Centennial of the End of the Great War

[Capt. Harlock]

10 June 1918

The Marines attempted another drive into Belleau Wood, this time with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. They gained some ground, but soon were brought to a halt by heavy machine-gun fire plus large amounts of German mustard gas. The losses were already the heaviest in the history of the Marine Corps, and the end was not in sight.

Operation Gneisenau continued, but the second day was not as successful as the first day had been. French artillery took a heavy toll of the advancing German infantry. Also on this day, General Jean Degoutte took over command of the French Sixth Army. This may or may not have helped the French defense immediately, but Degoutte appears to have been a superior commander to General Denis Duchêne.



The Austrian navy was being hampered from attacking Allied shipping in the Mediterranean by Allied ship patrols and mines at the Straits of Otranto. Attempting to break through, the battleships SMS Szent István and her sister ship SMS Tegetthoff, plus seven other ships, set sail in the early hours of the morning to attack. But the Italians were awake as well, and at 0330, the Szent István was hit by two torpedoes from the motor torpedo boat MAS-15. They struck the boiler rooms, and one by one the boiler fires were extinguished by the incoming water. Eventually the Szent István lost too much power to run the pumps, and she capsized and went down.

There happened to be a movie camera on board the Tegetthoff, and for the first time, the sinking of a battleship was captured on movie film. Note the Szent István and her sisters were among the world's earliest battleship designs to mount triple main gun turrets. (The footage has occasionally been mistaken for WWII footage.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pSiCjfhUUw

[Capt. Harlock]

11 June 1918

Although the German Gneisenau offensive was only on its third day, the French had the forces in place for a counter-attack. Four divisions and 150 tanks, led by General Charles Mangin, hit the German flank near Compiègne. The French trusted the tanks to give sufficient protection to their troops, so there was no preliminary bombardment. Their trust was well founded, and the Germans were caught entirely by surprise.

Three villages, le Frestoy, Courcelles, and St Maur went back into French hands, and a thousand German prisoners were also taken. At the end of the day, the Germans in the area realized they had a serious threat on their flank, and could not advance further without the danger of being cut off.

[Capt. Harlock]

12 June 1918

General Ludendorff read the reports coming in from Operation Gneisenau. Progress had stopped, and Allied reinforcements were coming in. Thus far, he had inflicted more losses than his troops had sustained, but with the powerful French force on his flank at Compiègne, that would likely change very soon. He therefore called a halt to Operation Gneisenau on its fourth day.

Total casualties for the Allies were about 35,000 men, while the Germans had lost about 30,000. In material the German advantage was larger: while they had lost 20 guns and 12 aircraft, the Allies had lost 70 tanks, 62 aircraft, and over 200 guns. This last was largely because the French had adopted the tactic of firing their field guns until the last moment, then disabling them and leaving. French industry was turning out generous numbers of cannon to replace what was abandoned on the battlefield. Roughly 12,000 of the 75mm “soixante-quinze” alone would be produced by the end of the war.

[Capt. Harlock]

Mid-June 1918

The Germans and the Turks had been scoring advances, but the Austro-Hungarians had been effectively quiet. This is not surprising, given that their Empire was now slowly disintegrating. The massive losses of both men and arms had left their economy in shambles, and their government was in almost as bad shape as the Russian government had been on the eve of the revolution. The parliament in Vienna had been suspended, making the Empire even less popular among nearly all of its constituent nations except Austria itself.

Emperor Karl Franz Joseph Ludwig Hubert Georg Otto Maria of the House of Hapsburg, or more commonly Charles I, was quite aware that the war his predecessor and grand-uncle Franz Joseph had helped to start was disastrous for his realm. He had attempted to negotiate a separate peace in secret the year before, but it had failed, leaving the Empire even more beholden to Germany. And now Germany demanded an offensive to draw British and French units away from France. It seemed a reasonable idea, and a victory might do much to rally the empire to something like loyalty to Emperor Charles.

The plan of the Central Powers was probably not the best that could have been put together. The Austrian high command had been unable to resolve an argument over whether the attack should be against the coastal region of the Piave River, or the more mountainous area to the west. Finally it was decided to do both. One force under Conrad von Hötzendorf would attack the Asiago Plateau inland, and a second force under Svetozar Boroević von Bojna would make its assault towards the coast, threatening Venice. In all, the offensive would employ 58 divisions, adding up to roughly 950,000 men. Ideally, both forces would break through the Italian lines, forcing the Allied troops to retreat or be enveloped.

However, the Italian army was no longer the one that had suffered the debacle of Caporetto. It was now lead by General Armando Diaz, who had spent much time and effort re-organizing the army to make it more flexible and mobile. He now had about 900,000 Italian troops defending the main line on the Piave River, bolstered by 40,000 British and 25,000 French troops.

[Capt. Harlock]

15 June 1918

The Austro-Hungarian army had been instructed in the new tactics for breaking through lines of trenches, but they were not as well equipped as the Germans. Most of all, they did not have the always- important advantage of surprise. After having been caught flat-footed for the first three major offensives of the year, Allied intelligence had improved considerably. (The French intelligence arm, the Deuxieme Bureau, had predicted the Germans would not be ready for another significant attack until July 15, which would prove to be spot-on.)

Now, it was the Italians who would spring the surprise: they had learned not only the day of the Austro-Hungarian assault, but also the exact time of 3:00 am. General Diaz therefore ordered his artillery to open its barrage at 2:30 am, catching the enemy troops forming up, and inflicting considerable casualties.


Nonetheless, showing remarkable determination for troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the attack went forward. In the western area, it did not fare well. With the aid a few British and French units sent as reinforcements, the Austrians were held to little more than a toe-hold on the south bank of the Piave River, and it cost them 40,000 casualties. In the coastal region, the offensive had more success. The Italians put up a good fight, but by the end of the day 100,000 Austro-Hungarians were across the Piave, and had established a lodgement 24 km (15 mi) wide and 8 km (5 mi) deep. They had also constructed 14 bridges to bring forward supplies and more men. For the moment, the Austrians seemed on their way to Venice.

[Capt. Harlock]

16 June 1918

In Italy, the weather went in favor of the Italians. Spring rains turned the Piave river into a torrent, carrying away several of the bridges the Austro-Hungarians had constructed. They dared not bring heavy guns across. On the other hand, the Italian artillery remained in range of the bridges. With the aid of Allied aircraft spotting, and dropping bombs, more bridges were wrecked. Before long there would be only four. This was not sufficient to carry the supplies needed for a major offensive.

To the west, the Austro-Hungarians were faring even worse. Their small advance of the day before was now brought to a halt by the Allied defenders. A few British units, angered by losing any ground to troops they regarded as second-string, even began local counter-attacks. There would be no giant pincer movement to catch Diaz's Italian army. Yet, Conrad von Hötzendorf refused to transfer any of his troops to aid Svetozar Boroević von Bojna’s battle on the coast.

[Capt. Harlock]

17 June 1918

On the Piave front, the battle reached a temporary standstill. The Austro-Hungarians could make no further significant advances.


French General Louis Franchet d’Esperey had supported General Duchene in his refusal to implement defense in depth in the Chemin des Dames, which had nearly led to disaster. Duchene had been relieved of command, but d’Esperey had given good service at the start of the war, and had an offensive spirit that Foch appreciated. On this date d’Esperey was kicked sideways, and given command of the Allied Army of the Orient, which was based in the Salonika sector of Greece. Up until now this had been a backwater of the war.

Franchet d’Esperey was irreverently nicknamed “desperate Frankie” by the British troops, but it wasn’t really accurate. He was reportedly a kindly man in his personal life, but had a fiery intolerance of anything he saw as slacking in matters military. His temper was fortunately matched by an energy to get things done, and he would prove just the man to finally invigorate the Army of the Orient. But not for a while yet, for the Salonika area was a hotbed of disease, especially malaria. d’Esperey would spend some time urging the Allied high command for fresh and healthy troops, and even more important, the authorization to use them. Given the titanic battles in France and Italy, it would not be easy. Public opinion in the Western democracies did not welcome still more casualties.

[Capt. Harlock]

18 June 1918

No modern dreadnought battleships were lost due to enemy gunfire in WWI (battlecruisers were a different story), but losses from other causes such as torpedoes, mines, and even accidents were considerable. On this date, there was a deliberate scuttling.

Since the Ukraine was now essentially a German vassal state, German troops advanced on the coast of the Back Sea, overrunning the ports. One of the most modern battleships in the Russian navy, the Svobodnaya Rossiya ( Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya before the revolution), and 8 destroyers were sunk by their own crews rather than let them fall into German hands. (This was actually a violation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which called for the Russian battleships to be turned over.)

[Capt. Harlock]

20 June 1918

In Italy, General Diaz had ordered the full counter-attack against the Austro-Hungarian forces to begin. In the area to the north and west, the Allies were already driving the enemy back across the Piave River, and even establishing a toehold on the northern bank. In the coastal area, however, the fighting was tougher:
[font="Times New Roman"]
Except down the roads and the railway there were no avenues of vision. Neither were the Italians fighting in prepared lines of defence, as they had lost their first line on the river bank when the battle began, and were never driven back as far as their second. Both sides had equally little advantage of ground, and fought behind dyke banks, in ditches and drains, or in improvised trenches scratched in the soft soil.

Naturally under these conditions the battle was always swaying to and fro in rushes and rallies.

[ ... ]

Above all, the reserves were well handled, here locally as well as by Diaz on the grand scale. The Bersaglieri ciclisti were hurried up on their "push bikes" along the lanes to the threatened spot time after time, and never in vain.

The Austrians had brought a few light cannon across the Piave, but generally speaking their excellent artillery had had to stay on the farther shore. And since they had lost the mastery of the air, thanks not a little to the British airmen in the spring, they could not get sufficient information as to how to direct their fire in accordance with the changing phases of the battle on the Italian side of the river.

They adopted the policy of plumping big shells on the country lanes, of which they had the accurate range, thereby often blocking them for a time. But the Italians, always careful of their road communications, were quick to fill up the holes.

[center]--G.M. Trevelyan, head of the British Red Cross in Italy[/center][/font]

In spite of this, Austrian General Conrad von Hötzendorf refused to transfer any of his troops from the northern sector to General Boroević von Bojna in the coastal sector. Hearing of the bickering between the two commanders in the field, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles took personal command of the situation. He was still fairly new, having inherited the throne in November of 1916, but he could see the Italians now had the upper hand, and a retreat back across the river would be necessary.

[Capt. Harlock]

21 June 1918

Since they were fighting in the area where the Piave River ran into the Adriatic Sea, the Italians had some naval units in the area. Now they gathered some sailors and marines for additional manpower, and made an attack along the coast with this combined force. It succeeded, turning the Austro-Hungarian left flank. The situation of the Austro-Hungarians had now gone from poor to critical. The order for immediate evacuation went out.

[Capt. Harlock]

23 June 1918

During the night, the Austro-Hungarians managed to complete their withdrawal back to the north side of the Piave River. Some reports state that the Italians were happy to let them go, and they took only light losses during the retreat. Another report, however, indicates that the remaining bridges were inadequate to handle the numbers of men attempting to escape, and hundreds men drowned either by falling in or attempting to swim the flooded river.

The Second Battle of the Piave River was over. (The first battle was an engagement between Napoleon’s forces and an Austrian army in 1809.) The forces involved had been massive, and the casualties were high: 8,396 dead, 30,603 wounded, and 48,182 captured for the Allies, and 11,643 dead, 80,852 wounded, and 25,547 captured for the Austro-Hungarians. Merely by looking at the map, the battle might have seemed to be a draw, for the two sides were essentially back to their starting positions. In actuality, the Italians had scored a decisive victory. They had shaken off the shock of Caporetto, and proved that they could fight. And the morale of the Austro-Hungarian army, already probably the lowest of the major combatants, had suffered a major blow. There would be no more significant offenses, and time would reveal that their defensive abilities had been mortally weakened as well.

[font="Times New Roman"] Towards the end of the week the enemy prisoners complained of hunger and eagerly ate the loaves shared with them by their kindly captors. As the Italians held their ground more firmly than ever, the Austrians, eight days after they had crossed the river, slipped back across it under cover of night.
Then we all knew that Italy had been saved, and we rejoiced together. But we did not know that Austro-Hungary had no less surely been doomed, and must now disappear from the category of States.

[center]--G.M. Trevelyan, head of the British Red Cross in Italy[/center][/font]

[Capt. Harlock]

25 June 1918

There had been a relatively quiet period in Belleau Wood while the Marines were taken out of the line to recuperate. But now it was decided to finish the job, and the Marines were sent back in. First, the Allies used their artillery plentifully. Beginning at 0300, the German positions in the northern part of the Belleau Woods region were blasted for a good 14 hours. Finally, the Marines moved to the assault as the guns shifted to a rolling barrage. At last, the German defenses began to crumble:

[font="Times New Roman"]About 700 of us went over this time – all that was left of our battalion… We had orders to take no prisoners… We had a wonderful barrage from our artillery which was falling only a few yards in front of us… We finally made it to the top of the hill; the Germans were entrenched at the bottom of the hill and just beyond the hill was a large wheatfield, the wheat being about waist high. After we had reached the top of the hill the Germans opened up with their machine-guns, hand and rifle grenades and trench mortars. Just then we all seemed to go crazy for we gave a yell like a bunch of wild indians and started down the hill running and cursing in the face of the machine-gun fire. Men were falling on every side, but we kept going, yelling and firing as we went. How any of us got through… I will never be able to figure out… I found a bunch of Germans in their dugout and ran them out… How we did cut the Germans down when they tried to cross the wheatfield. The wheat was just high enough to make good shooting, and when we hit one he would jump in the air like a rabbit and fall. We had orders to take no prisoners, to kill all of them . . .

[center]–- Marine William Francis[/center][/font]

By nightfall, the German-controlled part of Belleau Wood had been reduced to a small segment.

[AFBTD]

very; in veritas you are; napoleon was the first General to masacre the enemy infantry while the generals of the army on front runaway; massacre with his cannons

[Capt. Harlock]

26 June 1918

On this date, the Marines mounted one more assault in Belleau Wood. This time, against depleted German troops, it was entirely successful. The commander of the Marine battalion, Major Ed Shearer, at the end of the day sent in the succinct report, “Woods now U. S. Marines entirely. “

The nickname of Tefel Hunden (“Devil Dogs”) for the U. S. Marines seems to have been an American invention rather than something the Germans actually used. However, the battle had been hellish enough for both sides, with 1,811 killed and 7,966 wounded for the Allies. Elements of five separate German divisions were involved at one time or another, and this seems to have prevented accurate records of losses. 1,600 German prisoners were captured, and killed and wounded probably came to another 9,500 men.

[Capt. Harlock]

27 June 1918

The passenger liner RMS Llandovery Castle had been requisitioned for war service, as very frequently happened. She had been converted into a hospital ship, and transferred to Canada. On this date she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-86, commanded by Helmut Patzig. Attacking a hospital ship was a violation of international law, and the captain apparently attempted to cover up the crime by leaving no witnesses. U-86 ran down the lifeboats and even machine-gunned a number of the survivors, including female nurses.

However, a single lifeboat with 24 people was missed, all that escaped of the 258 sailors, soldiers, and medical staff that had sailed on the Llandovery Castle. The dead also told a tale: the HMS Morea came on the scene not long after and saw many bodies, kept afloat by their lifebelts.

It was the worst disaster at sea for Canadian forces in WWI. It was also one of the war’s most notorious atrocities, and one of the few for which a war crimes trial was attempted. Unfortunately, Captain Patzig managed to flee after the war ended, and his two junior officers would eventually have their convictions overturned on the grounds that they were following their captain's orders.

When the Nazis took power in the 1930’s, Patzig would be welcomed back into the Kreigsmarine.

[Capt. Harlock]

Late June 1918

The English Channel’s narrowest point was still under Allied control, and so the U-boats found it risky to go through it on their way to attack the Atlantic sea lanes. The favored route was to sail through the North Sea and then around Scotland. When the U. S. Navy learned this, they proposed minefields from the Orkney Islands off Scotland’s northern coast to Norway. At first, the British scoffed. The distance was 370 km (230 miles), which would take hundreds of thousands of mines, and many of them would be detonated by sea-life or drifting debris.

However, the American designers had for once come up with something more advanced than the other Allies. The Mark 6 mine had a copper wire “antenna fuse” extending its effective range, and which was also insensitive to anything non-metallic. With this counter-argument, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt appealed to President Wilson, who approved the project. The British also joined in when their own experts told them that a minefield which caught only 10% of submarines passing through it would still have a major impact on the morale of the crews in the surviving U-boats.


Sometime in late June, the British and American flotilla began laying the biggest naval minefield the world had yet seen. It would take almost until the end of the war to complete, and comprise a little over 70,000 mines.



The German possession of the French village of Hamel was a problem for the Allies. The Australian Corps under Lieutenant General John Monash was assigned the job of re-taking it. Monash, possibly the most famous general in Australian history, seems to have had the remarkable ability of becoming even more competent the higher he rose in rank. He had worked out his own theory of combined arms, coordination of infantry, tanks, artillery, and even aircraft, and was not slow to improvise new methods such as using tanks instead of wagons to carry supplies over shell-cratered terrain. He made meticulous plans for the attack, including painting diagrams on each individual tank for specific infantry platoons to know which one to follow.


Monash also accepted a suggestion form General Rawlinson to include American infantry. A total of 10 such companies were assigned, which would be the first time in history that American troops would be commanded by a non-American in battle on foreign soil.

[Capt. Harlock]

30 June 1918

At sea, the good news for the Central Powers was that only 3 U-boats had been lost during the month. The bad news was that monthly merchant shipping losses for the Allies were down to only about 255,00 tons, and their shipyards were launching ships faster than the U-boats could sink them. The even worse news was that 275,000 more American troops had made the voyage across the Atlantic.


In the United States, famed socialist Eugene Debs was arrested for an anti-war speech he had made in the middle of the month. The Justice Department claimed he had implicitly attempted to interfere with conscription. He had carefully worded his speech to try to comply with the restrictions of the Sedition Act, but he had praised three men who were in prison for opposing the draft, and this apparently was enough for the Wilson administration. (What likely really angered the President was Deb's declaration that all wars were fought for gain, and not for principle, but this would not serve for a conviction.)

[AFBTD]

interesting¡ a mean read soon¡

[Capt. Harlock]

1 July 1918

There was a tragic explosion at the National Shell Filling Factory in Chilwell, England. TNT is a fairly stable explosive, but it becomes more sensitive in hot and humid conditions, which often happen in the English summers. An estimated eight tons of TNT detonated, killing 134 people and injuring 250 more. (Of the dead, only 32 could be identified with confidence.) This was not the largest British munitions factory explosion during the war, but it may well have been the deadliest.


A combined force of French and Americans launched an assault, the Americans planning to recapture the village of Vaux, and the French aiming for the nearby Hill 204. Starting at 0500, Allied artillery opened a bombardment, which was quickly answered by the German guns.

[font="Times New Roman"]“…A newsreel photographer worked his way along the ravine bottom, stopped in front of us and said that this looked like a good place. He asked if he could get past us and I asked him where he was going. He said, “Over the rim. I’m going to take movies of the attack.” We gave him a hand and right in the thick of the firing, the chap crawled over and we handed the rest of his gear to him. What guts that fellow had!”
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(Guts, yes; wisdom, no. When the troops went “over the top” at 0600 they immediately found what was left of the photographer’s body. He had taken a direct hit from an artillery shell.)

[font="Times New Roman"]“My squad had demolition equipment: dynamite, triton, caps, drills and a magneto with which to blow up buildings, We found out later Joe was carrying the dynamite, which weighed about 25 pounds, and was right beside me. I was carrying a sack of percussion caps, more dangerous than the dynamite, and the magneto. None of us knew what we were carrying at the time. Joe was knocked down twice when shells landed in back of him, and he fell again crawling over some German wire. Luck was with us all, and our squad made it…”

[center]--Private Ralph L. Williams, 2nd Engineers[/center][/font]

In an hour, the Americans had taken Vaux. The demolition equipment turned out to be unnecessary, for a single Irishman tossing grenades through the windows of the headquarters building was sufficient to get the Germans inside to surrender. The Americans lost 46 men killed, 270 wounded, and 12 missing. According to American intelligence reports (which are probably not as accurate as if there were German records), the Germans lost 254 men killed, 162 wounded, and 510 missing or captured.


Germany had lost control of her African colonies as the war progressed. However, a force led by General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was now fighting one of the most brilliant guerrilla wars in history, managing to evade almost 300,000 British, Belgian, and Portuguese troops with a force that never grew larger than 14,000 men, and was often considerably smaller. This force consisted of German officers but mostly native African troops, living off what they could capture, since nothing had gotten through the British blockade after March 1916. On this date, they seized the outpost at Namakura (Nhamacurra in present-day Mozambique), which gave them not only a number of new rifles, but even some machine-guns and mortars. It would be the furthest south von Lettow-Vorbeck’s men would go; now it was time to head back to what had been German East Africa.

[Capt. Harlock]

3 July 1918

In Yildiz Palace in Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed V died at the age of 73. He had largely been a figurehead since the 1913 coup d’etat which had brought the “Young Turks” to power. But as Caliph, supposedly the chief political office for Muslims worldwide, he had declared the last formally recognized jihad in history, against the Entente Powers (Russia, France, and Britain). This had not stopped a number of Arabs from making alliances with the British in the hopes of gaining independent countries after the war.


General John “Black Jack” Pershing wanted his American Expeditionary Force to be as independent as possible, and was strongly opposed to American troops under the command of foreign generals. (Unless, of course, those troops were black.) When Pershing learned of the upcoming attack to recapture Hamel, he ordered the withdrawal of six of the ten assigned American companies. At this time, a U. S. Army company consisted of 250 men, so this was a significant weakening. The men attached to the 42nd Battalion, and a few others, actually disobeyed the order, but the majority reluctantly complied.

This was even more unfortunate because, of all the various nationalities, American units seemed to cooperate best with Australian troops. (This writer suspects it was at least in part because of the Australian fondness for beer instead of tea.)