Monica Mohindra On July 27, 1953, the Korean War ended with an armistice but no official treaty, technically meaning a state of war still exists between the combatant nations. Among the multinational participants in that significant flare-up in the Cold War were nearly 7 million U.S. military service personnel, of whom more than 1 million are still living. The 70th anniversary of the armistice spurred the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project to redouble its efforts to record for posterity the memories of those participants while it still can. Military History recently interviewed Veterans History Project director Monica Mohindra about its collection, the pressure of time and ongoing initiatives to honor veterans of that “Forgotten War” and all other American conflicts.

What is the central mission of the Veterans History Project?

Our mission is to collect, preserve and make accessible the first-person remembrances of U.S. veterans who served from World War I through the more recent conflicts. We want all stories, not just those from the foxhole or the battlefronts, but from all veterans who served the United States in uniform. The idea, developed by Congress in October 2000, was to ensure we would all be able to hear directly from veterans about their lived experience, their service, their sacrifice and what they felt on a human scale about their participation in service and/or conflict.  

Is your recent emphasis on the ‘forgotten’ Korean War mainly due to the anniversary?

Correct. But there is so much to share from the history of the Korean War that is relevant. We’re also marking the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the U.S. military, and researchers have been using our collections to understand, for instance, nurses’ perspectives on what it was like to serve in a desegregated military. Our collection speaks to what it was like prior to and after desegregation.  

To what extent do memories tied to both anniversaries overlap?

One of the real strengths of the Veterans History Project, and of oral history projects in general, is that one can pull generalized opinions from a multiplicity of voices. For example, there’s a story about a veteran named James Allen who “escaped” racially charged Florida to join the military. Serving in Korea in various administrative tasks, he experienced a taste of what life could be like under desegregation. When he returned to the United States, he moved back to Florida, the very place he’d escaped, to help veterans and advance such notions.  

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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You’re the spouse of a Navy veteran. Does that shape your perspective on history overall and the project you’ve taken up?

It absolutely adds another layer to the Veterans History Project and what it means on a human scale. This is personal. My husband’s experience, just like each veteran’s, is unique. He’s not ready to share his story—maybe not with me ever. His father, who also served, is not ready to share his story—maybe not with me, maybe not ever. Both of his grandfathers served. My grandfather served, too. So, I feel a personal imperative to help those veterans who are ready to share their stories.

It’s that seriousness of purpose, to create a private resource for future use, the Veterans History Project offers individuals around the country. We already have more than 115,000 such individual perspectives, and that gives us the opportunity to share the wealth of these collections.  

How does the project handle contributions?

Individuals may want to start by conversing with the veterans in their lives or by finding the collection of a veteran.  

To what use does the project put such memories?

People use the Veterans History Project—often online and sometimes in person here at the Folklife Center Reading Room—for a variety of reasons. More than 70 percent of our materials (letters, photographs, audio and video interviews, etc.) are digitized, and more than 3 million annual visitors come to the website. They’re using our materials for everything from school projects to enlivening curricula. Recently researchers have conducted postdoctoral research on desegregation during the Korean War. The project is also useful for beginning deeper conversations among friends and family members.

In this time of AI [artificial intelligence], the collection is a primary resource from those who had the lived experience. What did they hear? What did they see? How did they keep in touch with loved ones? These are the kind of questions we pose.  

What was unique about the Korean War experience?

Perhaps the extraordinary scope of injuries service members suffered because of the cold. Consider the Borinqueneers [65th U.S. Infantry Regiment], out of Puerto Rico, many of whom had never seen snow. On crossing the seas, they arrived in these extreme conditions, and it’s all so foreign. They received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2014, and we are fortunate to have memories from 20 Borinqueneers in our collection.  

Recently, the last American fighter ace of the Korean War died. Are you concerned about the time constraints you face?

Yes. The weight of that actuarial reality was quite heavy on World War I veterans. We had the pleasure to work with Frank Buckles [see “Frank Buckles, 110, Last of the Doughboys,” by David Lauterborn, on HistoryNet.com] several times, and he became sort of an emblem of his cohort, if you will. That was a heavy weight on him, one that he did not shy from.

The burden now is on people like me, you, your readers, to make sure we do sit down with the veterans in our lives. We want people 15 and up to think about doing that.  

What about the memories of U.N. personnel from other nations who served in Korea?

The legislation for the Veterans History Project is very clear. It limits our mission to those who served the U.S. military in uniform. That does include commissioned officers of the U.S. Public Health Service, an often forgotten uniformed service. We cannot accept the collections of Allies who served alongside U.S. troops. However, we do collaborate with other organizations within our sphere. For instance, in cooperation with the Korean Library Association we held an adjunct activity at the Library of Congress, a two-day symposium.  

Do you accept contributions from Gold Star families?

We do. The legislation for the Veterans History Project was amended in 2016 with a new piece of legislation called the Gold Star Families Voices Act. Before that we accepted collections of certain deceased members, including photographs or a journal, diary or unpublished memoir that could capture the first-person perspective.

However, the 2016 legislation put a fine point on a definition for Gold Star families to contribute. Under the Gold Star Family Voices Act, those participating as either interviewers or interviewees must be 18 or older, as one is speaking about a situation that involves trauma. Our definition calls for collections of 10 or more photographs or 20 or more pages of letters or a journal or unpublished memoir. The other way to start a collection is to submit 30 or more minutes of audio or video interviews. This enables us to gain a full perspective of a veterans’ experience, whether they are living or deceased.  

Where can an interested veteran or family member get more information?

There is all sorts of information on our website [loc.gov/vets]. They should also feel free to come to our information center at the Library of Congress [101 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, D.C.], with extended hours on Thursdays until 8 p.m.

This interview appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Military History magazine.

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The two frogmen slipped into the dark cold waters of the English Channel and started swimming towards the shore. The sea was lumpy and the pair could feel the current pulling them further east than they wished. The rain was torrential and all they could see was the lighthouse beam as they swam hard for land. They came ashore opposite the village of La Rivière, staggering up the beach at a crouch, relieved that they were screened from the lighthouse’s beam by buildings and trees.

For a few moments Maj. Logan Scott-Bowden and Sgt. Bruce Ogden-Smith recovered their breath in the lee of some groynes. From the buildings above them they could hear revelry. It was the last day of 1943 and the Germans were seeing in the New Year with plenty of beer and song. 

The two Englishmen set off down the beach, heading west for nearly a mile towards the original landing spot. The intelligence briefing had stated the beach was not mined. On this stretch of the Normandy coast the strong tides and shifting sand meant they would not stay in position. The rain was now nearly horizontal, a filthy night but a perfect one for their task.

Checking his map, Scott-Bowden announced that they had reached their place of work. They were to take samples of sand from the beach in an area designated in the shape of the letter ‘W’. The sand was collected by an auger, which, when inserted into the sand and given one half turn, dredged up a core sample. These were collected in twenty 10-inch tubes held in a bandolier worn by one of the men.

Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden worked swiftly, moving up and down the beach, taking samples but glancing now and again east to check that no Germans were clearing their groggy heads with a stroll down the beach. With their samples stashed in the bandolier, the pair left the beach and began wading through the breakers. But the wind had picked up and they were flung back into the sea. They tried again but without success. Apprehension began to rise. If they were caught on the beach with their bandolier the game would be up?

A Secretive Special Forces Unit

This was one of the most crucial moments of the war.  Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden ran up the beach. With the lighthouse beam to help them, they worked out the wave pattern. On the third attempt they made it through the surf and swam furiously towards the recovery boat. Suddenly Scott-Bowden heard a cry through the wind. Turning, he saw Ogden-Smith waving an arm. “I swam back somewhat alarmed, thinking he had either got cramp or his suit had sprung a leak,” recalled Scott-Bowden. “When I got close, he shouted ‘Happy New Year!’”

Bruce Ogden-Smith and Logan Scott-Bowden belonged to one of the most secretive special forces units in the British army. To those who served it was known by its acronym, COPP, short for Combined Operations Pilotage Parties. 

COPP was the brainchild of Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott, who had joined the Royal Navy between the wars, partly inspired by tales he’d heard as a young boy from his uncle Henry. He’d served in the First World War and had taken part in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915, when the Allies had attempted to knock Turkey out of the war by landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. It had been a bloody failure. Thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand troops were slaughtered attempting to establish a beachhead on clifftop ridges well-fortified by Turkish soldiers. Had the British planners been better briefed about the peninsula they might not have risked such an audacious amphibious assault. To Willmott’s dismay, the British military appeared not to have learned their lesson when the Second World War started. The Norwegian campaign in 1940, in which Willmott participated, was hampered by the Royal Navy’s ignorance of the fjords as they attempted to land British troops. 

Beach Surveillance

In early 1941 Willmott was appointed navigation officer for a planned invasion of Rhodes, a strategically important island in the Mediterranean Sea. There was scant intelligence on the approach to the beaches or shoreline itself. Might there be sandbars or rocks just under the water? Were the beaches mined? Were they suitable for vehicles? Were there accessible exit points so soldiers could quickly move inland? Answers to these questions had to be found. 

Willmott requested permission from Rear Adm. Harold Tom Baillie-Grohman, in charge of overall responsibility for planning the assault, to carry out a reconnaissance from a dinghy. It was a time in the war when the British, fighting a lone battle against the Axis forces, were at their most inventive out of necessity.

Small raiding units, dubbed ‘private armies’ were being formed with the encouragement of Prime Minister Winston Churchill: the commandos, the Long Range Desert Group and the Special Boat Section [SBS], the latter commanded by Maj. Roger Courtney, an adventurer before the war who had canoed the length of the White Nile in Africa. Courtney was only too happy to paddle Willmott ashore. Their reconnaissance proved invaluable, revealing perilous aspects of the shoreline that would have hampered any amphibious assault. 

Private Armies?

Not all British senior officers approved of ‘private armies.’ Some regarded these units as unbecoming of the British military and it was another 18 months before Willmott was authorized to raise a naval reconnaissance force. It took the shambles of the Dieppe Raid in August 1942 to convince the British that better reconnaissance was imperative for future operations. Intelligence about the Dieppe coastline had been so poor that the British planners were reduced to studying prewar postcards of the coastline for clues about its topography. Three thousand Canadians and British commandos were killed or captured because of this ignorance, plus three killed in action, five wounded and three POWs of the 50 U.S. Army Rangers that took part while assigned to a commando unit.

Willmott’s unit gathered intelligence for Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy-controlled French North Africa in November 1942. As a consequence, the following month the force was expanded and officially designated COPP. 

Scott-Bowden was recruited to COPP as Willmott’s second-in-command in May 1943, a few months before Sub-Lt. Jim Booth. Scott-Bowden was a soldier but Booth volunteered from the Royal Navy, where he’d tired of life as a junior officer mine-sweeping in the North Sea. “I’d heard nothing of COPP prior to my arrival,” recalled Booth in a 2017 interview with the author. “But it was soon apparent that I was among a different breed. They were mad, really, but in a nice way. I think for most of us the motivation for volunteering was to do something different.”

New recruits to COPP underwent training at Hayling Island, off the south coast of England near Portsmouth. Willmot was ruthless in weeding out those men he judged to be deficient physically or mentally for his unit. “He was very nice but bloody tough,” said Booth. “During the autumn and winter of 1943, he led us in training every day. He was methodical in our navigational training because he knew the problems caused by poor navigation.” While Booth completed his training, Willmot and Scott-Bowden were told to report to Combined Operations HQ in London in December 1943. 

Invading France

The planning for the invasion of France was underway. A 50-mile stretch of Normandy coast had been identified as a potential beachhead. But there were concerns. “Scientists had anxieties about the beach bearing-capacity of the Plateau de Calvados beaches for the passage of heavy-wheeled vehicles and guns, particularly in the British and Canadian sectors,” said Scott-Bowden. In ancient times there been peat marshes close to the sea. These had been covered with sand over the centuries, but the Allies feared that peat was often accompanied by clay, which could be catastrophic for a large invasion force. 

The Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington wanted a conclusive estimate of how much beach trackway would be required for the invasion force. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden undertook a trial run on Dec. 22, 1943 on a beach in Norfolk, eastern England. It was an opportunity to gain valuable practical experience of using the auger to collect samples. It was also a chance for COPP to prove to sceptical Allied planners that they could do their work undetected by sentries. Having proved their point, the pair sailed to Normandy on New Year’s Eve and the real thing was as fruitful as the dress rehearsal.

“[Lt.] General [Omar N.] Bradley commander in chief of all the American [D-Day assault] forces… having heard that we had examined the British beach [Gold] wanted Omaha Beach—as it came to be known—to be examined too,” remembered Scott-Bowden.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach was five miles west of ‘Gold’ beach. Bradley and his planners already knew it posed a formidable challenge to a putative invasion force. The beach was exposed, rising gently to a low sea wall, beyond which was a no-man’s land of marshy grassland. It was overlooked by bluffs, steep in places, which were cut by five valleys, the only exit points for vehicles and all heavily guarded by German concrete bunkers. COPP was instructed to bring back as much intelligence as they could about ‘Omaha’ beach in an operation codenamed Postage Able. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden were again part of the team, accompanied by Willmot. 

However, there was a significant difference to this mission compared to the one undertaken on New Year’s Eve. This time the audacious men would be traveling in an X-craft—a midget submarine that COPP had been conducting training on for several weeks in Loch Striven, a sea loch off the west coast of Scotland.

The X-class, or X-craft submarines were powered by 4-cylinder 42 hp diesel engines of the type used in London double-decker buses, and a 30 hp electric motor. Its maximum surface speed was 6.5 knots (a knot less when submerged). The midget submarines were usually crewed by three: the commander, pilot and engineer. Some also carried a specialist diver/frogman as a fourth member of the crew. “The X-craft were 52 feet long and 5 feet in diameter,” Jim Booth recalled, adding that they could remain at sea for to 10 days. The worst aspect of the midget submarines, certainly for the six-foot Booth, was their size. “The facilities were very cramped,” he remembered. “You had a bunk, cooking facilities, a gluepot for a hot meal, and you could just about stand.”

COPP had two midget submarines—X-20 and X-23—and it was the former that sailed from Portsmouth for Omaha beach on Jan. 17, 1944 under the command of Lt. Ken Hudspeth. It was a joint effort, his pilotage skills and the navigation of Willmot. “To reach the destination precisely, at [low] speed and in the strong cross-rides of Baie de Seine, was a measure of Willmott’s remarkable navigational skill,” commented Hudspeth.

At 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 18, the midget submarine was about 380 yards from the beach. It was nearly high tide. The vessel beached at periscope depth in 8 feet of water on the left-hand sector of ‘Omaha’ beach. Willmott took a couple of bearings to be sure of their position, then turned over the periscope to Scott-Bowden. “I took a quick general view and was astonished to see hundreds of [German] soldiers at work, and how hard they were working,” he recalled. “From our low-level view and pointing slightly up due to the slope of the beach, it was often possible to see under the camouflage netting and so verify the types of [gun] emplacement being constructed.”

Inside the Submersible

That night, Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith swam ashore to get a closer look. “We examined the beach with our augers over a wide area as planned,” said Scott-Bowden. The pair had special instructions to investigate the shingle bank at the back of the beach to determine if it might impede the progress of armoured vehicles. “It appeared to have been man-made and was above normal high water,” noted Scott-Bowden. “There were masses of wire immediately behind and a probable minefield. We each took one stone.” The next night the pair carried out another beach reconnaissance.

During daylight on Jan. 20 the midget submarine moved along the coast, observing different areas of the beach through the periscope. Then in the late afternoon they sailed for England. It was another two hours before Hudspeth felt it safe to surface, to the relief of the five men on board (the fifth was the engineer officer). Willmott recorded in his journal that the air was “very bad (none fresh for 11 hours) and everyone showed signs of distress.”

They reached Portsmouth at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 21—after no less than five days inside X-20. Several high-ranking officers were on the quayside to greet them but when the rear hatch was opened “the reception committee took a large step back.” Scott-Bowden didn’t blame them. The stench had been unbearable. A midget submarine was no place for a soldier.

The midget submarine had gathered vital intelligence on what became known as Omaha Beach for the planning for D-Day. Its role in assisting with the invasion of Normandy was not over. A new destination for X-20 was Juno Beach, the middle of the three Anglo-Canadian landing sectors with Gold to the west and Sword to the east. Arriving off the coast on June 4, the submarine acted as a beach marker for the main amphibious assault as they approached on the morning of D-Day.

COPP’s other midget submarine, X-23, was tasked with performing a similar task at Sword beach, the eastern extremity of the invasion task force. The crews of both vessels had been ordered to Portsmouth with their craft at the end of May. “We booked into the wardroom and so we knew it [the invasion] was imminent,” said Jim Booth. “Everything had been done in the greatest secrecy, however, and while we had done a lot of training, we had no clue to the date of the invasion or the location.”

On the morning of June 2, the skipper of X-20, Lt. George Honour, assembled his crew, which comprised Booth, Lt. Geoff Lyne (chief navigator), George Vause (engineer), and First Lt. Jimmy Hodges (diver). The invasion was on, he told them. They would depart in the evening. Their operational orders were to sail the 90 miles to Normandy and then lie on the bottom of the Channel a mile off Sword beach until the early hours of D-Day on June 5. Then they would surface, erect their masts with their lights shining seaward, activate their radio beacons and guide in the invasion fleet. 

Switching on the Beacons

Booth’s job was to climb into a dinghy and erect the masts and switch on the beacons. The operation was codenamed “Gambit,” a word Honour explained to his men was a chess move in which a piece is risked so as to gain advantage later. The men laughed sardonically.

The rest of the day was one of frenetic activity as they loaded the midget submarine with equipment: 2 small CQR anchors, three flashing lamps with batteries, several taut-string measuring reels, two small portable radar beacons, an eighteen-feet-long sounding pole and two telescopic masts of similar length. Twelve additional bottles of oxygen were hauled down the access hatch, to complement the vessel’s built-in cylinders, and three RAF rubber dinghies were also brought on board.

A handful of submachine guns and revolvers (and false identification papers) were stashed inside the sub in the event they were forced to abandon the vessel and make for Nazi-occupied France. At 9:40 p.m., X-20 and X-23 sailed out of Portsmouth and rendezvoused with two naval trawlers that towed them part way across the Channel. 

The submarines slipped their tows at 4:35 a.m. June 3 and headed independently towards their respective beaches. X-23’s orders was to position itself at the point where the amphibious Duplex Drive Sherman [DD-swimming] tanks were to be launched onto Sword Beach. The pressure on the shoulders of Lt. Lynne, the navigator of X-23, was therefore immense: a slight error in position could have appalling ramifications.

The chief pre-occupation of X-23’s skipper, George Honour, was their oxygen supply; to conserve it as best he could he carried out a procedure every five hours of what submariners call “guffing through”—coming to periscope depth and raising the induction mast, then running the engine for a few minutes to draw a fresh supply of air through the boat. This brought obvious risks, particularly as they would lying just off the enemy coastline. 

At 8:30 a.m. June 4 Honour wrote in his log: “Periscope depth, ran to the East. Churches identified and fix obtained.” They had arrived at their position off Sword beach. The churches they could see were those at Ouistreham. Booth peered through the periscope. On the beach was a group Germans playing football. “Poor buggers don’t know what’s going to hit them,” he muttered.

Enough Oxygen?

In less than 24 hours the invasion would be underway—or so they thought. But when they surfaced at 1:00 a.m. Monday June 5 and hoisted their radio mast, they received bad news. “The postponement was sent out in a broadcast,” remembered Booth. “There were several messages and the phrase to let us know invasion was off was ‘Trouble in Scarborough’. [Scarborough is a coastal town in eastern England]. That caused a bit of tension because we didn’t know the length of the postponement and we weren’t sure we would have enough oxygen.” X-23 remained on the surface until 3:00 a.m. June 5. The men enjoyed the stiff wind on their faces and the fresh air in their lungs. 

Reluctantly they climbed back inside their 52-foot submarine, closed the hatch and bottomed. Honour said the lack of oxygen inside the midget submarine left him feeling like he’d drunk “a couple of stiff gins.” He added: “It was murky, damp and otherwise very horrible.” X-23 surfaced at 11:15 p.m. on Monday, June 5. They began their wireless watch. The weather was still foul.

The crew believed the invasion would again be postponed, but the message they received confirmed it was on. They dived once more, then surfaced at 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday June 6. The sea was too rough for Booth to launch his rubber dinghy so instead he rigged up the lights above the submarine. The lights flashed the letter D for Dog for 10 seconds every 40 seconds from 140 minutes before H-hour—the start time of the assault.

“We had a few problems with the boat because it was rocking and rolling,” recalled Booth. “We secured the main one, a green light, and also some red and white lights, and then because it was so cold and miserable out on deck we went down below and put the [tea] kettle on.” The radio beacon had also been activated. There was nothing else to do but have a cup of tea and wait. The tension was as unbearable as the foul air they breathed. Aircraft began bombing the German coastal positions. Soon the guns of the naval armada joined the bombardment. 

Invasion Day

Booth and his comrades went back on deck just as dawn broke on June 6. For several minutes they peered south through the murk, straining to see the armada they knew was coming their way.

“Suddenly we saw them,” recalled Booth. “It was a case of ‘bloody hell, look at that lot’! It was literally ships as far as the eye could see. A very spectacular sight.”

As the invasion fleet loomed into view another danger confronted X-23—being sunk or shelled by one of their own vessels. The commanding officer of the destroyer, HMS Middleton, Lt. Ian Douglas Cox, was standing on his ship’s brige when “a small submarine suddenly loomed out of the faint mist.” He and his lookout assumed it was an enemy vessel. Middleton gave orders for ‘full ahead.” “As we gathered speed to ram her, a figure stood up on the conning tower waving a large White Ensign,” he recalled. “We laughed nervously and sheared away.”

X-23 avoided any further unpleasant encounters and made its way to HMS Largs, the headquarters ship, where it rendezvoused with a naval trawler. A relief crew exchanged places with Booth and his comrades, who gratefully boarded the trawler. The operation had lasted 72 hours—of which 64 had been spent underwater. The men craved fresh air as much as they did sleep. Operation Gambit had indeed been a risk, but above all it had been a success.

The COPP force and the midget “X-craft” submarines were vital to the success of the D-Day landings, anddeserve more credit than has yet been given to them. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied France on the Normandy coast, was the single most complicated human endeavor undertaken before the “computer age,” and its success is due to the incrediblecoordination of all branches of service of the Allied powers.

Popular history and films tend to focus on the June 5–6, 1944 airborne operations and the deadly ordeal the infantry assault troops suffered and endured at bloody Omaha Beach, but the ultimate goal of the operation—establishing a secure Allied foothold on the European continent in the face of fierce German resistance, was only achieved by the total commitment and supreme effort of every single member of all Allied forces taking part—on land, sea and in the air. This article recounts only one of those efforts.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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A night owl’s lament about wanting more sleep became an unexpected hit song in 1918 with lasting popularity. Irving Berlin’s “Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning,” swept across music halls in World War I and was performed all over the U.S. in World War II. 

Perhaps America’s most influential composer, Berlin was born Israel Beilin to a Jewish family in Russia and emigrated to New York City at age 5. He became a singer as a teenager living a hardscrabble existence on the Lower East Side, performing songs and parodies in music halls and nightclubs. Berlin won the hearts of audiences and quickly rose to fame in the city’s “Tin Pan Alley” as a composer and singer. His 1911 hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” sparked a wild craze for what was then seen by older folks as “scandalous” dancing. Berlin was a rising star.

World War I turned Berlin’s world upside down. Drafted into the U.S. Army and packed off to Camp Upton in Yaphank, Long Island in 1918, he was reduced to despair at being dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn. Berlin preferred moonlit streets, crowded clubs and staying up late to write music.

“There were a lot of things about army life I didn’t like, and the thing I didn’t like most of all was reveille. I hated it. I hated it so much I used to lie awake nights thinking about how much I hated it,” he later said. Needing to vent, Berlin expressed himself with a song that was not so much an artistic effort as an ode to drowsy grumpiness. It incorporated reveille into its refrain.

Oh! How I hate to get up in the morning, Oh! How I’d love to remain in bed; For the hardest blow of all, is to hear the bugler call: Youv’e got to get up, You’ve got to get up, You’ve got to get up this morning! 

Someday I’m going to murder the bugler, Someday they’re going to find him dead; I’ll amputate his reveille and step upon it heavily, And spend the rest of my life in bed. 

The song spread like wildfire. It appeared in a 1932 Betty Boop cartoon as well as Berlin’s popular 1942 Broadway show, “This is the Army.” Although Berlin wrote many other hit songs, including “God Bless America,” and received a Congressional Gold Medal for his achievements, his anti-morning ballad is among his most famous.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The heavy fighting at the Siege of Delhi during the 1857 Indian Mutiny left the 462 men of Maj. Charles Reid’s Sirmoor Battalion with 327 casualties. Despite the carnage, during the fighting Reid, desperate for replacements and hoping to salvage some of his wounded and return them to duty, went to the battalion hospital to look for volunteers. Every one of the wounded who could walk volunteered to rejoin the fighting. In the spring, the Sirmoors moved against the mutineers holding Delhi, overrunning a strong enemy position, capturing 13 guns, and taking the Badli-ki-Serai ridge six miles west of the city. On June 8, joined by two companies of the 60th Rifles, they occupied a house on the southern end of the ridge known as the Hindu Rao’s House where they were immediately attacked. 

For the next 16 hours, they fought in the heat and swirling smoke before finally repelling the attackers. They held the ridge and the Hindu Rao’s House for the next three months beating off another 25 attacks. When mutineers came out from behind the stone walls where they had taken cover, the Sirmoor Battalion attacked them. By Sept. 20, it was over. The British had blown open Delhi’s Kashmiri Gate and taken the city. 

The Sirmoor Battalion’s 490 men were Gurkhas. By the time the fighting at Badli-ki-Serai ended they were boasting among themselves that the mutineers were offering 10 rupees for the head of a Gurkha, the same price they were paying for an Englishman’s head. Reid wrote in his diary that British authorities who previously had their doubts about the Gurkhas “are now satisfied.”

The Gurkhas have continued to nobly and bravely serve the British Crown until today. Field Marshal William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim who fought alongside them in Burma during World War II called the Gurkha an “ideal infantryman … brave, tough, patient, adaptable, skilled in field-craft, intensely proud of his military record, and unswerving loyalty.” Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener and the hero of British operations in the Sudan called them “some of our bravest” and in his 1930 Gallipoli Diary 1915, Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton, commander in chief of Britain’s Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in World War I wrote that each Gurkha fighter was “worth his full weight in gold at Gallipoli.” 

The Legendary Kukri Knife

Over the past 200 years an estimated 200,000 Gurkha fighters have served in Britain’s colonial conflicts, in both World Wars, in the Falkland Islands, the Middle East, and Afghanistan with 46,000 of them living up to the Gurkha motto: “Better to die than be a coward.” 

These fighters from the mountains of Nepal average about 5 foot 3 inches tall, diminutive by European and American standards, but for centuries the image of charging Gurkhas, waving their kukri knives, and shouting their battle cry of “Aayo Gurkhali” (“The Gurkhas have arrived!”)have emboldened their allies and terrorized their enemies. The kukri alone is terrifying and well known.

These distinctive knives—the Gurkha emblem is two crossed kukris, with a crown above them—have been employed by the Gurkhas for centuries and may have evolved from the Greek kopis, the single-edged curved swords carried by Alexander the Great’s cavalry when it entered northern India in the fourth century bce. Basically a chopping weapon, the kukri is up to 18 inches long, weighs between one and two pounds, and is curved downward with a roughly quarter-inch spine tapering to a point.

The widest portion of the kukri blade is in the front portion of the blade, between the tip and where the downward curvature begins. This “well-forward” blade weighting adds substantial power to the downward thrusting motion, greatly increasing the blade’s penetration when slicing through a target—such as an unlucky enemy soldier! 

Generally, there is a notch in the blade just below the handle that is there for multiple reasons: symbolic; religious; and practical. For one, that simple notch allows blood to drain away, rather than coat the kukri’s handle making it slippery. Military issue kukris typically come with two much-smaller wooden-handled bladed knives contained in their own separate sheaths integrated into the main sheath: a karda utility knife; and a chakmak sharpening tool. The kukri’s handle is usually made of hardwood, but other substances such as buffalo horn, metal, and even ivory have been used. The Gurkha kukri is sheathed in a leather-wrapped wooden scabbard.

Legend has it that once a kukri has been unsheathed it must “taste blood” before it can again be sheathed. In truth, however, the kukri serves both as a weapon and a general utility knife used by the Gurkhas for cooking and various camp tasks. 

All Gurkha fighters are trained in its use for hand-to-hand combat. Stories have circulated for centuries about the kukri’s fierceness and effectiveness including one from a Gurkha unit fighting in North Africa during World War II that reported enemy losses of 10 killed and “ammunition expenditure nil,” a mute acknowledgement of the kukri’s effectiveness.

During the Falklands War in the 1980s, a photograph of a Gurkha sharpening his kukri circulated and was said to have unsettled Argentinians troops to such an extent that members of the 1st Battalion 7th Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Rifles captured several heavily armed Argentine combatants by doing little more than brandishing their kukris.

Military Tribes

There is “no agreement as to who is and who is not a Gurkha,” Byron Farwell wrote in his 1984 book, The Gurkhas. “There are some who would call all Nepalese ‘Gurkhas’ regardless of their origin, tribe, or social class. Others would limit the term to those who live in the hills around the town of Gurkha, some twenty-five miles northwest of Kathmandu.”

What is accepted is that the Gurkha fighters come from the mountains of Nepal (and parts of northeast India) and generally from four of what Great Britain has traditionally called that country’s “military tribes” that inhabit the region: Magars; Gurungs; and to a lesser extent, Limbus and Rais.

Nepal, today a country of about 30 million people, has been settled for at least 2,500 years. Venetian traveler Marco Polo passed through there in the 13th century calling it “wild and mountainous.” It is also the legendary birthplace of Gautama Buddha, born at Lumbini in what is today southern Nepal. Most of the area’s history is filled with war rather than the Buddha’s peace and serenity. It is a history of battle and betrayal; tribes, individuals, and various sections fought for supremacy. It is a martial history.

When Great Britain’s East India Company, formed in 1600 to “exploit” trade with eastern and southeast eastern Asia and India, moved men and supplies into India and Nepal in the early 19th century, Gurkha tribesman from the north harassed them. These skirmishes led to a May 29, 1814, raid by tribesman on three British police stations that killed twenty people including one Englishman and led to the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816. The British retaliated with separate invasions of Nepal in 1814, 1815, and 1816. The tribesman repelled the first two expeditions but were defeated in 1816 at Malaom in northeast India.

An Unlikely Alliance

In the process, however, the British had become impressed with the fighting ability of the Nepalese. John Ship of the 87th Foot, who fought them in the 1814 campaign, wrote about the tribesmen that, “I never saw more steadiness or bravery exhibited in my life. Run they would not, and of death they seemed to have no fear though their comrades were falling thick around them, for we were so near that every shot told.” 

Farwell also tells that during the Anglo-Nepalese War “in the middle of a British bombardment a Gurkha came out of the fort [at Kalunga] and approached the British line waving his hands; the first surrender the British thought. A cease-fire was ordered, and he was welcomed into the lines. His lower jaw was shattered and he was happy to be patched up by the surgeons, but this done, he asked permission to return to the fort and continue the fight”—an attitude more appropriate to a soccer game than a war.

India’s Governor General (1813-1823) Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings, authorized the establishment of the first Gurkha regiment, the Sirmoor Battalion, in April 1815 under the command of Lt. Frederick Young of the East India Company, who would command the Sirmoor Battalion for the next 28 years. (It first saw action in 1817 during Britain’s 3rd Mahratta War). After the signing of the Treaty of Segauli in 1816, which formally ended the Anglo-Nepalese War, the East India Company began recruiting other Gurkha regiments to serve as British mercenaries. 

The war left both the English and the Gurkhas with an increased respect or each other. The British erected two obelisks at Kalunga, the location of a hill fort Gurkhas had defended in November 1814. One obelisk commended the bravery of the British who had fought there and the other the courage of the fort’s Gurkha defenders. 

Regardless of the reputation the Gurkha fighters had earned, the English still considered them to be “sepoys”—a slightly disparaging term applied to all the native soldiers the Crown employed, and the respect the Gurkhas had earned was a respect qualified with caution.

The Indian Mutiny changed that. The Mutiny, a generalized rebellion of local Indian troops against British rule broke out in 1857 in northern India, spread like a wildfire, and quickly became centered around the city of Delhi, where what has come to be called the Siege of Delhi began in June 1857. It would last for the next four months. During the fighting, the British still distrusted their Gurkha regiments’ loyalty; British commanders often stationed Gurkha troops close to the British artillery so that artillery could be turned against the Gurkhas at any sign of disloyalty. Such an action was never required. By the end of the of the Mutiny in July 1859, Gurkhas had established their loyalty, and British authority, as Reid wrote, had been “satisfied.” 

“The British began to take a serious and studied view of the Gurkhas [and] to regard them as something more than good ‘native infantry,’ but as something special,” Farwell wrote. “In an era when British regiments of the line were filled with society’s rejects and it was felt that fierce discipline was required to keep the men under control, Gurkhas were enthusiastic soldiers requiring little discipline.” 

In one seven-year period, he wrote, only one Gurkha faced a court martial. “No British battalion could make such a boast, and probably such a record could not be duplicated by any battalion in any European or American army,” he wrote. (Meanwhile, the East India Company had deteriorated and after 1834 was little more than the manager of British government of India. It ceased to exist in 1873).

From World War I to Today

Gurkhas fought in the Britain’s colonial wars including the Sikh Wars of 1845-46 and 1848-49, the three Burma Wars of 1824-26, 1852, and 1885, the Afghan wars of 1839-42, 1878-81, and 1919. They also took part in the expedition led by Maj. Francis Younghusband into Tibet in 1903-04.

In World War I, more than 50,000 Gurkhas fought in Gurkha regiments (as well as 16,544 Gurkhas who served in the regular Indian Army), suffered 20,000 casualties and received 2,000 individual awards for bravery, including two Victoria Crosses. (A third VC was won by a British commander of a Gurkha unit). Nothing in their history, David Bolt wrote in his 1967 book Gurkhas, “prepared [the Gurkha force] for the conditions under which it was called upon to fight in Flanders: the sodden chill of a European winter, with its full-scale artillery barrages and acceptance of mass casualties, and the murderous hazard of occupying trenches dug previously by the much taller British soldiers so they could not see over the parapets.” 

British general Sir James Willcocks, who commanded the Indian Corps in France in 1914, pointed out that the Gurkha regiments also fought without hand grenades or mortars, were “exposed to every form of terror, and they could reply only with their valor and their rifles and the two machine-guns per battalion with which they were armed, and yet they did it.” 

They fought at the Loos, where Gurkhas kept fighting to the last man, at Givenchy, and Neuve-Chapelle in France, at Ypres, as well as in Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, and at Gallipoli where Gurkha fighters captured a heavily guarded Turkish position by climbing a 300-foot-high bluff under cover of a bombardment. Gurkha troops served with T.E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia, on the Arabian Peninsula. 

Yet despite their recognized courage and loyalty during these years, it was only in 1911 that Gurkhas became eligible for Britain’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross. 

Since then, individual Gurkha fighters have won 26 VC’s including the two won during World War I. One of those two VC’s went to 26-year-old Rifleman Kulbir Thapa of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Queen Alexandra’s Gurkha Rifles for his rescue of wounded men during the fighting at Fauquissart, France, in September 1915. He found a wounded man behind the first line of German trenches and stayed with him until the next morning when he dragged him through the German barbed wire in what has been called “spitting distance” of German troops.

Leaving him at the Allied lines, Thapa returned and brought in two other wounded, and in full daylight went back yet again to carry out a wounded British soldier. He was the first Gurkha to win a VC. (The first Indian enlisted man to receive a VC was Darwan Singh Negi of the 39th Garhwal Rifles of the Indian Army for his bravery in clearing a trench near Festubert, France). The second Gurkha to win a VC in World War I was Karanbahadur Rana, also of the 3rd Queen Alexandra’s Gurkha Rifles, who won his award at El Kefr, Palestine in 1918 for taking an enemy machine gun while under heavy fire.

The Gurkhas’ reputation as fighters expanded even more during World War II. During that conflict, over 110,000 served in 40 Gurkha battalions in Africa, Italy, Greece, and Southeast Asia. In all 30,000 of them were killed or wounded, and 12 Gurkha fighters won Victoria Crosses including 19-year-old anti-tank gunner Ganju Lama of the 1st Battalion, 7th Gurkha Rifles. Though wounded in the leg and arm and with his wrist broken, he crawled through a Japanese crossfire in Burma (now Myanmar) to destroy two enemy tanks.

The incident occurred only three weeks after Lama had won the British Military Medal, a forerunner of the Military Cross, for taking out a Japanese tank in a similar situation. Sgt. Gaje Ghale of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles suffered leg, arm, and upper body wounds but still engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Japanese defenders, overran a Japanese position and then repelled a counterattack.

Tul Bahadur Pun, armed with a Bren gun, singlehandedly overran a Japanese position under heavy fire, killing three of its defenders and putting five others to flight. Havildar Manbahadur, was shot in the spleen and slashed in the back of the head by a Japanese officer’s sword, but survived—and walked 60 miles to rejoin his unit and seek medical attention. 

The Royal Gurkha Rifles

In 1947, when Independence was granted to India, 10 Gurkha Regiments existed. Six remained in the Indian Army and four transferred to the British Army, the 2nd King Edward VII’s Own Gurkha Rifles (The Sirmoor Rifles), and the 6th, 7th and 10th Gurkha Rifles. They served in the Falklands, Cyprus, Bosnia, Southeast Asia, and today in the Middle East and Afghanistan. (Under Article 47 of the Geneva Convention, Britain’s Gurkha fighters—like fighters in the French Foreign Legion—are not considered mercenaries but as regular British infantry units receiving regular pay and treatment while serving a stated enlistment period). 

In 1994, these four regiments were merged into one unit, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, as part of the Brigade of Gurkhas of the British Army and Britain’s only Gurkha infantry regiment. 

There are currently about 3,000 fighters in the Gurkha Brigade and competition for any openings is fierce. In 2019, for example, 10,000 young Nepalese signed up to compete for about 500 openings. To be considered, these young Nepalese men—and women beginning in 2020— from the rural and largely impoverished mountains must pass one of the world’s most grueling military selection processes, which includes completing a three-mile, uphill run with a 55-pound pack that must be completed in 45 minutes and doing 70 sit-ups in two minutes. Both men and women applicants face the same qualification test. To apply they must also be at least 5 foot 1 inch tall and weigh at least 110 pounds.

During May of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s 2022 Platinum Jubilee year, the Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment was responsible for guarding the monarch and Gurkha guards stood at attention at Buckingham Palace, St James’ Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Tower of London. Gurkhas also marched in her funeral procession four months later. 

Aayo Gurkhali.

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Kilts allowed Scottish warriors increased mobility in battle as they dashed around the Highlands, but these proud traditional tartan garments had one major problem: no pockets. A man without pockets to stash things in is a man in a state of clutter and confusion. This was as true in the Middle Ages as it is today. Yet as early as the 12th century, Highlanders had developed a clever solution in a small all-purpose bag which became known as the sporran. 

The sporran, which is still a part of traditional Scottish menswear, was the ideal travel bag for the Scottish warrior on the go. Worn slung from a belt over the kilt, the sporran could be used to stash knives, food, bullets as soon as they were invented and whatever else an enterprising warrior wanted to take on the road. Early sporrans were made from leather or animal hide. Starting in the late 17th century, sporrans were furnished with metal clasps and gradually came to incorporate more intricate metal designs. 

Ceremonial sporrans were developed for military use in the 18th century. These are made with animal hair and are known as sporran molach. Animal hair used to make them have typically included goat hair, horsehair and rabbit fur. Soldiers’ sporrans feature tassels, which swing when the kilt-wearing trooper is marching. The number of tassels, as well as their placement, weave and colors, are rich in meaning and vary depending on regiment and wearer.

Some officers have had custom sporrans made for them. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders have traditionally worn a tassel arrangement known as the “Swinging Six” style and sporrans made from badger heads. Sometimes fox heads have been used for sporrans as well. A sporran can be worn sideways over the hip or more boldly front and center.

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On the first day of the Allied offensive on the Somme River of northern France in July 1916 the British suffered 57,470 battle casualties, making it the bloodiest single day in that nation’s military history. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, realized he must change tactics. Thus, he gave orders that all the newfangled tanks that had reached the Western Front be employed in a subsequent assault on German-held French villages dubbed the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. A dozen Allied infantry divisions and all 49 available tanks attacked the German front line that September 15. The tanks psychologically shattered the Germans, instilling in them a fear they termed “Panzer Angst” and prompting many to flee. Those who held their ground found that their most potent weapons—artillery shrapnel and machine guns—were useless against the lumbering armored beasts. In the first three days of fighting the British captured more than a mile of German-held territory.

Thanks for the British success was due in part to an unlikely early proponent of armored mechanized warfare—Winston Churchill.

That summer Churchill’s service as commander of the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers had come to an end. He’d been serving on the Western Front for the past six months after having taken a break from politics. The reason for that break was his undeniable link to the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. As first lord of the Admiralty, Churchill had been among the chief advocates for opening another front in the Dardanelles. In the wake of the sub-
sequent military fiasco, Churchill temporarily left politics and resumed his previous commission as a British army officer. What he witnessed in the trenches refocused his attention on a technological innovation he’d championed in the Admiralty—an armored vehicle that could break the stalemate on the Western Front.

Winston Churchill’s service to Great Britain as a cigar-chomping, no-nonsense prime minister during World War II has been the subject of countless books, articles and films. Less well known is his service as a British army officer after his graduation from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. As a young cavalry officer he saw active duty in the far reaches of the empire, including Cuba, India and the Sudan. After having served some five years, he resigned his commission to pursue politics and was elected a member of Parliament in the House of Commons. While Churchill served primarily as a politician for the rest of his life, he never abandoned his interest or involvement in military matters.

In 1911, after a decade in public office, Churchill was appointed first lord of the Admiralty by Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. Winston had always expressed a keen interest in naval matters, as a member of Parliament often pushing for increases in defense spending for the Royal Navy. As first lord he pushed for higher pay for naval staff, ramped up production of submarines and beefed up the nascent Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Churchill encouraged the navy to determine how aircraft might be used for military purposes, coined the term “seaplane” amid debate in the House of Commons and ordered 100 of the latter for naval use. His advancements were timely. Three years into his appointment as first lord Britain entered World War I.

With the onset of war Churchill grew increasingly obsessed with the Middle Eastern theater. Hoping to relieve Ottoman pressure on Allied Russia in the Caucasus, he proposed a combined naval expedition against Turkish gun emplacements in the Dardanelles. Churchill hoped a successful outcome there might enable the Allies to seize the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), force Turkey out of the war and allow British naval forces to transit the Bosporus Strait into the Black Sea. Churchill anticipated that Romania, a neutral nation bordering the Black Sea that harbored hostility for its Austro-Hungarian neighbor, would ultimately allow Allied troops to use its territory to open a southern front against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Allied representatives signed off on Churchill’s ambitious plan, and in February 1915 an Anglo-French fleet dubbed the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force sailed to commence a naval bombardment of Turkish defenses in the Dardanelles. On March 18 the Allied fleet, comprising 18 battleships and an assortment of cruisers and destroyers, launched its main attack against Turkish defenses at the narrowest point of the Dardanelles, where the straits between Asia and Europe are only a mile wide. The British first ordered civilian-crewed minesweepers into the straits, which soon retreated under significant artillery fire from Ottoman shore emplacements, leaving the minefields largely intact. At the outset of the attack the French battleship Bouvet struck a mine, capsized and sank within minutes; just 75 of its crew of more than 700 survived. The British battlecruiser Inflexible and pre-dreadnought battleship Irresistible also struck mines. Inflexible was severely damaged and compelled to withdraw. Irresistible was lost, though most of its crew was rescued. Sent to Irresistible’s aid, the battleship Ocean was damaged by shellfire and then struck a mine, sinking soon after its crew abandoned ship. Also damaged by shellfire, the French battleships Suffren and Gaulois had to withdraw. With his combined fleet bloodied, Rear Adm. John de Robeck, the British commander, ordered a withdrawal.

Churchill and others in favor of opening a southern front remained determined. If the Turkish emplacements could not be silenced by naval gunfire, then a ground invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula would serve the purpose. The planned assault called for Allied forces to conduct amphibious landings and then attack the Ottoman forts from the landward side. Initiated on April 25, the landings targeted several beaches on the peninsula. The Allied assault was conducted primarily by British and Commonwealth soldiers, including Australian and New Zealand troops, but also included a French contingent.

Organized on short notice, the amphibious assault suffered from a dearth of intelligence regarding enemy defenses and lacked accurate maps. Seeking to overcome both shortfalls, planners turned to seaplanes from No. 3 Squadron of Churchill’s vaunted RNAS. Unopposed by the small Ottoman air force during the preparation phase, the squadron initially provided aerial reconnaissance. Once the invasion was under way, the planes conducted photographic reconnaissance, observed naval gunfire and reported on Turkish troop movements. The squadron also conducted a handful of bombing raids in support of Allied ground troops.

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One handicap Allied planners were unable to overcome was the fact Ottoman forces held the high ground in the interior beyond the beachheads. The Turks knew their own geography and had modern artillery and machine guns provided by their German allies. The campaign devolved into a stalemate, with the Allies unable to break out from the beachheads, and the Turks unable to overrun them. A rare Allied highlight of the campaign was that Churchill’s Royal Navy was able to interdict most enemy merchant shipping seeking to resupply Ottoman forces in Gallipoli. That alone might have ultimately forced Turkey to sue for peace. But the Allied situation at Gallipoli soon devolved after Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. In early October 1915 the latter opened a land route through Bulgaria, connecting Germany and the Ottoman empire and enabling the Germans to rearm the Turks with modern heavy artillery capable of devastating the Allied positions. Germany also supplied Turkey with the latest aircraft and experienced crews.

‘Darth’ Tanker

Actually harking back in appearance to medieval Japanese samurai armor, this 1916-issue leather British tanker’s helmet with mask was designed to protect its wearer from head injury. When leather proved too flimsy, British tankers switched back to the steel Brodie helmet.

Seeing no realistic way to turn the situation to their favor, the British Cabinet made the difficult decision to evacuate in early December 1915. While Churchill hadn’t been the sole proponent of the disastrous campaign, he’d been among its most vocal, thus many ministers of Parliament held him personally responsible. The following May the prime minister agreed under parliamentary pressure to form an all-party coalition government on the condition Churchill be removed from his Cabinet position.

Unceremoniously booted from his appointment as first lord of the Admiralty, Churchill took a break from politics and resumed frontline service as an army officer. In January 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given command of the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers. After training, the battalion deployed to a sector of the Belgian front. For more than three months they experienced continual shelling and sniping while preparing to meet the expected German spring offensive. As the Germans were focused on taking Verdun, Churchill’s sector remained relatively quiet. In May the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers were absorbed into the 15th Division. Churchill didn’t seek a new command in the division, instead securing permission to leave active duty and return to politics. But his military contributions were far from over, and the seeds of an earlier endeavor were about to bear fruit.

In 1914, when the war slipped into stalemated trench warfare, First Lord Churchill had fished about for solutions and came to believe an armored motorized vehicle of some sort was the answer. Seeking ownership of the technology on behalf of the Admiralty, he’d labeled such futuristic armored vehicles “landships.” Eventually conceding the technology was more appropriately an army initiative, Churchill transferred £70,000 (more than $8 million in today’s dollars) from the navy to the army to develop what became known as the tank.

The man most often credited with having invented the tank is Lt. Col. Ernest D. Swinton. Appointed at the outset of the war by Secretary of State for War Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener, as the official British war correspondent on the Western Front, Swinton moved back and forth between France and England and to and from the front lines. Witnessing the death, destruction and deadlock of trench warfare, he initially conceived an armored variant of the American-made Holt caterpillar tractor. While Kitchener proved lukewarm over Swinton’s armored tractor, it resonated with First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill, who in February 1915 ordered formation of an exploratory Landship Committee, tasked with developing the technology.

Under Churchill’s ministry oversight were naval air squadrons based in Dunkirk, France. Perpetually at risk of enemy attack, the squadrons were ably defended by armored car squadrons. Thus, Churchill recognized the importance of and need for armored forces. He kept abreast of developments as the Landship Committee experimented with armored vehicle designs. The initial versions were essentially wheeled automobiles with bolted-on armor. However, it soon became clear wheeled variants could neither traverse trenches nor function properly in mud. Churchill’s Admiralty experimented with attaching bridging equipment to such vehicles, but the results proved disappointing. Swinton’s Holt caterpillar tractor proved far more promising. Offering greater grip and more weight-bearing surface, the tracked vehicle was just the ticket for crossing the no-man’s-land between trenches.

On June 30, 1915, Churchill arranged a demonstration of a prototype tractor’s ability to cross barbed-wire entanglements. A manufacturing company working on the project eventually produced the Killen-Strait armored tractor. Capped with the superstructure from a Delaunay-Belleville armored car, its tracks comprised an unbroken series of steel links connected by steel pinions. Churchill and David Lloyd George, then head of the Ministry of Munitions, were present for tests of the Killen-Strait. The promising results prompted Lloyd George to assume the responsibility for producing a steady supply of landships once the Royal Navy settled on a satisfactory design. For his part, Churchill was a total believer, convinced the new machine would enable Allied forces to readily traverse the muddy, shell-pocked landscape of the Western Front and smash enemy defenses.

Meanwhile, Swinton managed to persuade the newly formed Inventions Committee in the House of Commons to fund development of a small landship. He drew up target specifications for the new machine, including a maximum speed of 4 miles per hour on flat ground, the ability to perform a sharp turn at top speed, reversing capability, the ability to climb a 5-foot earthen bank and the ability to cross an 8-foot gap. Additionally, the vehicle was to accommodate 10 crewmen and be armed with two machine guns and a 2-pounder cannon. Though the landship was no longer under the purview of the Admiralty, Churchill went out of his way to write Asquith in praise of Swinton’s developments.

Under Swinton’s oversight, the prototype landship, nicknamed “Little Willie” had 12-foot-long track frames, weighed 16 tons and could carry a crew of three at a top speed of just over 2 miles per hour. Its speed over rough terrain, however, dropped considerably. Moreover, it was unable to traverse trenches more than a few feet wide. But while the initial trials proved disappointing, Swinton remained convinced a modified version would prove a breakthrough weapon.

Its manufacturers immediately began work on an improved tank. The resulting Mark I, nicknamed “Mother,” was twice as long as “Little Willie,” keeping the center of gravity low and helping its treads grip the ground. Sponsons were fitted to the sides to accommodate two 6-pounder naval guns. During initial trials in January 1916 the tank crossed a 9-foot-wide trench with a parapet more than 6 feet high.

With that, Swinton decided it was time to demonstrate the new tank to Britain’s leading political and military figures. Thus, on February 2, under conditions of utmost secrecy, Secretary of State for War Kitchener, Minister of Munitions Lloyd George and Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna gathered with other key personnel to see the Mark I in action. Lord Kitchener remained unimpressed and skeptical of the tank’s potential contribution toward victory. Fortunately for the Allies, Lloyd George and McKenna, the two with oversight of the government purse strings, did recognize the Mark I’s potential and by April had placed orders for 150 tanks. Churchill was ecstatic.

Foreshadowing the German Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg tactics, Churchill believed the army should wait to field the Mark I until factories had rolled out 1,000 tanks and then employ the shock value of a combined armor assault to win a great battle. Though Field Marshal Haig harbored doubts about the value of tanks, the British Expeditionary Force commander did order all available Mark Is to assist during that summer’s Somme Offensive. Unfortunately for their advocates, many of the tanks broke down, and the British army was unable to hold on to its gains.

Truth be told, the tank’s debut was not as great a success as the British press reported it to be. Of the 59 tanks that had arrived in France, only 49 were in good working order. Of those, 17 broke down en route to their line of departure for the attack. It must be noted that Swinton had cautioned commanders to carefully choose fighting ground that corresponded with the tank’s powers and limitations. Had they followed his recommendations, the initial results would have been better. Regardless, the sight of the tanks created panic and had a profound effect on the morale of the German army.

For his part, Colonel John Frederick Charles “J.F.C.” Fuller, chief of the British Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps (later Tank Corps), was convinced his machines could win the war and persuaded Haig to ask the government for another 1,000 tanks. Churchill, who by then had returned home as a politician, did everything he could to endorse Haig’s request.

Meanwhile, Fuller and others refined tank operating procedures, and just over a year later, during the Cambrai Offensive, Haig ordered a massed tank attack at Artois. Launched at dawn on Nov. 20, 1917, without preparatory bombardment, the attack wholly surprised the Germans. Employing more than 400 tanks, elements of the British Third Army gained up to 5 miles that first day, an incredible amount of territory to be captured so rapidly on the stalemated Western Front. Churchill’s belief in the tank as a combat multiplier had been validated. The British army remembered his tireless efforts, and at the outset of World War II it named its primary infantry tank, the Mk IV, the Churchill.

Retired U.S. Marine Colonel John Miles writes and lectures on a range of historical topics. For further reading he recommends Thoughts and Adventures, by Winston S. Churchill; A Company of Tanks, by William Henry Lowe Watson; and Eyewitness and the Origin of the Tanks, by Ernest D. Swinton.

This story appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Military History magazine.

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One of the nation’s foremost authorities on firepower and land warfare, Robert H. Scales retired from the Army in 2001 after more than three decades in uniform, much of it influenced by his service in Vietnam. A 1966 graduate of the United States Military Academy, Scales initially served in Germany before joining the 2nd Battalion, 319th Artillery in Vietnam. Scales commanded a howitzer battery in the battalion and earned a Silver Star in 1969. He would later lead artillery units in Korea, command the Field Artillery Center at Fort Sill, and serve as the Commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Scales holds a doctorate in history from Duke University and has written a number of critically acclaimed books, including Firepower in Limited War, Certain Victory, and Yellow Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military. In an interview with Vietnam contributor Warren Wilkins, he discusses his experiences in Vietnam, the role of firepower in that conflict, and the defining characteristics of American war-making.

On the night of June 14, 1969, you were in command of a 105mm howitzer battery at Firebase Berchtesgaden, located on a hill on the eastern side of the A Shau Valley, when a force of approximately 100 North Vietnamese sappers attacked the base. You received a Silver Star for your actions during the battle. Tell us about that night.

My four guns and two 155mm howitzers were clustered together on this mountaintop. In May 1969, the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] attacked my sister battalion on Firebase Airborne. They destroyed guns, killed 13 soldiers, and completely eviscerated that unit. One month later, they attacked us. They attacked early in the morning, and the hole that I lived in was right on the edge of the perimeter. My battery was the first thing they attacked. The goddamn infantry that protected us had decided that they were going to be in charge of illumination. The key to defeating a night attack is illumination. So the infantry said that they would handle it, but I didn’t believe them. If you look at Berchtesgaden on Google, you will see this one lone gun at the very top of the firebase with the tube sticking up almost vertically. Well, that was my gun. I kept that gun at 1100 mils [milliradians], one-and-a-half second delay on an illumination round, pointed straight up.

We got involved in this horrendous fight, and I had to get to that gun because the infantry never fired a round of illumination. The first sergeant and I fought like hell to get to that damn gun. Finally we got to it, and I pulled the lanyard. When that illumination round went off, it changed the whole complexion of the battle. All of the sudden, the light went on and the troops started killing those guys. They [the NVA] were literally caught in the open. We fought like hell, beat them back, and killed a whole bunch of them. Our main mission as artillerymen was to shoot artillery, but an equally important mission for young gunners is to be able to defend your position. That was a lesson I learned.

Prior to the sapper attack, your battery had provided artillery support for the 101st Airborne Division during the battle for Hill 937, better known as “Hamburger Hill.” How did the employment of artillery in Vietnam compare to other American wars?

You can almost draw a graph, starting with the 25th Infantry Division at Guadalcanal, that traces the density of supporting fires dedicated to the maneuver mission up through the Pacific battles, the Battle of the Bulge and the push into Germany, and then forward to Korea. That graph or curve goes way up in terms of the ratio of firepower expended versus the maneuver forces employed. Entire ships full of ammunition were expended in 1951-52 to preserve American lives.

By the time we got to Vietnam, this idea of trading firepower for manpower really started to take hold. So when I was there, no infantry unit was allowed to maneuver outside the artillery fan. The infantry in Vietnam would literally maneuver by fire. Artillery was also used as a navigation aid, to recon by fire and clear the way as units moved through the jungle, and to fire defensive concentrations.

Speaking of “Hamburger Hill,” you’ve noted that your battery hammered that hill with thousands of 105mm rounds, air strikes blasted its slopes and summit, and yet the enemy continued to fight. Did this cause you to reconsider the efficacy of firepower on the battlefield?

When I was at Berchtesgaden, I was higher than Hamburger Hill and could look down on it through my scope. By the time our infantry had conducted their fifth or sixth assault, the top of that mountain was completely denuded. I would sit there with my scope, and we’d fire and fire and fire. If our troops got down, behind a log or something, we could shoot within 40 meters [of them] if we were very careful.

I would look through that scope, and as soon as we lifted our fires, I could see those little guys [the NVA] come out from those underground bunkers and take up positions and start shooting back. I remember saying to myself—and this has been kind of a thesis of all the books I’ve written about firepower—that firepower has a limitation. We saw this in the First World War when artillery was shocking to both sides early in the war. By 1917, there were images of the British “Tommy” [soldier] brewing tea in the middle of a barrage.

In the age of “imprecision”—before what we now call “precision” munitions—the primary impact of artillery was psychological and not physical. It’s what’s called the palliative effect of artillery. By the time I got to Vietnam [in 1968] the psychological effects of artillery had dropped off considerably, and the enemy was no longer as intimidated by our killing power as he was in 1965. Two things always amazed me about artillery—one is the enormous pyrotechnic effect of artillery going off over the enemy, and the other is the remarkably few enemy it actually kills.

So from my experience at Hamburger Hill, I learned that there is a crossover point in the use of artillery and firepower at which its ability to influence the maneuver battle diminishes considerably. If a soldier is warm and protected—in other words, if he’s down or better yet under cover—it takes an awful lot of rounds to kill him. And no matter how much artillery and firepower you pile onto that—again I’m talking about “dumb” artillery and “dumb” firepower—its ability to influence the battle diminishes with time. That was reinforced in Korea and Vietnam.

The U.S. military—particularly the Army—clearly favored firepower over maneuver in Vietnam. Was this emphasis on firepower unique to that conflict, or was it merely a reflection of what some have called the “American way of war”?

We do emphasize firepower, but the Russians do the same. Although the Russians are far more willing to sacrifice human lives than we are, they have a very similar doctrine…. In Vietnam it was a career ender if your maneuver force was caught outside the reach of your artillery. And that psychology continued all the way into Desert Storm. As late as Desert Storm, one of the cardinal tenets of the American way of war was to never exceed the limits of your artillery.

The American army was caught in a dilemma in Vietnam. We had reached the limit, before the point where we could achieve our maneuver objectives, when artillery was no longer all that helpful. So what do you do? Do you start expending more human lives to achieve your objectives because you are no longer protected by firepower? Or do you fall back under the protective arcs of your artillery and refuse to maneuver beyond that and give the enemy the advantage? And until the “precision” revolution in 1972, that’s sort of where we were.

In retrospect, do you believe that a firepower-first approach in Vietnam was justified, given the operating environment and the existing political climate, or do you agree with critics who argue that the military’s overreliance on heavy supporting fires undermined American pacification efforts and failed to address the true nature of the enemy threat?

I argue in my book [Firepower in Limited War] that in a counter-insurgency campaign, firepower has its limits. But I failed to mention the psychological impact of firepower on the civilian population and the deadening effect it has on the innocent. That is particularly important when you’re fighting a war seeking popular support. So the presence of innocents on the battlefield greatly diminishes your ability to apply overwhelming firepower. The second thing we learned in Vietnam was that, after a while, firepower becomes an inhibitor rather than a facilitator of your ability to maneuver. So the days of using light infantry as a find, fix, and finish force were greatly diminished because of its inability to move outside the arc of artillery.

The Army was on the horns of a dilemma. The center of gravity of the American military in Vietnam was dead Americans, and the NVA knew it. In World War II, Col. [Hiromichi] Yahara, who served with the Japanese army on Okinawa, wrote a series of missives in which he said, essentially, the only way you can beat America is to kill Americans. We lost in Vietnam not because we were not able to defeat the enemy in battle, or that we had too little or too much firepower, but because too many Americans died and we tired of it first, just as Ho Chi Minh predicted the French would do before us. The only way to save lives in the close fight in Vietnam was through the use of protective fires. But firepower became a millstone around our necks in terms of our ability to maneuver. It also had a debilitating effect on our ability to maintain the “hearts and minds” of the people.

So we reached a plateau in our use of firepower, beyond which we could not go, and for which we had no alternative by 1970. Anytime you put maneuver forces forward in close contact with the enemy, soldiers are going to die. Yet we got to a point by 1970-71 where, anytime an American soldier died, it would end up on the front page of the New York Times. So you have two choices to keep those soldiers safe: lock them in firebases and let the enemy run amok in the countryside and control the population, or put them out there under the protective umbrella of firepower but greatly limit their ability to maneuver. It was that juxtaposition between keeping soldiers safe—our vulnerable center of gravity—or being able to maneuver and control territory, and we were never able to reconcile that.

The traditional role of the infantry has always been to close with and destroy the enemy. American infantry units in Vietnam, however, typically sought to find the enemy so that firepower could destroy him. Did this change in tactics occur organically within individual platoons and companies in the field, or was it mandated by some higher headquarters and then codified by formal regulations?

Actually, it was both. One of the amazing things about the American way of war—and we saw this in World War II, particularly as American soldiers became more literate and as the American army became more egalitarian—is that tactical innovation in the American army, beginning in North Africa, really came from the bottom up, not the top down. That’s different than the Russian army, which is ruled by norms driven by the general staff. The American soldier, when he learns something that will keep him alive, will embrace it and proliferate it very quickly. You build a firepower system around what the soldiers are telling you makes it most effective.

In his book Firepower in Limited War, Scales examines the advantages and limitations of firepower by analyzing its effects in several pivotal recent conflicts. The book was placed on the Marine Corps Commandant’s Reading List.

Part of the reason that we rely so heavily on the artillery was that the revolution at Fort Sill [home of U.S. field artillery] was such that we came up with by far the best artillery firepower system in the world. We just were never really able to embed it into the Army’s system until our experiences in North Africa taught us how to do it and how to provide close support. But we just hit the wall in terms of our ability to do that, because the enemy has a vote.

What did the Japanese do at Okinawa? What did the Chinese and North Koreans do? What did the NVA do? They learned how to effectively counter American firepower dominance by maneuvering outside of the [firepower] range fan, hugging maneuver units so that they couldn’t bring in heavy close supporting fires, using camouflage, and going to ground.

To reduce the destructive effects of American firepower, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese would frequently “hug” American infantry units in battle. How effective was that tactic?

It was very effective. I saw that firsthand. They were literally willing to die under our artillery fan to stay in their holes, frankly longer than we ever would, in order to continue to kill us. Remember, their purpose was not to hold ground. Their purpose was to kill us.

Gen. Vuong Thua Vu, former deputy chief of the North Vietnamese Army General Staff, characterized the American practice of generating contact with enemy troops and then calling in artillery and air strikes to destroy them as an “outmoded fighting method of a cowardly but aggressive army.” Similarly, some of our Australian and South Korean allies have suggested that the American infantryman, while certainly not “cowardly,” nevertheless relied too much on firepower. How did American soldiers and Marines perform in infantry combat?

For a drafted army and to some extent a [drafted] Marine Corps, they performed remarkably well. Whenever the U.S. Army got involved in what [retired Marine Corps general and former U.S. Secretary of Defense] Jim Mattis and I call “intimate killing,” they did it remarkably well, considering what was at stake. The critics have this wrong, because I suspect if you were South Korean, or Australian, or whomever and had that firepower available to you, you would fight precisely the same way. The problem is that you want to avoid intimate killing, and in that sense the American army had it right. But the limits of technology precluded the American army from avoiding intimate contact without the cost of logistics being so great that it was no longer effective.

So I have no problem whatsoever with the tactics that the American close combat forces used in Vietnam. My critique has always been with the firepower system that supported them. I have no problem whatsoever with finding, fixing, and finishing—the three words we used to describe Vietnam combat. I do have a problem with the technology that we used in our firepower system to do the finishing part. It was always inefficient, logistically burdensome, and reached a point of diminishing returns. What the “precision” revolution has allowed us to do is reverse that.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Vietnam magazine.

this article first appeared in vietnam magazine

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For more than a century the Royal Aircraft Factory’s B.E.2c has been denigrated as one of the worst aircraft ever made. Even during World War I, when it was on active service with the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC), the B.E.2c was condemned as a death trap that lacked the speed and maneuverability to evade attack as well as any effective armament with which to defend itself. Although there was some justification for those assessments, critics overlook the fact that the aircraft originated before WWI began, and before those criteria were even considered. In fact, the principal considerations in the B.E.2c’s design were stability, ease of handling and safety, not speed, agility or defensive capability. 

In fairness, the B.E.2c’s negative reputation may be an exaggeration. Much of that stems from the fact that the airplane remained in production and operational long after it clearly had become obsolete. In addition, the Royal Aircraft Factory in general, and the B.E.2c in particular, received negative publicity generated by a segment of the British aircraft industry, particularly by Noel Pemberton-Billing, a vocal member of Parliament and self-proclaimed aviation expert.

The Royal Aircraft Factory (RAF, not to be confused with the Royal Air Force, which wasn’t formed until April 1918) was established at Farnborough in 1906 when the Army Balloon Factory branched into development of heavier-than-air flying machines. Although assigned to create aircraft for the British Army’s newly established Royal Flying Corps, from the outset the institution was more of an experimental and developmental establishment than a production facility. Indeed, despite accusations from the aircraft industry that the British government was unfairly competing against private enterprise, the vast majority of RAF designs, including the B.E.2c, actually were manufactured by private companies rather than by the RAF itself.

The story of the B.E.2c begins with the B.E.1, the airplane from which it derived. The B.E.1 project was supposed to have been simply the repair of a damaged airplane; instead, in 1911 designer Geoffrey de Havilland created an entirely new one. His B.E.1 was a two-seat general purpose tractor biplane, with the “B.E.” signifying “Blériot Experimental.” (To the RAF “B.E.” meant any tractor-type airplane, while pusher airplanes received the designation “F.E.” for “Farman Experimental.”) All that remained of the airplane de Havilland was supposed to repair was the engine, a 60-hp liquid-cooled Wolseley V-8. In December 1911 de Havilland piloted the B.E.1’s first flight himself and he delivered it to the RFC early in 1912. 

The B.E.1 was a two-seat airplane with unstaggered biplane wings and tail surfaces consisting of a fixed airfoil-section horizontal stabilizer ahead of the elevators and a vertical rudder without a fixed vertical stabilizer. The observer sat in front of the pilot and occupied the center of gravity, enabling the aircraft to be flown without any alteration in trim if the observer’s seat was unoccupied. The airframe was wood, with the top and bottom of the fuselage covered with plywood for additional strength. Despite the early date of its design, the B.E.1 included all the characteristics one would currently recognize in an airplane save for the fact that, rather than ailerons, it employed wing warping for lateral control. On March 14, 1912, the B.E.1 became one of the very first aircraft to receive an official Certificate of Airworthiness. 

In February 1912 the B.E.1 was succeeded by the B.E.2, which was almost identical save for the substitution of a 60-hp air-cooled Renault V-8 engine for the B.E.1’s less-than-satisfactory Wolseley. It also became the first standard type of aircraft the RFC adopted for use. In March 1912, less than a month after the B.E.2 entered service, the RAF used it to flight test a newly developed radio transmitter.

Only two B.E.2s were constructed before it was succeeded by the incrementally improved B.E.2a, a total of about 80 of which were manufactured, mostly by Vickers and Bristol. The total number of B.E.2bs manufactured is not certain, however, because many were apparently completed as the later and substantially improved B.E.2c version.

Once the RFC adopted the B.E.2 series for mass-production, the airplane became the subject of a series of experiments conducted by another brilliant young RAF designer and test pilot, Edward Teshmaker Busk. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Busk became interested in perfecting aircraft stability. At the time, the British Army considered stability of vital importance—more than speed or maneuverability—because it wanted well-behaved reconnaissance airplanes in which the pilot could take his hands off the controls while making notes of enemy positions, taking photographs or even operating a radio transmitter. Positive stability was also important because early airplane pilots lacked blind flying instruments and could easily become disoriented in clouds and fall into a spin, something only an experienced pilot could survive.

Busk was both a theoretical and empirical engineer and he tested many ideas, including increasing dihedral, adding stabilizing fins to various parts of the airframe and even installing interplane struts incorporating additional side area. Although he test-flew many of his alterations himself, he also made use of a huge whirling arm, like an enormous centrifuge, to which he attached entire airframes in place of a wind tunnel.

As a result of his research, Busk redesigned the aircraft into the B.E.2c. While resembling earlier versions, this was almost an entirely new design. Not only did Busk add a large fixed vertical stabilizing tail fin, but he replaced the horizontal stabilizer with an entirely new design without the earlier version’s lifting airfoil section. He also revised the mainplanes with a new airfoil shape, new planform, positive stagger and added dihedral. Most noticeably, Busk replaced the old wing warping system with ailerons on all four wings, a change that strengthened the wing structure because the wings no longer needed to be flexible.

Powered either by a 70-hp Renault V-8 or a 90-hp RAF1a, both air-cooled V-8 engines, the B.E.2c could achieve a maximum speed of 72 mph, a ceiling of 10,000 feet and had an endurance of 3½ hours. From the first flight on May 30, 1914, pilots appreciated the B.E.2c’s docile qualities. On June 9, Major William Sefton Brancker flew his B.E.2c for 40 miles without ever having to touch the controls until he reached his destination and began to descend for a landing. Immediately popular with service pilots, the B.E.2c quickly superseded earlier versions of the aircraft on the production lines and was manufactured by no less than 20 aircraft companies. While initially intended for reconnaissance and observation, the aircraft later came to serve as bombers, trainers and even as fighters. 

Edward Busk did not live long enough to enjoy his success. On November 5, 1914, he died when a B.E.2c he was test-flying caught fire in midair and crashed. Although it has never been confirmed, the fire may have been caused by the premature detonation of a new type of incendiary bomb developed by the RAF. Whatever the cause, Britain lost one of its most brilliant and promising engineers and test pilots at the age of 28.

The various B.E.2s may not have been the most warlike of airplanes, but no one could accuse the pilots who flew it of lacking aggressiveness. B.E.2 variants equipped the first RFC squadrons deployed to support the British Expeditionary Force in France. On August 13, 1914, B.E.2a No. 347, flown by Lieutenant Hubert D. Harvey-Kelly, became the first British warplane to fly across the English Channel. Twelve days later Harvey-Kelly and his observer, W.H.C. Mansfield, flew the same B.E.2a to score the first British air-to-air victory—after a fashion—when they attacked a Rumpler Taube with small arms they had brought with them. Forcing the startled Germans to the ground and driving them into the nearby woods for cover, Harvey-Kelly landed and, after collecting souvenirs from the Taube, set it on fire and took off again.

On April 26, 1915, 2nd Lt. William B. Rhodes-Moorhouse flew his B.E.2b into Belgium to drop a 100-pound bomb on the Kortrijk railroad junction. Wounded by ground fire, he managed to return to base and report the success of his mission before going to the hospital, where he died the next day. Rhodes-Moorhouse became the first pilot to receive the Victoria Cross.

After German U-boats began menacing British coastal shipping, the Royal Navy retaliated by ordering a fleet of anti-submarine patrol blimps. Rather than design a control car for the new airships, the Navy simply suspended B.E.2c fuselages beneath the envelopes. The Navy produced 27 “Submarine Scout” airships this way.

When German Zeppelin airships initiated night bombing raids on British cities, the B.E.2c took on a new role as a night interceptor. Although lacking the performance of single-seat scouts, the B.E.2c’s positive stability made it the safest choice for the role of a night fighter in the absence of night-flying instruments. B.E.2cs received credit for shooting down seven Zeppelins. After the first such instance, on the night of September 2-3, 1916, B.E.2c pilot Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson received the Victoria Cross.  

During the first year of the war, few airplanes flew over the front, and they rarely encountered each other in the air. When they did, more often than not they lacked any effective armament with which to attack each other. However, the notorious “Fokker Scourge” against Allied aircraft began as early as July 1915 when the Germans introduced the Fokker Eindecker (monoplane), the first single-seat fighter to be effectively armed with a synchronized forward-firing machine gun. They produced only 416 of them, however, and never had many over the front lines. Moreover, the Eindeckers left a good deal to be desired as fighter planes. Since they relied on wing warping for lateral control, they were not very maneuverable and their wings were relatively thin and fragile. Furthermore, the limited power of available engines and the weight of the machine gun and ammunition meant that they could achieve a maximum speed of only 87 mph. Initially the Eindeckers were not deployed in specialized fighter squadrons but issued piecemeal, a few at a time, to mixed Feldflieger Abteilungen (Field Flying Companies), which operated several different aircraft types suited to perform a variety of aerial missions. As a result, the success of the Eindeckers during 1915 and early 1916 depended on luck and the aerial tactics developed by individual pilots. Even Oswald Boelcke, the most successful German fighter pilot of the first half of WWI, shot down only six Allied aircraft throughout 1915.

Nevertheless, the introduction of armed enemy aircraft highlighted the slow and stable B.E.2c’s vulnerability, transforming its positive qualities into liabilities. Although the British made attempts to install defensive machine guns on the B.E.2c, the observer/gunner’s position in the forward cockpit meant his field of fire was obstructed by the pilot, propeller, wings, struts and bracing wires. The RAF addressed the problem late in 1915 with the R.E.8, a two-seat reconnaissance plane with the observer seated more effectively in the rear with a machine gun. Due to the nature of the British War Office’s procurement system, however, many aircraft manufacturers could not shift production to the R.E.8 until they had fulfilled their B.E.2c contracts. The R.E.8 did not reach squadrons until November 1916, so the B.E.2c had to soldier on far longer than it should have done. By the time the R.E.8 appeared it, too, was becoming outdated, generating even more criticism of the RAF.

Much of that criticism came from Noel Pemberton-Billing. Born Noel Billing in 1881, he adopted the “Pemberton” during a brief stint as an actor. After fighting in the Boer War, he returned to England and became interested in aviation, getting his pilot’s license and launching an aviation company, Pemberton-Billing Ltd., which later became the foundation of the Supermarine company of Spitfire fame after Pemberton-Billing sold his interests. Pemberton-Billing won election to Parliament in 1916 and turned his attention and skills at invective to attack Britain’s aviation establishment. “The Government and its advisors, expert and otherwise, never believed in the reality of the air menace,” he wrote in his 1916 book Air War: How to Wage It. “They sneered at the Zeppelin, they laughed at the aeroplane. Who laughs today? Who pays the price for the work that was not done?” Pemberton-Billing even built a huge and grotesque twin-engine, multi-seat quadraplane, the Supermarine Nighthawk, for intercepting Zeppelins. It proved an abject failure in that role.

The RAF did attempt to address the B.E.2c’s lack of speed by introducing the improved B.E.2e version early in 1916. (The “d” variant was a dual-control training version of the B.E.2c produced in modest numbers.) The B.E.2e featured an entirely new set of unequal-span single-bay wings, similar to the R.E.8’s. The new version had a top speed of 82 mph and the climb rate was slightly better, improvements deemed sufficient to warrant production orders. The dual-control trainer version of the B.E.2e was known as the B.E.2f.

One development of the B.E.2 that has come under a particular degree of unfair criticism was the B.E.12, which many aviation historians have derided as the RAF’s failed attempt to create a single-seat fighter. Actually the B.E.12 first flew in July 1915, long before effective forward-firing armament was available in Britain, and the RAF conceived it as a single-seat bomber and photo-reconnaissance platform. It received a forward-firing machine gun much later, after the perfection of synchronizing mechanisms. Although lacking the maneuverability needed by a front-line fighter, the B.E.12’s excellent stability and forward-firing armament made it a useful home-defense night fighter. One contributed to the destruction of Zeppelin L48 on June 17, 1917.

Although the exact figures are not precisely known, it is estimated that the total production number of all B.E.2 variants was about 3,500, the vast majority being the B.E.2c version. The B.E.2c equipped no less than 72 RFC squadrons and four Navy squadrons. Belgium’s small air service used B.E.2cs and B.E.2ds powered by Hispano-Suiza engines after sensibly modifying theirs to put the pilot up front with a synchronized Vickers machine gun and the observer aft, manning a .303-inch Lewis machine gun on a ring mounting. In August 1918 the U.S. Army Air Service purchased B.E.2es for training purposes. B.E.s served not only over the Western Front but also the Mediterranean, the Middle East, South Africa and Australia.  

The B.E.2c was essentially a good airplane that simply outlasted its time but performed as intended until the evolving air war made it obsolete. Its large production, a huge number for such an early airplane, belies the undeserved bad reputation of an airplane that successfully fulfilled a wide variety of military roles all over the world right to the end of World War I.  

this article first appeared in AVIATION HISTORY magazine

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When World War I settled into static trench warfare, even the most advanced armored cars were effectively immobilized by the Western Front’s combination of muddy terrain, trenches, barbed wire, heavy machine guns and artillery.

To meet such challenges, in February 1915 British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill formed a Landship Committee tasked with designing an armored vehicle capable of mastering mud, bridging an 8-foot gap, climbing a 5-foot earthwork and other specifications outlined by British army Lt. Col. Ernest Swinton. Under the guidance of mechanical engineer Major Walter Wilson of the Royal Naval Air Service and agricultural engineer Sir William Tritton, the committee purchased twin “creeping grip” track assemblies from the Bullock Tractor Co. of Chicago, Ill., and fitted them beneath a boxlike crew compartment of riveted steel plates. Powering the vehicle was a Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder, 105 hp tractor engine provided by Tritton’s Foster & Co., of Lincoln, England. On discovering the Bullock tracks were too small to accommodate the vehicle’s weight, Tritton designed longer, wider tracks. He also added twin rear wheels to facilitate steering. A proposed round turret packing a 2-pounder Vickers gun was never installed.

Officially known as the No.1 Lincoln Machine or Tritton Machine, the prototype landship was nicknamed “Little Willie” (a derisive name then applied to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia). When not undergoing testing, it was kept under the strictest wraps, a backstory claiming it was a new mobile “water tank.” The abbreviated tank reference became universal for Little Willie’s descendants.

Little Willie was found to be top-heavy, but by that time a better design was in development, with a rhomboid-shaped track running above and below the superstructure and 6-pounder guns in sponsons on either side. Nicknamed “Mother,” the improved variant was further refined into the Mark I tank, which first saw combat at the Somme on Sept. 15, 1916. Today the tank’s forebear, Little Willie, is in the collection of the Tank Museum in Bovington, England.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Military History magazine.

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As a housekeeper for the German Embassy in Paris, Marie Bastian had two tasks. She was expected to gather the day’s paper trash twice a week…unless she recognized something worth pocketing to pass to her other employer, Maj. Hubert-Joseph Henry of the Section de Statistiques (“statistics section,” the innocuous-sounding title for French counterintelligence). Making her rounds on Sept. 26, 1894, she noticed a handwritten note in French lying torn up in the wastebasket of German military attaché Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen. She wasted no time in taking it to Henry, who passed it to his superior, Lt. Col. Jean Sandherr.

Pieced together, it proved to have only minor military secrets. Far more serious was the evidence of its origin. Someone in the French General Staff was passing secrets to the Germans. 

A Spy In Their Midst

It had been 23 years since the Franco-Prussian War, in which the Second Empire of Napoleon III collapsed and the collection of kingdoms and duchies that brought it down united into a single entity called Germany. Peace had reigned since then between the French Third Republic and the German Second Reich, but each power eyed the other suspiciously.

Behind a seeming high point in European civilization, spy games went on as secret agents from all the powers sought out any foreign secrets that might give them an edge, should another war ever break out. Although the French army had recovered from its humiliating defeat, it remained insecure to the brink of paranoia. This new revelation seemed to suggest that the paranoia was warranted.

Sandherr had been aware that someone was leaking information to Schwartzkoppen, but the note was the first solid evidence to fall into his hands. Matching the handwriting against documents among the General Staff, he found at least two specimens that seemed to match. Since the intelligence being passed was a list of new artillery components, including technical details for a hydraulic brake in a new 120mm howitzer and modifications to artillery formations, Sandherr narrowed the search down to an artillery captain on the staff: Alfred Dreyfus. 

Soldier and Patriot

A thorough examination of Dreyfus suggested dubious spy material. Born on Oct. 9, 1859 in Mulhouse, Alsace, he was the youngest of nine children whose father had risen from a street peddler to a textile manufacturer. When the Germans seized Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, the Dreyfus family moved to Basel, Switzerland, then to Paris. There Alfred chose to pursue a career in the army, enrolling in the Ecole Polytechnique to study military sciences.

In 1880 he was commissioned a sub-lieutenant and from then until 1882 studied artillery at Fontainebleau before being assigned to the 31st Artillery Regiment at Le Mans and then the 1st Mounted Artillery Battery of the First Cavalry Division in Paris. In 1885 he was promoted to full lieutenant and in 1889 served as adjutant to the director of the Etablissement de Bourges with the rank of captain.

Dreyfus married Lucie Eugènie Hadamard on April 18, 1891. Three days later he was admitted into the Ecole Superieure de Guerre (war college), from which he graduated ninth in his class in 1893. He was assigned to the headquarters of the Army General Staff—and ran into the first serious career obstacle stemming from his being the only Jewish officer on the staff.

One of his evaluators, Gen. Pierre de Bonnefond, gave him high marks for his technical acumen but lowered his overall score with a zero rating for “likeability” (what in modern U.S. Army jargon amounted to an “attitude problem”), adding that “Jews were not desired” on his staff. Although admitted to the staff, Dreyfus and some supporters protested Bonnefond’s blatant bias—an act that would be used against him when he came under investigation. 

Dreyfus Framed

Despite two of three examiners expressing doubts as to the similarity between Dreyfus’ writing samples and the handwriting on the note, Sandherr made it the cornerstone of his evidence against the captain. On Oct. 15, Dreyfus was ordered to appear at work in civilian clothes and was questioned by a self-styled handwriting expert, Maj. Armand du Paty de Clam, who, feigning an injured hand, asked Dreyfus to write a letter for him. Dreyfus did, giving no indication that he recognized the message he was transcribing as the same one to Schwartzkoppen. Upon his completing it, Du Paty fleetingly examined both documents and informed Dreyfus he was under arrest.

After four days of a secret court martial, Dreyfus was convicted of treason on Dec. 22 and sentenced to life imprisonment. At a public ceremony on Jan. 5, 1895, he was publicly stripped of every accoutrement on his uniform and had his sword broken before being sent to serve his life imprisonment at the penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. His last statement before being taken away was: “I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the army. Vive la France! Vive l’Armée!”

As Dreyfus was led away, he faced a barrage of insults, not only from brother officers but crowds stirred up by army provocateurs to undermine any sympathy for the traitor. The emphasis was on his religion, the most common cry being “Death to the Jews!” One Hungarian correspondent covering the event for the Austrian Neue Freie Presse took special notice.

Although he then believed Dreyfus guilty, he commented on the nature of the aftermath in his diary in June 1895: “In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism…above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.” Despairing of his co-religionists ever finding acceptance anywhere in Europe, Theodor Herzl turned his thoughts toward the idea of their finding a homeland of their own.  

In Search of Justice

While Dreyfus endured heat, insects, malaria, dysentery and all the horrors that gave Devil’s Island its dreaded reputation, his older brother Mathieu spent all the time, energy and money at his disposal to have Alfred’s case reexamined, seemingly in vain. One appeal after another was rejected. The French army staff, obsessed with maintaining an image of infallibility, was not about to reconsider its rush to justice against the homegrown “foreigner” in its midst.

When Sandherr, promoted to colonel, left the Section de Statistiques to command the 20th Infantry Regiment at Montauban on July 1, 1895, his successor, Lt. Col. Marie-Georges Picquart, was instructed by Assistant Chief of the General Staff Charles-Arthur Gonse to find more incriminating evidence to ensure that Dreyfus stayed right where he was. 

Picquart, however, proved to be of different moral fiber. Investigating more on his own than his superiors authorized, the more he found the less the case against Dreyfus rang true to him—especially in March 1896, when he found a telegram from Schwartzkoppen, intercepted before it left the embassy, addressed to the actual author of the note.

That and other handwritten documents revealed a more precise handwriting match than Dreyfus’s. The handwriting was traced to Maj. Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, another staff officer who had served in intelligence from 1877 to 1880. In a scenario common in the world of espionage, Esterhazy had fallen deeply in debt and sought a way out by selling secrets to the Germans. Confronted by Picquart on April 6, he made a full confession. Picquart submitted his revised report, with a recommendation that the Dreyfus case be reexamined. 

A Military Cover-Up

The response was hardly what he expected. His demand ran into brick walls at every turn from senior officers like Chief of Staff Gen. Raoul le Mouton de Boisdeffre and Minister of War Gen. Auguste Mercier, who remained determined that army intelligence not be sullied with having to admit that a mistake led to a miscarriage of justice. In regard to letting the real traitor slip away, Gonse went so far as to say, “If you are silent, no one will know.” “What you say is abominable,” replied an outraged Picquart. “I refuse to carry this secret to my tomb.” 

Picquart’s strong sense of justice led to his undergoing a series of transfers “in the interest of the service,” first to a unit in the French Alps and ultimately to command the 4th Tirailleurs Regiment in Sousse, Tunisia. In a further attempt to discredit his findings, Boisdeffre and Gonse ordered Picquart’s deputy in the Section de Statistiques, Maj. Henry, to fortify Dreyfus’ file with more incriminating evidence. This Henry did on Nov. 1 by producing what he declared to be further correspondence between Dreyfus and the Germans. However, when Boisdeffre and Gonse brought the most incriminating letter to then-Minister of War Jean-Baptiste Billot, they realized that it was a forgery clumsily created by Henry himself. 

Dreyfus’ innocence was becoming too clear to deny. Yet Billot joined Boisdeffre and Gonse in agreeing that the verdict must stand—and to persecute Picquart, “who did not understand anything.” Henry conjured up an embezzlement charge against his former superior and sent him an accusatory letter. This only brought Picquart back to Paris, armed with a lawyer.

Far from being buried, by mid-1896 the Dreyfus case had grown into a cause célèbre attracting partisans on both sides. Most French journals upheld the guilty verdict and opposed a retrial, reinforcing their arguments with accusations that Jews could only be expected to betray any country they inhabited. 

Besides the army, the partisans who came to be called “anti-Dreyfusards” were mainly conservatives, nationalists and traditionalists. The tradition they conserved was hundreds of years of antisemitism that had supposedly ended with the Revolution and the Rights of Man, but which the General Staff tacitly encouraged in its ongoing campaign to keep the brand of traitor on Dreyfus. Among the foremost civilian mouthpieces was Edouard Drumont, whose publication La Libre Parole became an open forum for anyone with bile against Jews in general.

The Spy Escapes

In spite of all this, a growing cross-section of the French intelligentsia began taking up Dreyfus’ case. The first of these “Dreyfusards” was anarchist journalist Bernard Lazare, who after examining the existing evidence published an appeal from Brussels, Belgium. The conflict between of the Revolution’s ideals and the revival of old prejudices in “defense” of a Catholic France came to virtually split the entire country in two, breaking up lifelong friendships even in the world of impressionist art. Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Paul Signac and Camille Pisarro, for example, were Dreyfusards, while Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were anti-Dreyfusards.

With evidence of Esterhazy’s guilt and Dreyfus’ innocence leaking into public scrutiny, the General Staff took a new step to address the matter head-on. On Jan. 10, 1898, it tried Esterhazy before a closed military court, Mathieu and Lucie Dreyfus’ appeals for a civil trial having been denied. The three army-supplied “experts” testified that Esterhazy’s handwriting did not match that on the bordereau. The next day, after three minutes of deliberation, the court acquitted Esterhazy and all officers present cheered. Dreyfusards protested in the streets, to be beaten down by mobs of rioting anti-Dreyfusards and antisemites.

Dreyfus suffered on, but the trial’s real victim was Picquart, who was discredited, subsequently arrested for “violation of professional security” and imprisoned in Fort Mont Valérien.

Having been publicly exonerated, Esterhazy was discretely discharged from the army and exiled to Britain via Brussels. Settling in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, he lived out his life comfortably until 1923.

The Dreyfusards swiftly changed tactics, doubling down on Lazare’s use of the press with a vehement 4,500-word open letter to President Félix Faure by novelist and social critic Emile Zola in the Jan. 13, 1898 issue of the newspaper L’Aurore. It was aimed directly at the high command’s perfidy with a title suggested by fellow journalist Georges Clemenceau:“J’Accuse!”

Clemenceau himself was equally accusatory when he declared, “What irony is this, that men should have stormed the Bastille, guillotined the king and promoted a major revolution, only to discover in the end that it had become impossible to get a man tried in accordance with the law.” Others who took up Dreyfus’ cause included Léon Blum, Anatole France, Marcel Proust, Sarah Bernhardt and even Mark Twain.

A Forgery discovered

J’Accuse exposed all that was known of the army’s morally corrupt handling of both Dreyfus and Esterhazy and included the General Staff members involved by name. L’Aurore’s circulation was normally 30,000 but it sold 200,000 copies on Jan. 13. The anti-Dreyfusards’ reaction was so violently negative that Zola needed a police escort to walk to and from his home. On Jan. 15 Le Temps called for a new public review of Dreyfus’ case. Minister of War Billot struck back by filing a public complaint against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, manager of l’Aurore, for defamation of a public authority, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies by a vote of 312 to 22.

Held at the Assises du Seine between Feb. 7 to 23, the trial ended with Zola condemned to the maximum sentence, a year in prison and a 3,000-franc fine. Again, the verdict was accompanied by street riots against Zola and against Jews. After another trial on July 18, Zola took friends’ advice and exiled himself to England for the following year. In the process, so much of the Dreyfus Affair was exposed to public scrutiny that Zola’s two courtroom defeats ultimately amounted to a tide-turning victory. 

France got a new minister of war, Godefroy Cavaignac, who was eager to prove Dreyfus’ guilt but was completely in the dark about the high command’s obstruction of justice. He ordered the case files examined and was astonished to find out how much evidence had been withheld from Dreyfus’ defense. 

On Aug. 13, 1898 one of his staff, Louis Cuignet, holding a key document before a lamp, noticed that the head and foot were not the same paper as the body copy. The forgery was soon traced to Major—now promoted to lieutenant colonel—Henry.

A court of inquiry was called for Esterhazy, who admitted his treason and revealed the high command’s collusion in framing Dreyfus. On Aug. 30 the council questioned Henry in the presence of Generals Boisdeffre and Gonse. After an hour of interrogation from Cavaignac himself, Henry broke down and confessed to having falsified the evidence. He was promptly arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Mont Valérien. The next day he was found with his throat cut. Nobody found a straight razor on his person when he entered his cell. How it got there—and whether his death was suicide or murder—remains a mystery.

With the news reports of Henry’s act of deceit, the anti-Dreyfusards declared him a martyr. Lucie Dreyfus pressed for a retrial. Cavaignac still refused, but the president of the council, Henri Brisson, forced him to resign. Boisdeffre also resigned and Gonse was discredited. While the partisans continued to struggle, sometimes violently, new revelations were gradually shifting the political landscape. A growing number of French Republicans recognized the injustice that hid behind the military’s veneer of “patriotism.” 

Pardoned?

On June 3, 1899, the Supreme Court overturned Dreyfus’ verdict and sentence. Dreyfus himself had little or no access to news of the maelstrom brewing in the wake of his arrest. It was days later that he learned that he was being summoned back to France. 

On June 9 Dreyfus departed Devil’s Island—only to be arrested again on July 1 and imprisoned at Rennes, where he was to undergo his retrial. This began on Aug. 7, presided over by Gen. Mercier, who was still determined to maintain the guilty verdict, and attended by as much popular rancor as before. On Aug. 14 one of Dreyfus’ lawyers, Fernand Labori, was shot in the back by an assailant who was never identified. As the original case against him crumbled, the president of the council, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, sought a compromise. 

Although five of the seven court members upheld the original verdict, on Sept. 9 Waldeck-Rousseau declared Dreyfus guilty of treason “with extenuating circumstances” and reduced his life sentence to 10 years. The next day Dreyfus appealed for another retrial. Eager to put the “affair” behind France, Waldeck-Rousseau offered a pardon. Exhausted from his time on Devil’s Island, Dreyfus accepted those terms on Sept. 19 and was released on Sept. 21. Still, being pardoned implies guilt. Dreyfus’ supporters remained unsatisfied with anything short of exoneration. Beyond France, protest marches broke out in 20 foreign capitals.

Not Guilty

Among other literary responses, Zola added to his previous essays, L’Affaire and J’Accuse! with a third, Verité (truth).  On Sept. 29, 1902, however, Zola died, asphyxiated by chimney fumes from which his wife, Alexandrine, narrowly escaped. In 1953, the newspaper Liberation published the dying confession by a Paris roofer that he had blocked the chimney. Dreyfusards like socialist leader Jean Jaurès kept up the pressure for the next several years. 

On April 7, 1903 Dreyfus’ case was investigated once more—and eventually its conclusion was finally reversed. On July 13, 1906 he was declared innocent. He accepted reinstatement in the army with the rank of major, backdated to July 10, 1903, and was also made a chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. He commanded the artillery depot at Fort Neuf de Vincennes until June 1907, when he retired into the Reserve. Also exonerated was Georges Picquart, who rejoined the ranks, was promoted to brigadier general and served as Minister of War from 1906 to 1909. He died in a riding accident on Jan. 19, 1914.

On June 4, 1908 Dreyfus found himself literally the target of residual antisemitic hatred. As he attended the transfer of Emile Zola’s ashes to the Pantheon, journalist Louis Grégory fired two revolver shots, slightly wounding him in the arm. Although apprehended, Grégory was acquitted in court.

The question of Dreyfus’ loyalty to his country got a final test when World War I broke out. Returning from the reserves at age 55, he commanded an artillery depot and a supply column in Paris but as the French army suffered heavy attrition in the field, in 1917 he transferred to take up an artillery command on the Western Front, fighting at Chemin des Dames and Verdun. His son, Pierre, also served as an artillery officer, being awarded the Croix de Guerre. Two nephews also became artillery officers but were both killed in action. The only other major player in the Dreyfus Affair to see combat during the war was Armand du Paty de Clam.

In 1919 Dreyfus’ honors were upgraded to Officier de la Légion d’Honneur. He died on July 12, 1935, aged 75, and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. For all the French military’s efforts to make it go away, the Dreyfus Affair long outlived its namesake, leaving behind a number of political, legal and social aftereffects. In France it held up a mirror that showed two psyches—which would recur five years after Dreyfus’ death with new evocative names, such as Charles de Gaulle and Pierre Laval. Sadly, it still hasn’t gone away.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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With her book The Hello Girls and a follow-up documentary film, historian, commentator and author Elizabeth Cobbs set out to recognize the women who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps’ Female Telephone Operators Unit during World War I. Members of the unit, many of whom worked Stateside as switchboard operators, maintained communications on the Western Front under spartan and sometimes hazardous conditions. Despite having served in uniform, however, the Hello Girls were denied veteran status. Though Congress remedied that in 1977, many of them had died by then. Recently lawmakers introduced legislation to formally honor the unit with the Congressional Gold Medal, presented for distinguished achievements that have had a major impact on American his-tory and culture. Past recipients include notable American warriors and military units. Cobbs recently spoke with Military History about her book and why the Hello Girls are deserving of recognition.

Who were the ‘Hello Girls’?

They were a group of 223 young women—some in their teens, most in their 20s and a few “old women” in their 30s—who volunteered at the request of the U.S. Army to go to France and run the telephone system. This was a daring thing. Most soldiers hadn’t even gone yet. These women were in logistics. The Army needed telephone operators over there before the majority of doughboys. They had to facilitate what was happening at the front, to get supplies, to get troops shipped here and there. Some served as long as two years. These women fielded 26 million calls for the Army in France. A handful traveled with General [John J.] Pershing during the big battles of Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. Others served at the headquarters of the American First Army, which was close to the front but not in the war zone. They came from all over—from Washington state, down to Louisiana, up to Maine, even Canada. There were some French-Canadian women who volunteered and served with the U.S. Army.

Many served close to or on the front lines. Were any killed or wounded?

None were killed in action, but some did suffer permanent injuries, mostly from tuberculosis, which was common in northern France. Two died from the influenza pandemic, one on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918.

The conditions of World War I were pretty difficult, especially related to the weather these women had to endure in fairly exposed accommodations. Some were under bombardment. Some were in buildings where artillery concussions blew out windows. Once, they were told to evacuate but wouldn’t leave until the soldiers had. These women worked around the clock, especially the supervisors. Chief Operator Grace Banker, who led the first unit, recorded in her diary at the start of an offensive, “I slept two hours today.” They were handling incredibly complex logistical problems near the front lines. They got no breaks; they worked seven days a week, 12-hour shifts for several months during the worst part of the American war effort. It was extremely stressful. Some were close enough to the front lines that their switchboards shook during bombardments.

Of course, these women crossed the ocean to get to Europe in the first place. This was a time when troopships were being sunk. All of these women knew about this, and they were constantly told to use their lifejackets as pillows and wear all of their clothes to bed in case they were torpedoed. It was scary.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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What kind of training did they receive?

They went through a very strict recruitment and training. They had to be bilingual in French and English, and many washed out because of that. In fact, 7,600 women applied for the first 100 positions. Many were cut for language reasons, others because they weren’t fast enough on the phone. Once selected, they were vetted extremely carefully, sometimes three and four times, by Army intelligence. These women were literally handling national secrets in the wires they connected. One woman was even pulled off a ship at the last minute, though she turned out to not be the German spy they feared she was.

Once selected, they were trained by AT&T [American Telephone and Telegraph] on the phone system. After that they were sent to New York City, where they were drilled and learned to salute on the rooftop of AT&T headquarters. Once they went to France, the women who were sent toward the front were trained in the use of gas masks and pistols. They wore uniforms and had dog tags; otherwise, they risked being executed as spies if captured. They were told again and again that their uniforms and dog tags were their protection as soldiers of the U.S. Army.

Many were bilingual. How important was that skill?

The first group of 100 female volunteers were all required to be absolutely fluent in French and English. They had these super strict tests, where they had to simultaneously translate and operate a telephone exchange, record everything correctly and communicate accurately under pressure. It’s hard for us to appreciate today how nerve-racking that could be. They were getting hundreds of calls an hour, all of them critically important, truly a matter of life and death. These women felt a great deal of responsibility. They were connecting all kinds of calls, such as between commanders and combat units in the field. There were times when they were even talking with French combat troops. The Army set up its own PBX [private branch exchange] telephone system for communications to and from the front. However, the women often had to connect with French lines and French toll operators. Back then, a toll call would be passed from operator to operator to operator. This was a problem for the American doughboys, who generally did not parlez-vous. Pershing realized he couldn’t get a call to go anywhere, so that’s when they realized they needed people who could do the job and communicate with the Allies at the same time.

Why were women selected as operators?

The Army found it took men 60 seconds on average to connect calls that women connected in 10 seconds. In wartime that was the difference between life and death—for an individual and sometimes for whole battalions. Women were adept at using this technology and had the ability to do it much faster and more reliably than men. They were tested on being able to place calls in two languages, write and convey messages, make life-and-death connections in an instant, all while maintaining their composure and decorum.

Banker received the Distinguished Service Medal. What did she do to earn such recognition?

Chief operator for the Signal Corps, Banker was a remarkable person who was devoted to the American cause during World War I. She led the first female contingent under very challenging and difficult circumstances. At one point she developed a severe allergic rash. A doctor told her she needed to have it taken care of, but she said she didn’t have time. There’s a photo of her in which she looked absolutely terrible. Grace served under the extraordinarily demanding conditions of the Battles of Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne and was recognized for courageous service. In World War I the U.S. Army awarded only 18 Distinguished Service Medals to Signal Corps officers, of whom 16,000 were eligible. All the honorees were listed by rank. She was listed as “Miss,” because she was a [single] woman.

Why did the War Department deny the ‘Hello Girls’ veteran status?

Their commanding officers begged and pleaded with the War Department to recognize these women who had served alongside them, some in very dire circumstances. Around 11,000 women served with the Navy and Marines during World War I, and every one of them got military benefits, including hospitalization for disabilities. They all served at home in the United States. Only the Army sent women across the ocean into harm’s way, and then denied them veteran status. It was so upsetting and maddening for these women. They were told it would lessen the importance of the meaning of “veteran” if they were to grant women this honor. The Army decided early in the war these women would be contract employees. However, they neither told the vast majority of women, nor gave them any to sign. In fact, women took the same soldier’s oath everybody else did. They wore uniforms but were unaware there was a distinction. Many of the women were flabbergasted when they arrived home and found out they weren’t veterans.

Congress finally recognized them as veterans in 1977. How did that come about?

Their recognition came on the same legislation as the WASPs [Women Airforce Service Pilots], introduced by Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater had also been a service pilot in World War II and couldn’t believe that women he’d served with, many who wore the same uniform as him, were not being given veteran benefits. At that time the women of World War I came forward and said, “What about us?” The legislation then covered both groups.

Why award the Hello Girls the Congressional Gold Medal after so many decades?

Because it’s a story that was lost. I’ve met so many women in the Army who’ve said they had no idea this is where their story began. Women today represent 15 percent of the armed forces. It’s a very brave act for any woman to join an organization in which she is going to be in the distinct minority and going against gender expectations. It’s important to say we value female veterans as much as we value male veterans. The Congressional Gold Medal would help all Americans better appreciate the women in our armed services. It would help us recognize that what the Hello Girls did was not only physically courageous, but morally courageous—challenging every social convention at the time in order to help our country. It took a very special person to do that. They performed a heroic service.

This interview appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Military History magazine.

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Morning has broken on Oct. 25, 1917 after a stormy night in the mountains on the border of Italy and Slovenia. The Tolmein Offensive has begun; the 12th Battle of the Isonzo looms on the horizon. You are Erwin Rommel, a 25-year-old German Oberleutnant serving in the Württemberg Mountain Battalion, a unit of crack mountain troops. Having proven your abilities in the field, you have been appointed to the battalion staff and have been placed in command of your own detachment. 

After bringing you up to meet him on the foothills of a huge mountain called Hevnik, your commanding officer orders you to sally forth as the advance guard of the battalion. The enemy is still in possession of the high ground on Hevnik’s peak. The Royal Bavarian Infantry Lifeguards Regiment—your comrades and sometime rivals—will be pressing forward on your left. You are to head north along the mountain slopes towards the village of Foni; you’ll be in the middle of a  dense forest with zero artillery support and tasked with clearing out any enemies on your own. Your orders state: “The day’s goal is to push forward continuously to the west with no limits on space or time, knowing that you will have strong reserves next to and behind you.” 

Your mission is beset with difficulties. Unceasing rain soaks everyone to the bone. Ascending a steep mountainpath overgrown with bushes, your field of vision is reduced; it isn’t long before your troops make contact with enemy Italians holed up in the woods, who immediately unleash machine gun fire at close range, wounding five of your point men. After sending a report back to warn your commander, you keep going—you try climbing straight up a slippery stony canal to bypass the enemy and their machine guns. It’s a disaster. You and several comrades are nearly crushed to death by a huge boulder accidentally dislodged by your point men. You manage to dodge the boulder, but then an avalanche of heavy mountain rocks crushes your foot, wracking you with pain and making it impossible for you to walk without the help of two soldiers. 

It is now, of all times, that you stumble across a hidden mountain trail leading down to a concealed enemy position, fortified with barbed wire, stretching like a spiderweb through the mountains. Nobody expected this to be here. You and your troops are first to discover it. It looks to be linked up to the enemy strongpoint in the forest where machine guns wounded your men not long ago. As the advance guard of your battalion, you ought to do something. You move into a basin ahead of the enemy position and consider your tactical options. What is your next move?

1. Stay put. 

Your injured foot is a problem; you can’t walk without help. Advancing or retreating, you risk becoming a burden to your men. Instead of dragging yourself further through the mountains, you can solidify your position near the enemy line. Dig in with your troops. Send a courier back to inform your commanding officer about the hidden enemy position and request additional instructions. Since things look formidable, you might possibly request extra support. The fierce Bavarian Life Guards would probably be glad to help you. 

2. Attack the enemy position head-on. 

You can’t help but notice that this ominous area actually looks like a juicy target. The Italians are not expecting your arrival and don’t seem to be doing a good job of sentry duty; in fact they seem like sitting ducks. There is however one big problem—even assuming you could sail past the enemy’s wall of hideous barbed wire obstacles, you can’t quite sneak through the 60-plus yards of thick undergrowth ahead of that. Even a lazy sentry would hear or notice your movement from far off.

3. Find a detour and break in. 

If you’re prepared to forget about your broken foot, or at least lean more heavily on the goodwill of your comrades, you might be able to scout a different route from which to surprise the enemy. The Italians haven’t seen you yet; act fast enough and you might be able to sucker punch them in grand style. Failure of course is a possibility. You haven’t been able to do thorough reconnaissance and your enemies might have some nasty surprises up their sleeves. Plus, if you do manage to pull off your attack, you’ll have to decide quickly whether to roll the enemy position uphill, downhill, or fight your way up to Hevnik’s peak itself. It’s risky. Making the wrong choice about how to use your momentum could have unintended consequences in the grand scheme of things. 

What is your decision, Oberleutnant Rommel? 

You’ve never been the type to just accept things as they are. You are practically allergic to passivity. You’re hellbent on attacking, even if you have to rush into the breach on crutches. But your spunk isn’t the product of mere bravado. There is actually method to your madness. You choose Option 3. You decide to surprise the enemy not by charging the wire but by simply following the enemy’s hidden trail right up to their position—a soft spot, and the very place where you are least expected. You estimate that if your soldiers saunter confidently down the path like they’re going for a stroll in the park, the sentries might mistake them for friendlies at first, and by the time the Italians realize they’re in danger, it will be too late. To avoid gambling your whole detachment, you’ll do a test run with a patrol. You would lead this patrol yourself in any other circumstance, but since you can’t walk without assistance, you task a trustworthy subordinate to lead this daring scheme, promising him that you will rush to his aid with all your remaning men if he is attacked.

Outcome 

What follows is dazzling success. Your patrol captures 17 prisoners and penetrates the Italian position. You follow up quickly with your entire detachment. You’re through the line! As to what direction you should concentrate your force? Hevnik’s peak! You decide to take the highest ground you can since other enemies nested on the mountain slopes below will then be at a disadvantage and have a hard time getting rid of you. Notwithstanding your injury, you climb up the mountain in pouring rain with your men, assisted by your comrades. Enemies are so startled by your ghostly appearance that they either surrender or scatter at once. Making contact with your Bavarian comrades, you press onward and successfully take the peak at noon. Aside from enemy weapons, you’ve captured hot meals fresh from Italian field kitchens for your hungry men—a major morale boost for everyone. You have also, amazingly, captured a mountain stronghold without a battle.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The Army redesignated Fort Polk, Louisiana, as Fort Johnson on June 13, concluding a move made in accordance with a 2021 Naming Commission policy requiring the removal of any names adorning Defense Department property that commemorated the Confederacy.

Fort Johnson, one of nine Army installations to receive a new moniker under the policy, was selected to honor New York National Guard Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black World War I soldier whose frontline heroism in France would etch his name into the history books as a lionheart of the famed Harlem Hellfighters.

Johnson was in his mid−20s when he left his job as a railway porter in Albany, New York, and enlisted in the Army. It was June 1917. America declared war against Germany two months prior and Johnson was eager to join the fight.

Standing at only 5-foot−4 and 130 pounds, Johnson enlisted in Brooklyn and was subsequently assigned to C Company of the 15th New York Infantry Regiment, an all-Black National Guard outfit that would later become the 369th Infantry Regiment — also known as the Harlem Hellfighters.

The 369th became the first Black combat regiment to serve with American Expeditionary Forces. Prior to the unit’s formation, Black soldiers who wanted to serve in combat worked around U.S. military policies by enlisting in the French or Canadian armies instead.

Racism encountered by Black soldiers at the time was severe. U.S. Gen. John G. Pershing even went as far as writing a pamphlet, titled “Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops,” advising French authorities against relying on Black American soldiers. In the correspondence, Pershing wrote that the men of the 369th were “inferior” to white soldiers, were a “constant menace to the American” and didn’t possess a “civic and professional conscience.”

Burdened by a misguided reputation, Johnson’s unit was initially relegated to labor-intensive duties. That was until they were ordered into battle in 1918 and assigned to the French Army, who seemed to care far less about race than their American allies.

Alongside French forces near the Argonne Forest, Johnson and 17-year-old Needham Roberts were standing watch during the early morning hours of May 15, 1918.

At about 1 a.m., the two men began taking fire from a German sniper. Johnson opened a box of 30 grenades and lined them up for quick use. Moments later, in the terrifying dark of the Western Front, Johnson heard the “snippin’ and clippin’” cutting sounds of at least 12 Germans making their way through the wire encircling the post.

Johnson tossed a grenade in the direction of the commotion and all hell broke loose. The German invaders unleashed gunfire and grenades toward the two watchmen, injuring Roberts immediately.

Unable to walk, Roberts sat upright in the trench and continued to feed Johnson grenades — but the Germans kept coming.

Johnson quickly exhausted his supply of grenades and subsequently suffered a rifle jam with the enemy soldiers close enough to touch.

Multiple German soldiers attempted to grab Roberts from the trench and take him prisoner, so Johnson went to work.

Climbing out of the cover of the trench he charged at the enemy, swinging his rifle, his fists and a bolo knife in a furious melee of clubbing, punching and slashing in every direction.

“Each slash meant something, believe me,” Johnson recalled.

Johnson stabbed one German in the stomach then killed a lieutenant before being shot in the arm. He was then attacked from behind by another, who he discarded by driving his knife into the German’s ribs.

The increasingly wounded and exhausted Johnson eventually managed to drag Roberts back to safety just as reinforcements arrived.

The diminutive-yet-Herculean soldier then fainted, fatigued from the hour-long fight and 21 wounds to his arm, feet, face and back — the majority of which were from knives and bayonets. Johnson’s left foot had also been shattered, and he would later have to have a steel plate inserted at a French hospital.

When dawn broke, the Americans found four dead Germans and evidence of at least 10 to 20 more having participated in the attack.

Johnson’s ferocity earned him the nickname “Black Death.” In recognition of his actions, France awarded him with the Croix de Guerre with a Gold Palm for extraordinary valor, making Johnson the first American to receive France’s highest award for bravery. Roberts also received the Croix de Guerre.

The Harlem Hellfighters would go on to spend 191 days fighting in frontline trenches and would sustain 1,500 casualties by war’s end, the most of any single American unit during World War I in either category.

When Johnson returned home to New York, the severity of his injuries prevented him from resuming his pre-war job at Albany’s Union Station. Sadly, Johnson turned to the bottle, became estranged from his family and faded from the memory of those who once celebrated his heroism.

Johnson contracted tuberculosis and later died, destitute, in July 1929 of myocarditis at the age of 36. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

In 2015, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Johnson the Medal of Honor. Johnson also was awarded the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross in 1996 and 2002, respectively.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

The Army officially redesignated the installation previously known as Fort Polk, Louisiana, on June 13 to Fort Johnson.

The fort, which is home to the Joint Readiness Training Center and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, derives its new name from New York National Guard Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black World War I soldier who bravely fought off German forces as a member of the famed Harlem Hellfighters.

“Sgt. Henry Johnson embodied the warrior spirit, and we are deeply honored to bear his name at the Home of Heroes,” Brig. Gen. David Gardner, the commanding general of the base, said in a statement.

Johnson enlisted in 1917 with the 15th New York Infantry Regiment — a National Guard unit of Black Americans later designated as the 369th Infantry Regiment — about two months after the United States entered WWI, according to the statement.

The Harlem Hellfighter single-handedly repelled a German raiding party in May 1918 with his rifle butt, grenades, his fists and a knife, saving his fellow soldier Needham Roberts from capture in the process.

“Each slash meant something, believe me,” Johnson once said. “There wasn’t anything so fine about it … just fought for my life. A rabbit would have done that.”

Suffering 21 wounds, Johnson was unable to resume his job as a luggage handler after the war.

He received the French Croix de Guerre military decoration for his actions, one of the first Americans to receive the honor, the Army statement noted.

The courageous soldier died in 1929 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor for his actions.

“It is a distinct pleasure and honor to represent the New York National Guard in the rededication ceremony of Fort Polk to Fort Henry Johnson,” Brig. Gen. Isabel Rivera Smith, the New York National Guard’s director of joint staff, said in the release. “As a Black American whose bravery wasn’t acknowledged at the time, Sgt. Johnson personified the Army values and was the epitome of strength. As a former member of the 369th Harlem Hellfighters myself, I could not be prouder to be part of this ceremony.”

The renaming move adheres to legislation requiring the removal or modification of Department of Defense assets that commemorate the Confederate States of America or those who voluntarily served under the Confederacy. The Louisiana post is one of nine Army installations being redesignated.

The Army installation was previously named for Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk, a resident of New Orleans who was killed in combat in 1864.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

On the strategic level the Battle of Riga, fought in Latvia on Sept. 1–5, 1917, effectively knocked Russia out of World War I. On the tactical level, however, Riga was even more significant. It marked one of the turning points in the history of warfare. The innovative offensive tactics tested by the Germans in that battle proved the key to breaking the long stalemate of trench warfare. After Riga no attack—or at least no successful attack—would ever again be conducted without some variation on those tactics.

It was a lightning offensive. On Sept. 1, 1917, the German Eighth Army, commanded by General of the Infantry Oskar von Hutier, made an assault crossing of the Dvina River (present-day Daugava) some 15 miles east of the city. The Russian Twelfth Army, commanded by General Dmitri Parsky, collapsed in short order. On September 3 German troops marched into the city, and by September 5 little stood between Hutier’s troops and the Russian capital at Petrograd (present-day St. Petersburg), 300 miles to the northeast.

The empire of Tsar Nicholas II had been on the verge of collapse ever since Russia’s humiliating defeat in the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War, and in March 1917 the provisional government of Georgy Lvov (succeeded in July by Alexander Kerensky) finally did replace the 370-year tsarist regime. Ober Ost, the German military command on the Eastern Front, sensed Russia was ripe for the kill. Ober Ost was then under the nominal command of Field Marshal Prince Leopold of Bavaria; but the real command was exercised by his chief of staff, the brilliant Maj. Gen. Max Hoffmann, the General Staff officer who had been the brains behind the German victory at Tannenberg in 1914. Hoffmann resolved to accelerate Russia’s collapse by striking at the old Hanseatic League port of Riga, on a namesake gulf of the Baltic Sea.

Hoffmann’s first move was to order his resident artillery expert, Lt. Col. Georg Bruchmüller, to conduct the preliminary reconnaissance and start fire-support planning for the crossing of the Dvina. In his memoirs Hoffmann deemed Bruchmüller an “artillery genius.” That may have been an understatement. By war’s end Bruchmüller proved central to the development of almost every tactical concept of modern fire support still practiced today.

Bruchmüller’s greatest innovation was the shift from artillery destruction fire to neutralization fire. Rather than trying to destroy everything in the path of the attacking infantry, Bruchmüller focused on tightly synchronizing the fire support and the infantry scheme of maneuver to neutralize the enemy defense just long enough for the attacking infantry to overrun it. He was especially innovative in the way he used combinations of persistent and nonpersistent gas to neutralize selected targets. Thus, while the typical artillery preparation in 1917 lasted a week or even two weeks, Bruchmüller’s preparations lasted only a matter of hours, with far better effect.

The Eighth Army’s infantry, meanwhile, was trained in an experimental attack doctrine the Germans would officially adopt in January 1918, itself a large-scale application of small-unit tactics that had been under development since late 1915. Captain Willy Rohr, the commander of Germany’s first unit of storm troops, was among its proponents and pioneers. Rather than advancing in the rigid, linear attack formations so characteristic of World War I, Hutier’s infantry was trained to advance using fluid infiltration tactics. The infantry companies were organized into small, highly trained combined-arms assault elements. Advancing leapfrog fashion, the small assault teams probed for weak spots and bypassed enemy strongpoints, leaving them for heavier follow-on forces to reduce. Reserves were committed to reinforce success rather than being thrown in where the attack had stalled. The assault teams pushed deep into the defender’s position, threatening his artillery and disrupting his communications systems. Rather than blind conformance with an established plan, the attackers down to the lowest-level leaders and even the individual soldiers were trained to use imagination and initiative to accomplish their missions.

By the standards of World War I, these were radical innovations. At Riga the German army would conduct the first large-scale test of these “infiltration tactics,” often referred to incorrectly as “Hutier tactics” or “storm troop tactics.” Riga was also the first clash in which the new infantry assault tactics and Bruchmüller’s artillery tactics were combined and synchronized.

Defending the Riga sector were the Russian Twelfth Army’s 15 infantry divisions and single cavalry division, a force numbering some 192,000 troops. Russian defenses north of the Dvina were organized in two parallel positions. The first position comprised three, and in some places four, successive trench lines dug into the dunes along the river. The second position consisted of two sets of trench lines anchored along a smaller river the Germans called the Kleine Jägel (the present-day Maza Jugla), a few miles northeast of the Dvina. (The five-day clash is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Jugla.)

Facing the Russians opposite Riga, deployed along the south bank of the river, Hutier initially fielded just over seven divisions along an 80-mile front running from the coast southeast to Jakobstadt (present-day Jekabpils). Ober Ost reinforced the Eighth Army with an additional eight infantry and two cavalry divisions. That gave Hutier sufficient strength to make his main effort, conduct holding attacks against the front of the city and secure the rest of his line along the Dvina. Hutier planned to make his main effort a crossing of the Dvina near Üxküll (present-day Ikskile), some 15 miles downriver from the city. He committed 10 divisions of about 60,000 troops to the crossing. Once across the Germans could maneuver around to the rear of the city and cut off the Russian garrison.

Hutier prepared for the offensive by assembling his attack divisions some 80 miles behind his front lines, where they trained and rehearsed for 10 days. The attacking divisions did not move up into their jump-off positions until the night before the attack. At 0910 hours on September 1 three divisions of Hutier’s LI Corps spearheaded the attack on a 10,000-yard front. The 19th Reserve Division, on the right, and the 2nd Guards Division, on the left, forced a crossing of the Dvina with assault boats and pontoon bridges. The 14th Bavarian Division in the center had to take heavily fortified Borkum Island as an intermediate objective. Once across the river the three divisions quickly overran the Russians’ first defensive positions and moved on toward the second. While the lead German elements were advancing on the second position, German pioneers started building fixed bridges across the river in each of the three divisional attack sectors. Once the bridges were up a second division crossed behind each first echelon division and prepared to exploit the breakout from the Russians’ second defensive positions.

In addition to the extra infantry divisions, Ober Ost had given the Eighth Army massive artillery reinforcements by stripping the Eastern Front of everything but the minimum number of guns necessary to hold the line in the other sectors. Some guns were even transferred in from the Western Front. With painstaking secrecy Bruchmüller supervised the movement of 615 guns (including 251 heavy guns) and 544 trench mortars into the 5-mile-wide penetration zone prior to the attack, achieving a density of 68 guns and 60 trench mortars per thousand yards. He also stockpiled 650,000 rounds of ammunition at the battery positions.

Once they moved into position, the newly arrived batteries refrained from giving themselves away by firing registrations before the start of the attack. Instead, they fired abbreviated registrations on preplanned points during the first two hours of the preparatory barrage, then quickly shifted fire onto their scheduled targets. While not the most accurate method of firing, it worked. The German artillery achieved total surprise against the Russians. Stunned Western Allies who later analyzed the battle concluded incorrectly the Germans had perfected an accurate technique for delivering unobserved fire without prior registration. (Bruchmüller would manage to do exactly that in March 1918.)

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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One reason accuracy was not quite so important was the unprecedented high number of chemical rounds fired. Rather than attempting to blanket the Russian line with gas, the Germans fired specific types of chemical munitions at selected targets to achieve precise results. Throughout the entire length of the fire the German guns and mortars fired an average of 500 gas rounds per minute on key targets in the penetration zone.

Bruchmüller’s preparatory barrage lasted five hours and 10 minutes. Though short by World War I standards, it was incredibly violent. At 0400 hours all 615 German guns opened up against the Russian artillery positions, firing 75 percent gas to 25 percent high explosive. After two hours of this reinforced counterbattery fire those German firing units with a specific counterbattery mission continued to pound the Russian artillery, while the rest of the German guns shifted to Russian infantry targets and started firing 20 percent gas to 80 percent high explosive. At that point the short-range trench mortars joined in, concentrating their fire on the Russian frontline positions.

The fire against infantry targets lasted three hours and 10 minutes and was divided into four phases. At 0850 hours, 30 minutes into the last phase, the counterbattery guns also shifted to the Russian infantry positions, leaving only one gun per battery to continue stoking the gas clouds enveloping the Russian guns. This final 20 minutes of the preparation was a saturation of the Russian front lines, with all guns and trench mortars firing at their maximum rates of fire. Although gas had been used on the World War I battlefields as early as January 1915, it had never been used with such precision and exacting effect. As British strategist Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller later wrote in The Conduct of War, 1789-1961, “The first skillful use of gas to effect a penetration was made in General von Hutier’s attack on the Riga front.”

At 0910 hours the German infantry surged across the river. Forward observers accompanying the assault elements crossed with the first wave after tying down their phone lines to prepositioned stakes at the ferry points. Once they were across, the assault from the north bank was preceded by a carefully orchestrated creeping barrage. With the exception of the one gun per battery still firing on the Russian gun positions, the German counterbattery guns continued to fire on deeper infantry targets during the first two phases of the creeping barrage.

As soon as the first wave of German infantry had firmly established itself on the north shore, the counterbattery guns turned their attention back to the Russian batteries. About that time the Germans put a number of light field guns across the river on rafts. In the days prior to the attack Bruchmüller’s gunners had rehearsed this technique on the lakes in the Eighth Army’s rear area. Meanwhile, specially trained detachments of gunners from the heavy artillery units crossed the river to take over any abandoned Russian guns in the forward positions. The bulk of the heavier German guns remained throughout the first day on the south bank of the river, having sufficient range to engage the Russian second positions.

Once the Russians’ second defensive positions were overrun, the Germans executed three successive programs of planned defensive fires. The first program provided cover from the time the Russian second defensive position fell until the completion of the fixed bridges over the Dvina. Once those bridges were completed, the Germans moved more artillery across. The second program of defensive fires ran from the completion of the bridges until the artillery that moved across got into position and registered. Once that was accomplished, those guns took over the third set of defensive fires that lasted until everything was ready for the start of the exploitation phase from the Russian second position.

The effects of the German fire were devastating. During the slightly more than five hours of the preparation alone the German gunners hit the Twelfth Army with more than 560,000 rounds—an average of 480 rounds per tube. Any artillery crewman who has ever manhandled ammunition will testify to the backbreaking nature of such a sustained rate of fire. Some 27 percent of the total rounds fired were gas, the highest proportion of such rounds fired in any battle of the war to that time. The total weight of the high explosive shells fired came to approximately 10,500 tons—the equivalent of the armament payload of 300 present-day Boeing B-52H Stratofortress bombers.

Three hours after the first assault wave crossed the river, the Russians started to break. Late that afternoon Twelfth Army commander Parsky ordered his XLIII Corps to counterattack with four divisions and the Latvian 2nd Rifle Brigade. By nightfall, however, the Germans had six divisions across the Dvina, with a bridgehead 8 miles wide. Early on September 2 the Russian counterattack force took up positions along the Little Jägel. The Germans responded with a heavy artillery barrage followed by an attack supported by flamethrowers and ground attack aircraft. The Russians and Latvians managed to hold out for about 24 hours, while the remainder of the Twelfth Army started evacuating Riga.

After the Germans fought their way across the Little Jägel, one part of the attack force broke off to the west and advanced on Riga itself. They entered the city with relatively little opposition in the afternoon of September 3. Simultaneously a German naval force broke through a Russian minefield at the mouth of the Dvina and approached the city from the river. The remainder of Hutier’s force kept pressing northeast, reaching the Grosse Jägel (the present-day Liela Jugla) by day’s end. Neither arm of the German advance, however, managed to prevent the bulk of the Twelfth Army from escaping.

The German attack ended on September 5. The operation had cost the Germans 4,200 casualties to Russia’s 25,000. The Russians also lost some 180 guns and 200 machine guns. After Riga fell, Russia also lost whatever stomach it had for staying in the war. The Bolshevik revolution overthrew Russia’s provisional government on November 7 (October 25 on the traditional Russian calendar). Four days earlier Leon Trotsky had issued a series of demands in the name of the Petrograd Soviet, which included “immediate armistice on all fronts.”

With Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin in Petrograd, and things destabilizing very nicely, Germany had no real incentive to continue large-scale military operations against Russia. It had bigger fish to fry. Thus, most of Ober Ost’s effective combat forces were transferred to the Western Front, where General Erich Ludendorff was planning his grand 1918 spring offensive, which he was convinced could still win the war for Germany.

The transfers to the Western Front included Hutier and Bruchmüller and their staffs. Hutier assumed command of the newly established Eighteenth Army, one of three armies that launched the massive Operation Michael on March 21, 1918. All the German forces in that operation employed the tactics that had proved so successful at Riga, and Bruchmüller planned and oversaw the greatest artillery barrage in the history of warfare to that point. Hutier was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his capture of Riga. Bruchmüller had already received the decoration for previous service on the Eastern Front. Both would receive the higher-level Pour le Mérite with oak leaves for their roles in Operation Michael. (The Pour le Mérite with oak leaves was awarded only 122 times during World War I.)

Like the Battle of Riga, Operation Michael was an overwhelming tactical success, but unlike Riga, Michael was a strategic failure. All the battlefield virtuosity the Germans could muster was not enough to overcome the decisive strategic advantages of the Western Allies. The Germans were simply out of manpower. The Americans had just entered the war, and by March 1918 they were pouring more than 100,000 troops per month into Europe. The French and British, however, did receive a bloody nose in March 1918, as the Germans took more ground in less time than almost all of the previous Western Front battles combined. The Germans followed up with similar massive offensives in April, May and July. But though they kept taking ground and inflicting high casualties, it was not enough to tip the balance in the bloody calculus of World War I.

The Allies, meanwhile, learned their lesson quickly. By July 1918 they too were using the same sort of flexible combined-arms tactics the Germans had pioneered at Riga. The stalemate of trench warfare was finally broken. The Russians learned the lessons of Riga as well, but too late to do them any good in World War I. Between the world wars, however, Soviet military theorists scrutinized German military operations during World War I and developed their own tactical techniques and procedures based on the same fundamental principles. They paid special attention to Bruchmüller, who in the 1920s wrote two books about his experiences, which included detailed information about the fire planning for Riga. Lieutenant General Yuri Sheydeman, chief of the Red Army’s artillery from 1921 to ’37, personally translated one of Bruchmüller’s books from German into Russian. Most of Bruchmüller’s fire-support principles and techniques were echoed in the 1937 edition of Artillery Training Regulations of the Red Army, the basic manual of Soviet artillery doctrine for World War II. Between 1941 and ’45 the Soviets on a hundred battlefields paid back the Germans for Riga in their own coin.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David T. Zabecki is Historynet’s chief military historian. For further reading he recommends his own Steel Wind: Colonel Georg Bruchmüller and the Birth of Modern Artillery, as well as Russia’s Last Gasp: The Eastern Front 1916–17, by Prit Buttar.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Military History magazine.

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After 105 years, the remains of an American doughboy were finally given a proper burial.

Today, the American Battle Monuments Commission, alongside French and U.S. officials, interred its first Great War unknown since 1988 — the first burial at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France since 1932.

The ceremony itself, however, was over a year in the making.

On February 8, 2022, local undertaker Jean-Paul Feval was digging a fresh gravesite in the cemetery at Villers-Sur-Fère, in northeastern France, when he stumbled upon “human bones, along with artifacts that would later include pieces of a helmet, a stretcher, a trench knife and a corroded, unreadable dog tag,” according to a Washington Post report.

The stretcher was a particularly unique find.

“During the fighting they tried to get rid of the bodies as soon as they could,” Bert Caloud, the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery’s superintendent, told The Post. “They would roll them up in ponchos. They’d roll them up in blankets. They could carry them on stretchers.

“My guess is he was dead, and what was left of him was put on a stretcher,” he continued.

For the past year French and American officials have worked in tandem to verify beyond a reasonable doubt that the remains found were, in fact, American.

While the identity of the American soldier remains unknown, it was determined that he was killed in July 1918 around the fight for Villers-Sur-Fère.

According to Mike Knapp, the commission’s director of historical services, the “archeological artifacts gave a good indication” that this was the gravesite of an American soldier. However, Graves Registration Service maps created in 1919-20, now housed at the National Archives, helped to verify the location of the American gravesites from the Great War.

“He’s been by himself for over 100 years, and finally we can give him the dignified and honored burial that he rates,” Caloud told the Post.

Buried with a Purple Heart and given full military honors, the unknown soldier joins 6,012 of his comrades — 597 unknowns — where they already rest.

His gravesite reads, “Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But to God.”

The ABMC, which was started in 1923 by President Warren Harding to honor U.S. World War I dead overseas, “operates 26 cemeteries on foreign soil where 123,000 service members from World Wars I and II are buried, and thousands of others are memorialized,” according to The Post.

The soldier’s discovery “is an extraordinarily big deal,” said Knapp.

“Here we are … 105 years after this guy died and … he’s getting a full honors, military funeral just like some veteran would get today at Arlington” cemetery, Knapp continued “I think that says a great deal.”

The Battle

While the First World War would end in just under five months after the unknown soldier’s death, the fight remained bitter to the last.

In late July 1918, the U.S. Army’s 42nd Infantry Division — called the Rainbow Division because it contained outfits from across the country — went on its first offensive, pushing back German forces around the Ourcq River, less than a mile north of Villers-sur-Fère.

The men of that division saw intense action around the village, with Francis Duffy, the division chaplain, writing in his postwar memoir, “Father Duffy’s Story,” that “Nearly one-third of those who lost their lives in this action received their death wounds from shell fire in and around Villers-sur-Fère.”

While it is believed that the unknown soldier was from the Rainbow Division, he could well have been a part of the the 165th Infantry Regiment, which also saw intense action around the French village of Villers-sur-Fère. More than 30 Americans from that regiment were hastily buried by a stone wall near the village cemetery.

However, regardless of the fact that “We do not know his name, his age, or his background,” Gen. James C. McConville, chief of staff of the Army, told the crowd gathered at Oise-Aisne this morning that “we do know one thing for certain … this soldier was a hero.”

Watch the full ceremony here.

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Maj. Samuel Woodfill’s Army career is the stuff of legend. It’s no surprise that, as a result, the Association of the United States Army released a graphic novel detailing the acts of heroism that earned him his Medal of Honor.

“General John Pershing recognized Samuel Woodfill as the most outstanding soldier of the First World War,” according to AUSA.

On Oct. 12, 1918, in the midst of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, then-1st Lt. Woodfill was with the 60th Infantry near the town of Cunel, France, when their advance came under heavy fire.

“Followed by two soldiers at 25 yards, this officer went out ahead of his first line toward a machine-gun nest and worked his way around its flank, leaving the two soldiers in front,” his citation reads.

As Woodfill approached, the machine gun firing stopped and four German soldiers attacked. Woodfill shot three and “attempted to club the officer with his rifle.”

After a struggle, Woodfill shot the soldier with his pistol.

His unit continued the advance until it was met with yet another machine gun barrage.

“Woodfill rushed ahead of his line in the face of heavy fire from the nest, and when several of the enemy appeared above the nest, he shot them, capturing three other members of the crew and silencing the gun,” according to the citation.

The unit then encountered a third machine gun nest manned by five German soldiers, which Woodfill took out with his rifle. He tried but failed to subdue two additional troops with his revolver. Instead, he took up a pick-axe in the trench and engaged them in close-quarters combat.

“Inspired by the exceptional courage displayed by this officer, his men pressed on to their objective under severe shell and machine-gun fire,” the citation notes.

For these acts of valor, Pershing presented the Medal of Honor to Woodfill on Feb. 9, 1919.

But Woodfill’s story started much earlier in his hometown of Madison, Indiana, where he attempted to join the Army at age 15 to fight in the Spanish-American War. Turned down, he joined in 1901 when he was 18.

In 1917, he was made and officer and promoted to the rank of second lieutenant.

Woodfill served in the Army until retiring in 1923, but was recalled in 1942 at the outset of World War II.

“He was given special clearance to serve and, at 59, was still an excellent marksman,” according to the Defense Department archives. “But he hit the mandatory retirement age of 60 in 1943, so his third bout of service was short-lived.”

Woodfill died in 1951 and was buried in Indiana, however, in 1955, his remains were reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery — next to Pershing.

You can download a free copy of this graphic novel here.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

If HistoryNet had a nickel for each time in the past six years that a Kentucky pilot crashed a World War I-era biplane and survived, we’d have 15 cents.

That isn’t enough money to repair the Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” replica that crashed (again) Monday — with no serious injuries — at a Kentucky National Guard training center, but it’s certainly 15 cents more than we expected to have.

The 1917 model plane, one of six — er, five — airworthy Jennies left in the world, crash-landed at the Wendell H. Ford Regional Training Center near Greenville, Kentucky, early Monday evening, according to a Kentucky National Guard press release. Spokesperson Capt. Cody Stagner told Military Times that the plane was returning from an airshow at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, when its engine suddenly lost power, causing the pilot to make a controlled crash-landing.

The plane is the same Jenny built by the Friends of Jenny, a historical non-profit that aims to educate the public about early American military aviation. The organization reportedly invested 10,000 technician hours into building the plane, which mostly aligned with the original manufacturer’s specifications.

And it’s the same Jenny that crashed on a Bowling Green, Kentucky, golf course in 2017, according to the Bowling Green Daily News. The pilot survived with minor injuries.

Its owner, Dorian Walker, wasn’t at the controls for that crash. He spearheaded a fundraising effort to get the plane back into the air while also overseeing the group’s other WWI-era restoration project — the world’s last airworthy de Havilland DH-4 biplane.

But Walker was at the sticks when the DH-4 crashed in May 2020.

After walking away from the 2020 crash unscathed, Walker told local reporters that his survival was “a testimony to how well-built this plane is.”

Walker was one of two pilots involved in Monday’s crash as well.

His biplane flying days may be over, though.

Walker’s wife, Elaine Walker, told the Bowling Green Daily News that the wreckage could “easily” be restored for a museum display after the Federal Aviation Administration completes its investigation of the crash. But getting it back into the air again?

“To restore it to fly again would be a little more complex.”

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

“Well, dear mother and father, Ethel, Edie and Basil… this is rather a novelty to come to Australia this way,” comes the crackling voice of Henry Miller Lanser. “The past week, training is getting heavier every day. My word, the Germans or Turks, as we hear, they are making for Egypt. Whatever happens we will stop them — from laughing anyhow — when we do start.”

His words, recorded sometime between December 1914 and January 1915, are believed to be the oldest surviving recording in the world of an ordinary soldier in wartime.

Born in 1890 to Edward and Bertha Lanser of Paddington, New South Wales, the 24-year-old Lanser enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on Sept. 2, 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War.

Posted to the 1st Battalion, Lanser arrived in Egypt that December in preparation for the now infamous Gallipoli campaign.

According to the Australian War Memorial, Lanser took the opportunity during some down time to make a recording of his voice at a small record manufacturing business. He sent the pressed shellac disc and metal stamper home to his family.

“These recordings were being sold at 10 shillings a pop … that’s an extraordinary amount of money, the equivalent of nearly $60 on a novelty, so he must have really wanted to do it,” Stephanie Boyle, a senior curator at the Australian War Memorial, told The Guardian.

The audio is unique, according to Boyle, as it is the only surviving voice of a young soldier from the Great War. The War Memorial’s archives only consist of oral histories taken from WWI soldiers from the 1970s onwards.

“Their story is only recorded in their voice decades later, when they are very elderly veterans,” Boyle continued.

Lanser’s War Begins

“I don’t know that I can say a great deal more now, mother, as this is a time-limited sort of affair, but all I can wish is, I hope you all had a real jolly good Christmas — we did, I know — and of course, it’s was the first — not really the first time I’ve been away for Christmas, but I was very anxious to get back for this one. But here I am here now, I am really enjoying myself and that’s the main thing, and I hope everyone at home are doing the same thing,” Lanser assured his family.

That happiness would be fleeting, however.

On April 25, 1915, Lanser’s battalion was among the second and third waves to storm ashore at Gallipoli. Within a few days of that chaotic landing, Lanser was wounded with a gunshot to his left knee.

Evacuated from the peninsula in early May, Lanser’s respite was short-lived as he re-joined his battalion on Gallipoli by the end of July that year.

Lanser was once again wounded during an ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) assault on Lone Pine on Aug. 6.

According to the War Memorial, Lanser received gunshot wounds to the chest and arm and was once more evacuated. He was not fit to return to his battalion — which was by now stationed in France — until March of 1916.

Fighting on the Western Front, Lanser — now commissioned as a second lieutenant — went on to survive the Somme in July and spent the rest of the year in training over Stokes trench mortars and Lewish machine guns.

Unfortunately, like his three-and-a-half-minute recording, Lanser’s life was brief.

He was killed on November 5, 1916, after being hit by machine gun fire while leading his men into no man’s land near the French village of Flers.

For four months, Lanser’s body lay where he fell in no man’s land, before he was eventually buried in Grevillers British Cemetery in Grevillers, France.

His last words to his family? “Well, goodbye everybody, and good luck.”

Listen to the full recording here:

“What is the dumbest way a huge turning point in history began?” was a question historian Peter Manseau recently posed on Twitter. What resulted was a flood of user comments that ranged from the inane (some noted their own births) to world altering.

We here at HistoryNet have compiled some of the more notable answers and added a few of our own to the list!

1. The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

While the story of Gavrilo Princip stopping to get a sandwich after the first failed assassination attempt on the lives of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie may be apocryphal, what is true is the couple’s driver took an unexpected new route (or a wrong turn) which led the pair to cross paths with Princip. The subsequent deaths of the Ferdinands plunged the world into the Great War, the Second World War, the Cold War and on and on the ramifications go.

2. The Death of Glyndwr Michael

The idea itself was very simple: find a dead body, plant false papers on the corpse, and then drop it where the Germans would inevitably find it. Yet to pull off the ruse would require ingenuity to overcome a complicated series of hurdles, namely finding the appropriate body that looked like it had died in an air crash at sea and floated ashore.  

The British eventually found their man in Glyndwr Michael, a vagrant who had recently died in London after swallowing rat poison. With no family to claim him, Michael’s body was put on ice as Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu set about creating “Captain (Acting Major) William Martin of the Royal Marines.”

Attached to Michael’s body was a briefcase that contained a series subterfuge documents designed to draw the Germans away from the Allies’ main target, Sicily.

On April 30, 1943, “Captain Martin” was launched into the ocean from the British submarine HMS Seraph and left to drift. From then on it was a wait-and-see game. Macintyre told The New Yorker that the Germans had to “believe that they had gained access to the documents undetected; they should be made to assume that the British believed the Spaniards had returned the documents unopened and unread.”

Indeed, they did. After taking the bait, the Germans rapidly doubled the number of troops being sent to Sardinia, while Hitler sent an additional panzer division from France to Greece. British code breakers sent the telegram, “MINCEMEAT SWALLOWED ROD, LINE, AND SINKER” to Winston Churchill in mid-May of 1943.

And as 160,000 Allied troops stormed Sicily on July 10 it became clear from the scanty German resistance that the British dupe was effective. The successful six-week campaign to retake Sicily brought Mussolini to his knees, helped to initiate the Italian land campaign, and forced Hitler to divert nearly a fifth of the entire German army fighting on the Eastern Front to help prop up Italy. Countless Allied lives were saved due to this one cadaver.

3. Ben Butler and the Bermuda Hundred Campaign

By fate, Benjamin Butler and P.G.T Beauregard found themselves at the head of opposing armies on the Virginia Peninsula in 1864: Butler in command of the Army of the James, Beauregard the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia.

Their showdown in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, lasting May 5 through June 7, 1864, remains one of the war’s most overlooked military ventures despite the fact that it could have possibly ended the American Civil War a year earlier, according to historian Sean Michael Chick.

That spring, Butler’s army was handed the critical role as “Left Hook” in Ulysses Grant’s massive three-pronged advance on Richmond, and even though Butler seemed to have the parts in place to succeed, he was instead left to rue lost opportunities and to cast blame on his subordinates.

Although there had been missed Confederate openings too, one thing was certain by June 7: Beauregard had managed to turn back Butler’s onslaught and Grant had been stopped on the outskirts of Richmond. He would not claim the coveted Confederate capital for another 10 months.

4. James Madison and the Bill of Rights

According to the National Archives, “James Madison, once the most vocal opponent of the Bill of Rights, introduced a list of amendments to the Constitution on June 8, 1789, and ‘hounded his colleagues relentlessly’ to secure its passage.”

Per the Archives:

Although no draft in his hand survives, there is good reason to believe that JM composed Washington’s first inaugural address. Even before he was officially elected president, Washington had turned to JM for his opinion of a seventy-three-page draft address that Washington’s secretary, David Humphreys, had drawn up for the occasion. Washington copied this draft with the intention of sending it to JM, but owing to the uncertainty of the communications between Mount Vernon and Montpelier, he decided to wait until JM stopped over at Mount Vernon late in February. The Humphreys draft clearly embarrassed Washington, and JM later referred to it as a “strange production.” No doubt for this reason Jared Sparks felt justified in cutting up Washington’s copy of the proposed address and sending pieces of it to his friends as examples of the great man’s autograph (PJM, XI, 446, 446–47 n. 1).

At their Mount Vernon meeting Washington and JM agreed that the Humphreys draft, which contained numerous legislative proposals, should be discarded in favor of a brief address that deliberately omitted specific recommendations to Congress. The one recommendation which the president made in his inaugural, that Congress consider amendments to the Constitution, was one that JM had much at heart. If the passage on amendments suggests the pen of JM, a remark by Washington in his note of 5 May 1789 clearly points to him as the author of the address: “Notwithstanding the conviction I am under of the labour which is imposed upon you by Public Individuals as well as public bodies—Yet, as you have began, so I would wish you to finish, the good work in a short reply to the Address of the House of Representatives.” Thus in the opening series of formal exchanges between the president and Congress, JM was in dialogue with himself. Having composed the inaugural, he drew up in turn the address of the House of Representatives in reply to the president (5 May), the president’s reply to the House address (8 May), and for good measure the president’s reply to the Senate address (18 May).

5. George Washington and the French and Indian War

Yes, you read that correctly. The then 22-year-old George Washington managed to spark a global war.

According to the Smithsonian, George and “his Virginia Regiment of a little over 100 effective soldiers were the tip of His Majesty’s spear in North America. Their assignment: to finish building a fort that would anchor Britain’s control over the Ohio Valley.”

Although Washington wasn’t instructed to start a war, he had the authority to restrain any French interlopers in the contested region of Ohio, if necessary, “kill & destroy” them. The scuffle that ensued — with many noting that it was Washington who fired the first shot — and the subsequent death of French Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, would spark the French and Indian War and help lead to the American Revolution (which was led by none other than George Washington).

HistoryNet’s honorable mentions:

1. The Discovery of Penicillin

Regarded as a true turning point in human history, penicillin, one of the world’s first antibiotics is discovered by Dr. Alexander Fleming — and by mistake no less. Fleming, a Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary’s Hospital in London was returning to his lab after a holiday and was beginning to sort through his petri dishes that contained colonies of Staphylococcus aureaus when he noticed that a mold, penicillium notatum, had prevented the growth of the staphylococci. What he discovered that day was a means to kill bacteria, and thereby treat infectious diseases. However, Dr. Fleming did not have the resources nor the chemistry background to isolate the penicillium mold juice, purify it and mass produce it.  

After publishing his findings in a 1929 journal, his report languished until 1938 when Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford University began in earnest their work on purifying penicillin. Their testing on mice showed that penicillin appeared nontoxic and could combat a variety of pathogens, including the bacteria that caused gangrene. Their work became so precious and closely guarded during the war that the researchers rubbed Penicillium notatum spores into the fabric of their jackets in case an imminent German invasion forced them to destroy their work. Despite initial successes, however, the issue became developing a means of mass producing the penicillin.  

This would not come until the summer of 1941, when British scientific ingenuity paired with American production abilities. And from January to May of 1942, 400 units of pure penicillin were manufactured and by 1945, American pharmaceutical companies were producing 650 billion units a month. During World War II penicillin is credited for not only curing rampant outbreaks of venereal disease, but for saving hundreds of thousands of Allied lives. The “wonder drug” cut incidences of gangrene to 1.5 cases per thousand and bacterial pneumonia from 18% in World War I to less than 1% in World War II.

As Dr. Fleming famously wrote: “When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.” 

2. The Death of Rear Admiral Keiji Shibakazi During the Battle of Tarawa

The attack on Betio, the largest and southernmost island in the Tarawa atoll, required a direct assault on the beachheads by U.S. Marines. Protected by coral reefs, the flat, small island was one of the most heavily fortified in the Pacific, and because of the island’s geography, the nearly 5,000 Marines would have no immediate room to maneuver. Landing on November 20, 1943, the Marines were met with withering fire, poured out by elite troops of the Imperial Navy’s Special Naval Landing Force, sometimes called “Japanese Marines.” The lethal hailstorm of mortars, machine gun and rifle fire threatened to halt the advance of the Marines. From this precarious position, General Smith radioed General Holland Smith midafternoon stating: “Successful landings on Beaches Red 2 and 3. Toehold on Red 1. The situation is in doubt.” By the end of the first day, the Marines had a tenuous hold on all three landing zones – designated Red 1, Red 2, and Red 3. Corralled onto the narrow beaches, no units had penetrated more than 70 yards inshore and by nightfall, being driven back into the sea was a legitimate threat.

However, by some stroke of luck, the commander of the Japanese garrison, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibakazi, frustrated with his inability to contact his men in the field, ordered his command post to move to the south side of the island. By a twist of fate, a fluke, or skill one of the U.S. destroyers managed to lob a 5-inch shell directly in the commander’s path as he left his concrete blockhouse — instantly killing him and several other senior officers. The death of Shibakazi essentially cut off the head of the Japanese command structure, which is seemingly why the Japanese could not coordinate an early banzai charge. If they had, it is likely that the Americans would have lost their fragile toehold on the beachheads.

Aware of their perilous position as a new day dawned, the Marines fought with extraordinary courage, many fighting despite being wounded several times. The fighting on day two is considered to be one of the toughest battles in Marine Corps history. However, by day three, Japanese resistance had largely collapsed, leaving only rogue snipers and small pockets of fanatical fighters. The Japanese had boasted that it would take a million men and 100 years to take the island. The Marines took it in three days.

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