Chapter Five: Zeppelin Attack – Incentives to Join The Colours

15GW794 Deutsch Marineluftschiffabteilung (German Naval Airship Division) on a raid, 1915.

15GW784 A German artist’s version of an attack on London.

15GW795 Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin; born July 1838, died March 1917.

In days to come my airships are destined to erase the advantages or disadvantages of the geographical location of nations. For Germany, as the power most capable of supplying proficient crews, they will assure her world military domination, as indeed they will cause a complete revolution in commerce and transportation.’

Graf von Zeppelin

15GW781 Airship LZ4 in her shed.

15GW783 LZ1 coming in to land on Lake Constance.

15GW802 LZ3 coming in to land and without disturbing the grazing sheep.

15GW800 LZ2 at her mooring on Lake Constance.

15GW780 The first flight of the LZ1 in July 1900, taking off from Lake Constance. It remained airborne for twenty minutes and was considered a failure, but the design was improved upon.

15GW799 The LZ3 lifting off stern first with crowds gathering to wave to its passengers.

15GW798 Count Zeppelin in the gondola of LZ3.

15GW789 The Zeppelin Victoria Luise as a pre-war transporter of passengers.

15GW779 Graf von Zeppelin.

15GW789 The Sachsen - Count Zeppelin played host on this occasion when the King of Saxony and his sons took a flight in this emerging form of transport.

15GW793 A close up of the stern of LZ3 showing its control and stabalizing fittings – 1910.

15GW798 The rear gondola of LZ3.

15GW796 LZ3 and her hanger on Lake Constance.

15GW801 Graf von Zeppelin takes his sister for a flight.

15GW788 A novelty in the skies above Germany in the years leading to war.

15GW816 Count Zeppelin with the King of Saxony in the central gondola of an airship.

15GW814 The L 3 participated in the first raid on England on 19 January 1915. On 17 February 1915 L 3 was abandoned by its crew after a forced landing in Denmark. The wind blew the unmanned airship over the sea, where it was wrecked.

15GW815 A Zeppelin flying above the Belgian capital, Brussels, in 1915.

15GW807 The forward control gondola of a German naval airship, showing the electrical bomb release switches.

15GW802 A Zeppelin engine.

15GW787 The rear gondola, showing the engine controlling the rudder.

15GW817 A Zeppelin discharging water ballast from one of its gondolas.

15GW813 Kapitänleutenant Heinrich Mathy was known as the most daring and audacious of all the Zeppelin raiders.

15GW808 The quick-firing French 75 mm field gun seen here mounted in the anti-aircraft role being examined by naval officers. This gun was in action against Zeppelin LZ15 on the night of 13 October 1915.

15GW805 Ground crew run to take hold of the handling bars to assist landing this improved model airship in late 1915. It carried a crew of nineteen and could lift a load of 4,400 lbs of bombs. The front of the control car is to the left.

15GW806 The German battleship SMS Markgraf being overflown by Zeppelin L54.

15GW822 Zeppelin bombs were dropped on Great Yarmouth on the first air raid made on Britain, 19 January 1915. The one on the left failed to explode.

15GW821 Mrs Gazeley, killed by a Zeppelin bomb in Yarmouth, 19 January 1915, photographed with her husband, who had been killed fighting in Flanders.

15GW841 Soldiers of the Norfolk Regiment among the ruins of a house destroyed at Great Yarmouth, 19 January 1915. The first air raid victims in Britain were killed in this raid. Martha Taylor and Samuel Smith were killed by a bomb which landed in the street.

15GW819 & 15GW820 Zeppelin raider routes over north coast targets as presented to British magazine readers in 1915.

15GW828 15GW829 Zeppelin bombs dropped on Bury St Edmunds – a dud and a successful incendiary device.

15GW827 Officers and non commissioned officers of a Zeppelin after being awarded the Iron Cross for a raid over enemy territory (date and which territory not known).

15GW830 Varieties of ordnance dropped from Zeppelins on targets in England.

15GW832 Showing off the bombs.

15GW831 Bombs dropped during the raid on Bury St Edmunds in April 1915.

15GW836 Incendiary bomb dropped on Lowestoft.

15GW837 Incendiary bombs dropped over the Tyne.

15GW839 Loss of life at Yarmouth, St Peter’s Plain, where Samuel Smith, shoemaker, was killed.

15GW838 Destruction at King’s Lynn following the Zeppelin raid of the night of 19 January 1915.

15GW834 A diagram of the workings.

15GW833 Showing off the bombs.

15GW840 High explosive bomb that failed to explode.

15GW835 One of the hated ‘Baby Killers’ that threatened life and limb of civilians, mainly along the north east coast of England and London.

15GW826 Butter Market, Bury St Edmunds 30 April 1915.

15GW824 One of the bombs dropped on King’s Lynn being examined by the Chief Constable, Charles Hunt.

15GW842 Soldiers helping with the salvaging of belongings in the bomb damaged house in King’s Lynn.

15GW786 Zeppelin LZ15 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Breithaupt over London on the night of 13 October 1915. It was one of a number of airships raiding England that night. Casualties were 71 killed and 130 injured. An official statement the following day said: The War Office announce that a fleet of hostile airships visited the Eastern Counties and a portion of the London area last night and dropped bombs. Anti-aircraft guns of the Royal Field Artillery, attached to the Central Force were in action. An airship was seen to heel over on its side and drop to a lower altitude. Five aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps went up.

15GW843 Workers repairing damage to the road in Liverpool Street, London. Liverpool Railway Station had been the target on the night of 9 September 1915, when four bombs were dropped from Zeppelin L13: one landed on the station and three in the streets, killing fifteen people.

15GW844 Soldiers and civilians gathered around a burning gas main in Wellington Street, London. Zeppelin LZ15, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Breithaupt, dropped a bomb at this spot, killing seventeen people, 13 October 1915. The gas pipe under the street was fractured and caught fire.

15GW848 15GW847 The commander of LZ 37 Oberleutant, Otto van der Haegen, and crew. The first raider to be brought down by a British airman.

15GW846 LZ 37 over Zeppelin sheds.

15GW872 The French built Morane-Saulnier ‘Parasol’ scout with which Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warneford destroyed Zeppelin LZ 37.

15GW845 Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warneford RNAS destroyed Zeppelin LZ 37 by getting above it and dropping six bombs, one of which brought the airship down in flames. He was awarded the Victoria Cross but was killed in an air accident two weeks later, on 17 June 1915.

Before the war, Nurse Edith Cavell was matron of a nursing school in Brussels. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities she was a training nurse for three hospitals in Belgium. She was arrested on 3 August 1915. At her court martial she was prosecuted for aiding British and French soldiers, in addition to young Belgian men, to cross the border and eventually enter Britain. She admitted her guilt in a statement prior to the trial. Her admission confirmed that Cavell had helped enemy soldiers to cross the Dutch frontier and clearly established that she helped them escape to a country at war with Germany. The penalty according to German military law was death.

15GW851 Edith Cavell in England, about ten years before the Great War.

15GW853 Edith Cavell in a garden in Brussels with her two dogs before the outbreak of the war.

15GW852 Belgian nursing school École belge d’infirmières diplômées – was founded in 1907. Direction of the School was entrusted to Nurse Edith Cavell.

15GW850 Cavell (seated centre) with a group of multinational student nurses whom she trained in Brussels.

GW15855 German officials appointed by the German Government to administer affairs in occupied Belgium.

The German government maintained that it had acted fairly towards Edith Cavell. In an official statement to the press, the German government stated that: It was a pity that Miss Cavell had to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly. It is undoubtedly a terrible thing that the woman has been executed; but consider what would happen to a State, particularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety of its armies to go unpunished because they were acts committed by a woman.

Front row sitting (left to right): Privy Councillor Major von Lumm; Rittmeister von der Lanken; Chief Administrator Dr von Sandt; Privy Councillor Hauptmann Mehlhorn; Privy Councillor Dr Bittmann.

Second row standing (left to right): Prince George von Sachsen-Meiningen; Councillor Leutnant Kempf; Dr Felix Somary; Privy Councillor Leutnant Bornhardt; Rittmeister Bucking; Bank Manager Leutnant Gutleben; Rittmeister Count Harrach; Acting Councillor von Radowitz; Administration Councillor Hauptmann von Wussow; Administrator and Surveyor of Buildings Degener; Bank Manager Dr Schacht; Councillor of Justice Schauer.

Third row (left to right): Privy Councillor Hauptmann Pochhammer; Leutnant Baron von Stein; Assistant Judge von Friedberg; Assistant Judge Schäffer; Herr Schotthöfer; Dr Ried; Leutnant Dr Hütten; Dr Böninger; Leutnant Honigmann; Councillor of Justice Trimborn; Herr Georg Behrens; Administration Councillor Löblich; Privy Councillor Brückner; Public Prosecutor Leutnant Bluhme; Rittmeister Prince zu Ratibor und Corvey; Burgomeister Leutnant von Loebell; Privy Councillor Rittmeister Kaufmann.

Fourth row (left to right): Herr Treutler; Dr Loymayer; Consul Dr Asmis; Assistant Judge Dr. Reuthner; Professor Rathgen.

15GW852 The Belgian nursing school École belge d’infirmières diplômées – was founded in 1907. Direction of the School was entrusted to Nurse Edith Cavell. It was here that Edith Cavell helped organize British, French and Belgian soldiers to escape into neutral Holland.

15GW860 Following the execution of Nurse Cavell on 12 October 1915, postcards and magazine articles flooded out in the countries ranged against Germany. This is a French depiction of her arrest and trial. She had been betrayed by Gaston Quien, who was later convicted by a French court as being a collaborator.

15GW858 St Giles Prison, Brussels, where Cavell was held and executed.

15GW859 German soldiers quartered in the Cour d’Appel, The Palace of Justice, Brussels, at the beginning of the occupation of Belgium.

15GW858 The cell in St Giles Prison, Brussels, where Edith Cavell was held for ten weeks, the last two in solitary confinment.

15GW857 American diplomat, Hugh Simons Gibson, First Secretary of the United States Legation,

‘We reminded the German civil governor, Baron von der Lancken, of the burning of Louvain and the sinking of the Lusitania and told him that this murder would rank with those two affairs and would stir all civilised countries with horror and disgust.’

15GW856 American Minister to Belgium, Brand Whitlock, wrote an appeal letter to the German Governor General of Belgium, Baron von Bissing:

‘She has spent her life alleviating the sufferings of others and at her school numerous nurses have been trained who, throughout the world, in Germany as in Belgium, have watched at the bedside of the sick. Miss Cavell gave her services as much to German soldiers as to others.’

The Americans could intervene because in 1915 they were still neutral.

15GW864 Governor-General of occupied Belgium, Generaloberst Moritz von Bissing, as supreme authority, Gerichtscherr, ratified Nurse Edith Cavell’s death warrant and refused to see a deputation from representatives of the American and Spanish governments.

15GW866 One of the many artists’ impressions of the execution. The event was a gift to those involved in waging the propaganda war against the Germans.

15GW863 The Head of the Political Department, Baron von der Lancken, received a delegation from the Hugh Simons Gibson, First Secretary of the United States Legation, who was accompanied by the Spanish Minister, Marquis de Villobar. Baron von der Lancken telephoned the Military Governor, Moritz von Bissing. Lancken conveyed the final decision to the American and Spanish diplomats:

‘I have acted in the case of Miss Cavell only after mature deliberation; that the circumstances in her case were of such a character that I considered the infliction of the death penalty imperative; and that in view of the circumstances of this case I must decline to accept your plea for clemency, or any representation in regard to the matter.’

The execution was carried out the next morning, 12 October 1915.

15GW867 A British propaganda stamp issued shortly after Cavell’s death.

15GW862 Nurse Edith Cavell was born 4 December 1865 and was executed by firing squad for treasonous acts against the German occupying forces on 12 October 1915.

15GW865 The Governor General of Belgium, Baron Moritz Bissing, on the steps of the Cathedral in Brussels. With him is the Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Bettinger, who has just conducted the service. This was a few weeks after the execution.

15GW868 The German action was justified according to the rules of war; however, by not showing clemency and shooting Edith Cavell they committed a serious propaganda blunder. Within days the nurse became a martyr and, worldwide, the Germans were being described as ‘monsters’. After her death was announced Allied determination was strengthened, and recruitment doubled during the next eight weeks.

15GW870 Londoners gathered in their thousands at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, to pay a last tribute of reverence to the memory of Miss Edith Cavell. An eye witness described the scene in the original caption:

‘What a sight it was, statesmen, scholars, scientists, a great company of nurses in their various uniforms, pathetic groups here and there of wounded soldiers home from the battlefields and then an immense concourse of the general public, chiefly women. What had brought the multitude together?… the memory of a poor woman, a hospital nurse, who has been foully done to death by a barbarous enemy.’

15GW869 An artist’s impression of the memorial service held in St Paul’s Cathedral – note the central praying figure is that of a young attractive nurse looking heavenwards – she appears to be loosely based on the the figure in the photograph above. The entire execution incident was a gift to those wishing to stir up sympathy and patriotism. The prayer concocted for the occasion reflected the mood and involved the Almighty (who now, more than ever, could be viewed as favouring the Allies). In part it read: ‘We give hearty thanks, for it hath pleased Thee to deliver Thy servant, Edith, out of the miseries of this sinful world.’ Incredibly, church attenders were encouraged to view her execution as some sort of a divinely ordained deliverance.

15GW871 In sharp contrast with the patriotism inflamed by the execution of Edith Cavell was this meeting six months earlier of the Women’s Peace Congress held at the Hague. More than 1,200 delegates from twelve countries discussed proposals to end the Great War through negotiation. British organizers had planned an attendance by 180 women delegates but this was reduced to three by a refusal to issue travel documents and the British Government’s suspension of ferry services between England and Holland at that time. Also the French government would not permit any of its nationals to attend. The original caption for this picture, which appeared in The Illustrated War News, 5 May 1915, read in part:

‘The futile and foolish International Women’s Congress at the Hague: a meeting which ended in “war”. One episode, illustrated above, was a “pause in silent reverence for the dead,” during which, we are told, “women wept, and the meeting was suspended until they could regain their composure”.

Such caption writing conveys the utter contempt held for those who failed to go along with the patriotic spirit of the time. The incident of the would-be British delegates, being thwarted in their attempts to attended the Peace conference was referred to as ‘almost amusing – it hardly created comic relief amid the world tragedy’.

15GW785 One immediate effect of the Zeppelin raids on London – the boost to recruiting was notable.

15GW810 Execution of British nurse Edith Cavell on 12th October 1915 was a gift to the recruiting drive.

15GW811 The Church of England added its voice for revenge against Germany. On Sunday 25 July 1915 the Bishop of London led a patriotic parade to St Paul’s Cathedral, where he delivered a stirring sermon of hate to the London Territorials: It is the soul of England which is once more to free the world, he cried with fervour, from behind an altar made up of military drums.

OUR FRIEND THE ENEMY.

JOHN BULL (very calmly). “AH, HERE HE COMES AGAIN—MY BEST RECRUITER.”