part0005

C avalry officers on horseback, stubby tanks and rickety biplanes of the first world war, now seem part of a distant age. The casualties of this great war are so immense. It's easy to forget individuals caught up in this conflict. Most were civilians—farm and factory workers, civil servants, teachers—taken right from their everyday lives and plunged into a terrifying and lethal ordeal. This war was on too grand a scale to be fought by only professional standing armies.

The stories in this book are about ordinary men and women: soldiers, sailors, and aircrew caught up in great battles and campaigns. Those who survived with no apparent physical or psychological damage were tormented by what they'd seen and done. One British veteran recalled:

“It took us years to get over it. Years! Long after, when you were working, married, had kids, you'd be lying in bed with your wife and you see it all before you. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't lie still. Many's the time I’ve got up and tramped the streets till it came daylight. In many's the time I've met other fellows that were out there doing exactly the same thing. Went on for years, that did.”

For those that fought, the great war remained the most intense and vivid experience of their life. In the beginning of August 1914, the most powerful countries in the world declared war on each other. Known as the Central powers: Hungary, Austria and Germany lined up against the Allied forces: France, Britain and Russia along with their colonial empires.

As the Great War progressed, other nations were drawn into the conflict. Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers. In contrast, Japan, China, Romania, the United States and Italy joined the Allies.

This was to be the first real-world war. It would ultimately involve countries from every continent. Most of the fighting took place in France and on the Eastern and Western fronts of Germany.

Crowds gathered at the news of the outbreak of war. They gathered in the grand squares of Europe’s majestic cities. Each side anticipated great marches and heroic battles quickly decided. The Kaiser declared that his troops would be home by the time the leaves fell from the trees.

The British weren’t as optimistic. It was often said that the war would be over by Christmas. Only a few farsighted politicians realized what was coming, including the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey.

Britain declared war on Germany August 4th . Sir Edward Grey commented to a friend about Britain's entry into the First World War:

His remark held a deep significance. At the time, Britain was a stable, prosperous country with an enormous empire. This war would prove the grim reality of warfare in the 20th century and remove Britain as the most powerful nation in the world.

Nearly all other countries that participated in the war suffered as well. Half of all men in France between the ages of 20 to 35 were killed or severely wounded. The Hungarian-Austrian Empire disintegrated.

The Germans lost their monarchy after the war and were on the brink of a communist revolution. The war eradicated the Russian monarchy and brought the communist Bolsheviks to power. With them came 70 years of brutal, totalitarianism oppression. The Russians still suffer from the horrible consequences of the first world war.

The United States was one of the few countries to emerge a stronger nation. By 1919, the US had become the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth.

Apart from its consequences, there's something uniquely haunting about the first world war. The city crowds that gathered that August had no idea what the next four years had in store. The waste of life or what British statesman Lloyd George described as:

After the final shell had been fired and the last gas canister unleashed, there was nothing to show for it except over 21 million dead.

Known as the war that will end all war. It was such a gut-wrenchingly horrible conflict. Many hoped humanity would not be foolish enough to do it again. After the Versailles peace treaty officially ended the war in 1919, the proceedings were dismissed as a 20-year-old cease-fire by one of the leading participants, French commander Marshall Foch. By the early 1920s, people began to refer to the war as the first world war.

The causes of the war were many. The system of rival alliances between the different European powers had built up in the previous decades. Individual countries tried to bolster their security and ambitions with powerful allies. Although alliances provided some security, they also came with obligations.

The events that led to war were set in motion in June 1914, when the Serbian student named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In retaliation, they declared war on Serbia.

Serbia was an ally of Russia. So, Russia joined the war against Austro-Hungary and all other rival nations tied to their respective alliances. They were dragged into the conflict, whether they wanted to be or not.

Why should a quarrel between Russia and Austria-Hungary over a little-known country in Eastern Europe automatically involve France, Germany and Britain?

It was because each was obliged to support the other in the event of war. There were other long-standing resentments. Britain maintained their power by having the world's greatest fleet. So, when Germany began to build a fleet to rival the Royal Navy, relations between these two countries deteriorated fast.

The British and French had vast colonial empires. Germany, also prosperous and powerful, only had a few colonies and wanted more. They all joined in the fighting to maintain or improve their position in the world.

The reason the conflict was so horrific is easier to explain. The war occurred at a moment in the evolution of military technology when weapons to defend a position were much more effective than the weapons available to attack it. The development of trench fortifications, barbed wire, machine guns, and rapid-fire rifles made it is simple and straightforward for an army to defend its territory. An army attacking well-defended territory had to rely on its infantrymen, armed with only rifles and bayonets—and they were to be slaughtered in the millions.

All the generals involved in the war had been trained to fight by attacking, so that's what they did. They’d been trained that horse cavalry was one of the greatest offensive weapons. Cavalry—still armed with lances, as they had been for the previous two thousand years, took part in a few battles, particularly at the start of the war.

These elite troops were quickly massacred. The tactics of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Napoleon, all of who’d used cavalry to great effect, were no match for the industrial scale killing power of the 20th century machine-guns.

There were other ugly additions to the new technology of warfare: poisonous gas, fighter and bomber aircraft, zeppelins, tanks, submarines and, especially artillery (field guns, howitzers, etc.). These weapons had reached a new pinnacle of sophistication. They were much more accurate and fired more rapidly than before. Over 70% of all casualties in the first world war were caused by artillery. Artillery could be used to attack and defend, gave neither side an advantage and made fighting more difficult and dangerous.

The war began with a massive German attack on France, known as the Schlieffen plan after its originator, Gen. Alfred Graf von Schlieffen. The plan called for the German army to wheel through neutral Belgium and seize Paris. The idea was to knock France out of the war as soon as possible. Apart from neutralizing one of Germany's most powerful rivals, this would have two other advantages. First, it would deprive Britain of a base on the continent from which to attack Germany. Second, with their enemies to the West severely disadvantaged, Germany could concentrate on defeating the much larger Russian army to the East.

The fighting in late summer and early autumn of 1914 was among the fiercest in the war. Both sides suffered huge losses. At the battle of the Marne, the German advance was halted less than 15 miles from Paris. By November, the Armies had become bogged down in opposing rows of trenches, stretched from the English Channel down to the Swiss border. Give or take the odd few miles here and there, the front line remained the same for the next four years.

At Germany's eastern border, its armies won crushing victories against vast hordes of invading Russian troops in late August and early September. They prevented the Russian steamroller from overrunning their country. From here on, the German army gradually advanced eastwards. In 1915, there was an attempt by British and Australian Army Corps troops to attack the central powers from the South through Gallipoli in Turkey. The strategy was a disaster. Between April and December 1915, around 200,000 men were killed trying to gain a foothold in this narrow, hilly peninsula.

By 1916, the war that was supposed to end by Christmas 1914, look liked it would last forever. The Germans launched an attack on the fortresses of Verdun in February. Their strategy was a success in some ways. The French army lost 350,000 men and never recovered. The Germans suffered over 300,000 casualties as well, and the French held onto the fortresses .

On May 31st, 1916, the German fleet challenged the British Royal Navy in the North Sea, at the battle of Jutland. In an all-out confrontation, 14 British ships, and 11 German ships were lost. If the British Navy had been destroyed, Germany would undoubtedly have won the war.

Island Britain would have been starved into submission, as cargo ships would have been unable to sail into British waters without being sunk. The British may have lost more ships, but the German Navy never ventured out to sea again, and the British naval blockade of Germany remained intact.

On July 1, 1916, another great battle began. The British launched an all-out attack on the Somme, in northern France. The British commander in chief, Field Marshal Haig, was convinced that a massive assault would break the German front line. This would enable him to send in his cavalry and allows troops to make a considerable advance into enemy territory.

The attack failed in the first few minutes and 20,000 men were slaughtered in a single morning. The battle of the Somme continued to drag out for another miserable five months.

By 1917, a numb despair settled on the fighting nations. With appalling stubbornness, Field Marshall Haig launched another attack on the German lines–this time in Belgium. Bad weather turned the battlefield into an and impenetrable mud bath. Between July and November, when the assault was finally called off, both sides had lost a quarter of a million men.

Two other events in 1917 had massive consequences for the outcome of the war. The Russian people suffered terribly and in March, the revolution forced Czar Nicholas II to abdicate. In November, the radical Bolsheviks seized power and imposed a communist dictatorship on their country. One of the first things they did was to make peace with Germany.

The Bolsheviks assumed that similar revolutions would sweep through Europe, especially Germany. They believed that Germany would soon be a fellow communist regime who’d treat Russia more fairly. They agreed to a disadvantageous peace treaty in March 1918. Germany took vast tracts of land from the Russian Empire—Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states and Finland. For Germany, this was a great victory. Not only had they added a vast chunk of territory to the eastern border, they could now concentrate all their forces on defeating the British and French.

But despite the successes, events were conspiring against Germany. After the battle of Jutland failed to win them dominance of the seas, Germany had drifted into a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. German U-boats attacked any ship heading for Britain—even those belonging to neutral nations.

It was an effective strategy, but it backfired. The submarine attacks caused outrage overseas, especially in the USA, and became one of the main areas of how America turned against Germany. Pres. Woodrow Wilson brought his country in on the side of the allies on April 6, 1917. Still, it wasn't until the summer of 1918 that the American troops began to arrive on the Western front in great numbers.

The timing could not have been worse for the German army. The Ludendorff offensive, named after German commander Erich Ludendorff, beginning March 21, 1918. Twenty-six divisions broke through weary British and French troops on the Somme and swept onto Paris. For a while it looked as if Germany would win the war on the Western front as well as the Eastern front. So alarmed were the British that Field Marshal Haig issued an order to his troops on April 12 commanding them to stand and fight until they were killed:

The Ludendorff offensive turned out to be the last desperate fling of the dying Army. Faced with stubborn British resistance and fresh, eager American troops, the German advance ground to a halt. The German army had no more to give, at home, the German population starved after four years of the Royal Navy blockade. Germany was on the verge of a revolution in August 1918.

The Allies made a massive breakthrough against the German front lines in northern France and began to make a relentless push toward the German border. Facing mutiny among his armed forces, revolution at home, and the inevitable invasion of home territory, the Kaiser abdicated. The German government called for an armistice–a cease-fire on November 11, 1918.

The fighting continued right up to the last day. In his memoirs, Gen. Ludendorff recalled the situation:

“By November 9, Germany, lacking any firm guidance, bereft of all will, robbed of her princes, collapsed like a pack of cards. All that we had lived for, all that we had bled four long years to maintain, was gone.”

Although there were wild celebrations in allied cities, many the soldiers on the Western front took the news with a weary shrug. The guns fell silent. Weeds and vines gradually crept over the desolate battlefield, covering the withered trees and ravaged fields, turning the blackened earth to a pleasanter green. Crude, makeshift burial grounds were eventually replaced by towering monuments and magnificent cemeteries.

Many of those killed found a final resting place among long rows of marble crosses, each one with the name, rank and date of death engraved upon it. Others, whose torn remains were incomplete and unrecognizable, were buried under crosses marked known unto God.

It would be another 10 or 15 years before the charred trucks, shell carriages and tanks were taken away for scrap, and the shell holes filled in. By the time war broke out again in 1939, much of the land was being farmed again. But the faint smell of gas still lingered in corners. Rusting rifles and helmets still littered the scarred ground and shell cases, shrapnel fragments and bones could still be tiled from the battlefield of northern France.