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| Trenches of the 11th Cheshire Regiment at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, on the Somme, July 1916. One sentry keeps watch while the others sleep. Photo by Ernest Brooks |
Welcome to the fourth installment of Sarge's "Off the top of my head" History Lectures*...
great
adjective
1. of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above the normal or average.
"the article was of great interest"
2. of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above the normal or average.
"the great Italian conductor" (Source)
It was called the Great War, not until the Second World War erupted was it called the First World War. It wasn't great as in wonderful or fantastic (in fact it was anything but), it was great as in massive, as in the whole world seemed to be involved. It was indeed intense, whether it was more intense than previous wars, I don't know. Getting shot at is pretty intense, regardless of the context.
When you mention the Great War to most people, they think of that opening photo, they think of trench warfare, the mud, the artillery, the incessant machine gun fire, but it didn't start that way. No, in the beginning it was men marching in columns or in line, either on foot or on horseback.
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| French infantry charging into battle in 1914. The machine guns haven't started firing, yet. |
The French Army went to war wearing blue kepis, blue coats, and red trousers. Yes, you read that correctly, RED trousers.
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| The evolution of French infantry uniforms in WWI. (Source) |
The Germans wore the pickelhaube, this rather odd (though somehow cool-looking) piece of headgear.
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| Photo courtesy of Le Musée de Sarge Yes, that's my pickelhaube |
While those helmets did look kinda cool, to make them ugly they covered them in gray cloth, with the regiment number painted on in red. Wie so...
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| Practical, but damn that's ugly! |
In addition, everybody had cavalry. Guys on horses with sabers. Heck, the French still had cuirassiers! Guys wearing steel back and breast plates, helmets with horse tails and all, just like back in the days of Napoléon! (Though to be fair, they looked more like Napoléon III's cavalry, red trousers and all!)
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| French cuirassiers in Paris, August 1914. These regiments wore cloth-covered cuirasses and helmets during the early months of World War I. |
The Germans had their lancers, which they called Ulanen or Uhlans.
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| Prussian Guard Uhlans about 1912. (Source) |
Men on horseback with pointed sticks. Just the thing for charging into machine gun fire!
Even the British had their mounted Life Guards
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| A squadron from the 1st Life Guards, August 1914; possibly attached to the Household Cavalry Composite Regiment, as the Life Guards did not leave for France until September. |
So the nations of Europe went to war in August of 1914, the troops went in standing up, bayonets at the ready (or on horseback, sword at the ready), just like the old days. Napoléon would have recognized the formations (and some of the uniforms), Grant and Lee would have shaken their heads, they knew better. Some fifty years earlier armies started digging, even without the machine gun and the latest artillery, they knew that to advance into enemy fire was a recipe for disaster.
But they learned, the hard way, after thousands of deaths, they learned. (As a side note, if you have not seen the BBC's mini-series Our World War, seek it out**. Only three episodes, the first, dealing with the Battle of Mons in 1914, shows the Germans marching blithely into British machine gun fire. Sobering it is.)
By the fall everybody started digging trenches in the West (the East stayed semi-mobile throughout the war due to the vast spaces involved, though some parts of that front were as heavily dug in as in France), from the Swiss border to the English Channel, the armies went to ground.
For four years the British and French generals tried the same old ways of attacking, and the infantry died the same old way. Blast the Germans lines with tons of artillery, then march forth to "do battle." Of course, the Germans kept their front line lightly manned, once the cannon fire stopped, the German machine gun teams would man their positions, and commence the slaughter of an entire generation.
In 1918 the Germans tried doing things a little differently. No massive artillery preparations, but small groups of shock troops seeking the weak points in the trench line, finding them then getting in the rear and making huge amounts of trouble. Thing is though, everyone was on foot, a soldier couldn't get very far before the Allied reserves would move up to seal the penetrations and then wipe out the shock troops.
Even when the tank came along there were no sweeping advances, those mechanical beasts were just too unreliable and they still needed infantry to protect them. They weren't all that fast either. The war ended because the German people were starving, the troops were mutinous, and new troops coming to the front didn't want to fight, they didn't see the point. Not with their families at home starving, "For what?", they asked.
With swarms of fresh American troops arriving, the German grunts saw the writing on the wall, there was no way they could win.
So they quit.
How did it start, this blood letting on a massive scale?
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| Europe in WWI, start to finish. (Source) |
Well, you might want to blame the royalty governing many of the powers in 1914. The King of England was related to the Kaiser of Germany and to the Czar of Russia as well. But really it was the system that was to blame for the war. But none of those chaps (including the Kaiser of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) was an absolute ruler, each had a Parliament/Reichstag/Duma to answer to for many things. (The Imperial Council and the Diet of Hungary for the Emperor in Austro-Hungary.)
Large armies, built via conscription, were all the rage on the Continent. The French used it, the Germans used it, the Russians used it, and the Austro-Hungarians used it. Everyone wanted to avoid being "not ready" for war should something happen.***
Of course, large, standing armies are very expensive. So most countries had a regular army and a system of reserves. A soldier would be trained, serve for a couple of years, then be sent back to civvy-street until such time as they were needed. So a small, professional army was to be augmented by calling up the reserves just prior to war starting.
Why not do it before the war started? Because then everyone else would know that you were ready to start a war, why mobilize if you weren't going to use that big army? So every army had a schedule for mobilization, once the crisis was clear, each army would recall their reserves, form them up, equip them and move them to the front, or I should say where they anticipated the front might be.
Anything that upset that schedule gave the generals nightmares. "What if the other guy gets a jump on his mobilization and is ready before we are? We could lose the war!" So everyone had to be ready to mobilize at a moment's notice. Once mobilized the troops would begin to move and nothing could stop them. See where this is going?
Anyhoo, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary) and his wife decided to visit Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was a fairly recent addition to the Empire (occupied since 1878, actually annexed in 1908). The Serbians were not happy with that. A small group of fellows (perhaps with the support of the Serbian government) decided to act on their dislike of the Empire's annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
By killing the Archduke and his wife as they visited Sarajevo.
Which they did. The Austrians demanded that Serbia turn over the culprits and gave the Serbs a list of demands which they knew would be rejected. They threatened war with Serbia.
The Russian were pissed off, they considered the Serbians "fellow Slavs" (but like Russians through the ages just wanted to be top dog in the area). The Germans were telling the Austrians, "go for it, we've got your back." So the Austrians mobilized.
Then the Russians mobilized (they'd show those damned Austrians), as did the Germans, figuring that because it took the Russians forever to do anything, they could mobilize, sucker punch France, then get the bulk of the army back to the east to deal with the Russians. All the while letting the Austrians defeat Serbia.
Of course the French had to step up and mobilize as well, they knew damned well that the Germans had their eyes on France first. (And they were itching to get Alsace and Lorraine back which the Germans had seized in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870).
One thing led to another and the troops went off to war. At the last minute Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany wanted to call the whole thing off, his generals told him that once the plan was set in motion that there was no stopping it. There would be chaos, the Russians would water their horses in the Rhine, etc., etc, "Suck it up Kaiser, we've got this whole thing planned out. Don't worry so much!"
Well, it didn't work that way. The French were a tougher nut to crack than the Germans figured, while they were wading through Belgian fortifications and fighting with French troops further south, the Russians were advancing through East Prussia. So France had to wait, they moved troops by rail to the East to stop the Russians, which they did.
But the advance on Paris stalled. ("Didn't follow my plan, did you?", asked the ghost of von Schlieffen.) The Battle of the Marne stopped the Germans in their tracks and the shovels came out, leading to four years of unheard of slaughter. Essentially a generation died.
That's my version of the Great War. (Yes, I had to look up a couple of dates, but for the most part, that was off the top of my head.)
Oh yes, everyone on the winning side said, "The Germans started it!" So they must pay, the Treaty of Versailles really led to World War II, didn't exactly cause it, but it gave Hitler his start in politics. Germans tended to believe that it wasn't their fault, Hitler told them so. So yeah, vote for Hitler. Thanks "Big Four."
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| The heads of the "Big Four" nations at the Paris Peace Conference, 27 May 1919. From left to right: David Lloyd George (UK), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), Georges Clemenceau (France), and Woodrow Wilson (USA). Four very good reasons to dislike politicians, that's what I call 'em. |
* Meaning which, I don't do a lot of research before writing, picture me answering a question about a topic while sitting down, face to face, avec moi, perhaps over an adult-type beverage. Hopefully which the questioner is buying. (Hint.) You can read the first three installments -
** Available at Amazon via BritBox. With a seven day free trial for Amazon Prime members.
*** The United Kingdom had a small, very professional army. They didn't resort to conscription until later in the war. When most of that small professional army was dead.
Then there’s *this* guy.
ReplyDeleteHorse... check.
Lance... check.
Stahlhelm... check.
Gas mask?... check.
Things got a little weird by the end.
https://i.imgur.com/j0uR6sH.jpg
DeleteI suppose I should, you know, include the link.
a bear #1 - Yes, yes they did!
Deletea bear #2 - That chap won't get very far because his horse isn't wearing this.
DeleteI’m curious why equine gas masks don’t seem to protect the horse’s eyes. Do horses not suffer from lachrymatory agents like people do? (Research says: not really, they work on certain receptors that humans have, but not horses.)
DeleteInteresting question. Even more interesting answer!
DeletePart of it may be that a blind horse can still be useful, while the materials to make a fully enclosed mask for a horse would be costly and actually freak the horse out worse than being blind.
DeleteIt's part of what makes a horse good in battle. The horse's brain hemispheres don't connect very well, especially visually. If you do something on the left side of a horse's vision, the other side of the brain literally doesn't get it. So when introducing oneself to a horse, you have to basically introduce yourself visually to both sides.
It's why blinders work.
And, going back to late medieval times, why horse armor, specifically the chanfron (head and face armor) for jousting often had the left eye (the eye on the side towards the other jouster) covered up completely, while the right eye was mostly obscured by a pierceworked eye cover (think looking through a strainer.)
Horses aren't exactly the smartest animals. It's one of the reasons we can use them for all the stupid things we use them for. A more intelligent animal, like a meat eater, would tell us to fork off and die.
Or the meat eater could, ya know, just eat us.
DeleteDidn't know that about horses, the eye thing, most interesting.
But they could be quite dangerous, both before and after they decided to turn on you.
DeleteAlthough it wasn't all a matter of luck that horses were domesticated. Their social structure is amenable to that. Zebras are definitely not. While zebras have been saddle-broken by some adventurous souls, I'm quite sure that would never have been done without long experience with horses. Modern horse evolution resembles that of dogs, somewhat, in that nearly all in existence are of domesticated stock. 'Wild' horses are pretty mostly like 'wild' dogs (with the exception of species that carry the 'dog' name, like African wild dogs), in that even the 'wild' types were either released (to breed on their own to be rounded up and broken later, like the Spaniards did in the Americas) or escaped. I hadn't realized until I read The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World just how few original, truly wild stallions may be at the root of modern horses. It's astoundingly small -- not more than hundreds, probably dozens, possibly only a handful. I can't recommend that book highly enough for history and historical linguistics nerds. The first 25%-35% is great, then it goes off into the deep weeds of archaeological digs (interesting, but unless you're really into that, it's skimmable), then the conclusions are well worth reading, as well.
DeleteHmm, unclear in one sentence: the Spaniards never released dogs to breed on their own to be rounded up and broken later. Horses, yes. Cattle, too, though not to be broken later, just eaten.
DeleteHahaha, love the radioactive bear cavalry. Just don't tell a bear!
DeleteDidn't know that about wild horses, makes sense. I did follow on the Spaniards not releasing dogs to breed on their own. 😁
(Don McCollor)...then for danger there is a mule. They can flick a fly off their ear with one hind foot...
DeleteI remember small snippets of personal history. A picture of my grandmother wearing her brother's army uniform. She was 20-ish when he left to Europe. He settled in Vermont mining granite or marble after the war.
ReplyDeleteI remember Lillie Belle telling us about her brother getting buried alive during shelling. How he never was quite the same after. LB was a close, personal friend. She was born the same year the Titanic sank.
People I knew and spent time with, with firsthand knowledge of those who served. Memories are such fragile threads that connect us to history. I'm glad history is written down shortly after it happens. And I'm glad that there are projects to record letters and personal stories. Micro and macro give better insight, than one or the other.
Memories only last as long as those that have them. There is much in my family history I remember hearing snippets of when I was young. My paternal grandfather was a tanker during the Great War. He spent the war years guarding Panama. Otherwise I might not be here.
DeleteRecording personal letters and stories is a great idea. We often forget the men and women behind the big stories of history. Without them, there is no history.
Was the spike on the helmets anything but decoration?
ReplyDeleteIt served no useful, combat purpose. Decorative in nature like many of the odd bits found in today's dress uniforms.
DeleteOriginally, back way back, way way back, it was a functional part of a helmet, intended to shed the downward strike of an opponent's weapon. Like the big metal fore-aft ridge on a Spanish conquistador's morion (helmet.)
DeleteSame with all that frilly braid and trim on uniform jackets belonging to cavalry up until about WWI. That stuff, basically rope, absorbs strikes from edged weapons. What? Ever try to hack a rope with a machete or knife or even an axe? Rope is hard to cut.
But, well, fallen times and gunfire kind of turned both from functional armor to decorative.
But don't knock the decorations too much. One group of horsie-people look remarkably like another group of cavalry, until you can pick out uniform colors or stupid decorations on their heads. Same with infantry, especially when covered in dirt or mud. Until you see whether they are wearing a kettle helm (Brits, US, French) or a sallet (Germans and Austrian-Hungarians.)
In Europe, until about the end of the first year of WWI, often officers wore much fancier outfits and hats on the battlefield, so their troops could see them. But then snipers would also see them and officers discovered not being seen by the enemy increased their chances of survival.
Something that the US could have told them from bitter experience during the Great Unpleasantness of 1861-1865. Which all major powers sent observers to both sides to observe the silly Americans kill each other, and none of the major powers learned a darned thing.
Lots of things on modern uniforms are vestiges of actual functional items. Of course, there were (and still are) parts of the uniform which are morale boosters for your side, morale detractors for their side. Tall shakos/bearskin hats were intended to make the wearer look taller, cross belts to look broader. We ape-lizard still tend to shy away from bigger opponents.
DeleteDrove Wellington nuts in the Peninsula when some shoe clerk in London redesigned the uniforms of the British light cavalry, made their uniforms very similar to those of the French chasseurs, especially at night when you couldn't see the color of the other chap's uniform, just the shape.
Cool stuff!
Shakos and bearskin hats also have a great resilience to cutting and crushing damage to the noggin wearing said hats. Functional AND decorative.
DeleteThat too!
DeleteNow, Nork officers, practically bullet-proof!
DeleteIt's all those medals.
DeleteOne giant electromagnet, courtesy of Acme, would solve the problem of Nork generals. I seem to remember Wile E. Coyote trying that, though.
DeleteHhmm, is brass magnetic?
DeleteMy uncle’s father in law was survived a gas attack, but it affected his nerves through the rest of his life.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know anyone else who served during that one.
Being gassed was horrific, many of those men suffered for the rest of their lives.
Delete(Don McCollor)...some Europeans did learn things from the American Civil War. One was a young Prussian officer who took several rides in Union observation balloons. Name was Count von Zeppelin...
DeleteHey AFSarge;
ReplyDeleteTold you in my post that you are good, LOL. Seriously when you made the comment about Grant and Lee, you are correct, the Europeans discounted the "internal squabbles of the colonialist", it was a precursor of the great war as far as slaughter, but the Europeans who sent officers to see how things were going, totally discounted the reports of the officers or the Officers themselves believed(Which I believe likely) the Americans were rank amateurs and their intercine squabble has no bearing on modern warfare. It took WWI to change that mindset. Out of the "Big 4" Wilson*Spits* tried to go easy on the Germans, but the British and French were after blood and wanted to make "La Boche" pay. And they did. What the Allies should have done though was march the army through Berlin to remind the Germans who had won, it might have nipped in the bud "our Army was never beaten in the field, we were betrayed at home" nonsense that a certain former corporal and failed artist used to his advantage to drum up support.
Roger that!
DeleteAnd thanks, I did read that post of yours, I was blushing...
The Brits, having experienced fighting both the Zulu, which were death on fancy uniforms, and the Boer and the Russians, both conflicts devolving into trench warfare muck like late-period US Civil War warfare, just really never ever learned. Dumb-butts.
DeleteAnd Russia? Always putting more emphasis on depth than defense, should have remembered the Crimean campaign also.
France? They were just butthurt over losing the First Franco-Prussian War. They would have lost the 2nd F-P War, but the Brits and the Amis helped them. They definitely lost the 3rd F-P War, only coming back after being conquered right handily by the Boche. And then effectively being reconquered by the Brits and the Amis and Poles, who were gracious enough to give France back to the French. And look how that turned out....
Ah the British, lions led by donkeys.
DeleteI would 'really' dispute the old 'Lions lead by donkeys' cliché. In 1914 the British army was about 250,000 strong. Tiny by European standards. There was no conscription in the UK. By 1918 the British army was 5 million plus strong. For the only time in its history it engaged its main continental enemy for the duration of a European war on the European mainland. Mistakes were made but every army fights the last war it was engaged in. I suggest you read about the 'Hundred Days', the period from August 1918 to the end of the war. That was when the British and Commonwealth armies really developed combined arms warfare and worked out how to win.
DeleteThe period of the first war was one of rapid technical and tactical innovation on the part of the British army. There was also a lot of very clever and detailed staff work performed which involved the 'stupid' generals leaning heavily upon those with relevant civilian expertise. Have a look at flash spotting for example and the speed at which countermeasures to counter gas attacks were introduced. 'Lions lead by donkeys', in that case what does that make the German army? They were comprehensively outfought and outthought by the end of the war. The March 1918 offensive only got as far as it did because reinforcements were held back by the politicians. The British, French and Americans didn't break, they may have buckled but at the end of the day who won?
Retired
For the Germans I would go with "peasants led by jackasses." But yes, the old lions and donkeys thing is rather cliché.
DeleteMy apologies to the Crown and the British Army.
On the other hand, the British learned about trench warfare from the American Civil War, the Crimea, the Boer War, alongside the Americans in the Boxer Rebellion and troubles in India. Yet they did not apply lessons learned on the far-off battlefields because they were only dealing with foreigners. Complete loss of institutional knowledge learned by sweat and blood on far-off lands because of low-class bloody foreigners.
DeleteSo.
"Donkey." Not far off. But it's an issue that affected, and affects all armies. The Germans, French, Americans, Russians, everyone.
We did the same thing. Many lessons learned from the Civil War and from all the Indian Wars (our Indians, not Indians from India) and from the Spanish-American war were also lost.
But back to the British. There's a reason that the old British army under-officer toast was, "To Bloody Wars and Sickly Seasons."
There was lots of innovation on the British side. But also a lot of trying to use tactics that were outdated soon after Waterloo.
Every country had small regular armies, with huge reserves or the thought that recruits could be trained and armed in next to no time at all. Like, well, in Wellington's time. Yank a man off the street or out of the prison, give him equipment and 4 weeks of drill and training (if you're lucky,) and you're good to go. Or call for volunteers and ship them out in a week and let them learn while traveling.
Modern magazine-fed small arms, rapid-fire weapons, improved artillery and the introduction of practical internal-combustion vehicles all changed the concept of war. Active and inactive reserves made of men who had served in the standing army with knowledge of modern weapons and tactics is the only way to get around having a large standing army. Thus the American system of Army, Army Reserve, Inactive Reserve and National Guard units.
Regular, standing armies are expensive, even when the troops aren't all that well paid. Still have to feed them, house them, train them, and pay them, even if it is a pittance. Not to mention the cost of equipping them.
DeleteStormtroopers! The real stormtroopers, not those guys who couldn't hit anything in the silly War Star movies.
ReplyDeleteAs to the US in WWI, the other powers, both allied and not allied, looked upon us as amateurs. Even though we had our fill of trench warfare in 1865... And got rid of our lancers pretty much from the start. We have always concentrated on gunned cavalry and horse-carried infantry over traditional light and medium cavalry. No lancers against the Sioux or Apache, no sir!
We liked dragoons, the horse carries the man to battle, where he dismounts to fight.
DeleteOf course, then 25% of your strength were horse-holders. We Americans have always tended to be practical soldiers. (The GI in the field will use tech if it works, not if it doesn't. The feather merchants peddling all of the expensive complicated crap don't care, as long as the money keeps flowing!)
But the 25% horse handlers allowed for an active reserve of men, rather than allowing a commander to commit 100% right away.
DeleteThere is that.
DeleteAnd if it really goes bad, you can always shoot the horses to create cover. Not that it helped Custer, but the army of the 1870s was really quite brittle and outgunned. If used too enthusiastically, as Custer did, they broke.
DeleteThe Germans had the clearest sense of what would be needed in 1914. More machine guns per regiment than anyone else had, more heavy howitzers and guns of 15 cm or larger per corps, and the regular troops were already fighting in a more dispersed style than anyone else. The reserves, however, with older training and far less recent practice -- yeah, they bunched up big-time. The new troops, trained in a rush largely by older reservists, were even worse. The Generalstab was more open to new ideas, and the nastier the better. Verdun was really the first (intentional) battle of attrition. The problem was that after the first successes, it attrited the Germans almost as much as the French. But since it kept the French from reinforcing the British as the Somme, it was kept up long after it should've been. The 1918 spring offensives nearly split the Anglo-French armies, and might have had the Germans had sufficient mechanization. They didn't have enough surplus resources to throw into that field, though. They'd actually looked at tanks at about the same time the Brits and French did, but recognized at the time that they didn't have enough resources. For example, with the horsepower available at the time, a large enough tank in their minds would have required two engines, with all the issues that entailed (a seriously complex transmission, for example), and decided those engines were more useful in trucks and aircraft. Plus, they were on the strategic defensive in the west from the end of 1914 onward and being strangled by the British blockade. By 1917, they knew combined arms warfare forwards and backwards. Of course, by 1918, so did the Allies, and they'd had America supplying vast amounts of food and munitions from 1914 onward, followed by large numbers of fresh (too fresh) troops in 1918. The British and French knew their business by 1918, but only after nearly breaking themselves in futile frontal attacks. Nearly as demoralizing to German troops as the failure of the 1918 offensives, despite tremendous initial successes (far more than anything the Allies had achieved thus far), was overrunning Allied lines and supply depots, then discovering just how lavishly fed and supplied the Allies were compared to themselves and their families back home.
DeleteI've no love for German administration, though. Everything they did in WWII was presaged by similar actions in WWI, except for death camps. But shooting hostages, slave labor for factories in the Fatherland, etc., were all carried out in WWI. Kind of like Stalin -- he did nothing that Lenin didn't, just bigger and better. His real crime, in the eyes of Khrushchev and later communists, was that the Party and its organs were also subjected to his tender mercies.
One of the most sobering things to see in just about any Belgian village are the monuments to their war dead. Usually two lists, those shot by the Germans in 1914 - 1918, and those shot by the Germans in 1940 - 1944.
DeleteBastards.
A question about the Pickelhaube. Was it actually functional, or more used decorative or ceremonial? It seems very cumbersome. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAs it was made mostly of leather with some metal fittings, it might (maybe) protect the wearer from a sword stroke from above. But by the time the machine gun relegated the cavalry to the rear areas, it was more decorative than functional. The later "coal scuttle" helmet the Germans used was much more effective being made of steel and covering the sides of the side and the back of the neck.
DeleteTherein lies the question. Yes, functional, leather helm protecting the occupant from some blows and harm, and originally the spike was an offshoot of a device meant to help deflect weapons.
DeleteBy WWI the spike was more of a decorative and informative element. See guy with spike, no shoot guy with spike, he on our team (or, conversely, see guy with spike, shoot guy with spike, he not on our team.)
And yes to the ceremonial, too. The Europeans have always had a flair for dress uniforms. Something we mostly ditched by the Civil War.
As to cumbersome, only when going through doors or low-hanging branches. Properly hung and supported, you can easily wear 15-20lbs of weight on your head for 7-8 hours. And the pickelhaube, being mostly leather and some metal, weighed about as much as a football helmet. You get used to it. And you take the damned thing off when you can.
The Stahlheim, or coal skuttle helmet (a derivation of the medieval infantryman's sallet helmet,) made of metal, was an improvement in many ways, better resistance to blast shock, better protection from fragments and you could cook with it. But not nearly as 'sexy' as the pickelhaube.
I see our comments crossed in the night, or something. One thing about the German helmets, you could NOT cook with them. They have an integral liner made of leather which is attached to the steel pot with something like a cotter pin, three of 'em as a matter of fact. While you can remove the liner, the intent being to replace it if necessary, if you bend those cotter pins too many times, they snap right off. (DAMHIK) Then your sergeant is screaming at you because you effed up your helmet.
DeleteThe old American steel pot has a helmet liner which is separate from the steel pot itself. You can cook with that, though again your sergeant is not going to like that as the Army issued pots to cook with. Heating water in your steel pot to shave? Sergeant won't get as mad because now you look squared away, sergeants like that.
The new "Fritz" helmet has an integral liner, so it not only looks like the old German coal scuttle helmet of WWII, but the inside looks similar as well. Can't cook or heat water with that one either.
Why do I know this about helmets? Well, I own a pickelhaube, as well as the coal scuttle helmet which replaced it, and both the M35 and M42 versions of the WWII standard German helmet (M35 has a rolled brim, M42 does not). As for the American helmets (steel pot and Fritz) I've had to wear them both during my time in service. I did NOT like the steel pot version, much preferred the Fritz.
Team Wendy makes velcro-attached impact-resistant foam padding that cuts concussion damage by up to 95%. Kind of like D3O foam, it's a progressively resistant foam that gets rigid under rapid pressure increases, but stays soft when slowly compressed.
DeleteNeat stuff. I was just about to go to some of their product before I stopped fighting. I did have an under armor shirt that had foam like that over the shoulders, center chest and kidneys. Worked really well.
Nice!
DeleteOldAFSarge & Beans, thank you gentlemen for the info and knowledge! Appreciate it.
DeleteWe do our best!
DeleteEsoteric information is Job 1!
DeleteThe more the better!
DeleteBeans, we could get tee-shirts with that as the logo!
Delete(Too much?)
Interesting timing for this post. Just last night I decided to reread "The Guns of August"; it's been a couple o years. Today, I see this.
ReplyDeleteSynchronicity, indeed.
--Tennessee Budd
Superb book by one of my favorite historians!
DeleteSpeaking of books, I owe you your's back. I seem to have misplaced your address. Could you shoot me an email at oldafsarge AT gmail DOT com? Thanks!
Only the French could redesign their uniform four times in a five-year war. How very French, to be fashion forward focused in times of crisis! Kidding of course, the evolution was fairly minor apparently and probably served more function than fashion. The Italians have definitely taken the place of the French in the fancy uniform department though. Have you seen their stuff? French uniforms today are fairly bland and almost pajama like. At least for their divers and aviators, at least the ones I've come across. But anyone with a uniform in Italy looks like they came straight out of Milan. At least the dress uniforms.
ReplyDeleteYes, the Italians are noted for their fashion sense. 🙄
DeleteDuring the American Civil War of Northern Aggression and Great Unpleasantness, several of the North's volunteer or state militia units fought wearing Zoave uniforms, red trousers, blue coats with tails, sashes... Other units, especially those raised by 'officers' who bought their units and equipped them out of their pocket, also had distinctively un-uniform uniforms. By the end of the war, pretty much the Union's uniform was standardized.
DeleteThe South was the same way at the beginning. And by the end of the war, well, yeah. But they standardized first on a grey(ish) uniform and then also on a butternut (khaki-ish) color.
As for the French, their dress uniforms still look like something inspired by the fashion industry. Just, well, since the 1st Gulf War, wearing tacticool uniforms (or BDUs, or fighting clothing of any type) has become the overriding norm in most all militaries, whether marching in parades, running ships, flying a desk or, well, fighting.
The Italians also have nice BDU/tacticool outfits, but tend to go to fancy non-combat uniforms for non-combat needs. Part of it is based, well, on the whole 'Italy is really a collection of individual states and cities all kind of working together' and the parade uniforms fill the need for group identities.
Just like we used to do, sort of. Before the Gulf War. Now? Everyone wears BDUs for everything.
Yup, BDUs for everything (or ACUs or whatever the nom du jour is.)
DeleteGrr, that's something I can't stand. Especially for HQ types unless it's wartime and you're at or near the front. Otherwise, it's camouflage for a bunch of poseurs.
DeleteConcur!
DeleteTo add some trivia regarding cavalry in ww1 (and 2!)
ReplyDelete1. Their primary modus operandi was dismounted, as infantry with means to travel countryside fast. Motorised and later mechanised infantry does same to this day.
2. By WW2 there were still cavalry formations in use by Germans, Poles, and Soviets amongst others, especially valuable where road network was scarce. (looks East of Vistula...)
3. Charge was rarely performed, but sometimes extremely successfu;. Exhibit A:
https://youtu.be/p7dm_nbjNjE
exhibit B:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Schoenfeld
Even Sobiet-commanded Poles had to throw last great cavalry charge of ww2...
I would trust that a Pole would be familiar with cavalry. 😁
DeleteAfter 9-11, the US Army had to recruit and reactivate the 'mule-skinner' specialty. Yep, a military speciality that disappeared (in the United States) before WWII.
DeleteHorse and mule wrangling, using as pack-animals, care of the animals, the whole nine yards.
We haven't, quite, returned back to actual dragoons and light cavalry, but it's one of the many things some of our troops have had to relearn.
Fortunately, we did not throw away our printed body of knowledge in the form of old manuals and regulations, kept in the archives. And, no matter how mechanized our nation is, there are always people-of-the-horse, cowboys, pack-trains, the whole nine yards, found all across these United States. Heck, mounted cowboys are still one of the best ways to deal with cattle in America.
There are parts of the world you can get to by equine, but not by vehicle.
DeleteClark AB had the last truly (active, not ceremonial) mounted units in the military, and Air Force, no less! Mt. Pinatubo put an end to that irregular nonsense!
DeleteWell, Clark was a pretty big base, no doubt easier to patrol from horseback than vehicle due to the terrain.
DeleteYou are right. That BBC series was excellent.
ReplyDeleteOne thing it brought out for me was how quickly the tactics changed.
And how much aviation advanced.
At first aircraft were simply as used observation. Then as they were being shot down fighters had to be developed.
Another thing I came to realize was how dangerous it was simply to stick your head above the trench.
That’s how my great uncle was killed in exactly one month before armistice.
Shot in the head by a sniper.
Trust you saw the movie 1917 which I thought was very good.
What a waste.
The line on the Western front row was about 300 miles long and hardly moved in four years.
I could understand the vindictiveness of the French when you look at their landscape.
Where is that famous YouTube video of a French aerialist surveying the Western front in 1919.
An excellent book on Churchel by William Manchester dealt with the politics of Europe in the 1930s. And every time the Germans started to get on their feet in the Weimar Republic, the French would demand their pound of flesh.
I’m not condemning it; just understanding it.
But I did not realize is that while all the German cities were spared they were hollowed out from the British blockade and an estimated half 1 million Germans civilians died from starvation
And I did not realize until a few weeks ago that the “Spanish flu“ was making its way in 1918 on both sides, but the censors kept it quiet for morale reasons.
They think that it started in the US at Fort sill Oklahoma. Or I think it was Kansas.
And our doughboys going overseas is what gave it to Europe where it’s spread around the world.
Ended up killing far more people than the great war.
Well better get my Stouffer‘s macaroni and cheese now
Haven't seen 1917 yet. It is available for rental on Amazon Prime, so I'll see it soon.
DeleteSpanish flu 100 years ago. History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
Well, technically starting in 1916, in Mainland China. Then hitting the trenches on both sides in 1917 as trench-lung and other ill-defined mailaises, and then on bases in the homelands, and then amongst the civilian populations.
DeleteSpain was just the first place it really broke out in the general civilian population, in Europe, and the first to get notoriety and press attention.
Start Here! Excellent explanation of the Spanish Flu!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ9WX4qVxEo
Follow the youtube channel and see why our American sandwich bread is fortified with vitamins and minerals!!!
I think I'll pass on that video. I get enough disease news as it is.
DeleteYeah, Spain was neutral, so its press wasn't censored like nearly everyone else. By the time Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Switzerland became aware of it, the Spanish had already broken the news, so they got the 'credit' for yet another Chinese malady of that variety.
DeleteI hadn't thought of that, good point Larry.
DeleteMy Grandfather Smith was gassed in France in 1918. He died in 1944 of cancer. The death certificate read "bladder cancer" but he'd been treated in VA hospitals for cancer of damn near everything. I still have the bayonet he brought back.
ReplyDeleteMy Great-uncle Lawrence (Grandfather's b-in-law) carried an 8mm (OK, 7.92. Sheesh, you guys are picky) bullet in his neck until he died in the late '70s. Didn't talk about the war. Well, there were stories about Paris but we kids weren't allowed to hear those.
Both were in a heavy machine gun unit.
Dang, that's a lot of sacrifice from your family.
DeleteAh Paris, my grandfather knew some dirty songs in French, not that he was there but my great-grandfather was from Quebec so gramp knew French, after a fashion.
My mother would get so upset when he'd sing those, funny thing is, we kids didn't speak French, we had no idea what gramps was on about.
I learned a couple of ditties in Tagalog and Ilocano that got me some wide eyes and shocked looks from a couple of very nice Filipinas I met since then. I knew they were 'naughty' but not quite how naughty! They only came up because I'd mentioned I only remembered a small handful of phrases and words, a mix of Tagalog, Pampangan (province around Clark AB), Ilocano (a couple hours to the north), and Ifugao. Ifugao was very different from Tagalog, like Portuguese is to Spanish. I was astonished to learn how much the Ifugao (highlanders, as in a mile or more above sea level, where it was really very pleasant) were hated by the lowlanders. Until perhaps 110 years ago, they were officially and active headhunters. My girlfriend in Baguio (8th daughter of an 8th daughter), her grandparents were from that culture, and her grandfather not only had taken a couple of heads, he'd captured her grandmother in a raid on the lowlanders. No, they were not loved by the lowlanders, but I found them to be very forthright and honest compared to the lowlanders (who thought them uncultured, simple, and savage). Yamashita made his last stand in those mountains, and the Ifugao lost 1/3 of their population between 1941 and 1945, mostly in '44-'45. Her best friend's father had taken 5 Japanese heads in those last years. I saw pictures of them proudly mounted above the doorway to their home in the 1950s. By the 60s, they'd been mounted inside, and in the 70s they were buried out back as somewhat embarrassing. Lord, but that man had a hatred of the communists. They'd thought it was a good idea in the 40s and early 50s, but as they saw the reality, they turned rather violently against it. Good people, all in all. I never got to go very far north of Baguio, though. Not to the rice terraces (very steep ones, too) -- off-limits. The communists (New People's Army) were still too active. :(
DeleteThe Philippines is a very interesting place with a lot of history.
DeleteDan Carlin had a great series on WWI on his Hard Core History podcast.
ReplyDeleteIs that the Blueprint for Armageddon series listed on his website? I'll have to check this fellow out.
Delete