Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish - History of the World War, Vol. 3
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Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish >> History of the World War, Vol. 3
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Complete Edition
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR, VOLUME III
An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War
by
FRANCIS A. MARCH, Ph.D.
In Collaboration with
RICHARD J. BEAMISH
Special War Correspondent and Military Analyst
With an Introduction by General Peyton C. March
Chief of Staff of the United States Army
With Exclusive Photographs by James H. Hare and Donald Thompson
World-Famed War Photographers
and with Reproductions from the Official Photographs of the
United States, Canadian, British, French and Italian Governments
Leslie-Judge Company
New York
MCMXIX
[Illustration: THE THRILL OF OLD-TIME WAR
The stirrup charge of the Scots Greys at St. Quentin. Holding on to the
stirrup leathers of the cavalry the Highlanders crashed like an
avalanche upon the German lines, tearing great gaps in their massed
formations.]
CONTENTS
VOLUME III
PAGE
CHAPTER I. NEUVE CHAPELLE AND WAR
IN BLOOD-SOAKED TRENCHES
War Amid Barbed-Wire Entanglements and the Desolation
of No Man's Land--Subterranean Tactics Continuing Over
Four Years--Attacks that Cost Thousands of Lives for
Every Foot of Gain 1
CHAPTER II. ITALY DECLARES WAR ON
AUSTRIA
Her Great Decision--D'Annunzio, Poet and Patriot--Italia
Irredenta--German Indignation--The Campaigns on the Isonzo
and in the Tyrol 29
CHAPTER III. GLORIOUS GALLIPOLI
A Titanic Enterprise--Its Objects--Disasters and Deeds
of Deathless Glory--The Heroic Anzacs--Bloody Dashes up
Impregnable Slopes--Silently they Stole Away--A Successful
Failure 58
CHAPTER IV. THE GREATEST NAVAL
BATTLE IN HISTORY
The Battle of Jutland--Every Factor on Sea and in Sky
Favorable to the Germans--Low Visibility a Great Factor--A
Modern Sea Battle--Light Cruisers Screening Battleship
Squadron--Germans Run Away when British Fleet Marshals Its
Full Strength--Death of Lord Kitchener 78
CHAPTER V. THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN
The Advance on Cracow--Von Hindenburg Strikes at
Warsaw--German Barbarism--The War in Galicia--The
Fall of Przemysl--Russia's Ammunition Fails--The Russian
Retreat--The Fall of Warsaw--The Last Stand--Czernowitz 104
CHAPTER VI. HOW THE BALKANS DECIDED
Ferdinand of Bulgaria Insists Upon Joining Germany--Dramatic
Scene in the King's Palace--The Die is Cast--Bulgaria Succumbs
to Seductions of Potsdam Gang--Greece Mobilizes--French and
British Troops at Saloniki--Serbia Over-run--Roumania's
Disastrous Venture in the Arena of Mars 145
CHAPTER VII. THE CAMPAIGN IN MESOPOTAMIA
British Army Threatening Bagdad Besieged in Kut-el-Amara--After
Heroic Defense General Townshend Surrenders after 143 Days of
Siege--New British Expedition Recaptures Kut--Troops Push on Up
the Tigris--Fall of Bagdad the Magnificent 187
CHAPTER VIII. IMMORTAL VERDUN
Grave of the Military Reputations of von Falkenhayn and the
Crown Prince--Hindenburg's Warning--Why the Germans Made the
Disastrous Attempt to Capture the Great Fortress--Heroic
France Reveals Itself to the World--"They Shall Not
Pass"--Nivelle's Glorious Stand on Dead Man Hill--Lord
Northcliffe's Description--A Defense Unsurpassed in the
History of France 209
ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME III
THE THRILL OF OLD-TIME WAR _Frontispiece_
PAGE
THE GLORIOUS CHARGE OF THE NINTH LANCERS 4
CHARGING THROUGH BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS 6
BRITISH INDIAN TROOPS CHARGING THE GERMAN
TRENCHES AT NEUVE CHAPELLE 10
CHARGING ON GERMAN TRENCHES IN GAS MASKS 12
AN INCIDENT OF THE WAR IN FLANDERS 18
[Transcriber's Note: This illustration was missing from
the source for this e-book.]
ITALY'S TITANIC LABOR TO CONQUER THE ALPS 30
WAITING THE ORDER TO ATTACK 38
TRANSPORTING WOUNDED AMID THE DIFFICULTIES
OF THE ITALIAN MOUNTAIN FRONT 42
THE LOSS OF THE "IRRESISTIBLE" 68
THE HISTORIC LANDING FROM THE "RIVER CLYDE"
AT SEDDUL BAHR 76
ADMIRAL WILLIAM S. SIMS 98
ADMIRAL SIR DAVID BEATTY 98
GERMAN FRIGHTFULNESS FROM THE AIR 110
BAGDAD THE MAGNIFICENT FALLS TO THE BRITISH 208
AMMUNITION FOR THE GUNS 224
HOW VERDUN WAS SAVED 224
CHAPTER I
NEUVE CHAPELLE AND WAR IN BLOOD-SOAKED TRENCHES
After the immortal stand of Joffre at the first battle of the Marne and
the sudden savage thrust at the German center which sent von Kluck and
his men reeling back in retreat to the prepared defenses along the line
of the Aisne, the war in the western theater resolved itself into a play
for position from deep intrenchments. Occasionally would come a sudden
big push by one side or the other in which artillery was massed until
hub touched hub and infantry swept to glory and death in waves of gray,
or blue or khaki as the case might be. But these tremendous efforts and
consequent slaughters did not change the long battle line from the Alps
to the North Sea materially. Here and there a bulge would be made by
the terrific pressure of men and material in some great assault like
that first push of the British at Neuve Chapelle, like the German attack
at Verdun or like the tremendous efforts by both sides on that bloodiest
of all battlefields, the Somme.
Neuve Chapelle deserves particular mention as the test in which the
British soldiers demonstrated their might in equal contest against the
enemy. There had been a disposition in England as elsewhere up to that
time to rate the Germans as supermen, to exalt the potency of the
scientific equipment with which the German army had taken the field.
When the battle of Neuve Chapelle had been fought, although its losses
were heavy, there was no longer any doubt in the British nation that
victory was only a question of time.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE GROUND OF NEUVE CHAPELLE]
The action came as a pendant to the attack by General de Langle de
Cary's French army during February, 1915, at Perthes, that had been a
steady relentless pressure by artillery and infantry upon a strong
German position. To meet it heavy reinforcements had been shifted by
the Germans from the trenches between La Bassee and Lille. The
earthworks at Neuve Chapelle had been particularly depleted and only a
comparatively small body of Saxons and Bavarians defended them. Opposite
this body was the first British army. The German intrenchments at Neuve
Chapelle surrounded and defended the highlands upon which were placed
the German batteries and in their turn defended the road towards Lille,
Roubaix and Turcoing.
The task assigned to Sir John French was to make an assault with only
forty-eight thousand men on a comparatively narrow front. There was only
one practicable method for effective preparation, and this was chosen by
the British general. An artillery concentration absolutely unprecedented
up to that time was employed by him. Field pieces firing at point-blank
range were used to cut the barbed wire entanglements defending the enemy
intrenchments, while howitzers and bombing airplanes were used to drop
high explosives into the defenseless earthworks.
Sir Douglas Haig, later to become the commander-in-chief of the British
forces, was in command of the first army. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien
commanded the second army. It was the first army that bore the brunt of
the attack.
No engagement during the years on the western front was more sudden and
surprising in its onset than that drive of the British against Neuve
Chapelle. At seven o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, March 10, 1915,
the British artillery was lazily engaged in lobbing over a desultory
shell fire upon the German trenches. It was the usual breakfast
appetizer, and nobody on the German side took any unusual notice of it.
Really, however, the shelling was scientific "bracketing" of the enemy's
important position. The gunners were making sure of their ranges.
[Illustration: THE GLORIOUS CHARGE OF THE NINTH LANCERS
An incident of the retreat from Mons to Cambrai. A German battery of
eleven guns posted in a wood, had caused havoc in the British ranks. The
Ninth Lancers rode straight at them, across the open, through a hail of
shell from the other German batteries, cut down all the gunners, and put
every gun out of action.]
At 7.30 range finding ended, and with a roar that shook the earth the
most destructive and withering artillery action of the war up to that
time was on. Field pieces sending their shells hurtling only a few feet
above the earth tore the wire emplacements of the enemy to pieces and
made kindling wood of the supports. Howitzers sent high explosive
shells, containing lyddite, of 15-inch, 9.2-inch and 6-inch caliber into
the doomed trenches and later into the ruined village. It was eight
o'clock in the morning, one-half hour after the beginning of the
artillery action, that the village was bombarded. During this time
British soldiers were enabled to walk about in No Man's Land behind the
curtain of fire with absolute immunity. No German rifleman or machine
gunner left cover. The scene on the German side of the line was like
that upon the blasted surface of the moon, pock-marked with shell holes,
and with no trace of human life to be seen above ground.
An eye witness describing the scene said:
"The dawn, which broke reluctantly through a veil of clouds on the
morning of Wednesday, March 10, 1915, seemed as any other to the
Germans behind the white and blue sandbags in their long line of
trenches curving in a hemi-cycle about the battered village of
Neuve Chapelle. For five months they had remained undisputed
masters of the positions they had here wrested from the British in
October. Ensconced in their comfortably-arranged trenches with but
a thin outpost in their fire trenches, they had watched day succeed
day and night succeed night without the least variation from the
monotony of trench warfare, the intermittent bark of the machine
guns--rat-tat-tat-tat-tat--and the perpetual rattle of rifle fire,
with here and there a bomb, and now and then an exploded mine.
[Illustration: _Illustrated London News_.
CHARGING THROUGH BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS
In one sector at Givenchy, the wire had not been sufficiently smashed by
the artillery preparation and the infantry attack was held up in the
face of a murderous German fire.]
"For weeks past the German airmen had grown strangely shy. On this
Wednesday morning none were aloft to spy out the strange doings
which, as dawn broke, might have been descried on the desolate
roads behind the British lines.
"From ten o'clock of the preceding evening endless files of men
marched silently down the roads leading towards the German
positions through Laventie and Richebourg St. Vaast, poor shattered
villages of the dead where months of incessant bombardment have
driven away the last inhabitants and left roofless houses and rent
roadways....
"Two days before, a quiet room, where Nelson's Prayer stands on the
mantel-shelf, saw the ripening of the plans that sent these sturdy
sons of Britain's four kingdoms marching all through the night. Sir
John French met the army corps commanders and unfolded to them his
plans for the offensive of the British army against the German
line at Neuve Chapelle.
"The onslaught was to be a surprise. That was its essence. The
Germans were to be battered with artillery, then rushed before they
recovered their wits. We had thirty-six clear hours before us. Thus
long, it was reckoned (with complete accuracy as afterwards
appeared), must elapse before the Germans, whose line before us had
been weakened, could rush up reinforcements. To ensure the enemy's
being pinned down right and left of the 'great push,' an attack was
to be delivered north and south of the main thrust simultaneously
with the assault on Neuve Chapelle."
After describing the impatience of the British soldiers as they awaited
the signal to open the attack, and the actual beginning of the
engagement, the narrator continues:
"Then hell broke loose. With a mighty, hideous, screeching burst of
noise, hundreds of guns spoke. The men in the front trenches were
deafened by the sharp reports of the field-guns spitting out their
shells at close range to cut through the Germans' barbed wire
entanglements. In some cases the trajectory of these vicious
missiles was so flat that they passed only a few feet above the
British trenches.
"The din was continuous. An officer who had the curious idea of
putting his ear to the ground said it was as though the earth were
being smitten great blows with a Titan's hammer. After the first
few shells had plunged screaming amid clouds of earth and dust into
the German trenches, a dense pall of smoke hung over the German
lines. The sickening fumes of lyddite blew back into the British
trenches. In some places the troops were smothered in earth and
dust or even spattered with blood from the hideous fragments of
human bodies that went hurtling through the air. At one point the
upper half of a German officer, his cap crammed on his head, was
blown into one of our trenches.
"Words will never convey any adequate idea of the horror of those
five and thirty minutes. When the hands of officers' watches
pointed to five minutes past eight, whistles resounded along the
British lines. At the same moment the shells began to burst farther
ahead, for, by previous arrangement, the gunners, lengthening their
fuses, were 'lifting' on to the village of Neuve Chapelle so as to
leave the road open for our infantry to rush in and finish what the
guns had begun.
"The shells were now falling thick among the houses of Neuve
Chapelle, a confused mass of buildings seen reddish through the
pillars of smoke and flying earth and dust. At the sound of the
whistle--alas for the bugle, once the herald of victory, now
banished from the fray!--our men scrambled out of the trenches and
hurried higgledy-piggledy into the open. Their officers were in
front. Many, wearing overcoats and carrying rifles with fixed
bayonets, closely resembled their men.
[Illustration: BRITISH INDIAN TROOPS CHARGING THE GERMAN TRENCHES AT
NEUVE CHAPELLE
Germany counted on a revolution in India, but the Indian troops proved
to be among the most loyal and brilliant fighters in the Imperial
forces.]
"It was from the center of our attacking line that the assault was
pressed home soonest. The guns had done their work well. The
trenches were blown to irrecognizable pits dotted with dead. The
barbed wire had been cut like so much twine. Starting from the
Rue Tilleloy the Lincolns and the Berkshires were off the mark
first, with orders to swerve to right and left respectively as soon
as they had captured the first line of trenches, in order to let
the Royal Irish Rifles and the Rifle Brigade through to the
village. The Germans left alive in the trenches, half demented with
fright, surrounded by a welter of dead and dying men, mostly
surrendered. The Berkshires were opposed with the utmost gallantry
by two German officers who had remained alone in a trench serving a
machine gun. But the lads from Berkshire made their way into that
trench and bayoneted the Germans where they stood, fighting to the
last. The Lincolns, against desperate resistance, eventually
occupied their section of the trench and then waited for the
Irishmen and the Rifle Brigade to come and take the village ahead
of them. Meanwhile the second Thirty-ninth Garhwalis on the right
had taken their trenches with a rush and were away towards the
village and the Biez Wood.
"Things had moved so fast that by the time the troops were ready
to advance against the village the artillery had not finished its
work. So, while the Lincolns and the Berks assembled the prisoners
who were trooping out of the trenches in all directions, the
infantry on whom devolved the honor of capturing the village,
waited. One saw them standing out in the open, laughing and
cracking jokes amid the terrific din made by the huge howitzer
shells screeching overhead and bursting in the village, the rattle
of machine guns all along the line, and the popping of rifles. Over
to the right where the Garhwalis had been working with the bayonet,
men were shouting hoarsely and wounded were groaning as the
stretcher-bearers, all heedless of bullets, moved swiftly to and
fro over the shell-torn ground.
"There was bloody work in the village of Neuve Chapelle. The
capture of a place at the Bayonet point is generally a grim
business, in which instant, unconditional surrender is the only
means by which bloodshed, a deal of bloodshed, can be prevented. If
there is individual resistance here and there the attacking
troops cannot discriminate. They must go through, slaying as they
go such as oppose them (the Germans have a monopoly of the
finishing-off of wounded men), otherwise the enemy's resistance
would not be broken, and the assailants would be sniped and
enfiladed from hastily prepared strongholds at half a dozen
different points.
[Illustration: CHARGING ON GERMAN TRENCHES IN GAS MASKS
Each British soldier carried two gas-proof helmets. At the first alarm
of gas the helmet was instantly adjusted, for breathing even a whiff of
the yellow cloud meant death or serious injury. This picture shows the
earlier type before the respirator mask was devised to keep up with
Germany's development of gas warfare.]
"The village was a sight that the men say they will never forget.
It looked as if an earthquake had struck it. The published
photographs do not give any idea of the indescribable mass of ruins
to which our guns reduced it. The chaos is so utter that the very
line of the streets is all but obliterated.
"It was indeed a scene of desolation into which the Rifle
Brigade--the first regiment to enter the village, I believe--raced
headlong. Of the church only the bare shell remained, the interior
lost to view beneath a gigantic mound of debris. The little
churchyard was devastated, the very dead plucked from their graves,
broken coffins and ancient bones scattered about amid the fresher
dead, the slain of that morning--gray-green forms asprawl athwart
the tombs. Of all that once fair village but two things remained
intact--two great crucifixes reared aloft, one in the churchyard,
the other over against the chateau. From the cross, that is the
emblem of our faith, the figure of Christ, yet intact though all
pitted with bullet marks, looked down in mute agony on the slain in
the village.
"The din and confusion were indescribable. Through the thick pall
of shell smoke Germans were seen on all sides, some emerging half
dazed from cellars and dugouts, their hands above their heads,
others dodging round the shattered houses, others firing from the
windows, from behind carts, even from behind the overturned
tombstones. Machine guns were firing from the houses on the
outskirts, rapping out their nerve-racking note above the noise of
the rifles.
"Just outside the village there was a scene of tremendous
enthusiasm. The Rifle Brigade, smeared with dust and blood, fell in
with the Third Gurkhas with whom they had been brigaded in India.
The little brown men were dirty but radiant. Kukri in hand they had
very thoroughly gone through some houses at the cross-roads on the
Rue du Bois and silenced a party of Germans who were making
themselves a nuisance there with some machine guns. Riflemen and
Gurkhas cheered themselves hoarse."
Unfortunately for the complete success of the brilliant attack a great
delay was caused by the failure of the artillery that was to have
cleared the barbed wire entanglements for the Twenty-third Brigade, and
because of the unlooked for destruction of the British field telephone
system by shell and rifle fire. The check of the Twenty-third Brigade
banked other commands back of it, and the Twenty-fifth Brigade was
obliged to fight at right angles to the line of battle. The Germans
quickly rallied at these points, and took a terrific toll in British
lives. Particularly was this true at three specially strong German
positions. One called Port Arthur by the British, another at Pietre
Mill and the third was the fortified bridge over Des Layes Creek.
Because of the lack of telephone communication it was impossible to send
reinforcements to the troops that had been held up by barbed wire and
other emplacements and upon which German machine guns were pouring a
steady stream of death.
As the Twenty-third Brigade had been held up by unbroken barbed wire
northwest of Neuve Chapelle, so the Seventh Division of the Fourth Corps
was also checked in its action against the ridge of Aubers on the left
of Neuve Chapelle. Under the plan of Sir Douglas Haig the Seventh
Division was to have waited until the Eighth Division had reached Neuve
Chapelle, when it was to charge through Aubers. With the tragic mistake
that cost the Twenty-third Brigade so dearly, the plan affecting the
Seventh Division went awry. The German artillery, observing the
concentration of the Seventh Division opposite Aubers, opened a vigorous
fire upon that front. During the afternoon General Haig ordered a
charge upon the German positions. The advance was made in short rushes
in the face of a fire that seemed to blaze from an inferno. Inch by inch
the ground was drenched with British blood. At 5.30 in the afternoon the
men dug themselves in under the relentless German fire. Further advance
became impossible.
The night was one of horror. Every minute the men were under heavy
bombardment. At dawn on March 11th the dauntless British infantry rushed
from the trenches in an effort to carry Aubers, but the enemy artillery
now greatly reinforced made that task an impossible one. The trenches
occupied by the British forces were consolidated and the salient made by
the push was held by the British with bulldog tenacity.
The number of men employed in the action on the British side was
forty-eight thousand. During the early surprise of the action the loss
was slight. Had the wire in front of the Twenty-third Brigade been cut
by the artillery assigned to such action, and had the telephone system
not been destroyed the success of the thrust would have been complete.
The delay of four and a half hours between the first and second phases
of the attack caused virtually all the losses sustained by the attacking
force. The total casualties were 12,811 men of the British forces. Of
these 1,751 officers and privates were taken prisoners and 10,000
officers and men were killed and wounded.
The action continued throughout Thursday, March 11th, with little change
in the general situation. The British still held Neuve Chapelle and
their intrenchments threatened Aubers. On Friday morning, March 12th,
the Crown Prince of Bavaria made a desperate attempt under cover of a
heavy fog to recapture the village. The effort was made in
characteristic German dense formations. The Westphalian and Bavarian
troops came out of Biez Wood in waves of gray-green, only to be blown to
pieces by British guns already loaded and laid on the mark. Elsewhere
the British waited until the Germans were scarcely more than fifty paces
away when they opened with deadly rapid fire before which the German
waves melted like snow before steam. It was such slaughter as the
British had experienced when held up before Aubers. Slaughter that
staggered Germany.
So ended Neuve Chapelle, a battle in which the decision rested with the
British, a victory for which a fearful price had been paid but out of
which came a confidence that was to hearten the British nation and to
put sinews of steel into the British army for the dread days to come.
The story of Neuve Chapelle was repeated in large and in miniature many
times during the deadlock of trench warfare on the western front until
victory finally came to the Allies. During those years the western
battle front lay like a wounded snake across France and Belgium. It
writhed and twisted, now this way, now that, as one side or the other
gambled with men and shells and airplanes for some brief advantage. It
bent back in a great bulge when von Hindenburg made his famous retreat
in the winter of 1916 after the Allies had pressed heavily against the
Teutonic front upon the ghastly field of the Somme. The record is one of
great value to military strategists, to the layman it is only a
succession of artillery barrages, of gas attacks, of aerial
reconnaissances and combats.
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