1918

by Matthias Strohn

  24John Milne, Footprints of the 1/4th Leicestershire Regiment, August 1914 to November 1918 (Leicester: Edgar Backus, 1935), quoted in Christopher Moore, Trench Fever (London: Little Brown, 1998), p. 187.

  25Priestley, Breaking the Hindenburg Line, p. 143.

  26Ibid., p. 74.

  27A. Montgomery-Massingberd papers, Joint Services Command and Staff College library, Shrivenham, quoted in Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army (London: Aurum, 2011), p. 323.

  28The author is grateful to Alistair McCluskey for pointing this out.

  29Edmonds and Maxwell-Hyslop, 1918, vol. V, p. 557.

  30Of the over five million men who made up the British Army in 1918, nearly two million (36 per cent) were fighting in France and Belgium but another one and a quarter million (24 per cent) were serving in expeditionary forces elsewhere: War Office, Statistics, pp. 29, 62–3.

  Chapter 5

  1Mitchell Yockelson, Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I (New York: New American Library, 2016).

  2Leonard Ayres, The War With Germany: A Statistical Summary (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919), pp. 17–25.

  3Robert B. Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), p. 151.

  4Baker to Pershing, 24 December 1917, File #14903-19, Entry 11, RG 120, NARA.

  5General Pershing to Chief of Staff, 1 January 1918, File #14903-20, Entry 11, RG 120, NARA.

  6Ibid.

  7Reports of Commander-in-Chief to the Chief of Staff, AEF, 1 January and 3 January 1918, Folder #21, Entry 22, RG 120, NARA.

  8‘Agreement between the Commanders-in-Chief of the American and British Forces in France regarding the training of the American troops with British troops’, 31 January 1918, File #14903, Entry 11, RG 120, NARA. (Hereafter cited as File #14903).

  9 William B. Fowler, British-American Relations, 1917–1918: the Role of Sir William Wiseman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 130–5 and 145–53.

  10File #14903.

  11Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms, pp. 159–61.

  12John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1937), vol. 1, p. 153.

  13See Terrence J. Finnegan, Delicate Affair on the Western Front: America Learns How to Fight a Modern War in the Woëvre Trenches (Stroud: The History Press, 2015).

  14Matthew Davenport, First Over There: The Attack On Cantigny: America’s First Battle of World War I (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015) and Peter Pederson, Hamel: Battleground Europe (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2003).

  15See Edward G. Lengel, Thunder and Flames: Americans in the Crucible of Combat (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015).

  16Robert Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig: 1914–1919 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1952), p. 325.

  1727th Division Historical Files, ‘Report of 27th Division, File 11.4, and 30th Division Historical Files, Operations of the Thirtieth Division’, Old Hickory, File 11.4, Entry 1241, Records of the American Expeditionary Forces (Record Group 120), and National Archives and Records Administration.

  18War Department, Operations of the 2nd American Corps (Washington: War Plans Division, 1926), pp. 36–39.

  19Albert Palazzo, Seeking Victory on the Western Front: The British Army and Chemical Warfare in World War I (London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 185.

  20Major General Sir Archibald Montgomery, The Story of the Fourth Army in the Battles of The Hundred Days, August 8th to November 11th, 1918 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920), p. 157.

  21Dennis Showalter, ‘Coalition War: The Anglo-American Experience’, in John Bourne, Peter Liddle, and Ian Whitehead, The Great World War, 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice (London: Harper Collins, 2002), p. 466.

  22War Department, Field Orders of II Corps during the Somme Operation (Washington: War Department, 1920), #17.

  23118th Infantry Regiment, ‘Report of Operations of the 118th Infantry Regiment’, 27 November 1918, Entry 1241, RG 120, NA.

  24The Papers of General Henry Lord Rawlinson, RWLN 1/11, Diary entry for 28 September 1918. Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge University (Hereafter cited as Rawlinson Papers).

  25Australian War Diaries, Entry 322, Record Group 165, NA.

  26Major General John F. O’Ryan, ‘Operations Report, 27th Division, A.E.F., France, 1918’, RG 120, Entry 267, NA.

  27Henry Berry, Make the Kaiser Dance: Living Memories of the Doughboy (New York: Arbor House, 1978), p. 217.

  28Office of the Chief of Staff, Second American Corps, ‘Memorandum for G-5, GHQ, AEF’, 24 October 1918, Secret Correspondence, Entry 7, RG 120, NA.

  29James M. Andrews, ‘Operations–27th Div., Sept. 25–29, 1918’, 27 November 1918, 27th Division, 105th Infantry Regiment, Entry 21, Records of the American Battle Monuments Commission (Record Group 117), NA.

  30Stephen L. Harris, Duty, Honor, Privilege: New York’s Silk Stocking Regiment and the Breaking of the Hindenburg Line (Washington: Brassey’s Inc., 2001), pp. 294–5, 329.

  31Rawlinson Papers, Diary entry for 29 September 1918.

  32The breakdown of casualties is as follows: 27th Division, 1,829 battle deaths and died of wounds, 6,505 wounded; 30th Division, 1,641 battle deaths and died of wounds, 6,774 wounded. American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (Washington: American Battle Monuments Commission, 1938), pp. 515–17.

  33Raised in remote Pall Mall Tennessee, York refused induction into the army for religious reasons. York’s conscientious objector status was rejected and he reluctantly entered service with the regiment. In France the 328th Infantry saw action in the St Mihiel offensive.

  34Mark Ethan Grotelueschen, The AEF Way of War: The American Army and Combat in World War I (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), inside flyleaf.

  Chapter 6

  1Ottokar Czernin, Im Weltkriege (Berlin: Ullstein, 1919), p. 243.

  2Glenn Torrey (ed.), General Henri Berthelot and Romania: Memoires et Correspondance (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1987), p. 124 (2 Dec. 1917); Michael Kettle, The Road to Intervention: March to November 1918 (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 12.

  3The number of German divisions in the East declined from 85 to 47 between the October Revolution and the peace of Brest-Litovsk; a further 13 were sent West until May; see Giordan Fong, ‘The Movement of German Divisions to the Western Fronts, Winter 1917–1918’, War in History 7 (2000), pp. 225–35. The official German history, Oberkommando des Heeres, Der Weltkrieg 1914–1918, vol. 13 (Berlin: Mittler & Söhne, 1942), p. 397, has 40 divisions stationed in the East on 21 March, 31 (plus three cavalry divisions) at the end of the war.

  4John Hussey, ‘The Movement of German Divisions to the Western Front, Winter 1917–1918’, War in History 4 (1997), pp. 213–20, here: p. 219.

  5Maximilian Polatschek, Österreichisch-ungarische Truppen an der Westfront 1914–1918 (unpublished PhD Thesis, Vienna, 1974), pp. 42, 54–7.

  6Lothar Höbelt, ‘The Austro-Polish Solution: Mitteleuropa’s Siamese Twin’, in Jean-Paul Bled and Jean-Pierre Deschodt (eds), Le crise de Juillet 1914 et l’Europe (Paris: Editions SPM, 2016), pp. 125–36.

  7 Winfried Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918 – von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1966), pp. 156, 168; Paul Halpern, The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1914–1918 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), pp. 546–53; Kettle, Road to Intervention, p. 209.

  8See the chapters on ‘Die Ukraine in den internationalen Beziehungen’, in Wolfram Dornik et al., Die Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft 1917–1922 (Graz: Leykam, 2011), pp. 345–464, in particular the essays by Bogdan Musial on Poland and the Soviet Union.

  9Stephen M. Horak, The First Treaty of World War I: Ukraine’s Treaty with the Central Powers of February 9, 1918 (East European Monographs 236: Boulder, 1988); Olek Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revo
lution, 1917–1918 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), here; Clifford F. Wargelin, ‘A Huge Price of Bread: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Break-up of Austria-Hungary, 1917–1918’, International History Review 19 (1997), pp. 757–88; Wolfdieter Bihl, Österreich-Ungarn und die Friedensschlüsse von Brest-Litovsk (Vienna: Böhlau, 1970), pp. 77–121; Lothar Höbelt, ‘Stehen oder Fallen?’ Österreichische Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015), pp. 206–21.

  10Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 2004), pp. 338–42, 359; OHL, Der Weltkrieg, vol. 13, p. 365; Baumgart, Ostpolitik, p. 27.

  11Wolfgang Steglich (ed.), Die Friedensversuche der kriegführenden Mächte im Sommer und Herbst 1917: Quellenkritische Untersuchungen, Akten und Vernehmungsprotokolle (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1984), pp. 304, 366; see also the comment by Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (London: Penguin, 2015), p. 494: ‘The bulk of the wealth lost by the Russian Empire was in Poland and Ukraine, lands to which Russia’s rulers, regardless of ideological persuasion, had no moral claim.’

  12John E. O. Screen, Mannerheim: The Finnish Years (London: Hurst, 2000), pp. 2, 12–35; Wolfram Dornik and Peter Lieb, ‘Die militärischen Operationen’, in Dornik et al. (eds), Ukraine, pp. 203–48; Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1961), pp. 611–13, 676–83, 811–22; Der Weltkrieg, vol. 13, p. 371.

  13Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Gefangenschaft: Revolution, Heimkehr. Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenproblematik für die Geschichte des Kommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 1917–1920 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2003); Reinhard Nachtigal, Russland und seine österreichisch-ungarischen Kriegsgefangenen 1914–1918 (Remshalden: Greiner, 2003).

  14Josef Kalvoda, The Genesis of Czechoslovakia (East European Monographs 209: Boulder, 1986), pp. 172, 200, 310; Betty Miller Unterberger, The US, Revolutionary Russia and the Rise of Czechoslovakia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 62, 136

  15Michael Kettle, The Allies and the Russian Collapse, March 1917 to March 1918 (London: Routledge, 1981), pp. 222–8, 268; W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), pp. 168, 187; Michael J. Carley, ‘The Origins of the French Intervention in the Russian Civil War, Jan. – May 1918: A Reappraisal,’ Journal of Modern History 48 (1976), pp. 413–39.

  16Lincoln, Red Victory, p. 187; Kettle, Road to Intervention, pp. 93, 112, 133, 152, 172.

  17See the brilliant synthesis by Ewan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2nd ed. 2008), pp. 64, 75, 90–3; Karel Pichlik, Boumir Klipa & Jitka Zabloudilova, Ceskoslovensti legionari (1914–1920) (Prague: Mlada Fronta, 1996), pp. 170–92; Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, pp. 365, 374; Der Weltkrieg, vol. 13, pp. 390–3.

  18Baumgart, Ostpolitik, pp. 127, 187, 291 (20 August 1918), 319 (9 September 1918); Kettle, Road to Intervention, p. 126; Manfred Nebelin, Ludendorff (Munich: Siedler, 2010), pp. 390 f.; Mawdsley, Russian Civil War, pp. 23, 28, 120–35.

  19Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport: Greenwood, 2001), pp. 182–91; Wolfdieter Bihl, Die Kaukasus-Politik der Mittelmächte, Teil II: Die Zeit der versuchten kaukasischen Staatlichkeit (1917–1918) (Vienna: Böhlau, 1992), pp. 106 f., 123, 161 f., 204; Sir George Franckenstein, Facts and Features of My Life: The Austrian Minister to the Court of St. James, 1920–1938 (London: Cassell, 1939), pp. 192–209; Kettle, Road to Intervention, pp. 205, 297, 311, 370 f.

  20The classic account is: James W. Morley, The Japanese Thrust into Siberia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954); Paul E. Dunscomb, Japan’s Siberian Intervention, 1918–1922 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011) adds a bit on the domestic background; Eugene Trani, ‘Woodrow Wilson and the Decision to Intervene in Russia: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Modern History 48 (1976), pp. 440–61; Kettle, Road to Intervention, pp. 10, 78, 233, 247, 287 f., 323, 356.

  21Martin Müller, Vernichtungsgedanke und Koalitionskriegführung: Das Deutsche Reich und Österreich-Ungarn in der Offensive 1917/1918 (Graz: Stocker, 2003).

  22See the volume of statistics by Helmut Rumpler and Anatol Schmid-Kowarzik (eds), Weltkriegsstatistik Österreich-Ungarns 1914–1918: Bevölkerungsbewegung, Kriegstote, Kriegswirtschaft (Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. XI/2, Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014), p. 165. The Austro-Hungarian Army officially counted 66 infantry divisions in mid-1918. Dismounted cavalry divisions and independent brigades brought the fighting total to something between 75 and 80. Seven infantry divisions and six cavalry divisions had been withdrawn from the East and sent to the Italian front.

  23Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Wien (HHStA), Friedrich von Wieser diary, 15 June 1918.

  24John Gooch, The Italian Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 261, 280–8; Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915–1919 (London: Faber & Faber 2008), pp. 344–7; Peter Fiala, Die letzte Offensive Österreich-Ungarns. Führungsprobleme und Führerverantwortlichkeit bei der öst.-ung. Offensive in Venetien, Juni 1918 (Boppard: Boldt, 1967); Fortunato Minniti, Il Piave (Bologna: Mulino, 2000); Kriegsarchiv (ed.), Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg, vol. VII (Vienna: Verlag der Militärwissenschaftlichen Mitteilungen, 1937), p. 359; Polatschek, Truppen an der Westfront, pp. 49 f.

  25HHStA, Berchtold Papers 5, diary 10 Sept. 1918; Polatschek, Truppen an der Westfront, pp. 66, 72, 91, 101 f.; Nebelin, Ludendorff, pp. 429–31.

  26David Dutton, The Politics of Diplomacy: Britain and France in the Balkans in the First World War (London: Tauris, 1998), p 187.

  27Glenn Torrey, The Romanian Battlefront in World War I (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), pp. 263–92; Elke Bornemann, Der Frieden von Bukarest (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1978); Lisa Mayerhofer, Zwischen Freund und Feind. Deutsche Besatzung in Rumänien 1916–1918 (Munich: Meidenbauer, 2010).

  28Gerard Fassy, Le Commandement français en Orient (octobre 1915–novembre 1918) (Paris: Economica, 2003), pp. 354–408.

  29Gooch, Italian Army, p. 263; Thompson, White War, p. 355.

  30Gooch, Italian Army, p. 247, pp. 288–97; Thompson, White War, p. 358; Bruno Wagner, Der Waffenstillstand von Villa Giusti 3. November 1918 (unpublished PhD Thesis, Vienna, 1970), pp. 136, 152, 227, 235 f.

  31Kalvoda, Genesis of Czechoslovakia, p. 505; Daina Bleiere et al., History of Latvia: The 20th Century (Riga: Jumava 2006), pp. 130–6; Screen, Mannerheim, pp. 60–2; Mawdsley, Russian Civil War, pp. 160, 176 f., 197, 230 f. The Red Army expanded from less than 200,000 men in the spring of 1918 to 700,000 at the end of the year and three million at the end of 1919 (ibid., pp. 39, 86, 250).

  Chapter 7

  1Hansard , 5th series [1917], vol. C., col. 2211.

  2Both sources cited in Malcolm Brown, Tommy Goes to War (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1978), p. 256.

  3Archibald Wavell, Allenby: A Study in Greatness (London: George G. Harrap, 1940), p. 186; John Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader (London: Allen Lane, 2002), p. 150.

  4Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1954), p. 179.

  5Hew Strachan, The First World War in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  6Brigadier General J. H. V. Crowe, General Smuts’ Campaign in East Africa (London: John Murray, 1918).

  7Edward Paice, Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (London: Phoenix, 2008).

  8The logistical cost and commitment in shipping was the largest burden on the British. See Geoffrey Hodges, The Carrier Corps: Military Labour in the East African Campaign, 1914–1918 (London: Greenwood Press, 1986).

  9S. A. Cohen, British Policy in Mesopotamia, 1903–1914 (London: Ithaca, 1976; republished 2008), p. 308.

  10Robert Johnson, Spying for Empire: The Great Game in Central and South Asia, 1757–1947 (London: Greenhill, 2006), pp. 218–22; Keith Neilson, ‘“For Diplomatic, Economic, Strategic and Telegraphic Reasons”:
British Imperial Defence, the Middle East and India, 1914–1918’, in G. Kennedy and K. Nielson (eds), Far Flung Lines: Essays on Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 103–23.

  11C. E. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, vol. II (London: Cassell, 1927), pp. 147–8.

  12Kaushik Roy, ‘The Army in India in Mesopotamia from 1916 to 1918: Tactics, Technology and Logistics Reconsidered’, in I. W. F. Beckett, 1917: Beyond the Western Front (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), pp. 131–58.

  13This is also the verdict of E. A. Cohen and J. Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 156–63.

  14George Barrow, The Life of General Sir Charles Carmichael Monro (London: Hutchinson, 1931), p. 132.

  15F. J. Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, vol. III (London: HMSO, 1924–7), pp. 79, 86–90; William Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen, 1914–1918, vol. II (London: Cassell, 1926), pp. 79, 227; Paul Guinn, British Strategy and Politics, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 219.

  16Guinn, British Strategy and Politics, pp. 113–14.

  17Moberly, Campaign in Mesopotamia, vol. III, pp. 204–11.

  18Guinn, British Strategy and Politics, p. 157; Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen, vol. II, p. 74.

  19Moberly, Campaign in Mesopotamia, vol. III, pp. 125–6, 159, 199; Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen, vol. II, p. 77; Guinn, British Strategy and Politics, p. 200.

  20Eugene Rogan, Fall of the Ottomans (New York: Basic Books, 2015), p. 323.

  21Rob Johnson, The Great War and the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 253–4; James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East (London: Simon and Schuster, 2011), pp. 70–3, 89–92.

  22Major General Dunsterville, the inspiration for Kipling’s ‘Stalky and Co’, was tasked to secure northern Persia and Baku on the Caspian with a brigade known as ‘Dunsterforce’. L. C. Dunsterville, The Adventures of Dunsterforce (London: E. Arnold, 1920).