may 26, 1917
US fighting units in France
From the camp where they have been training, the first American combatant unit started yesterday for the position which they are to occupy on the front.American ambulances are, of course, to be seen everywhere in France, and the American airmen attached to the French Army have done splendid work for the cause of the Allies. But this fine body of young men, mainly drawn from the University Corps of Cornell, Yale, Harvard, Chicago, and other well-known colleges in the United States, were something different. They were, in effect, though they actually came to France for ambulance work, the fighting vanguard of the Army which our new Ally will send across the Atlantic.
As soon as it was decided that their country would enter the war, these young men, many of whom are engineers by profession, gave up their design of serving with the Red Cross in order to join a fighting unit, and besides the contingent which went to the front yesterday several others are now being trained as soldiers in the same district, some according to American, some according to French, methods, under French and American instructors, one of them the captain of the Yale football team in 1910. Captain Tinkham, the officer commanding the detachment which started yesterday, has already won the Military Cross while serving with the French at Verdun.
The men were dressed in khaki, to all intents the same as the uniform of the British Army. As the motor field service convoy left the camp, where the Stars and Stripes and the Tricolor were floating side by side, the men were loudly cheered by their fellow-countrymen still going through their training, who will soon follow them to the front as an earnest of America’s resolve to range herself on the side of right and liberty in the war of nations.
American loans to Allies
Late war news, Washington, May 25.
Another loan of $75,000,000 (£15,000,000) has been made to Great Britain by the United States, bringing up the total loan to Great Britain to £80,000,000.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-05-25/register/valentine-fleming-an-appreciation-z975zns3p
may 25, 1917
Valentine Fleming. An appreciation
“WSC” [Winston Spencer Churchill] writes of the death of Major Valentine Fleming, MP, killed in action: This news will cause sorrow in Oxfordshire and in the House of Commons and wherever the member of the Henley Division was well known. Valentine Fleming was one of those younger Conservatives who easily combine loyalty to party ties with a broad liberal outlook and a total absence of class prejudice. He was most earnest and sincere in his desire to make things better for the great body of the people. He was a man of thoughtful and tolerant opinions, which were not the less strongly held because they were not loudly or frequently asserted. The violence of faction which swayed our political life upon the threshold of the Great War caused him a keen distress. He could not share the extravagant passions with which the rival parties confronted each other, and decided to withdraw from public life. He shared the hopes to which so many of his generation respond of a better, fairer, more efficient public life and Parliamentary system. But events have pursued a different course.The Oxfordshire Hussars were the first or almost the first Yeomanry regiment to come under the fire of the enemy, and in the first battle of Ypres acquitted themselves with credit. He had been nearly three years in France, as squadron leader or second in command, and had been twice mentioned in dispatches, before the shell which ended his life found him. From the beginning his letters showed the deep emotions which the carnage of the struggle aroused in his breast. But he never flagged or wearied or lost his spirits. Alert, methodical, resolute, untiring he did his work, whether perilous or dull, to the end. His passion in sport was deer stalking in his much-loved native Scotland. He rode well and sometimes brilliantly to hounds; and was a gay and excellent companion. He had everything in the world to make him happy; a delightful home life, interesting expanding business occupations, contented disposition, a lovable and charming personality. As the war lengthens and intensifies and the extending lists appear, it seems as if one watched at night a well-loved city whose lights, which burn so bright, which burn so true, are extinguished in the distance in the darkness one by one.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-05-24/register/the-submarine-campaign-bktghhwnl
may 25, 1917
The submarine campaign
The latest weekly return of shipping losses reveals a slightly higher total than that of last week. When the losses are compared it is found that in the bigger vessels of and over 1,600 tons, and also in the case of fishing boats, there is no change, but in smaller vessels there is an increase of four losses. If the comparison is made with the worst week of the campaign there is, of course, improvement in the number of vessels endangered by submarine or mine, and this may be regarded as confirmation of the theory that the enemy during these last two weeks has been employing fewer boats. Calculations based on this return cannot be regarded as a wholly trustworthy guide to U-boat activity, however, as it says nothing of the tonnage of the ships lost nor as to the damage done to neutrals.It may be assumed that the number of ships which now carry guns bear a considerable proportion to the whole. Sir John Jellicoe has expressed the opinion that the multiplication of armed merchant ships has driven the submarine to make its attack from a submerged position and thus the U-boat is at a double disadvantage. The torpedo, of which but a small number can be carried, must be the weapon used, and there must be greater difficulty in making a hit than with a gun.
It would be unwise to build up hopes of a speedy ending of the U boat campaign on a couple of fairly good returns. It has yet to be seen whether the Germans cannot again increase the number of boats they have working. If they do it is almost certain that the figures will go up again. Although Admiral von Capelle has boasted that he has the necessary boats, personnel, fuel, and all accessories, the demand for these must make a heavy drain on the German resources, and it would not be surprising if he found himself unable to maintain the campaign at the same pitch of violence. It is more likely that, in order to create an impression, both at home and abroad, we have been subjected to a few weeks of intense energy during which the reserves have been used. If the conditions demanded such an effort for a short time, then the present falling off in activity would be explained. It is satisfactory that there has been nothing sensational in this week’s return, but there is nothing either to warrant jubilation.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-05-23/register/on-vimy-ridge-crest-btcthxstl
may 23, 1917
On Vimy Ridge crest
In the middle of the waste on the summit of the Vimy Ridge there is a little group of white-painted wooden crosses marking the graves of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada who fell there. These Canadian Seaforths were mostly British Columbians, and it is a long, long way from the moist, pine-clad slopes of the Pacific North-West to this dreadful tableland, where no green thing is baking in the hot sun. A long, long way they came to die, the long-limbed sons of Victoria and Vancouver, New Westminster and Nanaimo. And some came even farther, for they were in camp on the far-off slopes of the Peak Mountains or the upper waters of the Fraser River when they heard the call. Many other feet will tread the same journey after them, the feet of pilgrims who, through generations yet to be born, will come here as to a shrine. The little graveyard will be an inspiration to the heart of Canada in ages of which we do not yet dream, for there has been nothing finer done in war than the achievement of those Western men up on the Ridge.The bulk of the Ridge to south and west was already ours, taken in the first rush of the morning of April 9. How the Canadians ever went up the top of the slope and over the edge to the flat above it is impossible now to understand. But they had done it, and our line ran unevenly from north-west to south-east across the summit which is here, perhaps, a mile and a half or two miles wide. Then, swinging on their left, the Canadian Seaforths took the line on over the open, which was swept with rifle and machine-gun fire, and, by merely refusing to be stopped, thrust the enemy from trench and shell-hole and emplacement down the forked slopes beyond. It is difficult to realize it now, but it was done in the bitter cold, in rain and driving snow.
There is no yard of this tableland where a man can find the original surface of the earth, the covering of soil being churned up with the white chalk below till all is greyish white. It is so that readers in Canada must think of the place where their sons rest. If I had my way I would plant this Vimy Ridge with trees brought here from Canada, and let these men, when the present wooden crosses have been replaced by a noble and permanent monument, rest in the shade of a grove of their own pines and firs and cedars.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-05-22/register/geographers-war-work-298lxl25k
MAY 22, 1917
Geographers’ war work
At the annual meeting of the Royal Geographical Society last night the president, Mr Douglas W Freshfield, presented the Royal medals and other awards announced in The Times of March 20. In an address, the president said that the Society had had the great satisfaction of learning that Sir Ernest Shackleton and his comrades and crew of the Endurance had escaped unharmed from their perilous attempt to cross the Antarctic continent between a hitherto unattained base on the shores of the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea. Experience had proved what some of the council were at pains to point out beforehand to Sir Ernest Shackleton, that the scheme of the expedition was, in the present state of Antarctic exploration, audacious in the extreme. It was a challenge to fate which might be held at least premature even by the warmest enthusiasts for Antarctic discovery.Continuing, the President said: “From time to time we get strange tales of the doings of some of our most distinguished travellers in the East — of one engaged on a political mission almost within sight of Mecca; of another, a geographer and archaeologist, who from a hydroplane directed a bombardment so that in destroying an enemy’s arms depot in Asia Minor there might be no risk of damage to a Greek temple; of a third, a lady, who is leading a strenuous life in staff work in Mesopotamia; and of others, too numerous to particularize, who in their various spheres are exhibiting the essential value of geography in the present crisis.
“I must not pass over our recent member of Council, Brigadier-General Sir Percy Sykes, from whose proceedings in Persia the veil was partially lifted by Lord Curzon a few weeks ago in the House of Lords, or Colonel O’Connor, who has fortunately returned safe from captivity in Eastern Persia.
“ln a hero of the recent sea-fight against odds off Dover — a fight that recalls the glorious traditions of the days of Queen Elizabeth — we are proud to recognize an Antarctic explorer, the second in command of Captain Scott’s last expedition, Captain Evans. It is the same energy and spirit that lead men to face the Antarctic blizzard or the foe that walks in darkness off our own coasts.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-05-20/register/tales-of-fighting-in-the-dark-vlz8gntx6
may 20, 1917
Tales of fighting in the dark
For the last two days the front has been singularly quiet, though the situation remains strained both at Bullecourt and Roeux, two points which have now seen as long and as bloody fighting as Guillemont, or any other place on the Somme.Among those who have had very hard fighting and borne themselves well have been Kentish troops, one party of whom had an experience very similar to that of the Londoners of whom I told the other day. These men from Kent, to the number of 40, went clear beyond the rest of the line in an attack, losing direction in the darkness, and landed up at a small copse a good 1,000 yards in front of everybody else. They were well out in the middle of the enemy territory, and having a machine-gun with them and Germans all round they settled down to do all the damage they could.
Apparently the enemy failed to grasp the situation, and no direct attack was made on them, so the men from Kent held on all day, and when evening came made up their minds to cut a way back. Besides scattered posts there were two regular trenches full of Germans between them and home, but they got to the first trench under cover of dusk without being detected.
Here a German officer with a drawn sword and two orderlies challenged them and called upon them to surrender. In reply, one of the two officers in charge of the little force shot the German with his revolver, while the two orderlies were simultaneously disposed of. Our men then charged the trench, which had suddenly sprung to life. There was a wild mêlée for a moment, and then our men were sprinting amid a hail of rifle balls and bombs. Happily this trench was deep and narrow, and our men took it as if they were steeplechasing, over the heads of the Germans below, who took pot shots as the Kents went overhead.
The remnant had still a zone of fire to cross, but ultimately half of the original 40 got home. Both the young officers and 13 men came in unwounded with the first rush, and wounded stragglers kept turning up all night. The troops to which these men belong did extremely good work on the Somme, at Ovillers-La Boisselle and elsewhere, and now no troops have seen more of the fighting at Arras than they.
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