june 12, 1917
US officers at the Palace
Lieut-General Pershing, Chief of the American Forces, who arrived in London on Friday, visited Buckingham Palace on Saturday, accompanied by the members of his Staff, and was received by the King. His Majesty shook hands with him very cordially, and remained for some time in conversation with him. General Pershing presented the members of his Staff in turn, and they too were heartily greeted by the King, who conversed with each of them. The American officers afterwards expressed keen appreciation of the cordiality of their reception. During the day General Pershing called at the Prime Minister’s residence in Downing Street, and at the Foreign Office and other Government Departments.In the evening 50 members of General Pershing’s staff were entertained at the Alhambra, where they had an enthusiastic reception. Several of the guests occupied a box decorated with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. After a speech of welcome by the manager (Mr E Foster), a verse of the “Star Spangled Banner” was played by the orchestra and the audience rose and cheered with great heartiness.
A detachment of the American soldiers who accompanied General Pershing on his voyage visited Windsor on Saturday, and were shown over several of the historic buildings at the Castle. The men were much impressed by the beauty of St George’s Chapel, and the Albert Memorial Chapel, and the lovely views across the Thames valley. They also visited the Round Tower and the Royal Mews. The Mayor of Windsor (Counsellor W Carter) welcomed the visitors at a luncheon at the White Hart Hotel. He said they were particularly proud and pleased to receive the vanguard of that great army of Americans who were going to fight for liberty and justice side by side with the British troops (Cheers).
Mr Rodney L Prizer, of the American Reception Committee, thanked the Mayor for his kindness, and the toast, “The Star Spangled Banner and the Union Jack — long may they be united”, was drunk with great enthusiasm. The American soldiers afterwards visited Windsor’s ancient Town Hall and Eton College They were greatly interested in the College Chapel, with its many war memorials, and the old College Hall.
june 10, 1917
Tribute to the miners
It is not possible to convey an adequate idea of the awful power created when all the mines went up into the dawn at once and the thousand voices of our guns broke out, almost as from a single iron throat. We did not use gas in the attack, but every other known form of offensive weapon, I think, we did employ (including a new horror known in the Army as “Oil Cans” or “Boiling Oil”) of which it is not permissible to give a description, beyond saying that it throws to a considerable distance projectiles which are, in fact, containers of highly inflammable stuff bursting on concussion and scattering conflagration over a wide area. We know from prisoners that they caused terror, and did an immense amount of harm, both in actual casualties and by starting innumerable minor fires.The largest and most destructive mine was that at Hill 60, where the ground lent itself favourably to mining, and where it seems, that not less than two thirds of a company of Wurtembergers was entirely wiped out and buried. The few survivors of the company who fell into our hands were utterly shaken and broken by the horror of it. The work of making the mine here has been going on for a long time, the tunnelling being done by English and Welsh miners. In the course of the operations they have many times had the Germans tunnelling quite close to them. On one occasion they stopped work on a gallery to allow the Germans, who were tunnelling diagonally across the same path, to pass ahead of them.
On another, something happened in the German workings which caused a landslide in one of our chambers on top of one of the charges of explosive, which, fortunately, did not go off. Again, a similar thing buried two of our listeners at the end of their galleries, and one of them was not extricated for 40 hours.
It is a pity that the whole story of the making of such a mine as that at Hill 60, with all the thrilling incidents and hair-breadth escapes, the mining and counter-mining, the long-drawn tension, and the final crisis, cannot be told in a volume by some Kipling or Conrad. The share which digging plays in such warfare as this is enormous, and the British Army has good cause to be grateful to its miners.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-06-09/register/a-visit-to-the-ridge-kpskwfxfk
june 9, 1917
A visit to the Ridge
I have spent much of the day on the Messines Ridge, and there could surely be no more conclusive proof of the thoroughness of our victory than that fact. We have gazed enviously and with hatred at that Ridge for two years. Yesterday I watched the stupendous spectacle of our bombardment of it. This morning I, a civilian, have wandered about it, not hiding in shell holes or threading communication trenches, but strolling unmolested in the open. It is true that we did not go into the two hummocks of dust and rubbish which are all that is now left of the village of Wytschaete. Punctually, once every 45 seconds or so, the Germans were dropping large shells in those spots, so we contented ourselves with walking through Wytschaete Wood, which adjoins the village, and watching the shells drop mathematically into the dust piles.The whole area of the Ridge is, perhaps, as dreadful a place as I have seen either on the Somme or at Arras. The casualties we suffered were light, and our dead who lie there are curiously few. The German dead are more numerous, but, as always, the visible German dead are only a small proportion of those that remain on one of these fields, because most of them are killed in their dug-outs and in the trenches, and already, as one walks about in the broiling sun, that dreadful odour comes up in whiffs from shattered heaps and ruined trenches which tells you what they contain.
I have seen today many of the craters of the mines which blazed up so magnificently yesterday morning, and among them four of the largest, the biggest of which I estimated to be about 70 feet deep and about 100 yards across. In one of these mines, the German prisoners tell us, a whole German company was buried, and there is no doubt that the demoralization and terror which the mines caused, apart from the actual loss of life, was enormous. Now they are merely huge circular cups going down below the blown earth to blue clay, so that the interior is mottled blue and brown, and great lumps of clay, the size of a cart, lie strewn about like dregs among the brown earth in the cups’ bottom.
The whole face and summit of the Ridge are a mere litter of earth and debris. Then, from the summit, one can look out into new country, where the land is still green.
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