Rare First World War German pictures. Part 1

There are not many photos available of German soldiers during the First World war. This is because that country lost the Great War.

QUOTES

".. all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride."

-- British philosopher Bertrand Russell, 1914

"I look upon the People and the Nation as handed on to me as an responsibility conferred upon me by God, and I believe, as it is written in the Bible, that it is my duty to increase this heritage for which one day I shall be called upon to give an account. Whoever tries to interfere with my task I shall crush."

-- German Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1913

German soldiers on the Russian front. Yes! There was an Eastern Front during WW1 too! But the fighting was not so ferocious as in the next war. February 1915, just before the German winter-offensive started in heavy snowstorms

QUOTES

"In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not. All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault."

German Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, 1917

GERMANY'S SCHLIEFFEN PLAN

Germany had been preparing for war long before 1914. In fact, Germany had started drawing up a plan for war - the Schlieffen Plan - in 1897.

Germany's plan for war was the Schlieffen Plan. It took nine years to finalise, but it was based on the theory that Germany would be at war with France and Russia at the same time. It did not prepare for many of the events that occured in July and August 1914. It was based on the belief that, if the country went to war, Germany would be faced with a war on two fronts with France and Russia.

The plan assumed that France was weak and could be beaten quickly, and that Russia was much stronger, but would take longer to mobilise its army.

The plan began to go wrong on 30 July 1914, when Russia mobilised its army, but France did not. Germany was forced to invent a pretext to declare war on France (3 August 1914).

Things got worse when Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 because, in a Treaty of 1839, Britain had promised to defend Belgium.

* The plan was the work of the German army chief-of-staff Alfred von Schlieffen.
* It took nine years to devise - it was started in 1897, presented in 1905, and revised in 1906.
* The plan imagined a huge hammer-blow at Paris, using 90 per cent of the German army, swinging down through Belgium and northern France, to take out France in a quick, decisive campaign.
* It was a plan of attack - for Germany, mobilisation and war were the same thing.
* It was Germany's only plan for war.
* It did not plan for a situation where Germany was at war with Russia, but not with France. When the German chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg asked: "Is the Fatherland in danger?", the German general Moltke declared: "Yes".
* In the event, Russia took only ten days to mobilise, and Moltke was forced to send some troops to the eastern front, which weakened the main attack on Paris.
* When the German army asked permission to go through Belgium on 2 August 1914, the Belgians refused, so the German army had to fight its way through Belgium. This slowed it down and tired the soldiers.
* Britain's decision to uphold the 1839 Treaty with Belgium amazed the Germans. "For a scrap of paper, Great Britain is going to make war?" said the amazed Bethmann-Hollweg.
* In the event, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrived to resist the Germans, and held them up at the Battle of Mons on 23 August 1914. With his army exhausted and many of his best forces killed, Moltke was defeated at the battle of the Marne on 6-10 September 1914. "Sir, we have lost the war," he told the Kaiser.

German soldiers march into Poland on bicycles.

QUOTES

There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.

Ernest Hemingway, in "Men at War"

The road to Paris is chock-a-bock with soldiers and fleeing civilians.

QUOTES

"At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess."

-- Philosopher Bertrand Russell, in 'In Praise of Idleness'

Germans lay down rules of occupation in Antwerp, Belgium. They were quite harsh.

GERMANS MOVE THROUGH BELGIUM (From Eyewitnesstohistory.com)

German juggernaut smashed its way into Belgium on August 5, initially targeting Belgium's line of defensive fortresses. The Belgian army was forced to retreat and by August 20 the Germans entered Brussels on its way to France. The Belgians elected not to defend the city and the Germans marched through unhindered.

Richard Harding Davis was an American newspaper reporter and witnessed the German army's march through the city. We join his account as he sits at a boulevard café waiting for the German arrival:

"The change came at ten in the morning. It was as though a wand had waved and from a fete-day on the Continent we had been wafted to London on a rainy Sunday. The boulevards fell suddenly empty. There was not a house that was not closely shuttered. Along the route by which we now knew the Germans were advancing, it was as though the plague stalked. That no one should fire from a window, that to the conquerors no one should offer insult, Burgomaster Max sent out as special constables men he trusted. Their badge of authority was a walking-stick and a piece of paper fluttering from a buttonhole. These, the police, and the servants and caretakers of the houses that lined the boulevards alone were visible.

At eleven o'clock, unobserved but by this official audience, down the Boulevard Waterloo came the advance-guard of the German army. It consisted of three men, a captain and two privates on bicycles. Their rifles were slung across their shoulders, they rode unwarily, with as little concern as the members of a touring-club out for a holiday. Behind them so close upon each other that to cross from one sidewalk to the other was not possible, came the Uhlans [cavalry], infantry, and the guns. For two hours I watched them, and then, bored with the monotony of it, returned to the hotel. After an hour, from beneath my window, I still could hear them; another hour and another went by. They still were passing.

Boredom gave way to wonder. The thing fascinated you, against your will, dragged you back to the sidewalk and held you there open-eyed. No longer was it regiments of men marching, but something uncanny, inhuman, a force of nature like a landslide, a tidal wave, or lava sweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious, ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward you across the sea.

The German army moved into Brussels as smoothly and as compactly as an Empire State express. There were no halts, no open places, no stragglers. For the gray automobiles and the gray motorcycles bearing messengers one side of the street always was kept clear; and so compact was the column, so rigid the vigilance of the file-closers, that at the rate of forty miles an hour a car could race the length of the column and need not stop - for never did a single horse or man once swerve from its course.

All through the night, like a tumult of a river when it races between the cliffs of a canyon, in my sleep I could hear the steady roar of the passing army. And when early in the morning I went to the window the chain of steel was still unbroken. It was like the torrent that swept down the Connemaugh Valley and destroyed Johnstown. This was a machine, endless, tireless, with the delicate organization of a watch and the brute power of a steam roller. And for three days and three nights through Brussels it roared and rumbled, a cataract of molten lead. The infantry marched singing, with their iron-shod boots beating out the time. They sang Fatherland, My Fatherland. Between each line of song they took three steps. At times 2000 men were singing together in absolute rhythm and beat. It was like blows from giant pile-drivers. When the melody gave way the silence was broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song rose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. They were followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheels and of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell-like voices of the bugles.

More Uhlans followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringing like thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and after them the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuses [machine guns] with drag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complaining brakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stones echoing and re-echoing from the house front. When at night for an instant the machine halted, the silence awoke you, as at sea you wake when the screw stops.

For three days and three nights the column of gray, with hundreds of thousands of bayonets and hundreds of thousands of lances, with gray transport wagons, gray ammunition carts, gray ambulances, gray cannon, like a river of steel, cut Brussels in two.

References:
Richard Harding Davis' account appears in: Downey, Fairfax, Richard Harding Davis: His Day (1933); Keegan, John, The First World War (1999).

German airplane goes to bomb Paris. These were feared objects.

QUOTES

"This war is really the greatest insanity in which white races have ever been engaged."

German Admiral von Tirpitz, in a letter to his wife, October 1914

When Paris did not fall, the disappointed Germans fell back. After the Battle of the Marne the Germans retreated to the river Aisne. It was here that the frontline stabilised and where the armies were going to dig in themselves. The trench warfare began.

QUOTES

"The wood of the walnut - Juglans regia L. - is reckoned among the finest there is. It is used for furniture and floors and, alas, it is also very suitable for making rifle-butts. During the First Worldwar many of the old walnut-forests in Europe were cut down for the production of these rifle-butts."

Dutch biologist Wouter de Herder, in a book on trees in Europe

The German soldiers look quite sullen here. He had reason to be. After weeks of long marches and numerous fights the German advance towards Paris came to a stand-still.

QUOTES

"Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country. "

British philosopher Bertrand Russell, in a letter to the paper The Nation, 15 August, 1914

German soldiers in trenches in France. A German unit during the Battle of the Marne.
Near the river Marne the German invasion was brought to a stand. 1914.

QUOTES

"I didn't get much peace, but I heard in Norway that Russia might well become a huge market for tractors soon."

Henry Ford, when returning from his unofficial peace mission, December 24, 1915

Farewells as the soldiers go to the front.

QUOTES

"The old lady told me that all the girls in the village of Annezin prayed every night for the War to end, and for the English to go away - as soon as their money was spent. And that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it."

Robert Graves, in "Good-bye to all that"

German soldiers on their way to Paris, 1914

QUOTES

"Never had the machine-gunners such straightforward work to do nor done it so unceasingly. The men stood on the firestep, some even on the parapets, and fired exultantly into the mass of men advancing across the open grassland. As the entire field of fire was covered with the enemy's infantry the effect was devastating and they could be seen falling in hundreds."

German Regimental Diarist, after the Battle of Loos, September 1915
(in the Battle of Loos 8,246 British soldiers - out of nearly 10,000 - were killed or wounded in just three hours)

RELATED ARTICLES

-- Rare German WW1 pictures: Part 2
-- Rare German WW1 pictures: Part 3

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We Will Remember Them

It is the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Seven former students of the BSA were killed: two at Gallipoli and five on the Western Front.

Stanley Casson served on the Western Front in the East Lancashire Regiment; he was wounded in May 1915. In 1916 he joined the General Staff in Salonica and served on the Allied Control Commission in Thessaly (1917). At the end of the war he served in Constantinople and Turkestan until he was demobilised in 1919. He was Assistant Director of the BSA under Alan Wace (1920-22), and Reader in Classical Archaeology at Oxford. He re-enlisted in the Intelligence Corps at the outbreak of the Second World War and served in Holland and Greece rising to the rank of Lt.-Colonel. He was killed on active service in a flying accident on 17 April 1944 and was buried in Newquay.

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Intelligence Gathering in the First World War

Many of the former BSA students helped to gather intelligence during the First World War (see Harry Pirie-Gordon). But other archaeological institutes were involved in similar activities.

In late November 1916 the directors of the German and Austrian archaeological institutes were required to leave Athens as they were alleged to have been involved with espionage and 'other hostile acts against the Entente Powers'.

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BSA Students and Military Decorations from Greece

Several former BSA students were awarded Greek decorations in recognition of their military (and civilian) service during the First World War.

The most prestigious was the Order of the Redeemer first awarded in 1833. There are five classes. The Gold Cross was awarded to Erenest A. Gardner (who had served in naval intelligence in Salonica), and the Silver Cross was to John C. Lawson and Richard M. Dawkins (who had both served in naval intelligence on Crete). Other members of the school were awarded the order though the class is not clear: Robert C. Bosanquet, Stanley Casson, William R. Halliday, Solomon C. Kaines Smith, Arthur M. Woodward. Bosanquet had been present in Salonica working with refugees from Serbia.

The second most prestigious was the Royal Order of George I instituted in January 1915. There were two recipients, John L. Myres (Commander) and Henry A. Ormerod (Chevalier).

Kaines Smith and Lawson were awarded the Greek Medal of Military Merit, and E.M.W. Tillyard the Greek Military Cross.

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BSA Students and Crete in the First World War

Students of the BSA had been involved in a series of excavations across Crete since the foundation of the Cretan Exploration Fund. These had included Knossos, the Dictaean Cave, Kato Zakro, Praesos, Palaikastro, the Kamares Cave and Plati.

Three former BSA students were commissioned as officers in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR): Richard M. Dawkins (1871-1955), John C. Lawson (1874-1935), and William R. Halliday (1886-1966). Their role was to monitor the activity of German submarines and to be involved in counter-espionage.

Lawson was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Dawkins had just resigned as Director of the BSA and was a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Both were in their 40s. Halliday had been appointed Rathbone Professor of Ancient History at Liverpool in 1914. Lawson was commissioned in February 1916, Halliday in May, and Dawkins in December. All held the rank of Lieutenant; Lawson rose to be Lt-Commander. (Dawkins' father had retired from the Royal Navy with the rank of Read-Admiral.) Lawson was based at Suda Bay, Dawkins to eastern Crete (an area he knew well from his excavations there), and Halliday to the western part of the island.

Lawson later wrote about aspects of his activity as an intelligence officer:

He must secure native agents ashore along coastlines of many hundred miles to report sightings of submarines, and movements of ships or persons suspected of communicating with or re-victualling them, and devise codes for the passing of such information. He must direct the tracking and procure the arrest of spies and enemy agents in general.

One of Lawson's actions was to annexe (briefly) the island of Kythera in January 1917 as he considered it to be acting as a base for enemy submarines responsible for a series of sinkings.

This work on Crete was conducted alongside other intelligence work through the Eastern Mediterranean Special Intelligence Bureau (EMSIB) in Salonica (see Harry Pirie-Gordon) or through civilian activity in Athens.

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Mary Hamilton and the BSA

Mary Hamilton (1881-1962) was educated at St Andrews. Her father, Rev. William Hamilton, was the minister of the Trinity Evangelical Union Church in Dundee. (The church had been opened by James Morison [1816-93], founder of the Evangelical Union, in December 1877.) She held a fellowship from the Carnegie Trust (working on incubation) and was subsequently admitted to the BSA for the sessions 1905/06 and 1906/07. In Athens she met Guy Dickins (1881-1916) and they were married, c. 1909. Mary continued to use the address of her parents in Dundee.

Dickins was appointed lecturer in classical archaeology at Oxford in 1914 and they moved to 12 Holywell Street. Dickins was commissioned in November 1914 (Kings Royal Rifle Corps) and served in France; he died of wounds received on the Somme in 1916. Mary continued living at Holywell Street until 1917 when she moved to Bevington Road in Oxford. In 1925 she returned to Scotland, Callendar in Perthshire. She subsequently married Lacey Davis Caskey (1880-1944), curator of Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and her contemporary in Athens at the American School (ASCSA); they lived in Wellesley, Mass.

Mary returned to Callendar in 1950.

Bibliography
Hamilton, M. 1906. Incubation, or, the cure of disease in pagan temples and Christian churches. London: W.C. Henderson & Son.
—. 1906/7. "The pagan element in the names of saints." Annual of the British School at Athens 13: 348–56.
—. 1910. Greek saints and their festivals. London: W. Blackwood & Sons.

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John L. Myres: 'the passionate ubiquity of the Flying Dutchman'

In March 1917 John L. Myres, who had been conducting raids on the Anatolian coast, was posted to Syra. Compton Mackenzie (Aegean Memories, 1940) described his arrival:

A scholar of mundane reputation before the war, Professor J.L. Myres was now a Lieutenant-Commander in the R.N.V.R. In appearance he resembled some Assyrian king with more than a suggestion of the pirate Teach, and to such an outward form were added the passionate ubiquity of the Flying Dutchman and the fierce concentration of Captain Ahab. During the previous year he had organized a series of cattle raids on the Anatolian seaboard which in the end were stopped because it was alleged that they were doing more harm to the Greek population in Asia Minor than to their Turkish masters.

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Gallipoli: Remembering Lives Lost

Today, April 25, is ANZAC Day when we remember the fallen at Gallipoli during the First World War. Two BSA students were killed during the campaign (see "BSA Deaths in the First World War"): Lieutenant George Leonard Cheesman, Hampshire Regiment, fell on 10 August 1915 during the surprise attack on Chunuk Bairun, and Captain William Loring, 2nd Scottish Horse, died of his wounds on the hospital ship Devanha on 24 October 1915. Loring's brother, Captain Ernest Loring RN, also served aboard ship at Gallipoli; two further brothers, Lt.-Col. Walter Latham Loring, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and Major Charles Buxton Loring, 37th Lancers (Baluch Horse) had been killed on the Western Front in October and December 1914.

At least two other former BSA students took part in an intelligence role (see "BSA Students and the First World War: Harry Pirie-Gordon"). Lt. Commander David Hogarth RNVR, working for the Arab Bureau in Cairo, was at Gallipoli in August 1915 interrogating Turkish prisoners of war. Lt. Harry Pirie-Gordon RNVR (Magdalen College, Oxford, like Hogarth) arrived at Gallipoli at the start of the landings but was evacuated on health grounds ('ptomaine poisoning') in May. He returned in the autumn and worked with Captain Ian Smith of the Royal Engineers (his former colleague from 1911-12 when they surveyed the area round the port of Alexandretta) on interrogation. Among the prisoners was Sharif Muhammad al Faruqi, an officer of the Ottoman army, who was interviewed in October 1915. Faruqi was recruited for the Arab Bureau operating as ‘G’, and serving as a go-between for Cairo and the Sharif of Mecca.

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BSA Students in Australia and New Zealand

Former BSA students had a major impact on the teaching of classics in England outside Oxford and Cambridge (e.g. Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, London). Three former students held chairs in Australia and New Zealand.

• H. Arnold Tubbs (born c. 1865; Pembroke College, Oxford) worked with this Cyprus Exploration Fund and had to leave during the final season of excavations in Cyprus in 1890 to take up the position of professor of Classics at University College, Auckland, New Zealand.
• William John Woodhouse (1866-1937; The Queen's College, Oxford) had worked on the Megalopolis excavations and then conducted a survey in Aetolia. He was assistant lecturer in Bangor and then lecturer in St Andrews. In 1901 he was appointed professor Greek at the University of Sydney. He was also the honorary curator of the Nicholson Museum of Antiquities (1903-37).
• Cecil A. Scutt (1889-1961; Clare College, Cambridge) had been admitted to the BSA just before the outbreak of the First World War. He was an assistant master at Repton for two terms (1915-16), and joined Military Intelligence in Macedonia; he was invalided out of the army in 1918. In 1919 he was appointed professor of Classical Philology, University of Melbourne (1920-55).

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BSA Deaths in the First World War: the Western Front

All but two of the deaths of former BSA students during the First World War were on the western front. Following the death of Guy Dickins on the Somme a letter ('Waste of Material') was sent to The Times (July 26, 1916) noting the deaths of three Oxford Fellows.

All three lives were lost leading infantry attacks in France. They would be less grudged if it was absolutely necessary to use the best brains of the country for this purpose: but is it really impossible to find no more suitable military work for them to do?

The fact that so many former students of the BSA were used in military intelligence (e.g. Harry Pirie-Gordon) perhaps indicates that such expertise was recongised.

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BSA Students and the First World War: Harry Pirie-Gordon

Gill, D. W. J. 2006. "Harry Pirie-Gordon: historical research, journalism and intelligence gathering in the eastern Mediterranean (1908-18)." Intelligence and National Security 21: 1045-59.

Abstract
British scholars were active in the Levant during the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Harry Pirie-Gordon toured medieval castles in the region during the spring of 1908 under the auspices of the British School at Athens; T.E. Lawrence used his maps in the following year. Pirie-Gordon continued to travel widely in the Near East as a member of the Foreign Department of The Times and was involved with the survey of the Syrian coastline around Alexandretta. He was commissioned in the RNVR in 1914 and took part in the raid by HMS Doris on Alexandretta. Pirie-Gordon served in an intelligence capacity at Gallipoli before returning to Cairo to work with David Hogarth. In 1916 he was involved with the occupation of Makronisi (Long Island) in the Gulf of Smyrna. Later that year he took charge of the EMSIB operation at Salonica until its purge in early 1917. Pirie-Gordon returned to the Arab Bureau in Cairo and took part in the Palestine campaign.

[On-line]

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BSA Deaths in the First World War

Some 115 male students had been admitted to the BSA before the First World War. Although at least four had died by the outbreak of hostilities (or in the early years of the war), it is surprising how few casualties were sustained from the ranks of former students.

Two were killed at Gallipoli. Lieutenant George Leonard Cheesman, a Fellow of New College who had enlisted in August 1914, was serving with the 10th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment. He landed with his unit at Suvla Bay on 7 August 1915 and took up position on the front-line at The Farm. He died in the Turkish surprise attack on Chunuk Bairun, led by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) on the morning of 10 August 1915. More than 1000 British troops died including Brigadier-General A.H. Baldwin. Captain William Loring was serving in the 2nd Scottish Horse. He had earlier served in the Boer War, first as a corporal in the 19th (Lothians and Berwickshire) Company, Imperial Yeomanry, and then as Lieutenant in the Scottish Horse. In the intervening period he had become Warden of Goldsmith's College. Loring's force landed as an infantry unit at Suvla Bay on 2 September 1915, and he died from wounds on a hospital ship; the date is disputed, either 22 (BSA) or 24 (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) October.

All the other BSA casualties were on the Western Front. Captain Kingdon Tregosse Frost, a lecturer at the Queen's University, Belfast, had joined the Officers' Training Corps (OTC) in Belfast. At the outbreak of war he was sent with the 1st Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment to Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). He was involved in the battle of Mons and was killed on 24 August 1914 (not 25 August as on the War Grave, or 4 September as on the BSA war memorial) near Elouges ‘fighting like a demon, having refused to surrender’. He was buried at Wihéries Communal Cemetery, Hainault. Lieutenant Cyril Bertram Moss-Blundell had been due to hold a school studentship at the BSA in 1914/15. He was commissioned in the 14th (Service) Battalion Durham Light Infantry in January 1915; Maurice S. Thompson, a former student of the BSA, had been commissioned in the same Battalion in August 1914. Moss-Blundell and Thompson arrived in France on 11 September 1915, and their unit took part in the battle of Loos on 26 September; during the fighting Moss-Blundell was killed. (Thompson survived the war.)

Captain Guy Dickins, fellow of St John's College, Oxford, was commissioned in November 1914 in the 13th (Service) Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps; Captain Erwin Wentworth Webster, fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and a former student of the BSA, received his commission for the same unit on the same day. Their unit was in France by July 1915. Dickins was injured at Pozières on 13 July 1916, during the battle of the Somme, and died of wounds in a field hospital on 17 July. He was buried at Amiens. Webster survived the Somme, but was killed on 9 April 1917 leading his company into action on the first day of the battle of Arras (First Battle of the Scarpe).

Roger Meyrick Heath had enrolled as a private in the Royal Fusiliers in September 1915. He was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant to the 9th, attached 3rd, Somerset Light Infantry, and posted to France in 1916. He was killed in action near Delville Wood on 16 September 1916, his first day in the trenches.

A plaque listing the casualties was erected in the BSA.

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