Expeditionary Forces in the First World War 3030250296, 9783030250294

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 5
Notes on Contributors......Page 7
List of Figures......Page 10
Chapter 1 Introduction: Concept and Themes......Page 15
What Was an Expeditionary Force in the Great War?......Page 19
Chapters and Themes......Page 28
Bibliography......Page 37
Chapter 2 A Tale of Two Expeditionary Forces: Religion and Race in the Dardanelles and France......Page 41
Limited Expedition: North African Muslims and the Dardanelles Campaign......Page 42
Expedition Across the Color Line: Race, France, and the AEF......Page 49
Conclusion......Page 61
Bibliography......Page 66
Chapter 3 Far from Home? Perceptions and Experiences of First World War Nurses and Their Patients......Page 70
Recreating “Home” in Overseas Hospital Wards......Page 73
Nursing “the Other”......Page 79
Conclusion......Page 85
Bibliography......Page 90
Chapter 4 The Enemy Lurking Behind the Front: Controlling Sex in the German Forces Sent to Eastern and Western Europe, 1914–1918......Page 92
Sexual Encounters Between Soldiers and Civilians......Page 96
Regulating the Wartime Sex Trade......Page 99
Civilian Reform Efforts......Page 105
Conclusion......Page 108
Bibliography......Page 117
Chapter 5 Vietnamese Contingents to the Western Front, 1915–1919......Page 123
The Recruiting Campaign and the Recruits......Page 125
The Recruiting Campaign in Indochina......Page 126
The Recruits: Volunteers or Forced Labor?......Page 127
The Journey to France......Page 129
In the Mist of War......Page 131
Experience on the Front Line......Page 132
Battle for Chemin des Dames......Page 134
In the Balkans......Page 135
The Enemy and the Allies......Page 137
After the Armistice......Page 140
Compensation, Expectation, and Disappointment......Page 141
Rebellious Sons of Indochina......Page 144
Conclusion......Page 145
Bibliography......Page 157
Chapter 6 Expeditionary Forces in the Shatterzone: German, British and French Soldiers on the Macedonian Front, 1915–1918......Page 161
Geography and Space......Page 163
Macedonia as an Intercultural Meeting Ground......Page 165
Martial Races......Page 170
Macedonia as Backwards, and as the Orient......Page 175
Conclusion......Page 180
Bibliography......Page 185
Chapter 7 An Alliance of Competing Identities: Stereotypes and Hierarchies Among Entente Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front......Page 189
Bibliography......Page 212
Chapter 8 Empire, Oil, and Bavarians: The German Expeditionary Force in the Caucasus, 1918–1919......Page 216
Germany and the Ostraum at the End of the First World War......Page 219
The Caucasus Expedition: By Design or Thrown Together?......Page 221
On the Ground in Georgia, June 1918–February 1919......Page 227
Conclusion......Page 232
Bibliography......Page 242
Chapter 9 Freikorps in the Baltics: German Expeditionary Forces in Eastern Europe, 1918–1919......Page 245
Launching the Baltic Freikorps......Page 248
The Field Campaign......Page 251
Deutschtum......Page 253
Delusions and Defeats......Page 256
Return to Germany......Page 258
Conclusion......Page 261
Bibliography......Page 268
Chapter 10 From Galicia to Galilee: The Ottoman and German Expeditionary Experiences in the First World War in Comparison......Page 271
The Ottomans in Galicia......Page 275
The Germans in the Middle East......Page 281
Conclusion......Page 291
Bibliography......Page 297
Chapter 11 “Some Corner of a Foreign Field That Is Forever England”: The Western Front as the British Soldiers’ Sacred Land......Page 299
What to Do About the Dead?......Page 303
The Soldiers’ Sacred Ground......Page 306
A Memorial by a Soldier for Soldiers......Page 310
Conclusion......Page 316
Bibliography......Page 320
Chapter 12 Conclusion......Page 322
Bibliography......Page 335
Expeditionary Forces by Designation......Page 338
Occupation Forces with “Expeditionary” Designation......Page 340
Allied Intervention Forces Not Termed Expeditionary......Page 341
Labor Forces Illustrative List......Page 342
Index......Page 344

Citation preview

Expeditionary Forces in the First World War Edited by Alan Beyerchen Emre Sencer

Expeditionary Forces in the First World War

Alan Beyerchen · Emre Sencer Editors

Expeditionary Forces in the First World War

Editors Alan Beyerchen Portland, OR, USA

Emre Sencer Knox College Galesburg, IL, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-25029-4 ISBN 978-3-030-25030-0  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1

Introduction: Concept and Themes 1 Alan Beyerchen

2

A Tale of Two Expeditionary Forces: Religion and Race in the Dardanelles and France 27 Richard S. Fogarty

3

Far from Home? Perceptions and Experiences of First World War Nurses and Their Patients 57 Alison S. Fell

4

The Enemy Lurking Behind the Front: Controlling Sex in the German Forces Sent to Eastern and Western Europe, 1914–1918 79 Lisa M. Todd

5

Vietnamese Contingents to the Western Front, 1915–1919 111 Kimloan Vu-Hill

v

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CONTENTS

6

Expeditionary Forces in the Shatterzone: German, British and French Soldiers on the Macedonian Front, 1915–1918 149 Justin Fantauzzo and Robert L. Nelson

7

An Alliance of Competing Identities: Stereotypes and Hierarchies Among Entente Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front 177 Chris Kempshall

8

Empire, Oil, and Bavarians: The German Expeditionary Force in the Caucasus, 1918–1919 205 Gavin Wiens

9

Freikorps in the Baltics: German Expeditionary Forces in Eastern Europe, 1918–1919 235 Victoria Bucholtz

10 From Galicia to Galilee: The Ottoman and German Expeditionary Experiences in the First World War in Comparison 261 Emre Sencer 11 “Some Corner of a Foreign Field That Is Forever England”: The Western Front as the British Soldiers’ Sacred Land 289 Natasha Silk 12 Conclusion 313 Alan Beyerchen and Emre Sencer Appendix: A Provisional Compilation of Expeditionary Forces, 1914–1918 329 Index 335

Notes

on

Contributors

Alan Beyerchen is an emeritus faculty member of the Department of History at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. Most wellknown for his book Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in Third Reich and articles on the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, he is currently writing a study of Clausewitz and the quest for a science of war. Victoria Bucholtz received her doctorate from the University of Calgary in 2015 under the supervision of Dr. Holger Herwig. Her dissertation, “Republic of Violence”, examined the Freikorps’ use of physical and emotional violence to achieve political objectives after the First World War in Germany. Her current research project concerns gendered negotiation of public spaces in fascist organizations during the Weimar Republic. Justin Fantauzzo is an assistant professor of history at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada. He has previously published in War in History, First World War Studies, Gender & History, and the Journal of War and Culture Studies. His forthcoming mono­ graph, to be published with Cambridge University Press, is titled The Other Wars: The Experience and Memory of the First World War in the Middle East and Macedonia. Alison S. Fell  is Professor of French Cultural History at the University of Leeds and is currently Director of the Leeds Arts and Humanities vii

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Research Institute. She has published widely on British and French Women and the First World War, including her most recent monograph Women as Veterans After the First World War in France and Britain (Cambridge, 2018). Richard S. Fogarty is Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is the author of Race War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Johns Hopkins, 2008; winner of the Phi Alpha Theta Best First Book Prize) and co-editor, with Andrew Tait Jarboe, of Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict (I.B. Tauris, 2014). Kimloan Vu-Hill  has a Ph.D. in the History of Southeast Asia and has been a Lecturer of Heritage Vietnamese Program at the University of California, San Diego, since 1999. She has published a book, Coolies into Rebels—Impact of World War I on French Indochina (Les Indes, 2011), and several articles on the same subject matter. Chris Kempshall is a historian focusing on the First World War and popular representations of warfare and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Army Leadership, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is the author of The First World War in Computer Games (Palgrave, 2015) and British, French and American Relations on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Palgrave, 2018). He is also authoring the book History and Politics in the Star Wars Universe, due to be published by Routledge in 2020. Robert L. Nelson is Head of the Department of History at the University of Windsor, Canada. His revised Cambridge dissertation appeared in 2011 as German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War. Earlier he published the edited volume Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present (2009). Emre Sencer is Associate Professor of History at Knox College, where he teaches courses on modern European and Middle Eastern history. He is the author of Order and Insecurity in Germany and Turkey: Military Cultures of the 1930s (Routledge, 2017). During 2018–2019, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Odessa, Ukraine.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS  

ix

Natasha Silk is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kent, researching the frontline British soldiers’ experience of grief, mourning, and bereavement during the First World War. She completed her undergraduate work in History at the University of Sussex in 2014 and then went on to complete her masters in First World War Studies in 2016. She recently had a chapter, “Witnesses to Death” published in Martin Kerby, Margaret Baguley and Janet McDonald, The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War Since 1914: The British Isles, the United States and Australasia. Lisa M. Todd is an associate professor of History at the University of New Brunswick (Canada), and director of the Network for the Study of Civilians, Soldiers, and Society, at the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society. Her first book, Sexual Treason in Germany During the First World War, appeared in 2017 with Palgrave-Macmillan, and she is currently investigating the links between mass violence and “miscegenation” fears in modern Germany. She is also co-editing (with Cindy Brown), A Cultural History of War in the Modern Age, 1920–2000, for Bloomsbury Press, and European Racism: A History in Documents (with Gary Waite), for Broadview Press. Gavin Wiens completed his Ph.D. in the Department of History at the University of Toronto in 2019, with a dissertation that examines the distribution of military power in Germany in the decades following the Austro-Prussian War. He argues that compromise between the Kaiser and his fellow monarchs—not imperial decrees—characterized Germany’s military affairs after unification, and, as a result, the German army remained a decentralized collection of state-based contingents until the end of the First World War. His other research interests include the role of “warrior princes” in the public relations campaigns of Europe’s royal houses before and during the First World War and the activities of German military attachés and advisors in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1

“His Overseas Mother,” United States, ca. 1918. Postcard (Source Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection. National Library of Medicine) 60 Fig. 5.1 The French Army on the Western Front in World War I: a company of Vietnamese troops preparing for ceremonial investiture with decorations at Etampes (France). Unknown photographer, black and white photograph, date unknown (Source collection online Imperial War Museum (Great Britain), Q102976. With permission of the Imperial War Museum) 124 Fig. 11.1 “The Brooding Soldier,” Canadian Memorial, St. Julien, Belgium 302

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Map 1  Europe and the near East 1914

Map 2  Macedonian Front

Map 3  Eastern Front

Map 4  Ottoman Empire

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Concept and Themes Alan Beyerchen

Since a number of the belligerents were world colonial powers, when Europe became engulfed in war in 1914 the conflict immediately became global. France and Great Britain, in particular, drew at once on forces that had to be brought across the seas into Europe to stem the German advance. As the War raged onward, the enormous spaces and casualties increasingly consumed troops and resources from around the world. The conflict thus became a World War, not only because the conflict reverberated outward around the globe and ignited fighting on other continents, but because the desperate, black hole of the War pulled such vast quantities of men and materiel inward to the European and Ottoman lands. This was a global conflict not just because the War came to the world, but also because, quite literally, the world came to the War. The manner in which these troops were gathered, transported, and deployed to other lands generally went by the designation “expeditionary forces.” The concept of setting out on a martial journey is older than the stories in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the notion specifically of a military “expedition” was in use in English since the seventeenth century to designate “a body of A. Beyerchen (*)  Portland, OR, USA © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_1

1

2  A. BEYERCHEN

persons, also a fleet, etc., sent out for a warlike or other definite purpose.”1 Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it was commonly used to designate a journey of exploration organized in a military manner, such as to the Arctic or Antarctic regions, even when not involving military units as such. Recent military uses included the British “Punitive Expedition in Abyssinia” in 1868, the “Nile Expedition” (or the “Gordon Relief Column”) to Khartoum in 1884–1885, the “China Relief Expedition” (to lift the siege of the legation compounds in Peking [Beijing] in 1900) and the American “Punitive Expedition, U. S. Army” into Mexico in 1916–1917. But the British did not use the term in the Boer War, nor did the Americans use it in the Philippines.2 Great Britain set the basic pattern of using the designation “expeditionary forces” for those troops sent abroad in the Great War. The Haldane army reforms of 1907 created a distinction between regular army divisions in the Expeditionary Force (and their reserve components) available to be deployed on the continent versus those of the Territorial Force, assigned to serve at home.3 Since the “Saturday Afternoon Soldiers” of the Territorial units were seen as beneath the standard of the regular army, when casualties mounted quickly in August and September 1914, Lord Kitchener as War Minister initially bypassed them in calling for a volunteer “New Army.” In the event, however, some of the more prepared Territorial battalions were called to France in the fall of 1914 well ahead of the arrival of the New Army units. In one sense, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) ceased to exist as regular army units were shattered in the early battles of the War and Territorial and New Army battalions came into the field to fight, but the designation BEF continued to be employed for British troops on the Western Front for the duration of the conflict.4 The Dominion countries mostly but not uniformly followed the British example. Although they were viewed as existing within the Imperial army for training and command purposes, their small territorial armies were designed for homeland defense and not for deploying abroad. The Dominions therefore created volunteer bodies to send to the aid of Great Britain. Thus arose the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and Indian Expeditionary Force A through G (the letters indicated different theaters of deployment, with A to the Western Front, B and C to East Africa, D to Mesopotamia, E and F to Egypt and G to Gallipoli). The South Africans created a volunteer South African Overseas Expeditionary Force, although many of its

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 

3

personnel were deployed in Africa rather than Europe. There was also a small Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (distinct from the troops sent to Europe and the Ottoman lands) dispatched to seize the South Pacific islands in German colonial possession at the outbreak of the War. A number of other countries followed suit. The Russians sent an expeditionary force to the west to demonstrate solidarity with their ally France and the Portuguese sent units late in the war to the Western Front to show their solidarity with Great Britain. Various Allied forces were pulled together for a specific purpose or area, such as the 1915– 1916 naval and army Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (i.e., the Gallipoli campaign), a portion of which was the French Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient, later designated as the Corps expéditionnaire des Dardanelles. An Anglo-French Italian Expeditionary Force was sent to Italy in 1917, when the German and Austro-Hungarian advance threatened to knock Italy out of the war. The British set up an Expeditionary Force in Egypt to move against the Ottoman Empire in the Sinai and Palestine, as well as multiple expeditionary forces in Africa to seize German colonial territories. The United States entry into the war in 1917 led to the creation of the massive American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). And there were several late-war intervention actions that carried the designation “expeditionary” by some of the participants, such as the American North Russia Expeditionary Force and the Italian Expeditionary Force in Murmansk (Corpo di spedizione italiano in Murmania) or the American Expeditionary Force Siberia and the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force. Yet the usage was not thoroughly consistent. The troops that were sent to the Macedonian (or Salonika) Front were part of the Allied Armies of the East (Armées alliées en Orient) and not formally named “expeditionary.” The French sent a Middle Eastern Détachement français de Palestine in 1917 (later termed the Détachement français en Palestine et Syrie). Toward the end of the war, there were several intervention forces informally referred to as expeditionary, but never formally so designated, such as the battalion or regiment-sized “Dunsterforce” and “Malleson Mission” in the Caspian Sea region. The Newfoundland Regiment was formed to serve with the British army, but never termed “expeditionary.” Perhaps the most glaring inconsistency was that of the Australians. In August 1914, the commanding general of the new Australian force declaimed any use of the term “expeditionary,” which

4  A. BEYERCHEN

was being applied to the smaller force heading into the South Pacific. “It’s not an expedition,” he proclaimed, so the initial Australian Division became the first of five infantry and two cavalry divisions sent abroad as part of the “Australian Imperial Force.”5 The French did not use “expeditionary” to describe the forces they drew to France from their colonies, whether from Algeria (which formally constituted three Departments of France and whose soldiers formed the major part of the French army’s strategic reserve), Morocco, Tunisia, West Africa, Madagascar, or even Indochina. None of the German army or other Central Powers’ forces was designated as expeditionary, and, more to the point, none has been viewed in the literature on the War as expeditionary. However, we show how several specific German and Turkish forces could—and should—be understood as in expeditionary mode. Given that the designation “expeditionary force” was widely used, it is surprising that it was not uniformly applied at the time and still remains taken for granted without serious examination. For example, the term even today is seen as so unproblematic that neither the Cassell’s World History of Warfare (2002) nor the Oxford Companion to Military History (2001; online 2004) has an entry for “expeditionary force.” The Encyclopedia Britannica of the time had no entry for “expedition,” much less “expeditionary force.” The Oxford English Dictionary has specified in successive editions that an expedition is “a sending or setting forth with martial intentions; a warlike enterprise,” but has had no entry for “expeditionary force” as such. Today’s online OED entries for “expedition” further indicate that the connotations of a sense of “speed” and “purpose” remain.6 There are many reasons for sending forth an expedition, but a limited set of purposes for making military force a determining characteristic of one. The first two of these were well established in recent precedent, namely a relief expedition to reach an endangered party or a punitive expedition to punish an opponent for perceived unacceptable behavior. There was little use of this terminology in the Great War, with the most prominent example that of the Austrians in 1916 mounting the Trentino Offensive as a Strafexpedition against the Italians for coming into the War on the side of the Allies when their prewar alliance had called for them to either join Austria-Hungary and Germany or at least remain neutral.7 From the German point of view, the Allied forces stationed along the Rhine in the postwar period looked much like a punitive expedition without the name. Another reason for an expeditionary

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 

5

force was to conquer, occupy, and acquire territory, populations, and resources with intent to hold them by military means over an extended period. This was one of the essential features of late-nineteenth-century colonialism in Africa. The several expeditionary forces on the continent were important components of the War and generated major stresses and changes, with over two million Africans pulled into service of the European armies (200,000 of whom are estimated to have died). “Never before in the history of Africa had manpower been mobilized on such a scale,” Hew Strachan has written.8 Yet he has argued that the fighting there “bore more relationship to the nineteenth-century campaigns of colonial conquest than they did to the Great War itself.”9 With limited resources we have decided to leave that story to other researchers.

What Was an Expeditionary Force in the Great War? Our focus in this volume is instead on expeditionary forces whose mission was to help an ally, for any one or combination of reasons. One was loyalty stemming from tradition and kinship, a strong factor in the immediate Canadian response to the outbreak of war (some 65% of the enlisted ranks in the over 35,000 men of the first contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force were born in the British Isles).10 A second emerged from loyalty and commitment through legal, cultural, and military ties, which characterized the Dominion forces of the British Empire in general, but also the French colonial response. Another was the sending of an expeditionary force out of self-interest to avoid future threats posed by the enemy of one’s ally, as was the case with the BEF itself—and could be argued was the case in the various Allied interventions in Russia intended first to keep Russia in the War and then to counter the rise of the Bolsheviks. A fourth reason to send an expeditionary force was unconcealed self-interest to shore up a position in an alliance or establish the basis for later gains with an ally. The Russians wanted to show solidarity and cement their mutual commitment with the French, the Portuguese with the British, and the Turks with the Germans. And a fifth was more about protecting commercial and political influence and options, which characterized the underlying rationale for sending the AEF to Europe, placing German forces in Turkey, sending French troops to Palestine or dispatching Japanese troops to China.11 While these are some of the reasons for the many expeditionary forces sent forth in the Great War, others could be adduced and reasons were not mutually

6  A. BEYERCHEN

exclusive. One measure of the quality and significance of political actions, after all, is how many purposes they fulfill at the one time. A basic decision in studying expeditionary forces in the First World War is whether to abide by the military titles of units at the time or by the experiences of the troops sent to fight abroad. Given the inconsistent usage, there is a tension between privileging the official designations of expeditionary forces versus the experience of soldiers and others (such as laborers or nurses) regardless of how they were designated. We consider both, but have opted primarily for the latter, which means we must call into question the usage and meaning of the term when it does not conform to the experiences of those involved. We propose a simple, straightforward definition of “expeditionary force” in the First World War, namely, “a military force sent to fight temporarily in a foreign land.” (For reasons that will become clear below, a key element of our definition is the word “temporarily.”) By “military force” we mean soldiers and others organized as soldiers. There certainly have been naval expeditions, but during the War naval vessels served expeditionary purposes primarily by embarking, transporting, protecting, landing, or retrieving ground troops (we take marines as ground forces in this context). There were actually on the order of thirty distinct sets of formally designated “expeditionary” forces and by our definition many others that acted as such without the designation. (See the provisional list in Appendix) Most were deployed around the periphery of the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Given the physical dislocation of millions of human beings in the expeditionary mode, issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and religion were of course suffused throughout the phenomenon.12 The Belgians, for all their desperation, did not deploy their Force publique from the Congo to Europe, because they were concerned that the status of whites might be jeopardized if black soldiers were to be ordered to kill white ones—and also because they wanted to maintain or enlarge their colonial holdings at the expense of Germans in the face of British rivalry in Africa.13 The British allowed only Indian troops, particularly from the “martial races,” to fight in Europe out of much the same concern for relations among races and ethnic groups. The British West Indies Regiment, for instance, was relegated to labor duty. There were 30,000 whites in the South African Overseas Expeditionary Force, but the 21,000 members of the South African Native Labor Corps in France served in the auxiliary labor and horse transport contingents. (One of

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 

7

the greatest losses of life of transported troops on the high seas during the War was a vessel carrying some of these labor troops.)14 Even then, there was concern among many South African whites that the experience in France would lead returning blacks to expect equality upon return and the strict segregation of the South African labor troops restricted where they could be assigned.15 Gender issues were unavoidable, as men lived together for sustained periods in homosocial environments and relations between the millions of mostly fit young men and the women they encountered behind the lines were bound to be a complex problem for authorities trying to keep them apart for purposes of unit discipline and sexual hygiene. Class also played a large role: labor battalions were primarily drawn from the lower classes of indigenous peoples in the colonies; even if men of color from the lower or middle classes were willing to fight they were usually neither trained nor given the opportunity to carry weapons. Amid their own desperation and true to their own traditions, the French had fewer qualms about deploying men of other races and religions from colonies in Africa or Asia against the Germans, although there were some reservations about sending them against the Turks.16 The Russians likewise used troops from the entire Empire on the Eastern Front, although the expeditionary forces they sent to the Western and Balkan Fronts were ethnically European. The Germans encouraged the Ottoman Sultan to declare holy war against Great Britain, France, Russia, and Serbia, and throughout the War entertained the notion that Muslim prisoners of war (from both the western and eastern fronts) kept at the Half Moon Camp south of Berlin would at some point aid in jihad.17 Such categorizations and prejudices certainly did not characterize only the minds of political figures, generals, or others in leadership positions as expeditionary forces were formed. And a major consideration was that, on the ground in a foreign land, the need to deal with cultural dissonance and the challenges to mental maps of every kind was a constant among most soldiers up and down the ranks in every expeditionary force—as it was among civilians who encountered them. Cultural clashes, exchanges, accommodations or impasses are an inherent reality when troops are sent to a foreign land. What distinguished the experiences of those sent to fight in a foreign land from those who fought in the homeland? The key differences in kind were absolutely fundamental, namely the language and customs of a foreign country and dislocation from the homeland. Culture created manifold divides and heightened expeditionary force members’

8  A. BEYERCHEN

awareness of difference and the Other both near and away from the battlefield. This is what makes a cultural approach to the subject quite productive, as will be seen in the chapters in this volume. The scale and demands of combat meant that these forces often needed to coordinate and cooperate under life and death situations with military units from another country, whose troops spoke other languages, used other equipment, experienced other forms of training and procedures, and observed other rituals, customs or beliefs. Behind the front, intermittent interactions with civilians required coping with challenges of communication in handling housing, food, transportation, recreation, and other aspects of daily life. Distance affected two of the most crucial aspects of the life of a soldier while not in combat, leave and mail. Even when men in most expeditionary units could obtain leave, they usually could not receive enough time or priority (except for some of the officers) to journey home to friends and family. Military authorities strove in most cases to deliver mail expeditiously (no pun intended), but aside from the BEF a letter took at least a week to get to its destination in good circumstances, so that communication with home took a minimum of two to three weeks, and more often than not, a full month or more. (All this presumes the censors allowed the missive to pass.)18 Soldiers needed to accommodate themselves beyond the military environment to the local unfamiliar—whether attractive or unwelcome. Cultural dissonance and redrawing of mental maps were thus endemic aspects of expeditionary activity. But the basic phases of experience were largely comparable in kind— mobilization, some degree of homogenizing differences during training, journey to the war zone and front, deployment and combat, life behind the lines, recruitment, and replacement as the war progressed, communication with home, redeployment or demobilization at the conclusion of the War, adjustment upon return home, and memory and memorialization. Belgian, French, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, or Ottoman soldiers who fought on the soil of their homeland went through all these experiences in the same succession. We should also not underestimate how greatly soldiers defending the homeland had to adjust to diversity among their comrades from different stations in life or geographical backgrounds. Linguistic barriers among dialects spoken in the homeland could be quite marked. Many men would not have known the villages, towns, or even cities they might be able to visit. Correspondence with home was likely to be quicker or easier for the soldier fighting in the

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 

9

homeland, and leave offered the prospect of seeing families or civilian friends, yet the life of a soldier in war usually causes alienation from those who have not been subjected to similar boundaries imposed by training, hierarchy, and standardization, much less the stresses and trauma of combat. The impact of new forms of killing and maiming were just as unimaginable for the non-expeditionary soldiers as for those fighting abroad. Treatment in a medical ward by persons perceived as familiar or from the homeland was more likely for those fighting closer to home, and being attended by someone perceived as one’s own kind was no small thing. However, efforts were usually made to provide such “home” experiences for those in an expeditionary force, particularly when it came to nurses.19 We must also consider how unsettling it could be for expeditionary soldiers to be stationed behind the lines in a given soldier’s homeland. In every category, it is possible to point to experiences for the soldier fighting on the home front that were comparable in kind to those fighting in an expeditionary mode. Soldiers were soldiers, wherever they were posted and sent into war. We should draw distinctions, but at the same time be careful to fetishize neither the expeditionary soldier nor his experience. The serious distinctions would seem to lie primarily in degree rather than kind, and the three crucial amplifying factors were the foreignness of language and culture and physical distance from the soldier’s home community. A soldier’s life was quite physical and tactile; proximity to loved ones and familiar places did matter. One way to deal with the unfamiliar situations soldiers encountered was for them to moderate the degree of unfamiliarity by denying its importance. The simplest form of denial was rejection of the foreign Other by thinking in stereotypes, that is, by imposing familiar perceptions upon unfamiliar experiences.20 Linguistic confusion may have further intensified the resort to stereotypes, whether or not interpreters were available.21 Soldiers tended to reinforce each other’s perceptions by remaining with other members of their unit as much as possible. Of course, the foreign sights, smells and sounds could not be entirely buffered by the hierarchy and cohesion of the unit. The landscape or, in particular, for those who traveled overseas, the ocean, could not be cordoned off. Battalions or regiments play a ubiquitous role across the essays in this volume, for these fundamental military units were of particular importance to the expeditionary experience. In World War I, the complement of troops in an infantry battalion ranged widely among different armies,

10  A. BEYERCHEN

but generally was between 600 and 1000 men in peacetime (a regiment could be the same size, but typically was larger and comprised a number of battalions). This figure could dwindle considerably in the field, even with replacements. Certainly, expeditionary troops found comradeship and unit cohesion involving smaller numbers of personnel who became the soldier’s “brothers,” as did soldiers fighting in their homeland. But, as Desmond Morton so aptly put it, a battalion, “was like a small town, full of remembered faces, shared experiences, and old friends and enemies,” which mattered all the more, because the soldier’s immediate comrades, his “real family,” could vanish with “devastating speed in the course of a battle.”22 A battalion thus provided something of a buffer against the annihilation of relationships and memories in war. The greater the distance from the homeland and the resulting cultural dissonance, the more important this familiar small town became. Soldiers also had larger identities related to their own homelands that could be accentuated while serving in a foreign land, but the battalion or regiment constituted the basic unit of recruitment in the homeland and assignment abroad. Its members often came from the same village, town, city, or region and therefore spoke the same or similar dialects and had something at home in common. Regiments, particularly those British (and thus Dominion) units pre-existing the War, usually had their own historical identity or tradition and distinctive insignia worn by their soldiers.23 A battalion or regiment performed many other functions. It was the key unit for administration and supply and—perhaps most crucially— transportation overseas or movement into danger toward the front. A single ship or train could not carry an entire division of 10,000 soldiers, but it could hold one or more battalions or regiments. Even at the front, the battalion still had some organic support staff such as medical, signals, or clerical personnel who kept records, posted mail, and tracked transfers and pay of individual soldiers. Also in the field, hot food usually came from the battalion kitchen. These organizational matters were largely the same for expeditionary and non-expeditionary forces. At issue is a matter of degree. The battalion as a familiar home somewhat shielded all soldiers against the unfamiliar, but this was particularly important for an expeditionary soldier who perforce had to cope with unfamiliarity amplified. Furthermore, the need for transport to a foreign land accentuated the role of these units for expeditionary forces, both at the time and in the archival records and other accounts of their activities.

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11

It is also important to realize that the expeditionary experience remained, for all its importance in making the conflict a world war, a minority experience. Exactly how many men were in that minority is partially a matter of definition and designation. Governments and military leaders of the belligerent country applied the term “expeditionary” or not. Yet the experiences of soldiers in units deemed “expeditionary” by one country might be much the same as experiences of soldiers in another country’s forces not carrying that term. There are many basic questions about exactly which personnel constituted “expeditionary forces.” One of the first is about the labor battalions that undergirded the combat forces. These are different from the support troops, such as railroad or chemical, ordnance or engineering, medical (including veterinary), or communications personnel (such as wireless operators or even the American “Hello Girls”), who worked behind front line troops and are widely recognized as part of expeditionary forces.24 Labor battalions have remained largely in the shadows of our consciousness of the War. Their members included stevedores and porters, truck drivers, wagon drivers, farriers, cooks, barbers, tailors, and all sorts of common laborers. The last helped stockpile and bring up supplies, clear forests, lay down roads, construct or rebuild structures, dig trenches, reinter the dead, and perform any other work as needed. They dealt with the same issues of language, culture, and distance as combat forces. Labor troops wore uniforms and were organized into battalion formations under military command and discipline—they were not civilians, and if a group of them refused orders to work, unlike civilian foreign workers they were not on strike, they were engaged in mutiny. They were referred to as “troops,” and at times came under fire, taking casualties when working close to the front lines. They suffered and died from many of the same enteric and other diseases as combat troops away from home. (This was a war in which, as usual until the advent of antibiotics and due in part to the impact of the influenza pandemic, more soldiers died of disease than combat wounds.) The fact that they were often (though not exclusively) from a lower class within the country that recruited and sent them, and were therefore less likely to be literate and generate written records, perhaps accounts for the tendency to ignore their presence in most later studies.25 Unlike combat troops, they were not specifically trained or expected to fight, but they were essential to the success of those who were—and sometimes they had to defend themselves when caught up in action at the front. Some of these troops

12  A. BEYERCHEN

were deployed among industrial workers, making it difficult to isolate them from the civilian population of fellow workers, many of whom were women.26 Their numbers alone indicated something of their necessity: for example, the Indian Army sent over 138,000 troops to the Western Front; some 49,000 of these troops were non-combatant personnel. Of the 675,000 Indians of Expeditionary Force D in Mesopotamia, over 348,000 were in this category.27 Labor troops play almost no role in military histories of the War, but they not only sometimes ended up in battle, their roles behind the lines were critical enough that the War could not have been fought as it was without them. They are part of the broad category of logistics in the First World War just beginning to garner the attention it deserves. We would like to see them included more readily within the rubric of “expeditionary forces” and hope that much more attention will be given to them.28 Another question regards the status of troops that journeyed from the French colonies. In particular, one cannot within the parlance of the day claim that Algerians were brought “to France,” since Algeria at that time constituted three Departments of the country. With its French citizens totaling nearly 110,000 troops (chasseurs d’Afrique, tirailleurs, and Zouaves, etc., some 33,000 of whom were Muslim), Algeria provided the strategic reserve for the Army of France, and in 1912 conscription had been introduced to help meet the demographic shortfall vis-à-vis the Germans. The French later increased recruitment of soldiers from the indigenous population and conscripted or hired more than 100,000 to work in French industry.29 France brought hundreds of thousands of other troops from the colonies, including elsewhere in North Africa, West Africa, Madagascar, and Vietnam (the latter often called by English speakers “Annamites” after the major northern province, Annam).30 The experiences of these soldiers and laborers were quite comparable to those of soldiers and laborers in the expeditionary forces of other lands, yet that designation was not used. The French were not afraid to name a Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient for the Dardanelles campaign, incorporating both French colonial settlers and West African soldiers. Yet they did not commonly use the term. Perhaps the drawing of forces “home to the mother country,” as opposed to “sending” them elsewhere, could partially account for this difference in nomenclature. However, we conclude that these soldiers’ experiences justify viewing them as “expeditionary.” A third question that arises concerns the status of advisors and liaison personnel sent on journeys to foreign lands. They went through

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 

13

all the stages noted above, but usually were part of groups smaller than battalions. One case in point is that of the German Military Mission in the Ottoman Empire. Many German commanders, staff officers and combat units served within the Ottoman Empire during the War. The list of German field commanders is long and distinguished, from formerly retired but highly regarded Colmar Baron von der Goltz in Mesopotamia, to Otto Liman von Sanders at Gallipoli, to former Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn in Palestine. Altogether, approximately 25,000 German military personnel were sent to the Ottoman Empire, of whom some 800 served in the Ottoman Army. Most of the Germans came in the second half of the War as part of the Asienkorps, but they were not designated as “expeditionary.” Neither were the railway, munitions, and other specialists. We believe these military and associated “mission” personnel should be included when examining “expeditionary forces” in the First World War. A fourth, perhaps surprising, issue is whether practically the entire German army was also in an expeditionary mode. Given the OED definitions of expedition and the common sense of an expeditionary force, namely “a military force dispatched to fight in a foreign country,”31 the Germans would seem to qualify. Troops sent deep into Russia or into the Balkans were clearly far from home. Their accounts are replete with observations of cultural and social differences and the level of civilization they encountered.32 Troops sent to the Alpine villages of northern Italy or the battered fields of Galicia or even to the carnage of France and Belgium were on foreign soil and often among peoples who spoke other languages and had other customs. It was a fact that the German soldiers arrived in their deployment areas relatively quickly, could experience hospitalization and convalescence in the home country, and corresponded relatively readily with family. But if the BEF was “expeditionary” only a few score miles from the homeland, then why were not the German forces? No one would want to argue that the German expeditionary experience on the Western Front was fully comparable to that of the Indian or Senegalese or even American troops. But it is reasonable to ask why the experience of Germans in foreign lands does not seem to penetrate our consciousness as “expeditionary.” Our rejection of the Germans as expeditionary soldiers arises from the nature of the deployment of German troops, namely that they were not sent to fight “temporarily” in a foreign land. One might argue that their initial surge into foreign territory was expeditionary, but against this is

14  A. BEYERCHEN

that the German strategic plan for war required the armies to defeat the French and immediately establish military occupation in France, while the main force turned toward the eastern front.33 In many areas (including Belgium and the Polish lands taken from Russia) the military quickly came to serve purposes practically indistinguishable from colonization.34 This swift transition from a mission of movement at the outset to something approaching permanence was a major feature of the German war effort. Thus our position is that the temporal feature of the purpose of an expeditionary force matters significantly when examining the deployment of such troops in the First World War. If so, then we must still deal with the exceptions: German troops far from home that were characteristic for forces in an expeditionary mode, but which were never given the designation applied so readily to Allied forces.35

Chapters and Themes Many of the individual expeditionary forces mentioned above, particularly those of the BEF, the Dominion countries of Australia, Canada and India, and the AEF, have been examined in detail by others.36 There are also a number of good collections of essays on the social and cultural ramifications of bringing troops from other parts of colonial empires to the War.37 Although we do not neglect the forces and issues already in the literature, those works were not designed to provoke a discussion of the expeditionary forces phenomenon in its own right. It is our goal in these chapters to do so. In the process, we offer a number of essays on the German and Ottoman dimensions of the expeditionary experience, which are underrepresented elsewhere. The next three chapters deal with contextual issues affecting expeditionary force members. In Chapter 2, Richard S. Fogarty weighs how religion affected the composition of the French Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient, which was sent to the Dardanelles in 1915, and how African American AEF soldiers serving in France were viewed by the French. More than half of the 500,000 French colonial troops deployed on First World War battlefields were Muslims, and accommodating the beliefs and customs of these soldiers to maintain their loyalty, especially among those sent to fight Muslim Turks, was perceived (in fact, wrongly) as essential. The appearance in France of thousands of men of color from the colonies, and then thousands more in the AEF, raised further issues of race and gender as these men could not be prevented

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 

15

from mingling with the local populations behind the lines. The integration of black American combat units into the French Army highlighted the differences between the claims of French egalitarianism and American segregation, with lasting consequences for French society during and after the War. For wounded soldiers to be treated by someone coming from home was a comfort and confirmation of the purpose of fighting, a topic taken up by Alison Fell in Chapter 3. Nurses often saw themselves as fulfilling an implicit social contract of connection between soldiers and the homeland. Diaries, letters, memoirs and other writings both in the wartime and postwar waves of publications offer a sense of the nurse as “witness” to the sacrifices of soldiers. They also allow her to demonstrate the complex interactions of nurses and patients in multiple expeditionary situations on different fronts. In particular, among both Allied and German nurses away from home, ambiguities of tending enemy wounded generated moral tensions and pressed the need for dispassionate behavior— or created a psychological journey from treating the “enemy” to simply compassionately confronting a shattered human body. Whether viewed as a proxy for a homeland domestic space or a militarized theater of care, the tension between nurses as “neutral caregivers” and “mobilized non-combatants” could never be fully resolved. Lisa Todd in Chapter 4 addresses sexual encounters between soldiers and civilians that became frequent and sustained as the German Army shifted almost immediately from expedition/invasion to occupation/ colonization. Military commanders worried little about the distinctions between consensual sex and sexualized violence, although observers on the Home Front were quite concerned about the former. The tendency among all German authorities was to equate “foreignness,” female sexual promiscuity and venereal disease as threats to military efficiency. Women in occupied territory who could infect soldiers and remove them from the fighting for medical treatment were seen as an enemy lurking behind the lines. Even worse, they could send the infections homeward with soldiers on leave. This chapter discusses both the issues raised by soldier–civilian sexual liaisons away from the homeland, and the efforts by military and civilian authorities to deal with them. Similar issues of liaison and its liabilities appear among our other chapters, but one indication the Germans were not in expeditionary mode is that they perceived local women not only as carriers of disease, but also as inherent threats of espionage and sabotage.

16  A. BEYERCHEN

The next five chapters deal with the direct expeditionary experience from distinct perspectives. In Chapter 5, Kimloan Vu-Hill examines the experiences of the nineteen battalions of Vietnamese raised among the forces brought from Indochina to France, focusing primarily on the four of which were combat units, while others served either in direct support often under fire or farther back in industry. She argues that the vast majority of the Vietnamese, despite claims to the contrary by anticolonialist writers, were to varying degrees volunteers. The combat and front line labor troops saw serious action on the Western front (in battles such as Verdun and Chemin des Dames) or in Macedonia. Some were convinced to stay beyond the armistice and make up for the French loss of manpower; others brought back with them French war brides. When most returned home with transformed expectations, they faced poor compensation and frequent disappointment, generating a reservoir of seasoned recruits for the anti-colonial struggle. In Chapter 6, Justin Fantauzzo and Robert L. Nelson show that whether German, French or British, troops on the Macedonian Front experienced a world culturally far distant from their homeland. Not only were the local inhabitants and the built environment decidedly alien, but also the mixings with foreign troops on their own side of the front were often unexpected and unsettling. Soldiers strained to explain all this to themselves, each other and their loved ones back home. Soldiers’ newspapers, memoirs, and letters offer windows into the disorientation that seemed the single greatest consistency across all the expeditionary forces. Chris Kempshall’s chapter examines the relations and expectations between leaders and common soldiers of the different expeditionary forces within the Entente alliance between 1914 and 1918. By examining how the men of different countries interacted with each other and with the soldiers of France, the power and hierarchical structures within which they existed and which they internalized are highlighted. These structures corresponded to contemporary thinking regarding Great Power politics and, as a result, would see certain nationalities welcomed (such as the Americans), others treated with ambivalence (such as the Russians), while others would be shunned (such as the Portuguese). Chapter 8 by Gavin Wiens investigates the 19,000-man German expedition (termed a “Delegation” by the Germans) to the Caucasus that set out in the summer of 1918, which has been condemned by many later observers as a sign of unbridled hubris. Regardless of the motivation of

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 

17

building on what the High Command expected would be a successful final offensive on the Western Front, he finds that the command and composition of the force reflected long-standing internal political considerations and tensions within the German army. Once on the ground, the German mission was hindered not only by increasing logistical impossibilities, but also by insurmountable political complications, including with its ostensible Turkish allies. His examination highlights the logistical and political underpinnings upon which the success of any expeditionary force inherently depends. The account of the quarrelsome and fiercely independent German Freikorps Baltic expedition at the conclusion of the War forms the subject of Chapter 9 by Victoria Bucholtz. Caught between the conflicting requirements of the November 1918, armistice both to disband the German army and at the same time militarily confront the Bolsheviks and limit their advance, the struggling new government called up a temporary, expeditionary force of volunteers. This chapter examines some of the major difficulties that can ensnarl political–military coordination for expeditionary forces once deployed. In particular, commanders in the field, reacting to the developments of a campaign, may interpret local circumstances quite differently than their domestic political leaders. The Free Corps can be viewed both as a complement to the international set of interventions against the Bolsheviks that began during the War and an example of an expeditionary force in extremis. The next two chapters look at the expeditionary experience through memory and memorialization. In Chapter 10, Emre Sencer looks at the Ottoman force sent to the Eastern Front in Galicia and the German advising mission and Asienkorps campaign in the Middle East, which have been overshadowed by the literature on other fronts. Postwar memoirs and periodicals generated by the participants reveal interesting insights into the ways Germans and Turks envisioned expeditions and their respective roles in them. The Ottomans had not sent troops as far west as Galicia in centuries and their goal was to show their solidarity with (and maintain the commitment from) their more powerful ally. Germans saw their military assistance to the Turks in the larger framework of their commercial and global conflict with the British Empire. The memories as expressed display from each side a kind of exoticism and even nostalgia for the expeditionary experience, and their accounts of matters as disparate as women, infrastructure, and fighting abilities make for some surprising reading.

18  A. BEYERCHEN

Natasha Silk concerns herself in Chapter 11 with the fact that leaving their fallen comrades behind in a foreign field was an added loss for ­veterans of the British and Dominion expeditionary forces. Mourning and the desires for memorialization among civilians on the Home Front have been well researched. Less well known, however, are the expressions of grief among the soldiers themselves. Documents, later accounts, soldier memorials and cemeteries make one common element stand out—the sacredness of the battlefield itself. For some veterans the bond between the dead and the living remained strong despite physical distance, while for others distance offered a way to leave the tragedy of sacrifice behind. The memorial at St. Julien to the Canadian dead of the Second Battle of Ypres, known colloquially as The Brooding Soldier, is a telling case study of the veterans’ representation of their sacrifices. Looking through these chapters, there are many more themes that could be examined than we can possibly address in this volume. In time, someone will produce a comparative study of the entire phenomenon. In the meanwhile, in addition to the complexities embedded in the concept of “expeditionary forces,” there are four overarching themes on which we would like to elaborate in the conclusion, Chapter 12. One is the particularly demanding role of logistics (recruitment and replacement, transport and supply) for any force projected into a foreign land. This is threaded throughout the chapters, but deserves to be pulled together and integrated with some of the literature on the subject. Another is the cultural dimension of the greater disorientation and dissonance faced by soldiers fighting in a foreign land than in their homeland. The distinctions involving cultural difference, we argue, were a matter more of degree than of kind. The linguistic and cultural difficulties faced by French soldiers speaking different dialects and coming from different regions to the western front may have been significant, but for French soldiers dealing with foreigners on the Salonika front the issues were clearly much more pronounced. The role of language in encounters with the “Other” and exposure to an unfamiliar culture is a constant, salient point. How women were viewed was also culturally filtered and needs to be seen for the powerful force it was. Cultural difference is implicit in all the chapters, and explicit in most. A third unifying theme is the crucial political importance of the rationale for sending soldiers to a foreign land and of ensuring their reliability. This is inextricably tied to the reliability of soldiers serving away from home. Soldiers defending the homeland needed little additional

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19

rationale for fighting, although even they needed continual assurance that the fight was worthwhile (the Russian army’s collapse is a case in point). But soldiers sent outside the homeland need an effective rationale to justify their dislocation and sacrifices away from the homeland. The rationale for sacrifice also plays a role in the political and social legacies in the postwar period. A fourth major theme is the role of memories of fighting in a foreign land, whether they are of sacrifice or of exoticism. The sharpness or distance in memory from either fallen comrades or experiences in a foreign land always plays a role in the legacies of expeditionary experiences. Memories and memorialization are part of the larger category of legacies, and thus tied closely to the theme of rationale for sacrifice. Nearing the end of the centenary observation of the First World War, we offer this volume in a spirit of discussion and exploration of the concept, conduct, and consequences of expeditionary forces. We seek to propose ideas rather than impose them; we seek not to win a debate or end a discussion, but to open a conversation on a topic we find surprisingly under-researched. The chapters we offer are only an entrée into possible topics concerning the expeditionary experience in the Great War. We suggest, however, that they can introduce insight into some of the manifold issues and themes presented by the topic of “expeditionary forces.” We hope the repercussions of our work might extend discussion of our themes into other wars past and into current experience.

Notes



1. Oxford English Dictionary, 14 vols., (1978), s.v. “expedition.” 2. One should keep in mind that the US Marines constituted a small, professional expeditionary force whether called that or not. 3. See K. W. Mitchinson, England’s Last Hope: The Territorial Force, 1908– 1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 4.  See George H. Cassar, Kitchener’s War: British Strategy from 1914 to 1916 (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2004), 31–35; see also Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–1916 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). 5. C. E. W. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. 1, The Story of ANZAC from the Outbreak of the War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign, May 4, 1915. 11th ed., 1941 (Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson Ltd., 1921–1942), Chap. 2, 36, https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/awm-media/collection/

20  A. BEYERCHEN RCDIG1069875/document/5519349.PDF. Earlier, on August 3, 1914, the Prime Minister had offered to the British government “an expeditionary force of 20,000 men” to be sent to any destination needed. Bean, Official History, 28–29. 6.  Oxford English Dictionary. The entry is essentially unchanged in the Second Edition (1989). In today’s Oxford English Dictionary online, Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.oed.com/, a side note elaborates, “This entry has not been fully updated (first published 1894).” 7. Holger Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), 205; Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915–1919 (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 163. 8. Hew Strachan, The First World War in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 3. 9. Strachan, War in Africa, 12. 10. A. Fortescue Duguid, Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War, General Series, Vol. 1: From the Outbreak of War to the Formation of the Canadian Corps, August 1914 to September 1915 (Ottawa: J. O. Patenaude, 1938), 50; Andrew Iarocci, Shoestring Soldiers: The First Canadian Division at War, 1914–1915 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 19. 11.  The Japanese rationale for seizing the German colonial holdings at Tsingtao (Qingdao) and expanding Japanese Presence on the Continent grew more colonial the longer Japan had troops there. See Frederick Dickinson, War and National Reinvention: Japan and the Great War, 1914–1919 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 5; Charles Stephenson, The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914 (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword, 2017), 64; see also James William Morely, The Japanese Thrust into Siberia, 1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 30–45. 12. Two good, recent collections from this perspective are Santanu Das, ed., Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, eds., Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 13. Strachan, War in Africa, 112–13 and 152–53; Edward Paice, World War I in Africa (New York: Pegasus, 2008), 172–75. See also, “Force Publique,” 1914/1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, Accessed March 15, 2019, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/force_publique. 14. Due to a collision, the SS Mendi sank on February 21, 1917, with the loss of over six hundred black South African Native Labour Corps members,

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 













21

several white NCOs and 31 of the ship’s crew. See John Starling and Ivor Lee, No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour During the First World War (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Spellmount, 1914), 228–31. 15. Starling and Lee, No Labour, 225, 235. 16. Richard Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). They also accepted black troops from the AEF. See Fogarty chapter in this volume. 17.  Heather Jones, “Imperial Captivities: Colonial Prisoners of War in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918,” in Das, Race, 175–93. 18. See the contemporary official report on procedures of censorship of soldiers’ mail in Appendix IV of David Omissi, ed., Indian Voices in the Great War (Gurgaon, India and New York: Penguin/Viking, 1999), 369–72. 19. See Fell chapter in this volume. At times, being treated by someone from another culture could be quite welcome. See letters by wounded soldiers in Omissi, Indian Voices, especially letter 24. 20. See Fantauzzo and Nelson chapter in this volume. This was common not just among soldiers, of course. See Alison S. Fell, “Nursing the Other: The Representation of Colonial Troops in French and British First World War Nursing Memoirs,” in Das, Race, 158–74. 21. The great importance of dealing with language confusion and barriers in expeditionary and coalition warfare should not be underestimated. See the essays in Julian Walker and Christophe Declercq, eds., Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 22. Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993), 77. 23. See David French, Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People c. 1870–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 24. Elizabeth Cobbs, The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). Doctors were often assigned military officer ranks, but nurses were not. Only the nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps in the First World War were actually in the military per se. See Cynthia Toman, Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Corps (Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2016). 25. This makes visual materials all the more effective in examining soldiers’ and laborers’ presence and contribution to the war, a fact put to particularly good use by Fell, “Nursing the Other.” See also the photographs of soldiers and laborers presented by Santanu Das, Indian Troops in Europe, 1914–1918 (Ahmedabad, India: Mapin Publishing, 2015; first published

22  A. BEYERCHEN











in English and French in Paris by Éditions Gallimard, 2014); and a similar collection by Vedica Kant, ‘If I Die Here, Who Will Remember Me?’ India and the First World War (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2014). 26. Kimloan Vu-Hill, “Sacrifices, Sex, Race: Vietnamese Experiences in the First World War,” in Das, Race, 53–69. 27. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War, 1914–1920 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1922), 777. It is useful to note that, for the Indian Army, Mesopotamia was the major theater of the War. Santanu Das has highlighted the complexity and nuance of “lateral contact” among colonial Indian troops and Ottoman subjects in India, Empire and First World War Culture: Writings, Images, and Songs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 239–73. 28. Starling and Lee, No Labour, No Battle, deal only with labor in British service, but we agree wholeheartedly with the thesis presented by their book’s title. In the case of the AEF, some 200,000 African American troops were sent to France as part of the US Army, with approximately 160,000 serving as laborers. Only 40,000 were assigned to two combat divisions, one of whose regiments were parceled out among divisions of the French army, where they fought with distinction. The black troops constituted one tenth of the AEF, but one third of the AEF laboring troops. Jennifer D. Keene, World War I: The American Soldier Experience (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 95–105. 29. Ian F. W. Beckett, The Great War, 2nd ed. (Harlow: Pearson Longman 2007), 96. 30. In the chapter in this volume, Kimloan Vu-Hill examines the experiences of the men of Indochina in nineteen “infantry battalions” (Battalions de l’Infanterie Coloniale), four of which were combat and fifteen labor battalions. See also Kimloan Vu-Hill, Coolies into Rebels: Impact of World War I on French Indochina (Paris: les Indes Savant, 2011). 31.  “Expeditionary Force,” Wikipedia, accessed April 1, 2019, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_Force. 32. As vividly described by Steven Aschheim in Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800– 1932 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982); Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and the Fantauzzo and Nelson chapter in this volume. 33. Herwig, First World War, 45–50. 34.  See Jörg Leonhard, Pandora’s Box: A History of the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 148–53 and 252–63; Larry Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World

1  INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT AND THEMES 





23

War I (New York: New York University Press, 2004); Jesse Kaufman, Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); David Hamlin, Germany’s Empire in the East: Germans and Romania in an Era of Globalization and Total War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). On the German conduct of the War as an extension of colonial practices, see Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). For a somewhat contrary point of view, see Susanne Kuss, German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). 35. See the chapters by Bucholtz, Sencer and Wiens in this volume. 36. In addition to works noted above, The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War, the five-volume series published by Oxford University Press in South Melbourne, Australia between 2014 and 2016 provides a case in point. On India, also see George Morton-Jack, The Indian Army on the Western Front: India’s Expeditionary Force to France and Belgium in the First World War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Gordon Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–1915 (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Spellmount, 2015); Shrabani Basu, For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2015). On the AEF, also see David R. Woodward, The American Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 37. Alongside the collections edited by Santanu Das and by Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela noted above, one could add Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict, ed. Andrew Tait Jarboe and Richard S. Fogarty (London and New York: IB Tauris, 2014).

Bibliography Aschheim, Steven E. Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1932. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Basu, Shrabani. For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front. New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2015. Bean, C. E. W. Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. 1, The Story of ANZAC From the Outbreak of the War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign, May 4, 1915. 11th ed., 1941. Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson Ltd., 1921–1942. https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ awm-media/collection/RCDIG1069875/document/5519349.PDF.

24  A. BEYERCHEN Beckett, Ian F. W. The Great War. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007. Cassar, George H. Kitchener’s War: British Strategy from 1914 to 1916. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2004. The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War. 5 vols. South Melbourne and Australia: Oxford University Press, 2014–2016. Cobbs, Elizabeth. The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Cockfield, Jamie H. With Snow on Their Boots: The Tragic Odyssey of the Russia Expeditionary Force in France During World War I. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999. Corrigan, Gordon. Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–1915. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Spellmount, 2015. Das, Santanu. India, Empire and First World War Culture: Writings, Images, and Songs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Das, Santanu. Indian Troops in Europe, 1914–1918. Ahmedabad, India: Mapin Publishing, 2015. Das, Santanu, ed. Race, Empire and First World War Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Dickinson, Frederick. War and National Reinvention: Japan and the Great War, 1914–1919. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Duguid, A. Fortescue. Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War, General Series, Vol. 1: From the Outbreak of War to the Formation of the Canadian Corps, August 1914–September 1915. Ottawa: J. O. Patenaude, 1938. Fell, Alison S. “Nursing the Other: The Representation of Colonial Troops in French and British First World War Nursing Memoirs.” In Race, Empire and First World War Writing, edited by Santanu Das, 158–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Fogarty, Richard. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. “Force Publique.” 1914/1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Accessed March 15, 2019. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918online.net/article/force_publique. French, David. Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People c. 1870–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Gerwarth, Robert, and Erez Manela, eds. Empires at War, 1911–1923. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Hamlin, David. Germany’s Empire in the East: Germans and Romania in an Era of Globalization and Total War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Herwig, Holger. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918. London: Arnold, 1997.

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Hull, Isabel V. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Iarocci, Andrew. Shoestring Soldiers: The First Canadian Division at War, 1914– 1915. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Jarboe, Andrew Tait, and Richard S. Fogarty, eds. Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict. London: IB Tauris, 2014. Jones, Heather. “Imperial Captivities: Colonial Prisoners of War in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918.” In Race, Empire and First World War Writing, edited by Santanu Das, 175–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Kant, Vedica. ‘If I Die Here, Who Will Remember Me?’ India and the First World War. New Delhi: Roli Books, 2014. Kaufman, Jesse. Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Keene, Jennifer D. World War I: The American Soldier Experience. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Kuss, Susanne. German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Leonhard, Jörg. Pandora’s Box: A History of the First World War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel. War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Mitchinson, K. W. England’s Last Hope: The Territorial Force, 1908–1914. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Morely, James William. The Japanese Thrust into Siberia, 1918. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957. Morton, Desmond. When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993. Morton-Jack, George. The Indian Army on the Western Front: India’s Expeditionary Force to France and Belgium in the First World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Omissi, David, ed. Indian Voices in the Great War. Gurgaon, India: Penguin/ Viking, 1999. Oxford English Dictionary. 14 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. And 2nd ed. 20 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. https://www.oed.com/. Paice, Edward. World War I in Africa. New York: Pegasus, 2008. Simkins, Peter. Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–1916. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Starling, John, and Ivor Lee. No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour During the First World War. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Spellmount, 1914.

26  A. BEYERCHEN Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War, 1914– 1920. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1922. Stephenson, Charles. The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword, 2017. Strachan, Hew. The First World War in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Thompson, Mark. The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915– 1919. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Toman, Cynthia. Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Corps. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016. Vu-Hill, Kimloan. Coolies into Rebels: Impact of World War I on French Indochina. Paris: les Indes Savant, 2011. Vu-Hill, Kimloan. “Sacrifices, Sex, Race: Vietnamese Experiences in the First World War.” In Race, Empire and First World War Writing, edited by Santanu Das, 53–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Walker, Julian, and Christophe Declercq, eds. Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Woodward, David R. The American Army and the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Zuckerman, Larry. The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I. New York: New York University Press, 2004.

CHAPTER 2

A Tale of Two Expeditionary Forces: Religion and Race in the Dardanelles and France Richard S. Fogarty

Because the First World War was a global war of empires, religion and race were deeply implicated in the conflict. Racial and religious differences animated social, cultural, and political structures within single nation states and across empires and played a role in the deployment of expeditionary forces. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the histories of the French Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient (CEO), which took part in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915–1916, and the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), which served in France between 1917 and 1920. France and its colonial empire are central to these histories, as they are to so much of the general history of the Great War—France was among the original and major belligerents of the war, the decisive Western Front lay almost entirely within France, and the colonial empire mobilized along with the metropole from the opening weeks of the war. Broader themes in French culture are critical to these stories as well. French attitudes and policies toward Islam and Muslims, as

R. S. Fogarty (*)  History Department, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_2

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well as German and Ottoman efforts to make Islam one of the contested issues of the war, shaped the debate over sending French Muslim soldiers with the French expeditionary forces to the Dardanelles in 1915. French attitudes about race, people of color, and equality, as well as American attitudes and practices, provoked tensions in France after 1917 in relation to black soldiers of both the French army and the AEF. Ultimately, the stories of the CEO and the AEF demonstrate that the history of expeditionary forces during the First World War is made up of more than the military and political aspects of coalition warfare, and includes cultural attitudes that shaped the experience and significance of the expeditions on which these forces embarked.

Limited Expedition: North African Muslims and the Dardanelles Campaign During the Great War, the French army deployed some 500,000 colonial subjects as soldiers, known as troupes indigènes, on European battlefields. More than half of these men—many West African troops and nearly all North Africans (Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans)—were Muslim.1 In the minds of French political and military officials, this raised questions about colonial politics in the empire and international politics in the context of a global imperial war. All of these questions coalesced in 1915 in discussions about French participation in the invasion of the Ottoman Empire at the Dardanelles Straits, an operation that became known as the Gallipoli campaign. As French leaders contemplated which soldiers to contribute to the Franco-British operation, many wondered whether Muslim colonial subjects should be among French forces fighting against Muslim Ottomans in a Muslim land. In the end, fears based in internal colonial politics, prevailing French attitudes toward Islam and Muslims, and the broader geopolitical and imperial struggle over influence in the Muslim world decisively shaped the makeup of the CEO. Well before plans to form an expeditionary force for the Gallipoli campaign, French officials sought to craft policies and practices that would account for the presence of Muslims in the army and protect France’s interests in its colonies and in the open rivalry among the belligerents for influence in the Muslim world. The army enacted policies to respect Muslim burial rites, allow Muslim troops to observe holy days, and provide these troops with the services of religious figures, or imams.

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The aim was to help maintain morale and ensure loyalty. German and Ottoman propaganda sought to undermine morale and loyalty by attempting to enlist Muslim subjects of the British, French, and Russian empires in a “jihad” against their colonial rulers. A key component of these efforts was the attempt to convince North Africans to take up arms against, rather than for, their French colonial masters. French fears about these efforts, and about the reliability of North African Muslims, shaped policies beyond attempts to accommodate Muslim soldiers’ religious beliefs and practices. Most notably, fears among military, colonial, and political leaders prevented the deployment of North Africans to the Dardanelles to fight against fellow Muslims in the Ottoman army. Attitudes and policies toward Muslim soldiers varied according to their origins. In the eyes of French officials, Muslims from West Africa posed less of a problem than those from North Africa. Predominant ideas among French and European observers about West African Islam held that so-called islam noir was less fanatical, rigorous, and obsessed with purity of doctrine than North African Islam, which was inveterately hostile to Christianity, the West, and Western values.2 French military officials shared the view of colonial administrators that islam noir was “fundamentally more tractable and less of a threat” than the Islam of North Africa and the Middle East.3 Moreover, West Africans in the French army included both Muslims and animists (whom the French called fétichistes), so policies toward these soldiers had to account for diverse religious beliefs and practices.4 North Africans were, in the eyes of French officials, different. Their adherence to their faith allegedly rendered them inveterately hostile to colonial rule, while aligning them with the conservative orthodoxy of their coreligionists in the Middle East and central Asia, forming a pan-Islamic threat to the French empire and French geopolitical interests.5 Islam was a factor in shaping some policies toward West Africans, but in many respects Islam was the most important factor by far in shaping policy toward soldiers from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. One result of this was that the French army went to a great deal of trouble to appear solicitous of the religious beliefs of its North African Muslim soldiers. Policies on burial procedures, holy days, and imams, as well as the construction of mosques and the careful accommodation of dietary needs (no pork or wine, plenty of couscous, mint tea, and coffee), aimed at maintaining the morale of Muslims fighting for the French, but authorities worried about the loyalty of these soldiers as

30  R. S. FOGARTY

they faced the machinations and propaganda of the Germans and the Ottomans. These concerns were most revealing of the difficulties that prejudices against Islam created for the use of North African Muslims in the war effort, and resulted directly in the exclusion of North Africans from the Dardanelles campaign. The French army was aware that the Central Powers were showing their own solicitude for North Africans’ religious beliefs, particularly in a specially-built camp near Berlin for Muslim prisoners of war taken from French, British, and Russian forces.6 These men could practice their religion in the camp’s mosque, while also enduring continuous propaganda and pressure from German and Ottoman officials to change sides and fight against their colonial masters. The French government built its own mosques for soldiers in France, seeking to ensure their loyalty by demonstrating France’s respect for their faith. These rival efforts to win the hearts and minds of Muslim soldiers reflected a larger struggle for legitimacy in the Muslim world.7 Both sides in the war posed as the true guardians of Muslim interests: the Germans as allies of the Ottomans and the Sultan in Constantinople, and the French as protectors of an Islam hijacked and betrayed to serve German and Ottoman interests. From the opening months of the war, German efforts focused not only on turning prisoners of war into soldiers for the Central Powers, but also on provoking indiscipline and desertion among front line troops. French officials referred to this as “racolage,” or solicitation, a term which could refer, depending on the context, to the way military recruiters, salespeople, or prostitutes attracted clients.8 French authorities became increasingly worried after the Sultan declared jihad in November, explicitly characterizing opposition to the Entente powers as the duty of all Muslims. Even soldiers “who are the most indifferent to the political and religious point of view” appeared “anxious.”9 Some Tunisian soldiers said openly that they “often hesitated to fire on the Germans for fear of killing the friends of the Sultan of Constantinople.”10 Resident General Alapetite wrote in December 1914 that enemy propaganda was wreaking “fearsome ravages” among such men, “to whom it is said that the Commander of Believers forbids them to go and get themselves killed for the infidels.”11 Of the three North African colonies, Tunisia had the closest historical ties to the Ottoman Empire and Tunisians still recognized the Sultan in Istanbul as the spiritual leader of Islam. Morocco had never been under Ottoman rule and Moroccans did not

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consider the Ottoman Sultan as the head of Islam, but Germany had maintained a strong commercial and political presence there before the war. Algeria had weaker ties to either enemy power, but French officials feared the effect of calls to religious solidarity upon a population they considered rife with Islamic “fanaticism.” Fears about Ottoman and German manipulation corresponded closely with general French prejudices against Islam. The Governor General of Algeria, Charles Lutaud, claimed that, “Islam, for a long time supported by Germany, clearly aims, despite its ethnographic varieties and divergent rites, at a unified struggle against European civilization.”12 Germany and Islam, in other words, were equally enemies of the civilization the Allies were fighting to preserve. Despite these fears, most North African soldiers proved wary of enemy appeals to religious solidarity. French Muslim subjects easily perceived the self-interest evident in these appeals, rejecting German and Ottoman claims to represent the Islamic faith. Algerian Lieutenant Si Brahim told fellow North African soldiers that the war against Germany was the real “holy war,” and “in taking up arms for our country [France], Muslims are defending the interests of their faith, the honour of their homes, and the integrity of the lands of Islam.” After hearing this, the Tunisians who had earlier hesitated to fire on the Germans as friends of Islam now asked to return to the front, eager to fight.13 Ultimately, German and Ottoman efforts failed, and this was obvious to French officials from an early date. By the end of December 1914, a senior Ministry of War official declared that the worries generated by the declaration of jihad had disappeared.14 Very few prisoners of war volunteered to switch sides and take up arms against France, French intelligence sources confirmed. But generalized fears about Islam still preyed on French officials and sowed doubts about the loyalty and reliability of Muslim soldiers. Nothing illustrated this more clearly than the prospect of direct military action against the Ottoman army in the Middle East. In the months preceding the British and French landings at Gallipoli, which began in April 1915, French military and political officials debated including North African soldiers in the expeditionary force. Some believed that North Africans would withstand the Anatolian climate better than European forces and would be familiar with the kind of topography, style of warfare, and opponent they would encounter there.15 And at least one general considered the political risks minimal, arguing, “The use of [North African] indigènes…against the Turks, who have also been

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[in the past] their enemies, can be contemplated without fear,” except perhaps for Tunisians, who remained more closely tied to the Ottomans. Pre-war French campaigns in Morocco proved that the army could use Muslim soldiers against fellow Muslims without serious difficulty.16 Nonetheless, many other officials felt that although North Africans could be trusted to fight the Germans in Europe, Muslims fighting against fellow Muslims in an important Islamic country was another question entirely. Algerian Governor General Lutaud expressed this point of view particularly forcefully, citing the religious affinity between the Ottoman Empire and Muslims everywhere. Despite numerous expressions of loyalty and rejections of the call to holy war, the Sultan remained an important spiritual leader to many North Africans. Fighting against fellow Muslims in Morocco was nothing like facing the Ottomans in a land many Muslims considered holy. Ottoman territory was a land “veiled in mystery: it is for the Islamite a sacred land, a land of holy places, which seems like something miraculous, [and] any hand foreign to Islam that falls on it is a sacrilegious hand.” Lutaud’s arguments grew out of a French tradition that viewed Islam as a faith rife with mystical superstition and irreconcilably hostile to Western civilization. As he put it, Islamic society was principally based upon “the Koran, which is fundamentally hostile, in its essence, to everything which is not Muslim.”17 In the end, such objections were decisive, and no North Africans participated in the Dardanelles campaign. Yet Muslim French soldiers did fight in the Dardanelles campaign: West African troops, many of whom were Muslim, made up more than a quarter of the CEO, with the proportion rising to half and even higher in the later stages of the campaign, due to troop transfers and reinforcements.18 Clearly, it was not only French ideas about Islam in general that influenced military policy in this instance, but also the more subtle distinctions and prejudices about the various Muslim cultures under French rule. Islam noir simply did not haunt the French imagination in the same way that North African, or “Arab” Islam did.19 When concerns did arise in Paris during the summer of 1915 that some West African Muslims of suspect loyalty were allowing themselves to be taken prisoner by the enemy, General Baillout responded “with indignation” that the loyalty of the West Africans, “even those of the Muslim race,” were above suspicion.20 During the lead-up to the landings at Gallipoli, the French army had recognized the potential problems of pursuing an exclusionary policy

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with respect to North Africans, so apparently based on mistrust. The army went to some lengths to counteract this impression. In March 1915, on the eve of the Gallipoli invasion, the Ministry of War directed interpreters in North African units to show that French claims of solidarity with the interests of Islam were not hollow, and to explain to the men that the Allies wanted to help the Ottoman people, victims of their government and of the Germans. “All true Believers desirous of seeing the integrity of Islam and the independence of the Caliph respected,” the interpreters were to declare, “send their best wishes to the Allied forces and count on them to work towards the salvation of the Islamic world.”21 Yet many Muslim soldiers would never send more than their best wishes to the Allied forces, even though they, above anyone, would want to help “work toward the salvation of the Islamic world.” If France were representing the true interests of Islam, why then did its government not trust North Africans to help in this fight, they might wonder. The story of one soldier, at least, indicated that this contradictory policy and evident lack of trust could indeed humiliate colonial subjects and soldiers whose loyalty and fighting spirit were critical to the war effort. Lieutenant Boukabouya Rabah, an Algerian lieutenant who deserted to the Germans in 1915 and later served them as a propagandist under the name El Hadj Abdallah, made much of France’s obvious mistrust of its North African soldiers in his anti-French publications. And he also told fellow soldiers whom he encountered in a prisoner of war camp in Germany that he had deserted because of his disgust over being left out of the Dardanelles invasion. Officials at the Ministry of War had already guessed that this exclusion may have prompted bad feelings and a number of desertions, including Boukabouya’s. Only four days after the first troops had landed on Ottoman soil, in April 1915, the Ministry of War reported to the High Command that many Algerians apparently considered “the fact of not having been called to contribute” to the invasion force “as a measure of unjustified mistrust.” The Ministry suggested sending a battalion of Algerian troops to Anatolia as a gesture of faith in their loyalty, but military and colonial officials demurred on both ­logistical and political grounds.22 When the Allies withdrew from Gallipoli in failure in the first days of 1916, French troops of the CEO reinforced the Armée d’Orient fighting in the Balkans. Even though French forces there were fighting against the Christian Bulgarians, the army maintained its policy of excluding North Africans. But by later in the year the policy had changed, and even

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more surprisingly French North African Muslims were fighting against Ottoman forces in the Middle East itself. French political and military officials now felt they had sufficient reason to trust their North African troops because now France, not just Germany, could claim to have allied itself with an indigenous, legitimate authority in the Muslim world. The event that changed French army policy was the rebellion of Hussein Ibn’Ali, Sharif of Mecca against Ottoman rule in June 1916. Great Britain and France provided substantial support to Hussein, including French troops, some of them North Africans, who fought with Sharifian forces in Syria. Among the members of the French military mission to the Hejaz were four Muslim North African officers and the army eventually sent eventually over 1000 of its Muslim soldiers to aid the revolt. France’s use of Muslim soldiers to fight in the Middle East only expanded as the war went on, with some 2500 North Africans forming part of the expeditionary force Détachement français de Palestine in 1917.23 This policy was not without opponents in the French administration, however. Colonial officials in particular feared the implications of associating France with any sort of pan-Arab movement of revolt, even against the Central Powers, since it could threaten French colonial rule over Muslims.24 But those who believed that French aid to Hussein and the inclusion of North African Muslims as part of the aid was good propaganda rather than dangerous policy prevailed, and in any case French desires to compete with Great Britain for influence in the Middle East determined outward support for the revolt, as they determined France’s participation in the Dardanelles campaign in the first place.25 In the end, French authorities were confident in sending North Africans to the Middle East now that there was significant resistance from within the Islamic world to the Ottomans and their call to holy war against the Allies. Despite the generalized prejudices against Islam embedded in previous objections from men such as Algerian Governor General Lutaud, the politics of the situation had changed enough so that others could argue that sending Muslims to fight fellow Muslims in the Middle East was actually good colonial policy. After all, North Africans would be fighting in support of their Arab brethren conducting a revolt from the sacred heart of Islam, Mecca, against Ottoman usurpers who had sold their religion to their own and Germany’s secular ambitions.26 Nonetheless, though outwardly a sign of trust in North African troops, this relaxation of French policy toward their deployment in the invasion of the Ottoman Empire highlighted starkly French presumptions that

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these men’s identity as Muslims was all-consuming and entirely determined their behavior and choices. Trust was forthcoming only when the Sharif of Mecca made himself, rather than the Ottomans, the focus of religious loyalties that French officials considered to be of overriding importance to their Muslim soldiers. French military and political authorities never quite rid themselves of suspicions that the religious identity of North African—but again, not West African—soldiers rendered them unreliable, and this shaped the makeup of the expeditionary force that France sent to fight at Gallipoli. In short, fears of Islam, both as a force in international politics through what officials called “panislamisme” and as an unstable and fickle element of North Africans’ collective and personal identities, placed significant limits on the deployment of troops that some thought most well suited to the Dardanelles expeditionary force. Misgivings about Islam itself, about its alleged incompatibility with European civilization and its inveterate hostility to the West, prevailing among French decisionmakers are thus an integral part of the history of the CEO, as much as the actions of politicians and generals, the movements of troops, and the fighting itself. This sort of cultural history, here about attitudes toward religion and religious identity, is also important to the history of the AEF that joined the war in Europe beginning in 1917. But it was attitudes about race, both those of Americans and of people in France, that most shaped a significant part of the story of the AEF in France.

Expedition Across the Color Line: Race, France, and the AEF The American Expeditionary Forces began arriving in France in 1917 and eventually some 2 million Americans in uniform would cross the Atlantic. Ten percent of these were African Americans, and they added to the incredible ethnic and racial diversity on display in France during the war years: more than a million people of color, including troops and workers from all over Africa and Asia (including China and India), the Pacific, North America, and the Caribbean, to say nothing of the variety of white soldiers from countries all over the world. Racial diversity particularly caught observers’ attention, and would have been one of the most remarkable aspects of the war experience for many on the Western Front. Ernst Jünger, German soldier and author of the classic memoir

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Storm of Steel, famously described his astonishment in discovering after a harrowing firefight that his opponents were not French or English soldiers: “So these were Indians we had confronted, who had traveled thousands of miles across the sea, only to give themselves a bloody nose on this god-forsaken piece of earth against the Hanoverian rifles.” Adding to the strangeness, the Indians spoke French, and the “whole scene…had something primordial about it. This wasn’t war; it was ancient history.”27 Jünger’s encounter with Indian soldiers serving the British took place on June 12, 1917, the day before US General John J. Pershing arrived in France to set up the command of the AEF. The American soldiers who soon joined Pershing could be just as struck as Jünger was by the exotic ethnic and racial encounters one might have on the Western Front. But white Americans were particularly aware of the broader implications of France’s complex racial landscape, coming as they did from a country with a strictly enforced racial hierarchy defined by a very clear color line between white and black Americans. The confusing ways this color line could blur in the eyes of some of the Americans who made up the AEF are captured in a curious story published after the war by John W. Thomason, who served in France as an officer in the Marine Corps. After the war, Thomason met Laurence Stallings, famous for his 1924 play What Price Glory, set in France during the war, and the playwright praised Thomason’s work effusively. This led to Thomason’s successful publication of Fix Bayonets!, a collection of short stories—fictionalized accounts of American soldiers on the Western Front—in 1926.28 He followed up the next year with another collection, Red Pants and Other Stories. Most of these were about Marine adventures in other parts of the world, but the story that gave this publication its title was set in France in the summer of 1918 and featured the interactions of white Americans, Africans, and African Americans. Thomason and his works were not destined to become as famous as Jünger and his, but Ernest Hemingway thought enough of the US Marine officer’s work to include several of his stories in an anthology of “the best war stories of all time,” published during the Second World War.29 And there is little doubt that Thomason captures in “Red Pants” the language, attitudes, and bemusement of many Americans when trying to understand and negotiate the racial terrain of wartime France. Fighting next to the Moroccan Division of French General Charles Mangin’s 10th Army, a company of Marines gets an up-close look at French troupes indigènes in action. Mangin was famous for his

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championing of the use of West African soldiers, and the Moroccan Division included units of the famous tirailleurs sénégalais (despite the name, recruited from across the huge territory of French West Africa, not merely from Senegal). The Americans are impressed by the West Africans’ ferocity in battle, and Thomason includes an anecdote about one of them cutting off the ears of a dead German, a purported practice widely known among Allied and German troops across the Western Front that symbolized the Africans’ fearsome primitiveness and savagery. The Marines speak admiringly of their allies—“Them Senegalese is bon fighters!”—but also assimilate them into the racialized conceptions of white Americans—“Them Senegalese coons over there….” Yet at the same time, the Marines draw distinctions between the African Americans they claim to know so well and these supposedly quite different black men: “Never thought a nigger’d fight—but did you see’em in the woods?” “Well, they ain’t like any niggers I ever saw,” not like, “a cawn-fiel’ nigger down South.” The soldiers speculate that what makes these black men different from those in America is that, “they ain’t niggers, exactly…they got a lot of Bedou-in or something in ‘em,” and they, “B’lieve in Allah.” 30 For these Americans, the color line in France is confused by the exotic presence of black men from Africa itself, awe-inspiring in their physical stature and martial prowess, enhanced by the deep and alien faith of Islam—“B’lieve if they get killed they go straight to Heaven….”31 But the confusion only deepens when they catch one of the tirailleurs stealing from their mess wagons. The enraged commanding lieutenant, faced with the culprit hauled in front of him by the cook, finds the French language not “violent enough” and so launches “into the idiom of his native South. Why you damn’ ornery black son of a—.” In response, the man in front of him cracks a wide smile and asks in stereotypical black southern American English, “Why boss, Lawd God, say, is you from the Souf?”32 The astonished lieutenant tells the cook that the man is a “friend of mine,” and then engages the obviously American black man in a long conversation about how he came to be a “Senegalese” soldier. It turns out that the man is from Galveston, Texas, a town the lieutenant knows well. The vicissitudes of the war economy, which affected the United States long before it entered the conflict, meant that the man’s work as a stevedore dried up and he signed on to a ship taking mules across the Atlantic to sell to the British and French armies. Landing in Marseille (“Mair-say”) the sailor ends up in a café and shares a

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drink with a tirailleur sénégalais whose exotic uniform he covets. The American is more or less press-ganged into the French army, and he gets his chance to wear the red pants of the tirailleurs as a member of their unit. This story is plausible even as fiction only in the context of a war that saw the extensive movement and mixing of peoples from around the globe. As the lieutenant notes, “Anything can happen—specially in a war—and frequently does!”33 But this white American officer is caught between understanding the situation in the racialized terms with which he was familiar, and the stubborn difficulty of assimilating this man and his story into standard American conceptions of race. The Marine had been around “negroes…all his life.”34 But this “boy” stands out in a way that only rarely happened with African Americans. And he had earned the Médaille Militaire for his war service to France, a medal that honored only the most extraordinary bravery. It turns out that he was seriously wounded while successfully subduing several enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, thus earning the impressive decoration. Yet Thomason explains, and the lieutenant understands (the author and his protagonist were both Texans and Marine lieutenants during the First World War, and it may be fair to assume the story is at least somewhat autobiographical) this uncharacteristic nobility in an African American by providing him with a royal pedigree. The soldier claims that his grandmother, herself born in Africa and bonded in loyal service to a Confederate war hero, always said she came from a family of African kings: “She was proud of bein’ black, an’ she raise us dat way.”35 The lieutenant reflects that even though most African Americans were descendants of “low, weak peoples—poor creatures with depressed skulls, from the Congo swamps under the Equator, just a hair removed from the gorillas,” some rare American slaves came from “great black races” such as “the fighting Zulus” or other peoples who put up fierce resistance to colonial conquest by Europeans.36 This African American clearly descended from one of these peoples, and was now returning to his noble inheritance by fighting alongside other African warriors, speaking their language and adopting their Muslim religion and magic charms to protect him in battle. “What you going to do when you get back to Galveston?” asks the lieutenant. Having returned to his African roots, this is a difficult question for the soldier, and his ambivalence speaks volumes, perhaps even more than the author intended, about the disruptions that validated and

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valorized black manhood conjured in the minds of white Americans. “Cap’n, sah,” the soldier responds, “you knows how it is in de Souf.”37 (It is worth noting that the soldier elevates the officer’s rank, perhaps as a colloquial term of respect, perhaps as a relic of the soldier’s maritime experience, but also perhaps a signal that Thomason is familiar enough with the tirailleur units’ culture to know that captains commanded these companies, envisioned by the French army as a sort of family unit in which the commander was, as one French officer put it, “truly the father.” 38 Here Thomason recapitulates and repurposes French army paternalism to portray the hierarchical paternalism that many white Americans thought proper in black–white interactions.) The soldier is certainly homesick, and misses southern cooking, but he admits that he has a better life in France, among his comrades, fulfilling his martial destiny: “‘Bout goin’ back—no sah.”39 Ostensibly, the soldier cannot return home because he will not fit in anymore with the different, lesser breed of African Americans he would find there. He is not a “Galveston darky” anymore. But lurking underneath this explanation is another, one that speaks to white Americans’ fears about putting blacks in uniform, arming them, and deploying them in combat to fight against a white enemy: such a man would have discovered his self-worth, would be too proud to submit to Jim Crow and the humiliations of the American racial order, unwilling to subsume his manhood under white paternalism. Such a man might “return fighting,” as civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois declared African American soldiers would when they came home from Europe.40 But this soldier would not return, even if he had changed his mind and was enticed by the prospect of home and home cooking. After the lieutenant and the Texan “Senegalese” parted ways, each returning to his war, the Marines heard that Mangin’s 10th Army engaged in fierce combat on the Chemin des Dames, not coincidentally the site in April 1917 of an attack by Mangin’s army that went disastrously, especially for the frozen and demoralized West Africans (tirailleurs sénégalais accounted for 32.5% of the losses even though they made up about 14% of the total forces engaged).41 A French officer tells the lieutenant that the Moroccan Division suffered particularly terrible losses, some units wiped out entirely. This leaves the lieutenant musing, “And I don’t even know his name….”42 The soldier is gone, and with him a rare nobility among African Americans, but also the threat he might pose to the racial order in postwar America, an order in which even remarkable African Americans are not important enough to have a name.

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“Red Pants” is notable for its detailed insights into West Africans’ role in the French army, insights that could only have come from an author who paid very careful attention during his own encounters on the Western Front with these troops and their reputation. But the story of course tells us much more about race and racism as the AEF and its personnel confronted a racial order that appeared confusing, even threatening. It is significant that the West African soldier the Marines meet is in fact an African American, speaking to the multiple ways that experiences in France could undermine the racial order on the other side of the Atlantic. This was a concern long before any American troops arrived in France. The very idea of black men armed and in uniform disturbed many white Americans, since these soldiers “symbolized the possibility of violent resistance to white supremacy.”43 Upon the entry of the United States into the war, the necessity of large-scale conscription via the Selective Service Act occasioned a debate about the wisdom of courting the dangers of black violence and participatory citizenship, an anathema to many Southern Democrats.44 But military necessity and mass mobilization for a modern industrial and global war prevailed over such objections, and black Americans registered for the draft and entered the armed forces in large numbers. But the anxieties and violence that their service provoked roiled American life immediately. Race relations were already tense, and the terrible rioting that broke out in East St. Louis in the summer of 1917 was not directly related to military service. Tensions over African American soldiers did, however, lie at the root of contemporaneous violence in Houston. And tensions only escalated, and sometimes resulted in violence, when African Americans in uniform began training and garrisoning towns and camps throughout the country.45 Nonetheless, some African Americans saw war service as an opportunity. As Chad Williams notes, black Americans approached the war in ways similar to how they viewed African American military service before the war: it “symbolized freedom, manhood, and martial heroism.”46 Du Bois made this stance, aimed squarely at civil rights and full citizenship, the keystone of his own reaction to the war. Right after the United States declared war on Germany, Du Bois equated German tyranny and race hatred with those same qualities in Southern American whites. And he proclaimed that, just as English suffragettes had backed their nation once it engaged in this world war for civilization, “So will we black men fight against Germany for America.”47 His most famous, perhaps infamous statement of this position appeared in the NAACP’s Crisis, which he

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directed and which was the vehicle for much of his political messaging, in the summer of 1918. In an editorial entitled, “Close Ranks,” Du Bois called on African Americans to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with their “own fellow white citizens and the allied nations fighting for democracy.” The triumph of Germany would be a civilizational disaster for blacks as well as whites around the world, and so blacks must “forget” their “special grievances.”48 This call was controversial, both because its seemingly supine accommodationism alienated more radical civil rights advocates, and because it seemed intended to ingratiate the author with American military officials who were dangling the offer of a captain’s commission in the army as a way to make a dependable patriotic ally of someone who had been a troublesome and trenchant public critic of US race relations. Du Bois evidently regarded the commission as a way to increase his influence in official circles, and perhaps with his African American constituency, but also probably as a way to satisfy his personal vanity and ambition.49 He may also have been eager to prove his and the NAACP’s loyalty at a time when they were under increasing pressure from military intelligence investigations.50 In any case, the move backfired and he lost the commission and damaged his reputation. Du Bois could certainly manipulate the circumstances of the war in ways that might appear cynical and contradictory, but it is clear that he did so largely to pursue the greater good as he saw it: black emancipation and full African American citizenship. Black emancipation the world over was also certainly important, but he always framed the issues squarely in terms of what they meant for African Americans. Of course, he recognized what he called the “color line” as a critical issue not only in the war, but in world politics more broadly. In his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk, he wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”51 And he might have added Europe, and no doubt would have as Europe filled with people of color after the war broke out in 1914. In 1915, Du Bois published, “The African Roots of War,” in which he argued that the acquisitiveness of European powers in taking possession of Africa was a principal cause of the war.52 “The ‘Color Line’ began to pay dividends,” he wrote, but also divided peoples among and within nations, leading to the kinds of tensions that inevitably provoked violence.53 Du Bois knew full well that France was one of the principal culprits in

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the racialized imperialism that carved up Africa and other parts of the world, and France figured prominently as such in this article. But in other writings, Du Bois made use of the idea that France was uniquely free of the sort of racial prejudice that poisoned life in the United States in order to critique American race relations. These sentiments and other events show clearly how the experiences of African Americans of the AEF in France became caught up in a complex mix of American and French racial politics. Du Bois wrote throughout the war in praise of the French struggle in the name of freedom and democracy against German tyranny, but the clearest and most powerful statements of what this meant for African Americans came in the immediate aftermath of the war. With the outcome on the battlefield no longer uncertain, attention turned to how the experiences of the war would shape the postwar world. African American soldiers had fought for “bleeding France and what she means and has meant and will mean to us and humanity and against the threat of German race arrogance,” but would return to a still “shameful land” of race hatred and lynching and other indignities. Du Bois summed up the goal of his whole political program of support for the war by noting that these “Soldiers of Democracy” were primed to save the nation and bring it to its true democratic destiny.54 And these soldiers had benefited from their experiences in a truly democratic nation, one that seemed blind to difference, at least in comparison to the United States, and seemed even to celebrate it. Du Bois described with an almost spiritual ecstasy the way France honored the soldiers from its colonies who fought to defend the metropole: “‘Mine eyes have seen’ and they were filled with tears. The mighty audience filled the Trocadéro, and in the center of the stage stood a black man, lithe, tall and straight [remarkably, this echoes the way Thomason described the impressive physiques of France’s African soldiers in “Red Pants,” though the Marine’s terms were more earthy and racist]; on his breast were orders and he wore the uniform of an officer of the French army.” A French general pinned on him the badge of the Legion of honor, then did the same for “the Arab who stood to the Negro’s left and the Annamite who stood on his right…. It was France—almighty and never-dying France leading the world again,” honoring “the black men and the yellow men who gave their lives for a country they are proud to call theirs and which is equally proud to claim them.” This effusive praise of France’s enlightened embrace of its colonial subjects in the spirit of ecumenical racial harmony sat uneasily

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with Du Bois’s condemnation of exploitative white imperialism, an area in which France, along with Great Britain, truly led the world. But, as usual, Du Bois’s goal was to highlight all the more starkly the injustices of American racism: “How fine a thing to be a black Frenchman in 1919—imagine such a celebration in America!”55 The imagination of such a celebration, or even lesser valorizations of black manhood did haunt the white American imagination. Conventional wisdom of the day held that soldiering and war made men, and this lay at the root of some white Americans’ opposition to drafting black men for the army. But sending them to France posed even greater risks. White American officers worried about the egalitarian treatment of their black soldiers by the French civilian population. Particularly alarming was the apparently more open attitude toward interracial interaction, even sex and love (Americans’ attitudes on these issues could hardly be more violently closed). The specter of “French-women-ruined” black men appeared repeatedly. Fred Parker, an officer in the AEF, wrote to his parents that it “cut might hard to see a white woman with a big black boy…. They would never think of doing it back in the States.” The French did not seem to understand the importance of minding the color line, treating black men “just the same as if they were white and many times even better.” White Americans in France still worked to police the color line, and Parker noted that as part of this they had recently “strung up one of those colored boys who was accused of rape.”56 When contrasted with the prevailing racial climate in the United States, France could appear to be colorblind to white and black Americans alike. Many African American soldiers were amazed by the welcome they received in France. One soldier wrote home to his mother, “These French people don’t bother with no color line business. They treat us so good that the only time I ever know I’m colored is when I look in the glass.”57 White American officers worried about how such a soldier could reintegrate into a racially oppressive social order at home. The French welcome of American troops seemed all the more oblivious to race when some African American soldiers of the AEF found themselves fighting in French formations, with French equipment. Many white Americans had argued against the use of African Americans as combat troops, preferring instead that they be relegated to labor battalions. This sort of service was supposedly more in keeping with their inherent utility as simple workers, and safer from the point of view of maintaining the racial hierarchy. Most African American soldiers who

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served in France performed manual labor, often as stevedores in port cities, unloading military supplies, or in other support roles—160,000 of them, constituting over one-third of such troops in the AEF.58 But Du Bois and others agitated for black soldiers to fight, the better to earn a claim to first-class citizenship, and some units were trained for combat. AEF commander Pershing satisfied both French military leaders’ demands for reinforcements to be integrated directly into French units, as well as proponents of African Americans in combat by allowing four regiments of the US 93rd Division to serve in the French army, retaining their American uniforms but wearing French helmets and carrying French rifles, ammunition, and gear. These units emerged from the experience highly decorated and impressed by the respect their French comrades accorded them.59 The 92nd US Division’s African American troops, by contrast, served under American command and performed poorly, but most scholars attribute this to the racist assumptions and treatment of their white officers. After the war, the division’s own commander made clear that he held his black soldiers in contempt, and raised the menace of black sexual depravity by highlighting the 92nd’s ­reputation as the “raping division.”60 The clash between differing conceptions of and approaches to racial difference among white Americans and French people crystalized in a circular written in August 1918 by French Colonel J. A. Linard, liaison to the AEF. Linard advised his colleagues to warn French civilians against “intimacy,” especially in public, with black American soldiers because of the racism of white Americans, which he argued the French did not have the right to question. He cited as an example of needless provocation an illustration on the cover of a recent issue of La Vie Parisienne, “The Child of the Dessert,” showing a black soldier and a white French woman dining together in an obviously intimate and romantic setting. This had deeply offended white American sensibilities. Linard warned his colleagues against praising black American troops too warmly, and against treating them with too much respect.61 Blaise Diagne, a black African parliamentary deputy from Senegal and recently appointed Commissaire Général des Effectifs Coloniaux, complained about Linard’s memo a few months later to Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Linard’s advice, Diagne argued, would provoke “outrageous prejudices which, manifestly, violate the inviolable principles of our colonial policy and clash with the noblest French ideas about civilization.” To see

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such “anti-democratic” sentiments penned by a Frenchman was gravely insulting to all men of color, particularly the thousands of colonial subjects then fighting for France. Diagne was incensed not just that Linard advised accommodating despicable aspects of American racism, but that the French officer seemed to justify white Americans’ attitudes. Linard noted, for instance, the greater dangers of “degeneration” through sexual contact presented by the United States’ very large and permanent black population.62 The controversy over the Linard circular outlived the war. During the summer of 1919, two black deputies from Caribbean colony of Guadeloupe and a white deputy from the Indian Ocean colony of Réunion demanded that the French Chamber of Deputies, “faithful to the immortal principles that inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, censuring and condemning all prejudices of religion, caste, or race,” affirm “the absolute equality of all men, without distinction of origin or color, to the benefit and protection of all the laws of the nation.”63 The declaration, unanimously approved by the Chamber, called on the French government to uphold the rule of law in the face of any crime committed on French soil, regardless of the identity of the perpetrator or the victim. The occasion for this parliamentary intervention was that the Linard circular had become public, and the deputies linked the document and its sentiments to a series of other outrages connected to interracial intimacy. The main spokesperson for the measure, Guadeloupian deputy Achille René-Boisneuf, demanded that the government condemn several acts of violence on the part of white American troops toward France’s soldiers of color, targeted as they enjoyed the liberty to socialize with whomever they pleased, even white women, in the nation they served. Boisneuf spoke not as a “black” but a “Frenchman…a French Deputy” (calling attention to the presence of a black man in powerful political position in the national legislature, hardly a realistic hope for a black American in the US), and was particularly incensed by Linard’s statement that “black American troops in France have, by themselves, been the source of as many reports of attempted rape as the entire rest of the [US] army.” Was lynching, he asked, now to be the law of France as well as of the United States? He then invoked how racial, gender, and sexual anxieties had mixed historically to poison racial relations and provoke violence by pointing to the “abominable ­legend of the negro satyr, especially crazed for white flesh.”64

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American racism particularly outraged Boisneuf and many others in France because they viewed the service of colonial subjects in the French army as evidence of France’s unique historical destiny to realize the promise of republican egalitarianism and colorblindness. These reactions highlighted the ways notions of proper relations between people of different races varied between France and the United States, and how the mixing of white Americans, French people, Africans, African Americans, and other people of color could be combustible as a result. On the surface, the contrast between white Americans of the AEF and their French hosts seemed to be between racist Americans and colorblind French people. This is too neat a distinction, for there were many indications during the war that race mattered very much in the supposedly colorblind society of France. France was not truly free from the stain of racial prejudice, and the possession of a racially justified and racially ordered colonial empire was only the most obvious indication. If French colonial subjects in uniform did indeed sometimes enjoy the freedom to mix with white French people, including women, in the metropole, this was not uncontroversial to everyone in France. And racism and discrimination decisively shaped colonial subjects’ service in the French army, from recruitment, to deployment, to demobilization. Critically, these men remained subjects with obligations, not citizens with rights.65 In fact, Tyler Stovall has argued that the real result of the First World War in France was to establish the very idea of a color line in that country.66 This resulted from the presence of large numbers of men of color as workers and soldiers in the metropole, and it is important to remember that it is not surprising that African Americans often received warm welcomes precisely because they were Americans, not French colonial subjects, and so their subordination to a racial hierarchy was not nearly so urgent as it was with, say, North Africans or West Africans. Racism existed in this supposedly colorblind society. But that does not mean that French and American racisms were identical. In fact, they differed enough for all parties involved to notice, largely because white Americans predominantly viewed race as an inalterable question of color defining a rigid, unchanging social order, while powerful republican traditions in France pushed French policies and behaviors toward a seemingly more open, egalitarian stance, even while the pull of discrimination based on racial identity was never absent and also influenced attitudes and approaches.

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Conclusion Expeditionary forces, by their very nature, travel to more or less distant destinations. But the spaces they traverse are not always merely geographical. The French Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient and the American Expeditionary Forces crossed water and land to reach their destinations, but they and their organizers also navigated complex cultural and political terrains. North African Muslim soldiers in the French army were denied a place in Gallipoli campaign because of their religious identities and the doubts those raised in the minds of their French commanders. But some of these same troops did make a later expedition to fight in the Middle East when their religious identities were no longer liabilities, but were in fact politically advantageous. African American soldiers journeyed far from a racially divided United States to France and the Western Front, but their racial identities shaped virtually every aspect of their lives in the AEF. Race conditioned debates about whether they would be drafted, where they would serve and in what capacities, and how observers would evaluate their performance. Unsurprisingly, the color line followed them across the Atlantic, since as Du Bois pointed out this line belted the world, but it blurred and shifted in unpredictable and puzzling ways when different cultures came together in France. The color line was no less important to white American soldiers, who were confused and troubled by what they found in France. As the fictional white American lieutenant in “Red Pants” puts it, “Anything can happen— specially in a war—and frequently does!”

Notes



1. The precise figures are not available, but between 1914 and 1918 West Africa provided approximately 166,000 recruits; Algeria 140,000; Indochina 50,000; Tunisia 47,000; Madagascar 46,000; and Morocco 24,000. When war broke out, there were already 90,000 troupes indigenes already under arms. Richard S. Fogarty, “The French Empire,” in Empires at War, 1911–1923, eds. Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 120. 2.  On prevailing French views of Islam in West Africa, see Christopher Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Athens, OH: Ohio University

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Press, 2000); Cheikh Anta Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007); Sean Hanretta, Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Bruce S. Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 3. Rüdiger Seesemann and Benjamin F. Soares, “‘Being as Good Muslims and Frenchmen’: On Islam and Colonial Modernity in West Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 39, no. 1 (2009): 95. 4. Marc Michel, L’Appel à l’Afrique: Contributions et réactions à l’effort de guerre en A.O.F. (1914–1919) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1982); Joe Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999); Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914– 1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), discuss aspects of religion and West Africans’ service. 5. On French fears of panislamisme, see Pascal Le Pautremat, La politique musulmane de la France au xxe siècle, de l’Hexagone aux terres d’Islam: espoirs, réussites, échecs (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003). On ideas about North African Islam, see George R. Trumbull, An Empire of Facts: Colonial Power, Cultural Knowledge, and Islam in Algeria, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Naomi Davidson, Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). 6. Gerhard Höpp, Muslime in der Mark: als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914–1924 (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1997); Margot Khaleyss, Muslime in Brandenburg: Kriegsgefangene im 1. Weltkrieg: Ansichten und Absichten (Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1998); Heather Jones, “Imperial Captivities: Colonial Prisoners of War in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918,” in Race, Empire and First World War Writing, ed. Santanu Das (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 175–93; Britta Lange, “Academic Research on (Coloured) Prisoners of War in Germany, 1915–1919,” in World War I: Five Continents in Flanders, ed. Dominiek Dendooven and Piet Chielens (Tielt: Lannoo, 2008), 153–59. 7. On France’s geopolitical approach to Islam during the First World War era, see Le Pautremat, La politique musulmane. On Germany’s, see Herbert Landolin Müller, Islam, gihad (“Heiliger Krieg”) und Deutsches Reich: ein Nachspiel sur wilhelmischen Weltpolitik im Maghreb, 1914–1918 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991); Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power

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49

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Tilman Lüdke, Jihad Made in Germany: Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005). 8. Service Historique de la Défense (SHD) 7N2103: “Prisonniers de Guerre Indigènes en Allemagne, 1914–1915.” 9. SHD 7N2103: Section d’Afrique (SA), “Rapport fait au Ministre, Au sujet des mesures propres à combattre l’action de la Turquie sur les populations musulmanes de l’Afrique du Nord,” novembre 21, 1914. 10. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (AMAE) G1664: Piat to MAE Delcassé, octobre 30, 1914. 11. SHD 16N194: Alapetite to MG Millerand, décembre 29, 1914. 12. SHD 7N2104: Lutaud to PC/MAE Briand, “AS d’une brochure allemande…,” mars 7, 1916. Emphasis in original. 13. SHD 7N2103: Consul General Piat, Note, “AS du Chérif si Ibrahim des Rahmanya,” undated. 14. AMAE G1670: Commission Interministèrielle des Affaires Musulmanes (CIAM), Séance 3, décembre 31, 1914. 15. SHD 7N2081: SA, “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques,” février 24– mars 18, 1915. 16. SHD 7N444: Ménestrel, “Inspection des Troupes d’Afrique,” juin 20, 1915. 17. SHD 7N2103: Lutaud to MG, mai 5, 1915. 18. Michel, L’Appel, 296. 19. In French usage at the time, “Arab” could refer to the peoples of the Middle East, but could also refer to the majority population of places such as Algeria, which also included large numbers of ethnic Berber peoples. The term glossed over much ethnic complexity and mixing in the Maghreb, but conventional wisdom held that the majority was Arab (that is, descended from the Arab conquerors of the seventh century) and espoused the same sort of allegedly “fanatical” Islam prevalent among Muslims in the Middle East. See Patrica M. E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995). 20. Michel, L’Appel, 297. 21.  SHD 16N194: MG to GCC, “Intervention des Puissances alliées en Turquie,” mars 12, 1915. 22.  SHD 16N194: SA to GCC, “Envoi au corps expéditionnaire d’Orient d’un bataillon de tirailleurs algériens,” avril 29, 1915; Joffre to SA, “Envoi en Orient d’un Bataillon de Tirailleurs,” mai 3, 1915. 23. See Pascal Le Pautremat, “La mission du Lieutenant-Colonel Brémond au Hedjaz, 1916–1917,” Guerre mondiales et conflits contemporains 221, no. 1 (2006): 17–31.

50  R. S. FOGARTY









24. Dan Eldar, “French Policy Towards Husayn, Sharif of Mecca,” Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 3 (July 1990): 335. 25. George H. Cassar, The French and the Dardanelles: A Study of Failure in the Conduct of War (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971); Christopher M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981); Jean-Charles Jauffret, “Gallipoli: A French Perspective,” in The Straits of War: Gallipoli Remembered, ed. Martin Gilbert (Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2000), 137–51; Elizabeth Greenhalgh and Colonel Frédéric Guelton, “The French on Gallipoli and Observations on Australian and British Forces During the August Offensive,” in Gallipoli: A Ridge Too Far, ed. Ashley Ekins (Wollombi: Exisle, 2013), 214–31. 26. SHD 7N444: MG, EMA, Bureau de l’Organisation et de la Mobilisation de l’Armée, “Rapport fait au Ministre…au sujet de l’utilisation des indigènes de l’Afrique du Nord, sur le théâtre d’opérations d’Orient,” septembre 27, 1916; SHD 7N445: MG, EMA, Bureau de l’Organisation et de la Mobilisation de l’Armée, “Note pour les Sous-Secrétariats d’Etat de l’Artillerie et Munitions, du Ravitaillement, et de l’Intendance, et pour la Direction du Génie, Utilisation des indigènes de l’Afrique du Nord sur le théâtre d’opérations d’Orient,” octobre 2, 1916. 27. Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel, trans. Michael Hofmann (New York: Penguin, 2004), 150. 28.  Kimberly J. Lamay Licursi, Remembering World War I in America (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 71–72. 29. Ernest Hemingway, Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time (New York: Crown, 1942); Licursi, Remembering, 87. 30. Captain John W. Thomason Jr., Red Pants and Other Stories (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), 11–12. 31. Thomason, 12. 32. Thomason, 16–17. 33. Thomason, 23. 34. Thomason, 20. 35. Thomason, 25. 36. Thomason, 27. 37. Thomason, 25. 38. Yves de Boisboissel, Peaux noires, coeurs blancs, 2nd ed. (Paris: Peyronnet, 1954; Paris: L. Fournier, 1931), 42. 39. Thomason, Red Pants, 27. 40.  W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis 18, no. 1 (May 1919): 13. 41. Michel, L’Appel, 320.



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42. Thomason, Red Pants, 28. 43. Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 31. 44. Christopher Capozzolla, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 35. 45. On violence against African Americans in general, and soldiers in particular during this time, see Williams, Torchbearers; Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974); Jennifer D. Keene, Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). 46. Williams, Torchbearers, 30. 47. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The World Last Month” and “Loyalty,” The Crisis 14, no. 1 (May 1917): 8. 48. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Close Ranks,” The Crisis 16, no. 3 (July 1918): 111. 49. The exact role of the officer’s commission has been the subject of some controversy, but appears to have played an important role. See Williams, Torchbearers, 75–77; Mark Ellis, “‘Closing Ranks’ and ‘Seeking Honors’: W. E. B. Du Bois in World War I,” Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (1992): 96–124; William Jordan, “‘The Damnable Dilemma’: African-American Accommodation and Protest During World War I,” Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (1995): 1562–83; Mark Ellis, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Formation of Black Opinion in World War I: A Commentary on ‘The Damnable Dilemma,’” Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (March 1995): 1584–90; 50.  Theodore Kornweibel Jr., “Investigate Everything”: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty During World War I (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), 142. 51. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: New American Library, 1903), 13. 52. W. E. B. Du Bois, “African Roots of War,” The Atlantic Monthly 115, no. 5 (May 1915): 707–14. 53. Du Bois, 708. 54. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis 18, no. 1 (May 1919): 13–14. 55. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Vive la France!,” The Crisis 17, no. 5 (March 1919): 215. 56. Adriane Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 102–103. 57. Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 18.

52  R. S. FOGARTY 58. Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers, 89. 59. Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers, 112–13, argue that racism and a low opinion of African American troops motivated Pershing, while Robert B. Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 161–62, argues that a desire to satisfy French demands with good-quality troops, not racism, explains the decision. 60.  See Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers, 137–63; Williams, Torchbearers, 320–23. 61.  SHD 6N97: Colonel J. A. Linard, Mission militaire française près de l’armée américaine, “Au sujet des troupes noires américaines,” August 7, 1918. 62. SHD 6N97: Diagne to MG, AS d’une circulaire relative aux troupes de couleur, novembre 16, 1918. 63. Journal Officiel de la République Française (JORF): Chambre des Députés-Débats (CD-D), juillet 25, 1919, 3732. 64. JORF, CD-D, juillet 25, 1919, 3731. 65. See Fogarty, Race and War in France. 66.  Tyler Stovall, “The Color Line Behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France During the Great War,” American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (1998): 737–69; “Colour-Blind France? Colonial Workers During the First World War,” Race and Class 35, no. 2 (1993): 35–55; “Love, Labor, and Race: Colonial Men and White Women in France During the Great War,” in French Civilization and Its Discontents: Nationalism, Colonialism, Race, eds. Tyler Stovall and Georges Van Den Abbeele (Lanham: Lexington, 2003), 297–321.

Bibliography Andrew, Christopher M., and A. S. Kanya-Forstner. France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion. London: Thames & Hudson, 1981. Babou, Cheikh Anta. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007. Barbeau, Arthur E., and Florette Henri. The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974. Boisboissel, Yves de. Peaux noires, coeurs blancs, 2nd ed. Paris: Peyronnet, 1954. First published 1931 by L. Fournier (Paris). Bruce, Robert B. A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003.

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Capozzolla, Christopher. Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Cassar, George H. The French and the Dardanelles: A Study of Failure in the Conduct of War. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971. Davidson, Naomi. Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: New American Library, 1903. Du Bois, W. E. B. “African Roots of War.” The Atlantic Monthly 115, no. 5 (May 1915): 707–14. Du Bois, W. E. B. “The World Last Month” and “Loyalty.” The Crisis 14, no. 1 (May 1917): 8. Du Bois, W. E. B. “Close Ranks.” The Crisis 16, no. 3 (July 1918): 111. Du Bois, W. E. B. “Returning Soldiers.” The Crisis 18, no. 1 (May 1919): 13–14. Du Bois, W. E. B. “Vive la France!” The Crisis 17, no. 5 (March 1919): 215. Eldar, Dan. “French Policy Towards Husayn, Sharif of Mecca.” Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 3 (July 1990): 329–50. Ellis, Mark. “‘Closing Ranks’ and ‘Seeking Honors’: W. E. B. Du Bois in World War I.” Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (1992): 96–124. Ellis, Mark. “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Formation of Black Opinion in World War I: A Commentary on ‘The Damnable Dilemma.’” Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (March 1995): 1584–90. Fogarty, Richard S. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Fogarty, Richard S. “The French Empire.” In Empires at War, 1911–1923, edited by Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, 109–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Greenhalgh, Elizabeth, and Colonel Frédéric Guelton. “The French on Gallipoli and Observations on Australian and British Forces During the August Offensive.” In Gallipoli: A Ridge Too Far, edited by Ashley Ekins, 214–31. Wollombi: Exisle, 2013. Hall, Bruce S. A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Hanretta, Sean. Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Harrison, Christopher. France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Hemingway, Ernest. Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time. New York: Crown, 1942. Höpp, Gerhard. Muslime in der Mark: als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914–1924. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1997.

54  R. S. FOGARTY Jauffret, Jean-Charles. “Gallipoli: A French Perspective.” In The Straits of War: Gallipoli Remembered, edited by Martin Gilbert, 137–51. Stroud: Sutton, 2000. Jones, Heather. “Imperial Captivities: Colonial Prisoners of War in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918.” In Race, Empire and First World War Writing, edited by Santanu Das, 175–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Jordan, William. “‘The Damnable Dilemma’: African-American Accommodation and Protest During World War I.” Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (1995): 1562–83. Jünger, Ernst. Storm of Steel. Translated by Michael Hofmann. New York: Penguin, 2004. Keene, Jennifer D. Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Khaleyss, Margot. Muslime in Brandenburg: Kriegsgefangene im 1. Weltkrieg: Ansichten und Absichten. Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1998. Kornweibel, Theodore, Jr. “Investigate Everything”: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty During World War I. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002. Lange, Britta. “Academic Research on (Coloured) Prisoners of War in Germany, 1915–1919.” In World War I: Five Continents in Flanders, edited by Dominiek Dendooven et Piet Chielens, 153–59. Tielt: Lannoo, 2008. Le Pautremat, Pascal. La politique musulmane de la France au xxe siècle, de l’Hexagone aux terres d’Islam: espoirs, réussites, échecs. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003. Le Pautremat, Pascal. “La mission du Lieutenant-Colonel Brémond au Hedjaz, 1916–1917.” Guerre mondiales et conflits contemporains 221, no. 1 (2006): 17–31. Lentz-Smith, Adriane. Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Licursi, Kimberly J. Lamay. Remembering World War I in America. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Lorcin, Patricia M. E. Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria. London: I.B. Tauris, 1995. Lüdke, Tilman. Jihad Made in Germany: Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005. Lunn, Joe. Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999. McMeekin, Sean. The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

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Michel, Marc. L ‘Appel à l’Afrique: Contributions et réactions à l’effort de guerre en A.O.F. (1914–1919). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1982. Müller, Herbert Landolin. Islam, gihad (“Heiliger Krieg”) und Deutsches Reich: ein Nachspiel sur wilhelmischen Weltpolitik im Maghreb, 1914–1918. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991. Robinson, David. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000. Seesemann, Rüdiger, and Benjamin F. Soares. “‘Being as Good Muslims and Frenchmen’: On Islam and Colonial Modernity in West Africa.” Journal of Religion in Africa 39, no. 1 (2009): 91–120. Stovall, Tyler. “Colour-Blind France? Colonial Workers During the First World War.” Race and Class 35, no. 2 (1993): 35–55. Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Stovall, Tyler. “The Color Line Behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France During the Great War.” American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (1998): 737–69. Stovall, Tyler. “Love, Labor, and Race: Colonial Men and White Women in France During the Great War.” In French Civilization and Its Discontents: Nationalism, Colonialism, Race, edited by Tyler Stovall and Georges Van Den Abbeele, 297–321. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003. Thomason, Captain John W., Jr. Red Pants and Other Stories. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927. Trumbull, George R. An Empire of Facts: Colonial Power, Cultural Knowledge, and Islam in Algeria, 1870–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Williams, Chad L. Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

CHAPTER 3

Far from Home? Perceptions and Experiences of First World War Nurses and Their Patients Alison S. Fell

On the ground in a foreign land the need to deal with cultural ­dissonance and the challenges to mental maps of every kind was a constant among most soldiers in almost every expeditionary force. This applies equally to the thousands of women who traveled overseas alongside expeditionary forces during the war, the majority of whom worked as nurses. In Britain, for example, military nurses who were members of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) and Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNSR), some of whom had already seen active service during the South African wars, were immediately mobilized alongside the British Expeditionary Force in August 1914, and traveled to the Western Front, working in makeshift hospitals and hastily adapted hospital trains. When the United States entered the war in 1917, over 21,000 women served in the US Army Nurse corps, 10,660 of them with the American Expeditionary Forces.1 Other women, who had not been trained as military nurses before the

A. S. Fell (*)  Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_3

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war, were mobilized for national Red Cross societies: they accounted, for example, for the majority of the tens of thousands of French and German women who worked as nurses in hospital wards during the war. While many worked close to their homes, thousands of volunteer Red Cross nurses also traveled long distances, caring for men from Expeditionary Forces on all fronts. Nurses stationed overseas worked hard to transform hospital wards into domestic spaces where their patients could not only find refuge from the battlefield, but equally rediscover “home comforts,” and find consolation in the partaking of familiar cultural practices. For many of the Western belligerent nations, rituals such as Christmas celebrations— presents, Christmas trees, carols and special meals—were recreated in order that the ward became a stand-in for “home.” In 1917, for example, the Red Cross warehouses in Boulogne contained 40,000 boxes of Christmas crackers and 80,000 Christmas cards among other goods and 25,000 Christmas puddings “stuffed full of lucky sixpences” were sent from Britain by volunteers to make sure that “their boys” had a “proper” Christmas dinner.2 An American nurse working in a French military hospital in 1915 described a typical Christmas scene in her letters home, one that was repeated in thousands of similar wards, in which familiar seasonal objects were used to connote “home”: “At the very top [of our tree] a tinsel star constructed by me and an able-handed patient, with the tricolor at the topmost point above the stars, mark you and little silk flags of the Allies clustered below, with a microscopic Stars and Stripes.”3 In her study of the relationship between medical staff and military patients in First World War hospital wards, Ana Carden Coyne argues that rituals such as those that took place at Christmas helped to create a sense of belonging: “Sociality – the creation of a community – was fostered by social activities and convivial interactions, but underpinned by the desire for emotional comfort and physical recovery.”4 That said, these attempts were often undermined by men’s physical suffering, anxieties and the lack of continuity in care, particularly in hospitals close to the front where there was a high turnover of both patients and staff. War hospitals therefore only provided temporary respite and relatively fragile communities. Carden Coyle points to evidence which suggests that experiences of both pain and sexual desire in particular troubled the construction of the hospital ward as a safe and familiar domestic space: “Close encounters with wounded bodies incited emotional and psychological reactions that had to either find expression or be repressed.

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Wounds stirred empathetic as well as disciplinary responses as a result of the peculiar mixture of civilian ideals inside military medical institutions.”5 This “peculiar mixture” of civilian and military ideals within hospital wards was mirrored by the ways in which nurses themselves occupied a liminal space between “front” and “home,” serving as reminders of home through their gender and caring role while at the same time functioning as a (vital) cog of the military machinery that required men to be treated and returned wherever possible to active service. The encounter between nurses and their largely male patients in a foreign land during the First World War could also be a sometimes troublingly intimate one that brought understandings of both “self” and “other” to the fore. While medical evacuations were organized according to nation, the wounded were not always treated in their “own” hospitals, and they tended to be separated into wards according to the nature of their wounds or illness rather than according to nationality.6 Nurses who worked overseas, as well as nurses who cared for soldiers from foreign expeditionary forces within their own nations, had as patients men from a wide range of backgrounds, nationalities and ethnicities, including “enemy” nations. These intercultural encounters in hospital wards throughout the war brought into question the status of female nurses. Were they civilian women in a military world, acting as “proxies” for the female relatives that servicemen had left behind at home? Were they “neutral carers,” embodying the spirit of the International Red Cross in dispensing their care to whoever needed it, including prisoners-of-war from enemy nations? Or were they the female equivalent of their mobilized fellow countrymen, carrying out a version of male active military service? In this chapter, I explore different contexts in which men and women’s “mental maps” were both shored up and challenged by their experiences of dispensing and receiving medical treatment in hospital wards. I begin by exploring the ways in which nurses both attempted to create, and were culturally made to embody, “home” for their patients. I then turn to nurses’ experiences of caring for men of different nationalities and ethnicities, including “enemy” or POW patients. Using memoirs, letters, diaries and interviews, I analyze the extent to which nursing or being cared for in a hospital abroad inflected both men’s and women’s understandings of national and transnational identities at war, focusing in particular on the concept of “home.”

60  A. S. FELL

Recreating “Home” in Overseas Hospital Wards The conditions in which sick and wounded men (and especially combatants) were cared for overseas during the First World War played an important role in propaganda efforts aimed both at populations at home and at neutral and/or enemy populations. Popular images of nurses caring for soldiers often emphasized the extent to which nurses sent abroad with expeditionary forces would care for “their own.” For example, American cultural imaginings of Red Cross nurses often presented them as stand-in mothers for American soldiers, as in this buxom motherfigure used in a Red Cross postcard (Fig. 3.1). In this postcard, not only is the nurse maternalized and her soldier-­ patient infantilized, presented reading a book in a non-military pose, but she is equally set against the backdrop of a stylized map, underlining the extent to which she is embodying “home” for American soldiers serving abroad. This version of the nurse’s role as simultaneously embodying both mother and homeland was important to soldiers, and to their families. Some accounts from soldiers describe the experience of hospital care as bringing with it visions and memories of home. British QuartermasterSergeant Gordon Fisher, for example, described his experience of arriving in no 4 General Hospital near Calais as a kind of domestic bliss: “It was

Fig. 3.1  “His Overseas Mother,” United States, ca. 1918. Postcard (Source Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection. National Library of Medicine)

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wonderful! I’ll never forget slipping down between cool white sheets in a hospital bed. I seemed to have been sleeping in my clothes for years, and to get between cool white sheets straight from the mud of the Front up in Passchendaele was like being in heaven,” and describes the hospital matron giving him beer—“a bottle of Bass”—with his lunch “every single day,” in a reconstruction of an English regional cultural habit.7 This association of hospital with home and of female carers with female relatives when men were being cared for in hospitals far from home was a common one during the First World War and was not necessarily dependent on a relationship of cultural or ethnic affinity between nurse and patient. This is illustrated in the memoirs of French West African soldier Bakary Diallo, who describes his experience of the evocation of visions of home when being helped to write a letter home by a female volunteer in a French military hospital: Mme Wilfort was leaning over the letter in order to understand what I wanted, with the lines very badly written with my weakened hand, and this time her face was suddenly marked by a painful sadness. In seeing her like this, I seemed to forget my suffering. I was stunned, in a state of shock, not knowing what to think, my eyes fixed on Mme Wilfort’s eyes as if I saw in her my mother Diara. Yet between her and my mother there was a difference in colour… The soul of a woman who is replacing an absent mother, does she identify with a colour? Mme Wilfort cried: “Don’t cry Diallo, or I won’t come and see you any more”. And the idea that she wouldn’t come and see me again transformed me. I felt a sense of calm coming over my body. My benefactor had understood. She continued to give me all her care and goodness.8

When describing their African patients, French First World War nurses’ writings tend to reveal a shift in the course of the war from descriptions of French West African soldiers (or tirailleurs sénégalais) that drew on racist stereotypes of “African savages,” or on the cultural norms of Orientalist travel writing, to more nuanced and individualized portraits of men who faced both linguistic and cultural challenges, as well as prejudice, when fighting for the imperial “homeland.”9 What is interesting about Diallo’s perspective as a patient, however, is that the nurse-asmother figure appears to transcend racial and cultural differences and to bring what is presented as a “universal” idea of maternal comfort to the narrator.

62  A. S. FELL

Acting as a “stand-in” or “go-between” for the absent home and family was also important to nurses, who often wrote directly to relatives, explaining the medical conditions that their patients were suffering from, and offering words of comfort. In the case of Britain, the War Office paid for family members to travel to see their patients if their condition was considered serious: “Every day small groups of anxious relatives arrived on the Channel ferries at Boulogne, often to face a long train journey to Rouen or to a hospital on the Normandy coast.”10 It was nurses who communicated with the patients’ families and who acted as a scribe or mouthpiece for their patients. Matron Helen Hanks, for example, wrote to the wife of a British soldier who had been wounded on the Western Front, explaining that: “[Tetanus] is a very painful condition due to general stiffness. He would like you and I would advise you to come. I will arrange for you to have a railway pass. I am very sorry for your Husband – he is so plucky & very bright. I shouldn’t worry too much about him – he cannot write – he sends his love.”11 Nurses therefore acted as a vital communication channel between front and home, narrating and “translating” the military experience for civilians behind the lines. Kate Luard, a British QAIMNS nurse who served with the British Expeditionary Force in a series of hospitals and hospital trains on the Western Front, described the difficulties she found in this role as writer of what she called “Break-the-News Letters.”12 After describing the death of an underage soldier, who related his desire to see his mother before he died, she repeated his final words to his mother in a letter, something which she described as “the most upsetting thing that has happened of all the upsetting things.” In a later passage, she expressed some frustration at female relatives’ responses to her letters: [Mothers] almost invariably write and ask if he “said anything under the operation” or if he “left any message” when you’ve carefully told them he was unconscious from the time he was brought in. And when you’ve said the Chaplain took the funeral they write and ask, “If he was buried respectable?” Some of them write most touching and heart-broken letters.13

There is clearly a difference of social class at work here: Luard’s mimicking of the working-class mothers’ language betrays a sense of frustration with their inability to understand the medical realities of their sons’ cases.

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However, there is also a sense of responsibility expressed in the passing on of news, on the need to act as a bridge between the front and home. Providing good medical care overseas was an important part of the “social contract” that was understood to exist between mobilized men and their homeland. Accordingly, many nurses saw their role overseas as primarily that of caring for soldiers from their homeland “on behalf” of the nation. Kirsty Harris’s research on Australian nurses, for example, shows how nurses went to great lengths to make “their boys,” from the Australian Imperial Force, feel “at home” on the Western Front: “They sought mementos from home to bring Australia a bit closer for their Australian patients – gum tree leaves, pieces of yellow wattle, Australian newspapers and comfort foods common in Australia.”14 Equally, Australian patients and medical staff in military hospitals sought to create a “home from home” via a program of cultural events and activities. The First Auxiliary Australian Hospital in Harefield, England, for example, published a hospital magazine called The Boomerang that held a “fancy craft” competition for convalescent soldiers, and many entries, preserved in the Australian War Memorial, had Australian motifs. The hospital equally kept a cockatoo and a koala as mascots.15 Creating an “Australian” identity for both nurses and soldiers away from home not only helped to create an ex-pat community, but equally meant that nurses were positioned differently from other Australian women in soldiers’ letters and memoirs. Stephen Garton argues in this context that: Australian soldiers […], thousands of miles from home, developed a complex demonology of home front betrayers, fanned by newspapers, letters from home, stories in journals and magazines and the reports of new troops, recently arrived from Australia. The focus of their enmity were all those seen to be failing in their duty to support the soldiers at the front.

Prominent among those seen not to be “doing their bit” in terms of the war effort were “women at home [who] were not fully committed to their cause.” Garton cites one popular Australian magazine’s cultural stereotype of the Australian woman at home as “Diggus Feminus, easily domesticated […] lives chiefly on chocolates, cakes and ice-cream […] very fond of theatres, movies, moonlight excursions and picnics.”16 The tone taken in relation to nurses caring for Australian soldiers overseas, however, is generally much more positive. Unlike women at home, nurses were usually understood by mobilized men to be on the “right”

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side of the dividing line between those suspected of shirking, profiteering or indifference in Australia, and those serving at the front. Another way in which nurses attempted to re-create “home” for their soldier-patients was by enabling what was often referred to as a “good death.” Nurses wrote to bereaved families to reassure them that their relatives were looked after when they passed away. After British Private William Forster’s death in September 1917 at a Casualty Clearing Station on the Western Front, for example, Sister Roy, a Scottish member of the QAIMNS, wrote to his family that “There was no chance of his recovery. Everything possible was done for him but he gradually grew weaker and weaker and peacefully passed away midday today. While with us he did not mention anyone at home.”17 During the war, there was a great deal of concern in all belligerent nations about a lack of appropriate rituals for men of different nationalities and religious faiths who died overseas. This can be seen, for example, in the debates that raged in Allied nations during and after the war about the repatriation of soldiers to be buried in their family plots rather than in large military cemeteries.18 Many nurses wrote about the deaths of their patients in their letters, diaries and memoirs. Alice Kelly argues in her analysis of British nurses’ personal writings that the reasons nurses wrote so regularly about their patients’ deaths was because this was a way of bringing order to the busy and sometimes chaotic setting of a military hospital, especially in Casualty Clearing Stations where the usual rituals surrounding death were not always possible to perform. Using familiar language, literary tropes and religious imagery in their diaries, letters and memoirs can therefore be interpreted as “an effort [by nurses] to impose meaning and dignity on the mass deaths that were occurring.”19 Anxieties about ensuring “a good death” for patients far from home is equally apparent in an account by Mimi Warth, a German Red Cross nurse who nursed in South Tyrol. Like many German Red Cross nurses, Warth was a Protestant deaconess,20 and her account is notable for the religious discourse she uses to describe her nursing practice. For her, the spiritual care of her soldier-patients was as if not more important than their medical care, and in her memoirs she makes no distinction of nationality. Rather, she discusses the problems of language, and attempted to learn some basic vocabulary so she could communicate with a range of patients: “With a good morning in clear Hungarian, Polish, Italian, Czech and Romanian, I would enter the ward every morning.” She was also anxious to offer good care to men of different religious faiths: “The hospital curate had given me a small

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crucifix which I wore round my neck and which I would bend down so the dying could kiss it with their lips. There were mostly Catholic, Orthodox but also a Mohammedan.”21 She was particularly concerned with fulfilling the soldier’s dying requests, and was frustrated when she felt she had failed in this duty because of language and cultural barriers to mutual understanding: Some wanted to tell me something, perhaps a last wish, but I couldn’t understand it since there were too many languages spoken there. If it was possible I ran quickly to find someone to translate, but some had to be content with an answer from me in his mother tongue “I do not understand”. How terribly sad it was for those poor men, but it was even more difficult for me. I wanted to help everyone so much.22

A similar account of the desire to give a soldier a “good death” appears in the published letters of an American volunteer nurse who describes the death of a French colonial soldier who “had come from the sunny shores of Guadeloupe to die for France: ‘Mama’ he murmured, ‘Louis’, then fainter and sweeter ‘O mon bon Dieu’, and it was over, and nothing remained but a radiating smile. I went to lay him away among the heroes; and if I ever doubted how to die, my black pearl fisher from Guadeloupe has shown me the way.”23 The impression given in this example is that at the moment of death the soldier has “returned home,” to this mother, via the attentive care of the nurse. Again, the extent to which this aspect of a nurse’s role in relation to a soldier’s death was widespread in First World War hospitals is illustrated by a similar depiction of the nurse’s role in the death of a patient in West African soldier Bakary Diallo’s memoir: A nun, working as a night nurse, is at the bedside of one of my neighbours in the ward. A man is going to die… It’s about four o’clock in the morning, night is battling with him in the white sheets of the hospital, and all the comrades who are awake have their heads turned towards his eyes. […] “Mother….mother….my mother….my God….my God…” It’s over. […] The sister, in her nun’s habit, stands up, her hands joined at her chest, her head lifted up, her eyes open and lips moving. She is praying and watching her guides my heart. I see the rays of daylight enter the ward through the closed windows. The sister prays, standing still. My impression is that she is no longer the person she was, she has become somebody else, ready to rise like an angel to heaven…24

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In both these examples, which are redolent with religious imagery, the nurse is imagined as playing the role of an intercessor for the dying soldier. At the same time, she is transformed into the soldier’s own mother, “transporting” him from the front to the home.

Nursing “the Other” The above examples illustrate that the nurse’s role could be that of intercessor, go-between or stand-in for the soldier’s home in overseas hospitals, whether for patients who shared a nurse’s nationality, or for those understood to be deserving of her care, such as patients from a nation’s colonies, or patients with a shared religious faith. However, this version of the nurse’s role in relation to the patient’s home is not always present in written accounts of the nurse–patient relationship. Harris makes a clear distinction between Australian Army nurses’ attempts to create an ex-pat community for their Australian patients and the “psychological shock” experienced by some of them when they nursed men of unfamiliar nationalities and ethnicities.25 While Sister Irene Bonnin evoked a notion of communal caregiving across national boundaries, commenting in her diary: “Who does it matter who we nurse – we are all helping one another,” her fellow Australian Sister Gladys White criticized the fact that in Salonika she was surrounded by “a confusion of strange tongues, weird customs and strange stinks.”26 Some nurses reproduced racist stereotypes in their writings. This sense of a patient’s “otherness,” rendering them less deserving of care and disrupting a nurse’s sense of caregiving as a maternal or patriotic duty, could equally relate to more “local” differences. British volunteer nurse Margaret Ellis, who worked at 26 General Hospital on the Western Front, for example, expressed her frustrations with a group of working-class Scottish patients in terms of national characteristics and stereotypes: They were dreadful, these Glasgow boys. They were shockers, worse than any, because they were always up to something. [One of the little Highland Light Infantry boys] […] as soon as he was allowed to get up for a time, he was always round the ward tormenting everybody who was still in bed. […] He kept going much longer than he should have done, wearing himself out and everyone else as well, because he would suddenly fling himself down on his bed and say in his broad Glasgow accent “Ach! My pair taes”.27

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A similar mixture of fascination for patient’s class and regional difference and disdain for men of a lower social class can be discerned in the description of a Parisian “apache” or gangster in The Forbidden Zone, the well-known postwar nursing memoirs by wealthy American volunteer Mary Borden, who ran a hospital on the Western Front: His name was tattooed on his arm, and the head of a woman life-size on his back. He himself might have been fashioned by Praxiteles, but some sailor in a North African port had dug needles of blue ink into the marble flesh of his arm and written there the indelible words – Enfant de Malheur. […] He was one of a lot of some twenty apaches that had been brought in that morning. As I remember them, they were all handsome young men – these assassins, thieves, pimps and traffickers in drugs – with sleek elastic limbs, smooth polished skins and beautiful bones. It was, if I remember rightly, only about their heads that I noticed imperfection. Their skulls were not quite right somehow, nor the shape of their ears. Their foreheads were low and receding, their jaws weak, and their mouths betrayed depravity. Still they were beautiful, beautiful as young leopards, and they brought with them into the hospital the strange morbid glamour of crime.28

Here there is no sense of shared kinship, no attempt to play the role of stand-in mother. Rather, the intercultural encounter takes center stage, and the nurse’s gaze becomes at once ethnographic, in her categorization of his physical characteristics that allegedly betrayed his moral failings, and sexualized in her open admiration of “dangerous” male bodies who were socially taboo for a woman of her class and wartime role. Sometimes, these kinds of troubling encounters between nurses and patients that did not conform to the idealized “mother–son” model consisted of intercultural encounters between British and Dominion patients, revealing the cracks that lay beneath more idealized models of an Imperial “brotherhood” forged in war. This is apparent in the following account of sexual harassment by British volunteer nurse Kit Dodsworth: Later [on Christmas Day] ‘raiding parties’ came round the wards, and I got badly caught again. There were six men, Australians, and one of them had blacked his face. They had sworn to kiss every Sister and nurse in the hospital. […] I hastily slipped out of the ward into a bathroom. I hoped that they hadn’t noticed me because there was no lock on the door, but to my horror I heard them coming. I tried to hold the door shut, but there

68  A. S. FELL were six of them and I was forced back. They came in and, having trapped me there, started discussing in loud joking voices whether they should do it in the ward or in the bathroom. They finally decided that as there was an audience in the ward that would be better, and they grabbed me, swept me off my feet and literally carried me in. They set me down and the blackfaced man kissed me vigorously, leaving a filthy black mark on my face. My own men felt it was beyond a joke and protested like anything, but that didn’t stop the Australians.29

There is a complex set of conflicting expectations and behaviors at play in this episode, particularly as the British nurse goes on to say that “We heard afterwards that some English boys had told the Colonials that English girls expected to be kissed on Christmas Day.” The Australian soldier having blackened his face is giving himself license to behave in an “uncivilised” manner, revealing the influence of both racist stereotypes and colonial hierarchies of power. The nurse presents the behavior in terms of cultural difference—comparing the Australian soldiers to “my own men”—but equally blames the English soldiers for spreading untrue myths about British women to “Colonials.” Underlying this episode, moreover, is the fragility of a conception of the nurse–patient relationship as asexual, non-threatening and maternal. The nurse becomes the potential victim of a sexual assault, and thereby upholds Carden Coyle’s observation that the common representations of hospital wards as socialized spaces and re-creations of “home” could easily be troubled or threatened in the intimate setting of a hospital ward. Another context in which the relationship between nurse and patient challenged both nurses’ and patients’ understandings of “self” and “other” was when nurses cared for POW or “enemy” patients. The relationship between medical personnel and “enemy” or prisoner-of-war patients was a source of tension in nurses’ personal writings, especially in relation to conceptions of “home.” On the one hand, the enemy patient’s body was seen in nurses’ accounts as “neutral” territory, in line with the transnational and impartial humanitarianism embodied in the symbol of the Red Cross. On the other, nurses who saw their role as a form of patriotic service to the nation tended to view the nursing of enemy patients as incompatible with their patriotic duty and therefore as less deserving—or, in a few cases, as undeserving—of their care. Evidence from letters, diaries and memoirs reveals that responses to the enemy body not only varied among nurses according to their attitudes

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toward their wartime role, but also that they evolved during the war: proximity to young, vulnerable men tended to transform the POW patient from representatives of an enemy “race” or nation into a suffering body to be nursed. The arrival of enemy patients was often a source of fascination, a chance to see the flesh-and-blood equivalents of the nationalist stereotypes that they had encountered previously. In her diary, British military nurse Edith Appleton, for example, described the way in which French civilians and British medical orderlies flocked to try and catch a glimpse of her German patients when nursing in a hospital in Etretat in October 1916: As before when I had the German patients, the whole population of Etretat turned out to see them carried in (37 were on stretchers), and they made themselves such a nuisance that I closed the ground-floor shutters. The youth of Etretat have been parading in front of the house singing the Marseillaise for the benefit of the Germans, and our own people are as bad. I find bunches of strange orderlies gazing at them, and I then make myself thoroughly unpleasant and banish the lot. I’m not going to keep a peep show. If they want to see Germans, I tell them to join an Infantry Regiment and they will get what they want.30

I have argued that when writing about Allied non-white patients, British and French nurses often adopted an ethnographic approach, treating them as “specimens” of a particular race or ethnicity to be categorized and described for the benefit of their readers.31 In Appleton’s diary, the Germans are also set up as embodiments of their “race” or nation; objects of fascination to be gazed upon. Despite Appleton’s professionalism in refusing to allow her ward to become a “peep show,” she also expressed distaste for nursing German prisoners, and used nationalist stereotypes to describe them: “They really looked like robbers, and there were some poor, cringing creatures among them. […] Really, the smell of gangrene, added to the always unpleasant German smell, was a trial to one’s stomach.” A sense of detached professionalism combined with nationalist sentiment is also apparent in the memoir of Australian nurse Elsie Steadman: “Fritz made a good patient but I am sure he had not the fine sensibilities of our own British boys […] There was one thing about nursing them, you did your work without a vestige of sentiment, just for

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[…] work’s sake, nothing else. Fritz you left when your day was done without a thought.”32 The ambiguities brought about by nursing the enemy body are particularly evident in the diary written by Kit McNoughton, an Australian trained nurse. She was in charge of a ward of 45 German POW patients at a base hospital in Boulogne in July 1916, and her attitude toward them evolved as the exhausting work of caring for so many seriously wounded young men took its toll. Like Appleton, she initially commented on the extent to which her patients became objects of fascination, and she was faced with a stream of visitors, including generals, journalists, parliamentarians and even the exiled Queen Amélie of Portugal: “We have all the swank in our ward as they come and see the Huns.”33 What also emerges in Kit’s diary, however, is her mixed feelings about nursing them. In one entry she wrote: I have eleven with their legs off and a couple ditto arms & hips & heads galore & the awful smell from the wounds is the limit as this Gas Gangrene is the most awful thing imaginable, a leg goes in a day. I extract a bullet from a German’s back today, and I enjoyed cutting into him. The bullet is my small treasure, as I hope it saved a life as it was a revolver one.34

As Janet Butler points out, it is surprising, firstly, that she was able to perform small surgical procedures as a nurse. But what is equally striking is the pleasure she expressed in removing the bullet, which she treats as a kind of war trophy. At this stage, when dealing with the stream of injured from the Somme, her style is detached, and she writes of the medical trauma of the German bodies without much sense of them as individual men. However, as the weeks passed her tone changed. When she stated “I have done my bit by my country as I killed a German today,” the tone is ironic as this was accompanied by expressions of her disappointment at the high death rate in her ward—“I think it’s the limit the way they die.” By the time the first batch of wounded were evacuated they had become individualized, and she claimed them as “her” Germans: “Evacuated all my Bosches [sic] today even my Hein & William Schellor – I hated them going & so did they & the poor kids along with souvenir in the shape of buttons for ‘Sister’ – their eyes filled up when they said goodbye. Of course they are going to write to me, so I can see myself being watched

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as a German spy.”35 Here, her German patients were written about in a manner similar to that in which she discussed her young Allied patients, although her additional comment about the dangers of corresponding with German POWs reveals an awareness of the risks of sounding like she is sympathizing too much with the enemy. In another entry she stated: “This book is filled up with chats re Germans but I don’t mind as long as the fight goes well with us.” Therefore, despite the shift in her perception of the enemy from “embodiments of Germany” to individualized “wounded bodies” she remained keen to reassure the readers of her diary (and perhaps herself) of her ongoing patriotism alongside her growing sympathy as a nurse with the POW patients for whom she was caring. The relationship between nurses and enemy patients was also inflected by the particular contexts in which they were encountering one another. In cases of enemy occupation, tensions were evidently heightened. For example, the British medical women of the Serbian Relief Fund, who remained in Serbia under the authorities of the Central Powers in 1915 caring for Serbian POWs, refused to treat enemy soldiers as a point of principle, agreeing only to treat Serbian casualties. However, Leila, Lady Paget, in her account of the invasion of Serbia printed for private circulation in 1916, also described the affection between the British women of the Serbian Relief Fund and Austrian POWs who worked as orderlies in their hospital, after having been previously taken prisoner by the Serbians. When they left Skopje in February 1916, Paget wrote: “It was not very easy to leave the hospital, though it held for us the memory of so much pain and hard work. […] It was a sad leave we took of the poor Serbian captives, and tears rolled down the faces of our faithful Austrians.”36 Here, the Austrians are depicted alongside the Serbians as needing protection from the German, Austrian and Bulgarian occupiers, suggesting a shifting of national allegiances in a hospital that had been stretched to its limits caring for typhus cases. This contrasts with the war diary of Yvonne Blondel, a French volunteer Red Cross nurse who, as the daughter of the French Ambassador to Romania, nursed in 1916 and 1917 in Romania and had to evacuate several hospitals in order to retreat from the advance of the Bulgarian and German armies. She never fell into enemy hands, and her descriptions of the enemy remained fixed in racialized stereotypes. When praising the actions of a Romanian soldier-patient she exclaimed for example: “Here is our Latin race, with its admirable humanity. I am certain that a ‘Boche’, with his pretentious

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‘Kultur’, and even less so a Bulgarian, as a ferocious slav, wouldn’t have reacted in the same way.”37 Unlike the British women, her national stereotypes were never challenged or nuanced by the experience of caring for individual German or Bulgarian patients, or by working alongside enemy medical personnel. The personal writings of nurses posted overseas suggest that attitudes toward their POW patients evolved over time. During the war, nurses were often hesitant about the “neutral” nature of the bodies of the enemy men they nursed. For some, they cared for them reluctantly, carrying out a professional duty while deliberately maintaining a distance as they felt it was not compatible with their patriotic task of nursing men from their homeland, embodying “the nation” while overseas. Others were keen to emphasize their neutrality as medical personnel in an attempt to provide evidence that their nation could not be accused of having broken the 1906 Geneva convention and had offered good nursing care to POW sick and wounded. Yet several nurses reveal in their personal writings that the experience of proximity and care of the bodies of the young men they nursed dictated their response. Australian army nurse Rosa Kirkcaldie commented in her postwar published memoirs on a shift in her attitudes brought about by her proximity to suffering young men’s bodies when she was nursing at the Western Front: Later, during the rush of the Somme battles, we carried many wounded German prisoners, and somehow the hatred one felt towards them collectively, faded when individuals, piteously wounded, were brought to us. […] As a rule they were most grateful for what was done for them, and, when I look back and see again that ward of mine, crowded with terribly wounded and dying Germans, I still feel only infinite pity for their awful sufferings.38

Conclusion Accounts like this reveal that it was often difficult for nurses to maintain a distance from their patients, whether they saw them as “their own” or as “other,” once faced with the bodily reality of their pain and suffering. But nurses’ writings also reveal an awareness of the potentially problematic position that this placed them in as women mobilized for war as patriotic citizens of their nation. The sense of sympathy for individual German soldiers’ bodies alongside the greater degree of reflection in

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Kirkcaldie’s account also relates to the fact that it was published in 1922; such sentiments were rarely expressed as unambiguously in published wartime accounts. This interplay between loyalty to nation and impartial care reflects broader ambiguities around humanitarian action during the First World War. As Heather Jones argues, in contrast to the original aims of the International Committee of the Red Cross, if we look at national societies of the Red Cross, for whom many trained and volunteer nurses worked, “we find patriotism and hyper-nationalism emerging.” Jones concludes that “national Red Cross societies and the ICRC in Geneva […] although they shared a common symbol did not always share the same motivations.”39 This conclusion is backed up by the ambiguities and hesitations about nursing POW patients expressed in nurses’ personal writings. Many nurses were mobilized as part of national aid efforts that used the rhetoric of patriotic service to the nation. At the same time, they were interpellated by broader, gendered discourses that associated womanhood with selfless and nurturing maternal devotion. Caring for one’s own soldiers allowed nurses to be both patriotic citizens and selfless female carers. But being faced with a sick or wounded enemy body forced nurses to challenge or break with one of these cultural roles. Hospital wards during the First World War were therefore spaces in which contrasting national and transnational understandings of women’s medical care were brought into sharp focus. In this chapter I have explored the concept of “home” for nurses who were posted overseas, often traveling alongside expeditionary forces, and for their patients. In some nurses’ letters, diaries and memoirs, the overseas hospital ward is presented as a stand-in for the home, as an extension of the domestic space into the military zone, and nurses are compared to female relatives left behind, most often as proxy mothers for their combatant patients. The nurse is often presented as a vital link or bridge between front and home, recreating cultural norms and cultural practices to bring comfort through familiar ritual, communicating with families, and ensuring that appropriate rituals were performed when men died. Furthermore, examples from a West African soldier’s memoir shows that the nurse’s role as a stand-in for the care of absent female relatives could also be true of nurses caring for foreign soldiers in hospitals in the nurses’ home nations. In other situations, however, the ward is viewed as a militarized space, an extension of the battlefield itself, in which nurses are understood as “mobilized” for their nations, the female equivalents of mobilized

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combatants. Nurses sometimes reacted angrily when asked to nurse men of other nationalities, or POW patients, or felt troubled by the tensions that emerged between a duty of care toward vulnerable men and a desire to serve their homeland. This relates to a broader tension between “national” and “transnational” conceptualizations of medical women’s wartimes roles—between understandings of nurses as “neutral caregivers” and that of nurses as “mobilized non-combatants.” The voices of nurses and patients cited in this chapter has revealed that these tensions were particularly evident in nurse–patient relationships that took place beyond the homeland during the First World War.

Notes







1. On the US Army Nurse Corps, see Mary T. Sarnecky, A History of the US Army Nurse Corps (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Lisa M. Budreau and Richard M. Prior, Answering the Call: The US Army Nurse Corps, 1917–1919 (Washington, DC: United States Department of Defense, 2008). On British and Dominion Nurses, see Alison S. Fell and Christine Hallett, First World War Nursing: International Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2013); Christine Hallett, Veiled Warriors: Allied Nurses of the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Kirsty Harris, More Than Bombs and Bandages: Australian Army Nurses at Work in World War I (Newport: Big Sky Publishing, 2011); Cynthia Toman, Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016). On French nurses see Margaret Darrow, French Women and the First World War (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Yvonne Knibiehler, Cornettes et blouses blanches: Les infirmières dans la société française (Paris: Hachette, 1984); Françoise Thébaud, La Femme au temps de la guerre de 14 (Paris: Stock, 1984). On Russian nurses, see Laurie S. Stoff, Russian Sisters of Mercy and the Great War: More Than Binding Men’s Wounds (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015). 2. Lyn Macdonald, The Roses of No Man’s Land (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), 248. 3. Anonymous, Mademoiselle Miss: Letters from a First World War Nurse at an Army Hospital Near the Marne (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 55. 4. Ana Carden Coyne, The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power During the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 191. 5. Carden Coyne, The Politics of Wounds, 191. 6. Carden Coyne, The Politics of Wounds, 198.



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7. Macdonald, The Roses of No Man’s Land, 269. 8. Bakary Diallo, Force Bonté (Paris: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1985), 115–16. This and all further translations are my own. 9.  Alison S. Fell, “Nursing the Other: The Representation of Colonial Troops in French and British First World War Nursing Memoirs,” in Race, Empire and First World War Writing, ed. Santanu Das (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 158–75. 10. Macdonald, The Roses of No Man’s Land, 100. 11.  Helen Hanks, Letter, n.d., Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. 12. Kate Luard, Unknown Warriors (London: Chatto and Windus, 1930), 106. 13. Luard, Unknown Warriors, 75. 14.  Kirsty Harris, “All for the Boys: The Nurse-Patient Relationship of Australian Army Nurses in the First World War,” in First World War Nursing: New Perspectives, ed. Alison S. Fell and Christine Hallett (New York: Routledge, 2013), 71–86, especially 78. 15.  Alexia Moncrieff, “Cultures of Care and the Shaping of Personal Relationships: Intimacy in a First World War Auxiliary Hospital” (unpublished paper delivered at the University of Leeds, 2017). The Boomerang also reported, however, that the koala was “wilfully murdered,” pointing to some evident tensions between Australian patients and local British residents, possibly because of a number of marriages between Australian patients and local British women who were working as VAD nurses. 16. “The Tabbie,” Aussi, 10 (January 1919), quoted in Stephen Garton, “Longing for War: Nostalgia and Australian Returned Soldiers After the First World War,” in The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, ed. T. G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper (London: Routledge, 2000), 222–39, especially 234. 17.  Sister Catherine Murray Roy, Letter, September 29, 1917, Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Roy was later Matron-in-Chief of the QAIMNS. 18. Dominiek Dendooven, “Bringing the Dead Home: Repatriation, Illegal Repatriation and Expatriation of British Bodies During and After the First World War,” in Bodies in Conflict: Corporeality, Materiality and Transformation, ed. Paul Cornish and Nicholas J. Saunders (London: Routledge, 2013), 66–79. 19. Alice Kelly, “‘Can One Grow Used to Death?’ Deathbed Scenes in Great War Nurses’ Narratives,” in The Great War: From Memory to History, ed. Jonathan Vance, Alicia Robinet, and Steven Marti (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015), 329–49, especially 329.

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20. The German Red Cross included women’s associations, men’s associations and sisterhoods, and had three levels of nurse depending upon training and experience. In 1914 around 17,000 Catholic nuns and 12,000 Protestant deaconesses offered their services to the German Red Cross. This contrasts with the three societies of the French Red Cross, which did not include French Catholic nursing orders. 21.  Elfriede von Pflugk-Harttung et  al., Frontschwestern. Ein deutsches Ehrenbuch Gebundene Ausgabe (Berlin: Bernhard & Graefe, 1941), 255, 259. 22. von Pflugk-Harttung, Frontschwestern, 259. 23. Anon, Mademoiselle Miss, 63–65. 24. Diallo, Force-Bonté, 110–11. 25. Harris, “All for the Boys,” 80. 26.  Irene Bonnin, Diary, May 20, 1916; Sister G. Walter, Diary, AWM. Quoted in Harris, “All for the Boys,” 80. 27. Macdonald, Roses of No Man’s Land, 197. 28.  Mary Borden, “The Forbidden Zone,” in Nurses at the Front, ed. Margaret R. Higonnet (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 99–100. 29. Macdonald, The Roses of No Man’s Land, 251. 30. Edith Appleton, A Nurse at the Front: The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton, ed. Ruth Cowan (London: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 194. 31. Fell, “Nursing the Other,” 167–70. 32. Elsie L. Steadman, Memoir, Papers of Elsie L. Steadman, Australian War Memorial, PR 86/302, 2–3. 33. Quoted in Janet Butler, Kitty’s War: The Remarkable Wartime Experiences of Kit McNaughton (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2013), 131. 34. Butler, Kitty’s War, 131. 35. Butler, Kitty’s War, 137. 36. Lady Paget, With Our Serbian Allies: Second Report, Imperial War Museum, 1916, 34602, 93. See Angela K. Smith, “Beacons of Britishness: British Nurses and Female Doctors as Prisoners of War,” in First World War Nursing: New Perspectives, ed. Alison S. Fell and Christine Hallett (New York: Routledge, 2013), 35–51. 37. Yvonne Blondel, Journal de guerre 1916–1917: Front sud de la Roumanie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 14. 38.  Rosa A. Kirkcaldie, In Gray and Scarlet (Melbourne: Alexander McCubbin, 1922), 119–20. 39.  Heather Jones, “International or Transnational? Humanitarian Action During the First World War,” European Review of History 16, no. 5 (2009): 702–3.

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Bibliography Anonymous. Mademoiselle Miss: Letters from a First World War Nurse at an Army Hospital Near the Marne. New York: Macmillan, 1916. Appleton, Edith. A Nurse at the Front: The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton. Edited by Ruth Cowan. London: Simon & Schuster, 2013. Blondel, Yvonne. Journal de guerre 1916–1917: Front sud de la Roumanie. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001. Borden, Mary. The Forbidden Zone: Reproduced in Nurses at the Front. Edited by Margaret R. Higonnet. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001. Budreau, Lisa M., and Richard M. Prior. Answering the Call: The US Army Nurse Corps, 1917–1919. Washington, DC: United States Department of Defense, 2008. Butler, Janet. Kitty’s War: The Remarkable Wartime Experiences of Kit McNaughton. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2013. Carden Coyne, Ana. The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power During the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Darrow, Margaret. French Women and the First World War. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Dendooven, Dominiek. “Bringing the Dead Home: Repatriation, Illegal Repatriation and Expatriation of British Bodies During and After the First World War.” In Bodies in Conflict: Corporeality, Materiality and Transformation, edited by Paul Cornish and Nicholas J. Saunders, 66–79. London: Routledge, 2013. Diallo, Bakary. Force Bonté. Paris: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1985. Fell, Alison S. “Nursing the Other: The Representation of Colonial Troops in French and British First World War Nursing Memoirs.” In Race, Empire and First World War Writing, edited by Santanu Das, 158–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Fell, Alison S., and Christine Hallett. First World War Nursing: New Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2013. Garton, Stephen. “Longing for War: Nostalgia and Australian Returned Soldiers After the First World War.” In The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, edited by T. G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper, 222–39. London: Routledge, 2000. Hallett, Christine. Veiled Warriors: Allied Nurses of the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Hanks, Helen. Letter, n.d. Liddle Collection. Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Harris, Kirsty. More Than Bombs and Bandages: Australian Army Nurses at Work in World War I. Newport: Big Sky Publishing, 2011. Harris, Kirsty. “All for the Boys: The Nurse-Patient Relationship of Australian Army Nurses in the First World War.” In First World War Nursing: New

78  A. S. FELL Perspectives, edited by Alison S. Fell and Christine Hallett, 71–86. New York: Routledge, 2013. Jones, Heather. “International or Transnational? Humanitarian Action During the First World War.” European Review of History 16, no. 5 (2009): 697–713. Kelly, Alice. “‘Can One Grow Used to Death?’ Deathbed Scenes in Great War Nurses’ Narratives.” In The Great War: From Memory to History, edited by Jonathan Vance, Alicia Robinet, and Steven Marti, 329–49. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015. Kirkcaldie, Rosa A. In Gray and Scarlet. Melbourne: Alexander McCubbin, 1922. Knibiehler, Yvonne. Cornettes et blouses blanches: Les infirmières dans la société française. Paris: Hachette, 1984. Luard, Kate Evelyn. Unknown Warriors. London: Chatto & Windus, 1930. Macdonald, Lyn. The Roses of No Man’s Land. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993. Paget, Lady. With Our Serbian Allies: Second Report. Imperial War Museum, 1916, 34602. Roy, Sister Catherine Murray. Letter, September 29, 1917. Liddle Collection. Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Sarnecky, Mary T. A History of the US Army Nurse Corps. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Smith, Angela K. “Beacons of Britishness: British Nurses and Female Doctors as Prisoners of War.” In First World War Nursing: New Perspectives, edited by Alison S. Fell and Christine Hallett, 35–51. New York: Routledge, 2013. Steadman, Elsie L. Memoir. Papers of Elsie L. Steadman. Australian War Memorial, PR 86/302. Stoff, Laurie S. Russian Sisters of Mercy and the Great War: More Than Binding Men’s Wounds. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. Thébaud, Françoise. La Femme au temps de la guerre de 14. Paris: Stock, 1984. Toman, Cynthia. Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016. von Pflugk-Harttung, Elfriede. Frontschwestern. Ein deutsches Ehrenbuch Gebundene Ausgabe. Berlin: Bernhard & Graefe, 1941.

CHAPTER 4

The Enemy Lurking Behind the Front: Controlling Sex in the German Forces Sent to Eastern and Western Europe, 1914–1918 Lisa M. Todd

In October 1916, the Commander General of the Carpathian Corps sent a report on soldier–civilian relations to the Bavarian War Ministry, in which he emphasized that the “majority” of women in the area, who were “willing to have sexual relations with soldiers,” were infected with venereal disease. In fact, he claimed that every soldier who chose to “engage in intercourse with these women” had a seventy-five percent chance of becoming infected with syphilis or gonorrhea. The Commander General maintained his men were well-informed on the medical threats posed by local women, and declared, “If a man knows there is a seventy-five percent chance of infection from every sexual encounter, and he does it anyway, we regard this as a deliberate self-removal from active duty. This is in contravention of his legal responsibilities as a soldier.”1 This equating of “foreignness,” female sexual promiscuity, and medical threats to military efficiency would guide

L. M. Todd (*)  Department of History, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_4

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the civil–military surveillance of sexual acts between combatants and non-combatants throughout the First World War. The spatial realities of this global war removed many Germans from their traditional relationships and thrust them into encounters with peoples they considered “foreign.” After a short period of mobile warfare, the static nature of trench warfare meant soldiers had prolonged contact with enemy civilian populations. Foreign prisoners-of-war from Russia, France, Great Britain, and Serbia were housed in German cities, towns, and villages.2 Women worked as nurses and auxiliaries in occupied territories.3 After 1918, Allied occupation forces from the United States, Canada, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Algeria, Senegal and Morocco were stationed in German cities and towns, triggering national and international outrage.4 Alongside the unsettling knowledge that Europeans were meeting “the enemy” on a mass scale was the reality that millions of German couples were physically separated by the exigencies of mobilization. Generally, soldiers had few furloughs in the span of a year, and for those in captivity, there would be no visits home at all. Though historians have been breaking down the monolithic dichotomy of home front/fighting front, for most Germans, spouses spending the war years largely apart became the new normal. Adultery seemed another unwelcome by-product of this global conflagration. Sexual encounters between soldiers and civilians became frequent and sustained as the German Army shifted, by late 1914 following the rapid military advances dictated by the Schlieffen Plan in the West and success against Russia in the East, from being an invading and expeditionary force to an occupying power. Just three weeks after mobilization, the German Army established the Imperial Government General in Belgium, consisting of military and civil administrations, and a Governor-General. The Government General was responsible for, among other matters, the occupation troops, border control, the control of the movement of people, the military police, and administration of justice.5 Likewise, by the end of 1914, the Germans had placed a Governor-General in charge of the German-occupied territories in the East, with its headquarters based in the Polish city of Łódź. When Warsaw was conquered on August 24, it became the new administrative center, the so-called General Government Warsaw. A small part of Poland remained under the military rule of the Ober Ost.6 The presence of high numbers of occupation troops resulted in frequent and sustained contact between soldiers and civilians, governed by new power hierarchies. In the heterosexual

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encounters that are the focus of this chapter,7 male soldiers and female civilians met in many spaces: on the street, in cafés and bars, in private homes, in brothels. Some intimate encounters were brief and happened once; others were long-lasting. Some were commercial transactions, others were not. Some sexual couplings were consensual, while others were very violent. Soldiers encountered professional prostitutes, women who exchanged sexual favors for a loaf of bread, women who engaged in affairs for pleasure rather than payment, and women who were victims of sexual violence. Within these various sexual spaces, crucial distinctions of coercion and consent can be difficult for the historian to ascertain. First World War military decision-makers spent little time worrying about the distinctions between consensual sex and sexualized violence. Instead, as historians have recently illustrated, they worried about the short- and longer-term impacts of what they saw as “unauthorized contact” between combatants and non-combatants.8 Chief among these was the fear, as voiced above by the Commander General of the Carpathian Army Corps, of sexually transmitted infections (or, venereal diseases— VD, in contemporary parlance). As this chapter will illustrate, these fears of disease led to coercive and invasive policies of surveillance and control, aimed at women deemed sexually promiscuous. In 1914, there was a recent precedent in privileging military male health over female civilian safety. Indeed, military medical journals published stories about comparative VD rates in European armies, and German planners used the FrancoPrussian War as an example of the medical dangers in enemy territories. In the summer and autumn months of 1870, when the German Army was still on the move and engaging in battle, the rate of infection among soldiers was between 3 and 10/1000; however, by May 1871, after a few months of entrenchment, the figure had risen drastically to 78/1000.9 In addition, German military forces had fought in the Boxer War in northern China (1899–1901), the Maji Maji War (1905–1907) in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania) and the Herero and Nama War (1904– 1907) in German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia).10 Indeed, during the genocidal warfare waged in Southwest Africa, the Commander of the German Schutztruppe remarked on the “the remarkable rise in VD…,” which he attributed to the increased number of female prisoners in German-run concentration camps, and lamented “the generally great ease with which sexual relations could be undertaken with the female native population, even when they were not prostitutes.”11 In response, German military officials, in cooperation with colonial and religious

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leaders, implemented legal and medical regulations aimed at controlling women deemed sexually promiscuous.12 As military commanders in the metropole led their troops into battle in Eastern and Western Europe a few years later, they were adamant they would learn from past mistakes, and take preventative steps to ensure the health of their men. Fighting the spread of diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea was a wartime aim not only for military doctors charged with keeping men in fighting shape, but for home front reformers who decried the physical “degeneration” of a shrinking German population. In 1914, before the advent of antibiotics, syphilis could cause reproductive infertility, health problems in newborns, and was classified as a “hereditary” disease. In other words, reformers blamed VDs for two major threats to the project of population politics, which measured the growth of the German Volk against that of its neighbors.13 Many “battle for births,” advocates stressed the importance of a large population in their industrial age: more workers to manufacture goods, more farmers to feed the population, more soldiers to defend the national borders.14 Religious leaders viewed the spread of VDs as another symptom of the immoral and sinful behavior displayed by a modern society losing its way. This chapter focuses on sexual encounters in Eastern and Western Europe and illustrates how military planners—and civilian medical and moral reformers—sought to control relationships between German soldiers and the local populations they encountered throughout the war. Officials avoided the use of fraternization bans, but instead established a network of military-administered brothels and police-regulated prostitution throughout Eastern and Western Europe, in their efforts to provide “safer” sexual experiences for the men under their command. This military surveillance of sexual encounters could be highly detrimental to local populations and was highly contested on the German home front, with many civilians being quick to opine that military policies not only institutionalized bourgeois sexual double standard models but might also be doing more harm than good. And, amidst the din of competing visions of sexual control, individual men and women continued to make sexual decisions with little regard for overarching goals and plans. By studying wartime sexual lives, we gain a critical vantage point on the shifting definitions, and ultimately eroding barriers, between soldiers/ civilians, combatants/non-combatants in this “modern” war, and the frequent disconnect between occupation force policy, home front rhetoric, and the intimate decisions of men and women.15

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Sexual Encounters Between Soldiers and Civilians Given the long history of prostitution during wartime and the unprecedented size of the German mobilization of 1914, it came as little surprise to contemporaries that soldiers engaged in sexual relations with enemy women. Indeed, many young men viewed sexual conquest as a legitimate part of the military conquest of foreign territories. One German soldier, Franz Schmiedt, described the following scene in his diary: “The whole city that we occupied is empty and destroyed. The houses that haven’t been burnt down are vacant. All the inhabitants have fled, save a few women who have remained behind. Prostitution is extremely common […]”16 Another soldier wrote to his brother, “one spends money on prostitutes here. I can tell you that no such prostitutes could be found in the whole of Greater Silesia. [I]f I were not looking forward to getting married, I would have some fun as well!”17 The trench newspaper Liller Kriegszeitung reported: “Whoever becomes acquainted with the street life of Lille learns about the Rue Nationale and its neighbouring streets, as there thrives the life of a large, urban metropolis. Prostitution has flourished, with strong-smelling ladies for every taste. These women know how to entice soldiers who have gone without for so long.”18 In Edfel Köppen’s largely autobiographical post-war novel Higher Command the central characters make several references to the presence (and availability) of women near the front lines. Indeed, one group of infantryman gives “glowing accounts” of their time in Lens, France, where there were “…women, young and old. You saw them running about in the streets, and in the evenings they often sat on their doorsteps and served in the estaminets. There were even some popular dance-halls where they kept it up until the morning. And you could talk to them, too, as they know German – well, passably.”19 This account was followed by a soldier passing a price list for the local brothel. When the soldiers established that their military pay would not allow them to partake of the brothel services, the infantryman replied, “Haven’t I just told you that it’s all a matter of knowing the ropes? Look here, old chap – it’s this way. The women – there is no question about it – haven’t got food. So, for instance, if you give them a loaf – or let us say even half a loaf – then I bet they will all spread their legs for you. You just try!”20 Soldiers often talked among themselves about the various cafés, bars, taverns, and cabarets where they could meet local women. In fact, so-called hostess bars, described as estaminets by the French,

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Animierkneipen by the Germans, and labeled as “teahouses” on the Eastern Front, were establishments that featured women whose job it was to provide company, conversation, and often sexual favors to induce their male clientele to spend more money on food and drink. A field chaplain on the Eastern Front wrote of this situation in 1915. “Here in Homonna, it is nearly impossible to find a local pub which does not offer women for sale. One feels ashamed to drink a glass of beer or a cup of coffee; for fear that this may give a false signal.”21 German military officials were suspicious of cafés and bars not only because of their function as meeting places for women and soldiers, and their contributions to public drunkenness, but because they were rumored to be potential sites for espionage. Officers in the German headquarters at Cambrai in May 1917 sent a Flemish secret agent to local French establishments to look for the illegal sale of alcohol and tobacco, but also to pick up information. The agent soon discovered that many of the local people were looking for, or giving away, military secrets. At one estaminet, they found two female proprietors asking soldiers where their units had just arrived from and where they were going next.22 Stories of the female “prostitute/spy” circulated widely in all nations during the war, though certainly such accounts walked the fine line between fact and fantasy.23 That women were using their alleged “feminine skills” to obtain military information played well into the cliché that woman civilians could not be trusted in a time of war, and that young soldiers needed to keep up their guards against the temptations of seduction. Many sexual interactions between soldiers and civilians were far from consensual, and constituted rape. Just as the recent experience of colonial wars had impacted the medical and police control of “sexually promiscuous” women after 1914, widespread violence against women and girls in colonial warfare no doubt added to a continuing misogynist ethos in the German Army. Isabel Hull, in her superb study of Imperial German military culture, writes that [in the case of the German-Herero War], the “unwillingness of the military to acknowledge endemic sexual ‘excesses’ is an example of the typical discrepancy between stated beliefs or values, and actual behavior,” and that “rape and sexual coercion of women appears to have been widely tolerated in non-European theatres of war.”24 Gesine Krüger’s research, as well as the recently published travel diary of Johannes Carl Wilhelm Spiecker, an inspector for the Rhenish Missionary Society, well illustrate the extent of gendered violence German soldiers perpetrated against indigenous women

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in Southern Africa.25 Further scholarly research is necessary to trace the connections between sexual violence in colonial contexts and those that followed in Europe after 1914. Even research on sexual violence in the First World War is regrettably sparse: until more work is done with military records, local police files, and family histories, scholars must rely on careful readings of atrocity propaganda for evidence of violent attacks.26 I have discussed elsewhere why this research needs to continue.27 For instance, Allied propagandists used descriptions of the rape, murder, and mutilation of women and children in very specific, and often manipulative ways, and with concrete goals: to quickly recruit soldiers, to provide a moral justification for military intervention, to prompt neutral countries (primarily the USA) to join the fight in Europe, to sell war bonds, to fundraise for victim relief organizations, and to sell newspapers. The iconography and descriptions of sexual violence were horrific. In the pamphlet The Truth about German Atrocities, a witness described a 17-year-old French girl, dressed only in a “chemise” and in “great distress.” She had been part of a group of girls who had been “dragged into a field, stripped naked and violated,” and was lucky not to have been “killed with a bayonet” like the others.28 Another “most respectable young woman” was “violated by two soldiers in succession” in the absence of her husband, who was “with the colors,” and a woman in Connigis (northern France) was the victim of “grievous violence at the hands of two Germans.” This woman was living with her in-laws while her husband was at the front. One of the Germans, the report reads, restrained the father-in-law, while the other committed “acts of revolting obscenity,” while threatening the young woman with a rifle. The mother-in-law witnessed the attack, which continued when another soldier “outraged” the young woman.29 German propagandists then retaliated against accusations of rape by highlighting the plight of their “own” women in Russian-occupied East Prussia in 1914, and by focusing on the dangers German male soldiers faced from non-combatants in Belgium and France.30 In doing so, German authors revived the decades-old story of the “franc-tireurs:” civilian partisans who acted contrary to the laws of war. The alleged crimes of the franc-tireurs—torturing wounded soldiers, burning men alive, attacking them with boiling tar, driving nails or knitting needles into their eyes, and attacking soldiers’ genitals—were widely disseminated in prints, postcards, novels, in the illustrated press, and in the German White Book.31 As Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg stated, in

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response to accusations of German violence against civilians: “Your countrymen will be told that German troops have burned Belgian ­villages and towns to the ground, but no one will tell them that Belgian girls have stabbed out the eyes of defenseless wounded men on the battlefield.”32 Such sentiments not only defended the actions of violent men, but suggested that enemy women were far from innocent victims. A similar sentiment ran through military discourses warning men against sexual relations with “foreign” women. In fact, one pamphlet for soldiers equated the “laps of enemy women” with the techniques of the franc-tireurs in Belgium.33 Others referred to “the enemy lurking behind the front,”34 reminding German soldiers that “a woman who looks completely healthy is often sick and infected,”35 and warning men in the “enemy lands” of France and Belgium to “guard against the lewdness of the women and girls you meet.”36 A soldier advised his comrades in a trench newspaper to avoid the “the Lille danger,” by which he meant to identify something “worse than plagues and cholera, and sadder than a lost battle.” This newspaper author then echoed a common myth of the early months of the war—that French and Belgian women were intentionally infecting German soldiers in order to limit the military might of the invading forces.37 On the Eastern Front, as historian Rob Nelson has illustrated, soldiers’ newspapers described Polish women as lazy, dishonest, and sexually available, and Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff voiced their concerns that the “unsanitary” and immoral practices of Eastern European women might lead to infections of German wives at home.38 In short, military cautions about dangerous women allowed occupation forces to construct discursive, and actual, power hierarchies in enemy lands.

Regulating the Wartime Sex Trade In observing the chaotic nature of sexual encounters between soldiers and civilians, German officials decided that intimate decisions could not be left up to the discretion of the rank and file. They instead implemented, in most areas, a system of regulated prostitution that promised medically “safe” sexual encounters. Based on a nineteenth-century model, one predicated on complicated structures of prostitutes, madams, pimps, and johns, the so-called regulation system operated from the premise that if police forces controlled the “source” of sexually transmitted infection (in their minds, female sex trade workers), they could

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also control the spread of disease. Hence, local governments issued wide-ranging and coercive regulations governing the living and working conditions of prostitutes, mandating obligatory gynecological exams and medical treatment, and criminalizing certain activities. Police forces created vice squads to enforce these rules, and effectively control the movements of working-class women who they deemed promiscuous. Their male clientele remained largely unregulated.39 When war broke out in August 1914, German military authorities declared, almost immediately, that the regulation system would continue to operate on the home front and be exported to military-occupied territories.40 As under the peacetime system, women sex trade workers either lived in brothels, or had their movements tracked by the police. Hence, the General Commander of the Eastern Army stated in the 1 July 1915 decree, “Regulations for Fighting the Further Spread of Venereal Diseases on the Eastern Front” that female persons under police surveillance for prostitution must carry an identity card at all times, immediately report changes in home address, and “secure their health by the means specified in police or military regulations.” Further, women who infected men (either civilian or military personnel) with VD would be given prison sentences, ranging from two months to one year, and would be put under mandatory military-medical control upon release.41 In most areas, the German military also operated a system of brothelized prostitution. Generally, there were two types of brothels. First, there were the temporary establishments, which included village homes, abandoned castles, wooden barracks, and wagons, which followed the lines of battle. The women in these brothels tended to come from the local area, where the upheaval and dislocation of war caused great economic need. Second, there were more permanent structures that were found behind the front lines, mainly in the central hubs of operation such as Lille, Brussels, Łódź, and Warsaw. Many of these latter types of brothels predated the war. German authorities were able to take advantage of this pre-existing system; they retained the local brothel-keepers so long as they stayed on good terms with the occupying forces. Each brothel usually also employed a soldier to work as “brothel patrol.” This guard stood at the brothel door to ensure adequate payment from each visitor, and to maintain order on the premises. Larger brothels also employed a military doctor, as all sex trade workers were required to undergo thorough gynecological exams, sometimes

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as often as twice weekly. Army doctors often prided themselves on the sense of order they brought to the sex trade; yet, at the same time, they placed a high burden of prevention on the women themselves. One medical notice read, “Every girl has a duty to reject an infected guest and does not have to allow a drunken or overly excited guest into her room. If the guest does not know how to use preventative measures, the girl must show him, and after the sex act she must lead him to the disinfectant room. Whoever participates in a sexual activity, while knowingly infected, will be legally punished.” The entrance to the disinfectant room was marked with a light bearing a red cross. The room itself contained written directions for self-disinfection, two urinals, wash basin with warm water, medicated ointments, and a clothes-stand.42 Likewise, a sign, titled “Regulations for Women” and issued by the Morality Section of the Łódź police force was displayed in all city brothels. It stated that “in order to avoid venereal disease,” each woman had to have on hand the following supplies, all which could be purchased “at cost” from the morality police: a basin, a vaginal douche, a sponge, either a permanganate of potash or Lysoform,43 a five per cent solution of Protargol,44 condoms, Vaseline, and a rubber syringe. The poster then advised on their use: before intercourse, the woman was to check whether the “man’s member show[ed] sores and whether, upon being squeezed, it discharge[d] pus”; next, she was to “smear the genital organs with Vaseline,” and suggest a condom. After intercourse, she was to urinate (“if possible”), wash her own genitals with a solution of permanganate or Lysoform (“two teaspoons in a quart of water”), and use a vaginal injection of permanganate of potash or Lysoform solution, “with the appropriate apparatus.” Finally, the poster instructed her to “inject into the urethra some Protargol with the rubber sponge.” In addition to these tedious and potentially dangerous tasks, the woman was told to “advise” her male clients to wash his genitals with a lye solution (“folding back the foreskin”), urinate (“if possible”), and inject two drops of Protargol into the “genital orifice.” Sensing the potential for men’s reactions to these instructions to be embarrassed at best, and violent at worst, the poster threatened, “Women who do not suggest to the man the use of antiseptic and Protargol will be severely punished.”45 Brothel inmates, then, were expected not only to provide sexual services to their male clientele, but also to be their pharmacist, physician, chemist, and enforcer. The coercive nature of brothelized prostitution is also evident in a description from a field brothel in Valenciennes, northern France.

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Eighteen women lived and worked in the brothel, six of whom served only officers. The business opened at ten o’clock in the morning, and each woman regularly received between twenty-five and thirty c­ ustomers a day. The standard price for each customer was four Marks, of which the prostitute received one Mark. The brothel-keeper received another Mark, and the Red Cross received the final two Marks, as payment for their daily medical check-up of the brothel inmates.46 Another French brothel listed higher prices, though it is telling that prices for women were on par with those for drinks: a bottle of Hungarian wine cost patrons eight Marks, while one hour with a prostitute cost ten Marks. A bottle of Henkell champagne was 18 Marks, while a night in the brothel was 30 Marks.47 The high prices also suggest that this establishment was for officers, and not for the rank and file. Indeed, brothels differentiated between their two principal clienteles with the use of recognized symbols: a blue lantern marked establishments for officers only, while those with red lanterns accepted common soldiers.48 In St. Quentin, an electric sign above the brothel door read: “For German Officers Only. No corporals, non-commissioned officers, or troops allowed.”49 It should hardly surprise us that the discrepancy in conditions between the officers’ and soldiers’ brothels caused tension between the ranks. As disease rates continued to climb, German military authorities were forced to admit that the tactic of requiring medical exams only of female sex trade workers had largely failed. Doctors therefore began to perform genital examinations on soldiers (every eight to fourteen days and immediately before and after a furlough). Often performed quickly on long lines of men, either in camp, or outside brothels, these intrusive exams became colloquially known as “short arm inspections” or “tail (or prick) parades.” A doctor provided a glimpse into the nature of these exams when he lamented that medical personnel and officers alike often treated VD as a “frivolous” matter and found it “amusing.”50 The German Society for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases published a pamphlet for soldiers that explicitly detailed the procedure for self-disinfection. This was to be used if soldiers engaged in intercourse without a condom, or if the condom was faulty. Merely washing with soap and water was not adequate; instead, washing was to be done with disinfectant agents: “Soak a cotton ball in the disinfectant solution, pull back the foreskin and wash the inside and the outside, the entire member, the testicles, and all the private parts, for at least two minutes. Pay special attention to any open sores or wounds and lightly dab these

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places with iodine – if you do not have any on hand, you may obtain some from a doctor or an emergency disinfectant station.”51 That this pamphlet was directed at men was a novel shift in the long history of German VD control. Previously, male patients were treated as victims, but not carriers, of sexually transmitted illness. Infected soldiers were then treated in field hospitals. One such hospital on the Eastern Front was situated only a half hour from a Russian boundary station. It comprised eight barracks with beds for 1500 patients. In 1917, one of these barracks housed victims of typhus, malaria, and cholera, but the other eight housed VD patients—or, as the local chaplain put it, “soldiers who obtained their diseases through their own guilt, and who now must spend their months-long hospital stay realizing the bitter truth.” Of the roughly 1000 patients, nearly forty percent were married and almost ninety percent had contracted their illness during their time in military service. These statistics compelled the chaplain to ask, “how many mothers, how many wives would cry bloody tears if they knew that their sons, their husbands were lying in a hospital bed with something other than ‘rheumatism’”?52 The slightly more positive news for VD patients was the scientific advancement in treatment in the years preceding 1914. Hence, a soldier in the First World War stood a far better chance of receiving effective diagnosis of, and treatment for, diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea than would have his father or grandfather. Albert Neisser discovered the causative agent in gonorrhea in 1879. August von Wasserman developed the first diagnostic blood test for syphilis in 1906, and Paul Ehrlich concluded his development of the arsenic-based drug Salvarsan (which he deemed the “magic bullet”) in 1910.53 Such treatments, however, entailed debilitating side effects. Salvarsan was often mixed with mercurial drugs in varying doses, and the resulting side effects could include intense muscular pain from the injections, vomiting, diarrhea, jaundice, or dermatitis. It is no wonder many men refrained from seeking treatment. Likewise, gonorrhea was treated by regular irrigations of the urethra with potassium permanganate, often administered by the soldiers themselves. A glass container containing the irrigation solution was fitted on a graduated pole that could be raised or lowered to adjust the pressure of the fluid. While the patient stood over a metal tub or trough, a nozzle was inserted into his urethra and the solution was washed into his lower urinary tract for up to ten minutes.54 As several patients shared

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one irrigation room, this treatment was not for the bashful! Much to the annoyance of soldiers, officers were excluded from this “hydrant and hose parade” and received a discrete course of treatment.55 Some soldiers, leery of these treatments, turned to alternative sources. Military authorities were justifiably worried that such “quack” medicine would undermine their own efforts. For this reason, the Commander of the Second Army Corps decreed in November 1915 that any non-medical personnel who treated a VD patient could be imprisoned for up to one year. The Commander of the Eighth Army Corps expanded this decree to include anyone who advertised their services or published their treatment techniques.56 Pamphlets such as Dr. Thisquen’s Biochemical Treatments for Gonorrhea without Injections or Professional Treatment were regularly confiscated from soldiers.57 Because the military authorities could not trust all men to come forward for treatment, any soldier who knowingly failed to report an infection was liable to be punished. The Commander of the Bavarian Army instructed his officers to emphasize to their troops that it was not the act of becoming infected that would be punished, but rather the failure to report and be treated for that infection.58 Taking matters to the next stage, the Bavarian Army Chief of Staff issued an ordinance in November 1916 stating that all infected military personnel must, under threat of punishment, report the name of the female source of their infection. This information was given to district police forces, who then apprehended the woman.59 Army records contain many examples of women denounced by men, both in enemy territories and on the German home front. Sebastian Apfelböck, a twenty-two-year-old Catholic shoemaker from Landau, was pulled before a military tribunal in February 1917 to provide the name of his source of infection. He testified that Rosa Eder, a domestic servant for a guesthouse in Landau, had infected him with gonorrhea on September 9, 1916. Apfelböck was certain she was the source because (he claimed) he had not had sexual relations since that time.60 Other women were similarly denounced and pursued by authorities, though lack of systematic records makes it impossible to estimate the total numbers involved. That the military police had the authority to arrest individual women, based on the (often self-serving) testimony of one man illustrates not only the misogyny inherent in these processes, but also the increasingly interventionist hand of the Kaiserreich at war.

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Civilian Reform Efforts While the military seemed to exert near hegemonic control over the wartime sex trade; in fact, individuals and organizations pushed back against the regulation system. Sometimes, they recognized that women in militaryoccupied territories were economically struggling because they were living under occupation. Hence, there were efforts to provide employment for women outside the sex trade. In late 1915, feminist activist and future Reichstag member, Dr. Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, worked with the Belgian Red Cross to establish an “Office of Help” in Brussels, where they aided local women in finding work in cigar-factories, laundries, and in sewing and lace-making. The office also set up soup kitchens, staffed advisory bureaus, assisted with childcare, provided medical advice to mothers, ran day nurseries, and set up businesses in which to employ Belgian women in economic need.61 Likewise, the Committee for the Aid and Protection of Women through Work, comprised of Belgians and expatriate Germans, sourced factory jobs for local women (one factory, ironically, produced warm undergarments for German soldiers). The committee provided child care for women workers,62 while other relief organizations cared for the illegitimate children of German soldiers and Belgian mothers, a topic for further investigation that would no doubt have much to tell us about the multi-faceted community effects of wartime sexual liaisons.63 Early twentieth-century debates over the nature of male sexual desire, the benefits and detriments of abstinence, and the effectiveness of prophylactics, also influenced civil–military responses to the problems caused by sex at the front. To put it bluntly: if the German state was going to separate millions of men from their peacetime sexual partners, was that same state then obligated to provide men with “safe” alternatives? To give but one example of how such a hypothetical question could play out on the ground: the distribution of condoms to soldiers was highly controversial during the war. Most military doctors saw condoms as the most practical way to decrease the incidence of infection. But not everyone was convinced. Distributing condoms to German soldiers, especially those who were married, was a hot-button topic in the early war years. The Reich Insurance Board maintained that many women on the home front “had taken it badly” that the military was supplying soldiers with condoms. They perceived it as “an invitation to adultery.”64 Dr. Alfred Blaschko, who with the German League for the Combatting

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of Venereal Disease, had been a proponent of prophylactic use before the war, argued that handing condoms out to soldiers would, “to many, equal a provocation to extra-marital sexual intercourse.”65 The Society for the Preservation and Growth of the Strength of the German People was concerned that soldiers might take condoms home with them for use as birth control with their wives, which could further hinder the already falling German birth rate, and contribute to the demographic emergency facing the German “race.”66 Because of such home front protest (and the inconsistency of decisions across regional armies), condoms were only distributed freely in certain military districts, and the practice remained a source of contention throughout the war years. Civilian moral reform organizations instead assisted the military in warning soldiers about the short and long-term dangers of sex with foreign women. Doctors and hospital staff, volunteers at train stations, field chaplains, and visiting experts eagerly took on the task of educating the troops. The German Christian Students’ Association visited the “sin quarters” of cities such as Brussels and Lille, to warn men about the dangers of prostitution.67 Karl Richter-Nürnberg, a pastor of the German Reformed Church in Antwerp, traveled on behalf of the White Cross to Flanders in late 1915, where he gave lectures on the dangers of drink and women to men in soldiers’ homes, theatres, exercise halls, monastery and convent rooms, schools, and church halls. In Ghent, five thousand soldiers turned up to hear the pastor speak on the “enemy of immorality.”68 Reform groups handed out millions of copies of hundreds of different pamphlets. The White Cross Morality League distributed 260,000 copies of A Serious Word to German Soldiers and Comrades! during the first four months of the war, and by 1918 could boast that they had distributed more than six million similar pamphlets.69 To pay for such a massive undertaking, the organization raised 40,000 Marks from their members and from front-line recipients of the pamphlets.70 Pamphlets from civilian organizations utilized myriad themes and techniques to exhort soldiers to abstain from sexual intercourse with enemy women. Touchstones as varied as patriotism, honor, familial guilt, and the threat of alcoholism were invoked to dissuade soldiers from unregulated sexual activity. The pamphlet Soldaten! wanted soldiers to think of the implications to the entire German nation when they saw a foreign woman on the street or in a brothel. It also appealed explicitly to the soldiers’ sense of individual honor with warnings such as, “do not tarnish your shield of honour in these great times by engaging in

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frivolous affairs with prostitutes or young girls.”71 Another publication asked soldiers, “Do you want to lower your eyes in shame as we march home in victory,” all because of a “frivolously spent hour”?72 A Lurking Enemy appealed to the soldiers’ sense of pride and his desire to be remembered as a hero: “Your colleagues may make fun of sexual abstinence, but at least this would give you a chance to be wounded honourably in battle. Your comrades will also laugh and jeer if you contract a VD – is this how you want to be remembered?”73 Moral reform groups also adhered to the adage—“idle hands do the devil’s work.” To occupy their free time, soldiers were provided with extracurricular activities such as reading, writing letters, and attending concerts and plays. The German Protestant Youth Association and the National Assembly of German Protestant Boys Groups proudly reported that they had each opened sixty soldiers’ homes and reading libraries in France and Belgium during the first year of war.74 The German Christian Students’ Association opened an elaborate home in Brussels. It was housed in a large, ornate building that had been a local art society before the war. The staff claimed that this home had “everything a soldier needs”: a dining room that served 6500 guests for the noon meal and 3000 in the evening, and writing rooms where soldiers mailed 400–500 letters and postcards every day. Reading rooms and libraries provided books, pamphlets, and newspapers, and visitors could also take advantage of the services of a barber and bathing facilities. The Kaiser Salon hosted concerts, plays, and readings for more than 4000 soldiers every month, while another room contained various games for the amusement of soldiers.75 A city map showing the location of such homes was often one of the first things a soldier received at the train station.76 Of course, soldiers’ homes, a Christian conscience, and patriotic pamphlets were not enough to dissuade all soldiers from extramarital intercourse. Not all decisions of an intimate nature were made with thoughts of the Fatherland uppermost in soldiers’ minds. Soldiers who did not necessarily wish to be saved presented a huge impediment to combating VD. Indeed, officials believed that some prostitutes were using their infected bodies as a selling point, by saying that soldiers could use an infection to escape military service.77 A contemporary cartoon portrayed a smiling woman, sitting in an open window, with a sign that read, “I will give you medical leave.” A railway commander wrote to inform the Bavarian War Ministry that he had witnessed soldiers self-infecting with venereal disease by transferring pus from an infected comrade onto

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their own genitals.78 Perhaps it is understandable to a modern audience that some soldiers preferred to contract an illness in a “house of shame” rather than die on the “field of honour?”79 Regardless, self-infecting soldiers presented a serious impediment to First World War disease control, and remind the historian that into a sphere so intimate, the German state could not expect to uniformly intrude.

Conclusion Sexual encounters between soldiers and civilians on the fighting fronts became frequent and sustained as the German Army shifted from expeditionary mode to an occupation force. These encounters ranged from sexually violent attacks, to transactions in military-run brothels, to informal relationships between soldiers and civilians. It can be difficult for the historian to accurately categorize the highly variable nature of wartime sexual contact, and more research is needed especially in the underanalyzed area of wartime rape in the 1914–1918 conflict. Contemporary military and civilian leaders paid less heed to the lines between coercion and consent when they issued orders aimed at keeping male soldiers safe from venereal diseases. These directives sought to control the movements and behavior of women deemed sexually “dangerous,” and could be particularly harsh when aimed at “enemy” women living under military occupation. The German Army had learned lessons from its global military campaigns in the service of imperialism and took cues from the peacetime regulation of commercial prostitution. By the end of the war, doctors had treated 352,202 cases of venereal disease, most often syphilis and gonorrhea. Of these, 192,687 infections occurred in Germany, 35,856 on the Western front, 39,002 in the Eastern theatre of war, and 10,779 in the Balkans (73,878 cases could not be pinpointed according to the place of their infection).80 Home front organizations declared these numbers a partial victory in the fight against disease, largely ignoring the daily realities of wartime programs in German-occupied Belgium, France, and the Polish lands, where tens of thousands of women were subjected to invasive medical examinations, long hospital stays, harassment by the morals police, unwanted advances and rape by soldiers, unplanned pregnancies, condescension from welfare workers, and the humiliation of being called a “Boche whore.” The German campaign to provide “safe” sexual experiences for their soldiers in enemy lands tells us several things about the nature of First

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World War occupation forces. First, military authorities assumed that the regulation of intimate sexual lives of women and men, of civilians and soldiers, of Germans, and peoples in the countries they occupied, was the purview of an occupying force. The erasure of distinctions between private and public played a role in the blurring of lines between combatant and non-combatant, one that led to multiple levels of intrusion, coercion, and violence. Second, military leaders depended on established peacetime police protocols, such as the regulation system of brothelized prostitution, to regulate sexual contact between men and women. In doing so, militaries assumed their soldiers were heterosexual, that men required regular sexual outlets, and that sexually “available” women were vectors of infection. Only begrudgingly did they adjust their practices to account for the enormous social dislocations of war and occupation, and they never did address the widespread crime of sexual violence. Third, this chapter has illustrated the close connections between the home and fighting fronts. Decision-makers needed not only to contend with diseases that traveled with soldiers between Germany and enemy countries, but also with the multi-faceted responses to their decisions on sexual matters. Indeed, the military regulation of intimate lives was frequently aided, but also critiqued, by home front organizations. Finally, civil– military discourses around the joint specters of disease and female promiscuity acted as another way to culturally establish the enemy as “Other” throughout German-occupied Europe. This, in turn, aided in the creation of power hierarchies that privileged German military forces over the female and male civilians they encountered during the First World War.

Notes



1. Report from the Commander General of the Carpathian Corps to the Bavarian War Ministry, 29 October 1916, Bayerisches Haupstaatsarchiv, Abteilung IV—Kriegsarchiv München (KAM), Stv. Gen. Kdo. I AK 967 Band I, Abt. P I Kriegszustand, Aufrechterhaltung der öffentlichen Ordnung, Sicherstellung der Versorgung - Geschlechtskrankheiten, 1915–1918, n.p. 2. Lisa M. Todd, Sexual Treason in Germany During the First World War (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017); Brian Feltman, The Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Heather Jones, Violence against Prisoners of War in First

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World War Britain, France and Germany, 1914–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Uta Hinz, Gefangen im Groβen Krieg. Kriegsgefangenschaft in Deutschland, 1914–1921 (Essen: KlartextVerlags, 2006); Iris Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2002); Birthe Kundrus, Kriegerfrauen: Familienpolitik und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1995); and Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980. Seasonal Workers/Forced Laborers/Guest Workers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990). 3.  Alison S. Fell and Christine Hallett, First World War Nursing: New Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2013); Christine Hallett, Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010); Janet K. Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory and the First World War in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Bianca Schönberger, “Motherly Heroines and Adventurous Girls: Red Cross Nurses and Women Army Auxiliaries in the First World War,” in Home/Front: the Military, War, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (New York: Berg, 2002); Angela K. Smith, The Second Battlefield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Margaret Darrow, French Women and the First World War (Oxford: Berg, 2000); and Regina Schulte, “The Sick Warrior’s Sister: Nursing during the First World War,” in Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency, and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). 4. Todd, Sexual Treason, Chapter 7; Julia Roos, “Racist Hysteria to Pragmatic Rapprochement? The German Debate About Rhenish ‘Occupation Children,’ 1920–1930,” Contemporary European History 22, no. 2 (2013): 155–80; Julia Roos, “Nationalism, Racism and Propaganda in Early Weimar Germany: Contradictions in the Campaign Against the “Black Horror on the Rhine,” German History 30, no. 1 (2012): 45–74; Julia Roos, “Women’s Rights, Nationalist Anxiety, and the “Moral” Agenda in the Early Weimar Republic: Revisiting the “Black Horror” Campaign against France’s African Occupation Troops,” Central European History 42, no. 3 (2009): 473–508; Sandra Maß, Weiβe Helden, schwarze Krieger: Zur Geschichte kolonialer Männlichkeit in Deutschland, 1918–1964 (Köln: Böhlau, 2006); and Sally Marks, “Black Watch on the Rhine: A Study in Propaganda, Prejudice and Prurience,” European Studies Review 13, no. 3 (1983): 297–334.

98  L. M. TODD 5.  Christoph Roolf, “Generalgouvernement Belgien,” in OnlineInternational Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel et  al., last updated April 23, 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.15463/ ie1418.10621. See also Sophie De Schaepdrijver, La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2004); Benoît Majerus, Occupations et logiques policières: La police bruxelloise en 1914–1918 et 1940–1945 (Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, 2007); and Adolf Solansky, German Administration in Belgium (New York: n.p., 1928). For the German occupation of French areas, see Annette Becker, “Life in an Occupied Zone: Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing,” in Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experience, ed. H. Cecil and P. Liddell (London: Cooper Press, 1996); Deborah Buffton, The Ritual of Surrender: Northern France Under Two Occupations, 1914– 1918/1940–1944 (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin-Madison Press, 1987); and Richard Cobb, French and Germans, Germans and French: A Personal Account of France under Two Occupations 1914–1918/1940–1944 (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1984). 6.  Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front. Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Stephan Lehnstaedt, “Occupation During and After the War (East Central Europe),” in Online-International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel et al., last updated October 8, 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10395. 7. For a recent study on the same-sex experiences of German soldiers in the First World War, see Jason Crouthamel, An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality, and German Soldiers in the First World War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 8. Craig Gibson, Behind the Front: British Soldiers and French Civilians, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Clare Makepeace, “Punters and their Prostitutes: British Soldiers, Masculinity and Maisons Tolérées in the First World War,” in What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity, ed. John Arnold and Sean Brady (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Clare Makepeace, “Male Heterosexuality and Prostitution during the Great War,” Cultural and Social History 9, no. 1 (2012): 65–83; Benoît Majerus, “Sex in the city. La prostitution à Bruxelles pendant la Grande Guerre (1914– 1918),” Cahiers de la Fonderie 32 (2005): 51–54; Benoît Majerus, “La prostitution à Bruxelles pendant la Grande Guerre: contrôle et pratique,” Crime, History and Society 7, no. 1 (2003): 1–34; Antje Kampf, “Controlling Male Sexuality: Combating Venereal Disease in the New Zealand Military During Two World Wars,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 2 (May 2008): 235–58; Michelle Rhoades,

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“Renegotiating French Masculinity: Medicine and Venereal Disease during the Great War,” French Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (2006): 293–27; Lutz Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft. Geschlechtskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999); Leslie A. Hall, “‘War Always Brings It On’: War, STDs, the Military and Civilian Population in Britain, 1850–1950,” in Medicine and Modern Warfare, ed. Roger Cooter, Mark Harrison, and Steve Sturdy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000). 9. In all, 33,538 venereal disease infections were recorded among German combatants in 1870/1871. Speech by Albert Neisser, 30 March 1915, as reported in Zeitschrift des deutsch-evangelischen Vereins zur Förderung der Sittlichkeit (hereafter ZdeVFS) 29, no. 6/7 (1915): 16; Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift (DMW) 2 (1914): 1816. 10. See most recently, Susanne Kuss, German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017). 11.  Kommando der Schutztruppen, Sanitäts-Bericht, 2:343 and 2:340, in Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 151. African women in colonized spaces were victims of sexualized violence as domestic servants in settler homes, as forced laborers for the military, and in concentration camps. See: Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book, ed. Jeremy Silvester and J. B. Gewald (Oxford: Brill, 2005); Gesine Krüger, Kriegsbewältigung und Geschichtsbewusstein: Realität, Deutung und Verarbeitung des deutschen Kolonialkriegs in Namibia 1904 bis 1907 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999). 12. See, for instance, Daniel J. Walther, Sex and Control: Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 1884–1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015). 13.  Annette F. Timm, The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Susanne Michl, Im Dienste des “Volkskörpers”: deutsche und französische Ärzte im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007). 14.  Maria Sophia Quine, Population Politics in Twentieth-Century Europe (London and New York: University of London Press, 1996); John R. Gillis, Louise Tilly and David Levine, The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850–1970: The Quiet Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 15. Tammy Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1914–1918 (New York: New York University Press, 2010); Roger Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

100  L. M. TODD 16. Cited in Magnus Hirschfeld, The Sexual History of the World War (New York: Cadillac Publishing, 1946), 157. 17.  Staatsbibliothek München, Handschriftenabteilung – “Schinnerania”. Transcribed by Benjamin Ziemann, 8. 18. “Die Liller Gefahr,” Liller Kriegszeiting, 1 February 1915. 19. Edlef Köppen, Higher Command (New York: J. Cape and H. Smith, 1931), 107, translation of Heeresbericht (Berlin-Grunewald: HorenVerlag, 1930). 20. Köppen, Higher Command, 108. 21. Letter from Chaplain Zentraf, 18 April 1915. Archiv des Diakonischen Werkes der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (ADW), CA, Gf/St 223 Prostitution und Krieg, 1914–1918. 22. Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart [HstAS], M33/2 Bü 27 - Generalkommando XIII. Armeekorps, 1914–1918, Geheime Befehle und Berichte, 120–23. 23. Tammy M. Proctor, Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (New York: New York University Press, 2003), esp. 123–44; Darrow, French Women. 24. Hull, Absolute Destruction, 151, 150. 25. Krüger, Kriegsbewältigung und Geschichtsbewusstein; Johannes Carl Wilhelm Spiecker’s 2000-page diary is held at the Archives of the Rhenish Missionary Society, in Wuppertal, Germany. A condensed version was published in 2012. All quotations here are taken from Martin Siefkes, “Discursive traces of genocide in Johannes Spiecker’s Travel Diary (1905–1907),” Journal of Namibian Studies 16 (2014): 83–114. 26. Nicoletta F. Gullace, “Representations of the ‘Hun’ in Britain, North America, Australia and Beyond,” in Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture, ed. Pearl James (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010): 61–78; Nicoletta F. Gullace, “Sexual Violence and Family Honour: British Propaganda and International Law During the First World War,” American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (1997): 714–47; Nicoletta F. Gullace, The Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); and Adrian Gregory, “A Clash of Cultures: The British Press and the Opening of the Great War,” in A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion and Newspapers in the Great War, ed. Troy R. E. Paddock (Westport: Praeger, 2004): 15–50. 27.  Lisa M. Todd, “The Hun and the Home: Gender, Sexuality and Propaganda in First World War Europe,” in World War I and Propaganda, ed. Troy Paddock (Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishing, 2014), 137–54.

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28.  Great Britain Committee on Alleged German Outrages, The Truth about German Atrocities—Founded on the Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages (London: Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1915), 15. 29. German Atrocities in France: A Translation of the Official Report of the French Commission (London: The Daily Chronicle, 1914), 24, 29–30. 30. See, for instance, Vejas G. Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Liulevicius, War Land; and Troy Paddock, “German Propaganda: The Limits of Gerechtigkeit,” in A Call to Arms, 115–60. 31. Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914, 137; James Morgan Read, Atrocity Propaganda, 1914–1919 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 78–103. 32.  Neue Freie Presse, September 7, 1914, cited in Andrea Orzoff, “The Empire without Qualities: Austro-Hungarian Newspapers and the Outbreak of War in 1914,” in A Call to Arms, 161–98 here 177–78. 33. Kameraden! 34.  Ein lauernder Feind. 35. Für Männer! 36.  Soldaten! 37. Clipping of “Die Liller Gefahr,” Liller Kriegszeitung, 1 February 1915, reprinted by Field Doctor Berg in the 5. Kriegsflugblatt des Deutschen Sittlichkeitsverein - Plötzensee. ADW Gf/St 223 – Prostitution und Krieg, 1914–1918, 42. 38.  Robert R. Nelson, German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Liulevicius, War Land, 80, 105. 39. Victoria Harris, Selling Sex in the Reich: Prostitutes in German Society, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Jill Suzanne Smith, Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890–1933 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013); Laurie Bernstein, Sonja’s Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Alain Corbin, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Mary Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915 (New Brunswick, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). 40. See, for instance, Ludwig von Köhler, Die Staatsverwaltigung der besetzten Gebiete. Bd. 1 Belgien. Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte des Weltkrieges (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1927), 20, 42; Adolf Solansky, German Administration in Belgium (New York, 1928); Majerus, “La prostitution”; Criminal Commissioner Galzow, “Die Deutsche Sittenpolizei in Belgien,” Deutschen Strafrechts Zeitung 6, no. 56 (1916):

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242; reprinted in Archiv für Frauenkunde und Eugenetik (September 10, 1916): 278–79. Dorothea von Belsen, “Report on Moral Standards in Germany,” (unpublished transcript), 5–6, Landesarchiv Berlin – HeleneLange Archiv (LAB HLA), microfilm reel 3400 - Gegen die Prostitution, für sittlich gefährdete Mädchen und Frauen, Schutz der Jugend. 41. Reprinted in Mitteilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (MDGBG) 13, no. 5/6 (1915): 112–13. 42. Moritz Sattler, “Zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten im Heere,” Der Militärarzt. Zeitschrift für das Gesamte Sanitätswesen der Armeen 50, no. 24 (October 28, 1916): 560–62. 43. L ysoform was the brand name used by a German company founded in 1900. They produced several types of disinfectant, both for commercial and personal use. It is unclear which formulation was being prescribed here. 44. Protargol was a commercial form of silver proteinate, commonly used to treat gonorrhea before the discovery of antibiotics. It was formulated by Arthur Eichengrün, for Bayer pharmaceuticals, and was first introduced for therapeutic use in 1897. 45. Poster reprinted in H. C. Fischer and E. X. Dubois, Sexual Life during the World War (London: Francis Aldor, 1937), 366–67. 46. Erwin Blumenfield, Durch tausendjährige Zeit, Erinnerungen (Berlin: Argon, 1988, orig. 1976), 192–98, cited in Lutz Sauerteig, “Sex, Medicine and Morality during the First World War,” in War, Medicine and Modernity, ed. Mark Harrison, Steven Sturdy and Roger Cooter (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 167–88, here 177. 47. Köppen, Heeresbericht, 108. 48. Hirschfeld, Sexual History, 145–53. 49. Letter from Paston to Riess, Stuttgart, 10 April 1915. ADW, CA, Gf/St 220 – Bekämpfung der Prostitution, 1914–1918, 128. 50.  MDGBG 13, no. 3/4 (1915): 47. 51.  Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskranheiten (DGBG), Für Männer! Anleitung zum Selbstschutz vor Geschlechtskrankheiten. Copy in Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfeld, R86. 1063 Reichsgesundheitsamt, Geschlechtskrankheiten: Abhandlungen und Broschüren, 1907–1931. 52. Zeitschrift des deutsch-evangelischen Vereins zur Förderung der Sittlichkeit 31, no. 6 (1917): 22–24. 53.  David Simpson, “Morale and Sexual Morality among British Troops in the First World War,” in World War I and the Cultures of Modernity, ed. Douglas MacKaman and Michael Mays (Jackson, MS: Mississippi University Press, 2000), 18–29. 54. Simpson, “Morale and Sexual Morality,” 41–42.



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55. Hirschfeld, Sexual History, 100. 56. Report from Association for the Prevention of Immorality in Pommern to Central Ausschuß, 12 November 1915. ADW, CA, Gf/St 213, 152; Ministerium des Innern, Ministerialblatt für Medizinal-Angelegenheit 17 (April 26, 1916). 57.  Chief of the Medical Division to General Command, 14 April 1917. KAM, Stv. Gen. Kdo. I.b.A.K. 967. 58. Commander of the Bavarian Army to all units, 9 November 1916, KAM, Stv. Gen. Kdo. I.b.A.K. 967. 59. Chief of Staff, 9 November 1916 and 27 November 1916, KAM, Stv. Gen. Kdo. I.b.A.K. 967. 60. First Battalion, Regular Infantry Regiment 39, Wesel, 6 February 1917, KAM, Stv. Gen. Kdo. I.b.A.K. 967. 61. von Belsen, “Report,” 6–7. LAB HLA 3400, n.p; Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, Fürchte dich nicht. Persönliches und Politisches aus mehr als 80 Jahren, 1878–1962 (Köln: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963). 62.  Dr. Pannwitz, “Soziale Fürsorge des Belgischen Roten Kreuzes,” in Sitzungsbericht der am 8. Okt. 1915, 33–34; Speech by Henriette Fürth to the DGBG in Heidelberg, MDGBG 14, no. 1/2 (1916): 62. 63. Ludwig von Köhler, Die Staatsverwaltigung, 228–29. 64. Cited in Ute Daniel, The War from Within: German Working-Class Women in the First World War (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1997), 141. 65. Alfred Blaschko, “Die Prostitution in Kriegszeiten,” Deutsche StrafrechtsZeitung 1 (1914): 494. 66.  KAM, Gen. Kdo. I AK 968 Band I, Abt. P I Kriegszustand, Aufrechterhaltung der öffentlichen Ordnung, Sicherstellung der Versorgung - Geburtenrückgang, 1915–1918. 67.  Reports from memberships of the German Protestant Morality Association and the West German regional branches, 4 September 1915. ADW, CA, Gf/St 223, 26a-27. 68. Karl Richter-Nürnberg in Weiße Kreuz. Zeitschrift 3. Förderung sittlicher Reinheit unter jungen Männern aller Berufsstände Organ des SittlichkeitsBundes vom Weißen Kreuz für Deutschland und Osterreich 22, no. 4 (October 15, 1915): 66–69. 69.  Ein ernstes Wort an deutsche Krieger and Kameraden! 70.  Festschrift zum 30 jährigen Bestehen des Deutschen Sittlichkeitsbundes vom Weißen Kreuz (Nowawes, 920), 25–26. 71.  Soldaten! 72. Reprinted in MDGBG 13, no. 2 (1915): 24. 73.  Ein lauernder Feind, 14.

104  L. M. TODD 74.  Reports from the respective memberships of the German Protestant Morality Association and the West German regional branches, 4 September 1915. ADW, CA, Gf/St 223. 75. Karl Richter-Nürnberg, “Weißkreuzreise an Schutzgraben in Frankreich und Belgien,” Weißes Kreuz 22, no. 4 (October 15, 1915): 66–69. 76.  Weiße Kreuz, April 1917. 77. Commander of the Bavarian Army to all units, 16 March 1917, KAM, Stv. Gen. Kdo. I.b.A.K. 967. 78. Letter from War Ministry, Army Division to Commander of the Bavarian Army, 22 June 1918. KAM, Stc. Kdo. I.b.A.K. Sanitäts-Amt 44. 79. Daniel, War from Within, 141. 80.  War Ministry, “Die Geschlechtskrankheiten im Heere während des Krieges,” December 1918, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfeld (BAB) R1501. 111874, Ministerium Innern, Maßregeln gegen Geschlechtskrankheiten, 89–91.

Bibliography Archival Sources Archiv des Diakonischen Werkes der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (ADW). Bayerisches Haupstaatsarchiv, Abteilung IV – Kriegsarchiv München (KAM). Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfeld(BAB). Landesarchiv Berlin – Helene-Lange Archiv (LAB HLA). Staatsbibliothek München, Handschriftenabteilung.

Other Sources Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane. L’enfant de l’ennemi (1914–1918): Viol, avortement, infanticide pendant la Grande Guerre. Paris: Aubier, 1995. Becker, Annette. “Life in an Occupied Zone: Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing.” In Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experience, ed. H. Cecil and P. Liddell, 630–41. London: Cooper Press, 1996. Becker, Annette. Les Cicatrices Rouges 14–18: France et Belgiques occupies. Paris: Fayard, 2010. Belsen, Dorothea von. “Report on Moral Standards in Germany.” Unpublished Transcript, 5–6. Landesarchiv Berlin, Helene-Lange Archiv (LAB HLA), Microfilm Reel 3400, Gegen die Prostitution, für sittlich gefährdete Mädchen und Frauen, Schutz der Jugend. Bernstein, Laurie. Sonja’s Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

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Chickering, Roger. The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914– 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Chickering, Roger. Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Chickering, Roger, and Stig Förster, eds. Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 2000. Clark, Anna. Desire: A History of European Sexuality. New York: Routledge, 2012. Corbin, Alain. Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Crouthamel, Jason. An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality, and German Soldiers in the First World War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Daniel, Ute. The War from Within: German Working-Class Women in the First World War. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1997. Darrow, Margaret. French Women and the French World War: War Stories of the Home Front. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2000. De Schaepdrijver, Sophie. La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2004. Dickinson, Edward Ross. Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880– 1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Fell, Alison S., and Christine Hallett. First World War Nursing: New Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2013. Feltman, Brian. The Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Fischer, H. C., and E. X. Dubois. Sexual Life During the World War. London: Francis Aldor, 1937. Galzow (Criminal Commissioner). “Die Deutsche Sittenpolizei in Belgien.” Deutschen Strafrechts Zeitung 6, no. 56 (1916). Reprinted in Archiv für Frauenkunde und Eugenetik, September 10, 1916, 278–79. German Atrocities in France: A Translation of the Official Report of the French Commission. London: The Daily Chronicle, 1914. Gibson, Craig. Behind the Front: British Soldiers and French Civilians, 1914– 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Gibson, Mary. Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915. New Brunswick, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Gillis, John R., Louise Tilly, and David Levine. The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850–1970: The Quiet Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Great Britain Committee on Alleged German Outrages. The Truth about German Atrocities—Founded on the Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages. London: Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1915. Gregory, Adrian. “A Clash of Cultures: The British Press and the Opening of the Great War.” In A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion and Newspapers

106  L. M. TODD in the Great War, ed. Troy R. E. Paddock, 15–50. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2004. Gullace, Nicoletta F. “Sexual Violence and Family Honour: British Propaganda and International Law during the First World War.” American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (1997): 714–47. Gullace, Nicoletta F. The Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Gullace, Nicoletta F. “Representations of the ‘Hun’ in Britain, North America, Australia and Beyond.” In Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture, ed. Pearl James, 61–78. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Hall, Leslie A. “‘War Always Brings it on’: War, STDs, the Military and Civilian Population in Britain, 1850–1950.” In Medicine and Modern Warfare, ed. Roger Cooter, Mark Harrison, and Steve Sturdy, 205–33. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Hallett, Christine. Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Harris, Ruth. “The Child of the Barbarian: Rape, Race, and Nationalism in France during World War One.” Past and Present 141, no. 1 (1993): 170–206. Harris, Victoria. Selling Sex in the Reich: Prostitutes in German Society, 1914– 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Herbert, Ulrich. A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980: Seasonal Workers/Forced Laborers/Guest Workers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990. Herwig, Holger. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914– 1918. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Herzog, Dagmar, ed. Brutality and Desire. War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Hinz, Uta. Gefangen im Groβen Krieg. Kriegsgefangenschaft in Deutschland, 1914–1921. Essen: Klartext-Verlags, 2006. Hirschfeld, Magnus. Sittengeschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges. Hanau am Main: Verlag Karl Schustek, 1929. Hirschfeld, Magnus. The Sexual History of the World War. New York: Cadillac Publishing, 1946. Horne, John, and Alan Kramer. German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Hull, Isabel. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Jones, Heather. Violence Against Prisoners of War in First World War Britain, France and Germany, 1914–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Kampf, Antje. “Controlling Male Sexuality: Combating Venereal Disease in the New Zealand Military During Two World Wars.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 2 (May 2008): 235–58.

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Köhler, Ludwig von. Die Staatsverwaltigung der besetzten Gebiete. Bd. 1 Belgien. Wirtschafts - und Sozialgeschichte des Weltkrieges. Berlin: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1927. Köppen, Edlef. Higher Command. New York: J. Cape and H. Smith, 1931. Translation of Heeresbericht. Berlin-Grunewald: Horen Verlag, 1930. Krüger, Gesine. Kriegsbewältigung und Geschichtsbewusstein: Realität, Deutung und Verarbeitung des deutschen Kolonialkriegs in Namibia 1904 bis 1907. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999. Kühne, Thomas, and Benjamin Ziemann. Was ist Militärgeschichte? Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000. Kundrus, Birthe. Kriegerfrauen: Familienpolitik und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg. Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1995. Kuss, Susanne. German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. Liulevicius, Vejas G. War Land on the Eastern Fron: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Liulevicius, Vejas G. The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Maß, Sandra. Weiβe Helden, schwarze Krieger: Zur Geschichte kolonialer Männlichkeit in Deutschland, 1918–1964. Köln: Böhlau, 2006. Majerus, Benoît. “La prostitution à Bruxelles pendant la Grande Guerre: contrôle et pratique.” Crime, History and Society 7, no. 1 (2003): 1–34. Majerus, Benoît. “Sex in the city. La prostitution à Bruxelles pendant la Grande Guerre (1914–1918).” Cahiers de la Fonderie 32 (2005): 51–54. Majerus, Benoît. Occupations et logiques policières: La police bruxelloise en 1914– 1918 et 1940–1945. Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, 2007. Makepeace, Clare. “Punters and Their Prostitutes: British Soldiers, Masculinity and Maisons Tolérées in the First World War.” In What Is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity, ed. John Arnold and Sean Brady, 413– 30. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Makepeace, Clare. “Male Heterosexuality and Prostitution During the Great War.” Cultural and Social History 9, no. 1 (2012): 65–83. Marks, Sally. “Black Watch on the Rhine: A Study in Propaganda, Prejudice and Prurience.” European Studies Review 13, no. 3 (1983): 297–334. Michl, Susanne. Im Dienste des “Volkskörpers”: deutsche und französische Ärzte im Ersten Weltkrieg. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Nelson, Robert R. German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Orzoff, Andrea. “The Empire Without Qualities: Austro-Hungarian Newspapers and the Outbreak of War in 1914.” In A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public

108  L. M. TODD Opinion, and Newspapers in the Great War, edited by Troy R. E. Paddock, 161–98. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004. Paddock, Troy R. E. “German Propaganda: The Limits of Gerechtigkeit” In A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion and Newspapers in the Great War, ed. Troy R. E. Paddock. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2004. Proctor, Tammy. Civilians in a World at War, 1914–1918. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Quine, Maria Sophia. Population Politics in Twentieth-Century Europe. London: University of London Press, 1996. Rachamimov, Iris. POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002. Rhoades, Michelle. “Renegotiating French Masculinity: Medicine and Venereal Disease During the Great War.” French Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (2006): 293–327. Richter-Nürnberg, Karl. Weiße Kreuz. Zeitschrift 3. Förderung sittlicher Reinheit unter jungen Männern aller Berufsstände Organ des Sittlichkeits-Bundes vom Weißen Kreuz für Deutschland und Osterreich 22, no. 4 (October 15, 1915): 66–69. Roberts, Mary Louise. What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Roolf, Christoph. “General Gouvernement Belgien.” In Online-International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel et al., Last Updated April 23, 2015, https://doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10871. Roos, Julia. “Women’s Rights, Nationalist Anxiety, and the ‘Moral’ Agenda in the Early Weimar Republic: Revisiting the ‘Black Horror’ Campaign against France’s African Occupation Troops.” Central European History 42, no. 3 (2009): 473–508. Roos, Julia. “Nationalism, Racism and Propaganda in Early Weimar Germany: Contradictions in the Campaign against the ‘Black Horror on the Rhine’.” German History 30, no. 1 (2012): 45–74. Roos, Julia. “Racist Hysteria to Pragmatic Rapprochement? The German Debate About Rhenish ‘Occupation Children,’ 1920–1930.” Contemporary European History 22, no. 2 (2013): 155–80. Sattler, Moritz. “Zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten im Heere.” Der Militärarzt. Zeitschrift für das Gesamte Sanitätswesen der Armeen 50, no. 24 (October 28, 1916): 560–62. Sauerteig, Lutz. “Sex, Medicine and Morality During the First World War.” In War, Medicine and Modernity, edited by Mark Harrison and Steven Sturdy Roger Cooter. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998. Sauerteig, Lutz. Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft. Geschlectskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999.

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Schönberger, Bianca. “Motherly Heroines and Adventurous Girls: Red Cross Nurses and Women Army Auxiliaries in the First World War.” In Home/ Front: The Military, War, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany, edited by Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, 87–113. New York: Berg, 2002. Schulte, Regina. “The Sick Warrior’s Sister: Nursing During the First World War.” In Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency, and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey, 121–41. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Siefkes, Martin. “Discursive Traces of Genocide in Johannes Spiecker’s Travel Diary (1905–1907).” Journal of Namibian Studies 16 (2014): 83–114. Silvester, Jeremy, and J. B. Gewald, eds. Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book. Oxford: Brill, 2005. Simpson, David. “Morale and Sexual Morality among British Troops in the First World War.” In World War I and the Cultures of Modernity, ed. Douglas MacKaman and Michael Mays, 18–29. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Smith, Angela K. The Second Battlefield. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Smith, Jill Suzanne. Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890–1933. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. Solansky, Adolf. German Administration in Belgium. New York: n.p., 1928. Timm, Annette F. The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Todd, Lisa M. “The Hun and the Home: Gender, Sexuality and Propaganda in First World War Europe.” In World War I and Propaganda, ed. Troy Paddock, 137–54. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishing, 2014. Todd, Lisa M. Sexual Treason in Germany During the First World War. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017. Walther, Daniel J. Sex and Control: Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 1884–1914. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Watson, Janet K. Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory and the First World War in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Ziemann, Benjamin. Gewalt im Ersten Weltkrieg: Töten – Überlebten – Verweigern. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2013.

CHAPTER 5

Vietnamese Contingents to the Western Front, 1915–1919 Kimloan Vu-Hill

The 1914–1918 war was often labeled as the war to end all war, but in fact it marked the beginning of the downfall of the European colonial enterprise in Asia and Africa, redrew the map of Europe, and led to World War II. Millions of able-bodied Frenchmen were called up to serve on the front line and millions more were needed to maintain the production of arms and munitions for the war machine. In 1915 alone France suffered nearly 1.3 million casualties. By the end of the war, out of the 8.4 million men mobilized, 6 million were casualties—wounded, killed or missing.1 Since the casualty rate was so high, France had to turn to its colonies to recruit more manpower, even after having mobilized French women to work on the factory floors in order to release more men for the military. About 100,000 men from Indochina— French-born, naturalized French citizens, and Vietnamese—were mobilized to serve in factories and on the front line as combatants and soldier-workers (lính thợ). As this chapter will show, the recruitment by France of so many Vietnamese to help defend its borders had unintended consequences for the French colonial enterprise in Indochina. K. Vu-Hill (*)  Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_5

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The military and industrial training they received, together with the opportunity to observe life in France, created a class of men who would eventually become military and political leaders and militant workers, and who would rise up in the postwar period to demand social and political changes in Indochina. With the influence of communist agents from France and Russia, this movement for change became political and eventually led to the downfall of the French in Indochina. This paper will provide a brief history of the recruiting campaign in Indochina, and discuss the question of whether the recruits were forced labor or volunteers; next it will describe the soldiers’ experience in the war to show that their experience on the front line ultimately changed their perceptions of France and the established order in Indochina; and finally, it will discuss lessons that may be drawn from this historical event and its impact on French Indochina. This paper, however, is not a comparative history of the Vietnamese experience with those of people from other colonies in Asia and Africa. In the English speaking world, except for Kimloan Vu-Hill’s book, Coolies into Rebels: Impact of World War I on French Indochina, which deals extensively with the subject of Vietnamese participation in World War I as soldiers and workers, most of the scholarly works on Vietnam mention this event only in passing and the general perception has been that the recruits were forced or conscripted labor. In France there are two works: Henri Eckert’s doctoral dissertation, “Les Militaires Indochinois au Service de la France (1859-1939),” which deals with the history of Vietnamese in the French Colonial Army in French Indochina and in which the history of Vietnamese soldiers in World War I forms only a part; and Mireille Le Van Ho’s recent book, Des Vietnamiens Dans la Grande Guerre, 50 000 Recrues dans les usines Françaises, which deals extensively with the subject of Vietnamese workers in France.2 The common view on the French side has been that, since France colonized Indochina, the French must have used their power to “force” Vietnamese people to serve France in World War I. Such a conclusion is in line with conventional wisdom and leaves no room for exceptions; it also leaves readers who know the history of French Colonial Indochina wondering how the colonial authorities in Indochina were able to drag nearly 100,000 Vietnamese to France without being noticed by the representative of the French League of Human Rights and members of the French socialist party like Ernest Babut, the publisher of the Đại Việt Tân Báo (Modern News in Great Viet). Both were living in Hanoi at

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the time and were fierce critics of the French government.3 Moreover, in concluding that the Vietnamese recruits were “forced/conscripted labor,” scholars implied that the Vietnamese recruits had no agency and could not think for themselves, even though at that time the French had colonized Vietnam for about five decades; such a conclusion also takes away the nobility of the sacrifice the recruits were willing to undergo for the betterment of their lives and the lives of their loved ones. A majority of information in this paper is drawn from various national archives in France and Vietnam. The “voices” of the Vietnamese actors in this paper are from the monthly reports of the French Postal Control Bureau in Marseille. Like all countries that participated in the war, France created an office to censor domestic and international personal communications. Its office in Marseille, however, was created specifically to censor communications between the recruits and their relatives in Indochina; its aim was to “prevent false information and enemy propaganda from reaching the colonies.”4 The first batch of mail was read on November 20, 1916. While some workers and soldiers wrote their own letters, many depended on “writers” who were hired from Indochina to write for them. In Indochina, the colonial government also provided writing services for the families of the recruits in France. Most of the letters were written in Quốc Ngữ (the Latinized script), although some were written in French or Chinese scripts. A number of the letters also included postcards which had nude pictures of French women; these postcards were removed before the letters were forwarded to Indochina. In general, about one third of the letters never reached Indochina.5

The Recruiting Campaign and the Recruits During the war, while Germany had a large population to sacrifice, France did not have such a luxury, which was the result of a low birth rate that had begun in the mid-nineteenth century. Between 1850 and 1910, the French population increased by 3.4 million while the German population increased by 31 million.6 Moreover, the nature of warfare shifted from depending only on manpower to making use of modern weapons: machine guns, grenades, shells, and poison gas. Therefore, France also had to expand its armament industry to meet war needs. For example, France was able to produce only 10,000 shells per month, or about 330 shells per day, while it fired off about 1000 per day.7 To meet that need France had to increase its production of war materials and find

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more labor to fill the vacuum on the factory floors, since most of the able-bodied men were drafted to the front. Besides workers from neighboring countries such as Belgium, Spain, and Italy, France also tapped into the reservoir of surplus labor from its colonies overseas.8 The Recruiting Campaign in Indochina The French colonial government depended on the indigenous administrators and village leaders to carry out its recruiting campaign. Posters announced volunteering bonuses, family allowances, exemption from the body tax and corvée labor, and other benefits to attract villagers to volunteer their services for France. The pictures on posters depicted Vietnamese soldiers standing next to an allied soldier or bạn đồng minh and a French soldier or bạn tòng chinh (a comrade in arms).9 Court mandarins went on tour around the country to encourage villagers to enlist, along with a film crew to show scenes of the daily life of Vietnamese recruits who were already in France to reassure potential volunteers and their families and erase any fears and doubts among villagers.10 The military mobilization took place in several stages: all French active and reservist military personnel were called up on March 29, 1915; next, all French-born and naturalized citizens on July 1, 1915; and all indigenous active and reserve military personnel of classes 1900, 1901, 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1909 on November 22, 1915. Similar to current practice, active soldiers had to go wherever their governments sent them, so the active indigenous soldiers in Indochina, in this case tirailleurs de militaire, had to go to France when the colonial government ordered them. On the other hand, the indigenous reservists, tirailleurs de la réserve, also had to go to France when the colonial government sent them because they were bound by the terms of their military contracts— that is, they could be recalled to active duty any time for thirty-eight years after having served the initial requirement. The general campaign to recruit volunteers began on December 17, 1915. Officially, each volunteer had to be 18 years of age or older to sign the service contract. If they were 16 or 17 their parents had to sign the contract. The contract required that all volunteers serve in France for the duration of the war plus six months after the ceasefire. On January 20, 1916, to show its support for the campaign, the Royal Court at Huế issued an edict to reinforce the terms of the recruiting campaign and reiterated the benefits offered in the contract.11

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In term of wages, naturalized citizens received the same salary and benefits as their European counterparts—150 francs monthly, 5% of which would be retained to contribute toward their pension fund. Each indigenous volunteer for military service received a 200-franc bonus for volunteering, 50 francs at the time he signed his contract and 150 francs when he departed for France. If he became an invalid he would receive a 120-franc pension annually; and if he died in France his wife and children under 16 would receive 15 francs as immediate compensation and his lifetime pension. Their wages varied with their rank, ranging from 0.60 francs/day for a private second class to 1.85 francs/day for a warrant officer.12 According to Albert Sarraut (1872–1962), the former Governor-General of Indochina, by the end of the war 48,922 or 50% of all volunteers were soldiers as distinct from workers.13 The Recruits: Volunteers or Forced Labor? Who were the recruits and what prompted them to serve France during the war? Some were students from the Professional Schools in Hà Nội and Hải Phòng, the School of Asian Mechanics in Saigon, and the School of Medicine in Hà Nội. Some were workers in industrial establishments, hospitals, and public work projects; some prisoners also volunteered with a hope that their sentence would be commuted and that they would receive the same benefits as other volunteers. Interpreters were drawn from among public servants in the colonial administration or from the colonial Territorial Army. Court officials and members of the royal family also volunteered.14 The rest of the recruits were farmers, and unskilled workers who came mainly from the rural population in the coastal plains of Annam (Central Việt Nam) and the deltas of Tonkin (Northern Vietnam).15 According to Nguyễn Ái Quốc, aka Hồ Chí Minh, all the recruits were conscripted, “taken in chains…., and confined into school compounds…. Most of them will never again see the sun of their country.” A number of historians in the field of Southeast Asia also have claimed that the recruiting campaign was only “ostensibly voluntary” and that “many would prefer self-mutilation to being shipped to France.”16 A recent search in French archives, however, shows that the majority of the recruits volunteered to serve France for a variety of reasons: to escape poverty and hardship, to see the world beyond the bamboo hedges of their villages, and to better their lives. For a Sergeant Major Duc, it

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was about “honor, a new status, more money, and French citizenship.” Others believed that if they “put their hearts and minds into helping France defeat the Germans, [they] would have a better future.”17 One poor peasant stated that he joined the colonial army so that he would “no longer be regarded as a coolie.”18 Yet, others volunteered because they wanted to escape the constraints of the Confucian society, to see France in order to fulfill their mộng giang hồ (dream of adventure). For example, when hearing the news of mobilization François Can, a métis, exclaimed that his longtime desire to see France would soon be fulfilled and immediately enlisted to fight in France.19 Nonetheless, the claim that the recruiting campaign was only ostensively voluntary and that “peasants were taken in chains” bears some truth. Traditionally, all able-bodied men in the villages, namely peasants, were required to contribute a number of days per month to repair dikes, roads, and other public projects; they could, however, pay others to perform this service for them. That system led to abuses by village leaders and local administrators, who often forced poor and landless peasants to perform the labor due for them without pay.20 Peasants in Việt-Nam, therefore, have always been suspicious of “volunteered labor.” To illustrate this point, when the colonial government called for volunteers, local leaders in major provinces of Cochin-China, such as Gia Định, Rạch Giá, Gò Công, Tây Ninh, Sa Đéc, and Mỹ Tho, rounded up “unwanted elements” among the “floating population” in their villages. They “arrested and chained those peasants together and forced them to sign employment contracts.” As a result many peasants fled to the hinterland, while others vandalized community centers, the đình, and chased after village nobles. When the news reached the Governor of Cochinchina, local French administrators and village leaders were removed from their posts and reprimanded.21 In addition, at the news of the general mobilization some 700 indigenous soldiers in the colonial army in Cochin-china deserted their units and 33% of its reservists declared themselves unfit for duty. The situation prompted the colonial government to issue a notice on August 16, 1915 promising a 10-piaster reward to anyone who reported a deserter. This caused widespread tension and fear in villages. In fact, such measures remained in effect after the war and some of the deserters were arrested long after the war was over.22 In Tonkin, there were indications that peasants were also forced to sign up, though it was not a widespread phenomenon like in Cochinchina. Nguyễn Văn Thanh in Hà Đông province was one of four sons in

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his family; his village leaders decided that one must serve in the c­ olonial army and that Thanh would be the one. When General Pherivong, the Inspector General and Commander of Lombard Division, received a complaint from Thanh’s parents he ordered his release.23 What were the reasons that motivated thousands Vietnamese men to volunteer while some other resisted? First of all, economic distress and poverty caused by natural disasters such as flood, drought, bad harvests, and famine were the main reasons that prompted many to sign up. In Tonkin, at the time the recruiting campaign began, a flood buried 25% of cultivable land under six meters of water and wiped out any sign of life.24 As a result, in 1916 the peasants there were able to harvest only one-third of the yield in a normal year.25 By the same token, famine was also a normal part in the life of the peasants in Annam. In 1916 a long period of drought in Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, and Hà Tĩnh (North Annam) brought on social disorder like robberies, looting, and even revolts by imperial soldiers, which motivated many to join the military.26 Secondly, court records show that due to their infertile land and the annual natural disasters, those regions had been the main recruiting ground for the imperial army and revolutionary leaders since the thirteenth century.27 One can conclude that joining the army was a tradition for men in Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, and Hà Tĩnh regions to escape poverty, and that famine and poverty were permanent features in Tonkin and Annam. World War I, therefore, offered men from both Annam and Tonkin an opportunity to improve their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It also offered men from Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, and Hà Tĩnh an opportunity to pursue the traditional profession long practiced by their forefathers. Over all, records show about seven-eighths of all volunteers were from Annam and Tonkin.28 The Journey to France After signing up, the recruits received a medical exam and military or professional training in various military and civilian centers in Indochina; for example, medical recruits were trained on how to handle patients, dress wounds, and draw blood, while soldiers in artillery received their training on the ships taking them to France. All received quick lessons in the French language and culture, and social practices, and were told what to expect while travelling from Indochina to France.29 The Department of the Colonies and the Office of the Governor General of Indochina hired private shipping companies in Japan and Shanghai

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(China) to transport troops from Indochina. When that was not enough, the Paris government passed a series of laws to give the Ministry of War the absolute power to requisite French commercial ocean liners, cargo ships, and all other forms of naval transport. As compensation, shipping companies received between 303 and 429 francs per passenger on a cargo ship and 500 francs for each person transported on an ocean liner.30 Since there was an outbreak of cholera just before the recruiting campaign began, all soldiers were kept in isolation to avoid contaminating their ships with the disease.31 The voyage to France took at least a month; from Indochina they passed through the South China Sea, the Straits of Malacca, and the Indian Ocean to reach the Suez Canal, and stopped for refueling and rest before moving on to Marseille. At Port Said, the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, their ships joined other ships to form a convoy and were escorted by British, American, or French Navy ships until Bône, Algeria. From Bône, the French Navy escorted them until they reached Marseille.32 While some soldiers, like Corporal Nguyễn Văn Ba, were fortunate to have their own beds and were provided with coffee for breakfast and two meals each day on the ship, the majority of them had to endure hardship.33 Battles at sea, stormy weather, heat, and sanitary deficiencies caused by overcrowding and inadequate living quarters allowed diseases to proliferate. According to the log of the Captain of the s/s Athos, the ship was torpedoed on 1 of March 1917; as a result 752 people died, including 37 Vietnamese.34 The journal of Battalion #13 reported that between March and June 1916, 200 men of the battalion stayed near the area of human and animal waste, and faced walls daily. Despite having taken all necessary steps to avoid cholera, soldiers died daily from the disease. As a consequence, the ship’s cargo and passengers were quarantined for a month at Tor, a city not far from the Suez Canal. They were kept in isolation and were not permitted to enter the Mediterranean, until all were disinfected.35 When they arrived at Marseille, they were shocked to see its buildings six, seven-stories high, wide streets filled with automobiles of all sorts, street cars, horses as big as “buffaloes,” and markets that displayed abundant meats, fruits, and vegetables. France, as Corporal Nguyễn Văn Ba later recalled, was an “extraordinary” country with its riches, beauty, and modernity. It lacked nothing, but rice!36 None of that, however, had prepared them for the destruction of war and the transformation in their consciousness that they would soon experience.

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In the Mist of War The soldiers from Indochina formed nineteen battalions of the Colonial Infantry (Bataillons de l’Infanterie Colonial, hereafter BIC) comprising four combat battalions and fifteen labor battalions, which also included nurses, clerical workers, and about 5000 drivers who would serve in the military zones.37 The composition of each battalion included a European cadre and an indigenous cadre. The European cadre had several officers, non-commissioned officers, and a few soldiers; their jobs were to lead and closely supervise the native soldiers; the indigenous cadre formed the bulk of the battalion; it had several non-commissioned officers as leaders, while the rest were corporals and privates.38 At the beginning of the campaign, there were only two indigenous combat battalions, BICs #1 and 2, which had served in the French Colonial Army in Indochina. However, as the war progressed and the French Army experienced a shortage of manpower, its military leaders decided to use some Vietnamese soldiers as combatants. Since BICs #7 and #21 showed that they were excellent combatants in the battle of Verdun in October 1916 they were sent to the front line in France.39 Over all, the Vietnamese soldiers were scattered throughout France, the Balkans and the Middle East and their distribution was as follows: BICs #1 and 2 were stationed in Macedonia, BIC #8 in Djibouti, BICs #7, 9, 13, 17, 21 and 26 were at Aisne, Chemin des Dames, Vosges and Reims, BICs #3 and 6 at Verdun, BICs #11 and 18 in Paris and its vicinity, BICs #14 and 17 were assigned to work in factories. The rest of the battalions were sent to the Middle East—Levant and Palestine.40 Of the labor battalions, or bataillons d’étape, only BIC #8 was stationed in Djibouti while others served in France. They served behind the war zone and provided essential services such as maintaining hospitals, airfields, roads, and railroads.41 The areas they served stretched from Dunkerque, Lille and the Somme in the Northwest to Paris, Soissons, Champagne and Reims in the Center, and to Meuse (near Metz) and Vosges in the Northeast. Their units frequently moved from military camp to military camp and from one region to the next. BIC #3, for example, was split between Verdun and Marseille.42 Therefore, while technically non-combatant, they were constantly subjected to air raids and artillery barrages. As for combat battalions, companies of each battalion were often reattached to different divisions or regiments and formed new battalions.

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These newly formed battalions were called bataillons de marche. For instance, company #1 of BIC #7 was assigned to the 54th Regiment, then reattached to the 12th Infantry Division before joining the 134th Infantry Division in Neuvillet, near Reims; company #2 to the 67th Regiment in Ambrief before joing the 3rd Battalion of the 54th Infantry Regiment; company #3 to the 1st battalion of the same regiment after being assigned to 350th Regiment; and company #4 to the 6th Infantry Regiment before joining the 21st Infantry Division. It engaged in the battle for Chemin des Dames in Aisne region in May 1917. Company #5, however, did not have to engage in combat; it was assigned to the Depot of the 12th Division behind the front line.43 Experience on the Front Line After arriving on the front line, Private Kha was optimistic that the war would be over by the end of 1917 and wrote his wife in Indochina that when the war was over he would use his savings to open a business in Saigon.44 Since the Vietnamese had never experienced modern warfare before, many had thought it was easy: “they only had to aim their guns at the enemies and squeezed the trigger.” Others immediately volunteered for combat as soon as they arrived on the front line.45 However, after taking part in the battles of the Somme and Verdun, they realized that modern warfare was dangerous, brutal, and that the fighting would not end soon. Corporal Ham in BIC #6 was terrified when he saw that not only was the war fought on the ground, it was also fought in the air and in the trenches where “projectiles showered like rain” over their heads.46 Nguyễn Lý Mai believed that both sides determined to destroy each other with bombs, poisoned gas, tanks and mines; he indicated that not only had Vietnamese soldiers on the battlefields had to fight the enemies with modern weapons, they also had to “fight [the] fear [from within].”47 The war was beyond anything that the Vietnamese could ever imagine; hence they could find no word to describe it to their relatives in Indochina. To convey the sounds of gunfire they compared them to the sounds of “firecrackers during Tết (Vietnamese Lunar New Year)” and the picture of airplanes engaged in dogfights to “bamboo leaves whirling in the wind of a typhoon.”48 Regarding the sight of the dead, Corporal Chan of BIC #3 wrote that: “Their bodies piled on top of one another like heaps [of cut rice stalks in a harvest].”49

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After his arrival in France, Corporal Nguyen Van Ba worked as a ­ ilitary laborer in the 10th military sector in northern France, where he m repaired roads and railroads, and transported munitions while German shells fell on his worksites daily.50 According to newspaper accounts and the journal of BIC #6, a labor battalion, in 1916 the battalion was utilized to repair roads, guard the train station, and provide security for the public in Froissy (Oise). In September its members endured air raids on a daily basis. In December, three of them were killed while eight others were wounded.51 Company #4 of the same battalion was deployed to dig trenches and prepare the battleground in conjunction with French and Zouaves soldiers at Fort Douanmont (Verdun) in October. Each time the French army gained new territory, a Vietnamese-Zouaves team followed, digging trenches and guarding the new trenches until the French gained new ground. The process continued that way under heavy bombardment until the trench network was completed.52 Corporal Phạm Văn Lương, a patrol leader, did not encounter the enemy until September 1918 when he attacked them by surprise during a patrol, and as a result, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and awarded the Croix-de-Guerre.53 Corporal Phạm Văn Gốc was not so fortunate, he was attacked by two Germans who had tunneled toward the French line and emerged where he was standing guard; he was seriously wounded although he managed to kill both of them.54 Although as former peasants, the soldiers were used to working in wet rice fields and enduring hardship, some still felt that life in the trenches was “unbearable.” When it rained, the trenches were filled with water. In such conditions, a Sergeant Phùng stood guard in the trench for a week without a change of shoes and clothes.55 Vietnam’s weather is mostly tropical, although in winter the temperature in North Vietnam occasionally dropped to freezing point; however, cold is a constant feature of winter in France and in Northern France the temperature can dip below freezing point; and the trenches could not shield soldiers from the cold winter wind. A soldier wrote that when he spit on the ground his saliva immediately froze; while another complained that the chill of winter pierced his heart.56 Common health issues that triggered serious illnesses among the Vietnamese during cold winter months were tuberculosis, Pott diseases, bronchitis, mumps, dysenteries, and venereal diseases.57 To keep them warm in the winter the French Military High Command issued quilt vests, woolen coats, socks, and blankets, long underwear, and sheepskin jackets.58 Behind the front line, officially each

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soldier would receive a fuel allowance of coal, wood, or oil for heating in the winter; but as the war raged on there was a fuel shortage, some of them cut down trees in the neighbors’ yard to get wood for heating.59 J. Bosc, the Administrator of Indochinese soldiers’ affairs sent a memo to the Minister of the Colonies on July 15, 1917, to warn that if the Military continued to send Vietnamese soldiers to the front line in winter it would have grave consequences. Therefore, he suggested that any soldiers who had served one winter on the front line be sent back to the interior to rest and enjoy the hospitality of the Alliance Française, which would offer them beds to rest and entertainment such as Vietnamese opera.60 Homesickness and inability to adjust to life in France led to mental illness. Even though hospitals were built in various regions, and the Diocese of Marseille also built a large convalescence home with 300 beds as a “retreat home” for Vietnamese soldiers, a doctor in Hospital Complémentaire 30 in Nice pointed out that although he was able to treat their physical problems, he could not provide them with emotional care due to cultural and language barriers. To deal with such problems, Hospital Terminus put all Vietnamese patients in the same ward so they could provide one another the needed emotional support.61 The Vietnamese were always well fed, even when there was a food shortage nationwide and French civilians faced hunger. According to soldier Thân, they were afraid to venture outside their camps at night, fearing that they might trigger protests because “local people were facing famine.”62 Battle for Chemin des Dames By 1916, France had suffered more than 1.5 million casualties on the Western front and the Germans were advancing toward Paris. In December 1916 General Joseph Joffre (1852–1931), the Commander of the French Army, was replaced by General Robert Neville (1856–1924), whose plan was to retake control of the Chemin des Dames. The main battles would take place in the Aisne region, between Soissons and Reims.63 BICs #7, 9, 21 and 26 were deployed to Aisne as combatants and laborers. Their primary role was to guard supply lines and clear the occupied territory; however, when the Germans launched a counter-­attack on May 7, 1917, the BIC #7 had to take part in the heavy fighting.64 According to Lieutenant Mourroux, one of the commanding officers of

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BIC #7, the companies of Vietnamese soldiers in his battalion were sent to different sections to assume different duties: one company was sent to the front line for combat; one company was placed in reserve with another regiment; another company was attached to a battalion responsible for providing food and munition supplies. The rest, along with French soldiers, dug themselves into the bank of a shallow pit in Plateau Croixsans-Tête, East of Ostel in the Aisne area, where a trench network formed a second line of defense, facing the Germans’ first line of defense. Also according to Mourroux, the nights were cold and heavy shelling was constant, day and night. On May 5, the day that his unit launched the offensive attack, Lieutenant Mourroux asked for volunteers to lead the charge. A French sergeant and four Vietnamese soldiers stood up to assume that duty. Mourroux testified: “They charged 50 meters ahead, threw grenades, and pursued any Germans that fled.” Next night the whole unit fought off a violent attack by the Germans. When one French officer was seriously wounded, a Vietnamese soldier carried him on his back to safety under heavy shelling. The officer called this Vietnamese soldier “my savior.” Next morning, as his unit moved on, Mourroux found out that some of his Vietnamese soldiers had disappeared. He reported that “no one knows” if they had died or had been taken prisoners.65 Although the Allied force was able to gain control of the area, its number of casualties was high. Soldier Thanh later recalled: “Since April, of the 330 [Vietnamese men who participated in the battle], 250 were killed. Besides me, of all the men I have known since I left the village, only twelve are still alive”66 (Fig. 5.1). In the Balkans A month after Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in October 1915 France and Britain sent troops to the Balkans. The French sent two colonial divisions under the command of General Maurice Sarrail (1856– 1929). Initially, Sarrail intended to use the colonial soldiers in a military campaign to save the Serbs, but since Serbia had already fallen, instead he ordered his troops to fortify the Greek city of Thessaloniki and its harbor in anticipation of a German invasion.67 To strengthen his forces in the Balkans, Sarrail requested eight more battalions of colonial troops to take part in military operations and work on construction projects. In April and May 1916, the Headquarters of the High Military Command in Paris sent six Madagascan and two Indochinese battalions, the BIC #1 and #2,

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Fig. 5.1  The French Army on the Western Front in World War I: a company of Vietnamese troops preparing for ceremonial investiture with decorations at Etampes (France). Unknown photographer, black and white photograph, date unknown (Source collection online Imperial War Museum (Great Britain), Q102976. With permission of the Imperial War Museum)

in response to Sarrail’s request. These battalions were utilized in reconnaissance missions, raids, and ambush missions in Serbia, Macedonia, and Albania. According to their commanders, the rugged terrain in the Balkan states was similar to that in Tonkin where the Vietnamese men received their basic training and therefore these men were more suitable for small scale operations in the Balkans than for the big battles in Europe.68 The Vietnamese soldiers proved that they were up to their tasks. In Albania, in September 1917 the commander of the BIC #2 received orders to destroy a bridge behind the Austrian line. A French lieutenant, Larmalle, led 15 men from Company #3 of BIC #2 and one artillery company armed with machine guns to blow up the bridge while others were to launch a diversionary attack to draw the enemy’s attention away from the bridge. They set out on September 25. Lieutenant Larmalle coordinated with the Albanian police force to carry out this mission. Vietnamese Warrant Officer Kế and two dozen other Vietnamese soldiers

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set up explosives to destroy the bridge. The whole mission was accomplished in 45 minutes! Although the Austrian guards discovered and interrupted their operation, they completed their objective and escaped with no casualties.69 As the war was coming to a close, in 1918 General Franchet d’Espèrey (1856–1942), the new commander of the French Army in the Balkans, decided to launch a final push to gain more territory and to pressure the Bulgarian government into suing for peace.70 Vietnamese soldiers took part in this operation, patrolling, scouting, and participating in a mopping-up campaign. When the war was over, members of BICs #1 and 2 were among those who received military decorations recommended by the Commander of the French Army in the Orient, who wrote that although the Vietnamese soldiers in the Balkans suffered heavy casualties, they showed courage, bravery and skill in fighting a more powerful enemy on treacherous terrain without ceding any ground.71 The Enemy and the Allies Between March and May 1918, the Germans began a series of “victory drives” (Spring offensive) hoping to break through the Allied Front. In the northern sector, BICs #3, 6, 9, 11, 16, 17 and 24 were deployed as labor battalions; BICs #7 and 21 were deployed in combat, participating in the battles that took place between Armentière, near the Belgium border, and Ham, southwest of St. Quentin.72 On March 21 and 28, the Germans deployed 37 divisions on a 40-mile front from the Sensée River to Oise, and 20 divisions on a 20-mile front between Arras and the Vimy Bridge to overpower the British Fifth Army and broke through the 40-mile front in the March 21 battle.73 The British suffered 200,000 casualties, dead and wounded, and the French 70,000 casualties.74 Witnessing this, Sergeant Kha and Private Thoi compared the large number of soldiers on the battlefields to “innumerable rice stalks” in a rice field, and that the battlefields were full of soldiers like a rice field filled with workers during a harvest.75 Despite heavy losses, the British army would not concede defeat; according to Winston Churchill (1874–1965) they prepared to “conquer or die.” General Douglas Haig (1861–1928) ordered that “every position must be held to the last man.” (He was later known by some as “butcher” for the loss of his soldiers’ lives.) When the waves of German troops

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descended on the battlefield, “companies, battalions, and even brigades of British, South African and Australian soldiers were obliterated.” In early April 1918, Sir Douglas Haig tried to stem the German advance upon Amiens at the Battle of the Lys. The Allies kept on fighting until they finally repulsed the Germans on the hill of Kemmel on April 12, only to lose it again on April 25.76 Seeing that both sides had sustained heavy losses but neither wanted to quit, Sergeant Ất compared it to a cockfight in his village “the opponents were worn and bloody but they would not give up.”77 By the end of April, when the battle in the northern sector had died down, German General Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937) chose Chemin des Dames, the site of earlier victories, to deploy his troops to launch his third Spring offensive against the Allies. On May 27, eighteen German divisions advanced and reached Chemin des Dames in only one day. Six French and three British divisions could not stop them. They continued to march on and took Soissons. On June 2 they reached the Marne at Château-Thierry and were 50 miles from Paris.78 The Vietnamese soldiers believed France and the Allies would be defeated because the Germans were powerful and the French lacked the military skill that the Germans possessed.79 Soldier Chuc predicted that France would have to sue for peace because its human and material resources were depleted.80 The Americans entered the war in April 1917, and by October of 1917 about 65,000 American soldiers in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) had landed in France. That number increased slowly and by July 1918 American presence in France was in full force, with 54,224 officers and 1,114,838 enlisted men. Initially they were attached to the French Army under the command of French General Marie-Eugène Debeny (1864–1943) to be trained in trench warfare for which they lacked experience.81 The AEF did not enter the front line until January 1918; and in May 1918, the French and the American leaders agreed to form an Inter-Allied Committee to co-ordinate their war efforts. In May 1918 the AEF made their debut in a battle at Montdidier in the Somme and captured Cantigny, a small village, but they suffered 1000 casualties—200 dead and 800 wounded.82 In July 1918 the American First and Second Divisions joined the French XX Corps of the French General Charles Mangin’s 10th Colonial Army against the German offensive in the Second Battle of Marne; their aim was to break through the German line between Soissons and Château Thierry.

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In this battle, the Allies successfully halted the Germans’ advance east of Chateau Thierry and forced them to retreat from the Marne.83 In the French 10th Colonial Army the Vietnamese served as drivers transporting the Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers to the battlefield84; however, the journal of BIC #7 indicated that the Vietnamese soldiers had met American soldiers, and that sometimes the two participated in joint reconnaissance missions or came to each other’s assistance during battles. In other words, they were bạn đồng minh (Allies). Letters from Vietnamese soldiers in this period revealed that the Americans had earned their respect and admiration. They viewed the Americans as a powerful force, and “fierce fighters” whose presence on the battlefield brought back confidence among the Vietnamese.85 In his letter to his family in Indochina, Trần Văn Điệp expressed his confidence that the end of the war was near because “[the Americans] had not lost a battle.”86 Some Vietnamese called them Vua or King and believed that the Americans had the Mandate of Heaven to rule the world and that France had lost its mandate to govern Indochina. Soldier Phương of BIC #21 wrote to his parents and asked if the Americans had taken the French place in Indochina. Moreover, since the Americans saved France from being taken over by the Germans, its people should pay tribute and honor the Americans as “Thầy” or Master.87 In the words of one soldier, the Americans were “civilized, rich, strong, good, intelligent and superior.”88 On Christmas 1923 Albert Sarraut, the former Governor General of Indochina and French Minister of Colonies, held a reunion ball in Tonkin for the Vietnamese and American veterans of World War One, who had fought together in Champagne, Artois, Verdun and Alsace.89 The Vietnamese were not alone in their positive view of the Americans. Jean Pierrefeu in the French Army described how he felt at the sight of Americans landed in France: it appeared as if France’s “mangled body had received a blood transfusion.” Their presence “infused new hope, new vigor, [and] new courage” in the Allies.90 In 1927, when discussing the Second Battle of the Marne, German General Erich Ludendorff wrote in his memoir that, while the British and the French were already exhausted, the young Americans carried with them an “untapped” energy and they were “brave” although their attacks were “often reckless.”91 Regarding the Vietnamese performance, while some Vietnamese thought that their fellow soldiers were “brave” and French soldiers were

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“cowards;” others, such as Quách Văn Khai, reported that when facing the Germans in the battlefield, his fellow soldiers “waved the white flag” and surrendered.92 Many constantly lived in fear of mustard gas and death; one reported that “one night 67 men were killed and blinded by mustard gas.”93 By August 1918 the battle area around the Marne was quiet. One Vietnamese soldier wrote that the tide of the war was reversed: in 1917 a French defeat was imminent but by the same time in 1918 the Germans were on the run and “their blood runs like a river.”94 By the end of the war, about 4% of the Vietnamese soldiers had died, although it was not clear how many soldiers were missing or became prisoners. According to Albert Sarraut, nearly 6400 out of nearly 600,000 volunteers from all French colonies, were missing; 150 colonial soldiers were captured by the Germans in the Battle of Chemin des Dames. They sent a majority of them to Romania as laborers, and most of them had died there; others were incorporated into the Turkish– German units in Palestine, also as laborers.95 Many colonial soldiers received military medals and decorations for their courage, their devotion and their daring.96 At Verdun, for example, a company of Vietnamese soldiers in BICs #7 and 21 received military honors because, despite the fact that the French army had lost 50% of their troops, the Vietnamese “held out until the end.”97 According to Lieutenant Mourroux, 83 Vietnamese soldiers in his battalion received medals after the battle of Chemin des Dames and one soldier in particular, Private Nguyễn Vinh, received the Croix-de-Guerre for his “bravery and injury” that he sustained on May 6, 1917, while doing his duty “valiantly.”98 In the Air Force, a Lieutenant Đỗ Hữu Nghi was promoted to captain for completing his mission and for “bringing back valuable information” to the French Commanding Headquarters. A Captain Phạm (no first name) was awarded a medal after fighting off an enemy assault and taking some of them prisoner.99

After the Armistice On November 7, 1918, the Germans sued for peace, and on November 11 Germany and France signed the armistice in a railroad car in a forest near Compiègne, north of Paris. Like millions others in France, many Vietnamese soldiers and workers immediately asked their superiors: “When can we go home?”100 However, since the war had fundamentally

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changed everybody’s life, they would soon find out that the war had altered their lives as well. The repatriation process began with the reservists in combat units who were the first to leave France; next were the reservists in the labor battalions, nurses, clerical workers and soldiers whose contracts were about to expire. Skilled workers were the last to leave.101 By 1920, only 1100 soldiers remained in France; while many were stationed outside France: in Germany, the Balkans, China, Syria, Morocco, the Levant, and Lebanon, some were assigned to automobile service in the French Army.102 However, since millions of Frenchmen had been killed or became invalids, France continued to turn to Indochina to recruit soldiers for its army and, therefore, gave 50% of the World War I soldiers, who were already repatriated, the opportunity to re-enlist and return to France. Soldiers who preferred to stay in the military in Indochina were incorporated into the Colonial Army.103 A small number of soldiers, who were discharged from the Colonial Army but did not want to return to Indochina, petitioned the French government in Paris for permission to stay in France in order to pursue higher education, receive professional training, work, or to be with their French wives and children. Each petition had to include a resumé, a letter of support from his superior and, if he wanted to remain in France to be with his French wife and children, proof of financial support and proof that he had no wife in Indochina.104 Only a small number of petitioners were able to stay; others were rejected because they could not show proof of financial support, or proof that they were not married in Indochina. Moreover, although scholarships were available in Indochina the General Governor of Indochina only granted scholarships to those who learned a profession needed for the development of Indochina.105 Compensation, Expectation, and Disappointment To ease the veterans back into society, the governments in Paris and Indochina introduced two political reforms. In 1921 they abolished Hội Đồng Hào Mục [Council of Notables] in villages, whose members were elected by retired officials, degree holders and former village chiefs, and replaced it with Hội Đồng Tộc Biểu (Council of Lineage Representatives) whose members were elected by their family members, relatives and friends.106 Such reforms enabled World War I veterans like Corporal Nguyễn văn Ba in Hà Đông to run for seats in Hội Đồng Tộc Biểu and,

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with the support of their families and friends, they were elected.107 In 1926 French President Gaston Doumergue (1863–1937) issued a decree allowing qualified native people in Indochina to compete with French citizens for employment in the colonial administration.108 Financially, the veterans were to receive discharge bonuses, pensions, land to farm, and priority for jobs in the industrial sector. About 12,000 returnees were employed in industries such as mining, cement, glass, and paper, and in rubber plantations.109 However, not all were so fortunate; two years after 10,000 volunteers from Thanh Hóa (Annam) were demobilized in January 1919, the majority of them remained unemployed.110 Moreover, although the returnees were entitled to land, only infertile land in the Upper Tonkin and North Annam was available to them. Consequently, after a three-year trial, many deserted their lands or sold their lands to ethnic people in the mountain region, the Nùng, and moved back to the lowlands. In the end, only 1/10 of the veterans who had received land remained on their land.111 Their dream of having their own piece of land to cultivate was squashed. Such dream of riches was destroyed further when each of them received a discharge bonus of 120 francs, the amount listed in their contracts, instead of a bonus of between 1000 and 1500 francs, which was paid to each demobilized French soldier.112 To make things worse, in 1920 the market rate of exchange was 11 francs/piaster instead of 3 francs/piaster as stipulated in the veterans’ contracts. The depreciation of the French currency, the franc, therefore, depleted their savings, bonuses, and pensions quickly since they were paid in franc.113 When the veterans protested, the colonial government fixed it at 3.65 francs/piaster; but that rate was applied to calculate the veterans’ pensions only.114 The veterans’ demand that the colonial government use the rate of exchange in their contracts to convert their savings and earnings was unsuccessful because in 1918 the Paris government issued a law that removed the colonial government from any responsibility for such changes. Article 1 of the law stated that benefits paid to the Vietnamese and their families in Indochina would be paid in piasters and that the colonial government would supplement any differences incurred by the fluctuation of the rate of exchange. However, Article 2 also said that the ability to supplement the differences depended on funding from France; and the colonial government had a right to decide whether or not it wanted to supplement the differences.115 In effect, the veterans were shortchanged because postwar France had no money to fund

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Indochina and, therefore, the colonial government did not have to assume any responsibility for the loss of the veterans’ money in their savings accounts. To add insult to injury, inflation rapidly rose in the postwar period; for example, 100 kilograms of wood (used for cooking) cost only 0.65 piasters in 1914 but 70 piasters in 1919, and 100 kilograms of rice paddies (rice before thrashing to remove the husk) cost 3.60 piasters in 1914 but 6.40 piasters in 1919.116 The veterans who had expected to be granted French citizenship after having served in the military to defend France’s national borders felt that the French governments in Paris and in Indochina betrayed them when their applications for citizenship were denied.117 Before 1912, French citizenship was awarded to soldiers who served in the colonial army and were injured or became disabled while fighting for the French empire. But new laws in 1912 and 1913 dictated that to gain French citizenship a local soldier had to serve fifteen years in the National Guard in Tonkin, be 21 years old or older, be literate in the French language, and be decorated with the Legion of Honor or have provided exceptional services to France. Unfortunately, although the veterans had provided exceptional service to France in World War I, many did not meet other requirements. Between 1921 and 1924 only eight out of 71 applicants were granted French citizenship, the rest were rejected on the ground that they lacked education and proficiency in the French language.118 In truth, however, the French government did not want to grant citizenship to Vietnamese soldiers because it feared that giving them citizenship would bring about political problems.119 Finally, the colonial government also ignored its responsibility toward disabled veterans: out of 35,000 disabled veterans only 10,750 received compensation; and three years after the end of the war the kin of soldiers killed in action had not received their compensation because they could not provide documents to prove their relationship to the deceased.120 Last but not least, although the veterans were accorded mandarin honors and titles by the Vietnamese Emperor, they were meaningless. Traditionally, besides respect, such honors and titles also carried financial rewards, but in this case they were meant to bestow only honor and not to confer any monetary benefit on the recipients.121 Therefore, the mandarin honors and titles were useless and contrary to the veterans’ expectation. One can only imagine the kind of disappointment, and perhaps embarrassment, the veterans must have felt when they faced villagers.

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Rebellious Sons of Indochina The decades between the two world wars in Europe were characterized by economic, social and political instability, and by the rise of communism and fascism. Indochina experienced the same instability. Being unemployed caused many veterans to become restless and impatient. The unemployed veterans in Thanh Hóa often showed up at the office of the local French administrator and demanded assistance in money and in kind. They often were given money and promises but were scorned.122 When the promises were not fulfilled, some veterans became angry and their anger manifested itself in different forms: fighting with customers in restaurants, even with agents who interviewed them for jobs, or being violent in public places. The Inspector General in Tonkin reported that some of the veterans no longer respected the established local social hierarchy and authority, causing social disorder and embarrassing their parents.123 In Tonkin, 40 veterans showed up in a market and caused a disturbance, prompting vendors to flee for their lives. The public blamed France for the veterans’ rowdy behavior.124 Some of the soldiers brought their French wives, whom they met while stationed in French villages, back to Indochina, where such marriages were deemed unacceptable with regard to Vietnamese customs. The Vietnamese believed that the presence of a French woman in a Vietnamese family destroyed the family foundations and threatened many traditions.125 In the view of the French colonists, the Vietnamese men who married French women did so to antagonize Frenchmen in Indochina.126 By 1930, when the Great Depression set in, 1/3 of the labor force in the industrial sector faced being laid-off; those who still had a job had to take early retirement or accept a 30% reduction in their salaries. At the same time, Hồ Chí Minh, who was then known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc and was one of the founding members of the French Communist Party in 1920, also founded the Vietnamese Communist Party.127 It was reported in 1919 that his influence had spread among Vietnamese soldiers in France.128 In Cochinchina when European and indigenous business owners, and their workers, took to the streets to voice their anger, the veterans were among the protesters; and they were led by communist agents. In Hà Nội in 1929 and in the 1930s the veterans even raised the communist red flag at their protests.129 Some of the former World War I soldiers who were incorporated in the Colonial Army in Indochina

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took part in the Yên Bái mutiny against the colonial government on March 17, 1930.130 One can speculate that in 1940, when Hồ Chí Minh returned to Việt Nam to lead the anticolonial Revolution, he already had thousands of followers who were well trained in French military tactics and strategies during World War I: they knew how to throw grenades, set up mines, blow up bridges, and ambush enemy convoys.

Conclusion In World War I the Vietnamese soldiers had given France invaluable service that came from their labor, sweat, tears, and courage and, in some cases, they even shed their blood, to help secure France’s national borders. When they returned to Indochina they expected to find their rightful place in society and to reap benefits from the services they had rendered France. What many faced instead were unfulfilled promises by the French government, disappointment, disillusion, and even discrimination from their own people and the colonists. Their pensions and savings evaporated quickly with the postwar exchange rate. Consequently, they fell back to their former lot, empty-handed, but had no means to rebuild their lives. Corporal André Châu expressed that sentiment in a letter to his brother: “… We had suffered a lot to serve France: we slept in snow, ate frozen food…. After all that, we return to Indochina without a sou [penny]. How will we restart our lives?”131 In 1925, Dương Văn Giao, who served as an interpreter during the war, wrote: “Through the sacrifice of Vietnamese soldiers [and workers], France has incurred a great debt of gratitude toward these men that they should never forget.”132 Nonetheless, the exchange of labor for postwar material and financial benefits did not benefit the veterans but the French; and the French had betrayed their trust, ruined their expectations, and destroyed their hopes and dreams. Therefore, the protests by the veterans in the late 1920s and the 1930s were foremost a movement seeking redress for unfulfilled promises on the part of the French, who had not kept their end of the bargain. Nonetheless, although it is clear that the French had acted in bad faith, it cannot be said that the recruits were conscripted laborers who were forced to serve France in the war, as many historian have believed. In fact, these recruits had made the decision to go to France hoping to build a better life for themselves and their loved ones, although in the end they did not get what they had bargained for.

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World War I also transformed the volunteers into a different class of men who were no longer illiterate, docile peasants. They had traveled the world and become far superior in knowledge and experience to their fellow villagers, including village leaders. Such experience created a sense of superiority, which led them to believe that they no longer had to submit to the power of local authorities. Moreover, after fighting for the survival of France and living in France for four years many expressed their contempt for France and the colonists: in their view France was no longer an “extraordinary” country as Corporal Nguyễn Văn Ba had stated, and the colonists had come to Indochina to make a living because they were “dirt poor” in France.133 Yet, it was in France that the veterans were “modernized” by experiencing and adopting new ideas and practices: they learned the meaning of freedom of speech and association, and the power of collective action to demand justice and more rights. Thước, a soldier in a labor battalion, who witnessed the French labor protest movement in 1917, wrote that French workers had set examples for Vietnamese workers on how to fight for better wages and against employers’ exploitation. French workers, he concluded, “were powerful.”134 In Indochina, when the economic events of the 1930s took a toll on the economy, communist agents, who had already infiltrated Indochina, seized on the veterans’ anger and hatred toward the French and channeled their feelings into political protests against the French presence in Indochina.135 In the end, although Indochina had provided the French government with an immediate solution to its dire situation in World War I, that solution also had a far reaching consequence: it triggered the eventual downfall of the French colonial enterprise in Indochina. From this point of view, World War I is an important event in the history of Vietnam because it allowed a number of Vietnamese men to make their debut on the world theater alongside other international forces. The war also had blurred the dividing line between France and its colonies: the tens of thousands of people recruited from Indochina to work in France during the war became pioneers who paved the way for more Vietnamese to come to France to work and study from the postwar period on. In addition to the French government hiring more soldiers to safeguard French national borders, French merchant marine companies also hired Vietnamese as sailors on their ships, either legally or illegally, enabling them to gain passage to France.136 France also changed its laws to allow students from Indochina to attend French schools.137 Together

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with the veterans already living in France these “new comers” eventually formed “Indochinese colonies” in the heart of France. In the period between the two world wars, together they became the backbone of the anti-colonial movement in France, in conjunction with the protest movement in Indochina.138 Most importantly, it was in France that the Vietnamese migrants were recruited by the French Communist Party to go to Moscow and be trained as agents for the Comintern (the Communist International or the Third International, 1919–1943).139 As mentioned above, it was in France that Nguyễn Ái Quốc joined a majority of the French Socialist Party and voted to adhere to the Comintern. Their votes led to the creation of the French Communist Party of which he was a founding member.140 Therefore, it can be said that without World War I, there would not be Indochinese colonies in France and, subsequently, the Vietnamese would never been exposed to communism and the communist revolution might have never taken place in Vietnam. No doubt, the French would eventually have had to leave Indochina, but not at the hands of Hồ Chí Minh and the Vietnamese Communist Party.

Notes





1. Jacques Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française de 1914 at nos jours (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), 53–54; John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 1082. 2. The author of this chapter is responsible for the translation of all nonEnglish documents in this article, unless stated otherwise. Kimloan Vu-Hill, Coolies into Rebels: Impact of World War I on French Indochina (Paris: Les Indes Savante, 2011); Henri Eckert, “Les Militaires Indochinois au Service de la France (1859–1939)” (Thèse pour l’obtention du grade de Docteur de l’Université Paris IV, 1998); and Mireille Le Van Ho, Des Vietnamiens Dans la Grande Guerre, 50 000 Recrues dans les usines Françaises (Paris: Vendémiaire Éditions, 2014). 3. Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 103. 4. 1 SLOTFOM 8 (Service de Liaison avec les Originaires des Territoires de la France d’Outre Mer in Archives Nationale d’Outre Mer or ANOM), Note in file, November, 1917. 5. 1 SLOTFOM 1, Report of the Budget General of Indochina—1919, the Alliance Française was founded by the former Minister of the Colonies

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and Governor General of Indochina, Albert Sarraut, in 1915 “to provide social and cultural services to Indochinese soldiers and workers in France,” including language lessons in French and Quốc Ngữ for Vietnamese soldiers and workers. About 25,000 Vietnamese recruits became literate during World War I; NF 263 (Nouveau Fond in ANOM) & SHAT 16 N 1554 (Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre at Chateau de Vincennes in Paris), “Correspondance des travailleurs étrangers,” No 18243, August 4, 1917; L’Avenir du Tonkin (January 15, 1915); Note: Technically the Confucian based education system was open to everyone but in reality only the children of the wealthy landowner, village leaders, and the mandarins could have access to this education system; the majority of the population, peasants, were illiterate. 6.  B. R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 1750–1988 (New York: Stockton Press, 1992), 4, 8, 92, 95, 101–102. 7. Gerd Hardach, The First World War, 1914–1918 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 57–59. 8. Gary Cross, Immigrant Workers in Industrial France (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press 1983), 20–24; F. Braudel and E. Labrousse, eds., Histoire économique et sociale de la France, 1880–1950, Vol. 4 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979–1980), 104–107. 9. NF 252, “Circonscriptions Administratives de l’Indochine”; RST 73172 (Résident Supérieur du Tonkin in Cục Lưu Trữ Quốc Gia I, Hà Nội), Poster, January 20, 1916. 10. Le Van Ho, Des Vietnamiens Dans la Grande Guerre, 42–44. 11.  Bulletin de la Section d’Information du G.Q.G. Nouvelle, série no. 95, March 16, 1919; Journal Officiel de l’Indochine Française, March 26, July 1, November 22, 1915, and January 26 and February 12, 1916; Albert Sarraut, La Mise en valeur des colonies françaises (Paris: Payot, 1923), 38–43; Albert Sarraut (1872–1962), a career civil servant in French government, was the Governor General in Indochina twice, 1911–1914 and 1917–1919, and the Minister of the Colonies 1920– 1924 and 1932. 12. 1 SLOTFOM 1, Dossier 6, “Action de l’autorité militaire – Rapport sur le Recrutement indigène demandé à l’Indochine,” August–December 1915; “Nos soldats d’Extrême Orient,” in La Dépêche Colonial et Maritime (October 5, 1917); Memo from the Minister of the Colonies H. Simons to the President of the Council of War, 1919. 13. Albert Sarraut, La Mise en valeur des colonies françaises, 42–43. 14. 1 SLOTFOM 1, Dossier 6, “Action de l’autorité militaire – Rapport sur le recrutement indigène demandé à l’Indochine de Août à Décembre 1915”; RST 20826 and RST 73172; 10 SLOTFOM 6, “Liste nominative des gens de la famille royale d’Annam dans des bataillons

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Indochinois,” 1919; 1 SLOTFOM 4, in April 1917 Tri phủ ­(district chief) Nguyễn văn Vinh and Phạm Gia Thụy and Án sát ­(provincial chief) Nguyễn văn Hiền were hired as a quality controllers for Indochinese workers and troops in France. 15. 9 PA 13/3 (Papiers d’ Albert Sarraut in ANOM), Memos from the Governor General of Indochina to the Governors of Cochin-china, Résident Supérieurs in Tonkin, Annam and Cambodia regarding the total numbers of soldiers and workers from Indochina who served in France during World War I and their repatriation to Indochina in postwar time, June 2, 1918. 16. Nguyễn Ái Quốc, La Procès de la Colonisation Française (Hanoi: Édition en Langues Étrangère, 1962), 9–22; Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, Vol. 1 (London: Pall Mall Press, 1967), 96, 490; and Martin J. Murray, The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina, 1870–1940 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 217. 17. 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report, March 1917; NF 227, Postal Control Report, January and June 1918. 18. 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report, March 1917. 19.  François Bertrand Can with George Durrwell, Carnet de route d’un petite massouin cochinchinois: impressions et souvenirs de la Grand Guerre (Saigon: Imprimerie Albert Portail, 1916), 1–9. 20. Murray, The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina, 81–90, 386–91. 21. 1 SLOTFOM 4 and Amireaux 7599 (in ANOM) Report by Saurin, the Inspector of the Colonies, October 12, 1916. 22.  Journal Officiel de L’Indochine Française (hereafter JOIF), August 16, 1915; Amireaux 7599, “Rapport de l’Inspection des colonies sur le service de recrutement volontaire en Cochinchine,” 1916. 23. RST 21440, “A/S d’un ONS engagé contre son gré,” March 9, 1917. 24. Pierre Gourou, The Peasants of the Tonkin Delta: A Study of Human Geography (1936), trans. Richard Miller (New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files, Inc., 1953), 80–81, 90–92; “Les Inondations du Tonkin,” La Cochinchine, July 23, 27, 1915; “La Lutte contre les inondations,” La Ville, March 1916. 25.  GGI, 7967–7969 (Fond Gouvernement Générale de L’Indochine in Cục Lưu Trữ Quốc Gia I, Hà Nội),“Annual Reports on the Economic Situations in Tonkin,” 1916–1918. 26. James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasants: Rebellions and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1976), 127–28; 10 SLOTFOM & NF 226, “Rapport sur la situation politique

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de l’Annam” by the Governor General of Indochina, 1st Semester 1916 (April 22, 1916). 27. Phan Huy Chu, “Binh Che Chi,” in Lich Trieu Hien Chuong Loai Chi, Vol. 3, trans. Phan Huy Giu, Trinh Dinh Ru, and Cao Huy Giu (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1992), 23–29. 28. 9 PA 13/3, Memo from the Governor General of Indochina to the Governors of Cochin-china, Résident Supérieurs in Tonkin, Annam and Cambodia regarding the total numbers of soldiers and workers from Indochina who served in France during World War I and their repatriation to Indochina in postwar time, June 2, 1918. 29.  RST 73172, 1 SLOTFOM 1, Dossier 6, “Action de l’autorité militaire – Rapport sur le Recrutement indigène demandé à l’Indochine,” August–December 1915; SHAT 7N2121, Second Report by Senator Henry Berenger; Amireaux 1884, Ministère de la Guerre, “Instructions générales sur le recrutement et l’incorporation des contigents indigènes,” January 3, 1916, Extrait 153 de l’Instructions spéciale, January 11, 1916 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1916). 30. SHAT 7 N 2030, Note du Commissaire aux Transports Maritimes et la Marine Marchande à M. Le Président du Conseil Ministère de la Guerre; Journal Officiel de La République Française, Inscription maritme en temps de guerre (September 30, 1917); Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Marseille (ACCM), “Réquisition Naval” in the file of the s/s Athos of Compagnie Messageries Maritimes, Côté 46, 1915; “La Réquisition de la Flotte Marchande,” in La Dépêche Coloniale et Maritime (February 19, 1918). 31.  1 SLOTFOM 1, Dossier 6, “Action de l’autorité militaire…”; RST 20877 & Amireaux 1883, Report by the General Government of Indochina on miliary and worker compounds. 32. ADBR 531U414 & 531U417 (Archives Départementales des Bouches du Rhône), Rapports de Mer; François Bertrand Can, Carnet de route, 13–18; ADBR 531U419, Rapports de Mer by Captain Delamer of the Latouche Tréville, July 1917 and by Captain Veziat of the Meinam, September 8, 1917. 33. Jean Marquet, Lettres D’Annamites: Lettres de Guerre, Lettres de Paix (Hanoi: Édition du Fleuve Rouge, 1929), 11–15. 34.  ACCM (Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Marseille), Rapport de Mer by Captain of the Athos, December 7, 1916. 35. ADBR, Rapports de Mer by Captain Delamer of the Latouche Tréville, July 1917. SHAT, 26 N 874, Journal de Marche et d’Operation du Bataillons Tirailleurs Indochinois, BIC #13. 36. Marquet, Lettres D’ Annamites, 21–23.

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37.  Emmanuel Bouhier, “Les Troupes Coloniales d’Indochine en 1914– 1918,” in Les Troupes coloniales dans la Grande Guerre, ed. Claude Carlier and Guy Pedroncini (Paris: Economica, 1997), 74–77. 38. Lieutenant Mourroux, Le Tirailleurs Indochinois – Le 7 e Bataillon Indochinois au front en 1917 (Hanoi: Impimerie d’Extrême – Orient, 1919), 15. 39. Bouhier, “Les Troupes Coloniales d’Indochine,” 74–77; SHAT 16 N 3057, “Unités Indochinois en Orient”; 10 SLOTFOM 5, “Note pour le Comité de Guerre au sujet des tirailleurs indigènes en service aux Armées”. 40.  Bouhier, “Les Troupes Coloniales d’Indochine,” 74–77; SHAT 16N196, “Rapport sur la situation des bataillions d’étapes Indochinois dans le groupement du camp Tassigny.” I have no information regarding the activities of the battalions sent to the Middle East. 41.  Bouhier, “Les Troupes Coloniales d’Indochine,” 74–77; SHAT 16N196, “Rapport sur la situation des bataillions d’étapes Indochinois dans le groupement du camp Tassigny.” 42.  SHAT, 26 N 874, Journals de Marche et d’Operation du Bataillons Tirailleurs Indochinois. 43.  Bouhier, “Les Troupes Coloniales d’Indochine,” 74–77; Les Armées Françaises d’Outre-Mer, Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris, Les Troupes Coloniales pendant la Guerre 1914–1918 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1931), 72–97; See also, Commander L’Mourroux, Le Tirailleurs Indochinois, 14. 44. 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report, March 1917. 45.  1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report, December 1916; extract of Private Gấm’s letter. 46. 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report, November 1916. 47. 3 SLOTFOM 93, Letter by Nguyễn Lý Mai, Postal Control Report, March 1918. 48.  1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report, September 1918; NF 227, Postal Control Report, June and September 1918; 3 SLOTFOM 93, Postal Control Report, July 1918. 49. NF 227 (Nouveau Fond in Archives Nationale d’Outre Mer or ANOM), Postal Control Reports, March 1918. 50. Marquet, Lettres D’Annamites, 33; List of Military zones in Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (Dover, NH: Berg, 1985), 333. 51.  SHAT, 26 N 874, Journals de Marche et d’Operation du Bataillon Tirailleurs Indochinois (JMO), BIC #6. 52. 9 PA 13, “Les Tirailleurs Tonkinois, qui combatant pour la France éternelle,” in Le Courrier d’Haiphong (June 11–12, 1917).

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53. NF 227, Postal Control Report, November 1917. 54. 10 SLOTFOM 4, “Decorations of War.” 55. NF 227, Postal Control Report, June 1918. 56. NF 227, Postal Control Report, January 1918. 57. 10 SLOTFOM 3, Report by Controller Lamarre on Indochinese troops in the 12th and 18th regions, January 18, 1918. 58.  10 SLOTFOM 5, Note in the Council of War on “wintering” for Indochinese soldiers, September 5, 1917; 16 N 196, Report by Lt. Mangin in the Frist Bureau, Army zone March 6, 16 and 18, 1917. 59. NF 227, Reports by Controllers Dupuy-Volny and Tri Phủ Vinh, August 31, 1918. 60. 10 SLOTFOM 5, Memo from J. Bosc to the Minister of the Colonies, July 15, 1917. 61.  NF 246/249, Report by Controller Eckert, December 1917; 1 SLOTFOM 2, Maison de convalescence, 1917. 62. NF 227, Postal Control Report, March 1918. 63. Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, 53–55; Michael S. Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 10, 183. 64. JMO, BICs #7, 9, 21, 24. 65. Lieutenant Mourroux, Le Tirailleurs Indochinois, 18–20. 66. NF 227, Postal Control Report, November 1917. 67. Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 1055–60; Ministère de Défense (France), “Maurice Sarrail, 1856–1929,” Chemins de Mémoire, accessed December 10, 2018, http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/ maurice-sarrail. In old texts, Thessaloniki was Salonique in French and Salonika in English. In this text, I use Thessaloniki as it appears on a 1994 map published by the Institut Géographique National. Hereafter, the spelling of cities in the Balkan is based on that map. 68. SHAT 16N3057, “Unités Indochinois en Orient—Au sujet de l’empoi des bataillons de tirailleurs Malgaches et Indochinois,” March 15, 1916; “Note du GQG sur les transports des troupes Serbes,” April 17, 1916; Exposition Colonial International de Paris, Les Armées Françaises d’Outre Mer, 93–95; JMO, BIC #10. 69. JMO, BIC #2; Bouhier, “Les Troupes Colonials,” 76. 70. Ministère de Défense (France), “Louis Franchet d’Esperey, 1856–1942,” Chemins de Mémoire, accessed December 10, 2018, http://www. cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/louis-franchet-desperey. 71.  SHAT 20 N 835, “Historique sommaire des opérations auxquelles a pris par les bataillons Indochinois du Septembre 25 au Octobre 4, 1918,” par le Chef de bataillon Paponnet, Commandant du 2e bataillon

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Indochinois; Exposition Coloniale International de Paris, Les Armées Françaises d’Outre Mer, 93–95. 72. JMO, BICs 3, 6, 4, 9, 11, 16, 17, 21 and 24. 73. Winston Churchill, The Great War, Vol. 3 (London: G. Newnes, 1933– 1934), 1123; Gary Mead, The Doughboys: America and the First World War (New York: Overlook Press, 2000), 139. 74. Brian F. Newmann, ed., The U.S. Army in the World War I Era: The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War I (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2017), 44. 75. NF 227, Postal Control Reports, January–June 1918. 76. Churchill, The Great War, Vol. 3, 1137–41. 77. NF 227, Postal Control Report, March 1918. 78. Churchill, The Great War, Vol. 3, 1154–58; Newmann, The U.S. Army in the World War I Era, 48. 79. 3 SLOTFOM 93, Postal Control Report, July 1918. 80.  NF 227, Postal Control Reports, January–June 1918; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 1076. 81. Mead, The Doughboys, 136. 82. Mead, The Doughboys, 125, 152, 228–34; Newmann, The U.S. Army in the World War I Era, 48. 83. Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne, 120–22; Newmann, The U.S. Army in the World War I Era, 58. 84. Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne, 120. 85.  1 SLOTFOM 8, Control Agent Josselme, July 1919; NF 246, 3 SLOTFOM 93, Postal Control Reports, May 1918. 86. 3 SLOTFOM 93, Postal Control Report, July 1918. 87. 3 SLOTFOM 93, Postal Control Report, July 1918. 88.  NF 246, Nguyễn Thu in Postal Control Report, May 1918; 3 SLOTFOM 93, Trần văn Phước, Postal Control Report, July 1918; 1 SLOTFOM 8, Luyện in Postal Control Report, May 1919. 89.  “Amicale Tonkinoise des Anciens Combattants,” La Ville, April 22, 1924. 90. Churchill, The Great War, Vol. 3, 1158; Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne, 154; quote from Christian Bach, The Fourth Division: Its Services and Achievements in the Great War; n.p., 1920. 91. Mead, The Doughboys, 189. 92. NF 227, Postal Control Reports, June 1918. 93. 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Reports, May and September 1918; 3 SLOTFORM 93, Postal Control Reports, July 1918; NF 227, Postal Control Reports, June and September 1918. 94. NF 227, Postal Control Reports, September 1918.

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95. Sarraut, La Mise en Valeur, 44; 10 SLOTFOM, Report 1 July 1919; 11 SLOTFOM 1–2, Letter from the Minister of War to the Minister of the Colonies, March 24, 1922. 96. 1 SLOTFOM 8, NF 227, 3 SLOTFOM 93, Postal Control Reports from May to September 1918. 97. “Les Annamites au feu,” La Cochinchine Libérale, April 17, 1917. 98. Lieutenant Mourroux, Le Tirailleurs Indochinois, 20–38. 99. “Au Tour de la Guerre,” Chronique d’Haiphong, February 18, 1917. 100. NF 226, Note from the Director General of the Colonial Troops on the subject of repatriation of Indochinese and Madagascan soldiers and workers, December 19, 1918. 101. 1 SLOTFOM 6, Note from the Director General of Colonial Troops to the President of the Committee to Assist Indochinese workers, December 2, 1918; NF 226, Note from General Aube to the Minister of War, December 18, 1918; SHAT 16N2767, Note from General Mardacq to Marshall Foch, December 31, 1918; 10 SLOTFOM 5, Note from Minister of the Colonies to the President of the Council of War, January 4, 1919. 102. Sarraut, La Mise en Valeur, 44; 10 SLOTFOM 4–5, Note from the Ministry of War to the Ministry of the Colonies, 4 March, 22 March, and 1 July 1919; Les Armées Françaises d’Outre Mer, 72–97. 103.  Chronique d’Haiphong, October 11, 1919. 104. 10 SLOTFOM 6, Note in file, 1918; NF 226, “Inter-ministerial memo on the demobilization of colonial soldiers and workers, other than Tunisians and Algerians, who petitioned to remain in France,” signed the Minister of the Colonies H. Simon and the President of War Council, George Clemenceau, April 4, 1919; “Addendum to the Interministerial memo of 4 April 1919” and “Eratum to the Inter-ministerial memo of April 4, 1919” by the Bureau of Military Services, December 7, 1919. 105. Le Van Ho, Des Vietnamiens en France, 205. 106. Alexander Barton Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, Harvard Monograph 140 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 155; Murray, The Development of Capitalism, 393. Both Woodside and Murray mentioned the reform in village political structure but did not explain why. 107. Jean Marquet, Lettres des Annamites, 67–79. 108.  3 SLOTFOM 118, Decree on August 28, 1926 to put into law a Decree approved on May 20, 1926, signed by French President Gaston Doumergue. 109. Duong van Giao, “L’Indochine Pendant la Guerre 1914–1918,” (Thèse du Doctorat, Université de Paris, 1925), 121–23, 133–44.

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110.  RST 7372, Letter from an administrator of the French civil service ­system to the Resident Superior of Tonkin, July 3, 1922. 111. Gourou, The Peasants in the Tonkin Delta, 242–43. 112. NF 226, A memo to H. Simon, 1919. 113. 12 SLOTFOM 2, Postal Control Report by Josselme, February 5, 1925. The official rate of exchange on their discharge document was 3 francs/ piaster but in Indochina that rate fluctuated between 10 and 11 francs/ piaster. 114. JOIF, Administrative order by the Secretary General of the Indochinese government on August 20, 1920. 115. 12 SLOTFOM 2, Report by Josselme on February 5, 1925; 9 PA 13, “Les allocations militaires,” in L’Avenir du Tonkin (14 June and 8, 9 July 1918). 116. Charles Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indo-China (1944), trans. Isabel A. Ward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 143; François Marsal, “French Finance and the French Franc,” Foreign Affairs 5, no. 2 (January 1927), 189–204; Bauduin de Belleval, “La Piastre Indochinoise,” La Revue du Pacifique (January 1923), 426– 44; and Merriman, Modern Europe, 1171–72. 117. 5 SLOTFOM 36, Trần Xuân Mai, “La Voie d’Annamite,” in La Paria, nos. 18–19 (September–October, 1919). 118. RST 73172, Letter to the Resident Superior of Tonkin, July 3, 1922; “La Naturalization des Annamites,” Chronique d’Haiphong, November 8, 1919; 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control reports, January 1919; Eckert, “Les Militaires Indochinois,” 436–41. 119. 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report, January and June 1919. 120.  RST 21446, letter from the Resident Superior of Tonkin to the Governor General of Indochina, 1921; GGI 6074, “De la liquidation des primes de démobilisation aux réformés indigènes revenant de France,” June 9, 1921. 121. 1 SLOTFOM 2, Memo from the office of the President of the War Council to the Commander of Marseille Headquarter, the regional commanders of Indochinese Worker, 1918. 122.  GGI 6074, Report on the political situation in Thanh Hoá, 3rd tri-semester1921. 123. Dương văn Giao, L’Indochine Pendant la Guerre, 133–44; RST 7312, the remark was from Tuần Phủ of Kiên An (Tonkin), July 12, 1922. 124. Ibid.; 9 PA 13, Albert Chavalier, “Un état d’espirit nouveau: grave barrage, les ONS contre tirailleurs,” L’Opinion, November 8, 1918; “Barrage sanglant,” Le Courrier Saigonnais, November 8, 1918; “Tirailleurs retour du front,” Chronique d’Haiphong, August 2, 8, 1919.

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125. Khái Hưng, Gia Đình in Văn Xuôi Lãng Mạn Việt Nam, 1930–1954; reprint (Hà Nội: n.d.), 198. 126. M. Laumonier, “Retour de France,” L’Impartial, April 27, 1919. 127. Goscha, Vietnam: A New History, 140–41; Huynh Kim Khánh, Vietnamese Communism 1925–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 143–47, 152. 128.  1 SLOTFOM 8, Report by Agent Josselme, Postal Control Report, July 1919; 3 LOTFOM 5, Report by the Office of General Control Indochinese Troops to the Security Police [Service Renseignement Politique], December 1, 1920. 129. Huỳnh Kim Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, 143–47, 152; NF 2635, 2636, 2639, Reports on the political situation in Indochina, 1931. 130. 3 SLOTFOM 22, Report from the Resident Superior of Tonkin on the “Mentality of World War I Veterans,” March 17 and April 12, 1930; NH 2639, Report from the Superior of Annam to the Governor General of Indochina on the political situation in Annam, July 29, 1931. 131. 1 SLOTFOM 8, Postal Control Report by Josselme, July 1919. 132. Dương văn Giao, “L’Indochine Pendant la Guerre,” 40. 133. 1 SLOTFORM 8, Postal Control Report, September 1923. 134. NF 227, Note on “Strike” in file. 135. Trần Văn Giàu, Giai Cấp Công Nhân, Sự Hình Thành và Sự Phát Triển của Nó từ Giai Cấp Tự Mình đến Giai Cấp Cho Mình, 2nd Edition (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Sự Thật, 1957), 144. 136. Eckert, “Les Militaires indochinois,” 165–72; 10 SLOTFOM 8 & 9, Letters from the Under Secretary of State to the Minister of Public Works and the Controller General of Indochinese Workers, April 25 and May 9, 1922; 6 SLOTFOM 8, Letters from the SR (Information Collection Services or Intelligence Services) agent Jolin, regarding the subject of Indochinese soldiers who entered France illegally, May 27, 1922; 6 SLOTFORM 3, Memo from the Ministry of Public Works to the Ministry of the Colonies concerning unemployed Indochinese sailors in Marseille, July 9, 1928. 137. See Scott McConnell, Leftward Journey: The Education of Vietnamese Students in France, 1919–1939 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989). 138. 10 SLOTFOM 6, 3 SLOTFOM 93 & 10 SLOTFOM 4, Note in file & Notes from Pierre Guesde to the Minister of the Colonies, 1919 and to the Director of Military Services, December 1919; Cablegram from the Governor General of Indochina to the Minister of Public Education, October 30, 1918.

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139. 3 SLOTFOM 2, 3 & 5, Report from the SR agents to the Governor General of Indochina and the Prefect of Police in Paris in 1923, 1925, and 1927. 140. Pierre Brocheux, Ho Chi Minh: A Biography, trans. Claire Duiker (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17–18; Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 31.

Bibliography Archival Sources Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Marseille (ACCM). Archives Départementales des Bouches du Rhône (ADBR). Archives Nationale d’Outre Mer (ANOM). Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer (CAOM). Nouveau Fond (NF). Papiers d’ Albert Sarraut. Résident Supérieur du Tonkin in Cục Lưu Trữ Quốc Gia I, Hà Nội (RST). Service de Liaison avec les Originaires des Territoires de la France d’Outre Mer (SLOTFOM). Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre at Chateau de Vincennes in Paris (SHAT).

Other Sources Bach, Christian. The Fourth Division: Its Services and Achievements in the Great War, 1920. Becker, Jean-Jacques. The Great War and the French People. Dover, NH: Berg, 1985. Bouhier, Emmanuel. “Les Troupes Coloniales d’Indochine en 1914–1918.” In Les Troupes coloniales dans la Grande Guerre, edited by Claude Carlier and Guy Pedroncini, 69–81. Paris: Economica, 1997. Braudel, F., and E. Labrousse, eds. Histoire économique et sociale de la France, 1880–1950, Vol. 4. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979–1980. Brocheux, Pierre, ed. Histoire de l’Asie du Sud-Est: Révoltes, Réformes, Révolution. Lille, France: Presse Universitaire de Lille, 1981. Brocheux, Pierre. Ho Chi Minh: A Biography. Translated by Claire Duiker. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Brocheux, Pierre, and Daniel Hémery. Indochine: La Colonisation Ambiguë, 1858–1954. Paris: Édition La Découverte, 1995. Buttinger, Joseph. Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, Vol. 1. London: Pall Mall Press, 1967.

146  K. VU-HILL Can, François Bertrand with George Durrwell, Carnet de route d’un petite massouin cochinchinois: impressions et souvenirs de la Grand Guerre. Saigon: Imprimerie Albert Portail, 1916. Chavalier, Albert. “Un état d’espirit nouveau: grave barrage, les ONS contre tirailleurs.” L’Opinion (November 8, 1918). Churchill, Winston. The Great War, 3 Vols. London: G. Newnes, 1933–1934. Cross, Gary. Immigrant Workers in Industrial France. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1983. De Belleval, Bauduin. “La Piastre Indochinoise.” La Revue du Pacifique (January 1923): 426–44. De Bevoise, Ken. Agents of Apocalypse: Epidemic Disease in the Colonial Philippines. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Duong van Giao. “L’Indochine Pendant la Guerre 1914–1918.” Thèse du Doctorat, Université de Paris, 1925. Dupâquier, Jacques. Histoire de la population française de 1914 à nos jours, Vol. 4. Paris: Presse Universitaire de France, 1988. Eckert, Henri. “Les Militaires Indochinois au Service de la France, 1859–1939.” Thèse pour l’obtention du grade de Docteur de l’Université Paris IV. Paris: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1998. Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris. Les Troupes Coloniales pendant la Guerre 1914–1918. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1931. Goscha, Christopher. Vietnam: A New History. New York: Basic Books, 2016. Gourou, Pierre . The Peasants of the Tonkin Delta: A Study of Human Geography. Translated by Richard Miller. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files, Inc., 1953. Hardach, Gerd. The First World War, 1914–1918. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977. Huynh Kim Khanh. Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Journals de Marche et d’Operation du Bataillon Tirailleurs Indochinois (JMO). Khái Hưng, Gia Đình in Văn Xuôi Lãng Mạn Việt Nam, 1930–1954; reprint, Hà Nội, n.d. Laumonier, M. “Retour de France.” L’Impartial (April 27, 1919). Le Van Ho, Mireille. Des Vietnamiens Dans la Grande Guerre, 50 000 Recrues dans les usines Françaises. Paris: Vendémiaire Éditions, 2014. Magraw, Roger. A History of the French Working Class, 2 Vols. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992. Marquet, Jean. Lettres D’ Annamites: Lettres de Guerre, Lettres de Paix. Hanoi: Édition du Fleuve Rouge, 1929. Marr, David G. Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971.

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Marsal, François. “French Finance and the French Franc.” Foreign Affairs 5, no. 2 (January 1927): 189–204. May, Glenn Anthony. Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991. McConnell, Scott. Leftward Journey: The Education of Vietnamese Students in France, 1919–1939. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989. Mead, Gary. The Doughboys: America and the First World War. New York: Overlook Press, 2000. Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. Ministère de Défense (France). “Louis Franchet d’Esperey, 1856–1942.” Chemins de Mémoire. Accessed December 10, 2018. http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/louis-franchet-desperey. Ministère de Défense (France). “Maurice Sarrail, 1856–1929.” Chemins de Mémoire. Accessed December 10, 2018. http://www.cheminsdememoire. gouv.fr/en/maurice-sarrail. Mitchell, B. R. International Historical Statistics: Europe, 1750–1988. New York: Stockton Press, 1992. Mourroux, [No First Name]. Le Tirailleurs Indochinois – Le 7 e Bataillon Indochinois au front en 1917. Hanoi: Impimerie d’Extrême – Orient, 1919. Murray, Martin J. The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina, 1870– 1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980. Neiberg, Michael S. The Second Battle of the Marne. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008. Newmann, Brian F., ed. The U.S. Army in the World War I Era: The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War I. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2017. Ngo Vinh Long. Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants Under the French. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973. Nguyễn Ái Quốc, La Procès de la Colonisation Française. Hanoi: Édition en Langues Étrangère, 1962. Phan Huy Chu. “Binh Che Chi.” In Lich Trieu Hien Chuong Loai Chi, Vol. 3. Translated by Phan Huy Giu, Trinh Dinh Ru, and Cao Huy Giu, 23–29. Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1992. Popkin, Samuel L. The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1979. Quinn-Judge, Sophie. Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Robequain, Charles. The Economic Development of French Indo-China. Translated by Isabel A. Ward. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Sarraut, Albert. La Mise en valeur des colonies françaises. Paris: Payot, 1923.

148  K. VU-HILL Scott, James. The Moral Economy of the Peasants: Rebellions and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1976. Trần Văn Giàu. Giai Cấp Công Nhân, Sự Hình Thành và Sự Phát Triển của Nó từ Giai Cấp Tự Mình đến Giai Cấp Cho Mình, 2nd ed. Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Sự Thật, 1957. Trần Xuân Mai. “La Voie d’Annamite.” La Paria, nos. 18–19 (September– October 1919). Vu-Hill, Kimloan. Coolies into Rebels: Impact of World War I on French Indochina. Paris: Les Indes Savante, 2011. Woodside, Alexander Barton. Vietnam and the Chinese Model. Harvard Monograph 140. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

CHAPTER 6

Expeditionary Forces in the Shatterzone: German, British and French Soldiers on the Macedonian Front, 1915–1918 Justin Fantauzzo and Robert L. Nelson

After enduring a German chemical gas attack, most likely that which saw fifteen thousand asphyxiating shells fired at the British trenches between the Doiran and Vardar over a three-day period in March 1917, Sapper John Steeksma wrote about Salonika from his hospital bed for the Royal Engineer’s Post Section.1 “CITY that was fair look on,” he mused, From the troopship in the bay; Wretched hole you’re glad to flee from When you’ve smelled it for a day: Briton, Serb and Turk and Frenchman, Wandering Jew and furtive Greek, Wretched nondescript and German – They are all in Salonique.2 J. Fantauzzo (*)  Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada R. L. Nelson  Department of History, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_6

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The rest of Steeksma’s poem dealt with homesickness, Salonika’s poor roads, crowds of “hucksters” all looking to pull one over on British soldiers, and the desire of every “Tommy” to make it back home. Although Steeksma was born and raised in East Yorkshire, his characterization of Salonika and, by extension, Greek Macedonia, as a relentless disappointment, was shared by most soldiers of the British Army’s expeditionary force in Macedonia, the British Salonika Force (BSF). Yet British and Dominion soldiers in the BSF were not alone. Their allies, Italian and Russian troops, and the French soldiers in the Armée d’Orient (Army of the Orient), as well as their foes across the line, the Germans, all also found themselves far from home and performing a strange military mission in an alien environment. Each force was unclear about its military goals, and the soldiers of each army felt that they were merely a part of a sideshow, away from the real battleground, the Western Front.3 In fact, these men from Western and Northern Europe felt themselves to be in a pseudo-colonial space; in the Eurasian borderlands, the “primitive,” seemingly eternally at war “shatterzone” of the Balkans, where the role of these soldiers was as much to occupy territory and “civilize” the locals as it was to defeat the enemy.4 Alongside the seminal work of Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius on the Eastern Front, historians are now actively engaging with the experience of German troops on exotic fronts, from German expeditionary force soldiers in the Middle East among the Ottomans to the prolonged campaign in colonial East Africa.5 The name of the French expeditionary force, the Army of the Orient/the Army of the East, conjures up a theme that will run through virtually all of the eyewitness accounts mentioned in this paper, the specter of orientalism. The Army of the East could have been rendered as the much more neutral “Armée de l’Est,”6 but of course the French high command of 1915 was calling back to Napoleon in Egypt and the very “idea” of the Orient constructed at that time, so famously described by Edward Said. As will be seen throughout, an understanding of the East as a historical and cultural construction already firmly in the minds of the soldiers before their arrival, and then the confirmation of its “otherness” once encountered, is an inescapable quality shared across the German, British, and French experience. Further, the experience of all three nations’ soldiers maps onto Liulevicius’ concept of a “mindscape of the East.” In his telling, German soldiers arrived in Eastern Europe with a vague and oriental understanding of primitive and backwards Slavs and Jews, and then once there,

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daily reaffirmed their beliefs. These were a people in need of “German Work” and culture, and only through such blood and soil transformation would they rise to the level of the West. In Macedonia, Germans, British, French, and even Slavic Russians arrived with similar civilizational lenses and motives, a mindscape of the blurry, southeastern edge of Europe. It is for this reason that our study does not include any memoirs of Serbs, Bulgarians or Turks. For them, this was less of an expedition than for their Western and Eastern European comrades and enemies and more an incursion into a neighboring land; a land, moreover, that all three had once possessed or laid historical claim to. This paper compares and contrasts German, British, and French— including one Italian volunteer and one Russian volunteer—soldiers on the north and south slopes of the front line that ran along the mountain tops and cut across the river valleys that today largely encompasses the Greek-Macedonian border, some eighty kilometers north of the great city that gives this forgotten theater its other name, Salonika (modern-day Thessaloniki). We will be using both contemporary sources, such as soldier newspapers, diaries, and wartime correspondence, as well as postwar memoirs published by veterans of the Macedonian Front.7 After comparing and contrasting German, British, and French perspectives on themes such as geography and space, Macedonia as an intercultural meeting ground, multiculturalism and race, martial races, and Macedonia as culturally backwards, we will conclude with some general questions for future research.

Geography and Space German soldiers stationed on the Macedonian Front found themselves performing a peculiar military mission in what was, to their eyes, a strange land at the edge of Europe. First, their fundamental identity as warriors was seriously decentered, for, on the one hand, they were far from the “real” theater of action, the Western Front, and, on the other hand, they were not supposed to win. Initially, when German and Bulgarian troops stopped some eighty kilometers north of Salonika, it was for two reasons. First, they had outstripped their logistical capabilities and were running low on supplies, lacked reinforcements, and had no artillery. Second, they knew that bearing down on the second largest Greek city would surely bring the still neutral Greek Army firmly in on the side of the already numerous Allied troops holed up in

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Salonika; Allied soldiers had started pouring into Macedonia in 1915 as they attempted to support the retreating Serbian Army. The apparent brilliance of not attacking only grew in 1916 as Falkenhayn removed German troops for the assault on Verdun. First of all, the German High Command (Oberste Heeresleitung or OHL) was very pleased that more than half a million Allied troops were cooped up in the “birdcage” of Salonika, as British troops were wont to call it. Pushing British and/or French soldiers back onto their ships would only result in their reappearance on that “real,” Western Front, with the French specifically showing up at Verdun.8 Even more importantly, were the Allies in Macedonia to be defeated, Bulgaria would very likely have withdrawn from the war, happy with their gains. Thus, with only about 90,000 German troops bolstering a half million Bulgarian soldiers, this was a very good deal for the OHL, and so Germans stationed in Southeastern Europe during the war were not supposed to defeat their enemy.9 Further, these few Germans called all the shots, and treated their Bulgarian allies in a manner closer to Indian regiments in the British Army than they did their Austrian allies (for whom they also lacked respect, it must be noted). In fact, Heeresgruppe Scholtz, which was 90% Bulgarian, was staffed completely by German officers. This strange, pseudo-colonial military alliance, and military strategy, was only exacerbated by the locale: Were these Germans even fighting in Europe? Dr. Erich Schede, after receiving a telegram ordering him to mobilize and leave Germany for Valandovo, remembered thinking to himself, “Macedonia, what is that? Where was Valandovo?”10 Adolf von Ernsthausen explained the German soldier’s ignorance by pointing to his already limited knowledge of European geography. The further away German soldiers marched from German borders, Ernsthausen suggested, the less they knew about the local peoples and geography. Not only were German soldiers unfamiliar with the geography of Southeastern Europe, but also the information they did have, according to Lieutenant Hausmann of Armeeoberkommando 11, was out of date and often incorrect.11 Hausmann’s complaint in many ways resembles those of expeditionary force soldiers throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: expeditionary force soldiers often have little to prepare them for the culture shock of occupying a foreign land. Likewise, Macedonia’s uncertain geography was on the minds of many men attached to the BSF and the Armée d’Orient. George Renwick, the Daily Chronicle’s special correspondent in Greek

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Macedonia, wrote plainly of the educational effect that the BSF had on working-class soldiers. “WAR makes us familiar with geography,” he noted, for the First World War had taken British and Dominion soldiers to “many strange parts of the world.” None were stranger and more perplexing than Macedonia.12 Similarly, Armand B., a stretcher-bearer in the Armée d’Orient, characterized French soldiers as having an “ardent desire to penetrate this mysterious and unknown Orient.”13 In Stanley Casson’s memoir of his service with the East Lancashire Regiment, he was certain that the BSF’s medical services had been so ill-prepared to deal with diseases such as malaria because few Britons, in fact, had any idea where Salonika was located. I imagine that they had forgotten to do this, and that the War Office in London, on looking for Salonika on the map, found that it was in Europe. I can imagine the conversation: ‘I say, Ernest, where is this place Salonika where they are sending troops?’ ‘Haven’t the foggiest, old fellow: let’s get a map: you never know: it may be in the tropics or something, and the troops may need hats and mosquito nets and all that sort of troublesome gear: I hope not, because then I shall have such a lot of work to do.’ ‘Here it is, Ernest: it’s all right, you needn’t worry. It’s in Europe, a few inches south of Vienna.’ ‘Thank heavens, Henry, then I shan’t have to get any of that damned tropical equipment for them or have to write any more memos. If it’s in Europe, then of course it can’t be tropical. Only India is in the tropics.’14

Casson’s playful criticism of British war-planners and their failures to assess the region’s health risks hinted at a very real question of geography, and whether Salonika was within or outside the borders of Europe.

Macedonia as an Intercultural Meeting Ground Of course, the other “near as far” theater of operations for the Germans was the Eastern Front, with its pseudo-colonial, Eurasian space of not-quite-European natives.15 Two major differences, however, make the Macedonian story even more “othered” than the Belarusian steppe. First, German soldiers on the Eastern Front, while similarly isolated from Germany, were more than a million strong. Second, Slavs were still Christians (although Muslims populated parts of the Caucasus,

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and Tatar mosques sometimes appeared on the horizon even in eastern Poland). Further, the main non-Christian population in Eastern Europe, Ashkenazi Jews, were well represented in Germany. While shtetl Jews surely appeared foreign, there was a frame of reference for their belief system.16 In Southeastern Europe, German soldiers were a small fighting force massively outnumbered by their Bulgarian allies, and they were in a part of Europe which had been for centuries ruled by the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Much of the population, including Turks and a good number of Bulgarians, were Muslims, and the region’s skyline was dotted with minarets rising from elegant, Turkish-inspired mosques on the ground. Salonika, in particular, only became Greek during the First Balkan War of 1912 to 1913, and was officially annexed after the Second Balkan War as part of the Treaty of Bucharest in August 1913. As much as half of the city’s population was Sephardic Jewish, while a sizeable portion of the city’s laborers were drawn from across the Mediterranean world, but especially from Italy and France. According to the 1913 census, only about one-third of the city was identified as Greek.17 Thus, both Greek Macedonia and Salonika were very much in the early stages of the Greek national project, and neither had been totally Hellenized by the time of the First World War. The German correlate to the British experience in multicultural Macedonia and Salonika, which will be discussed below, was the Serbian city of Skopje. Skopje, like Salonika, had changed hands after the Balkan Wars, moving from the Ottoman Empire to Serbia. The city’s population, however, was far from homogeneous, and was made up of Orthodox Christian Serbs, Muslim Albanians, Turks, and Bosniaks. Skopje’s cosmopolitanism made an immediate impression on one German soldier, who was taken aback by the city’s multiethnic population of “Arnauts, real Turks, Christian and Muslim Bulgarians, Aromanians, Greeks, Gypsies.” The town of Veles, the same soldier guessed, was just as mixed, with “eight parts Slav; three parts Greeks, Turks, Albanians and others.”18 For many Germans Skopje was the first point of entry to the Macedonian region, and the soldiers immediately considered themselves to be in a Turkish city, for there was only one orthodox church in a sea of mosques and minarets. In addition to this otherworldliness, there was the phenomenon of ubiquitous damage, in this case from the battles of 1912 and 1913. For men who already believed that they were walking down a cultural gradient the further they moved away from Germany, war damage merely confirmed the idea of

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the region as backward, uncivilized, and, ultimately, un-European (much like German soldiers on their advance into “scorched earth” Russia, as described by Liulevicius). In a telling moment, one soldier remarked that while approaching Veles, it had the romantic appearance of the exotic Orient. But upon arrival, he described what was “nothing other than one of the many miserable and dirty Turkish hamlets on the Vardar River.”19 The façades of homes were riddled with bullet holes, while broken minarets and collapsing buildings could be seen throughout the rest of town.20 The failure to rebuild after the Balkan Wars was clear evidence that the region was culturally and civilizationally inferior.21 Echoing this experience of a patina of exoticism confounded by dirty reality was Monastir. Like Salonika and Skopje, Monastir, too, was “relocated” after the Balkan Wars, moving from the Ottoman Empire to Serbia. One German soldier wrote that the city of Monastir had lots of food to offer the men, but their appetite was often spoiled upon seeing it prepared. The locals would lick their dirty fingers and continue cooking, the soldier wrote in astonishment, raising serious questions about the locals’ knowledge of sanitation and hygiene.22 Signs within the city were written using both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, and French, Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek were all spoken. While British soldiers, as we will see, found much of interest in Salonika’s Jewish population, German soldiers found the Turkish influence on Macedonia striking, and, whether positively or negatively, took an interest in Islam.23 Some men visited the Ishak Çelebi Mosque and spoke to the hodžas and imams about “Mohammed and Mecca, about the Hagia Sofia and the beauty of the minaret.”24 However, keeping in line with the more general view the Germans had of these cities, another wrote of Monastir’s dirty streets which they had to pass through daily. Other cities in the region had the same effect on German soldiers. Like Veles, Prilep, in the eyes of August Peters of Armeeoberkommando 11, looked to have a good appearance as he moved toward it and it made a “beautiful, true Oriental impression.” But once again Peters and other German soldiers were disappointed by what they found: “the bad streets, the small crooked houses … everything covered with filth — an eloquent testimony of the cultural stage of this country!”25 Peters’ negative assessment of Prilep, based mostly on poor civil infrastructure, shoddy-looking architecture, and a lack of public sanitation, were issues that, as we will see, also concerned British soldiers. To be fair, not every town and village in Macedonia disgusted the Germans. Ohrid was described as “the most

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beautiful city of the Balkan peninsula,” although very few Germans were stationed there to give their views on it.26 Further, it should be pointed out that for the Germans, the cultural gradient sloped westwards, away from Germany as well, just not as steeply. Throughout the First World War Germans described dirty, unhygienic French villages, and French women who looked good with a “patina” of civilization (makeup) but horrific straight out of bed in the morning.27 While they tend not to appear in memoirs, the German soldier newspapers in Southeastern Europe made some reference to Roma. The Kriegszeitung der Heeresgruppe Scholtz contained the descriptive piece “Balkan Gypsies.” The author explained that Gypsies came out of a “dark” past, were widely dispersed throughout Europe, and were both nomadic and sedentary. While the settled members were positively depicted as now fully assimilated inhabitants in various European countries, the disreputable nomads were described as a people who changed their domiciles as easily and quickly as they did religions. They were “half naked,” dirty and indolent, yet happy with their fate. Interestingly, however, the author seemed to praise the aspect of their “Oriental” philosophy that did not force them to constantly seek “money and fame.”28 Like the disappointment felt by German soldiers occupying Monastir, Skopje, and Veles, British and French soldiers were also left feeling deceived and disillusioned by Salonika, as Sapper Steeksma showed in our introduction.29 After praising the view of the city from the harbor, Lieutenant A. H. Muggeridge of the Leicestershire Regiment marched with his regiment through the city. Salonika’s infrastructure, cleanliness, and crowdedness failed to impress. The “previous picturesqueness we had seen from the ship,” he wrote in his diary: became a shattered illusion as we proceeded through the city. Squalor, dirty and unhealthy smells seemed to everywhere pervade. A polyglot populace. Wizened people in blanket-cloth garments. Many men were wearing long-seated, tight-at-shin nether garments. This attire was subsequently labelled ‘dysentery trousers’ by our troops.30

The arrival of so many different peoples in Macedonia, and Salonika’s resulting cosmopolitanism, were wondrous curiosities. Étienne Burnet of the Armée d’Orient described the “colourful crowd” on Salonika’s wharf, made up of “Kaftans, turbans, Western suites of the latest cut, long black Levites, scarlet fezzes like poppies, like the flower, women in

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tchartchaf, accentuated profiles straight out of the Bible, white-bearded prophets, Castilian Jews in velvet boleros and silk sashes.”31 In The Orient Weekly, a small soldier-produced newspaper printed in Salonika, wartime Greek Macedonia was unquestionably “the most cosmopolitan country in or out of the war zone.” To the Weekly’s anonymous author, one anecdote, in particular, best represented the region’s medley of nationalities. A Russian soldier was knocked down by an Italian lorry. He was picked up by a French Ambulance, and take to a British Hospital on Greek territory for the benefit of the Serbs. The doctor who attended him was a Canadian, the Sister of the ward Scotch, the orderly Irish, and the means of communication between doctor and patient German. On the staff of the Hospital was a Roumanian doctor, and at the gate an Annamite [Vietnamese] camp.

The author admitted that the story sounded too good to be true, but maintained that the multicultural street scene was a “statement of actual fact.”32 Similarly, Major Arthur Hamilton Gibbs, who served with the Royal Field Artillery, wrote of Salonika as “a modern Babel. The cobbles of the Rue Venizelos,” he detailed in his postwar memoir, “rang with every tongue in the world — Turkish, Russian, Yiddish, Serbian, Spanish, Levantine, Arabic, English, French, Italian, Greek and even German.” He recalled Salonika’s markets thusly: Little tin swords clattered everywhere and the place was a riot of colour, the Jew women with green pearl-sewn headdresses, the Greek peasants in their floppy-seated trousers elbowing numerous Russian soldiers in loose blouses and jack boots who in turn elbowed small-waisted Greek highlanders in kilts with puffballs on their curly-toed shoes. There were black-robed priests with long beards and high hats, young men in red fezzes, civilians in bowlers, old hags who gobbled like turkeys and snatched cigarette ends, all mixed up in a kaleidoscope jumble with officers of every country and exuding a smell of garlic, fried fish, decaying vegetable matter, and those aromatic eastern dishes which fall into no known category of perfume.33

For others, Macedonia was an ethnographer’s dream. Salonika’s cosmopolitanism, its “sharp contrasts and curious contradictions,” led Renwick to call it “an extraordinary museum, not only of languages, but of races and religions.” Tens of different peoples, from Vlaks to Dönmehs

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(Jewish converts to Islam) and from Albanians to Bulgarians, crowded the city’s narrow, winding streets. Salonika, though, was more than just a hodgepodge of Balkan peoples. Renwick reminded the reader that on some street corner, nearly two thousand years prior, Salonika was where St. Paul preached Christianity. Originally “one of the gateways” by which St. Paul’s new religion entered Europe, Renwick saw twentieth-century Salonika as a laboratory in which the world’s great religious movements seemed to get along. “We find a town,” he wrote, “with three Sundays — Orthodox, Mohammedan and Jewish. The muezzin’s cry falls not only on the ears of the faithful, but also on those of the heathen Albanian, the religion-less Bulgar and the atheist freemason of all the city’s races.”34 French soldiers were also disillusioned with Salonika and struck by the city’s multiculturalism, a fact that not all Frenchmen considered ­positive. Alsatian Jean Saison, an infantryman in the Armeé d’Orient, recalled in his postwar memoir, “they [the soldiers] had had disillusions [about the Orient]. How many times did I hear the words: ‘What a country! That is what they call the beauties of the Orient!?’” According to Saison, French soldiers blamed their perception on the “absence of trees: their homeland boasts the most beautiful forests of France.”35 Saison himself, near Zeitenlik, had identified the appearance of a row of trees, running parallel with the Greek barracks, as a “rare spectacle” that “betray[ed] the presence of the Occident.”36 For Medical Officer Armand Gélibert, a physician from Ain in the Armée d’Orient, arriving in Salonika brought forth this description and critique: “a little black smoke, a foul stench that emerges from the smelly waters of the harbour, in which the sewers dump. King Constantine certainly does not know the first thing about modern hygiene!”37 Another French soldier, writing in February 1917, described pulling into Salonika’s harbor. Salonika’s dockhands, “giving guttural cries, climbing like chimpanzees,” moored the boat, and French soldiers were “besieged by a crowd of people with tanned figures, black eyes, and filthy hands: Turks, Greeks, Jews cry, hurl, shout in deafening, strange jargon.”38

Martial Races British, French, and German soldiers in Macedonia not only found themselves in a seemingly foreign, oriental environment, surrounded by peoples of suspect race and ethnicity, they also found themselves allied with some of the very people they found so strange. An article in the

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June 1, 1918 issue of the Kriegszeitung der Heeresgruppe Scholtz, situated on the Macedonian frontier, explained that Bulgarian was the language most useful at the market in Skopje, and that the growing knowledge of this tongue by German soldiers was the clearest proof that Germans abroad were traditionally very good at getting to know the locals and interacting in their community. It is not surprising that Germany’s main ally in Macedonia, the Bulgarians, were represented in a very positive light.39 In the February 1916 issue of Kriegs-Zeitung von Baranowitschi, produced on the Eastern Front, a contribution appeared with the surprisingly “positive” claim that Bulgarians were “completely” Slavic. “They are without doubt purer Slavs than the Russians,” and had less Mongolian blood than other Slavic peoples, the paper claimed.40 By late 1917, it was no longer acceptable to describe Germany’s valiant allies as “Slavs,” and thus an article from August of that year stated that the Bulgarians, and the Romanians, too, were descendants of Thracians, a Finno-Aryan blood-mixture that had produced surprisingly impressive results: This injection of Finnish blood in an Aryan Race, the excessive political weight of a weapon-happy nobility over a sedentary peasant stock, created a solid and tenacious, strong and tough, sober and hardworking, proud and warlike people, that took the lead in the Balkan peninsula and placed the Byzantine Caesar in check for 500 years.41

When it came to the attempt to liken Bulgarians to Germans, however, the listing of positive traits was more common and fruitful than simple reference to the clearly confusing question of race and blood. “The Bulgarians are the Prussians of the Balkans,” trumpeted one article. This “proud soldierly people” were clearly in possession of “German honesty, German diligence, German industry and agriculture, German love of the Fatherland and steadfastness.”42 Another, slightly more complex article, claimed that unlike big, happy Serbs, Bulgarians were small and “suspicious.” They were very serious, like Prussians, and unlike Frenchmen. This Volk was “prudent” and worked hard, although perhaps on the slower side. And finally, Bulgarians were “diligent,” unlike the apathetic Turks.43 More in keeping with the politics of the time was the article “The Bulgarian Soldier.” Here, this solid and dutiful “freedom fighter” had his long and deep hatred of the Serbs duly noted. There was no mention,

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however, of the long and deep Bulgarian hatred for their current ally, the Turks. This last article, as well as a few others, emphasized the “heartfelt comradeship” between Germany and Bulgaria, claiming that, unlike the Allies, Bulgaria and the Central Powers were proper comrades, never bickered, and fought together for victory, a commentary that ignored the discord between German and Ottoman policymakers.44 As Oliver Stein has noted in his analysis of German officer memoirs of the Macedonian Front, the propaganda machine in the home front press was hard at work, creating an image of these “Prussians” before the Germans had even arrived in Skopje.45 It did not take long however before a more complicated understanding of these problematic allies began to emerge. Indeed, the pre-1915, Karl May inspired vision of oriental bandits soon returned once German soldiers fought alongside the Bulgarians. Their appearance, in uniforms that looked almost identical to that of the Russian enemy, never sat well with Germans who feared Bulgarians were untrustworthy. Further, almost all the memoirs mention Buffalo-drawn wagons as some kind of antediluvian indicator of the primitive, “nature volk” character of these allies. In language that strongly echoes that of the French regarding their Senegalese troops (both of whom faced the Germans in Macedonia), the Germans described the Bulgarians as kriegerisch, warrior-like, as opposed to the more cold-hearted, rational militärisch disposition of a true Prussian. As opposed to being able to thoughtfully consider the most effective assault, Germans claimed that Bulgarians would simply bravely charge the enemy with naked bayonet. Fascinatingly, Stein points out that the Germans were always able to reference the lower cultural level of the Bulgarians as an excuse for their incompetence, a well they could not draw upon to explain similar incompetence among their Austrian allies. Skopje, like Salonika for the Allies, was the place for Germans, Austrians and Bulgarians to meet and carouse,46 where French tended to be the lingua franca, something that resulted in rather strange drunken pronouncements from these soldiers allied against the French, such as the oft-declared “fraternité allemande-bulgare.”47 But this relationship steadily deteriorated over the course of the war, especially after the defeat of Romania in 1917 when Bulgaria could be said to have truly achieved all of its war aims. The Allied blockade of Germany slowly choked off supply lines to the extent that the Germans were doing very little to help their Bulgarian allies and morale plummeted. Further, the Bulgarians were under no illusion as to how they were perceived and

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treated by their German commanders, and for an independent, indeed, proud nation, to be exploited as if they were merely an Indian Army fighting for the Raj, was too much for most. Ludendorff never replaced the German soldiers he removed for Operation Michael in the Spring of 1918, so that when the main Allied assault finally came in September, there were only 25,000 Germans astride a completely demoralized Bulgarian force that folded like a house of cards. While German soldiers alternated between praise and scorn for their Bulgarian comrades, British soldiers were almost unanimous in their appreciation of the Serbs. Especially when compared to the Greeks and, surprisingly, French soldiers of the Armée d’Orient, the Serbs stood out as the region’s supermen. Major Desmond Allhusen, an Old Etonian serving with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, informed his mother in January 1917 that he was “becoming decidedly Greco-phobe,” especially after comparing the Serbs to the Greeks. The Serbs “look very nice + clean,” he told her, while the “Greek officers are greasy little bounders, very pleased with themselves, + the men are slavish looking tramps.”48 Like German soldiers who concerned themselves with the racial acceptability of their new allies, British soldiers, too, connected martial prowess to race, ethnicity, and geography. No one had higher praise for the Serbs than Major Arthur Cecil Alport, a South Africanborn physician with the Royal Army Medical Corps. In Alport’s postwar memoir, the capture of Kajmakçalan from the Bulgarian Army in September 1916 stood out as one of the war’s most spectacular successes, and it was all down to the Serbs’ “superb patriotism, marvelous courage and extraordinary powers of endurance.” In the Serbs’ martial prowess, Alport found far more to like than in any other soldiers, including Britain’s allies, from Mediterranean Europe. Alport struggled to understand why French officers had “professed to look down on the Serbs and considered themselves on a higher plane culturally and otherwise.” In reality, he argued, “there was no comparison; the Serb as a soldier is unsurpassed among the nations of the world.” Although Alport was willing to admit that while some soldiers equaled the Serbs, including the men of the British Empire, “he has no superiors, certainly not among the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greeks or any of the other Mediterranean races.” What most bothered Alport, in fact, was that Britain and France had not come to the rescue of the Serbs earlier in the war, before Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and Greece declared neutrality. British short-sightedness was to blame. “Had the military

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authorities of France and Britain shown as much intelligence and vision as the civilian medical people did in supporting the Serbs,” he pointed out, “the history of the War might have been very different. But they could not see further than the end of their noses, and the end of their noses was the Western Front.”49 Admiration for the Serbs was wholesale and completely out of step. For most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, if the British public and politicians had found any Balkan people worth their salt, it was first the Greeks and later the Bulgarians. Greek independence and rebellion against the Ottoman Empire had inspired the romantic writings of Byron, Keats, and Shelley, and garnered widespread support among British Liberals.50 Toward the end of the nineteenth century, anti-Ottoman Gladstonian Liberals threw their weight behind Bulgaria as the Eastern Question seemed to be nearing an answer.51 Of course, part of what fed into the dislike of Greeks was the country’s neutrality. Many soldiers harbored the suspicion that Greece was not only sympathetic to Germany but also outwardly hostile to the Entente. The Serbs, in contrast, had valiantly defended themselves against Austro-Hungarian aggression, and seemed to embody the very best of British manhood and society. “Culturally, and as a patriot and a gentleman,” Alport remarked, “he ranks with ourselves.”52 Although somewhat condescending in his appraisal, Douglas Walshe of the Army Service Corps wrote that “There was something about these nobly simple soldiers, who had,” he explained, given up everything and never talked about it, who could still smile though they had been robbed of their country and their homes and were tortured underneath by a sickly fear of what might be happening to their loved ones in Austrian-Bulgarian hands, that went straight to the British heart. Tommy, a child himself, loves children, and this was a race of brave babies—delightful, unexpected, straight, and transparent, shrewd and simple as babies are; something unique and lovable, and withal strong and “White” all through—a race that meant business and was out to kill but never said so, and grew as glum and dumb as Tommy himself when invited to describe their achievements, or else talked about their friends.

In short, Serbian soldiers were racially acceptable—“White all through,” wrote Walshe—and displayed all the characteristics of the resolute, cheery, humble, and deadly capable British “Tommy.”53

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Macedonia as Backwards, and as the Orient Bulgarian and Serbian allies aside, the backwardness of Macedonia was thought to have extended to all parts of society, and, as a whole, the rest of the Balkans was considered decades if not centuries behind Western Europe. For British, French, and German soldiers alike, Macedonia’s backwardness seemed to be a window into the past; into the world of the Bible. In the German soldier newspaper, Kriegszeitung der 9. Armee, Macedonia was depicted as a rugged, hilly landscape, where horse travel was the sole form of transportation.54 Crowds of “Arabs” dressed in “oriental garb,” moving in small caravans with dogs, sheep, goats, and lambs along the road into Salonika, reminded C. D. Halliday of the Army Pay Corps “of the tales of the Old Testament.”55 Private Henry Dudley of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry found it strange to see Greek Macedonians pushing their belongings down the road in wooden carts, “like they did in the olden times as we have read in the bible.” Compared to the British, he added, “they are a curious people here and very dirty.”56 A similar scene of wooden-wheeled carts bouncing along Salonika’s cobbled streets led W. J. Mussett of the Army Service Corps to write in his diary that the people of Greek Macedonia were “really what one reads of in the Bible.”57 For Saison, a French Alsatian, the coming of spring led him to describe Macedonia as a “beautiful country so close to the immutable Orient,” and a place where “biblical images return naturally to the spirit.”58 Albert-Georges C., also an infantryman in the Armée, noted that small, wooden boats near Salonika’s harbor reminded him “of the triremes of Rhodes.” He was also reminded that it was in Salonika that “Saint Paul suffered from the animosity of the Jews.”59 Other French soldiers were even more convinced that Macedonia and Greece were unmistakably oriental and the endpoint of Europe. The soldier newspaper, Bulletin des Armées de la République, described Salonika as “the apparition of the Orient.”60 Another soldier newspaper, La Bourguignotte, placed Salonika within “Oriental Europe.”61 Likewise, Le Clairon presented Salonika as typically oriental, and Islamic, in the poem “Crépuscule Salonicien”: Under the thin minarets, in the fading day, The tragic city climbs its difficult ordeal; A voice poses the sending of a prayer, And Islam bows down to the striking call

164  J. FANTAUZZO AND R. L. NELSON The fog of the Vardar climbs the mauve hills Like a light incense; ceasing to glitter, The sun, that freezes itself in a slab of tawny gold, Gets damaged in a sunset of purple and sapphire62

Stretcher-bearer Armand B. of the Armée d’Orient found in Macedonia a wild, oriental quality that clearly contrasted with France’s tamed and more passive nature. One side of the valley in which he and his French comrades were encamped was lit up by “sun, very lively still in the Orient.” The landscape was “abrupt, charred, without trees, without vegetation, cliffs with tones of ochre or blood.” The image, to B., had “the savagery, the harshness, the fierce beauty of exotic mountains.” In contrast, the other side of the valley recalled “the grace and amiability of our peaceful valleys of France. It softly inclines its wooded spurs towards the brook; the pine needles of its shrubs quiver in the light and rises and the depths of its foliage sparkle with reflection of gold.”63 Even Viktor T. Lebedev, a Russian volunteer in the French Army, felt that Macedonia and Salonika were at the crossroads between the orient and occident.64 In his postwar published memoir, translated into French from Russian, Lebedev described the Armée d’Orient as an “armada of new Argonauts” who had sailed “towards the Orient.”65 At Salonika, a “modern Babylon,” as he and so many others put it, crowds of Greeks and Turks lined the promenades and cafés of the city, where they “drink from their small cups the sweet Oriental nectar, and they see the whole world from their calm and wise eyes.” The whole scene reminded him of something from One Thousand and One Nights.66 While some pointed to the region’s deep past, the Biblical scenes of Salonika, and the region’s eastern, oriental feel, C. E. Vulliamy of the Welch Fusiliers thought that Britons had to look no further back than the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913 for clear proof that the region had produced a baser form of civilization and society (as some German soldiers had done in Skopje). In this case, and in a strange twist, the almost constant state of war in the Balkans, and its brutal conduct, was regarded as a sign of the region’s civilizational inferiority. After visiting the small town of Kukus and seeing firsthand evidence of the Balkan War’s destruction, Vulliamy was convinced that “No matter if the

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moving army was Greek or Turk or Bulgar,” he wrote in his postwar memoir: its behaviour was the same. Retreating Turks burnt all the Christian villages, raped all the women and shot all the men. Advancing Christians, zealous in revenge, fell upon the unprotected Mahomedans, cut them to pieces, and brutally committed upon their dead or living bodies the most unspeakable abominations. Children were thrown to the pigs; old women, after assaults, were mutilated; men were burnt alive.67

For Vulliamy, the moral and humanitarian enlightenment that had for over a century reformed Western European conduct in war had failed to penetrate the Balkans. He made no reference, however, to the use of poison gas on other fronts, by either the British or the Germans. Indeed, Vulliamy’s characterization of the Balkans was positively medieval; it was a place of endless and indiscriminate slaughter, and, as a result, a place that was not at all European. “Let there be no nonsense,” he continued, “You may discriminate in the Balkan States between varieties of barbarism and varieties of decadence, but civilization (in the western sense of the word) does not exist at all. It is absurd, it is disastrous,” Vulliamy concluded, with an eye to the end of the war and the postwar administration of the region, “to pretend that you can treat the Balkan peoples as you would treat the western European.”68 French soldiers also found Macedonia and, by extension, the Balkans, to be in a perpetual state of war; a land in which barbarity was the norm, not the aberration, and evidence of a lower form of European civilization. Medical officer Armand Gélibert in the Armée d’Orient, decried French efforts to instruct Macedonians in modern farming techniques and to encourage them to cultivate the land. “What a great joke!,” he wrote in his postwar memoir, “Why do the peasants give themselves the pain of cultivating their soil, elsewhere very fertile, in a country that is always at war, for twenty centuries.” Indeed, in Gélibert’s eyes, Macedonia was an endless warzone that made him struggle to understand its appeal either to the Allies or the Central Powers.69 As much as the region’s recent history of violence affected its perception by British, French, and German soldiers, especially when compared to ancient Greece, Macedonia and Salonika seemed a far cry from its former glory. Peters of Armeeoberkomando 11 described twentieth-century

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Macedonia as a “wasteland.”70 Twort was sure that if “the sculptors of ancient Greece were to come to life” and tour modern Salonika, especially the area around King Constantine Avenue, “and see some of the specimens of modern Greek art they would turn away as sad men.”71 Similarly, Arthur Dix, a prewar journalist for Die Weltpolitik, wrote that Salonika had been turned from a paradise into hell.72 Dix was well positioned to comment on the difficulties of Greek Macedonia’s underdevelopment and its problematically plural population. Besides journalism, Dix was also a trained economist who had written widely on the demographic and economic futures of Germany and Europe. Both economies, he later argued, were dependent on world markets, expansion into Africa, and some sort of a pan-European or Central European economic union.73 Even St. Paul, O. C. M. Haines joked to family in Swansea, “only came to Salonique once, + after that he always wrote letters here. May we do likewise.”74 French soldiers were also put off by the jarring discrepancy between their perception of Greece, based on an understanding of the region’s ancient history and its importance to French Enlightenment thinking, and the reality of modern Greece. Jean-José Frappa, a prewar editor at La Presse and Le Monde Illustré, arrived in Salonika from France to work in the Armeé d’Orient’s operations office in October 1915. “Like all Frenchman fed the classics,” he wrote in his postwar memoir, “I arrived in Greece with the same emotion of a believer setting foot on Palestinian land. I was predisposed to finding everything beautiful, everything admirable.” Yet “before my eyes,” he continued, “rose the deceitful prism of literary memories;” Salonika was not the Greece he had imagined.75 Indeed, according to Frappa, it was his disenchantment with Salonika, that “unfaithful mistress,” as he labeled it, that had turned him into a wartime poet, a role in which he vented his frustration with Greece in sonnet form. “Greece, I have contemplated your sky with sadness,” he wrote, We have given you much of our classical soul; You are nothing more than a museum compared to a boutique; The ancient virtues have deserted your heart! Cry, cry, the warrior whose high value Had, in the long-ago heroic era, Made from your country a magnificent world, Achilles’ Greece was feared.

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Divine Argonauts, great chimera runners, The Golden Fleece of our desires is at the auction They made themselves merchants, these handsome and strong men; Their soul is, now, shifty and mercantile, The flame has disappeared from the clay lamps, On snowy Olympus, alas, the gods are dead!76

Frappa’s message was clear: Ancient Greece, a land of virtuous warriors, had died, and had been replaced by a curiously oriental, “mercantile” Greece. Like Mandley of the BSF, who much preferred rural to urban Greeks, the same kind of anti-urbanism if not anti-modernism manifested in Frappa’s poetry. The city, it seemed to Frappa, had killed the gods. Other French soldiers also struggled to reconcile Greece’s past with its present. Pol Roussel had been reared on the glories of ancient Greece, on “the characters of Greek mythology” which had “charmed” his childhood. “Oh Greece, eternal Greece,” he wrote in his postwar published diary, “here I come before you!…I hardly dare to express the sentiments I feel in approaching your soil, country of beauty, torch of the arts and poetry, oh you, so great in the past, that made the cradle of western civilization and transmitted to us a magnificent heritage!”77 Yet Roussel, like Frappa, was to be disappointed. “I did not think,” he pondered, “however that the realization of this dream would result in a cataclysm.” Although Roussel suspected that he would experience “inevitable deceptions,” nothing had prepared him for Salonika; a city he described paradoxically as both a “leprous agglomeration of shacks and locked cabins bordering a putrid gulf, an unhealthy ghetto; in sum, a cesspool bathed in light,” and a “very picturesque Oriental city.”78 More than Frappa and Roussel, Ricciotto Canudo, an Italian-born soldier in the Armeé d’Orient, questioned Greece’s place as the center of western civilization. An avant-garde artist, writer, and early promoter of cinema as an artistic form, Canudo, born in Apulia, Italy, had enlisted in the French Army in Paris in August 1914, alongside other prominent foreign artists.79 Arriving in Greece after the evacuation of the Dardanelles, Canudo came face-to-face with twentieth-century Greece. “The reality of the present and the future swarms about,” he mused, “in all the archipelago, and under the sea, and in the air. And then,” he pleaded with his reader, “Greece did not create Western civilisation.

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She is not the founder of this ensemble of norms, canons, spiritual ordinances, that each century must transform for the usage of mankind that enhances without stopping.”80 Greece was nothing more than a “ripple in the current of the great metaphysical river,” he continued, That flows the link of the human spirit from south-east to north-west of our world. She plastically formed the two anthropomorphic elements of the universe: the spirit and the flesh. She delivered a speech that Rome, then Florence, then Paris in turn, threw in the metal in perpetual fusion of the human soul. We made the Colosseum after the Parthenon, and the cathedrals after the Colosseum. We created symphony after tragedy. We had Descartes after Plato. And the Acropolis could be in us a memory that self-pollinates in the same manner as the ruins of Angkor and the Pyramids.81

Beyond distancing modern, western civilization from its ancient Greek past, Canudo was also keen to distance the modern Greeks as a race from the rest of the twentieth-century Mediterranean world. “We are not more Greco-Roman than Roman,” he argued passionately, “in France as in Italy, and as in Moorish Spain or in Slavo-Germanic Romania.” Moreover, he pointed out, “There is not a link of ‘race’ between us and the Greeks since they were for centuries out of the great current of the ‘Mediterranean race’…The Greeks remain oriental. Let us be ruthlessly occidental, from our occidental Mediterranean.”82

Conclusion In conclusion, what strikes us most is the consistency of reactions to Macedonia, whether German, British, or French. All appeared to be concerned with geography and space, and what seemed to be the total mystery of where, exactly, Macedonia fit on the world map. Race and multiculturalism were also of concern. Yet both the British and the Germans managed to find a single Balkan/Slavic people that best fit and in some ways mirrored the qualities that the British and Germans held dear. For British soldiers the Serbs stood out, while for Germans it was the Bulgarians. British, French and German soldiers saw Macedonia as backwards, a viewpoint informed by western ideas about culture, progress, and civilization. This reservoir of post-Enlightenment, western thinking led western soldiers to judge Macedonia as a place that had not been touched by modern, western (read proper) European ideas.

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Perhaps our main question for this edited volume is: Where do such expeditionary forces sit on the spectrum of different kinds of missions, and what does this particular story tell us about expeditionary forces in general? To illustrate this spectrum, let us elaborate with the example of British soldiers during World War One as they found themselves on several fronts: Some British soldiers in northern France found it to be only somewhat exotic, and behaved accordingly. Other British men found themselves in the wholly unfamiliar Mesopotamian desert and experienced a world war in a far more unusual way. In the middle, quite literally, were the British soldiers in Macedonia. Does the liminal experience shed light on the other two? Is there, in fact, any significant difference, ultimately, for these three British expeditionary forces? Is there a difference in kind, once one leaves the shores of Britain and lives among more and more “foreign” peoples, or is the fact that the local women are French, Greek, or Arab merely a difference of degree in the eyes of the British soldier? Such questions are at the heart of colonial studies: where does the metropolis end, and where does real colonial space begin?

Notes





1.  Yigal Sheffy, “The Chemical Dimension of the Gallipoli Campaign: Introducing Chemical Warfare to the Middle East,” War in History 12, no. 3 (2005), 316–17. 2. “Salonica,” The Royal Engineer’s Post Section, December 1, 1917. 3. See Justin Fantauzzo and Robert L. Nelson, “A Most Unmanly War: British Military Masculinity in Macedonia, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, 1914–18,” Gender and History 28, no. 3 (2016), 587–603. 4. Omer Bartov and Eric Weitz, eds., Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013). 5.  Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Hans Werner Neulen, Feldgrau in Jerusalem. Das Levantekorps des kaiserlichen Deutschland, 2nd ed. (Munich: Universitas, 2001 [1994]); Michael Pesek, Das Ende eines Kolonialreiches. Ostafrika im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2010). 6. Significantly, this was in fact the name of the Army of the East formed in 1870, inside France. 7. Robert L. Nelson, “Soldier Newspapers: A Useful Source in the Social and Cultural History of the First World War and Beyond,” War in History 17 (2010), 167–91.

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8.  Holger Afflerbach, “Greece and the Balkan Area in German Strategy, 1914–1918,” in The Salonica Theatre of Operations and the Outcome of the Great War: Proceedings of the International Conference Organized by the Institute for Balkan Studies and the National Research Foundation “Eleftherios K. Venizelos,” Thessaloniki, 16–18 April 2002, ed. Danai Kaplanidou (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 2005), 53–66. 9. See D. Dieterich, Weltkriegsende an der Mazedonischen Front (Oldenburg: Stalling Gerhard, 1925), 8. See also, Richard C. Hall, Balkan Breakthrough: The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 133. 10. Erich Schede, Als Arzt in Mazedonien 1916–1918: Briefe und Betrachtungen eines Arztes (Nordhausen: L. Hornichtel, 1929), 3. Much of our discussion and citation of German sources comes from what may well be the only study of German memoirs of the Macedonian Front: Courtney Tripney, “German Visions of the Macedonian Front, 1915–18” (MA, University of Windsor, 2014). 11.  Adolf von Ernsthausen, Balkanerinnerungen (Detmold: Meyersche Hofbuchhandlung, 1922), 1. 12. George Renwick, War Wandering: A Record of War and War Travel 1914–1916 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1916), 268. 13. Un groupe de Poilus, De la Somme à Verdun et sur le Front d’Orient: Contes Véridiques 1916–1917 (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1917), 297. 14. Stanley Casson, Steady Drummer (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1936), 115. 15. See Liulevicius, War Land. The phrase comes from the seminal article, David Furber, “Near as Far in the Colonies: The Nazi Occupation of Poland,” International History Review 26 (2004), 541–79. 16. Indeed, they were foreign to German Jews. Stephen Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew and German Jewish Consciousness 1800–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). 17. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (London: HarperCollins, 2004), 284. 18. Adolf Köster, Mit den Bulgaren (Munich: Albert Langen, 1916), 83. 19. Siegfried Seidel, In den Schluchten des Balkans: Kriegsfahrten des Detachements Bürkner und der Sächsischen A.K.K. 240 durch Mazedonien, Albanien und Montenegro (Buchholz in Saxony: Friedrich Seidel, 1921), 9. 20. Köster, Mit den Bulgaren, 90. 21. Interestingly, there is a modern parallel in the failure of Serbia to erase the scars of the Yugoslav Wars of the nineties, while its neighbors, including Slovenia and especially Croatia, have become tourist hotspots. 22. A. Peters, Die Höhe 1050 bei Monastir in Mazedonien: Oktober 1916 bis Juli 1917 (Heide in Holstein: Holstein, 1933), 18–19. 23.  It may be that German soldiers found Islam more striking because of their familiarity with Jewish culture and society, as well as their new

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alliance with the Ottoman Empire. For British soldiers, despite London’s Whitechapel district and Petticoat Lane, they might have found Salonika’s Jews more interesting because of their familiarity with Indian Muslims. 24. Köster, Mit den Bulgaren, 105, 110. 25. Peters, Die Höhe 1050, 45. 26. Köster, Mit den Bulgaren, 120. 27.  Robert L. Nelson, German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), chap. 4. 28. Kriegszeitung der Heeresgruppe Scholtz, September 7, 1917. 29. Smyrna, Beirut, and Istanbul were similarly disappointing to western visitors when inspected more closely. See Mazower, Salonica, 182. 30. Wartime diary, Private Papers A. H. Muggeridge, IWM 99/84/1. 31. Étienne Burnet, La Tour Blanche: Armée d’Orient 1916–1917 (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1921), 6. 32. “Babel in Brief,” The Orient Weekly, October 14, 1917. 33. A. Hamilton Gibbs, Gun Fodder: The Diary of Four Years of War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), 108. 34. Renwick, War Wandering, 269. 35. Saison, D’Alsace à Cerna, 315–16. 36. Saison, D’Alsace à Cerna, 24–25. 37. A. Gélibert, Avec les Poilus d’Orient: Souvenirs d’un Médecin du Corps Expéditionnaire Salonique, 1915-1916-1917 (Lyon: BOSC Frères, M. & L., 1936), 67–68. 38. L. Gay, “Souvenirs d’Orient: Salonique,” Journal des Internés Français: Hebdomadaire Illustré, February 3, 1917, 289–90. 39.  While the September 5, 1917 issue of the Scholtz claimed, in “The Folklore of the Macedonians,” that the locals were virtually 100% Bulgarian, in the edition appearing ten days later, an article entitled “The Albanians” recognized there were indeed others in this land, and that simple notions of “nation” and “state” did not apply very well to Macedonia. See also the fascinating piece, “Something from Albania,” Die Feldgraue, April 1918. In early 1916, Professor Dr. Rudolf Eucken (University of Jena) wrote an article for a Western Front newspaper which claimed that Bulgarians were the leaders in Slavic literature. He argued that they were very bright and that Germany could indeed learn and benefit from them. Kriegszeitung der 4. Armee, January 14, 1916. 40.  Kriegszeitung von Baranowitschi, February 16, 1916. 41.  Rumänien im Wort und Bild, August 25, 1917. 42. Der Feldbote, November 18, 1917. This soldier newspaper was located on the Western Front. 43. Seille-Bote, November 21, 1915. Except for this one reference, Turks were depicted very positively in the German soldier newspapers. Importantly, this was also a Western Front newspaper.

172  J. FANTAUZZO AND R. L. NELSON 44.  Rumänien, August 25, 1917; Rumänien, May 26, 1917; Rumänien, February 27, 1916. 45.  Oliver Stein, “‘Wer das nicht mitgemacht hat, glaubt es nicht.’ Erfahrungen deutscher Offiziere mit den bulgarischen Vebündeten 1915–1918,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg auf dem Balkan. Perspektiven der Forschung, ed. Jürgen Angelow (Berlin: be.bra wissenschaft, 2011), 271–87. See also Oliver Stein, “Zwischen Orient, Rußland und Europa. Zum Bild der Bulgaren und ihres Militärs in der deutschen Presse 1912– 1918,” in Am Rande Europas? Der Balkan — Raum und Bevölkerung als Wirkungsfelder militärischer Gewalt, eds. Bernhard Chiari and Gerhard P. Groß (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 159–75. 46. Köster, Mit den Bulgaren, 82. 47. Stein, “Wer das nicht,” 274. 48. Allhusen to Mother, 14 January 1917, Private Papers Major D. Allhusen, IWM 09/74/1. 49. Arthur Cecil Alport, The Lighter Side of the War: Experiences of a Civilian in Uniform (London: Hutchinson, 1934), 137–38, 144. 50. David Rossel, In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in the English & American Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), chaps. 1 and 2. 51. Eugene Michail, The British and the Balkans: Forming Images of Foreign Lands, 1900–1950 (London, 2011), 4. 52. Alport, Lighter Side of the War, 137. 53. Douglas Walshe, With the Serbs in Macedonia (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1920), 107. 54.  Kriegszeitung der 9. Armee, March 9, 1917. 55. Wartime diary, Private Papers C. D. Halliday, IWM 09/34/1. 56. Dudley to Uncle, Aunt, and Cousin, November 8, 1916, Private Papers L. E. and H. Dudley, IWM 15/3/1. 57. Wartime diary, Private Papers W. J. Mussett, IWM 04/5/1. 58. Jean Saison, D’Alsace à la Cerna: Notes et Impressions d’un Officier de l’Armée d’Orient (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1918), 283. 59. Un groupe de Poilus, De la Somme, 234–35. 60. “La Macédoine: Son Importance—Son avenir,” Bulletin des Armées de la République, August 30, 1916, 5. 61. “La Question d’Orient,” La Bourguignotte, ND, NP. 62. Jean Njellys, “Crépuscule Salonicien,” La Clairon: Journal Français de Salonique, May 12, 1916, 25. 63. Armand B., “Une Caravane d’Émigrant Macédoniens,” in Un groupe de Poilus, De la Somme, 295–96. 64. Although Lebedev was a volunteer in the French Army, Russia had sent a Russian Expeditionary Force consisting of two brigades to Macedonia in 1916. The total number of Russians in the force was approximately 20,000 men. See Alan Palmer, The Gardeners of Salonika: The

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Macedonian Campaign 1915–1918 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 137–39. 65. Victor Lebedev, Souvenirs d’un Voluntaire Russe dans l’Armée Française, 1914–1915 (Paris: Perrin et Cie, Libraires-Éditeurs, 1917), 124. 66. Lebedev, Souvenirs d’un Voluntaire Russe, 129-30. 67.  Anonymous (C. E. Vulliamy), Fusilier Bluff: The Experiences of an Unprofessional Soldier in the Near East 1918 to 1919 (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1934), 85. 68. Vulliamy, Fusilier Bluff, 85. 69. Gélibert, Avec les Poilus, 281. 70. Peters, Die Höhe 1050, 24. 71. Memoir, Private Papers F. W. Twort, IWM 09/49/1. 72. Arthur Dix, Zwischen Beresina und Wardar: Landsturmbriefe und Balkanbilder (Berlin-Wilmersdorf: Hermann Paetel Verlag, 1918), 242. 73.  Peo Hansen and Stefan Johnsson, Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 45; Kris Manjapra, Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals Across Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 149. 74. Haines to Mother and Father, 1 November 1916, Private Papers O. C. M. Haines, IWM 95/16/1. 75. Jean-José Frappa, Makédonia: Souvenirs d’un officier de liaison en Orient (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1921), 214. 76. Frappa, Makédonia, 215. 77. Pol Roussel, Impressions d’Orient au Temps de la Grande Guerre: Salonique au temps de la campagne d’Orient (Paris: E. Chrion, 1925), 67–68. 78. Roussel, Impressions d’Orient, 68, 71, 93. 79.  Nicolas Beaupré, “Construction and Deconstruction of the Idea of French ‘War Enthusiasm’ in 1914,” in The Legacies of Two World Wars: European Societies in the Twentieth Century, eds. Lothar Kettenacker and Torsten Riotte (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 49. 80. Capitaine Canudo, Combats d’Orient: Dardanelles-Salonique, 1915–1916 (New York: French Bookman, 1917), 15–16. 81. Canudo, Combats d’Orient, 16–17. 82. Canudo, Combats d’Orient, 18.

Bibliography Archival Sources Imperial War Museum, London, UK Allhusen, Major D. 09/74/1. Dudley, L. E. and H. 15/3/1.

174  J. FANTAUZZO AND R. L. NELSON Halliday, C. D. 09/34/1. Haines, O. C. M. 95/16/1. Muggeridge, A. H. 99/84/1. Mussett, W. J. 04/5/1. Twort, F. W. 09/49/1. Soldier Newspapers Bulletin des armées de la rèpublique. Der Feldbote. Die Feldgrau. Journal des internés français: Hebdomadaire illustré. Kriegszeitung der 4. Armee. Kriegszeitung der 9. Armee. Kriegszeitung der Heeresgruppe Scholtz. Kriegszeitung von Baranowitschi. La Bourguignotte. Le clairon: journal français de Salonique. Rumänien im Wort und Bild. Seille-Bote. The Orient Weekly. The Royal Engineer’s Post Section.

Other Sources Afflerbach, Holger. “Greece and the Balkan Area in German Strategy, 1914– 1918.” In The Salonica Theatre of Operations and the Outcome of the Great War: Proceedings of the International Conference Organized by the Institute for Balkan Studies and the National Research Foundation “Eleftherios K. Venizelos”, edited by Danai Kaplanidou, 53–66. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 2005. Alport, Arthur Cecil. The Lighter Side of the War: Experiences of a Civilian in Uniform. London: Hutchinson, 1934. Anonymous (C. E. Vulliamy). Fusilier Bluff: The Experiences of an Unprofessional Soldier in the Near East 1918 to 1919. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1934. Aschheim, Steven E. Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew and German Jewish Consciousness 1800–1923. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Bartov, Omer, and Eric Weitz, eds. Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013. Beapré, Nicolas. “Construction and Deconstruciton of the Ideas of French ‘War Enthusiasm’ in 1914.” In The Legacies of Two World Wars: European Societies

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in the Twentieth Century, edited by Lothar Kettenacker and Torsten Riotte, 41–57. New York: Berghahn Books, 2011. Burnet, Étienne. La tour blanche: Armée d’Orient 1916–1917. Paris: E. Flammarion, 1921. Canudo, Ricciotto. Combats d’Orient: Dardanelles-Salonique, 1915–1916. New York: French Bookman, 1917. Casson, Stanley. Steady Drummer. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1936. Dieterich, D. Weltkriegsende an der Mazedonischen Front. Oldenburg: Stalling Gerhard, 1925. Dix, Arthur. Zwischen Beresina und Wardar: Landsturmbriefe und Balkanbilder. Berlin-Wilmersdorf: Hermann Patel Verlag, 1918. Ernsthausen, Adolf von. Balkanerinnerungen. Detmold: Meyersche Hofbuchhandlung, 1922. Fantauzzo, Justin, and Robert L. Nelson. “A Most Unmanly War: British Military Masculinity in Macedonia, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, 1914–18.” Gender and History 28, no. 3 (2016): 587–603. Frappa, Jean-José. Makédonia: Souvenirs d’un officier de liaison en Orient. Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1921. Furber, David. “Near as Far in the Colonies: The Nazi Occupation of Poland.” International History Review 26, no. 3 (2004): 541–79. Gélibert, Amand. Avec les poilus d’Orient: souvenirs d’un médicin du corps expéditionnaire de Salonique 1915-1916-1917. Lyon: BOSC Frères, M. & L Riou., 1936. Gibbs, A. Hamilton. Gun Fodder: The Diary of Four Years of War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1924. Hall, Richard C. Balkan Breakthrough: The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010. Hansen, Peo, and Stefan Johnsson. Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism. London: Bloomsburg, 2014. Köster, Adolf. Mit den Bulgaren. Munich: Albert Langen, 1916. Lebedev, Victor. Souvenirs d’un voluntaire Russe dans l’armée française, 1914– 1915. Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1917. Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel. War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Manjapra, Kris. Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals Across Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430– 1950. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Michail, Eugene. The British and the Balkans: Forming Images of Foreign Lands, 1900–1950. London: Continuum, 2011.

176  J. FANTAUZZO AND R. L. NELSON Nelson, Robert L. “Soldier Newspapers: A Useful Source in the Social and Cultural History of the First World War and Beyond.” War in History 17, no. 2 (2010): 167–91. Nelson, Robert L. German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Neulen, Hans Werner. Feldgrau in Jerusalem. Das Levantekorps des kaiserlichen Deutschland. Munich: Universitas, 2002 [1991]. Pesek, Michael. Das Ende eines Kolonialreiches: Ostafrika im Ersten Weltkrieg. Frankfurt: Campus, 2010. Peters, A. Die Höhe 1050 bei Monastir in Mazedonien: Oktober 1916 bis Juli 1917. Heide in Holstein: Holstein, 1933. Renwick, George. War Wandering: A Record of War and War Travel 1914–1916. London: Chapman and Hall, 1916. Rossel, David. In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in the English & American Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Roussel, Pol. Impressions d’Orient au temps de la grande guerre: Salonique au temps de la campagne d’Orient. Paris: E. Chiron, 1925. Saison, Jean. D’Alsace à la Cerna: notes et impressions d’un officier de l’armée d’Orient (octobre 1915 – août 1916). Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1918. Schede, Erich. Als Arzt in Mazedonien 1916–1918: Briefe und Betrachtungen eines Arztes. Nordhausen: L. Hornichtel, 1929. Seidel, Siegfried. In den Schluchten des Balkans: Kriegsfahrten des Detachments Bürkner und der Sächsischen A.K.K. 240 durch Mazedonien, Albanien und Montenegro. Buchholz in Saxony: F. Seidel, 1921. Sheffy, Yigal. “The Chemical Dimension of the Gallipoli Campaign: Introducing Chemical Warfare to the Middle East.” War in History 12, no. 3 (2005): 278–317. Stein, Oliver. “Zwischen Orient, Rußland und Europa. Zum Bild der Bulgaren und ihres Militärs in der deutschen Presse 1912–1918.” In Am Rande Europas? Der Balkan — Raum und Bevölkerung als Wirkungsfelder militärischer Gewalt, edited by Bernhard Chiari and Gerhard P. Groß, 159–75. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009. Stein, Oliver. “‘Wer das nicht mitgemacht hat, glaubt es nicht’. Erfahrungen deutscher Offiziere mit den Bulgarischen Vebündten, 1915–1918.” In Der Erste Weltkrieg auf dem Balkan: Perspektiven der Forschung, edited by Jürgen Angelow, 271–87. Berlin: be.bra wissenschaft, 2011. Tripney, Courtney. “German Visions of the Macedonian Front, 1915–18.” MA diss., University of Windsor, 2014. Un groupe de Poilus, De la Somme à Verdun et sur le front d’Orient: contes véridiques 1916–1917. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1917. Walshe, Douglas. With the Serbs in Macedonia. London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1920.

CHAPTER 7

An Alliance of Competing Identities: Stereotypes and Hierarchies Among Entente Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front Chris Kempshall

Although combat would take place in many countries and several continents during the First World War, the bulk of the fighting for the nations of the Entente Cordiale would take place in Europe around the Western Front. The soldiers of the French and Belgian armies would fight a defensive war on their own territory, but their allies would all deploy expeditionary forces of varying sizes to foreign lands to wage war. Soldiers from Britain, America, Russia, Portugal, and many others, including the empires and dominions of Britain and France, gathered on the Western Front in an attempt to secure victory against Germany. While in some ways the various Allied expeditionary forces shared specific experiences, their time on the Western Front could often be defined not by similarities with each other but by profound differences. Issues of language and communication were an ever-present concern but not an insurmountable one. Where necessary interpreters and shared phrases could, given time and patience, alleviate some of the isolation felt by soldiers on foreign soil. More difficult to overcome was the emerging Allied

C. Kempshall (*)  Canterbury, UK © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_7

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hierarchy that placed certain nations at the center of the power dynamic and pushed others to the periphery. To understand the dynamics and political interactions of these expeditionary forces it is necessary to also understand their place within this hierarchy and that will be the focus of this chapter. Many soldiers, be they British, Russian, or Portuguese discovered a different situation on the Western Front from the one they had been expecting. The extent to which they were able to move beyond expectations, both their own and their allies’, was dependent on their ability to traverse the internal power dynamics of their soldiers and armies around them. For some this deployment to France was part of a plan established in the years before 1914. For others, it was the result of emerging diplomacy during the war or of acts of either desperation or of a desire to claim a place on the world stage. Regardless of the motivation behind their arrival on the Western Front the soldiers within these armies all shared similar situations; they were sent to a country where they were not fluent in the language and where they did not fully understand their allies and hosts. When in doubt these men would attempt to cling onto their own sense of identity. From this starting point some blossomed and others failed. Some, when given enough time, would do both. Interactions between men of these expeditionary forces and their fellows could at times be complicated and fraught with confusion and judgments of inferiority. The middle years of the war gave the volunteer recruits who repopulated the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) the opportunity to learn and grow during their time in France. Such opportunities were denied to men from other nations. As a result, the battles to come would push some soldiers and some nations to breaking point while it also elevated others to new levels of power. In the background of interactions between individual soldiers was a series of alliances based upon hierarchies of power. These hierarchies could be very clear; Britain and France believed themselves to be at the center of the Entente Alliance with nations like Russia, Portugal, and Italy noticeably on the periphery. However, these very same hierarchies would lead to repeated attempts by the various participants to either expand their role in affairs or restrict the involvement of others so as to protect their own position. In this sense, the Entente Alliance was more dysfunctional than that of the Central Powers where the role of Germany in the center largely dictated the direction of that alliance. The detriment to Germany’s situation at the center of the Central Powers was that its

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allies had decreasing power to help shoulder the burden the longer the war continued. This chapter will examine the different relations, interactions, and experiences between Allied armies and Expeditionary Forces during the First World War. Its principal focus will be those of the BEF and the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF); however, it will also examine some of the issues faced by both the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps (CEP) and the Russian Expeditionary Force (REF) during the conflict as well. There were notable power discrepancies between these countries, not just in the number of men they deployed to this theater but also in regard to the perceived ranking of these countries in Great Power terms. The hierarchies that existed between these nations would most commonly make their impact felt in the interactions between the upper echelons of military and government, but they would also have a role to play in the trenches. Many studies of alliance warfare have at times, understandably, focused on the relations and interactions of those in positions of power, generals, and politicians. After all, leading politicians and heads of the respective militaries decided on the overall strategy and focus of the war effort. However, although each of the allies shared the same overall goal of victory they were also concerned with their own spheres of responsibility and their own national interests. In many ways the men who decided the strategy became the embodiments of their own national interests and were charged with protecting them. This had certainly been the case regarding the orders presented to General Sir John French at the deployment of the BEF in 1914 and it did not evolve very far in the years that followed.1 These interactions between principal commanders and politicians often took on a dynamic where national interests and hierarchies were reproduced in operational and logistical planning. Discussions about imminent strategy and the movement of armies were undeniably important matters, but these discussions could often become bogged down and entrenched over a number of issues ranging from who had operational command in certain sectors and scenarios, to who carried the responsibility for resupplying, and which nation would bear the weight of an assault. In this sense the discussions highlighted the inherent weakness of a large-scale coalition; the final goal of victory may well be the same but each country had its chosen path to reach it and a price thought reasonable to achieve it. Further to this none of the primary combatants wished to achieve a victory that then greatly benefited everyone else but left its efforts unrewarded.

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When such military planning was ongoing the respective generals showed little to no interest in how their soldiers would interact with their allies. With no direction emerging from above this process was left to either grow or founder entirely organically. That relations were able to develop between the various Expeditionary Forces, particularly those of the principal powers, without serious issues is testament to good fortune rather than clear strategic thinking. The ‘military conversations’ between France and Britain since 1905 had produced a plan that would lead to the BEF being deployed to France in the event of war with Germany. However, while this aspect of the strategy was agreed there were noticeable flaws in it that would greatly hamper allied operations in 1914. Firstly, the plan developed did not—despite its depth of logistical details—pay any regard to ‘the BEF’s role after battle had been joined.’2 Indeed, the actual details of the French strategy in the event of war, known as Plan XVII, were not even communicated to the British until after the majority of the BEF related plans had been written.3 Furthermore, although there was an expectation that the British and French would form some sort of coordinated response with the Belgian army in the event of their neutrality being violated, Belgium had refused to enter into any form of military talks for fear of violating that same neutrality themselves. This lack of actual allied cooperation combined with the lack of forward planning for how the men of the BEF were to interact with their allies and resulted in an unfolding disaster in 1914. Relations between Britain and France during the war were often complicated by competing hierarchical beliefs and enduring stereotypes. Perhaps understandably the professional soldiers of the BEF did not believe themselves to be inferior in quality to anyone, particularly not the French, and this belief was shared by those in command. At the same time, however, the BEF was dwarfed in size by the larger continental armies and would need to be placed in an area of relative safety alongside the French army. The deployment of the BEF to France was conducted in secret under the tight censorship of the War Office and it was not until August 18, 1914 that the presence of British soldiers on mainland Europe became public knowledge.4 Even though the arrival of the BEF in France was largely a triumph, there were early signs of a growing disconnect between the British soldiers and the world they understood back home, based on the inability of British soldiers to access newspapers.5 The lack of accurate reporting around the front was due in no small part to the restrictions Kitchener had placed upon the press in regard to what

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they could print about the situation in France.6 Kitchener’s focus with these press controls was clearly the home front but, by obvious offshoot, it would have an effect in how news was reflected back to the men in France. With no easy access to English language newspapers, the men of the BEF would become increasingly isolated in France as they struggled to find out what was going on around them. British soldiers faced a further obstacle due to their inability to either communicate with the French or properly understand their motivations. In fact many in Britain, at times, seemed to be largely ignorant about French character and customs.7 The BEF had been assigned French interpreters and each soldier had received a book of French words, but the interpreters were deployed in such a manner that they were rarely available when regular soldiers needed them, and a phrase book is not the same as an understanding of the language.8 As a result, British soldiers as a whole knew very little French and their leaders were left hoping that upon encountering interpreters they would be able to teach the British ‘what to ask for in “pukka” French,’ but such language training was going to take time.9 By contrast some of the French civilians British soldiers encountered had native levels of English from having worked in service jobs in England before the war, therefore leaving the British soldiers at a distinct disadvantage. The inability to communicate with their French allies was not only reserved for the soldiers. Field Marshal Sir John French spoke practically no French, and as the early battles of the war unfolded approached something resembling a complete mental breakdown. He lost all faith in the French armies arrayed around him and only direct orders from Lord Kitchener compelled him to maintain a defensive withdrawal with them rather than making for the channel ports. When left with little solid information on either their strategic situation or their allies’ intentions, British soldiers found solace in both their own identity and that of military institutions and then applied these to the wider world. Belief in the necessity of ‘soldierly’ appearance and behavior had been rooted in the British army since the Napoleonic Wars. Despite the fact that the British army was no longer quite as much the preserve of the upper classes in 1914 as it had previously been, some traditions still remained. The BEF of 1914 was composed primarily of professional soldiers who had been through both comprehensive military training and military institutionalization. A tendency to rank appearance and mannerisms alongside fighting ability was in itself not a huge issue

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when the British army was operating independently, but after meeting the French army in 1914 a clash of cultures was inevitable. The British were left distinctly unimpressed by what they viewed as unacceptable ­levels of dress and behavior by French soldiers under uniform. The difference in presentation between the British and French was repeatedly highlighted by the national cultural interpretations of facial hair. British soldiers Private Hugh Bellew and Lieutenant Lionel Tennyson, in particular, serve as good representatives for the “British” view that being clean-shaven and smart in appearance is an important aspect of being a soldier. On August 25 Bellew wrote that ‘it would make you weep to see our wounded, with about a fortnight’s beard on them and clothes torn to pieces and no kits’ while on August 27 he noted that he ‘saw a brigade of R.H.A. [Royal Horse Artillery] pass here yesterday all with beards, you would not know them.’10 On September 3, he would also joke that ‘you would laugh to see our troops with beards, the officers as well. It would make father envious.’11 What Tennyson and Bellew viewed as being ‘unsmart’ and, as an implied consequence, unfit for duty, the French soldiers were particularly proud of.12 War was, after all, a dirty business and the defense of la patrie could not be successfully undertaken without the defenders themselves becoming immersed in both the soil and a particular image of French masculinity.13 The British could not understand this aspect of the French character and the same could be said in reverse. More than one British soldier was nearly arrested and/or shot by French soldiers in the war’s early months because they had no idea what the British uniform looked like. Lieutenant Edward Spears found himself accosted by French soldiers in mid-August 1914 because ‘[my] strange uniform was totally unfamiliar to them, and they jumped to the conclusion that I was a German prisoner.’14 Spears had already been pushing for the creation of ‘postcards and coloured plates showing British army uniforms’ and for them to be dispersed among French units and he credits Colonel Macdonough, Head of Intelligence, for achieving this ‘miracle’ before the Battle of Charleroi.15 After finally encountering their new ally many French soldiers struggled to understand the British approach to facial hair in much the same way as the British had struggled with theirs. One French interpreter assigned to the British would go so far as to say that they were almost unnaturally preoccupied with maintaining their appearance.16 Given time the professional soldiers of the original BEF may have found a way to reconcile

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their own identity and institutional loyalties with those of the French army, but the battles of 1914 and early 1915 effectively destroyed it as a fighting unit. To expand and rebuild the army, Britain would have to turn to its civilian population. The men of Kitchener’s New Armies were civilians first and foremost who had signed up in 1914 and early 1915. They were not soldiers. More to the point they seemed to know they were not soldiers. The French, by comparison, had been through a process of (at least) 2 years active military service. Therefore, it should not be overly surprising if the newly arrived British men were slightly intimidated by their French compatriots and were measuring their own efforts against the bar the French had set. Some soldiers believed that they were coming up short in that test. The officer classes in particular, having volunteered in 1914 and undergone their training before reaching the front in 1915 and 1916, seemed to be instructed in methods and techniques relating to historical battles such as ‘Minden, Albuhera, and Waterloo, and the Battle of the Pyramids’ only to find that, upon joining their battalion, they became ‘acutely conscious of how little [I] knew.’17 From the moment they signed up to the army to the time they entered the training regime these men may have had a rough idea about the nature of war, but they were not professional soldiers and would not have thought of themselves as such. During the training process this would conceivably have changed as they were taught the martial skills they would, supposedly, need to both survive and triumph in France. The resulting displacement of becoming an expeditionary force member and deployed away from their own country then immediately began to test this recently instilled confidence. What resulted was a swing in the hierarchical framework. Whereas in 1914 British soldiers had believed themselves to be the pinnacle of military ability, the civilian soldiers of 1916 instead deferred and reached out to their French allies. The French would, in turn, extend their services as both hosts and teachers toward the British and allow relationships to form that superseded any sense of serious military rivalry or confusion.18 By remaking and redefining the allied ties and hierarchy between each other British and French soldiers were able to begin the process of overcoming previous obstacles and refining their fighting ability. This would allow the British and French to communicate on a more personal level that would reap precious dividends for the rest of the war by allowing a more complete transition of the BEF into the European theater.

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However, the lingering remains of the different military cultures between the British and the French would lead to pointed French criticism of their allies on the Somme in 1916 where French soldiers noted that although brave, the British often seemed highly reckless. French soldiers reported that British soldiers seemed unwilling to take cover or lie in the mud for fear of getting dirty or being viewed as a coward, a state of affairs which was a complete anathema to the French Poilu who sculpted their identity on a willingness to get dirty for their country. The result was an evaluation of the British by the French which suggests that their allies, men they dubbed to be ‘parade ground soldiers’ were ‘very fine but not very clever.’19 Although the French were content to contextualize the British efforts in 1916 against their relative abilities they would not do so forever. French soldiers would react with fury to the British withdrawal from St. Quentin in 1918 and, in the months that followed, completely blame the British army for placing the entire front in jeopardy.20 This belief was echoed in the higher echelons of command as well and only exacerbated by the fact that Field Marshal Douglas Haig seemed to be attempting to draw some credit from the British withdrawal by suggesting the French would have retreated even further.21 The soldiers of the BEF may have had several false starts when it came to integrating with allies along the Western Front, but at least the men of Kitchener’s New Armies were there voluntarily. The same could not be said for other expeditionary forces along the front. Having been effectively ‘sold for shells’ by the Russian government to the French, the REF constituted two brigades of men, the 1st and the 3rd, and arrived in France in 1916.22 The influence of the Russian Revolution would see the REF largely collapse in 1917, although some of the soldiers would continue fighting until 1918.23 The men of the BEF were traveling to support an ally and did not have to worry about having abandoned a front much closer to their home. This was the case for the men composing the REF and once a deal was struck between the two nations it was not greeted warmly by Russians already living in France. Similarly, a French diplomat like Paul Cambon was of the opinion that this new force should be sent to somewhere more worthwhile like Salonika.24 The exchange of Russian soldiers for French guns made military sense, but it did not fully account for the realities of moving thousands of men from Russian ports to France through freezing weather and then integrating them into existing fighting forces.

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Like the British army, crowds of French civilians greeted the REF with great enthusiasm as they arrived in French ports.25 This enthusiasm was not matched by the French military, however, who had noticed rumors circulating in Russian newspapers that the REF had been effectively sent to ‘save France’ and that they were now serving with distinction in a variety of battles from Verdun to the Somme.26 Although the French military had desired the influx of additional manpower the intention had not been for the Russians to overshadow the French army through the spread of patently false propaganda stories. However, the morale of the REF would begin to erode away fairly early into their deployment. The Russian soldiers found themselves almost entirely cut off from any contact with their homeland while ‘the French seemed to use the Russians for especially nasty missions and behaved with a condescension often showered on their other allies as well.’27 In an operational sense being cutoff for soldiers was a worst-case scenario and could place both their positions and their lives under dire threat. The cultural isolation that the Russians were experiencing may not have been as dire but it did raise the specter of how they would communicate with their French ally should the line be ruptured. This situation was aggravated by the ‘cultural and linguistic isolation’ the Russians experienced.28 Access to two Russian language newspapers were ‘the only source to alleviate the boredom and isolation’ and although they would offer ‘a French vocabulary lesson with the pronunciation of each word given as close as possible in Russian transliteration’ the differences in languages and alphabets made communication between French and Russian soldiers extremely difficult.29 No longer participating in a war of defense in their own homeland and eschewed by many in the French military around them, the soldiers of the REF became increasingly isolated and insular. The outbreak of the Russian Revolution was the death knell for the REF who were swiftly moved into an effective quarantine situation to prevent them from infecting French troops with militant Bolshevism. While the French found the Russians useful at points during their service on the Western Front, they were never able to fully integrate them into a combined army. Similarly the Russians themselves were never able to fully commit to a front far away from their own threatened homes. Following the war’s completion, the memory of the REF would become a point of ideological conflict between loyalist Russians in Paris and the nascent Soviet Union. Russian churches in Paris would continue to remember the sacrifices of these

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men in the interwar years, while the Soviets would highlight them as victims of the treasonous former government and a duplicitous French ally who had sent them to their deaths.30 Despite this the Russians had at least been part of the original alliance since the beginning of the war and, as a result, afforded a measure of respect by Britain and France as a necessary part of the strategic balance. The same was not true of nations who joined the war effort after August 1914. The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance of 1386 meant that Portugal could conceivably enter the war at any point following a British request for aid. The reality though was that the British had no interest in a Portuguese presence on what was already proving a crowded Western Front. The Portuguese made several attempts to insert themselves into the conflict, most notably when the French requested the Portuguese collection of 75 mm artillery pieces and were told that the guns would only be sent if they were accompanied firstly by Portuguese artillery soldiers and then by further infantry as well. Unsure if the Portuguese were serious, the British and French called their bluff. What resulted was a drawn out 18 month crisis which saw the Portuguese government collapse and a partial coup occur as the country tore itself apart politically over the issue of whether to intervene in the conflict or not.31 The crisis was largely avoidable not least because the French soon discovered that the 75 mm guns in question had been adapted to use different ammunition than the norm and as a result were effectively useless to them.32 The resulting Portuguese government found themselves in a political and hierarchical bind. They desired to enter the war in order to reinvent their position on the European stage and shake off the perceived constraints placed upon them by Britain, but they could not do so without, at the very least, the support and consent of Britain. By being forced to remain ‘neutral’ they effectively ceded all control of their policy in this matter, and others, to Britain and had to accept a relegated status. Nominally a neutral state the Portuguese were effectively duty bound to accept virtually any request made to them by London or risk a breach of the alliance treaty that guaranteed their safety. At the same time many were acutely aware that, if Britain were to lose the war, Portuguese colonies in Africa might make for disposable bargaining chips between London and Berlin.33 The sentiment in Lisbon was that London was

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comfortably content with the current arrangement and saw no reason to allow Portugal the leeway to expand its own horizons.34 The eventual solution to this impasse was for Portugal to go further in their acceptance of London’s requests than might otherwise have been expected. Citing ‘an urgent economic necessity’ (a position supposedly guaranteed by the Portuguese-German treaty of commerce) in February 1916, the Portuguese began seizing German merchant shipping. The background to this had been the request by the British that the Portuguese requisition German shipping. When the Portuguese pointed out that their own ‘economic need’ would be served by seizing only one ship rather than seventy, the British responded that, in future, they could not guarantee the use of British ships in trade with Portugal.35 This message, which made no mention of the actual alliance in existence between the two nations, caused panic in Lisbon at the fear of being left effectively defenseless at home and in Africa. In response, eventually, the Portuguese acquiesced and seized German shipping and, within weeks were presented with a German declaration of war on March 9, 1916.36 In reality, Portugal and Germany had already been fighting in Africa after two Portuguese military expeditions to Mozambique and Angola in 1914, where they sustained heavy casualties and were effectively overlooked from 1916 onwards in favor of the training and provision of what would become the Portuguese Expeditionary Force (CEP).37 To create this new fighting force 50,000 officers and men were mobilized and trained for deployment to the Western Front. The preparations for this fighting force actually began in October 1914 following the initial French request for the 75 mm artillery. Following repeated pauses in the years afterwards the training of the CEP was accelerated after the declaration of war in March 1916. As French observers of the training believed that the Portuguese could be ‘useful,’ Joffre favored a deployment akin to the REF which would see the CEP deployed among the French. The British seemed far less interested in allowing this new fighting force to participate on the Western Front but, after realizing the French may simply acquire them for themselves, eventually accepted the notion of them being deployed to the Western Front in exchange for them being positioned in the British sector.38 Upon their arrival on the Western Front in soon became clear that the CEP were a marginalized force in both their makeup and their reason for deployment:

188  C. KEMPSHALL [d]espite the small size of the CEP (an incomplete army corps), [it] is of interest to historians of the Great War because it provides a unique perspective of that conflict: for Portugal the war was a limited, and not a total, war against a distant enemy; there was no consensus in Portugal over the need to send an expeditionary corps to France or even, among a significant and vocal minority, to be at war with Germany. Moreover, the Portuguese army reflected this lack of consensus, a substantial part of its officers believing the country’s intervention to have been the result of partisan policy, born out of the material and political interests of a few, and not of national necessity. Finally, the CEP was, in its social and cultural composition, an exception on the Western Front … as an example of a largely rural and illiterate population, whose experience of war was limited to African campaigns, it naturally faced greater difficulties than its Allied counterparts in adjusting to the mass industrial battlefields of France.39

As an Expeditionary Force made up of rural and illiterate soldiers who were then transported from their homeland into a foreign war, the men of the CEP underwent a process of detachment very much akin to the REF’s. For the Portuguese the low literacy levels made substantial communications impossible, and the gulf in language structure and alphabet had the same impact on the Russians. Their experience was further complicated by an ongoing conflict over Portuguese identity and autonomy with the British military. The leader of the CEP until July 1918 was General Tamagnini de Abreu. Under Tamagini’s leadership the CEP was coordinating with the British but, much to the annoyance of their larger ally, the Portuguese had developed a tendency to dodge any responsibility for their own errors and shortcomings.40 As a result, the British believed that in the event of an enemy attack on their position, the CEP would break.41 Soldiers within the British army certainly did not hold a particularly high opinion of the CEP. One British Captain reckoned them ‘a dirty frowsy looking lot’ who ‘had proved quite useless in defense at Neuve Chapelle and had lost us many miles of ground.’42 At the start of April 1918, another British soldier reported that the British High Command had issued orders to stop their soldiers referring to the Portuguese as ‘Pork and Beans.’43 Despite this some British soldiers believed that if the Portuguese could be separated from their ineffective officers they could, as during the Peninsula War, be converted into useful allies.44 By September of 1918 Lieutenant Gameson noted, with some sympathy, that further measures had been taken to prevent the apparent abuse of the CEP.

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It was in September, I think, that the famous G.R.O. was issued, and I quote from memory: “On no account in future will our oldest and most gallant Allies of Portugal be referred to as ‘Those bloody Portuguese’” Bloody Portuguese was not the only gibe. The tragic phrase “Missing, believed killed” was transmuted to “Missing, believed at Boulogne!” There was no malice in these gibes. I believe that the unfortunate troops had had the bad luck to be flung into a very sticky patch with no previous experience at all of serious fighting.45

In the eyes of the British the CEP was the military manifestation of Portugal’s power and place in the European hierarchy. Whereas it had once been one of the Great Powers of Europe, Portugal’s golden age had long passed by the onset of the First World War. A fallen Great Power that could only muster such a small army was ripe for derision and the British response to these men should be understood within this framework. With likely little actual knowledge about Portugal or the Portuguese, British soldiers could fall back on something they did know; the current power dynamic of Europe. Whereas France might, grudgingly, be considered a form of equal, Portugal most definitely was not. As a result, the British attitude toward the CEP becomes a comment on the apparent Portuguese unworthiness of being an ally. The Portuguese prewar position had been very useful for the British government and Portuguese desperation to enter the war had not been deemed in Britain’s best interests. Now that they were involved very few in either the British high command or the British ranks seemed remotely convinced as to the fighting merits of their longest serving ally. While the British were writing off the Portuguese, within the CEP a power struggle was underway to try and remove Tamagnini from power because many Portuguese believed that he had been reduced to little more than ‘simply doing the bidding of the British High Command.’46 In the eyes of Portuguese politicians and some officers, Britain had been able to subsume the identity of the CEP to such an extent that ‘the English now have … generals, especially Tamagnini, saying amen to whatever they want, and not standing up to the resistance offered by the British to the complete organization of our CEP, and accepting what is, for us, a true humiliation.’47 The Portuguese issues with autonomy and identity were not far removed from those which had so troubled the Russians. National pride required at least a measure of goodwill and respect from either the

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British or the French but the situation they encountered was far removed from that which they had either expected or hoped for. However, while the REF actually acquitted itself well militarily and was eventually brought down by the revolutions in Russia, the CEP’s collapse was brought about by the damage inflicted by the Germans at Lys in April 1918. However, it was not the number of men who became casualties that dramatically weakened the CEP in the German attack, it was the number who were taken prisoner. Only 395 soldiers and officers were killed during the German offensive but 6585 were taken prisoner (of which 270 were officers), indicating a potential collapse in morale.48 So badly weakened was the Portuguese force that it would not return to action until November 1918 when the war was effectively won. The Portuguese defeat at Lys was not an anomaly in itself and was contextualized by widespread allied retreats after March 21. The British themselves had been forced to give way by the onset of Operation Michael but they did not seem aware of the extent to which French soldiers blamed them for the retreats of 1918 following the German Spring Offensives. However, when it came to assessing allied performance and retreats in the latter years of the war the British could often be quite scathing. After being deployed to Italy at the end of 1917 to bolster their front following the defeat at Caporetto, British soldiers wrote about how they despised the ‘ice-cream vendors’ and ‘OrangeSuckers’ of the Italian army who appeared shabby and defeated.49 The language used by these soldiers was not just a result of the Italians’ military shortcomings but also of perceived national characteristics which cast them onto the periphery of the allied hierarchy. In the words of one British soldier, his fellows had a ‘whimsical contempt for all that is not British.’50 Evaluations as to the success or failure of expeditionary forces on the Western Front become further complicated by the American declaration of war in 1917. Once war was declared and the decision was taken that America would be dispatching an expeditionary force to Europe, a decision that was not a foregone conclusion at first, it became obvious that this army would need to be trained quickly in what to expect or arrival on the battlefields of the Western Front. Obviously, Britain and France were the best placed of the nations making up the alliance to offer this training and both dispatched army officers to America to begin the process of preparing the AEF for the war.

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However, although they would provide practical training for battle the differences in how the British and French approached the war, how they viewed and rationalized it, and how they thought of their friends and allies would also be transmitted to the American recruits under their control. As an extension of this arrangement, it is also necessary to consider that the AEF’s experience begins while still on American soil and is therefore a variation on normal ideas of ‘the home front.’ It is with Britain that the firmest notion of the ‘home front’ is most commonly associated. The English Channel provided a clear geographic distance between the war and life at home so as to allow the British to operate in separate spheres. The home front became the place that soldiers wanted to return to and where the production of material for the war was undertaken safely away from the dangers of the front. By contrast, despite large parts of France being removed from the fighting on the Western Front, as an invaded nation, their ‘home’ was not a safe place far from the fighting and significant portions formed an occupied land that needed to be liberated. Significant parts of France’s industrial heartland had fallen into German hands. Some French soldiers were able to return home during their leave, but this was only possible for those whose homes were not on the wrong side of the line. So: what of America? The British and French soldiers sent there to provide training were about as far from the fighting as you could now get, but how could they be considered to be on the home front when they were not at home? Similarly, the widespread training the Americans were now undergoing meant that America was both part of the ‘home front’ and also linked to the training grounds and militarization evident in Europe. Additionally, the way training was divided up between Britain and France is an area in need of further research. It would have made both operational and logical sense for Britain and France to train the Americans in the aspects of warfare in which were most proficient. However, because of the nature of this particular alliance and the institutional egos on display an admission that one nation was stronger in a certain aspect can also be viewed as an admission that your own nation was weaker at it. Because of the need for trained and prepared men in Europe, the training in America does not appear to have been easy on any of those involved. The 47th US Infantry was trained by French officers named Captain DuPont and Colonel Roudiez.51 Roudiez rapidly became known for his repeated use of regimental reviews in order to bring the American soldiers up to

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acceptable standards, once having the regiments paraded three times in a single afternoon. The British and French trainers would no doubt have seen that the process of moving from civilians into being soldiers, and functioning within a system of military discipline and the army institution, was going to be a crucial part of preparing the men for war. For the Americans however, it also proved to be one of the most difficult aspects to acclimatize to as indicated in the history of the 115th American Infantry Regiment, which recorded that their soldiers struggled to abandon the habit of thinking for themselves.52 The idea that the British and French were not teaching the Americans relevant skills became something of a running theme in the American records. The official history of the 120th Infantry recalled that most of their trench warfare training ‘proved of little value in active service.’53 This was a belief shared by their commanders. Major General Dickman explained how, although the Americans had absorbed the lessons handed down to them from the French and the British, ‘they all along had entertained, from the private to the Commander-in-Chief, fighting theories of their own, quite different from those of the trench warfare that had paralyzed the offensive spirit of the allies.’54 The monotony of their training and the conditions which these new recruits had to experience while still in America may well have helped them prepare for trench warfare in ways they had not anticipated. The French were, perhaps understandably, incredibly keen to get American soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean and then incorporate them into the existing allied forces. To an extent the British position was similar. However, the actual nature of their deployment remained a source of controversy within the Allied armies. Both Britain and France wanted American soldiers to be amalgamated into their own armies to replace the losses already sustained. General Pershing was adamant that Americans would fight as a distinct army in their own right. As this argument was playing out, the American forces continued their training in America. Britain and France wanted them brought into the fray quickly, but both acknowledged that if their training was rushed or half-completed then this new army was unlikely to achieve anything. What this meant for the Americans was a prolonged period of training in America. The bulk of the AEF did not even begin arriving in France until after the Germans’ Spring Offensive of 1918 had begun in March. The reality for many American soldiers following the declaration of war was ongoing training, repetition of exercises and, when the winter

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of 1917 arrived, freezing conditions in training camps. African-American soldiers who had already undergone difficult circumstances during their induction to the American military in short order found themselves removed from the army altogether and gifted en masse to the French as an attempt by Pershing to solve the racial dynamics in the AEF.55 This was not the heroic experience that American soldiers had expected when they volunteered or were drafted, but extended experience of such conditions would, from a pragmatic military point of view, serve as a useful prologue to fighting in the trenches of France and Belgium. The British in particular were taking every opportunity to teach the Americans some of the perhaps shadier approaches to fighting this sort of war. Some American soldiers wrote on how they were instructed by British trainers to refuse acceptance of any German soldier attempting to surrender and, instead, to kill these men by bayonet so as not to risk being tricked.56 Although some Americans would take these lessons on board and attempt to copy the British, a great many more found it difficult to warm to their British allies. The growing feeling among the men of the AEF was that the soldiers of the British army were arrogant and patronizing. One American would write that over time they would come to respect the British and the great efforts they had clearly undertaken during the war, but Americans were never able to fully like them.57 The British approach to the Americans can perhaps be understood both as a manifestation of Great Power politics and also a growing sense of dislike toward their new ally based upon the actions of British soldiers. The British and French armies had used their alliance as useful cover during the war to occasionally rile each other in a manner that seemed designed to test whether or not their ally was still worthy of being considered a Great Power. The prewar Great Power system had often operated through a set of carefully timed interactions between nations to size each other up. Britain in particular carried this system into their dealings with most other nations during the war. The arrival of America, not one of the European Great Powers, but bearing all the hallmarks of an emerging giant, distorted the existing order of things. To the British the Americans inevitably appeared as nouveau riche; having both the wealth and the status but not possessing an understanding of European Power norms. More concerning to the British was, upon the arrival of the Americans in France, that their soldiers, despite the efforts in training, appeared ill-disposed toward obeying orders and still had too much fondness for the freedoms they had enjoyed back home.58

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As a result, the British were not averse to finding ways of using the Americans to needle their French allies. Some early relations between French and American soldiers in 1918 were soured by the tendency of the American soldiers to refer to the French as ‘Frogs,’ ‘Froggies’ or variations on that theme.59 This term for identifying the French did not appear to exist in the writings of these same American soldiers until they had undergone some contact with the British. The use of nicknames like this potentially played a part in the souring of relations between French and American troops toward the end of 1918.60 For their part American soldiers then also became annoyed that the British would alternate between calling them ‘Sammies,’ ‘Yankees,’ and ‘Doughboys’ (and invariably applying the wrong term to the wrong group) which suggested that some British soldiers were either mischief making or struggling to grasp the fractured nature of their allies’ national identities.61 The framework for cooperation between America and France had been constructed much earlier in the war, beginning with the initial American volunteers who had joined the French army, continuing with the Escadrille Lafayette fighter squadron and culminating in the decision in 1917 to send Marshal Joffre to America to rally further support for France and the war effort.62 Additionally ‘in sharp contrast to England, where Pershing and the Americans had “attracted little attention”’ the arrival of the AEF in France was greeted by wild scenes of celebration and mutual appreciation.63 Such festivities extended to the French announcement that they wished to stage a ‘massive celebration in honor of American independence’ on July 4.64 As the AEF arrived in France it was decided following heated debates involving the Americans, British, and French that ‘American battalions and regiments’ would ‘be placed temporarily with French divisions for training purposes’ and ‘in a limited fashion’ with the British.65 The Americans had been warmly welcomed into France at almost every level with strong references being made by both sides to their joint revolutionary heritage. The fallout of the ‘amalgamation’ crisis regarding how the American soldiers would be used resulted in most American soldiers being, at least temporarily, integrated with the French army in a remarkably short space of time. These Americans achieved a level of proximity and interaction with the French in a remarkably short space of time that the British never really matched. By the time, the French and Americans were operating together on the battlefield they were already forging strong relationships that were only enhanced by the perceived turmoil of the BEF during the German

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Spring Offensives of 1918. Furthermore, by undergoing a period of integration with the French before being reconstituted into their own national army the arriving Americans were the beneficiaries of a system that would have been ideal for the British during their arrival in 1914. That being said, Franco-American relations were not always without incident and there are reports of violent brawls between the two sides.66 In addition to the attempts by some to sabotage relations between the Americans and the French by priming Americans to use terms like ‘Frogs’ to describe their ally, British soldiers would also at times react to their American allies with violence.67 However, as previously alluded to, the experiences of African American soldiers in the First World War differed quite dramatically from those of their countrymen. They were placed into self-contained regiments in order to avoid contact with white soldiers other than their officers. When they were moved to France, the African-American soldiers were presented to the French without being required to return to the main American army. Although most served in labor units at docks, along railroads and other support locations, some 40,000 of the approximately 200,000 of these soldiers who served in France saw combat in the 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions.68 What was originally an act of dismissal by the American authorities actually turned out to be hugely beneficial for these soldiers for reasons that probably also link back to their original training. Views of AfricanAmerican soldiers within their own army were marked by the type of racial prejudice that was common in America at the time and the views of British soldiers and officers toward them, both in training camps and at the front, were not much different. The French however, had a much longer history of utilizing imperial and colonial forces in their armies and largely did not view them as being any different from any other soldiers.69 What resulted from this was a level of equal treatment that most African-Americans had probably never experienced in their lives to date. This was then further married to the fact that the French army was far more skilled than the American army. As a result, the AfricanAmerican combat units became recognized and rewarded by the French army for their martial skill in a way that the American army was unwilling to do.70 Men such as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ or the 171 AfricanAmerican soldiers who were awarded the French Legion of Honor would have been first exposed to some of these different French attitudes in their training camps in America. Having experienced life much

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closer to the center of power and events than the extreme periphery to which they were accustomed, these black soldiers would later return to a home front that did not appreciate this new order of things. To prevent black soldiers from becoming comfortable in their new position in the allied hierarchy, the American army employed violence against AfricanAmericans both in France and back home following the allied victory in 1918.71 The experiences of the different Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front during the First World War were not simply defined along military lines. The ability to interact with their allies, the willingness of those allies more powerful to interact with them at all, and the social context of these interactions all played a key role in the formation of wartime experience. Within the Western Front there existed a hierarchy of nations, and the success of an expeditionary force could rely on where each nation fell in this hierarchy and their ability to traverse beyond their assigned niche. For those men within nations deemed worthy of recognition, such as Britain, early problems with France could be overcome because of the military necessity of incorporating these soldiers. For those the next level down in the hierarchy, such as the United States of America, the emerging size of their expeditionary force would also help overcome some issues with Britain and France, but the fact that they were almost impervious to European politics could cause resentment, and this is particularly obvious within British opinions of the AEF. Such an imperviousness did not apply to all. For those men in the Portuguese or Russian Expeditionary Forces who were either too small in number or too small in power they could find themselves mocked and derided at best, or potentially used as cannon fodder and placed under surveillance at worst. For some within multiple allied armies, however, positions could be both fluid and restrictive at the same time. AfricanAmerican soldiers within the AEF soon found themselves inhabiting multiple levels within the allied hierarchy. Shunned by an army that did not want them they found a measure of acceptance within the French army and flourished. However, this success would then be greeted with horror by AEF commanders who quickly used violence to try and reestablish the peacetime social hierarchy of America. The AfricanAmericans, like both the Russians and the Portuguese, would learn that, although for different reasons, some stereotypes and hierarchies were not yet in a position to be challenged.

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Notes 1.  Lord Herbert Kitchener, ‘Instructions for the General Officer Commanding the Expeditionary Force Proceeding to France,’ 1914, War Office Records, WO 32/5590, National Archives, Kew. 2. William Philpott, Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–18 (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 6. 3. Philpott, Anglo-French Relations, p. 6; Doughty also gives a good overview of the creation of Plan XVII; Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (London: Harvard Belknap, 2005), pp. 37–38. 4. Martin J. Farrar, News from the Front (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), p. 6. 5. Lieutenant Geoffrey A. Loyd, ‘Typescript Diary,’ 1914, IWM: DOCS— 98/2/1, Imperial War Museum, August 14, 1914. 6. For more information about these reporting restrictions, see Farrar, News from the Front. 7. Chris Kempshall, British, French and American Relations on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 58–61. 8. Kempshall, British, French and American Relations, pp. 44–45. 9. Captain Walter Fyrth, ‘Manuscript Diary,’ 1914, IWM: DOCS—97/4/1, Imperial War Museum, August 20, 1914. 10.  Sapper Hugh Bellew, ‘Manuscript Diary,’ 1914, IWM: DOCS— 91/23/1, Imperial War Museum, August 25 and 27, 1914. 11. Bellew, ‘Diary,’ September 3, 1914. 12. ‘[T]hey became known as the poilus, or ‘hairy ones.’ With unruly hair and beards or mustaches [sic] grown at the front, soldiers and civilians alike embraced a term that connected the defenders of the country to Samson from the Bible, who likewise drew his strength from his hair. The poilus created their own world, with its own rules and strategies of survival, separate from yet intimately connected to both the generals’ war and the war of the civilians in the interior.’ Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane AudoinRouzeau, and Annette Becker, France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 76. 13.  Chris Kempshall, ‘Le Poilu,’ in 1914–1918 Online-International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel et al., last updated March 29, 2016, https://doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10871. 14. Edward Spears, Liaison 1914 (London: Cassell, 2000), p. 69. 15. Spears, Liaison, p. 69. 16. Fernand Laurent, Chez Nos Allies Britanniques (Paris: Boivin and Ce Editeurs, 1917), p. 45. This observation, drawn from a wider statement on the British, by Laurent was picked up by both The Daily Mirror, September 17, 1914, p. 3 and The Times, September 17, 1914, p. 7.

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17. Peter Parker, The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public-School Ethos (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), pp. 37–38. 18. Kempshall, British, French and American Relations, chap. 3. 19.  Elizabeth Greenhalgh, ‘“Parade Ground Soldiers”: French Army Assessments of the British on the Somme in 1916,’ Journal of Military History 63, no. 2 (April 1999): pp. 283–312. 20. Kempshall, British, French and American Relations, pp. 210–14. 21. Jean-Yves Le Naour, 1918: L’étrange Victoire (Paris: Perrin, 2016), p. 176. 22. Jamie H. Cockfield, With Snow on Their Boots (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), chaps. 1 and 2. It is worth noting that the agreement originally struck between the French and Russians intended for around 400,000 Russian troops to be deployed in France, but this deal was never fulfilled. 23. Cockfield, With Snow. 24. Cockfield, p. 42. The 2nd and 4th Brigades were deployed there in 1916. 25. Cockfield, pp. 38–39. 26. Cockfield, pp. 42–44. 27. Cockfield, p. 70. 28. Cockfield, p. 71. 29. Cockfield, p. 71. 30.  Sofya Anisimova, ‘The Russian Expeditionary Force in Memory and Commemoration: Comparative Case-Study of France and Russia,’ Presentation, 1918–2018: An International Conference: The End of the War & the Reshaping of a Century, University of Wolverhampton, September 6–8, 2018. 31. Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, Portugal 1914–1926: From the First World War to Military Dictatorship (Exeter: HiPLAM, 2004), pp. 11–20. 32. Meneses, Portugal 1914–1926, pp. 12–13. 33. Meneses, pp. 21–22. 34. Meneses, pp. 20–21. 35. Meneses, pp. 22–24. 36. Meneses, pp. 20–21. 37. Meneses, pp. 33–47. 38. Meneses, pp. 50–54. 39. Filipe Ribiero de Meneses, ‘“All of Us Are Looking Forward to Leaving”: The Censored Correspondence of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in France, 1917–18,’ European History Quarterly 30, no. 3 (July 2000): pp. 333–55. 40. Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘Anglo-Portuguese Relations on the Western Front: The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps and the British High Command (Part I),’ First World War Studies 8, nos. 2–3 (2017): p. 175. 41.  This prediction would eventually come true in April of 1918 during the German attacks at Lys. Meneses, ‘“All of Us Are Looking Forward to Leaving”,’ p. 341; Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘Anglo-Portuguese

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Relations on the Western Front: The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps and the British High Command (Part II),’ First World War Studies 8, nos. 2–3 (2017): p. 199. 42.  Captain W. Graham Wallace, ‘Memoirs of 1914–1918,’ 1935, IWM: DOCS—86/9/1, Imperial War Museum Dated around the end of March. 43.  Harry Gore, ‘Transcript Memoir,’ 1930s, IWM: Docs—01/36/1, Imperial War Museum 04/1918. 44. Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘“Not Only Useless, but Dangerous?” The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in France in the Aftermath of the Battle of La Lys, 9 April 1918,’ Journal of Military History 82, no. 4 (October 2018): p. 1159; Miguel Freire, ‘Portuguese in Flanders, 1918: A Defeat Abroad Amongst Revolutions on Homeland,’ Presentation, 1918–2018: The End of the War & the Reshaping of a Century, University of Wolverhampton, September 6–8, 2018; and Miguel Freire, ‘Anos de Óbice à Mentoria Estrangeira: O Caso Do CEP 1916–1918,’ Presentation, XXI Colóquio de História Militar, Lisbon, 2012. 45. Captain L. Gameson, ‘Typescript Memoir,’ 1923, 1922, IWM: DOCS— PP/MCR/C47 & P395–396 & Con Shelf, Imperial War Museum, Dated September 1918. 46. Meneses, ‘Anglo-Portuguese Relations (Part I),’ p. 181. 47. Meneses, ‘Anglo-Portuguese Relations (Part I),’ p. 181. 48. Meneses, Portugal 1914–1926, pp. 62–64. 49. John Dillon, ‘Allies Are a Tiresome Lot’ the British Army in Italy in the First World War, Wolverhampton Military Studies, no. 12 (Solihull, West Midlands: Helion & Company, 2015), p. 63. 50. Dillon, p. 63. 51. James E. Pollard, 47th US Infantry: A History (Saginaw, MI: Seeman & Peters, 1919), pp. 17–18. 52.  Chaplain F. C. Reynolds and Chaplain W. M. F. McLaughlin, 115th Infantry, U.S.A., in the World War (Baltimore: The Read Taylor Co., 1920), pp. 35–36. 53.  Major John O. Walker, Thomas Fauntleroy, and William A. Graham, Official History of the 120th Infantry ‘3rd North Carolina’ 30th Division, from August 5, 1917, to April 17, 1919 (Virginia: J.P. Bell Company, n.d.), p. 7. 54. Joseph T. Dickman, The Great Crusade: A Narrative of the World War (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1927), p. 140. 55. Kempshall, British, French and American Relations, pp. 186–87. 56.  Stephen A. Banks and Corporal Elmer Dewey, Doing My Duty: Corporal Elmer Dewey—One National Guard Doughboy’s Experiences During the Pancho Villa Punitive Campaign and World War I (Springfield, VA: S.A. Banks, 2011), pp. 130–31; Reynolds and McLaughlin, 115th Infantry, p. 39.

200  C. KEMPSHALL 57. Russell L. Stultz, History of the 80th Blue Ridge Division in World War I A.E.F., ed. Bill J. Krehbiel (n.d.), chap. 12. 58. Wallace, ‘Memoirs of 1914–1918,’ August–September 1918. 59. Frank Palmer Sibley, With the Yankee Division in France (Boston: Little, Brown, 1919), p. 86. 60. Kempshall, British, French and American Relations, p. 250. 61. Kempshall, p. 182. 62. See Robert B. Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms; America and France in the Great War (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003), chaps. 1 and 2; Robert B. Bruce, ‘America Embraces France: Marshal Joseph Joffre and the French Mission to the United States, April–May 1917,’ The Journal of Military History 66, no. 2 (2002). 63. Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms, pp. 69, 90. 64. Bruce, p. 91. 65. Bruce, p. 170. 66. Robert Tombs and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy (London: William Heinemann, 2006), p. 479. 67.  Private Robert Cude, ‘Typescript Diary,’ 1921, IWM: DOCS—PP/ MCR/C48, Imperial War Museum, November 21, 1918. 68. David R. Woodward, The American Army and the First World War, Armies of the Great War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 180. 69. See the following work by Richard Fogarty; Richard Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918, War, Society, Culture Series (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Richard Fogarty, ‘The French Empire,’ in Empires at War: 1911– 1923, The Greater War, ed. Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 70. Woodward, The American Army, pp. 182–83. 71. See Arthur W. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine: The Story of New York’s Colored Volunteers (New York: Covici Friede, 1936), 351–54; Malcolm D. Aitken, ‘Personal Experiences of the War,’ n.d., 28, USAHEC WWI 273 (2nd Division—Folder 3), U.S. Army Heritage and Education Centre; Events summarized in: Kempshall, British, French and American Relations, pp. 252–53.

Bibliography Archival Sources Imperial War Museum

Bellew, Sapper Hugh. Manuscript Diary, 1914. IWM: DOCS—91/23/1. Cude, Private Robert. Typescript Diary, 1921. IWM: DOCS—PP/MCR/C48.

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Fyrth, Captain Walter. Manuscript Diary, 1914. IWM: DOCS—97/4/1. Gameson, Captain L. Typescript Memoir, 1923, 1922. IWM: DOCS—PP/ MCR/C47 & P395–396 & Con Shelf. Gore, Harry. Transcript Memoir, 1930s. IWM: Docs—01/36/1. Loyd, Lieutenant Geoffrey A. Typescript Diary, 1914. IWM: DOCS—98/2/1. Wallace, Captain W. Graham. Memoirs of 1914–1918, 1935. IWM: DOCS—86/9/1.

Other Sources Aitken, Malcolm D. Personal Experiences of the War. USAHEC WWI 273 (2nd Division—Folder 3). U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, n.d. Anisimova, Sofya. “The Russian Expeditionary Force in Memory and Commemoration: Comparative Case-Study of France and Russia.” Paper presented at 1918–2018: An International Conference: The End of the War & the Reshaping of a Century, University of Wolverhampton, September 6–8, 2018. Banks, Stephen A., and Corporal Elmer Dewey. Doing My Duty: Corporal Elmer Dewey—One National Guard Doughboy’s Experiences During the Pancho Villa Punitive Campaign and World War I. Springfield, VA: S.A. Banks, 2011. Bruce, Robert B. A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003. Cockfield, Jamie H. With Snow on Their Boots. London: Macmillan Press, 1998. Declercq, Christophe, and Julian Walker, eds. Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War. Palgrave Studies in Languages at War. Basingstoke and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Declercq, Christophe, and Julian Walker, eds. Languages and the First World War: Representation and Memory. Palgrave Studies in Languages at War. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Dickman, Joseph T. The Great Crusade: A Narrative of the World War. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1927. Dillon, John. ‘Allies Are a Tiresome Lot’: The British Army in Italy in the First World War. Wolverhampton Military Studies, no. 12. Solihull, West Midlands: Helion & Company, 2015. Doughty, Robert A. Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War. London: Belknap, 2005. Farrar, Martin J. News from the Front. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1998. Fogarty, Richard. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918. War/Society/Culture. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Fogarty, Richard. “The French Empire.” In Empires at War: 1911–1923, edited by Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, 109–29. The Greater War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

202  C. KEMPSHALL Freire, Miguel. “Anos de Óbice à Mentoria Estrangeira: O Caso Do CEP 1916– 1918.” Paper presented at XXI Colóquio de História Militar, Lisbon, 2012. Freire, Miguel. “Portuguese in Flanders, 1918: A Defeat Abroad Amongst Revolutions on Homeland.” Paper presented at 1918–2018: An International Conference: The End of the War & the Reshaping of a Century, University of Wolverhampton, September 6–8, 2018. Greenhalgh, Elizabeth. “‘Parade Ground Soldiers’: French Army Assessments of the British on the Somme in 1916.” Journal of Military History 63, no. 2 (April 1999): 283–312. Kempshall, Chris. British, French and American Relations on the Western Front, 1914–1918. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Kempshall, Chris. “Le Poilu.” In 1914–1918 Online–International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson. Last updated March 29, 2016. https://doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10871. Laurent, Fernand. Chez Nos Allies Britanniques. Paris: Boivin and Ce Editeurs, 1917. Le Naour, Jean-Yves. 1918: L’étrange Victoire. Paris: Perrin, 2016. Little, Arthur W. From Harlem to the Rhine: The Story of New York’s Colored Volunteers. New York: Covici Friede, 1936. Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro de. “‘All of Us Are Looking Forward to Leaving’: The Censored Correspondence of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in France, 1917–18.” European History Quarterly 30, no. 3 (July 2000): 333–55. Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro de. “Anglo-Portuguese Relations on the Western Front: The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps and the British High Command (Part I).” First World War Studies 8, nos. 2–3 (2017): 173–87. Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro de. “Anglo-Portuguese Relations on the Western Front: The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps and the British High Command (Part II).” First World War Studies 8, nos. 2–3 (2017): 189–204. Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro de. “‘Not Only Useless, but Dangerous?’ The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in France in the Aftermath of the Battle of La Lys, 9 April 1918.” Journal of Military History 82, no. 4 (October 2018): 1149–74. Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro de. Portugal 1914–1926: From the First World War to Military Dictatorship. Exeter: HiPLAM, 2004. Parker, Peter. The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public-School Ethos. Hambledon and London: Continuum, 2007. Philpott, William. Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–18. London: Macmillan, 1996. Pollard, James E. 47th US Infantry: A History. Saginaw, MI: Seeman & Peters, 1919. Reynolds, Chaplain F. C., and Chaplain W. M. F. McLaughlin. 115th Infantry, U.S.A., in the World War. Baltimore: The Read Taylor Co., 1920.

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Sibley, Frank Palmer. With the Yankee Division in France. Boston: Little, Brown, 1919. Smith, Leonard V., Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Annette Becker. France and the Great War, 1914–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Spears, Edward. Liaison 1914. London: Cassell, 2000. Stultz, Russell L. History of the 80th Blue Ridge Division in World War I A.E.F. Edited by Bill J. Krehbiel, n.d. Tombs, Robert, and Isabelle Tombs. That Sweet Enemy. London: William Heinemann, 2006. Walker, Major John O. Thomas Fauntleroy, and William A. Graham. Official History of the 120th Infantry “3rd North Carolina” 30th Division, from August 5, 1917, to April 17, 1919. Virginia: J.P. Bell Company, n.d.

CHAPTER 8

Empire, Oil, and Bavarians: The German Expeditionary Force in the Caucasus, 1918–1919 Gavin Wiens

At just before six o’clock in the evening on June 6, 1918, the steamship Corcovado slowly made its way out of the harbor at Sevastopol, through a cordon of captured Russian surface craft and submarines, and into the Black Sea. Its destination was the Georgian port of Poti. Crowded on board the converted passenger liner were twenty officers and 1060 other ranks of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion and nearly five hundred men of the Prussian 10th Sturm Battalion. Over the preceding two days, several hundred horses, numerous field kitchens and wagons, and enough ammunition to enable the small expeditionary force to operate independently for several weeks had been loaded onto the ship. The farewell celebration was short. In a speech to the departing men, the commander of the German troops in the Crimea, General Robert Kosch, emphasized the mission’s importance: the Bavarians and Prussians had been selected as representatives of German culture to the people of the Caucasus. Three cheers for Kaiser Wilhelm II concluded the brief festivities and, as the Corcovado steamed out of the harbor, a band struck

G. Wiens (*)  University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_8

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up a martial tune on the wharf.1 This scene was repeated several times over the following weeks. At the end of July, two more Jäger battalions departed Sevastopol for the eastern coast of the Black Sea and, in the first half of September, an entire Bavarian cavalry brigade— strengthened by artillery, machine-gun, engineer, communications, and medical units—was transferred from the southern Ukraine to Georgia. By mid-September 1918, the force’s commander, the Bavarian General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, had almost 19,000 men at his disposal.2 This buildup of troops took place over two thousand miles from German General Headquarters in Belgium and at a time when Germany’s military situation was rapidly deteriorating. In late March 1918, General Erich Ludendorff, the First Quartermaster General in the Supreme Command, launched a series of offensives against the British and French armies on the Western Front. Considered by many German officers to be their “last card,” these offensives were preceded by extensive preparations. Thousands of men had been transferred to Belgium and France from Eastern Europe and massive amounts of munitions and supplies had been stockpiled behind the front lines. Although the first weeks witnessed spectacular advances, neither the British nor the French were driven out of the war and, when the German offensives lost their momentum, the Allies, bolstered by the arrival of fresh American troops, counterattacked. These limited successes had been purchased at an enormous cost: between the end of March and mid-July, the German armies in the West suffered around one million casualties. Under these circumstances, many soldiers simply stopped fighting. In the final months of the war, “shirking” became a mass movement and a huge number of men—perhaps as many as 750,000 to one million—lingered in field hospitals or supply depots behind the front, separated themselves from their replacement units, or simply wandered about the rear areas. Others surrendered.3 By early August, almost one month before the Bavarian cavalry arrived in Poti, the Supreme Command was forced to admit that its failed “last throw of the dice” had broken the army’s morale. Soldiers advancing toward the front were greeted with shouts of “strikebreakers” from their retreating comrades on what Ludendorff referred to as “the black day of the German army.”4 The Supreme Command’s decision to send an expeditionary force to the Caucasus in the summer of 1918 has been condemned by historians. Most have highlighted the chasm between objectives and available

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resources as evidence of the inability or unwillingness of Germany’s leaders to come to terms with the strategic situation. In his massive and controversial study of German war aims, Fritz Fischer pointed to a stubborn conviction in the economic importance of the Ostraum, or the western territories of the former Russian empire. Both the German Foreign Office and the Supreme Command believed that badly needed resources, such as copper, manganese, and oil, could be acquired in the Caucasus. The former’s pleas for a cautious approach and, later on, limited intervention were nevertheless ignored by the generals who argued that only hard power could secure the region’s economic riches.5 German soldiers were therefore transported across the Black Sea, a decision that Gerhard Ritter described as “grotesque” in view of the desperate situation confronting Germany and its allies in Western Europe, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, and Palestine.6 In reaching this decision, Winfried Baumgart has argued that Ludendorff’s personality was decisive. Many German officers shared their superior’s blind optimism in Georgia’s economic potential. Like the First Quartermaster General, they were also convinced that a Georgian army could augment the diminishing strength of the Central Powers and that a German presence in the Caucasus could create a “springboard” for the recapture of Bagdad and an eventual advance toward India, the most sensitive part of Britain’s empire. Despite these shared beliefs, Baumgart concludes that Ludendorff’s megalomania was the driving force behind the expedition.7 This chapter looks beyond Ludendorff’s motivation for sending troops across the Black Sea in the summer of 1918. It instead examines two aspects of Germany’s intervention in the Caucasus that have received little attention from scholars: the composition of the expeditionary force that began arriving at Poti in June and the challenges that confronted German soldiers on the ground. Ludendorff and his Prussian subordinates were operating within a structure that gave Germany’s federal states, particularly Bavaria, considerable influence over organizational and personnel decisions, even during wartime. This influence, which had created anxiety among Prussian military and political leaders before the war, ensured that Bavarian soldiers served together and often under their own officers. The Supreme Command’s decision to place a Bavarian general in command of an operation that was considered to be of crucial importance to the German war effort and the transfer of thousands of Bavarian soldiers from the Ukraine to Georgia therefore reflected the growing confidence of Prussian officers in their South German

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comrades. At the same time, the enormous demands of the Western Front and the scarcity of available troops in southern Russia ensured that Bavarians were not the only German soldiers sent to the Caucasus. As a result, learning to coexist with one another numbered among the challenges that the men of the “Imperial German Delegation in the Caucasus” faced on the ground.8 There were others. Communications and the transportation of men and material were often hamstrung by the chaotic political situation and the breakdown of social cohesion that accompanied the collapse of the Russian empire, while the hostility of Germany’s ally, Turkey, whose leaders pursued their own—and not entirely compatible—objectives in the region, created additional problems. German intervention in the Caucasus may have been motivated by Ludendorff’s megalomania and the Supreme Command’s unwillingness to come to terms with the strategic situation in the summer of 1918. Once the decision had been made to send an expeditionary force to Georgia, however, German planners were forced to contend with an array of organizational, logistical, and operational challenges that were exacerbated by the chasm between objectives and available resources in the last months of the First World War.

Germany and the Ostraum at the End of the First World War The eight months between the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk at the beginning of March 1918 and the collapse of the Central Powers in the same autumn represented, in the words of Jennifer Jenkins, the “German moment.” Having concluded peace with the Bolsheviks and as Russia descended into chaos and revolution, the Supreme Command could focus its attention on the Western Front where the upcoming spring offensives would hopefully bring an end to the war before the full weight of American manpower could be brought to bear against Germany. At the same time, much of Eastern Europe had been transformed into a German sphere of influence: at Brest-Litovsk, the Bolsheviks had been compelled to recognize the independence of Courland, Lithuania, and Poland. They also agreed to conclude a separate peace treaty with the Ukraine, thereby legitimizing the new government in Kiev. Meanwhile, Germany would occupy Estonia and Livonia. The power vacuum created by the withdrawal of Russian influence and

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the continuation of the war elsewhere encouraged the diplomats of the Foreign Office, the generals of the Supreme Command, and the planners of the German government’s economic office to broaden their gaze in the Ostraum. In February 1918, Austro-Hungarian and German forces advanced into the Ukraine, eventually setting up a puppet government that would ensure the delivery of foodstuffs to the starving populations of the Central Powers. In April, German troops intervened in Finland’s struggle against the Bolsheviks. This vast imperial project, which went far beyond the prewar plans for a Mitteleuropa, would expand still further in the following months and encompass the Caucasus, the Middle East, and Central Asia.9 Germany had interests in the Caucasus from the very beginning of the war. In the spring of 1915, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, who had served as the German consul general in Tiflis before the war, began to raise a Georgian Legion from among prisoners of war and refugees in Eastern Anatolia. This project, part of the Foreign Office’s broader “program for revolution,” sought to ignite an insurgency behind the Russian Caucasus front and create the nucleus for a pro-German Georgian army after the war. Opposition from Turkish commanders and the unwillingness of the German Foreign Office to spend the large sums required for the project frustrated these efforts and, in early 1917, the legion was dissolved.10 The Russian empire’s collapse and the creation of the Transcaucasian Republic, consisting of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, in the fall of 1917 led to renewed German interest in the region. The Foreign Office thereafter worked quickly to establish diplomatic relations with the new republic and thereby gain a share of its raw materials, especially manganese for the munitions industry and oil for the fleet. Securing control over Georgia’s railways, the oil production facilities around Baku on the Caspian Sea, and the 530-mile pipeline to the Black Sea port of Batum became crucial German objectives from the spring of 1918 onwards. Yet the Germans were not the only power with interests in the region. Encouraged by the Treaty of BrestLitovsk, which had assigned the districts of Ardahan, Batum, and Kars to the Turks, many in the Turkish officer corps, including the war minister, Enver Pasha, believed that the entire southern Caucasus should be incorporated into the Ottoman sphere of influence. In the spring of 1918, Enver’s brother, Nuri Pasha, began to recruit an “Army of Islam” from among the region’s Muslim population. Enver and Nuri

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were not simply interested in the Baku oilfields. Resigned to the loss of Mesopotamia and Palestine, they and other Turkish leaders had shifted their focus to extending Ottoman influence eastwards to the Caspian Sea and northwards into the Caucasus.11 When Turkish forces advanced into the southern Caucasus in the spring of 1918, the German Foreign Office immediately objected. At the end of April, the German military plenipotentiary in Constantinople, the Bavarian General Otto von Lossow, was sent to take part in the peace negotiations between the Transcaucasians and the Turks at Batum. The Foreign Office hoped that Lossow would assist the two sides in reaching a compromise over their shared borders. He instead adopted a belligerent stance toward the Turks and, at the end of May, signed a series of economic agreements with the Georgians, who, following the collapse of the Transcaucasian Republic, had declared their independence. At the same time, Lossow penned a series of reports that greatly exaggerated the advantages of German intervention in the Caucasus. In his view, German troops—perhaps one or two entire divisions— and a “politically skillful general” could oversee the consolidation of a “North Caucasus State,” organize and train the region’s manpower, and exploit its abundant natural resources.12 Lossow’s efforts had the desired effect. At the beginning of May 1918, Kress, who had recently been appointed the interim Bavarian military plenipotentiary at German General Headquarters in Belgium, was offered command of an expeditionary force to Georgia. In a discussion with Ludendorff on May 12, the First Quartermaster General outlined the objectives of the mission: in addition to the restoration of peace and order in the region and the acquisition of raw materials for German wartime industry, it was of the utmost importance to organize a Georgian army. Kress soon departed and, following a ten-day delay in Constantinople, arrived in the Georgian capital of Tiflis at the end of June.13

The Caucasus Expedition: By Design or Thrown Together? The composition and leadership of the expeditionary force that was assembled by the Supreme Command in the summer of 1918 bore the imprint of the German army’s federal structure. From the foundation of the German empire in 1871 until its collapse in November 1918, the

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army remained a collection of state-based contingents. This structure had emerged during the Wars of Unification (1864–1871) and as a result of the unwillingness of the Kings of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg to completely surrender their military authority to Prussia.14 On the one hand, Article 63 of the imperial constitution placed “the entire land power of the empire” under the command of the Kaiser, who was also the King of Prussia, “in war and peace.”15 This article formed the legal basis for the Kaiser’s Kommandogewalt, or power of command, and allowed the Prussian General Staff to assume control over the entire army in wartime. On the other hand, a series of military agreements concluded with Prussia between 1867 and 1870 safeguarded to varying degrees the authority of the Bavarian, Saxon, and Württemberg monarchs over personnel appointments, the deployment of units, and even the design of insignia and uniforms. Separate ministries of war in Munich, Dresden, and Stuttgart oversaw the arming, clothing, feeding, housing, and training of Bavarians, Saxons, and Württembergers, while cadet schools, general staffs, and war colleges continued to exist across non-Prussian Germany. Bavaria enjoyed the most independence within this system: Bavaria’s army was recognized as “a self-contained component of the federal army … under the military command of His Majesty the King of Bavaria” in peacetime. Unlike in Saxony and Württemberg, the King of Bavaria retained exclusive control over his officer corps.16 The German army’s federal structure compelled the Prussian military authorities to compromise with the non-Prussian kingdoms. It also created anxiety in Berlin. Many Prussian officers emerged from the Wars of Unification with a low opinion of their Bavarian comrades. In October 1872, Prussia’s military attaché in Munich reported that, despite the recent adoption of Prussian service regulations, the Bavarian officer corps lacked adequate education and leadership. It might be necessary, he wrote, to send Bavarian officers to Prussia for extended periods of training.17 Beginning in the mid-1870s, a small number of Bavarian staff officers were transferred to northern Germany. These officers acquired experience in the Prussian General Staff and with Prussian units, participated in staff rides, and attended the annual autumn maneuvers, or Kaisermanöver.18 The increased contact between the two contingents erased many of the earlier doubts about the ability of Bavarian officers. When the position of chief of staff in Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria’s Sixth Army unexpectedly became vacant in August 1914, few objections were raised to the appointment of the Bavarian General

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Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen. Krafft, who had been assigned to Berlin between 1903 and 1905 and had later served as chief of the Bavarian general staff, was considered well qualified for the post.19 Krafft was not an exception. Evidence exists that the Prussian-dominated Supreme Command became more and more willing to give Bavarians greater command responsibilities as the war progressed.20 Kress, who had served in the Prussian General Staff between 1908 and 1910, checked one of the necessary boxes. Yet another factor made him a suitable candidate to lead the Caucasus expedition: his service in the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in the 1880s, Prussian officers had been dispatched to Constantinople as military advisors. In January 1909, the Bavarian military plenipotentiary in Berlin approached the Prussian war ministry with a request that Bavarians also be considered for service overseas. This request was quickly brushed aside. It was only after the Turkish ambassador to Germany raised the issue in December 1910 that the Prussians relented. In the last years before the war, an increasing number of Bavarian officers therefore joined the German military mission in Turkey and a few, including Otto von Lossow, saw active duty during the two Balkan Wars. Kress himself arrived in Constantinople in early 1914.21 Even though greater scrutiny was applied to applications for service outside of Europe after the outbreak of the First World War, the military authorities in Munich continued to pressure the Prussians on behalf of Bavarian officers. When rumors circulated in late 1916 that the Turkish government intended to undertake major military reforms after the war, the Bavarian minister of war ordered its representative at General Headquarters to make it clear to the Kaiser’s military cabinet that Bavaria expected to participate. Not only were Bavarian officers and officials to be transferred to the Ottoman Empire, but the Bavarian contingent should be represented in proportion to its strength in the German army.22 By 1918, Kress was one of a number of Bavarians who had benefitted from both the backing of their war ministry and increased Prussian confidence in their command abilities. The selection of units for the expeditionary force to the Caucasus was likewise influenced by the relationship between the Supreme Command and Bavaria. In peacetime, the recruiting districts of the German army’s twenty-five corps reflected the political structure of the empire. The three Bavarian corps, for example, drew their recruits from within the borders of the South German kingdom. Almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, the barriers between the state-based contingents

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began to break down. Corps suffered casualties at different rates and some districts possessed more trained recruits than others. Replacements were therefore often assigned from wherever they were available to wherever they were most urgently needed.23 Compelled to respond to rapidly changing circumstances on several geographically distant fronts, the Supreme Command also transferred entire units between the contingents. The result was a number of divisions containing various combinations of Bavarians, Prussians, Saxons, and Württembergers. As casualties mounted at Verdun and along the Somme in the second half of 1916, questions were raised about the combat effectiveness of these “mixed” formations.24 Immediately, the military authorities in Munich, Dresden, and Stuttgart pressed for change. In early October, Ludendorff was forced to admit that the Supreme Command’s personnel policies had produced “undesirable” results. He also pledged to respect the army’s peacetime structure in the future. Over the winter of 1916–1917, most of the mixed divisions were broken up.25 There is no evidence to suggest that Ludendorff had the circular of October 1916 in mind when he pondered military intervention in Georgia less than two years later. That being said, it is likely that the appointment of Kress as chief of the Imperial German Delegation in the Caucasus influenced the composition of the expeditionary force that began to arrive in Poti in June 1918 (see Table 8.1). The German occupation forces in the Ukraine in the final months of the war amounted to between 200,000 and 300,000 men. These forces included a Bavarian cavalry division, consisting of two brigades and support units; two additional, independent Bavarian cavalry brigades, one of which would be transferred to Georgia in early September; two Bavarian infantry brigades; and various smaller units drawn from the Bavarian contingent, such as engineer, communications, and supply troops. In total, there were 20–25,000 Bavarian soldiers in the Ukraine, representing around ten percent of the German occupation forces. These figures roughly corresponded to the percentage of Bavarians in the peacetime army.26 Yet probably more than fifty percent of the men who formed the Caucasus expedition were drawn from the Bavarian units in the Ukraine. Moreover, Bavarian officers occupied numerous positions on the staff of the German delegation and Bavarians commanded a majority of the battalions and regiments on the ground.27 Although not explicitly referenced in the surviving correspondence, the circular of October 1916 could not possibly have been far from Ludendorff’s mind in 1918.

214  G. WIENS Table 8.1  Major units under the command of the Imperial German Delegation in the Caucasus, 1918–1919

1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion 10th Sturm Battalion 29th Bavarian Infantry Regimentb 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigadec 18th Landwehr Brigade

Strength

Arrival

Departure

1080

June 8, 1918

February 6, 1919

488a 2250

June 8, 1918 August 1, 1918

7520

Early September 1918

February 6, 1919 Late October–Early November 1918 Late October 1918

ca. 6000d

Early September 1918

Late September 1918

Source Baumgart, “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen.’ Erster Teil,” 102–4; Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 419; war diaries of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion, the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, the 5th Bavarian Chevaulegers Regiment, and the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv aStrength of the battalion’s initial deployment (one company, one machine-gun platoon, and one trench mortar platoon) bConsisting of the 7th and 9th Reserve Jäger Battalions cThis brigade, composed of the 4th and 5th Bavarian Chevaulegers Regiments, was strengthened by artillery, machine-gun, engineer, communications, and medical units from the Bavarian Cavalry Division in the Ukraine dOnly 2000 of these 6000 men were transported to Georgia before the brigade was redirected to the Balkans

The German army that fought the First World War was a federal institution and the rights and interests of the smaller German kingdoms impacted personnel and organizational decisions in all theaters of war. The demands of the occupation of the Ukraine and the need to rapidly transfer as many German troops as possible to Georgia nevertheless guaranteed that the expedition could never have been an entirely Bavarian affair. Prussians therefore also arrived in Poti in large numbers. When the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment reached the Caucasus in early August, it consisted of two Prussian battalions. The regiment’s only Bavarians, the soldiers of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion, had been sent ahead in June 1918. Moreover, among the troops transported across the Black Sea in the first half of September were elements of a Prussian Landwehr brigade.28 Making the force’s composition even more bewildering was the creation of additional units on the ground. Soon after they arrived in Poti in June, the Bavarians and Prussians were astonished to encounter German guards at railway stations. These men had been recruited from among German prisoners of war who found themselves

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in the Caucasus in the spring of 1918. In some cases, they were led by Baltic Germans who had previously served as officers in the Imperial Russian Army. These units were subsequently disbanded and many of their men were combined with the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion to create a Caucasian Jäger Regiment. In September 1918, this unit was renamed the 15th Bavarian Jäger Regiment. Once again, the designation was misleading. Because a large number of the former prisoners of war were Alsace-Lorrainers, Bavarians comprised only around half of the new regiment’s strength.29 The eclectic composition of the expeditionary force—AlsaceLorrainers, Baltic Germans, Bavarians, and Prussians—was a product of the Supreme Command’s desire to rapidly seize control of resources that might still change the course of the war. It also produced the same tensions that had contributed to Ludendorff’s circular of October 1916. The importance of their objective convinced few Bavarians to overlook their dislike of North Germans. Even before the first troops departed Sevastopol in June 1918, the men of the Bavarian Jäger battalion complained that only the Prussians had received new uniforms in preparation for their upcoming operations.30 Once in Georgia, Bavarians did not hesitate to criticize their comrades. Later in his life, Kress recalled that he regularly received complaints about the Prussian Sturm battalion from his subordinates. The Prussians, he wrote, clearly did not understand how to behave toward the population of a friendly state. Despite his detailed instructions and against his repeated orders, they had executed civilians, demanded contributions from villages, burned down houses, and confiscated livestock, thereby earning the hostility of the Georgians whom they had been sent to protect.31 Much of this animosity was based on traditional stereotypes of Prussians as crass and unrefined. This stereotype was perhaps most evident in the diary entries of the delegation’s chief medical officer, Captain Friedrich Niedermayer, a Bavarian and the brother of Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer who had led a German expedition to Afghanistan earlier in the war. After inspecting a hospital in Georgia in the summer of 1918, Friedrich Niedermayer expressed his surprise at the skill of the Prussian medical staff. It was clear, the Bavarian officer wrote, that “not everyone on the other side of the Prussian border is a negro.”32 Regional differences were just as keenly felt in the Caucasus as they were on the Western Front.

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On the Ground in Georgia, June 1918–February 1919 The animosity between Bavarians and Prussians was not the only problem that confronted Kress and his men in the Caucasus. First, there were too few German troops available for the expeditionary force in Georgia. At the beginning of October 1918, General Hans von Seeckt, the Turkish army’s German chief of staff, wrote that the Supreme Command had grossly overestimated Germany’s available strength. It was not possible to fight a decisive battle on the Western Front while simultaneously pursuing a “policy of expansion” in the East. Seeckt could not deny that German control of Baku and the appearance of a fleet of German submarines on the Caspian Sea “would make an impression in the Hindu Kush and along the coast of Baluchistan.” For this reason, he had initially shared Ludendorff’s more fantastic expectations for a Turkish-German advance through the Middle East. By the end of the war, however, Seeckt had come to realize that Germany simply did not possess the necessary resources.33 Kress would quickly realize that the available manpower hardly sufficed to achieve much more limited objectives. Second, as Ludendorff had explained to the newly appointed chief of the German delegation in May, the most important of these objectives was the economic exploitation of the Caucasus and the acquisition of raw materials, particularly copper, manganese, and oil, which were urgently needed by German industries. Almost immediately after the Corcovado docked in Poti in early June, the Bavarians and Prussians came face-to-face with the realities on the ground in Georgia. These realities would pour cold water on the lofty expectations of the Supreme Command. What was most apparent were the deficiencies of the railway system. Because Georgian locomotives were fueled by a low-quality oil known as “mazut,” the capture of the Baku oilfields by the Soviets in March 1918 had ensured that transportation thereafter ground to a halt. When Kress arrived in Poti at the end of June, he was immediately forced to contend with severe disruptions on the railways. Making matters worse, automobile traffic had almost completely ceased and even the supply of water to Tiflis had become irregular.34 These shortages not only meant that many locomotives remained idle. Because the axles of railway wagons required large quantities of oil as lubricant, German soldiers routinely complained that their transports were halted for lengthy periods due to overheating. During the withdrawal of one unit from Tiflis at the end of October 1918, three wagons had to be disconnected and abandoned.

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One of the wagons had burst into flames on the tracks.35 Adding to these problems was the unreliability of the railway personnel. When the Bavarian Jäger battalion and the Prussian Sturm battalion departed Tiflis in the middle of June in order to sweep southern Georgia of Kurdish and Tatar irregulars, the men found that the locomotive drivers and station attendants, who were for the most part Russian and poorly paid, often disappeared.36 These factors produced considerable delays. By the middle of September, the journey between Tiflis and Poti—a distance of only two-hundred miles and requiring twelve hours by railroad under normal circumstances—could take as long as three days. Although German engineers eventually converted many Georgian locomotives from oil to coal or wood, fuel shortages and “passive resistance” ensured, in the words of Kress, that the railroads remained a Sorgenkind, or problem child, for the German expedition.37 The frequent disruptions of railway traffic forced German soldiers to rely on other forms of transportation. Before their departure from Sevastopol, the Bavarians and Prussians had discarded their own heavy wagons in favor of the lighter Russian “panje” wagons. This was not uncommon. Already in the summer of 1915, one Württemberg general commanding a division on the Eastern Front had observed that every one of his battalions had acquired these lighter vehicles. As a result, his division contained five thousand men and even more Russian ponies.38 Yet, even with these lighter wagons, horse-drawn transportation proved problematic in the Caucasus. This was above all because of the shortage of healthy horses in the southern Ukraine. When the Prussian 7th and 9th Reserve Jäger Battalions disembarked at Poti in the first week of August, they did so with only twenty horses, several of which were officers’ riding horses. The Prussians had been forced to leave the remainder behind in Sevastopol because of their poor condition and fears that they would spread disease. After they arrived in Tiflis, the exhausted soldiers were forced to drag their wagons and carry much of their supplies from the train station to their quarters, a distance of over two miles.39 Nor was it feasible to make good the shortage of horses in Georgia. As several German units observed during the summer and fall of 1918, only a few animals were available for purchase and these were often seven to eight times more expensive than in the Ukraine. The Germans were eventually forced to transport horses, regardless of their condition, across the Black Sea. On September 15, units of the 7th

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Bavarian Cavalry Brigade arrived in Poti with 160 additional horses for the expedition.40 The acquisition of food and fodder was also a constant concern. Before they could even disembark from the Corcovado in June, the Bavarians and Prussians were confronted by worried Georgian officials. The Georgians above all pleaded with the Germans to refrain from requisitioning food and supplies from the local population. Most of all, bread was scarce in Poti.41 The Germans encountered similar shortages in the following months. When the regiments of the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade arrived from the Crimea in early September, they found it almost impossible to acquire sufficient fodder for their horses. Because of the swampy terrain surrounding Poti, there were doubts that enough hay could be requisitioned within a fifty-mile radius of the port. The brigade commander ordered that future transports carry enough fodder for an entire month.42 The situation worsened as the brigade’s units were ordered by road to Tiflis because of the recurring delays on the railways. Throughout the march, the Bavarians found the Georgian civilians to be accommodating and, at times, even friendly. The opposite was true of local officials, who were routinely unwilling to provide adequate pasture. Shortly after arriving in one village in mid-September, the men of the 5th Bavarian Chevaulegers Regiment found that their horses would have to graze in a dried-up swamp.43 Moreover, the cost of food and the lack of fodder resulted in a shortage of paper money in many German units. On average, each squadron commander was forced to bring 10,000 Marks with him for supplies. Even when supplies were available, the purchase of large quantities only increased tensions with the local population. The Georgians, Kress later observed, had soon arrived at the entirely justifiable conclusion that “we Germans sucked their land dry, but didn’t want to give anything back to them in return.”44 In addition to supply and transportation problems, the Germans had to contend with the hostility of their Turkish allies. In the spring of 1918, the Turkish war minister, Enver Pasha, had sent sizable forces into the southern Caucasus in order to support the operations of Nuri Pasha’s Army of Islam. Despite German requests that these troops be transferred to Mesopotamia and Palestine, the Turks continued their operations in the region throughout the summer. At the end of July, the Bolsheviks fled Baku and a government consisting of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks thereafter took power in the city. Because of the new government’s weakness—it immediately appealed to the British for military

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support—it seemed inevitable that Baku would fall to the Army of Islam.45 At the same time, the Turks sought to consolidate their control over the region by recruiting irregular troops from the local Kurdish and Tatar populations. In mid-June, the Bavarians and Prussians who arrived in southern Georgia therefore came face-to-face with “bands” that were often led by Turkish officers and supported by Turkish units. These meetings between allies produced more than one awkward moment. When the Bavarian Jäger battalion took control of a village in June, they captured a Turkish officer and three Turkish soldiers. All four Turks were wearing German uniforms. Although it was clear that the officer was in command of the irregulars, he insisted that he was merely a curious bystander who had been drawn to the sound of nearby fighting. The Bavarians were thus compelled to release him and his men.46 Twice in the summer of 1918 Turkish troops appeared along the Black Sea coast north of Poti. Claiming to have been invited by Abkhazian estate owners who feared the rumored land reforms of the Georgian government, these troops occupied the town of Suchum at the end of June and again in early August. On the first occasion, the local Turkish commander withdrew his soldiers after meeting personally with Kress. Following the second landing, elements of the Prussian Sturm battalion and the 9th Reserve Jäger Battalion met their “allies” on the beaches. The Turks were disarmed without incident and, in order to maintain the façade of German-Turkish cooperation, sent back to their commander as deserters.47 Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Kress requested additional resources—both men and material—from the Foreign Office in early August 1918. Without a stronger German presence, he warned, the entire region, including the northern Caucasus, was in danger of falling under the influence of the far more numerous Turks.48 Poor communications also hampered German operations. In fact, messengers were often the most reliable means of sending and receiving orders. When the Bavarians and Prussians began operating in southern Georgia in mid-June, fears that the Turks would intercept sensitive information compelled the Bavarian commander to schedule trains whenever reports needed to be sent to Tiflis. In the words of the battalion history, a kind of “personalized traffic” developed along the railway between the Armenian border and the Georgian capital. In the end, this expedient led to a collision and still more transportation delays.49 Unsurprisingly, communications were even worse between Tiflis and Berlin. Until the very

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last days of the war, the Germans did not possess the means by which to communicate directly with either the Foreign Office or the Supreme Command in Belgium. One of the first messages received by the newly constructed wireless station in the Georgian capital was Friedrich Ebert’s announcement of the Kaiser’s abdication and the proclamation of the German Republic on November 9, 1918. In view of these deficiencies, Kress relied on the transmission of messages either through the German embassy in Constantinople or by means of the wireless sets on board the steamships that shuttled men and supplies between the Crimea and Georgia. The result was that some messages were never received and others reached the German Delegation days or weeks after they had been transmitted. For example, at the end of August, the Supreme Command notified Kress that the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade and a reinforced Prussian Landwehr brigade, together amounting to almost 14,000 men, would soon arrive in Poti. It was not until almost two weeks later that another telegram explained the reason for the reinforcements: Kress should cooperate with local Bolshevik forces in order to capture Baku, thereby preventing the Army of Islam from seizing the oilfields. It was already too late. On September 15, Turkish forces overran Baku’s defenses.50 The Allied offensive in the Balkans, which began in mid-September 1918, and the collapse of Bulgarian resistance led to a gradual withdrawal of German troops from the Caucasus. On September 16, two recently arrived battalions of the Prussian 18th Landwehr Brigade were ordered to board transports for Braila on the western coast of the Black Sea. Two days before these orders were issued, Kress had requested that further transports to the Caucasus be postponed in view of the chaos on the railways and the chronic food and fodder shortages in Georgia. Admiral Albert Hopman, the commander of German naval forces on the Black Sea, was convinced that the Germans possessed “neither the strength nor the skill” to take advantage of the situation in the Caucasus and gladly dispatched the remainder of the 18th Landwehr Brigade to the Balkans.51 The majority of the German expeditionary force nevertheless remained in Georgia until October. Thereafter, the scaling down of German troops proceeded in an orderly manner. On October 7, the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade received orders to concentrate in Poti. The brigade’s units, which were scattered along the Black Sea coast and throughout southern Georgia, assembled in the port over the following two weeks and boarded transports for Braila.52 Yet, because the number

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of steamships on the Black Sea was limited and because shipments of oil from Baku were frequently interrupted by the Turks, units disembarked as soon as they arrived at the coast. Some units were soon scattered between the Balkans and the Caucasus. The 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment provides a good example. By November 5, the regiment’s staff and most of one battalion had arrived in Sevastopol. The majority of the other battalion had only just departed Poti for the Crimea, while the remaining companies of both battalions were still in Georgia. In fact, a detachment of the Prussian 7th Reserve Jäger Battalion had not even withdrawn from the mountain pass near Kasbek, north of Tiflis.53 The situation became critical after the collapse of Turkey in late October cut the transportation route between Georgia and the Ukraine. As British and French warships steamed into the Black Sea, some German units, including the Prussian Sturm battalion and the entire 15th Bavarian Jäger Regiment, became trapped in the Caucasus. As knowledge of the armistice on the Western Front and the outbreak of revolution in Germany spread among the troops, Kress and his fellow officers feared that military discipline might completely collapse. The men, he telegraphed the Foreign Office shortly after the armistice, were becoming increasingly concerned for the safety of their families and desperately desired to return home.54 The election of soldiers’ councils in mid-November exacerbated these fears, while rumors that Kress had purchased extensive tracts of land in Georgia and wished to protect these investments with the expedition’s remaining units created a tense atmosphere. Much to the relief of Kress and his officers, there were no largescale outbreaks of unrest. The stranded men instead spent the following weeks attending opera performances in Tiflis, competing in athletics competitions, and exchanging bread for tobacco with the newly arrived British soldiers. At the beginning of December, the first transport, consisting of Alsace-Lorrainers and the oldest Bavarians, departed Georgia. In early February 1919, Kress and the last soldiers of the expeditionary force boarded a steamship for Constantinople.55

Conclusion The dispatch of an expeditionary force to the Caucasus in the final months of the First World War was the most extreme example of the disconnect between available resources and German war aims in the Ostraum. At a conference between representatives of the Foreign Office

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and the Supreme Command in early May 1918, Chancellor Georg von Hertling had questioned the wisdom of sending men across the Black Sea who were badly needed on the Western Front. After all, he argued, the diplomats were confident that raw materials could be acquired through compromise and negotiation. Ludendorff’s answer betrayed his weakening grasp of the strategic situation confronting Germany: “whether the troops fight here or there makes no difference.”56 The First Quartermaster General’s megalomania ensured that German involvement in the Caucasus continued into the early autumn of 1918. At the beginning of October, Colonel Friedrich Freiherr von der Goltz was dispatched to Baku, which had fallen to the Turks in the middle of September. Goltz had only recently arrived in the Caucasus in order to take control of the delegation’s military operations. Over the following weeks and with the assistance of a small staff and a battalion of infantry, Goltz organized the shipment of oil to the western shore of the Caucasus and, from there, across the Black Sea. In exchange for the oil, the Germans promised to deliver tens of thousands of captured Russian rifles to the Army of Islam. These activities bordered on the absurd when, in mid-October 1918 and as the German armies disintegrated in the West and the German fleet descended into mutiny in the North Sea ports, Kress informed his superiors that control of the Caspian Sea was within Germany’s reach. In the opinion of one of Goltz’s officers, it was possible to transport a submarine to Baku and reassemble it in the city’s harbor.57 The Caucasus expedition can reveal more than simply the delusions that reigned in the Supreme Command during the “German moment” of 1918. As this chapter has sought to demonstrate, the chasm between objectives and available resources produced an array of challenges for the officers responsible for the organization, logistics, and operations of the German expeditionary force. The appointment of a Bavarian commander and the transfer of Bavarian units from the Crimea to Georgia reflected the influence of the German army’s federal structure on the composition of forces in all theaters of war and the increased confidence of Prussian officers in their Bavarian comrades. Even over two thousand miles from the Western Front, the fact that an officer was Bavarian or Prussian or that a battalion consisted of men from Augsburg or Magdeburg was a concern for the First Quartermaster General and his subordinates. Nevertheless, speed was crucial. The expeditionary force therefore

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consisted of men from all over Germany and beyond its borders, resulting in the same tensions between North and South Germans that had led to Ludendorff’s circular of October 1916. Once on the ground in Georgia, a range of developments, both in the Caucasus and elsewhere, severely hampered the ability of this motley group of soldiers to achieve their objectives. Severe shortages of food and fodder and problems with communications and the transportation network were exacerbated by the incompatibility of German and Turkish objectives in the region. The collapse of Bulgarian resistance in the Balkans ensured that many of the expedition’s soldiers remained in the Caucasus until early 1919. Kress was certainly justified in drawing the following lesson from his experience in Georgia: “when preparing for operations in distant countries, one should pay much more attention to economic circumstances and transportation possibilities than occurred in our case”.58

Notes





1. War diary of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion, entry for June 6, 1918, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (hereafter BayHStA) Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Jäger-Regimenter 3 und 15 (Weltkrieg) 7. See also Hans Muggenthaler, Hugo Ritter von Pflügel, and Martin Scheuring, Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1 (K.B. Jäger-Regiment 15) (Munich: Verlag Max Schick, 1935), 414–19. 2. Wolfdieter Bihl, Die Kaukasus-Politik der Mittelmächte. Teil II. Die Zeit der versuchten kaukasischen Staatlichkeit (1917–1918) (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1992), 75–76; Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, ed. David Paitschadse (Tbilisi: Samshoblo, 2001), 57–59. 3. Wilhelm Deist, “Der militärische Zusammenbruch des Kaiserreichs. Zur Realität der ‘Dolchstoßlegende’,” in Das Unrechtsregime. Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus, ed. Ursula Büttner (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1986), 1: 101–29; Hew Strachan, “The Morale of the German Army, 1917–18,” in Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced, ed. Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), 383–98; Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 184–231; Benjamin Ziemann, “Enttäuschte Erwartung und kollektive Erschöpfung. Die deutschen Soldaten an der Westfront 1918 auf dem Weg zur Revolution,” in Kriegsende 1918. Ereignis, Wirkung,

224  G. WIENS Nachwirkung, ed. Jörg Duppler and Gerhard P. Groß (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 165–82. For the course of the spring offensives, see Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and AustriaHungary, 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), 392–428. 4. Erich Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914–1918 (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1919), 547–51. 5. Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), 534–62, especially 550–62. 6. Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1973), 4: 286–95. 7.  Winfried Baumgart, “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen’ – Größenwahn Ludendorffs oder Routineplanung des deutschen Generalstabs? Erster Teil: Ein kritischer Rückblick auf die deutsche militärische Intervention im Kaukasus am Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 18 (1970): 47–126, especially 115–18. 8. In order to maintain the fiction that intervention was merely intended to support the government of the newly established Georgian republic, the German troops in the Caucasus were not referred to as an expeditionary force. Kress was instead appointed chief of the Imperial German Delegation in the Caucasus—Chef der Kaiserlich deutschen Delegation im Kaukasus—and all correspondence was directed to the Foreign Office. Ludendorff nevertheless insisted that Kress receive instructions for military operations from the Supreme Command. Baumgart, “Das ‘KaspiUnternehmen.’ Erster Teil,” 76–81. 9.  Jennifer L. Jenkins, “The German Moment in 1918,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 62 (2018): 51–67. For the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and German policy in the Ukraine and Finland, see Winfried Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918. Von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1966), 13–28, 93–155. For the Austro-Hungarian and German military operations in the Ukraine, see Peter Lieb and Wolfram Dornik, “Military Operations,” in The Emergence of Ukraine: Self-Determination, Occupation, and the War in Ukraine, 1917–1922, ed. Wolfram Dornik (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2015), 155–201. 10.  Werner Zürrer, “Zur Geschichte der Georgischen Legion im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 23 (1978): 85–104. For the “programme for revolution” more generally, see Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, 120–54. Jennifer Jenkins has called for a reappraisal of Fischer’s thesis concerning Germany’s global ambitions between 1914 and 1918. See Jenkins, “Fritz Fischer’s ‘Programme for Revolution’: Implications for a Global History of the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 48 (2013): 397–417.

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11. Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, 550–52; Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter, 286–87. For the Turkish objectives in the Caucasus, see Bihl, Die Kaukasus-Politik der Mittelmächte. Teil II, 222– 30; Michael A. Reynolds, “Buffers, Not Brethren: Young Turk Military Policy in the First World War and the Myth of Panturanism,” Past & Present 203 (2009): 137–79, especially 169–76. 12. Lossow to the Supreme Command, May 18, 1918, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (hereafter PA AA) Berlin, R 11046. See also Bihl, Die Kaukasus-Politik der Mittelmächte. Teil II, 44–51; Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter, 287–89. For the situation in the Caucasus and the collapse of the Transcaucasian Republic, see Firuz Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 109–27. 13.  Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 30–41. See also Baumgart, “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen.’ Erster Teil,” 63–64. Ludendorff and the imperial chancellor, Georg von Hertling, had already discussed the dispatch of troops to Georgia in a meeting at General Headquarters on May 11. “Protokoll über die am 11. Mai 1918, nachmittags 1/2 5 Uhr in Spa abgehaltene Sitzung,” PA AA Berlin, R 11045. 14. Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 1815–1871 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 348–54, 480–90. 15. Article 63, “Gesetz betreffend die Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches,” in Die Stenographischen Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstages, Anlagen (Berlin, 1871), 21: 8–9. 16.  “Militär-Konvention zwischen dem Norddeutschen Bund und dem Königreich Sachsen vom 7. Februar 1867,” “Der Bundesvertrag betreffend den Beitritt Bayerns zur Verfassung des Deutschen Bundes vom 23. November 1870,” and “Militärkonvention zwischen dem Norddeutschen Bunde und Württemberg vom 21./25. November 1870,” in Dokumente zur Deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, ed. Ernst Rudolf Huber (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1986), 2: 292–94, 329–33, 339–42. 17. Report of Major Hermann von Stülpnagel, Prussian military attaché in Munich, October 16, 1872, PA AA Berlin, R 2704. 18. Othmar Hackl, Der bayerische Generalstab (1792–1919) (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999), 277–79, 292–96, 326–47. 19. Stefan März, Das Haus Wittelsbach im Ersten Weltkrieg. Chance und Zusammenbruch monarchischer Herrschaft (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2013), 169–70; Thomas Müller, Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen (1862–1953). Porträt eines bayerischen Offiziers (Munich: Kommission für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, 2002), 239–59, 276–85, 290–96. In the event, Rupprecht and Krafft created considerable headaches for their Prussian superiors and, in the spring of 1915 and against

226  G. WIENS the wishes of the Bavarian crown prince, Krafft was transferred to the newly formed Alpenkorps. See Holger Afflerbach, “Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 75 (2016): 28–32. 20. For example, in the autumn of 1915, the Bavarian military plenipotentiary in General Headquarters, General Karl von Nagel zu Aichberg, expressed his surprise that the Prussians had proposed the Bavarian General Maximilian von Höhn as the commander of a Prussian guard division. See Nagel to the Bavarian ministry of war, September 28 and October 7, 1915, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, MKr 1828. 21. Michael Unger, Die bayerischen Militärbeziehungen zur Türkei vor und im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003), 23–50; Jehuda L. Wallach, Anatomie einer Militärhilfe. Die preußisch-deutschen Militärmissionen in der Türkei 1835–1919 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1976), 93, 108–19. In 1913, the Turkish military attaché in Berlin even approached the Bavarian military plenipotentiary with a request for teaching materials from the Bavarian war academy. Turkish military attaché to General Karl von Wenninger, May 19, 1913, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, MKr 224. 22. Circular drafted by the Bavarian minister-president, Georg von Hertling, December 16, 1916, and the Bavarian minister of war, General Otto Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, to King Ludwig III of Bavaria, March 2, 1916, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, MKr 224. 23.  Ernst von Wrisberg, Erinnerungen an die Kriegsjahre im Königlich Preußischen Kriegsministerium. Heer und Heimat 1914–1918 (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1921), 90. 24. For example, see the reports of the Prussian envoy to Bavaria, Carl-Georg von Treutler, to Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, June 23, 1916 and November 2, 1916, PA AA Berlin, R 2736. For the tensions more generally, see Benjamin Ziemann, War Experiences in Rural Germany, 1914–1923 (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 137–44. 25. Order of the Supreme Command, October 6, 1916, Hauptstaatsarchiv (hereafter HStA) Stuttgart, Bestand M 1/11, file 351. See also Tony Cowan, “A Picture of German Unity? Federal Contingents in the German Army, 1916–17,” in The Greater War: Other Combatants and Other Fronts, 1914–1918, ed. Jonathan Krause (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 147–48. For the pressure from the non-Prussian governments and their representatives at General Headquarters, see the reports of General Traugott Leuckart von Weißdorf, Saxon military plenipotentiary in General Headquarters, to the Saxon minister of war, August 25, 1916, and September 10, 1916, Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (hereafter SHStA) Dresden, Bestand 11250, file 54;

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General Friedrich von Graevenitz, Württemberg military plenipotentiary in General Headquarters, to Württemberg’s minister of war, October 1, 1916, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand M 1/2, file 114. 26. Peter Lieb, “Bayern als Besatzer – Die Ukraine 1918,” in Bayern und der Erste Weltkrieg, ed. Günther Kronenbitter and Markus Pöhlmann (Munich: Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildungsarbeit, 2017), 90–92; Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, “Bayerische Truppenteile in der Ukraine im Jahr 1918,” in Bayern und Osteuropa. Aus der Geschichte der Beziehungen Bayerns, Frankens und Schwabens mit Rußland, der Ukraine und Weißrußland, ed. Hermann Beyer-Thoma (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000), 442–43. The prewar German army comprised fifty divisions. Of these, thirty-eight were Prussian, six were Bavarian, four were Saxon, and two were from Württemberg. The Bavarian contribution to the strength of the German army actually declined from twelve to eleven percent over the first three years of the war. See Cowan, A Picture of German Unity?, 144. 27.  The commanders of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion (Major Martin Scheuring), the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment (LieutenantColonel Philipp Aschauer), and the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade (Lieutenant-Colonel Otto Freiherr von Eyb) were Bavarians. Kress’ chief of staff, one of his two adjutants, and the chief medical officer of the delegation were also officers in the Bavarian contingent. For the composition of the delegation’s staff, see Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 32–35. 28. A detailed organizational breakdown of the German units that were transferred to the Caucasus is provided in Winfried Baumgart, “Das ‘KaspiUnternehmen’ – Größenwahn Ludendorffs oder Routineplanung des deutschen Generalstabs? Zweiter Teil: Dokumente zur deutschen militärischen Intervention im Kaukasus am Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 18 (1970): 266–67. 29. War diary of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion, entry for June 9, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Jäger-Regimenter 3 und 15 (WK) 7. For the formation of the Caucasian Jäger Regiment, see Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 45; Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 467–72. For the presence of Alsace-Lorrainers in the Middle East more generally, see Jean-Noel Grandhomme, “Alsace-Lorraine Soldiers in the Palestine Campaign: Conformism and Specificities of a National Minority Within the German Military Mission in Turkey,” in Palestine and World War I: Grand Strategy, Military Tactics and Culture in War, ed. Eran Dolev, Yigal Sheffy, and Haim Goren (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 23–42. 30. Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 416.

228  G. WIENS 31. Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 59. In the regimental history of the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, the unit’s former commander recalled that the Prussian Sturm battalion, which had been tactically attached to the regiment for several weeks in the summer of 1918, had summarily hanged several Georgians but that these executions were in response to the murder of a German soldier who had attempted to mediate between two feuding villages. Philipp Aschauer, Auf Schicksalswegen gen Osten. Kriegserlebnisse eines deutschen Jägerregiments in Rumänien, auf der Krim und im Kaukasus (Münster: Helios Verlag, 1931), 323–24. 32.  Diary entry for August 23, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Nachlass Friedrich Niedermayer 5. For the exploits of Niedermayer’s brother and his influence on the Supreme Command’s decision-making in the summer of 1918, see Hans-Ulrich Seidt, “From Palestine to the Caucasus – Oskar Niedermayer and Germany’s Middle Eastern Strategy in 1918,” German Studies Review 24 (2001): 1–18. 33.  Hans von Seeckt, Aus seinem Leben 1918–1936, ed. Friedrich von Rabenau (Leipzig: Hase & Koehler Verlag, 1940), 91–93. For Seeckt’s initial enthusiasm for intervention in the Caucasus, see Baumgart, “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen.’ Erster Teil,” 66–69. 34. Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 43. 35. War diary of the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, entry for October 28, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, InfanterieRegimenter (WK) 3. 36. Muggenthaler et  al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 440–48. Because the resulting delays had handcuffed the preparations for an attack on Kurdish and Tatar irregulars on June 13, the Germans thereafter distributed food, above all bread, from their field kitchens to the Georgian railway personnel. 37. Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 55. For the length of the delays on the railways, see Baumgart, “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen.’ Erster Teil,” 101. This passive resistance later gave way to organized work stoppages in the autumn of 1918, only exacerbating the transportation difficulties in Georgia. 38. Letter by General Otto von Moser, commander of the 107th Infantry Division, July 23, 1915, HStA Stuttgart, Bestand M 660/027, file 8. For the exchange of German for Russian panje wagons, see Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 415–16. 39. War diary of the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, entries for July 29–30 and August 4, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Infanterie-Regimenter (WK) 3. See also Erich Karitzky, Reserve-JägerBataillon Nr. 9 (Oldenburg: Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1925), 140; Verein

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der Offiziere des ehemaligen Kgl. Preußischen (Westfälischen) JägerBataillons Nr. 7, Das Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 7 (Oldenburg: Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1923), 198. 40. War diary of the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade, entry for September 15, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Kavallerie Höhere Stäbe (WK) 1128. For the price of horses in the Caucasus compared to those in the Ukraine, see the war diary of the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, entry for August 4, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Infanterie-Regimenter (WK) 3. 41. War diary of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Jäger Battalion, entry for June 8, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Jäger-Regimenter 3 und 15 (WK) 7. See also Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-JägerBataillon Nr. 1, 426–27. The Georgian authorities in Poti had not even been informed of the impending arrival of German troops. 42. War diary of the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade, entries for September 3 and September 9, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Kavallerie Höhere Stäbe (Weltkrieg) 1126. 43.  War diary of the 5th Bavarian Chevaulegers Regiment, entries for September 16–18, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Kavallerie-Regimenter (Weltkrieg) 2411. 44. Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 50. For the shortages of money among the German troops, see the war diary of the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade, entries for September 14 and September 20, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Kavallerie Höhere Stäbe (WK) 1128. 45. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 136–39. By the summer of 1918, both the Foreign Office and Supreme Command were convinced that the Turks had no intention of diverting these troops to the threatened fronts in the Middle East and instead planned to advance on Baku. For example, see Bernstorff’s report to the Foreign Office, July 5, 1918, PA AA Berlin, R 11051. For Kress’ negotiations with the Turks concerning Baku, see Baumgart, “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen.’ Erster Teil,” 90–92. 46. The following day, the Bavarians captured an entire Turkish wagon column with goods confiscated from the local population. Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 444–49. 47. Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 46, 58. Elements of the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment were redeployed to the coastal area north of Poti in early August to protect the port against “bands” in Turkish uniforms. See the regiment’s war diary, entry for August 10, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, InfanterieRegimenter (WK) 3; Aschauer, Schicksalswegen gen Osten, 316–17; Karitzky, Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 9, 142.

230  G. WIENS 48. Kress von Kressenstein to the Foreign Office, August 16, 1918, PA AA Berlin, R 11055. 49. Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 453–54. 50. Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 59–63. Kress vented his frustrations in a lengthy report to the Foreign Office in mid-September. Poor communications had kept him in the dark about the urgency of the situation and the reasons for the exclusion of the Turks from an advance on Baku, something that the general believed at any rate to be impossible considering the weak German forces in the Caucasus. Kress von Kressenstein to the Foreign Office, September 13, 1918, PA AA Berlin, R 11059. For the Turkish capture of Baku and the British involvement in the port’s defence, see Bülent Gökay, “The Battle for Baku (May–September 1918): A Peculiar Episode in the History of the Caucasus,” Middle Eastern Studies 34 (1998): 30–50. 51. Diary of Admiral Albert Hopman, entries for September 5, 16, and 18, 1918, in Von Brest-Litovsk zur Deutschen Novemberrevolution. Aus den Tagebüchern, Briefen und Aufzeichnungen von Alfons Paquet, Wilhelm Groener und Albert Hopman März bis November 1918, ed. Winfried Baumgart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 583–84, 599– 602. See also Baumgart, “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen.’ Erster Teil,” 103–4. 52. War diary of the 7th Bavarian Cavalry Brigade, entries for October 7–20, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Kavallerie Höhere Stäbe (WK) 1130; war diary of the 5th Bavarian Chevaulegers Regiment, entries for October 9–25, 1918, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Kavallerie-Regimenter (WK) 2411. 53. Aschauer, Schicksalswegen gen Osten, 344–45. For the dispositions of the 29th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, see the regiment’s war diary, entry for November 5, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, InfanterieRegimenter (WK) 3. 54. Kress von Kressenstein to the Foreign Office, November 12, 1918, PA AA Berlin, R 11061. 55.  War diary of the 15th Bavarian Reserve Jäger Regiment, entries for November 3, 1918–February 6, 1919, BayHStA Munich, IV. Abteilung Kriegsarchiv, Jäger-Regimenter 3 und 15 (WK) 7; Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 63–67. For the election of soldiers’ councils, see also Muggenthaler et al., Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1, 516–18. 56. “Protokoll über die am 11. Mai 1918, nachmittags 1/2 5 Uhr in Spa abgehaltene Sitzung,” PA AA Berlin, R 11045. 57. Bihl, Die Kaukaus-Politik der Mittelmächte. Teil II., 125–27. For Goltz’s own account of his mission, see Friedrich Freiherr von der Goltz, “Meine Entsendung nach Baku,” Jahrbuch des Bundes der Asienkämpfer 3 (1923): 126–56. 58. Kress von Kressenstein, Meine Mission im Kaukasus, 50.

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Bibliography Afflerbach, Holger. “Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern im Ersten Weltkrieg.” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 75 (2016): 21–54. Aschauer, Philipp. Auf Schicksalswegen gen Osten. Kriegserlebnisse eines deutschen Jägerregiments in Rumänien, auf der Krim und im Kaukasus. Münster: Helios Verlag, 1931. Baumgart, Winfried. Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918. Von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges. Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1966. Baumgart, Winfried. “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen’ – Größenwahn Ludendorffs oder Routineplanung des deutschen Generalstabs? Erster Teil: Ein kritischer Rückblick auf die deutsche militärische Intervention im Kaukasus am Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 18 (1970): 47–126. Baumgart, Winfried. “Das ‘Kaspi-Unternehmen’ – Größenwahn Ludendorffs oder Routineplanung des deutschen Generalstabs? Zweiter Teil: Dokumente zur deutschen militärischen Intervention im Kaukasus am Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 18 (1970): 231–78. Baumgart, Winfried, ed. Von Brest-Litovsk zur Deutschen Novemberrevolution. Aus den Tagebüchern, Briefen und Aufzeichnungen von Alfons Paquet, Wilhelm Groener und Albert Hopman März bis November 1918. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971. Bihl, Wolfdieter. Die Kaukasus-Politik der Mittelmächte. Teil II. Die Zeit der versuchten kaukasischen Staatlichkeit (1917–1918). Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1992. Cowan, Tony. “A Picture of German Unity? Federal Contingents in the German Army, 1916–17.” In The Greater War: Other Combatants and Other Fronts, 1914–1918, edited by Jonathan Krause, 141–60. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Deist, Wilhelm. “Der militärische Zusammenbruch des Kaiserreichs. Zur Realität der ‘Dolchstoßlegende’.” In Das Unrechtsregime. Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus, edited by Ursula Büttner, 101–29. Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1986. Fischer, Fritz. Germany’s Aims in the First World War. London: Chatto & Windus, 1967. Gökay, Bülent. “The Battle for Baku (May–September 1918): A Peculiar Episode in the History of the Caucasus.” Middle Eastern Studies 34 (1998): 30–50. Goltz, Friedrich Freiherr von der. “Meine Entsendung nach Baku.” Jahrbuch des Bundes der Asienkämpfer 3 (1923): 126–56. Grandhomme, Jean-Noel. “Alsace-Lorraine Soldiers in the Palestine Campaign: Conformism and Specificities of a National Minority within the German Military Mission in Turkey.” In Palestine and World War I: Grand Strategy, Military Tactics and Culture in War, edited by Eran Dolev, Yigal Sheffy, and Haim Goren, 23–42. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014.

232  G. WIENS Hackl, Othmar. Der bayerische Generalstab (1792–1919). Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999. Herwig, Holger H. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914– 1918. London: Arnold, 1997. Huber, Ernst Rudolf, ed. Dokumente zur Deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte. 5 vols. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1978–1997. Jenkins, Jennifer. “Fritz Fischer’s ‘Programme for Revolution’: Implications for a Global History of the First World War.” Journal of Contemporary History 48 (2013): 397–417. Jenkins, Jennifer L. “The German Moment in 1918.” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 62 (2018): 51–67. Karitzky, Erich. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 9. Oldenburg: Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1925. Kazemzadeh, Firuz. The Struggle for Transcaucasia. New York: Philosophical Library, 1951. Kressenstein, Friedrich Freiherr Kress von. Meine Mission im Kaukasus, edited by David Paitschadse. Tbilisi: Samshoblo, 2001. Lieb, Peter. “Bayern als Besatzer – Die Ukraine 1918.” In Bayern und der Erste Weltkrieg, edited by Günther Kronenbitter and Markus Pöhlmann, 85–95. Munich: Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildungsarbeit, 2017. Lieb, Peter, and Wolfram Dornik. “Military Operations.” In The Emergence of Ukraine: Self-Determination, Occupation, and the War in Ukraine, 1917– 1922, edited by Wolfram Dornik, 155–201. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2015. Ludendorff, Erich. Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914–1918. Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1919. März, Stefan. Das Haus Wittelsbach im Ersten Weltkrieg. Chance und Zusammenbruch monarchischer Herrschaft. Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2013. Mędrzecki, Włodzimierz. “Bayerische Truppenteile in der Ukraine im Jahr 1918.” In Bayern und Osteuropa. Aus der Geschichte der Beziehungen Bayerns, Frankens und Schwabens mit Rußland, der Ukraine und Weißrußland, edited by Hermann Beyer-Thoma, 441–60. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000. Müller, Thomas. Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen (1862–1953). Porträt eines bayerischen Offiziers. Munich: Kommission für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, 2002. Muggenthaler, Hans, Hugo Ritter von Pflügel, and Martin Scheuring. Das K.B. Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 1 (K.B. Jäger-Regiment 15). Munich: Verlag Max Schick, 1935. Pflanze, Otto. Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 1815–1871. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. Reynolds, Michael A. “Buffers, Not Brethren: Young Turk Military Policy in the First World War and the Myth of Panturanism.” Past & Present 203 (2009): 137–79.

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Ritter, Gerhard. The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany. 4 vols. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1969–1973. Seeckt, Hans von. Aus seinem Leben 1918–1936, edited by Friedrich von Rabenau. Leipzig: Hase & Koehler Verlag, 1940. Seidt, Hans-Ulrich. “From Palestine to the Caucasus—Oskar Niedermayer and Germany’s Middle Eastern Strategy in 1918.” German Studies Review 24 (2001): 1–18. Strachan, Hew. “The Morale of the German Army, 1917–18.” In Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced, edited by Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle, 383–98. London: Leo Cooper, 1996. Unger, Michael. Die bayerischen Militärbeziehungen zur Türkei vor und im Ersten Weltkrieg. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003. Verein der Offiziere des ehemaligen Kgl. Preußischen (Westfälischen) JägerBataillons Nr. 7. Das Reserve-Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 7. Oldenburg: Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1923. Wallach, Jehuda L. Anatomie einer Militärhilfe. Die preußisch-deutschen Militärmissionen in der Türkei 1835–1919. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1976. Watson, Alexander. Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Wrisberg, Ernst von. Erinnerungen an die Kriegsjahre im Königlich Preußischen Kriegsministerium. Heer und Heimat 1914–1918. Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1921. Ziemann, Benjamin. “Enttäuschte Erwartung und kollektive Erschöpfung. Die deutschen Soldaten an der Westfront 1918 auf dem Weg zur Revolution.” In Kriegsende 1918. Ereignis, Wirkung, Nachwirkung, edited by Jörg Duppler and Gerhard P. Groß, 165–82. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999. Ziemann, Benjamin. War Experiences in Rural Germany, 1914–1923. Oxford: Berg, 2007. Zürrer, Werner. “Zur Geschichte der Georgischen Legion im Ersten Weltkrieg.” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 23 (1978): 85–104.

CHAPTER 9

Freikorps in the Baltics: German Expeditionary Forces in Eastern Europe, 1918–1919 Victoria Bucholtz

Throughout the First World War, German forces fought extensively outside their national boundaries, and yet unlike British, American, Canadian, and French forces dispatched to combat zones beyond their borders, German troops are not often viewed as expeditionary in nature. However, working from a broader perspective, incorporating a re-periodization of the war to include the associated conflicts that were directly linked to the signing of the armistice on the Western Front, there is clear evidence of German expeditionary activities along the Baltic coast. Specifically, German Freikorps troops were dispatched to the region as a direct result of provisions included in the armistice between the Entente Powers and Friedrich Ebert’s new German republic, to defend the newly independent Baltic states from Bolshevik aggression. Therefore by the definition established in this volume, the Freikorps should be examined as an expeditionary force: a military force sent to fight temporarily in a foreign land.

V. Bucholtz (*)  Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB, Canada © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_9

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While there might be a temptation to view this deployment as a continuation of German occupation of territories won under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, both the objectives and composition of the Freikorps mission indicate that there was indeed a sharp and distinct break in continuity for the military. The nature of Article XII of the armistice agreement expressly stated that German troops were only to remain in the region until Entente forces could take over security arrangements, rendering the Freikorps operation definitively temporary, unlike the wartime occupation that proceeded without a clear termination date. Furthermore, although many veterans of the world war served in Freikorps formations, these were new command posts, serving new masters, with a substantially different outlook than their imperial predecessors. Taking into account both the timing and motivation of the undertaking, the Freikorps in the Baltic lands represent a radicalized case for German expeditionary forces of the First World War. The international adventures of Freikorps units tended to accentuate the ­ independent streak in many commanders and soldiers, straining the relationship between the political leadership of the republic, the remnants of the imperial army command, and the semi-autonomous Freikorps command structure. A sense of honor, duty, and patriotism that keep many expeditionary forces loyal to the home nation served as a double-edged sword in the case of the Freikorps. Conceptions of Deutschtum (“Germandom” or “Germanness”) were re-imagined while abroad and the emerging set of cultural sensibilities was used to chip away at the bonds to the mother country and offer a vision of a new future for “pure” Germans. This “Germanic imaginary” became an animating feature of the free corps experience. As in other expeditionary forces, physical, and psychological distance from the soldier’s home community were key elements of life in the foreign land, and the Freikorps were not immune from such ­factors. And as with other formations serving abroad, the battalion became “home” during the deployment. Indeed, the German Freikorps in the Baltics can be considered an extreme expression of this dynamic, since the bond to the home battalion superseded attachments to the ostensible home nation. In the fields of Latvia and Lithuania, ties back to the Fatherland were stretched to their limit and in some cases beyond their breaking point.1 At the end of November 1918, only seven Freikorps units had been created, however the pace and scope of recruitment dramatically increased during political unrest in December. By January 1, 1919, 103

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Freikorps units were in existence. Exact figures are missing, but records indicate that as many as 1.5 million men participated in Freikorps formations and their associated organizations between November 1918 and December 1923. Somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 troops directly served in units designated as “Freikorps,” although these numbers are only gross estimates.2 Freikorps units were created primarily in three ways. First, many of the largest and most powerful Freikorps units were formed through the conversion of former imperial army formations under the supervision of army officers. These units were composed of significant numbers of First World War veterans, and tended to be loyal to the army high command. Second, some former imperial army officers independently organized their own Freikorps units comprising former wartime comrades. Many of these units proved to be rebellious and difficult for the German government and military to control, as they rarely followed a consistent political agenda. Third, Freikorps units were periodically created as a response to a perceived local crisis, such as agitation along on the Polish border or domestic tensions between leftwing supporters and government supporters. This type of Freikorps unit was often short-lived and usually dissolved after only a few weeks or months of activity, having no unifying ideology or political cause that stretched beyond an immediate, localized crisis. Leaving behind few historical records, the so-called “crisis Freikorps” represented the least professional and militarily capable expression of the Freikorps movement. Although their combat performance against the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund) in January 1919 and against the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils in the winter of the same year demonstrated that they were well-suited for operations within Germany, the Freikorps system faced greater problems on foreign soil. Historian Annemarie Sammartino has framed the Freikorps phenomena within a “crisis of sovereignty.”3 She has argued that Freikorps formations, like the Baltic Landeswehr or the Iron Division, were an expression of uncertain identities and a desire to both defend Germany against Bolshevism and to project German power abroad.4 These fluid identities would be tested along the Baltic coast, as Freikorps units would seek new opportunities to renegotiate the meanings of “Germanness” and national loyalties. Sammartino’s recognition of the central role that violence played for the Freikorps is particularly applicable in the Baltic campaigns. Her argument that “this violence must be read as a key component of Freikorps creativity … violence was both a symptom and constitutive element of [the Baltic campaign]”

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is consistently born out in the 1919 spring operations.5 Therefore the volatile Baltic units illustrate a prime example of Freikorps ­independence and offer a case study of an expeditionary force that abandoned the home country in favor of quixotic dreams in far-away lands.

Launching the Baltic Freikorps Under Article XII of the November 1918 Armistice Agreement signed between Germany and the Entente Powers, all German troops were ordered to evacuate the occupied regions in eastern Europe and return behind Germany’s new borders.6 However, facing considerable logistical and manpower issues, the Entente Powers were unable to immediately dispatch their own troops, and instead German units were compelled to remain in the newly independent region and provide deterrence against possible Bolshevik attempts to re-conquer the former Romanov territory. Chancellor Friedrich Ebert and the Social Democratic cabinet assembled around him to lead the new Weimar Republic were therefore bound to deploy German troops in the region to honor the terms of the armistice. At the same time they were confronting a possible insurrection from rivals further to the left within Germany, particularly from the Spartacus League and other groups that would soon coalesce into the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). They faced a paucity of reliable troops. Former imperial formations had a noted tendency to demobilize on their own authority upon returning to Germany’s borders, and few commanders were even able to give the government or the military Supreme Command (Oberste Heersleitung, OHL) under General Wilhelm Groener accurate estimates of the troops still under their control.7 The larger issue of preserving the authority of the officer corps during the process of haphazard and ad hoc demobilization permeated much of the military’s decision-making during 1919. Nevertheless, unless Ebert’s government secured the Baltic region for the Entente Powers, Germany could have been found in violation of the terms of the general armistice and risked penalties or even a resumption of hostilities. Unwilling to gamble away a desperately needed peace, Ebert was forced to turn to an unorthodox and ill-advised solution to fulfill this obligation.8 Thus began the German Freikorps’ operation in the Baltics. Although the number of men fighting in the Baltic Freikorps fluctuated significantly and therefore cannot be precisely determined, there were approximately 20,000–50,000 men who saw action in this theater.9

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Theoretically, these troops were launched as an extension of central German political and military authority in Berlin, and the initial preparations seemed to confirm this. General Rüdiger von der Goltz’s Freikorps units were incorporated into the VI Reserve Corps, and under the nominal oversight of Oberkommando Grenzschutz Nord (High Command of the Border Protection North, also known as Armee Oberkommando Nord or AOK Nord). This was under General Ferdinand von Quast and his chief of staff Major General Hans von Seeckt, the latter of whom had already begun to distrust the loyalties and reliability of the Freikorps movement. This arrangement had implications beyond just command authority, however, as it also served as the central vein of logistical support between the demobilizing imperial army and Freikorps formations being sent abroad. As fewer and fewer soldiers reported to barracks once units of the withdrawing VI Reserve Corps reached the German border, supplies were diverted by the corps staff to support Freikorps units like Freikorps von der Goltz, The Iron Division, and the Baltic Landeswehr.10 Therefore from the perspective of the former imperial army, represented by Quast and Seeckt in East Prussia, and Ebert’s republican government in Berlin, the Freikorps expedition into the Baltic states would be a clear demonstration of German power. Despite this intention, Freikorps commands were given surprisingly remarkable liberty to interpret how best to execute their mandate to protect the new Baltic states from Bolshevik incursions. Freikorps commanders chose to interpret Article XII as an opportunity for a wider attack on any Bolshevik presence in the Baltic region. In this sense, German and Allied political authorities were in agreement with Freikorps objectives. These nations did not want to see the Red Army sweep into eastern Europe, spreading communism in its wake. While the French representatives at the Armistice negotiations remained insistent that German military power be demobilized in all forms, limited French reserves forced at least a temporary acceptance that German troops would have to secure some sort of defensive position against the Red Army’s march toward the Baltic states by the end of 1918.11 The imminent threat represented by the Red Army led to u ­ ncommon bedfellows as desperate times did in fact lead to desperate measures. Putting aside deep-seeded political suspicions and mistrust, socialist-led workers’ and soldiers’ council groups worked quickly to assist the ­creation and arming of right-wing nationalist Freikorps units from the dissolving imperial army formations. On November 27, 1918, after

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winning approval from the Social Democrat delegate August Winnig,12 the German Chief of the Civilian Administration in the Baltics, Konrad von Goßler, approved the creation of a “rear guard” from various ­divisional units. In connection with the soldiers’ councils in Riga and Mitau (today Jelgava), the first Baltic Freikorps, the “Iron Division,” was created the following day. Although retaining its former imperial officer corps, recruitment for the new unit was directed under the authority and supervision of the local socialist soldiers’ councils—a partnership unthinkable within the borders of the Weimar Republic. More Freikorps formations were created in the following weeks as the scale of the task facing the German forces became more apparent and the weaknesses of the disintegrating imperial army were exposed. From the moment of their creation, the Baltic Freikorps were noted for their independence from central command. Compared to the strict discipline of General Maercker’s Freiwillige Landesjägerkorps, founded on broadly accepted military laws of command and obedience and only deployed domestically, the Baltic Freikorps formations were particularly independently minded, even for Freikorps units. They tended to be smaller than domestic German Freikorps formations, ranging between the size of a squad and up to a full battalion, publishing few written rules and regulations, and instead adopting their character from the personality of their commanding officer. “These formations exist under no proper military laws,” wrote a Baltikum commander, underscoring the diversity of the units. “No force created them and no force keeps them together. The will of the Commander alone was valid…”13 Coordination between former imperial command posts and the new units was often poor and army command authorities in Libau (Liepaga) and Königsberg frequently complained about the unruly and unreliable nature of the Baltic Freikorps troops. Command structures within units were generally improvised, lacking necessary officers for many critical tasks including unit liaison and record keeping, and often had a fluid character throughout their existence. This organizational disorder was also reflected in the diversity of the Freikorps membership. Observing that they were more akin to adventurous marauders than a reliable expression of German authority, Sammartino described the Baltic Freikorps as “not regular soldiers but volunteers drawn to the Baltics by a complex set of motivations, including the desire to fight Bolshevism, a wish for adventure, and the dream of Baltic settlement.”14 This independence at both larger and smaller unit levels within the Baltic Freikorps can be primarily attributed to their intended purpose and function as an expeditionary

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force. While expeditionary forces often demonstrate an increased degree of autonomy due to both their temporary nature and their geographic separation from the home country, the Freikorps units represent a radicalized expression of this commonly seen independence: they were products of both the post-armistice time period of their deployment and their internal character. Freikorps units also innovated at the tactical and operational levels, as they asserted their preferred autonomy at all levels of military function. Rejecting First World War operational doctrine rooted in static warfare, the Freikorps adopted smaller, mobile units, comfortable operating in vast open spaces, generally without the secure support of their i­mmediate neighboring formations. The commander of the Jagdkommando, Captain von Besser, wrote that although troops were “once trained to fight only in larger units, it was necessary now, without orders from above, to established themselves, entirely as their own master, and each man is only responsible to God in Heaven.”15 This thoroughly accommodated what historian Hagen Schulze termed “the half anarchist spirit of the Freikorps.”16 These small units generally did not fight and maneuver as a part of a centrally controlled corps or division, instead pursuing their own battlefield objectives in a series of small parallel wars fought alongside each other, with a notable degree of isolation from other units and central command. Within the operation of the Baltic Freikorps, there was a revival of the old Prussian principle of independent subordinate commanders, which suited both the operational realities of the units and their philosophical sentiments.

The Field Campaign The first major operation against Soviet troops in February 1919 deployed a loosely coordinated system of independent commands. Under General Rüdiger von der Goltz, the Baltic Freikorps were given three main attack routes to assault Soviet positions in the Kurland region. However the Iron Division, the Baltic Landeswehr and the 1st Garde-Reserve-Division each executed their own battle plans that drove them into the flanks and rear of the disorganized Russian troops. Pushing the Red Army back over 100 km, the majority of Kurland was in German hands including Mitau, Bausk (Bauska) and Tuckum (Tuckums) by March 26.17 The new commander of the Iron Division, Major Josef Bischoff, emphasized the fluidity and tempo of the Freikorps attack:

242  V. BUCHOLTZ From the thin marching columns with broadly sweeping infantry leaders, diverged small attack groups laterally within sweeping movements after the first enemy shots. Quick and surprising attack groups replaced our deficiency of [troop] numbers and artillery. Skill in utilization of terrain, lightning fast understanding of particular situations, and great mobility … enable flanking manouvres, rather than the defense of the Soviet troops with massive units, too stiff and cumbersome.18

By the end of March, the Red Army was reeling under von der Goltz’s assault and was pushed back over 200 km from the new German lines along the Baltic coast. However, the Bolshevik threat was not yet contained as communist-led revolts in Riga forced a German occupation of the city on May 22 to restore local order. Despite casualties to both the attacking and defending forces, the city fell by the end of the first day as the “reindeutsche Freikorps troops” of the Baltic Landeswehr and Detachement Medem secured the city.19 By May 27, the Iron Division and Baltic Landeswehr established a defensive position to the East of Riga, aided by the Latvian contingent of the Baltic Landeswehr covering the northern flank. Having only just recently quelled a Bolshevik style revolt within the German borders during the Spartacus Uprising in Berlin, Ebert’s government had intended the Freikorps to act not only as Entente-approved occupation forces, but also as a physical deterrent against the spread of revolutionary Russian Bolshevism toward the East Prussian border. Therefore victory brought new problems for the Baltic Freikorps. Soviet troops had been so soundly defeated that they were streaming back to the East, depriving the Freikorps of their fundamental reason for operation in the Baltics. Without the threat of the Red Army, German Freikorps presence was no longer required and many commanders feared that they would be forced to return to the Heimat. Many soldiers hoped that they would be able to remain as settlers in Latvia after defeating the Red Army.20 Indeed, the sympathetic Andreas Needra21 government in Riga had even begun preparations for the immigration and settlement of German Freikorps troops in Latvia, further encouraging the fantastical dreams of the Freiwilligen.22 However, British observers did not wish to see an extension of German military power in Latvia and began to pressure Ebert’s government to prepare for the withdrawal of Freikorps units back to Germany. While many Freikorps commanders, such as Major Bischoff and Captain Walter von Medem understood the rationale

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behind the orders of the High Command of Army North (AOK Nord in Bartenstein, East Prussia) to return to the homeland (Heimat), they also voiced a desire to protect the Baltic region from any renewed attempts by the Russian army to re-assert control over the region. Self-interest and romantic visions of glory on the frontier prevailed, as Baltic Freikorps troops attempted to forge a new identity for themselves through physical violence in a contested region.23 In response to a May 27 order to return to the German border, the Baltic Landeswehr instead moved to the Latvian-Estonian border on 29 May. The Iron Division followed them the next day. The rupture between the Freikorps movement and the Reich authorities had begun.

Deutschtum One of the motivations, if not the key motivation behind the Freikorps’ break with the republican government in Berlin stemmed from a radicalized Germanic imaginary, that of “Germandom” (Deutschtum), characterized by a set of sensibilities which they no longer felt was solely confined within a particular set of national boundaries. Instead, after the First World War, German nationalism was increasingly fluid. Some authors within the Freikorps movement, including Maercker, Salomon, Ihno Meyer, and Bischoff, imaged a new locus of Germandom situated beyond a particular government institution or monarch and instead residing within a group of individuals who embodied true German values, such as loyalty, duty and discipline. Describing the character of the Freikorps fighter Ernst von Salomon wrote, “where they stood was the state.” Continuing, he stated: [The Freikorps] stood in the focal point of danger, there, where the state accentuated itself the strongest. … No border of the Germans is conceivable that is not built through the consciousness of the Germans: so far and no further.24

In Salomon’s view, the Freikorps replaced the state as the embodiment of Germandom. “They were Gewalt [force], because the state is Gewalt,” Salomon argued. “They dealt in justice, because the state deals in justice.”25 Created as a reaction to a specific historical development, the Freikorps brought together violence, authority and “Germanness” in a new nationalist movement. “They were the state in a stateless time,”

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he wrote. “They were the warriors, and the State, carried forth in their consciousness, which was therefore a martial essence.”26 Malleable, freed from the influence of institutions and officialdom, the Freikorps’ radical nationalist expression of Deutschtum proved to be the perfectly tailored ideological framework for their aggressive agenda and operations. Once again, Salomon’s poetic phrasing aims to sanitize and legitimate the actions of the Freikorps: “They fought along the borders in the East, they charged as the German vanguard in a forgotten land.”27 Establishing a vague concept of a re-imagined set of values that were collectively understood by Freikorps members under the banner of Deutschtum created a philosophic rallying point for similarly inspired Germans after the war. This radicalized postwar interpretation of German values provided the core of an aggressive, expansionist nationalism, determined to defend threatened outposts of Germandom. While the intensity and ubiquity of calls to defend Deutschtum varied by region and the intensity of the Freikorps military operations, in the threatened eastern border provinces, Germanness served as a crucial characteristic of the Freikorps soldiers. “The troops must always bear in mind,” urged a pamphlet distributed to Grenzschutz commanders in the eastern V and VI Army Corps regions, “that they are the foundation of Germanness.”28 The concept of Deutschtum imaginary was also negotiated in direct contrast to Bolshevism. Not merely in opposition to a physical opponent on the battlefield, the Freikorps worldview was defined and redefined in opposition to their Bolshevik moral foe. Paradoxically, however, Freikorps authors and members categorically denied the pursuit of any political agenda or aspirations. Instead, Freikorps operations against anyone they could successfully squeeze under the catch-all “Spectre of Bolshevism” designation were undertaken as a part of a moral crusade to restore “peace and order” (Ruhe und Ordnung) in Germany. Rooted in prewar conservative social norms and heavily influenced by nationalist rhetoric and military virtues, the Freikorps’ conception of order was at once a rejection of aggressive international “Bolshevism” and an adaptation of an “apolitical” culture that pre-dated the war. Now seeking to redefine opposition to socialism and communism as a moral act rather than a political one, the Freikorps movement sought to elevate its actions above the daily squabbling of political life in the early Weimar Republic. In the eyes of many Freikorps troops, campaigns to ruthlessly “restore Ordnung,” both domestically and abroad, were not examples of a political discourse, but rather a moral crusade against a spiritual and cultural enemy.

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Although his direct connections to the Freikorps movement were minimal, Ernst Jünger’s works reflect the thinking and motivations of many members of the Freikorps movement. Jünger linked notions of Kampf (struggle) with Germanness and highlighted feelings of anger or resentment concerning the end of the war and a new expression of German nationalism. “We were the God of War incarnate,” Jünger stated. “Like other Germans who had made their periodic mark on history, we rose with a Germanic fury that brooked no resistance.”29 Although Jünger was describing German soldiers generally in the First World War, his works were published during the turmoil of the first few years after the war and mirror authors who were directly connected to the Freikorps movement, like Ernst von Salomon, Ludwig Maercker, and Ihno Meyer. Furthermore, his term “Germanic fury” (germanischer Wut) accurately describes the interplay between nationalism and aggression in Freikorps’ conceptions of “Germandom.” Freikorps authors sought to situate “Germanic fury” in a larger history of German culture. Ihno Meyer, commander of the Jägerbatallion of the Iron Division, sought to place his Freikorps in a longer history of militant civilian action.30 Referencing the military record of another Iron Division fighting against Napoleon in the 1813 Wars of Liberation, Meyer attempted to present the Freikorps movement as merely the most recent expression of a form of populist “Deutschtum” that periodically arose in German culture. He sought to connect the postwar Freikorps movement with the popular uprisings against Napoleon and French hegemony over central Europe, at the wellsprings of German nationalism. “There on the Windau, the strong fist of Major Bischoff brought the further advances of the Bolsheviks to a halt, and firmly established the Iron Division,” Meyer wrote, “It was there that the Yorckschen Jäger wrote a new chapter in their battalion’s history.”31 Praising the “Yorcksche Geist” of the new battalion, he equated the Napoleonic era victories with the unit’s most recent performance on the “crater fields of the west,” ­attempting to scaffold a commonly accepted German military legend around the new highly politicized domestic war. At their core these p ­ropaganda activities reflected an effort to present the Freikorps movement as an expression of a broader populist nationalist movement, deriving its power and influence from the devotion and commitment of its followers rather than the prestige of its loftiest patrons. Like other radical right-wing organizations and movements that developed after the end of the Great War, the Freikorps were fundamentally focused on wining

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the support of “ordinary Germans,” not social, political or military elites.32 The Freikorps movement lived and died on the streets and fields of the German Heimat. It rose and fell with the support of a culture of militant Germans who refused to demobilize socially, culturally and militarily after the end of the First World War. The leap from “defenders of Germany” during the war to “defenders of Germandom” during the Weimar era proved to be short and easily managed.33

Delusions and Defeats Bischoff’s rebellion proved disastrous. Initially, the advance of the German and Baltic troops went perfectly according to plan. The Iron Division crossed the Düna River in two columns and marched into Friedrichstadt and Jakobstadt along the Latvian-Estonian border. Two further days of progress saw the Iron Division push past the border and make contact with the retreating Soviet 24th Guard Regiment, dealing the Russians yet another severe blow. Following this latest setback, the Soviets withdrew all their troops from the Baltics, effectively ceding the region to the German Freikorps and their Baltic allies. Their triumph was short-lived. Relocating to the north along the Estonian border, the Freikorps commanders were not greeted as liberators by Estonians and northern Latvians, but rather as an impediment to achieving independence. Many citizens of the Baltic region did not welcome the atmosphere of fear and potential violence that was deliberately inculcated by the Freikorps formations during an occupation.34 Although actual physical violence against civilian populations may have been limited, the psychological violence and intimidation was widespread in occupied zones. In response to the violence of the Freikorps units, the pro-English Estonian government ordered the complete withdrawal of all German troops to a line south of Riga. Surprised and angered, the Baltic Landeswehr and the Latvian Nordkorps under Colonel Semitan overthrew Karlis Ulmanis’s government and sought to establish a new regime under pastor Andreas Needra, while the Iron Division completed their sweep of the Latvian countryside, rooting out remaining Bolshevik influences.35 The German Freikorps units quickly found themselves deeply embroiled in a new bloody civil war between supporters of the Needra and Ulmanis governments. While tensions had existed between the two factions before this point, the presence of the German Freikorps, and the availability of Entente arms, dramatically expanded the scope of the

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conflict in Latvia. However, after a few weeks of combat, a Germansympathetic American “Colonel Greene” managed to arrange an armistice on June 10, temporarily halting the advance of the pro-Needra Freikorps. As negotiations continued on June 13, General von der Goltz recognized the deteriorating support for the continued presence of German troops on Latvian soil and proposed that all reliable “reichsdeutsche Truppen”36 be withdrawn to a position 30 km south of Riga, while half of the Freikorps troops were to return to the German border.37 Motivated by external pressure, specifically the Allied Military Commission public declaration that the German Freikorps were the most serious threat to Latvian integrity, von der Goltz further conceded that Ulmanis should be allowed to establish a new Latvian government to settle internal issues. In light of peaceful political negotiations and no significant threat of Soviet invasion, the rationale for the continued operation of a multinational Freikorps command evaporated quickly. Cooperation between Latvian and German units broke down as June wore on. The Latvian Brigade of the Baltic Landeswehr, under Colonel Janis Bolodis, declared neutrality and refused to respond to German orders, as scattered White Russian units under Prince A. P. Lieven deserted across the Russian ­border.38 German troops also split between reliable “reichsdeutsche” troops on one hand, who were willing to obey AOK Nord directly and therefore consequently Berlin’s authority, and dissident Freikorps units eager to continue to fight against any foe they could broadly label “Bolshevik” on the other.39 Nonetheless, lingering like an unwanted house guest, the Freikorps formations once again went into battle near Wenden on June 20 against Ulmanis’ forces in the developing Latvia civil war. The battle ended with a complete defeat of the deteriorating German and Baltic forces. Poor intelligence and confused cooperation between the Baltic Landeswehr and the Iron Division hampered the main German thrust against the city. Here, the shortcomings of the Freikorps system were laid bare. Accustomed to fighting in small isolated units, the Freikorps troops failed in a classic “Großkampf” (large-scale operation). Cooperation and coordination between the attack groups broke down, and individual units, accustomed to operating for months at a time as independent assault groups, leapt into the battle piecemeal and were quickly isolated and ambushed by the Latvian defenders. The vaunted leadership principle of the Freikorps movement compounded the issues plaguing von der Goltz’s forces. Confronted with an unfamiliar form of warfare,

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insecurities of Freikorps commanders frequently were projected onto the troops, amplifying the faltering attitude of the German forces.40 German units fought one last rearguard battle against advancing Estonian troops at the end of June, but the campaign was lost. An official armistice in the Baltics was signed in Strasdenh of on July 3, 1919, between Needra, Ulmanis, and the Allied Commission under British General Herbert Gough. Under the agreement, Ulmanis returned to his office as Minister President, and all “reichsdeutsche” formations were to be dissolved in the following weeks. Instead of obeying the new agreement, the German Freikorps operating in the Baltics split even further with the Reich authorities. As the deadline to disband approached in mid-August, and troops obedient to von der Goltz began to withdraw to the German border, Freikorps units mutinied and refused to report for the Baltic voyage back to Germany. Freikorps troops now rebelled not against a political body with which they disagreed, but rather the very military institution that had launched their expedition, supplied critical logistical support, and incubated their movement from its first moment of conception. The reactions by the Freikorps rank-and-file demonstrated that they greeted this decision with open arms. One after another, the Freikorps declared their refusal to obey orders to return to the German border. Freikorps Weikmann and the Battalion Rieckhoff were soon joined by Major Bischoff and the Iron Division on August 14. “Far be it for me to carry out a counterrevolution across Germany,” Bischoff told his troops. “I will only concern myself for you. Put yourself firmly behind me! I will carry the full responsibility, .. I am taking your trust and will not betray it.”41 Rather than taking steps to secure provisions, living quarters, or more munitions, the Freikorps organized a theatrical demonstration of strength. On the night of August 24, the troops of the Iron Division were joined by members of all other dissident Freikorps units in an elaborate torchlight demonstration march through the city of Mitau. Members of the Pan-German League praised the Iron Division’s command staff, noting “such enthusiasm has not existed since August 1914!”42

Return to Germany Despite the enthusiasm of some of the troops, after the departure of von der Goltz the Freikorps command continued to fracture at the end of August. Officers and enlisted men from several reichsdeutsche formations

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deserted from their units. Most of the 1st Garde-Reserve-Division, the Freikorps von Plehwe, part of the Freikorps von Diebitsch, plus some deserting reichsdeutsche soldiers attached to the Iron Division assembled themselves as the new Freiwilliges Schützenregiment Baltenland on August 25. The same day the newly formed Deutsche Legion agreed with Bischoff’s decision to refuse orders to return to Germany and instead remain in the Baltics.43 However even as other Freikorps would chose to follow Bischoff’s lead, the poor logistical situation and the extremely limited political options available to the rebellious formations prompted an attempt at a negotiated settlement to their dire situation. Serving as de facto commander of the rebel Freikorps, Bischoff opened negotiations with the army command in late August. Bischoff met with the Commanding General’s representative, Colonel Albert Fleischer, and presented him with a written ultimatum, explaining the insubordination of the Iron Division over broken promises of the government. On behalf of the estimated 40,000 men under his command, Bischoff demanded the retention of at least 30% of Freikorps officers, non-commissioned officers and troops in the newly created Reichswehr in Germany, the preservation of the current form of the Iron Division in the new army, placement of the division on a fixed post on the East Prussian-Lithuanian border as a Border Protection unit, land for settlement in Germany, and complete impunity from prosecution for mutiny and other crimes.44 The relationship between the Reich authorities in Berlin and the Freikorps continued to sour and both sides began to issue statements defending their actions. The rebellious Baltic Freikorps distributed a declaration through Captain Walter von Medem, entitled “Declaration from the German Freikorps to the German Fatherland and all Cultural Peoples of the Earth” (Aufruf der deutschen Freikorps an das deutsche Vaterland und an alle Kulturvölker der Erde). Seeking to engage in what was by then a well-established narrative of anti-Bolshevism, Medem argued that the Freikorps only wanted to “protect the borders of our Fatherland from the unspeakable torments which the breakthrough of the Bolshevik hordes will bring to our Volk.”45 Striking back, Defense Minister Gustav Noske issued an order to the Baltic commanders, reminding them of their duty to the Reich government to maintain order, as well as a thinly veiled threat of the harsh repercussions dissident Freikorps troops could anticipate. “Eastern troops will have no assurances [to join] in the new Reichswehr,” Noske pointedly declared on September 5, 1919 from OHL in Kolberg. “For all officers and men, absolute obedience toward

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Berlin is demanded. Insistence on rebellion will lead to a termination of the agreement, and involve a stoppage of the payment of wages and ­provisions, plus criminal punishment.”46 Noske’s decision to halt pay and supplies for those troops who did not obey represented an important acknowledgment that logistical and financial considerations could potentially trump nationalism and political ideology, as well as an indication of the key leverage of the Berlin government. Freikorps soldiers and officers were preoccupied with their future security, especially in the uncertain postwar era. Demobilization was surely coming for German forces, and which units and men would be able to secure a place in the soon to be formed Provisional Reichswehr (Vorläufige Reichswehr) armed forces was not yet clear. Cessation of funds and supplies would also have immediate and devastating repercussions on the current military, political, and social activities of the Freikorps movement. If Noske was able to curtail the ability of the Freikorps to project an image of imminent and deadly force, their ability to influence the broader social and political events of the postwar era would be significantly threatened. Although Noske had hit upon the right formula for controlling the Freikorps, it would be some months before the Freikorps themselves were willing to acknowledge their losing situation. Cut off from government funds and provisions and with no ­assurances of a secure reception within the Provisional Reichswehr, the German Freikorps commanders nonetheless marched on, firmly outside the grasp of Ebert’s regime in Berlin. Details of the Freikorps actions in fall 1919 remain scattered as they struggled to find sympathetic Baltic communities that would welcome a large group of heavily armed German would-be colonists. Several dissident units eventually grouped together around Dünaberg (today Daugavpils, Latvia) in October 1919 under the banner of the “Deutsch-Russische Freiwillige Westarmee.” The total strength of the force was approximately 50–52,000 men, of which 40,000 were German, including the Freiwilliges Korps Graf Keller, the II Detachement Oberst Weyroglitsch, and old rebels like the Iron Division and the Deutsche Legion.47 Eventually, some units of the Baltic Freikorps found work participating in their favorite pastime, fighting Bolshevism. However, participation in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White Armies effectively ceded the fate of the German rebel Freikorps to forces outside of their control. While for Ebert’s beleaguered

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government in Berlin it mattered significantly how well the Freikorps fought and how many rifles and battalions stood at the ready, for the Entente forces operating against the Russian Bolsheviks the delicate balance of international relations stood paramount. Entente policies concerning Russian intervention and their policy toward Germany would decide the fate of the German Freikorps’ expedition. The defeat of the White Armies under Alexander Kolchak, Anton Denikin, and Nikolai Yudenich squandered the best chance to defeat the Red Army, and British support for further Russian intervention quickly evaporated. So too, did Allied tolerance of German Freikorps marching through the Baltics. By December 13, the Inter-Allied Baltic Commission reported that through protracted negotiations, the majority of the Deutsche Legion and the Iron Division had been convinced to return to East Prussia, largely because of their severe shortage of funds, provisions, and replacement military equipment. The German Baltic adventure ended with the inglorious crossing of the German-Lithuanian border by halfstarved troops of the Freikorps Roßbach on December 16, 1919.

Conclusion The Freikorps escapades in the Baltics demonstrate the dangerous reality of increased access to the means of physical violence that developed at the end of the First World War. With the destruction of the German Army’s hegemony over the means of violence, semi- or fully independent organizations had the ability to unleash the terrible killing power of industrial warfare to pursue their own political agendas, as was the case with the German troops in the Baltic Freikorps. Dissatisfied with Ebert’s decision to honor the terms of the armistice agreement and withdraw German troops from the Baltics, the Freikorps attempted to either find a new sympathetic home or become their own independent state, drafting foreign and military policies as they went. The Baltic Freikorps campaign was both characteristic of important trends within the broader Freikorps movement, particularly radical völkisch nationalism and anti-Bolshevism, and also the breakdown of established political order in central and eastern Europe after the First World War. As Sammartino argues, many Freikorps soldiers were attracted by “the lack of order and rules in the Baltics,” and others were lured by “the sense of freedom.”48 Independence, radical nationalism, and a mixture of physical and psychological violence were prevalent in the Freikorps movement, both in and outside of Germany’s border.

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Although the first rupture between the government and the Freikorps system began far away from Berlin along the coast of the Baltic Sea, it would not be long before tremors from this event would shake the foundation of the unstable alliance with military leadership that Ebert’s political authority so precariously rested upon. The weaknesses of the pact between Ebert and Groener, as well as the continuing rebellious influence of Freikorps formations, were clearly indicated through the actions of Wolfgang von Lüttwitz and other senior army officers during the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in Berlin during March 1920.49 Ultimately the German Freikorps Baltic expedition had a mixed outcome. For Ebert and the Social Democratic government, there was a slim net positive, as their international obligations under Article XII of the Armistice Agreement were met and the independence of the Baltic states was secured, largely through German actions in February and March. However, the rebellious actions of the Freikorps expeditionary units clearly demonstrated limits to the political and military authorities in Berlin. The paucity of reliable troops that had led to the selection of the Freikorps for the expedition in the Baltics clearly persisted after their operation, and instead only further exposed the incomplete consolidation of the republican regime. In the eyes of the former imperial officer corps this campaign was another example of the crisis of authority and troop reliability that threatened the continued existence of the military. Groener and the former General Staff recognized that demobilization had created a crisis within the army and the loyalty and reliability of the wartime divisions were no longer a certainty. New and reliable formations needed to be created, however, after the Baltic campaign it was clear to the army leadership that the Freikorps were not the ideal answer to their problems. For the Freikorps, this expedition also had mixed outcomes. From a material or tangible perspective the Baltic campaign had ended disastrously. Limping home, even after the early victories over the Russians, was a bitter conclusion for many of the Freikorps commanders and soldiers—bitterness that would be expressed for decades to come. Briefly, nested within the German military, the Freikorps had had access to significant and critical resources, which they hoped to be able to use to achieve their own political objectives through displays of violence or the threat of violence. The disastrous end of this campaign, the ­weakening of the relationship between the Freikorps movement and the central military authority, as well as the loss of those government resources

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represented a crippling blow to the ability of the Freikorps to project an image of violence and power. However, if there was a positive for the Freikorps movement overall, it was a “spiritual” one. The Baltic campaign was a clear demonstration of the Freikorps’ commitment to völkisch ideology, radical conceptions of Deutschtum, and a rejection of Bolshevism; their willingness to use violence to achieve their goals would remain a fixture of Freikorps and right-wing propaganda in the following years. A further consideration is that the German Freikorps’ Baltic c­ ampaign highlights several key aspects of expeditionary forces. Chief among them include distance, both physical and metaphysical from home, the importance of an effective policy–strategy matrix, civil–military relations, the centrality of discipline and chain of command, and the inescapable reality of logistical constraints. As alluded to previously, reliability of the troops sent abroad was another critical factor in a successful expeditionary force. The importance of consistent obedience to the chain of military command and to the political authority that launched the mission was exposed throughout the Freikorps Baltic operations. The independent and quarrelsome nature of the Freikorps movement is responsible for the mixed outcome of Germany’s postwar Baltic operation. Freikorps commanders were notorious for ignoring orders with which they did not agree, and instead marching in pursuit of their own political and strategic objectives. Rules and laws were frequently ­broken or re-interpreted to justify all manner of actions against their chosen enemies. Freikorps commanders often proclaimed that they had no political agenda, yet in numerous examples they did not hesitate to assume political authority through a hastily declared “military dictatorship” and suspension of civil liberties when they felt that civilian authorities lacked sufficient authority to implement measures to safeguard “Germandom.” This ambivalence toward authorities that the Freikorps did not approve extended on their part all the way to Ebert and the new republican government. Within the Freikorps movement authority stemmed from personal relationships and bonds of loyalty demonstrated through action, not from institutions and abstract notions of chain of command. This loose structure and independent characteristic made the Freikorps a dubious choice for a government-sponsored expedition, as Ebert and Groener would both come to appreciate. Additionally, this underscores the importance of coordination between civilian policy and military strategy, and the relationship between the specific individuals involved in that process.

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Continuing with the theoretical implications from the Baltic campaign, the meta-physical distance from an imagined “home” is of particular importance to understanding the actions of the Freikorps and a unique challenge posed to expeditionary forces. For the Freikorps soldiers and officers the Deutschtum imaginary was a far more attractive and powerful influence in their decision-making than the allure of the Heimat. An imagined Germandom was their true homeland. As German Freikorps troops demonstrated little love for the new Socialist-led republic, bonds of loyalty were already weakened in the immediate aftermath of the war. This perceived political and moral incompatibility, combined with an indulgence of naïve visions of new German-Latvian colonies for campaign veterans, led to the development of a significant gap or distance between the mindset of the Freikorps and their nominal superiors in Berlin. Additionally the length of deployment, even a relatively brief one such as the Baltic campaign, had a significant effect, degrading the already shaky loyalty exhibited by the Freikorps. Finally, it is only in the most basic of material conditions and supply that the true master of the Freikorps was revealed: logistics. The “logic” in logistics proved to be inescapable for the Freikorps as it is for expeditionary forces in general. Cutting off resources to the unruly and undisciplined Freikorps proved to be the decisive mechanism to finally tame the political and military aspirations of Freikorps commanders and soldiers. In the simplest terms, soldiers must eat, bullets and shells must be replenished, and an expeditionary force is most often dependent on its home country for these resources. The foolish attempt to ignore this fundamental reality of expeditionary life only serves to highlight the fantastical and ill-conceived aspirations and political ambitions of the German Freikorps commanders in the Baltic campaign.

Notes

1.  On the Freikorps movement as a whole see the classic by Robert G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918–1923 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952); Hagen Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 1918–1920 (Boppard am Rhein: H. Boldt, 1969). On the Baltic Freikorps, see Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. 227–46; Tomas Balkelis, “Turning Citizens into Soldiers:

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Baltic Paramilitary Movements After the Great War,” in War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War, ed. Robert Gerwarth (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 126–44. 2. Analysis of these units is hampered by the questionable reliability of firsthand accounts. Many of the diary entries, campaign logs, and collected statements left behind by Freikorps soldiers and officers contain factual inaccuracies. Therefore working from incomplete and often inaccurate sources has affected historians’ ability to construct a clear image of these units and their interactions with the broader social movement in which they operated. Therefore there are no precise statistics for Freikorps participants from November 1918 to late 1923, due to the fluid membership in such formations. However several authors have proposed estimates based on documented sizes of units who worked with the Reichswehr at various times, as well as reviewing the anecdotal, and often inflated, records of the Freikorps themselves. James Diehl estimated that 1.5 million men participated in volunteer organizations of some kind during this period, with approximately one-third of those men enlisting in Freikorps formations for at least some period of service. “Germany: Veterans’ Politics under Three Flags” in The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, ed. James Diehl and Stephen R. Ward (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975), 135–80. Alternatively Robert Waite set the number of Freikorps troops around 200,000–400,000 (Vanguard of Nazism, 39–40); Harold Gordon in The Reichswehr and the German Republic, 1919–1926 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 70–71 accepted the latter number as generally accurate, while Hagen Schulze argued that there were no more than 250,000 recorded volunteers in volunteer units, Schulze, Freikorps, 36–37. When incorporating the work of Erwin Könnemann, the 200,000 figure appears quite low. Erwin Könnenmann, Einwohnerwehren und Zeitfreiwilligenverbände. Ihre Funktion beim Aufbau eines neuen imperialistischen Militärsystems (November 1918 bis 1920) (Berlin: Deutscher Militärverlag, 1971), Document 23. Thus an average composite of these studies yields the 300,000–500,000 estimate used in this work. Liulevicius in War Land (228) gives 20,000–40,000 for the Freikorps members in the Baltic, the Baltikumer. 3.  Annemarie H. Sammartino, Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2010), 1–17. 4. Sammartino, Impossible Border, 46. 5. Sammartino, Impossible Border, 46. 6. Schulze, Freikorps, 132. 7. Kuno Friedrich Westarp, Das Ende Der Monarchie Am 9 November 1918: Abschliessender Bericht Nach Den Aussagen Der Beteiligten. Mit Einem

256  V. BUCHOLTZ Nachwort Hrsg. Werner Conze (Stollhamm [Oldb]: Rauschenbusch, 1952), 63. OHL was moved to Kassel with the end of the War, and in February 1919 was moved eastward to Kolberg in Pommerania (today Kolobrzeg, Poland) out of concern for possible forcible territorial encroachment by the new Polish Republic. 8. While many rank-and-file soldiers were eager to return to Germany and demobilize, voices among Germany’s leadership, including Groener and August Winnig were in favor of projecting German power eastward once more. Groener’s primary concern was the growing strength of the newly formed Polish Army. See Gerhard W. Rakenius, Wilhelm Groener als erster Generalquartiermeister: Die Politik der Obersten Heeresleitung 1918/1919 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1977), 165–98; Matthias Strohn, The German Army and the Defence of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle, 1918–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 63–86. 9. Sammartino, Impossible Border, 45. 10. Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA) Freiburg im Breisgau RH 69-207, Grenzschutz Nord, February, 1919. Landeswehr is a designation normally used for “home guard” (Britain) or “national guard” (US) units, many of which fought as regular infantry during the 1914–1918 period. It is difficult to estimate the size of these formations at any point in their existence, however the amount of supplies consumed by the Freikorps units was comparable to at least two First World War infantry divisions. 11. Schulze, Freikorps, 133–35. 12. August Winnig (1878–1965) began his career as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and an important activist within the German trade union movement. At the end of the war, Winnig was serving as East Prussian Oberpräsident, and with the onset of revolution in Germany, General Bevollmächtiger (Penipotentiary or chief representative) of the occupied Baltic countries. Although Winnig signed the documents recognizing the independence of Estonia and Latvia, he would also demand that one quarter of the seats in the Latvian People’s Council be reserved for the German Baltic minority, in order to preserve “Germandom in the East.” His actions proved to be out of step with the federal SPD leadership and his popularity within the party diminished over this issue. See August Winnig, Das Reich als Republik (Stuttgart and Berlin: J. G. Cotta, 1929). 13. Schulze, Freikorps, 135. 14. Sammartino, Impossible Border, 45. 15. Schulze, Freikorps, 138.

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16. Schulze, Freikorps, 138. 17. Josef Bischoff, Die Letzte Front: Geschichte der Eisernen Division im Baltikum 1919 (Berlin: Buch und Tiefdruck Gesselschaft, 1935), 61. 18. Bischoff, Letzte Front, 63. 19. Bischoff, Letzte Front, 62. 20. Sammartino, Impossible Border, 45. 21. Needra’s name came be found under multiple different spellings, including “Andreas Niedra” and “Andrievs Niedra.” For this study, “Andreas Needra” will be used. 22. BA-MA, R 43 I/47, “Telegram der Gesandschaft Libau, Mai 29, 1919.” 23. Sammartino, Impossible Border, 48. AOK Nord in Bartenstein, East Prussia, and AOK Süd in Breslau, Silesia, were both under Zentrale Grenzschutz Ost in Berlin, which reported to OHL under Groener in Kolberg, Pommeria. 24. Ernst von Salomon, Das Buch vom deutschen Freikorpskämpfer (Berlin: W. Limpert, 1938), 12. 25. von Salomon, Deutschen Freikorpskämpfer, 12. 26. von Salomon, Deutschen Freikorpskämpfer, 13. 27. von Salomon, Deutschen Freikorpskämpfer, 10. Deutschtum was always in flux, but usually involved an intimate sense of community, belonging and yearning based on a claim of mystical blood ties created by common sacrifice for the greater good. 28. “Merkblatt – Für Führer im Grenzschutz,” in Salomon, Freikorpskämpfer, 249. 29. Ernst Jünger, Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1925), 156, as translated in Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. 2, Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 368. 30. Ihno Meyer, Das Jägerbataillon der Eisernen Division im Kampfe gegen den Bolschewismus (Leipzig: Hillmann, 1920), 6. 31. Meyer, Jägerbataillon, 6. Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg was a prominent Prussian military commander who fought against Napoleon and achieved folk hero status by the early twentieth century. Yorck commanded one of the first nineteenth century Freikorps formations and was instrumental in pushing the French troops out of Prussia. He also commanded forces during the Battle of the Nations and the storming of Paris in 1814. See Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of Prussian Reform, 1807–1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). 32.  See Chris Millington, “Duelling with Words and Fists: Meeting Hall Violence in Interwar France,” in Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940, ed. Chris Millington and Kevin Passmore (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 112–26.



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258  V. BUCHOLTZ 33. For more analysis of the right wing in the Weimar Republic, see James Diehl, “Germany: Veterans’ Politics under Three Flags,” in The War Generation: Veterans of The First World War, ed. Stephen R. Ward (Port Washington, NY: National University Publications, 1975), 162. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism; Gordon, Reichswehr and the German Republic, 1919–1926 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). 34.  For more information concerning the use of intimidation by the Freikorps, see BA-MA RH 69-1636, “Erfahrungen aus den Straßenkämpfen in Berlin.” Generalleutnant von Hofmann, Innere Angelegenheiten (IA) Nr 225, March 31, 1919. 35. Bischoff, Letzte Front, 66. 36. Troops who directly obeyed the central military authority in Berlin. 37. Schulze, Freikorps, 150. 38. Schulze, Freikorps, 134. 39. Schulze, Freikorps, 151. 40.  Rüdiger von der Goltz, Meine Sendung in Finnland und im Baltikum (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920), 203; Bischoff, Letzte Front, 136; Edgar von Schmidt-Pauli, Geschichte des Freikorps, 1918–1924: Nach amtlichen Quellen, Zeitberichten, Tagebüchern und persönlichen Mitteilungen hervorrangender Freikorpsführer (Stuttgart: R. Lutz, 1936), 114; and Schulze, Freikorps, 152. 41. Bischoff, Letzte Front, 248. 42. Ibid., 199. 43. Schmidt-Pauli, Freikorps, 128–30. 44. Schulze, Freikorps, 167. 45. Schulze, Freikorps, 168. 46. Schulze, Freikorps, 170. 47. Schulze, Freikorps, 185. 48. Sammartino, Impossible Border, 51. 49. BA-MA N 40-11. “Erinnerungen von Hilmar von Mittelberger an den Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch,” March 13, 1920. Berlin, 9.

Bibliography Archival Sources Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA) Freiburg im Breisgau. N 40-11. “Erinnerungen von Hilmar von Mittelberger an den Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch.” March 13, 1920. Berlin. RH 69-207, Grenzschutz Nord, February, 1919. RH 69-1636, “Erfahrungen aus den Straßenkämpfen in Berlin.” Generalleutnant von Hofmann, Innere Angelegenheiten (IA) Nr 225, March 31, 1919. R 43 I/47, “Telegram der Gesandschaft Libau, Mai 29, 1919.”

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Other Sources Balkelis, Tomas. “Turning Citizens into Soldiers: Baltic Paramilitary Movements After the Great War.” In War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War, edited by Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, 126–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bischoff, Josef. Die Letzte Front: Geschichte der Eisernen Division im Baltikum 1919. Berlin: Buch und Tiefdruck Gesselschaft, 1935. Diehl, James. “Germany: Veterans’ Politics under Three Flags.” In The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, edited by James Diehl and Stephen R. Ward, 135–80. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975. Goltz, Rüdiger von der. Meine Sendung in Finnland und im Baltikum. Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920. Gordon, Harold. The Reichswehr and the German Republic, 1919–1926. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Jünger, Ernst. Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis. Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1925. Könnenmann, Erwin. Einwohnerwehren und Zeitfreiwilligenverbände: Ihre Funktion beim Aufbau eines neuen imperialistischen Militärsystems (November 1918 bis 1920). Berlin: Deutscher Militärverlag, 1971. Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel. War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Meyer, Ihno. Das Jägerbataillon der Eisernen Division im Kampfe gegen den Bolschewismus. Leipzig: Hillmann, 1920. Millington, Chris. “Duelling with Words and Fists: Meeting Hall Violence in Interwar France.” In Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918– 1940, edited by Chris Millington and Kevin Passmore, 112–26. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Paret, Peter. Yorck and the Era of Prussian Reform, 1807–1815. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Rakenius, Gerhard W. Wilhelm Groener als erster Generalquartiermeister: Die Politik der Obersten Heeresleitung 1918/1919. Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1977. Salomon, Ernst von. Das Buch vom deutschen Freikorpskämpfer. Berlin: W. Limpert, 1938. Sammartino, Annemarie. Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. Schmidt-Pauli, Edgar von. Geschichte des Freikorps, 1918–1924: Nach amtlichen Quellen, Zeitberichten, Tagebüchern und persönlichen Mitteilungen hervorrangender Freikorpsführer. Stuttgart: R. Lutz, 1936. Schulze, Hagen. Freikorps und Republik, 1918–1920. Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1969.

260  V. BUCHOLTZ Strohn, Matthias. The German Army and the Defense of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle, 1918–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies, Vol. 2, Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Waite, Robert G. L. Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Post-War Germany, 1918–1923. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952. Westarp, Kuno Friedrich. Das Ende der Monarchie am 9 November 1918: Abschliessender Bericht nach den Aussagen der Beteiligten. Mit einem Nachwort hrsg. Werner Conze. Stollhamm [Oldb]: Rauschenbusch, 1952. Winnig, August. Das Reich als Republik. Stuttgart and Berlin: J. G. Cotta, 1929.

CHAPTER 10

From Galicia to Galilee: The Ottoman and German Expeditionary Experiences in the First World War in Comparison Emre Sencer

There was a time in the 1970s and 1980s when many Turkish children in middle school (especially the boys) read a book originally published in 1957. Titled Hababam Sınıfı (loosely translated as The Chaos Class); Rıfat Ilgaz’s book was actually a collection of stories taking place roughly in the 1940s, based on his high school experience in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Ilgaz, a former teacher who had been persecuted for being a communist during the WW II years, published these stories in order to support his other more serious writing. The book narrates the adventures and antics of a group of high school seniors at a boarding school. It quickly became a readers’ favorite and surpassed the fame of his other work. By the 1970s, a series of films based on the book won popularity with audiences. With a few exceptions, the teachers in the book are depicted as unimaginative, vindictive, or outright ridiculous. An interesting exception was one of the science teachers, an elderly and rather incompetent man whom the boys found easy to provoke into going off on tangents,

E. Sencer (*)  Knox College, Galesburg, IL, USA © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_10

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especially to avoid unannounced quizzes. A sure way to sidetrack him was to mention the Great War, especially his service in Galicia. His participation in that campaign, as well as later in the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922), was supposed to explain some of his odd behavior. This military past somewhat endeared him to the boys, who dubbed him the General. He only appears in one major scene in the book.1 In the stage and screen adaptations of the novel, the references to Galicia are often deleted, and the teacher becomes a hero of the War of Independence. Perhaps this change was representative of the overall lack of knowledge or interest in the late 1970s about the Galician campaign. Approximately forty years after that period, interest in the First World War is now a veritable cottage industry in Turkey, taking up a sizeable portion of popular history publishing. This interest is not limited to the academic field; various campaigns of the war fascinate amateur historians, antiquarians, and enthusiasts. Social media accounts thrive with rediscovered images from the war and long discussions involving campaign memoirs. One of the fields that benefited from this enthusiasm lately has been the Ottoman expeditionary activity in Eastern Europe and the Balkans (namely, Galicia, Romania, and Macedonia). It is understandable that the readers interested in the First World War would also find this campaign fascinating. The two major Ottoman victories of the war, Gallipoli and Kut al Amara (both in 1916), are quite well known.2 The defeats in the war, on the other hand, do not receive as much attention from the general readership, with the exception of publications that highlight the suffering of the troops. Yet the expeditions to aid the empire’s allies were campaigns in which the Ottoman units did very well, despite sizeable casualties. The Ottoman XV Corps was sent out to Galicia to support German and Austro-Hungarian positions against Russian advances, and stayed in the region roughly from August 1916 to August 1917 when the troops were pulled out to bolster the Mesopotamian Front. During the same period, other Ottoman contingents also fought in Romania (August 1916–May 1917) and Macedonia (Autumn 1916), eventually deploying around 100,000 men in the European theater between the summer of 1916 and the spring of 1918.3 So, why were they not better known until recently?4 The possible answer lies in the way the war is viewed by the modern Turkish public. Buttressed by the two lonely victories in 1916 on the one hand and a series of disastrous defeats that led to the collapse of

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the Empire on the other, there is very little room in the imagination of the average Turkish reader for these “sideshows.” Not having anything to do with defense of the homeland (Gallipoli) or the attempt to save the Ottoman Middle East from the British (Kut), the expeditions to the West (for these were deployments in the West from the Ottoman geographic and cultural perspective) soon fell by the wayside. Yet a reading of the memoirs and other sources about these expeditions, especially the one to Galicia, provides an interesting look into the Ottoman experience in the war and places their participation in the context of other expeditions during the period. Similarly, the memories of the German experience in the Ottoman Empire during the war also have echoes of a sideshow. Newly discovered narratives and memoirs of German soldiers bewildered by their sojourn in the Empire draw attention as curiosities shedding light on German orientalism. A recently reported account about a 19-year old recruit posted to Constantinople in 1918, for example, describes the impact of the capital city on the soldier’s young and inexperienced mind.5 German technical advisers had been involved with reforming and strengthening the Ottoman military and training staff officers for almost thirty years (since the early 1880s), especially under the influence of Colmar von der Goltz. His 1883 book Das Volk in Waffen (The Nation in Arms) had impressed a large number of Ottoman officers commissioned during that period, especially the staff officers.6 Under Wilhelm II, the emphasis on closer strategic and economic ties between the two empires intensified, including the launching of the Berlin-Baghdad railway.7 The German interest on Ottoman Empire eventually led to three visits by Wilhelm II in 1889, 1898, and 1917. The German Military Mission in the Empire had been already active since 1913, commanded by Liman von Sanders.8 German troops were involved in the Sinai region by the beginning of the war. In time, there would be both support units and the actual deployment of German soldiers, sailors, and airmen, especially on the Mesopotamian Front. After 1916, new formations arrived for the Palestine front (called Expeditionskorps Pascha I), committing more and more troops there, especially after the capture of Baghdad by the British in March 1917. The bulk of the German material mentioned in this essay comes from the officers and troops who were involved in the Heeresgruppe F (or Yıldırım Orduları Grubu, Turkish for “Thunderbolt” Army Group) on the Palestine Front, deployed under the title Expeditionskorps Pascha II from the late summer of 1917.

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Collectively, the German forces in the Ottoman Empire were known as the Asien-Korps or Levante-Korps.9 The German experience in the Ottoman Empire was a much bigger commitment than that of the Ottomans in Eastern Europe. While smaller in comparison to any of the European fronts, the survivors among the German forces in the Ottoman Empire returned home after the war with a distinct understanding of their role in the conflict and appreciation for the region and its peoples. This distinct identity led to their own veterans’ organization, Bund der Asienkämpfer (League of Asian Fighters, hereafter BdAK). While it played a lobbying role similar to many other such groups in the Weimar Republic, BdAK had a unique membership composition and its publications reached a more heterogeneous readership than other veterans’ organizations. The organization included many civilian members and affiliates, former imperial academics, bureaucrats, and other employees whose paths took them to the Ottoman Empire before and during the War. It was the geographic connection rather than military service that created this distinct identity, one of which the membership seemed to be quite proud. At once a lobbying group for German interests in the region and a venue for reminiscence, the organization fulfilled multiple purposes and garnered a sizeable membership. It continued to develop into the early Nazi era, with some of its members quickly attracted by the new regime. Yet the group’s seemingly dated conservatism and the perceived lack of regime-loyalty led to the eventual shutting down of the association’s journal Mitteilungen des Bundes der Asienkämpfer in 1938.10 A typical story in the prewar Nazi practice, the association was gleichgeschaltet (brought into line/consolidated) out of existence. The aim of this chapter is to look at these two widely different involvements in expeditionary action by the two allies neither of whom used the term or perhaps were not interested in using it,11 and to provide a look into their culture within the larger war experience of the two empires. The focus is not on campaign strategy or tactics but the comparative experience of expedition. The bulk of the chapter will focus on the German side of the affairs due to the size and duration of that operation, but the Ottoman side will also offer a chance to compare the two legacies. Insight into the German and Ottoman experience in these fronts provides a parallel with other similar involvements by other powers, and resonates with the overall concept of expedition in the War.

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The Ottomans in Galicia The origin of the decision to send an Ottoman corps made out of two infantry divisions to Galicia lay in the disastrous impact of the Brusilov Offensive on the Austrian war effort in the summer of 1916. The severe lack of reserves created something akin to panic among German and Austrian authorities, and pushed them to look for alternatives to prop up the front against the Russian onslaught. The option of sending Ottoman troops to the Eastern Front required persuading both the Austrians to allow that decision and to convince Liman and the German Mission in the Ottoman Empire to use troops that were otherwise badly needed in the Caucasus or Mesopotamia, especially after the devastating series of defeats by the Russians in Eastern Anatolia during the summer of 1916. For the Ottoman leadership, the deployment offered a chance to show their commitment to the Central Powers’ war effort and to ensure continuing support from Germany and Austro-Hungary in return. The troops that made up the corps included mostly units that were Gallipoli veterans, and the corps itself was reasonably well-equipped for Ottoman standards. Yet it was clear that the corps would need logistics and artillery support from the Austrians and additional weaponry, especially heavy machine guns, from the Germans.12 Despite the size of the commitment and the quality of the troops, these shortages were quite clear in the personal narratives by Ottoman participants. The majority of narratives regarding expedition during wartime focus on the actual fighting and the conditions surrounding the troops’ daily lives. This is perhaps to be expected, considering the necessary attention on the human condition and the brutality of warfare. However, when looking at the expeditionary experience, it is useful to also examine the actual difficulties surrounding the logistics and “behind the scenes” nature of transport, accommodation, and support issues that dogged planners on both sides of the war. The Ottomans were no exception; in fact, due to the financial and infrastructural difficulties of the imperial military, these issues were even more critical for the Ottomans than their allies. It is not surprising, therefore, that many participants spent a lot of time discussing the prelude to fighting in their narratives. Since the fact that the bulk of the Ottoman troops sent to Galicia was drawn from the units that fought in Gallipoli, they had to be properly rested and replenished before the deployment. Many units were already at the rear in various locations in the Thrace during June 1916.

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A recurring complaint in Ottoman memoirs about the period is the ­limited quantity and quality of the supplies delivered to these troops and the understrength nature of the units waiting to be deployed. M. Şevki Yazman, the author of one the most well-known memoirs about the expedition, points out that the men were fed a daily ration of cracked wheat, supplemented with a twice weekly portion of goat meat.13 While the quality of the supplies improved once the mobilization orders arrived, it was not until the troops were on the move and supplied by their allies that the meals became satisfactory. Along with the additional supplies, the mobilization orders brought in replacement troops for the losses and a new batch of younger officers, who immediately began the training of the troops. Although the arrival of the new crop of officers was a welcome development, some of the officers themselves were fresh out of reservist training, and as one of the latter recounted, neither the quality of the training nor their basic living conditions were commensurate with the requirement of the task at hand.14 Along with the training, the authorities had to worry about the morale of the troops so recently pulled out of brutal trench warfare at Gallipoli. Desertion was a real risk; the author of another famous memoir, İbrahim Arıkan, mentions in passing that the troops were originally told that they were being sent to beef up security and order in Austria.15 The arrival of the War Minister and acting Commander-in-Chief Enver Pasha in July for an inspection seems to have established the significance of their departure to the troops, even if the officer corps already had heard of the rumors of the expedition to Galicia. Even if the troops had known the names of the places they were going, however, they did not necessarily understand where exactly these locations were. Yazman reports in his usual humorous way how he quizzed his soldiers about the capital cities and the rulers of AustriaHungary and Germany; the result was not very promising. Although the incident is in the book possibly for comic effect, the general ignorance and illiteracy of many of the troops in his story are hard to miss.16 The security aspect before the departure evolved into an ongoing concern for the troops’ commanders. Arıkan remembers with approval how his company commander had to listen to the division commander lecture his subordinates about protecting “the honor of Turkishness and of the military” by keeping an eye on the troops’ behavior.17 As a result of this worry, his own section was given military police duties. This was part of a strategy to both control the soldiers and to avoid

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any mishap or loss of prestige in the eyes of their Austrian and German allies. The need to avoid any embarrassment, along with a slight sense of inferiority when it came to manners and to “brotherly” interaction, seems to have bothered the officers over a broad range of possibilities. Yazman recounts early in his memoirs his intense dislike of an imam attached to the officers in his unit, based on the man’s lack of table manners; for fear of further embarrassment, the officers seem to have made a unified decision to leave the man out of any eating arrangement with foreign officers.18 Discipline was a major worry, which would have surprised present-day Turkish commentators and readers, who often like to glorify the Ottoman fighting force and its traditions of obedience. However, theft, desertion, black marketeering, and the occasional drunkenness or opium use emerge in the memoirs. So does harsh punishment. Military authorities seem to have given the NCOs a free hand in punishing especially the more serious crimes. In at least two places, Arıkan mentions violent beatings meted out to soldiers for theft of civilian property and for the occasional “insolence.”19 Once the expedition gets under way in July 1916, however, an air of adventure is hard to miss in the writings of Ottoman memoirists. The slow trip carried the troops through Bulgaria, occupied Serbia, the Hungarian Plain, eventually over the Carpathian Mountains, and into Galicia. The talk of food (the abundance of the supplies provided by the Austrians, for example) is ever present. As mentioned above, Yazman especially points out the generosity of German and Austrians toward the troops and a general care for the well-being of the soldiers, against which their own Ottoman logistics arrangements fared rather badly.20 However, if Ottoman soldiers were pleased with eating arrangements, they were in for a shock when they first encountered Austrian hygiene requirements. In Belgrade, Austrian authorities required all the men to undergo a thorough cleaning process, with the uniforms going through a disinfection procedure, which required the men undressing fully. This request seems to have almost caused a riot. According to Muslim tradition, as well as local practice in the Middle East, men usually kept a wrap around their waists while visiting public baths. It took persistent effort to convince the men to undergo the process as the Austrian authorities wanted. This incident was perhaps the first sign of cultural misunderstanding (along with a spell of confusion regarding pork products in the meals) between the two allies for the Galician campaign.21

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Once the troops had moved into their positions, they had access to a broad territory and had a chance to interact with a wide variety of locals. The names of towns and geographic markers confused many of them. Names such as Zlota Lipa, Berezhany, and Drohobych appear in a variety of spellings in the accounts, along with the troops’ inability to properly pronounce or remember them. There is also very little proof that the soldiers were aware of the differences between Poles and Ukrainians, even though they clearly understood that the Austrian and the Hungarian officers were in charge of the facilities and the local population. Occasionally, the reader gets a glimpse of the officers’ views of large provincial metropolises, such as Lemberg (Lviv). It is of course quite difficult to gauge their exact impressions of the land and its people solely based on the writings of a handful, literate officers and NCOs; but especially during the period leading up to fighting in September, they seem to have made plenty of connections with the locals and established relationships even if only for obtaining goods, bartering, and for the occasional romantic liaison. The memoirists spend a large amount of time retelling the men’s interaction with local women. For many Ottoman troops (especially the ones from the countryside) this was the first time they met foreign women. Men became involved with women from both small towns they went through and the villages near which they were stationed. The tendency in the memoirs is to report these relationships in a warm and humorous way.22 It is quite clear that for women who did not have men to do daily chores of village life or to provide protection in wartime, the presence of these uncomplicated and eager men was a bonus. The elderly villagers and widows also seem to have formed bonds with the troops. It is also striking to see how easily especially the officers were enamored of the local women. For instance, there is the case of a young officer writing home in shock regarding the use of “such pretty women” in road building or ditch digging by Austrian authorities.23 By the end of the deployment, there were a handful cases of marriage between a local woman and an Ottoman soldier, which seems to have been a problematic decision which required interference with troop commanders, not least because the soldier in question often required the woman to convert to Islam. In some cases, the religious difference seems to have led to the break-up of the relationship, almost always imposed by the soldier.24 It is important to note here that the Ottoman experience in interacting with local women in Galicia was quite different than the German

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experience in Belgium, France or Poland. Turkish troops did not find themselves dealing with women of an occupation zone. As a result, they did not see these women as a threat nor had they any concern for espionage or other security issues. The relationships reported in these accounts seemed to be consensual. Especially in the more rural areas, the absence of local men to take care of the labor or to supply additional resources and food were possible incentives for some of the women. Needless to say, there are no reports of rape or sexual assault in these accounts; any such incident would have been removed from the memoir in an act of self-censorship. However, the interaction between local women and the Ottoman troops seems to have drawn the attention of the Austrian authorities; at least one group of officers was brought back behind the lines for a seminar on venereal disease prevention.25 The relationship between the Austrians and Germans on the one side and the Ottomans was uneven. It is clear that the Ottomans were impressed by the orderly nature of the Central Powers’ war machine, as well as their material wealth and organizational capabilities. However, at least one observer was quick to point out that, especially the Austrians lacked fighting spirit and were eager to retreat when given the chance. In other words, “they knew everything except to fight.”26 The Austrians and Germans, for their part, seem to have been impressed by the martial qualities of the Ottoman troops (their quick counterattacks under adverse conditions, their will to stand their ground under heavy artillery fire, their ability to execute vicious bayonet charges, etc.), while having the usual western misgivings about them regarding health, hygiene, and intellectual preparation. The same Ottoman officer recounts with obvious pleasure how a small group of Ottoman subalterns easily defeated their counterparts in a tactical exercise involving geometric calculations. The astounded comment from the German chief instructor present was “So they learn geometry in Turkey, too.”27 None of this banter could hide the relentless brutality of the campaign.28 The losses were high on both sides, and the Russian use of gas in at least a couple of incidents was a shocking novelty for the Ottoman soldiers.29 While the impact of the casualties was not as disastrous as in the Gallipoli campaign, which most of these troops and their officers had also survived, the morale of the troops bore the effects of such fighting, especially during the hard winter months of 1916–1917 when reinforcements arrived.30 Battles often required quick thinking on the part of commanders, especially on the small-unit level, and the danger of

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disastrous decisions was acute. Arıkan tells almost without commentary how an Ottoman officer ordered a small group of German31 cavalrymen mowed down along with their Russian attackers, because the Ottoman position was in severe danger of being run over.32 It was inevitable that soon after the Ottoman troops entered the campaign, a large number of wounded would have to be cared for. There were conflicting reports on the quality of the medical care offered to the troops. At least one source reports in gratitude about the kind of care he received both at the field hospital and later at the health facilities in the rear, especially by the Germans.33 At the Austrian-run hospitals in the rear, there seems to have been a concerted effort to classify the Ottoman wounded as a group on their own, with their specially prepared gear, including caps with crescent emblem.34 Furthermore, as Arıkan’s relationship with the woman named Marie shows,35 these stays at the hospitals and recuperation centers allowed the men more chances to interact with the locals, especially female medical personnel and the women from nearby towns. Yet, reports prepared by senior Ottoman physicians assigned to the front provide a more complicated picture. The provisions and the general level of conditions at several Hungarian hospitals received so many complaints that these locations were either closed or the patients removed to Austrian hospitals, which received much better evaluations by Ottoman military physicians.36 By 1917, these Austrian military hospitals began to refer the recuperating Ottoman patients to light occupational training at workshops, as well as physical rehabilitation institutes in the rear.37 The interaction that the troops had with the locals developed further during these stays, giving them a much better chance to get to know these locals and to gain a favorable impression of their allies. By the summer of 1917, the almost year-long engagement on the Galician front came to end and the troops began their withdrawal. By the end of September, the withdrawal was complete.38 For the troops, the return home presented new difficulties of logistics and provisioning. While they were glad about the withdrawal from such a bloody and arduous deployment, the treatment they received on the way back quickly reminded them of the differences between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian/German war planning. There seems to have been a change in the provisioning of the troops as soon as they crossed the Ottoman border, disappointing the officers.39 Both the quality and the

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quantity of the food were in no way comparable with what the troops became used to while fighting alongside their allies, so that many soldiers and officers tried to fend for themselves on the way back to Constantinople. The physical condition of the country, further impoverished by war conditions, also affected the morale of the troops, leading them to hearken back to the Austrian standards of railroads, telegraph facilities, and so on.40 For many of these troops, especially the officers, Galicia was just one more campaign bookended by Gallipoli and the Southern Front (Mesopotamia and Palestine). Many of the survivors found themselves fighting at the next front, with at least one of the memoirists becoming a British prisoner of war. The Ottoman troops fighting in Galicia came from a panoply of various backgrounds and origins, consisting of anyone from gullible small-towners to ignorant yet wily peasants, naïve countryside dwellers to the occasional metropolitan cutthroat or petty thief, and from the opportunistic drunkard to the half-reformed opium addict. It was a wild, unruly fabric, representative of the imperial manpower just like any other belligerent, held together by a rough stitch of authoritarian officers operating under makeshift regulations, invented on the go. Added to this situation were the unrealistic expectations of the High Command in Constantinople that desired to impress the Austrians and Germans at all cost, in order to convince them of the irreplaceable contributions of the Ottoman Empire and to retain the German and Austro-Hungarian commitment to the Ottoman war effort in return.

The Germans in the Middle East The German contribution to the war effort in the Middle East can be divided into three broad groups. The first was the military mission going back to before the war (as well as continuing the legacy that was established by von der Goltz), which performed the advisor and liaison roles, and included at its height roughly 800 members in Ottoman uniform. The second included a variety of technical specialists and experts in the fields such as rail transport, shipping, and ports, signals intelligence and communications, field engineering, medicine, meteorology, and air units. Some of these specialists were civilians, who occasionally served in uniform in temporary capacity. The final group consisted of actual line troops, which included infantry, cavalry, and artillery units in German uniform as separate units within the Ottoman Army.

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For the veterans who founded the organization, Bund der Asienkämpfer, remembering the legacy of the campaign in the Middle East was a complicated affair. In the difficult year of 1919, the early members of the organization aimed to highlight the connection with the seemingly exotic, foreign region with notions of community, sacrifice, and comradeship. Writing in the introductory issue of the journal for BdAK, organization’s founding chairman General Kress von Kressenstein outlined their interest as “that beautiful part of the world, which has been a second home [Heimat] for many of us,” and “the memory of the time spent under the hot Asian sun.” His opening piece underlined the “friendly feelings of our allies” and “the hard work of our comrades.”41 The association, its activities (veteran reunions, regular meetings, etc.), and its publications such as the journal and the yearbooks functioned as forms of memorialization. It was clear from the tone of this and many other entries in the journal that the wish to keep the memory of the campaign fresh in the minds of the public was forefront. In the introduction to the first volume of the yearbook series of the association, the editors noted that “shared experiences and common action wove together a comradely union. This treasure of ideas and personal relations should not be lost. To nurture and broaden both, the Bund der Asienkämpfer was formed.”42 As was common in the early years of the Weimar Republic, many veterans of the war observed the new German political order with detachment or pure hatred. At least one former Middle East “warrior” described the contemporary society in the introduction to his book as one in which “real heroes were called criminals or idiots.” He belonged to the group of war veterans who could defiantly state that “We had our time and it will return” (“Unser Zeit war und—wird wiederkommen!”).43 Along with the longing for past glory, there was also the desire to use the organization as a lobby for veterans’ rights, as well as an interest group that focuses on the affairs of the contemporary Middle East. For many military officers and bureaucrats, Ottoman Empire and the Middle East had been a desirable posting location even in the years leading up to the war. The German military mission and the directly deployed troops both received many more applications than they could handle, a condition which increased once the hostilities began. The wish to be posted to the region was not only limited to the officers; even enlisted men or non-commissioned officers could petition to be sent to the Ottoman

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front. Many of the applicants listed future career or business interests as the reason.44 Once the actual deployments began, however, the difficulties hampering Ottoman officers’ transition to the Galician front were repeated for German officers and bureaucrats. The lack of suitable printed material for training, manuals and language guides, and maps hindered the effectiveness of the mission.45 Added to this situation was the prevalent “Orientalist” attitudes regarding the troops’ expectations from the region and its peoples, with a wide variety of misconceptions and prejudices classifying the various ethnic groups in the Empire (Anatolian vs. Thracian Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Levantines, etc.).46 Compared to the Ottoman officers’ eagerness to find out more about Eastern Europe, it is probably safe to suggest that German officers and officials brought more complicated mental maps to the mission. The problems of staffing and recruitment were not idle worries, especially for the officers who had to train and prepare the troops for the arduous deployment. For example, Captain Simon-Eberhard recounts how he was quickly disillusioned by the human material entrusted to him in the collection camp before the departure to the Middle East. He had been told of the upcoming deployment by a friend during a rest leave in the early summer of 1917. The volunteering process involved convincing the regimental doctor to clear him for service in the “distant, unhealthy, and wild lands” of the “tropics.”47 Having volunteered for the operation, he was assigned to a camp in Neuhammer, Silesia, preparing personnel for assignment in the Asienkorps. He quickly classified many of the men, including the NCOs, as “old tropics hands, Asians and Africans,” adventurers and idlers who wanted to avoid service in the trenches and who hoped for war spoils from the Mesopotamian campaign. He states that his fears were later justified during the actual campaign. This observation also extended to the civilian personnel. After arriving in Anatolia, he notes with disapproval that it would have been much better to send more qualified people there instead of the common “shipwrecked” types, adventurers, and profiteers,” some of whom were already bankrupted at home.48 While in the camp, one of his major worries seems to have been to stop the men from cavorting with the prostitutes in town. Not only were the men not ready for the campaign, he also claimed that the provisioning for the officers was very weak and they had to procure geese and ducks, among other things, from local merchants to supplement their meager fare.49

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It is interesting to see how the path of the two expeditions crossed during this period, even if it was from a distance. The news of the Ottoman XV Corps’ deployment to Galicia was known in Neuhammer, as the officers discussed the need to find suitable Turkish-language materials or interpreters for their own deployment in the Middle East. Later, after the departure on November 8th, Simon-Eberhard reminisced about his own deployment in Galicia and Volhynia from April 1915 to July 1916. The route of the German troops followed the one covered by the Ottomans in the opposite direction, going from southern Germany and Sudetenland though occupied Serbia and Bulgaria into the Ottoman Empire. And after the arrival in Constantinople, SimonEberhard gushed with excitement about the Ottoman effort in Galicia, claiming that just like how the Sultan sent “two of his best divisions” to fight the Russians in Galicia, now Germans “are going to Asia, to the hot desert, to reciprocate to the Turkish comrades, to fight the common enemy, England!”50 The daunting task of transporting troops and supplies from Europe through the Ottoman Empire to the Palestine Front became clear as the German staff officers and organizers observed the terrain and technical difficulties. While participants such as Simon-Eberhard could reflect anecdotally on the arduous process of loading and unloading pack animals, supply crates, and men throughout the long trip, it is in the accounts of the rear-echelon officers that one can find the signs of the strategic and logistics nightmare faced by the expedition. The distance from the Haydarpaşa train station (the starting point in Constantinople) to the front was roughly 1600 km; when calculated from Germany it was about 3000 km. The route went across Asia Minor, crossed two mountain ranges, cut across Syria, and finally arrived at the fighting line.51 This reality made the logistics of support a major headache for staff and supply officers. The expedition organizers had to contend with issues of gaugewidth and single-track lines, as well as personnel and quality-control issues on the Ottoman side. When one added the losses through fire, theft, fresh goods going bad under the natural conditions, and technical deficiencies, reinforcement and resupply conditions became thoroughly inadequate for modern warfare standards, as one expert noted.52 After the war, German experts who had been involved in logistics operations in the Middle East often returned to this theme of transport challenges. The strategic significance of railroads in the region, especially observed from the angle of British and French dominance in the postwar

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years, captured the imagination of German former soldiers and officials with Ottoman service backgrounds. In these reports, with their coroner-like emphasis on “what-went-wrong,” it is clear to see the traces of frustration with the technical and human challenges faced by the expeditionary authorities. At the core of the transport hub into the Ottoman Middle East was the Hedjaz railway, extending from Damascus to Medina, which also had a branch line to Haifa. By the beginning of the War, the railway had (including the branch line) roughly 1500 km of track. This was the network that carried the likes of Simon-Eberhard to the Palestine front. The shortages of 1917 and onward made running the railroad a problem in itself. Trying to burn wood in the locomotives caused a series of issues, chief among them the risk of flying spark fires. By the summer of 1918, fuel for lighting was a real scarcity; German officials supplied tar oil (creosote) to keep the lamps in the wagons burning. All of this, along with food supply problems, seems to have taxed the patience of German technical and logistics personnel all too accustomed to European peacetime conditions. Yet in their accounts, they do highlight the importance of cooperation with Ottoman mid-level officials and officers, even though they concede the damages caused by theft and desertion by 1918.53 One significant point in these accounts is the emphasis placed upon the quality of German-trained Turkish personnel, the hint of proud paternalistic superiority ever-present toward the junior allies, even if the fighting takes place on their soil.54 For all their enthusiasm for the fighting élan of the Ottoman troops, officers such as Simon-Eberhard were also not immune to the general prejudices regarding the peoples of the Middle East. For example, soon after arriving in Constantinople, he reports being greeted by a German railroad official with a curt “Welcome to the land of filth [Dreck].”55 Some contemporary readers were probably surprised to read his account of an evening spent in the company of the German station commander in Pozantı (entry point into Cilicia), during which the commander expressed his opinion that only the British could properly colonize Mesopotamia. While Simon-Eberhard claims to have been shocked at this admission, he adds that he later agreed with the man’s verdict when he saw the “unquestionably big problems of Turkish rule” in the region.56 This attitude also extended to his clichés regarding “fiery eyed” southern beauties or to the supposedly ubiquitous need to come up with “baksheesh” to get things done.57 On the more positive side, his account

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is also replete with detailed descriptions of stunning scenery throughout Anatolia, even if he claimed that his aim was not to write about the usual minarets and sunsets but the views of the regular field soldier, “gray, dirty, and flooded with rain.”58 Officers exasperated by the physical and technical demands of the expedition deflected their frustration to what they believed was the “natural and cultural” qualities of “the Turk.” Laziness, fatalism, living handto-mouth with no reflection for the future, primitive conditions figured all too easily in representative accounts.59 It is clear from such accounts that German officers felt uncomfortable dealing with the local conditions, while also feeling professionally and culturally superior to their hosts. The decision to cut loose from the Ottoman supply chain seems to be have been taken quite early on, with German officers and officials taking over the supply and logistics duties in the stations and waypoints through which expeditionary troops crossed. Merkel, for example, is quite dismissive of the non-Turkish “elements” of the region as well, counting such populations as a part of Germans’ problems.60 The overall impression presented to German postwar readers was one of German ingenuity and resourcefulness in the face of a rather inhospitable, unhelpful, and thankless environment. The challenges of the actual physical environment emerged most forcefully through the hygienic conditions of the region. Medical professionals attached to units or those seconded to Ottoman civilian installations began noting infectious enteric diseases among the troops as early as during the transport phase through Anatolia. Lice became a major issue due to the conditions in train transports. Both typhoid fever, relapsing fever, and typhus claimed thousands of victims among the troops and the local population, which included a large number of refugees. Until 1916, the epidemics were difficult to control, and counting among their victims Colmar von der Goltz and the German consul in Damascus. Dysentery and cholera made up the second group of diseases which took a toll on the troops. In relation to the hygienic conditions, especially the problems with the quality of the water supply, German authorities were exasperated by, as one participant remembered, the local living standards that echoed the “biblical stories.”61 Just as in the railroad officials’ remembrances, the balance sheet of cooperation on the hygienic and medical fields was uneven; Ottoman physicians and officials trained by Germans or other Europeans received positive marks, while many of the other local personnel failed to impress the Germans.

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The amused and fascinated gaze of the western observer, on the other hand, is more evident in the memoirs and personal accounts that use the photographic record to make a statement about the time spent in the region. One of the more interesting examples of this was Friedrich Moench’s account of the arduous retreat from Iraq of the German Detachment (Abteilung) of the Ottoman Sixth Army.62 While this edited collection of photos contributed by members of the unit is perhaps more useful for illuminating the details of the trek home, the visual record it leaves behind is highly telling about the interests of the expedition members. Moench, a reserve lieutenant with a doctoral title, provides a fascinating album of photos, not all of which were taken during the German withdrawal. There are plenty of photos collected in the volume, which were submitted by soldiers from a variety of units, including members of the flight squadron operating on the Mesopotamian Front. Because the photos came from different locations and captured both military and social settings, the resulting collection offers the reader a glimpse of life behind the front for German expeditionary troops. The volume includes photos of makeshift airfields and snapshots of archeological sites placed right next to portraits of civilians from a variety of ethnic/religious backgrounds. Due to the eclectic nature of the collection, and also because there is very little text accompanying the photos, the viewer is presented with a kaleidoscope of Middle Eastern life, as depicted by the German soldier in tourist mode. For example, on one page it is possible to see, among others, a photo of a military plane before take-off, complete with onlookers and their two dogs, alongside a group photo of four females in a small tent, with the accompanying caption of “In the harem of an Arab tent.”63 The choice is possibly due to all of the photos on the page being submitted by the same individual, but the resulting effect is a lively yet confusing record of the expedition. It is difficult to gauge how engaged the troops were with the locals based solely on such photos. Often the cold stare of the camera eye is the conveyor, with not much consideration given to the setting or the ambience. Yet the photos still display a somewhat naïve interest in the surrounding life and society. The notion of adventure and novelty reflected in the title (“From the Tigris to the North Sea”) is apparent in most of the photos, aiming to remind the reader about the far-flung, unfamiliar posting of the expedition members. Judging by the coverage of the Mitteilungen, in the years following the war, this interest in the region and its social and cultural fabric seems

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to have continued and indeed turned into a sense of affectionate belonging, especially for those who previously held a bureaucratic position. Tinged with a touch of nostalgia, and quite certainly intensified by the defeat in the war, this focus seems to have become an obsession for some commentators. Other, more specifically military journals of the interwar era reflected a similar sentiment about the lost territories and a sense of belonging, although mostly in conjunction with Germany’s former colonial holdings, not usually with territories in partner states in which German troops fought.64 These tendencies were quite clear in the coverage of the association’s journal, especially when it reported on post-1918 British rule in the region. For example, the fate of the German population in the Middle East after the defeat drew close attention. It appears that the British had ordered the “involuntary return” of the members of German religious orders in Palestine, a decision which drew the ire of German experts of the Middle East in the early Weimar years. According to the journal, the order targeted the individuals who have already spent time in British internment camps, and now they were being sent home in “forced transports,” eliminating the fruits of their long history of constructive labor in the region.65 Such concern for the problems of German civilians in the Middle East was a common theme for the veterans’ association.66 A further theme of interest was the fate of those interned in British camps in Egypt. These reports highlighted topics such as the “cold and heartless” attitude of British and Australian female personnel in charge of women’s and children’s camps.67 With the Turkish Nationalist victory against Allied occupation in 1922, however, the journal began reporting with enthusiasm about how (at least) Anatolia was now open to German goods and personnel, helping the country’s economy and undoing British (and American) injustice in that field.68 The journal became most interesting, however, when it covered the remembrances of little-known engagements and comrades lost. These pieces often highlighted the brutality of the fighting, horrid natural conditions, deprivations suffered by German troops, their heroism under adverse conditions and against crushing numerical superiority of the enemy, etc. An additional interesting detail about these types of memoirs was the occasional denigration of the Ottoman input, especially in the latter phase of the campaign by the Pascha II expedition. Buried under a mass of other details, these comments could point out to the suspected unwillingness of the Ottoman troops to fight especially in 1918,

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and the ability of the British and colonial troops to hold off attacks much more easily from the Turkish side, resulting in bloody defeats for the Germans.69 While such bitter sentiments occasionally surfaced in the accounts of participants, calmer and more sober analyses could come from the ranks of highest participants in the expedition. These early 1920s accounts, often in the form of technical analyses mixed with cultural observations about the German experience in the Middle East, could offer sharp insight into the minds of the German command and staff during and after the expedition. One such example was the experience of the retired general Gerold von Gleich. A Württemberger with a military pedigree, son of a general, and a prolific writer on military and scientific topics, von Gleich had the unique background of both having observed the Ottomans from the opposing side (as the German military attaché in Greece during the Balkan Wars) and as the chief of staff of the Ottoman Sixth Army in 1916, working under von der Goltz and later Halil Pasha.70 That latter fact made him a veteran of the successful Kut campaign and provided him with a wealth of first-hand experience about the capabilities and limitations of the German expedition and the Ottoman ally. Von Gleich’s stocktaking of the expedition was quite direct. He is one of the few early commentators who designated the whole undertaking as a “colonial” war, regardless of the fact that it took place on Ottoman territory. Partially, this was due to having the British as the opponent, and Germans of the period were constantly in a “comparing mood” when dealing with the British, even in peacetime. But the colonial attitude also stemmed from the fact that the conditions, expectations, and reality all depended on understanding that this was not the West but someplace else outside the daily normality of German fighting men. However, von Gleich quickly points out that the fact this operation was a colonial campaign does not mean that the Germans could treat the human material in the region as colonial folk (here meaning, of course, the peoples of German East and Southwest Africa). While paying lip service to the usual clichés regarding “Oriental slowness,” the importance of patience when dealing with the locals, and the supposed suitability of Anatolian Turkish farmers for military duty over the Arabs, Iranians, and Jews, von Gleich underlined the Germans’ own shortcomings in preparation, especially in the fields of printed material and linguistic competence. Coupled with these problems, the German bureaucracy’s shortcomings, such the mail

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taking on the average six weeks to reach Germany and back, or the hassles of the cumbersome censorship of private letters contributed to the mental discomfort of the German troops on the front. Gleich’s is a very rare account in which the author points out that the heat and the lack of proper hygienic standards affected not just the morale of the troops and officers, but also might have pushed especially the officers to take fewer chances and be less aggressive. He was also probably one of the few senior officers willing to go in print about the flattery by high-ranking Ottoman officers (including Halil Pasha) as a tool to avoid complying with German advice, which they quite often saw as intrusive or unhelpful. This mix of sober analysis and bitter military advice must have been quite surprising to the average reader of the usual BdAK publications.71 The calm and clinical observations of a commander with the caliber of von Gleich regarding the defeat and the collapse in 1918 were one thing, but the same experience reported from the perspective of field officers and the men serving at various locations of the front was a more emotional affair. Simon-Eberhard, for example, talks about the shock waves of British breakthrough in September 1918 and the spread of panic and resignation among the ranks. The air attacks, exacerbated by insufficient supplies and means of transport, figure strongly in the last pages of Simon-Eberhard’s account, as they were probably experienced by many other troops at the front. The exit from the theater operations and the retreat through Anatolia back to Constantinople are narrated as a series of deprivations and chance encounters. Finally, he arrives in Berlin in early October to a country in the throes of final crisis. Yet in his closing statement, Simon-Eberhard manages to add a note of proud remembrance as a member of the “expedition to Asia” (“Expedition nach Asien”), and “poor in possessions, but rich in experience and adventure.”72 When Simon-Eberhard claims that he would rather not miss these experiences and that the balance sheet was on the plus side, the soldiers and officers who submitted their photo collections to Moench’s volume from the same period of defeat and collapse would probably agree. The saga of return for the members of the “German Detachment” took them over a similar ground, from Syria to southern Anatolia, and from there through Central Anatolia back to Constantinople. The slides chosen by the editor reflect almost a touristic agenda. The men who had access to photographic equipment recorded a large variety of scenes, from village idylls to busy street scenes from various cities. The selections from Constantinople show their interest in the multicultural fabric of the city

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and their attention to religious differences. The sea voyage that followed, from the Mediterranean through Gibraltar to the North Sea, on the other hand, is shown through the weary yet hopeful faces of the troops who found refuge on the two German freighters that were enlisted for the trip. The last photos of the collection are of the German torpedo boat S 133 that met them before the entrance to harbor and of the trains that were to transport them inland. Perhaps it is not surprising that the final caption at the bottom of the page is “Finally home!” (“Endlich daheim”)73

Conclusion The Ottoman and German experiences of expedition in the First World War were not similar. After all, the Ottoman effort was a limited campaign to support and impress their more powerful and much better supplied allies, and to prove that their Empire was worth including in the endeavor. The German involvement in the Middle East, on the other hand, was part of a much larger plan to extend Germany’s influence at the expense of the British, and provide the country with a colonial reach into strategic and economic greatness. Yet considering the experiences of these two allies in the war provides us with a fascinating look into the way the members of these two expeditionary forces thought and felt about the war and each other. Most of the Ottoman officers who participated in the Galician campaign did not see themselves as members of a special or elite affair. From the way they describe the fighting, one can see that they thought of the whole campaign as just another front, and perhaps more of a diversion from other fronts. The men were content to be in Europe, seeing places that they never thought they would before, and to have experiences to write home about or talk about after they returned. Once the fighting became more intense, however, the descriptions of the front are not much different than those of Gallipoli or later, the Palestine front. They were impressed by German and Austrian technical superiority, the abundance of supplies and food, and the overall orderliness of the German and Austro-Hungarian campaigning. With a surprising “occidentalist” twist, however, they clearly saw themselves as equal if not superior when it came to the actual fighting. In the way the memoirs depict the situation, they often saw their allies as being somewhat “odd” and not terribly practical at times. There is probably also the factor that at

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least the officers saw themselves as representing the Ottoman Empire in Europe, and as a result, they were quite sensitive to criticism and were eager to prove themselves. When it came to the civilians in the region, they do not seem to have made a differentiation between the Poles and Ukrainians in the fighting zone, or for that matter, the friendly civilian population of the Austro-Hungarian towns they visited in transit. They themselves were also a curiosity for the civilians they met, a fact which should not be underestimated when analyzing their accounts. The Germans, on the other hand, clearly thought of themselves as superior to not only the myriad ethnic and religious groups of the Middle East that they encountered, but also to their Ottoman colleagues, including the officers. They were willing to concede the martial qualities of the Ottoman fighting men (especially of what they called the “Anatolian farmer stock”), and they also gave credit to the abilities and courage of Ottoman career officers with whom they worked. But it is also quite clear that this was an inferior political entity to which their empire was allied, and its structural failings were often the result of what they saw as “cultural deficiencies.” To them this was an enterprise in an alien and exotic territory, fought against another colonial empire (Britain), and German technical know-how and cultural superiority should have eventually prevailed. As such, they were members of an elite undertaking and, as a result, they belonged to a special club of sorts. The fact that this formula did not work in the end is at the core of almost every narrative about the campaign. These relatively lesser known expeditionary campaigns in the war were no sideshows. They both cost quite a high number of casualties, not just through the fighting alone, but also due to disease and adverse natural conditions. Like many other expeditionary operations before or since, they left their mark on the survivors, especially because of the perceived lack of interest by the general public on these specific fronts. They also generated a large number of POWs, whose fate became a concern for the public at home (Turks in Russian and later Soviet captivity, Germans in British and Australian hands).74 And finally, for the memory of the war, they continued to be seen as symbols of the needless sacrifice of fighting men in far-flung corners of the globe, a fact that contributed to the tragic legacy of the war. For all these reasons, both of these campaigns deserve more interest and further analysis of not just the actual tactical results but also the perspective of social and cultural experience of the soldiers themselves.

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Acknowledgements   I would like to thank Alan Beyerchen and Yiğit Akın for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from German and Turkish are mine.



Notes





1. Rıfat Ilgaz, Hababam Sınıfı (Istanbul: Çınar, 1998), 339–44. 2. The bulk of the fighting in Gallipoli was in 1915, but the final withdrawal of the Entente forces happened in January 1916. 3. Yiğit Akın, When the War Came Home: The Ottomans’ Great War and the Devastation of an Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), 102. 4.  For the details of the Ottoman campaign in Galicia, see Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (New York: Praeger, 2000); Volkan Marttin, “Galiçya Cephesi’nde 15. Türk Kolordusunun Etkinliği Üzerine,” in 2nd International History Symposium, Izmir, October 16–18, 2014, Papers Book (Izmir: Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2015), 627–46; and Piotr Nykiel, “The 15th Corps of the Imperial Ottoman Army on the Eastern Galician Front (1916–1917),” Belleten 79 (April 2015): 335–50. The earliest postwar Turkish coverage was in the official Turkish military journal Askeri Mecmua in 1930. 5. Verena Niepel, “Istanbul, eine deutsche Fantasie,” taz.gazete, November 9, 2018. 6. On the development of the Ottoman military in the years leading to the war and the influence of Germany, see Handan Nezir Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005). More specifically on the history of German influence on the Empire, see İlber Ortaylı, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda German Nüfuzu, 3rd ed. (Istanbul: İletişim, 1998). 7. On this relationship, see Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 8. Von Sanders’ own account of his tenure in the Ottoman Empire can be found in Otto Liman von Sanders, Fünf Jahre Türkei (Berlin: Scherl, 1920). 9.  For the German Asien-Korps in the Middle East, see Hans Werner Neulen, Feldgrau in Jerusalem. Das Levantekorps des kaiserlichen Deutschland (Munich: Universitas, 2002). Among the better-known contemporary accounts are Hans Guhr, Ein “Preuße” als türkischer Divisionskommandeur in Kleinasien und Palästina (Aachen: Helos, 2018) and Werner Steuber, ed., “Jildirim.” Deutsche Streiter auf heiligem Boden (Berlin: Stalling, 1928).

284  E. SENCER 10.  Mitteilungen des Bundes der Asienkämpfer (Berlin: Verlag Bund der Asienkämpfer, 1919–1931). After 1932, the journal’s title was changed to Orient-Rundschau. 11. The only time the Germans used the term “Expedition” was in designating Pascha I and II as “Expeditionskorps.” Yet this terminology is used rarely in personal accounts or postwar journal articles. One reason was probably that this was more of a “western” (British or American) term. Another possibility is that fighting in allied territory made using that term rather uncomfortable (despite the Pascha designation), at least in joint documents. On the other hand, for the Ottomans the deployment of the XV Corps was simply the “Galician Front.” 12. The details of the decision to send the troops and the preparations for the deployment can be found in Erickson, Ordered to Die, 137–39, Marttin, “Galiçya,” 631–35, and Nykiel, “15th Corps,” 338–41. 13. Mehmet Şevki Yazman, Kumandanım Galiçya Ne Yana Düşer? Mehmetçik Avrupa’da: M. Şevki Yazman’ın Anıları (Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2011), 4. The book’s first edition appeared in 1928. 14. Yazman, Galiçya, xx. 15.  İbrahim Arıkan, Osmanlı Ordusunda Bir Nefer: Bir Mehmetçiğin Çanakkale-Galiçya-Filistin Cephesi Anıları (Istanbul: Timaş, 2010), 77. 16. Yazman, Galiçya, 4–6. 17. Arıkan, Bir Nefer, 78. 18. Yazman, Galiçya, 7–8. It is probably worth noting here that these two authors present quite a different tone and temperament in their memoirs. Arıkan, a tough, disciplinarian soldier from the ranks, often has a more bleak and critical view of his fellow soldiers and his superiors with a few exceptions, and is harsher in his attitude, as well as being the religiously more conservative of the two. Yazman, on the other hand, a graduate of the Military Academy who eventually received an engineering diploma and retired with the rank of colonel from the republican army, as well as serving in the parliament in the 1950s, seems to have been more tolerant of the troops’ foibles and has a more lighthearted tone. However, once they begin to describe the actual fighting, their narratives become parallel in the description of the brutality, the slaughter, and the daily deprivations. 19. For example, Arıkan points out almost casually that a corporal caught stealing cattle before the departure (that is, still within the Ottoman territory) had died a few days later due to the beating he had received. Arıkan, Bir Nefer, 76. 20. Yazman, Galiçya, 15–17, 23–25. 21. Yazman, Galiçya, 17–19. 22. Yazman, Galiçya, 98–102.



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23. Yazman, Galiçya, 48–49. 24. Arıkan’s own relationship to a young woman named Mari (Marie?), an employee of the hospital cafeteria, on whom he spends a whole chapter of his account, is supposedly ended due to her unwillingness to convert. Arıkan, Bir Nefer, 114–27. 25. Yazman, Galiçya, 133. 26. Yazman, Galiçya, 60. 27. Yazman, Galiçya, 135. 28. For example, the casualties from the fighting during June 29–July 2, 1917 alone were 248 killed, 1027 wounded, and 1275 missing. See Erickson, Ordered to Die, 141–42. 29. For the brutality of the battles in September and the high Ottoman casualties, see Nykiel, “15th Corps,” 342–43. 30. By January 1917, the troop strength was around 27,000, with roughly additional 5000 in training depots. Erickson, Ordered to Die, 141. 31. Ottoman troops were often positioned near or next to German troops. The closer to the frontline they were, the more likely they were to run into German units. Conversely, most of the units they came into contact with in the rear, and the authorities that dealt with them at support installations, hospitals and recuperation centers, and training establishments, as well as the military police or gendarmerie units were Austro-Hungarian. 32. Arıkan, Bir Nefer, 97–99. 33. Arıkan, Bir Nefer, 110–11. 34. Arıkan, Bir Nefer, 113. 35. See above, n. 24. 36. Oya Dağlar Macar, “Galiçya Cephesi’nde Osmanlı Birlikleri ve Sağlık Hizmetleri (1916–1917),” Osmanlı Bilimi Araştırmaları 10 (2009): 41. 37. Macar, “Galiçya,” 43. 38. Nykiel, “15th Corps,” 346. 39. Yazman, Galiçya, 308–12. 40. Arıkan, Bir Nefer, 183. 41. Kress, “Was wir wollen,” Mitteilungen des Bundes der Asienkämpfer (hereafter Mitteilungen), December 1, 1919. For Kress’ own account, see Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, Mit den Türken zum Suezkanal (Berlin: Vorhut Verlag Otto Schlegel, 1938). Kress had started his deployment as a colonel, and finished the war as a Generalmajor. This was the same Kress who commanded the German troops sent into the Caucasus in 1918–1919. 42. Cleemann, Mulzer, and Solger, eds., “Zum Geleit,” in Zwischen Kaukasus und Sinai. Jahrbuch des Bundes der Asienkämpfer, vol. 1 (Berlin: Deutsche Orientbuchhandlung, 1921), 2. There were in total six issues of these year books between 1921 and 1929.

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43. Max Simon-Eberhard, Mit dem Asienkorps zur Palästinafront (Berlin: Allgemeine Verlags- und Druckerei Gesellschaft, 1919), non-paginated introduction. 44.  Jan Christoph Reichmann, “Tapfere Askers’ und ‘Feige Araber.’ Der osmanische Verbündete aus der Sicht deutscher Soldaten im Orient 1914–1918” (PhD diss., University of Münster, 2009), 221–22. 45. Reichmann, “Tapfere Askers,” 231–32. 46. Reichmann, “Tapfere Askers,” 236, 243. 47. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 10. 48. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 45. 49. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 11–13, 15. 50. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 15, 18, 27. 51. Cpt. Merkel, “Die deutsche Jildirim-Etappe,” in Zwischen Kaukasus und Sinai, ed. Cleeman et al., vol. 1, 107. 52. Merkel, “Jildirim,” 108. For the challenges of the Ottoman military in the fields of logistics, reinforcements, and supply, see Akın, When the War Came Home, Ch. 4. 53.  For the Ottoman military’s desertion problem, see Mehmet Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012), especially Ch. 5. 54. An interesting and detailed account of the German experience on the Hedjaz Railway during the war is Regierungsrat Dieckmann, “Die Hedjasbahn und die syrischen Privatbahnen im Weltkriege und ihre gegenwartige Lage,” in Zwischen Kaukasus und Sinai. Jahrbuch des Bundes der Asienkämpfer, ed. Cleeman et al., vol. 2 (Berlin: Deutsche Orientbuchhandlung, 1922), 47–69. 55. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 24. 56. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 42. 57. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 33. 58. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 24. 59. See, for example, Merkel, “Jildirim,” 109. 60. Merkel, “Jildirim,” 112. 61.  Privatdozent Dr. Victor Schilling, “Kriegshygienische Erfahrungen in der Türkei,” in Zwischen Kaukasus und Sinai. Jahrbuch des Bundes der Asienkämpfer, ed. Cleeman et al., vol. 2, 77. 62. Friedrich Moench, ed., Vom Tigris zum Nordseestrand: Eine Bilderfolge zur Erinnerung an unsere Rückkehr aus der asiatischen Türkei (Berlin: Kultur-Verlag, 1919). 63. Moench, Vom Tigris zum Nordsee-Strand, 19. 64. On the revisionist sentiments in the military press of the interwar years in Germany, see Emre Sencer, Order and Insecurity in Germany and Turkey: Military Cultures of the 1930s (New York: Routledge, 2017).

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65. “Unfreiwillige Rückkehr von Palästina-Deutschen,” Mitteilungen, June 1, 1920. 66.  For an earlier report see, for example, “Das Schicksal der PalästinaDeutschen,” Mitteilungen, April 1, 1920. 67. “Unsere Heimkehr aus Heluan Ägypten,” Mitteilungen, August 1, 1920. 68. “Deutsche Tätigkeit in der Türkei,” Mitteilungen, May 1, 1923, 2. 69. See, for example, Dr. Pritze, “Zum 14. Juli,” Mitteilungen, August 1, 1920. 70. Halil (who later took the last name Kut, based on his role in the 1916 campaign) was the uncle of Enver Pasha, and one of the senior Ottoman commanders in the region. After the war, he was accused of having committed atrocities against the Armenians. 71.  Gerold von Gleich, “Betrachtungen über die Kriegführung in Mesopotamien,” in Zwischen Kaukasus und Sinai. Jahrbuch des Bundes der Asienkämpfer, ed. Cleeman et al., vol. 3, 1923, 81–105. Also see Gerold von Gleich, Vom Balkan nach Bagdad. Militärisch-politische Erinnerungen an den Orient (Berlin: Scherl, 1921). 72. Simon-Eberhard, Asienkorps, 116. 73. Moench, Vom Tigris zum Nordsee-Strand, 89. 74.  For POWs, see Brian K. Feltman, The Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015) and Yücel Yanıkdağ, Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine, and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914–1939 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

Bibliography Akın, Yiğit. When the War Came Home: The Ottomans’ Great War and the Devastation of an Empire. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. Akmeşe, Handan Nezir. The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Arıkan, İbrahim. Osmanlı Ordusunda Bir Nefer: Bir Mehmetçiğin ÇanakkaleGaliçya-Filistin Cephesi Anıları. Istanbul: Timaş, 2010. Beşikçi, Mehmet. The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Cleemann, Mulzer, and Solger, eds. Zwischen Kaukasus und Sinai: Jahrbuch des Bundes der Asienkämpfer. Berlin: Deutsche Orientbuchhandlung, 1921–1926. Erickson, Edward J. Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War. New York: Praeger, 2000. Feltman, Brian K. The Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

288  E. SENCER Gleich, Gerold von. Vom Balkan nach Bagdad. Militärisch-politische Erinnerungen an den Orient. Berlin: Scherl, 1921. Guhr, Hans. Ein “Preuße” als türkischer Divisionskommandeur in Kleinasien und Palästina. Aachen: Helos, 2018. Ilgaz, Rıfat. Hababam Sınıfı. Istanbul: Çınar, 1998. Kressenstein, Friedrich Freiherr Kress von. Mit den Türken zum Suezkanal. Berlin: Vorhut Verlag Otto Schlegel, 1938. Macar, Oya Dağlar. “Galiçya Cephesi’nde Osmanlı Birlikleri ve Sağlık Hizmetleri (1916–1917).” Osmanlı Bilimi Araştırmaları 10 (2009): 35–58. Marttin, Volkan. “Galiçya Cephesi’nde 15. Türk Kolordusunun Etkinliği Üzerine.” In 2nd International History Symposium, Izmir, October 16–18, 2014, Papers Book. Izmir: Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2015. McMeekin, Sean. The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Mitteilungen des Bundes der Asienkämpfer. Berlin: Verlag Bund der Asienkämpfer, 1919–1931. Moench, Friedrich, ed. Vom Tigris zum Nordseestrand: Eine Bilderfolge zur Erinnerung an unsere Rückkehr aus der asiatischen Türkei. Berlin: KulturVerlag, 1919. Neulen, Hans Werner. Feldgrau in Jerusalem. Das Levantekorps des kaiserlichen Deutschland. Munich: Universitas, 2002. Niepel, Verena. “Istanbul, eine deutsche Fantasie.” taz.gazete, November 9, 2018. Nykiel, Piotr. “The 15th Corps of the Imperial Ottoman Army on the Eastern Galician Front (1916–1917).” Belleten 79 (April 2015): 335–50. Ortaylı, İlber. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda German Nüfuzu. 3rd ed. Istanbul: İletişim, 1998. Reichmann, Jan Christoph. “‘Tapfere Askers’ und ‘Feige Araber.’ Der osmanische Verbündete aus der Sicht deutscher Soldaten im Orient 1914–1918.” PhD diss., University of Münster, 2009. Sanders, Otto Liman von. Fünf Jahre Türkei. Berlin: Scherl, 1920. Sencer, Emre. Order and Insecurity in Germany and Turkey: Military Cultures of the 1930s. New York: Routledge, 2017. Simon-Eberhard, Max. Mit dem Asienkorps zur Palästinafront. Berlin: Allgemeine Verlags- und Druckerei Gesellschaft, 1919. Steuber, Werner, ed. “Jildirim.” Deutsche Streiter auf heiligem Boden. Berlin: Stalling, 1928. Yanıkdağ, Yücel. Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine, and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914–1939. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Yazman, Mehmet Şevki. Kumandanım Galiçya Ne Yana Düşer? Mehmetçik Avrupa’da: M. Şevki Yazman’ın Anıları. Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2011.

CHAPTER 11

“Some Corner of a Foreign Field That Is Forever England”: The Western Front as the British Soldiers’ Sacred Land Natasha Silk

As the Centenary of the First World War has come and gone, and our focus on the landscape of the Western Front has been renewed, there is perhaps no better time to reconsider the commemorations of old once more. Over the last four and a half years the memorial landscape both at home and abroad has been altered with new memorials, dedications, and increased visitation. Pilgrimage to the old front lines has again become popular, as it was in the 1920s, as people seek to renew their family connections to the dead of the Great War. However, this chapter focuses on a commemorative group which has now been lost—the veterans of the war. The deep connection these men had to the landscape, as well as the memories of the carnage and destruction they witnessed, are part of the reason why these landscapes remain sacred. Moreover, the British Army of the Great War left the most indelible mark of any British Expeditionary Force that has ever set foot on foreign soil; the evidence of their presence in France and Belgium is a physical record which cannot be expunged.

N. Silk (*)  School of History, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_11

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290  N. SILK If I should die, think only this of me: That there is a corner of a foreign field, That is forever England.1

Rupert Brooke’s famous war poem conjures and embodies the themes present throughout this chapter. The Great War saw 5 million men of the British and Dominion Armies serve in all capacities, of whom approximately 956,000 were killed in action, died from injury or disease, or were missing presumed dead. The Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), with a government mandate and led by Fabian Ware, would make decisions on how these men should be commemorated in Belgium and France. The IWGC created cemeteries which reflected Brooke’s sentiments. The old landscapes of the battlefield would be transformed into English gardens in the form of cemeteries and memorials, which sanitized the landscape and removed the brutality of war.2 This chapter will consider how the soldiers of the British and Dominion Armies came to view and understand the place which they had fought and many died for—the land for which they had seen their comrades sacrificed and they had been laid to rest. This chapter will consider the process by which the landscape came to have a personal and emotional draw for the soldiers who fought there. The Canadian Memorial at St. Julien, the Brooding Soldier, will then be considered as a place where the soldiers’ mourning met and mirrored the grief of the Home Front. There was little consensus among all bereaved groups as to what should happen to the dead after the war. Many families at home wanted the repatriation of their loved ones, whereas others disagreed or accepted that soldiers should be left where they fell. It was ultimately decided that soldiers were to be laid to rest where they had been killed and that all men who lost their lives would be remembered in perpetuity through the work of the IWGC, a subject which has been extensively covered by Philip Longworth in The Unending Vigil. The work was initially begun by the Red Cross as early as 1914, before Fabian Ware lobbied the government to make the efforts of recovering and burying the dead official. In 1915 the Graves Registration Unit, led by Ware, came into existence.3 Ware would then become instrumental in the creation and work of the IWGC, as they moved to create and make cemeteries permanent toward the end and after the war. The IWGC was petitioned by some Home Front bereaved to return the dead back to their families where they belonged. However, it was ultimately decided that this was not in keeping with the

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aims of the Commission. The dead would have only been returned to those who would be able to pay for it themselves, and the vast amount of missing and unnamed dead would have complicated this process.4 Moreover, the repatriation of some of the fallen and not others did not align with the ideals of the IWGC. They believed that there should be equality for all dead and those who fought and died side by side should find their eternal resting place together. The work of the Commission created the landscape we have today on the Western Front. It is a landscape punctuated by the iconic English garden cemeteries which cover the old battlefields and the grand memorials which still form the focus of our commemorative practices abroad.5 The work of the IWGC constituted one side of the commemorative landscape of the war. As the dead were not to be returned home and since many would not be able to make the pilgrimage abroad, the fallen would also have to be remembered at home. There has been a large amount of attention given to the outpouring of grief on the Home Front, which came to dominate the commemorations of the postwar era. As Adrian Gregory explored in The Silence of Memory, it was the civilian bereaved, particularly mothers, who were given priority when it came to deciding how the commemorations and memorialization of the dead would evolve after the war.6 However, the story of soldiers as a group in mourning is a peripheral one and their grief was marginalized in the postwar era. This silence was forced on them by the civilian domination of war memory.7 In contrast, Paul Fussell has argued that soldiers did not possess the vocabulary necessary to express their experiences on the frontline.8 Therefore, the silence was not forced upon them by civilians but was instead self-imposed. However, neither explanation is wholly satisfying when considering the soldiers’ emotional connections with the war. Although there is an element of veterans being forced out of commemorations, it does not mean that they did not choose to remove themselves from the civilian practices. Civilian commemorations did not resonate with some soldiers and they found their own ways to remember the dead, either individually or collectively.9 Soldiers, through their service during the war, had been admitted to an exclusive world that only they could understand.10 Furthermore, it is a mistaken notion that soldiers did not have the ability to express themselves and convey the horrors of their war experience. Many of them left behind detailed accounts of what they witnessed at the front. These are the focus of this chapter.

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As Jay Winter has argued about the civilian bereaved, soldiers also needed to employ the processes of memorialization and commemoration to help them make sense of the trauma and death which they experienced; to remember the dead together is to affirm belonging to a community.11 For soldiers had, as David French outlined, formed their own communities formally and informally within the military structure.12 Therefore, deaths within these military communities also needed to be collectively processed and the commemorations which took place on the Home Front were not necessarily an appropriate reflection of veterans’ feelings or experiences. Harry Patch offers a well-known example of how state-led commemorations were not popular with veterans. Patch did not think much of the National Armistice Day but instead preferred to observe his own “Remembrance Day” on the anniversary of when he lost three of the eight men of his machine gun team to a shell that had put Patch, himself, out of the war. He later referred to this loss as “losing part of my life.”13 About his personal “Remembrance Day” he said, “that day, the day I lost my pals, 22 September 1917—that is my Remembrance Day, not Armistice Day. I’m always very quiet on that day and I don’t want anybody talking to me.”14 Patch is an example of how some veterans were marginalized by society from civilian commemorations. Armistice Day did not resonate with Patch as a moment of reflection. He had been invalided out of the war by the same shell that had killed his pals and therefore did not observe the Armistice at the Front. He chose to remove himself from this collective act of remembrance and instead observe a moment which was personal to him. The soldiers’ memorial focus was not, and could not be provided by, the collective state-led projects which occurred at home, with many soldiers feeling ambivalent to such memorials as the Unknown Warrior. As Gregory has argued, the concept of an unknown soldier was not one that a soldier would find easy to subscribe to. Having witnessed the scores of unidentifiable and unrecoverable dead littered across the battlefields they could not buy into the concept that interred in the tomb was a man they might have fought with.15 The landscape where they fought alongside their comrades and left behind the fallen made a more fitting memorial for those men who had survived. However, Stephen Graham, who served as a private in the Scots Guards, commented of the Unknown Warrior: “touching as it is to have a soldier in the dim light of the Abbey where so many can shed invisible tears, it had been better perhaps in a stern era to have posted him at St. Stephen’s, at

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the entry to parliament, that he might challenge in his silence all who enter there to stand for England… Proceed in peril if you cannot meet the challenge of the dead!”16 It must be acknowledged that sweeping generalizations of soldiers’ opinions are unhelpful, and suggestions that soldiers did not approve of state commemorations are misleading. Many soldiers were not epistemologically opposed to them but saw the benefit of them, for others if not for themselves. Graham sees the importance of the Unknown Warrior as a reminder to do right by those who sacrificed themselves for England’s future rather than as a site for remembrance. Therefore, he should have been placed so that those in power could be reminded of the debt owed. There is a tendency as historians to view veterans of the Great War as one homogenous group with a coherent opinion. However, when considering soldiers’ opinions and reactions to the memory and commemoration of the war it is important to acknowledge the complexities and individuality of the men who formed this group in mourning.17 Although most soldiers’ writings discuss loss and grief, when it came to the armistice and postwar feelings there is a silence. Most men did not record these ideas in their diaries or memoirs. Many stopped abruptly when the soldier was killed, or did not experience the end of the war at the front; he may have been waiting for redeployment, have been injured, or have been given a staff job behind the lines. In these instances, they had little to say about the end of the war. For others who did see out the war, the conflict seems to have simply faded away. Their time in the army did not simply end with the armistice, as many would carry on through to Germany awaiting news of their demobilization orders. For them, the fighting and deceased comrades faded as they became concerned with what their lives would be like after the war. Some offer thoughts on the futility of the conflict and the wasted lives of those lost but little more than this. Reflective accounts in which men begin to consider the full extent of the cost, as well as the eternal resting place of their fallen comrades, seem to have become important to veterans after some distance from the war.

What to Do About the Dead? Little consideration has been given to the desires of the soldiers who had fought on the Western Front. The complexities of Home Front feelings toward what should happen to the dead formed enough tension between

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the bereaved and the government that there was not enough space, nor has there been since, to consider what soldiers may have wanted to happen to their fallen comrades. This picture is complicated further as there was little consensus among soldiers concerning what they wanted to happen to their mortal remains during the war, let alone when the war was over. Max Plowman recorded this conversation he had with another soldier in his memoir: Hardy’s… feelings about decent burial is strong. His own, almost his only, fear for himself is lest his own corpse should be left unburied. He told me the other day he simply could not stand the thought of his body being left to rot, and he extracted a promise from me to do what I could if he were killed. I made no compact with him, for I don’t share his feeling, not having too much concern for my living body to care what happened to it dead.18

Plowman records the complexity of soldiers’ opinions on the matter. Some, such as Plowman, cared little about what happened to the remains not only of themselves but also those they served with. Others, such as Hardy, would go to great length to bury the dead properly with all the relevant rites. Clearly, there were some soldiers who were more invested in how their comrades were commemorated in perpetuity. Plowman, who published his memoir in the 1920s under the pseudonym Mark VII, was famously anti-war and left the army after pleading exemption under the grounds of conscientious objection. Already anti-war before he even enlisted, Plowman’s opinion of death at the front as a pointless waste of life would have impacted his opinions on such matters as what should happen to the dead. However, in other postwar writings the work of the IWGC provided some ex-servicemen with comfort, as in the case of Lieutenant Norman Collins: We buried them in one long trench, each one wrapped up in an army ­blanket, laid side by side. They were given a decent burial – we had the reverse arms, the bugle, the last post. I saw Maclean and Smith buried there, side by side. Later Mailly Wood cemetery was built, and they were all properly identified and properly laid to rest, with headstones.19

Soldiers had an understanding of what a “decent” and a “proper” burial entailed. Although, in many cases, all they could hope to offer their fallen comrades was a decent burial, the IWGC could make sure the

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named dead, at least, could be offered a proper commemoration. Also, it was important that these men lay side by side together, in the same cemetery where they had been buried by their brothers in arms. For Collins, they were able to offer these men a “decent” burial, as they had been able to administer some of the rites owed to military men killed in action. It would only be a proper burial when all rites could be observed and the grave marked permanently. However, these feelings recorded by soldiers are not surprising, especially when considering that soldiers constructed on the front line what Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annett Becker termed the “cult of the dead.” Soldiers not only went to great lengths to recover their dead but also to mark them too, to counter the “invisibility of the slaughter and restore individuality to the dead.”20 The randomness and anonymity of death in the trenches took a heavy toll on soldiers and the desire to honor their dead in this way was of high importance. It is, therefore, unsurprising that they would want this process to endure following the conclusion of the war. It is important to acknowledge that the process of funerals and burials has been important to human society for time in memoriam. As Jon Davies argues, even within the earliest and primitive societies humans have always gone to great lengths to respect the dead. A death within a community creates a sense of chaos for those left behind and burial rites were designed to restore order.21 Therefore, for soldiers and civilians alike, the burial of a dead soldier was of high importance for the mourning process; it was the absence of this significant ritual that, in part, led to the need for a widespread memorial culture. Soldiers lived with the cult of the dead for the duration of the war, observing and remembering the fallen of all armies and creeds that clashed on the Western Front. In some cases soldiers would even mark the graves of enemy dead, with the British honoring the Germans and vice versa. For some men, this cult was bound in unspoken agreement that they should stay where they fell. The true sacredness of the pact of leaving the dead behind is illustrated by Stephen Graham in The Challenge of the Dead, as he comments on the American repatriation of their dead: In this way America’s sacrifice is lessened… The taking away of the American dead has given the impression of a slur on the honour of lying in France. America removes her dead because of a sweet sentiment towards her own. She takes from a more honourable resting place to a less honourable one… That the transference of the dead across the Atlantic is out

296  N. SILK of keeping with European sentiment she ignores, or fails to understand… As it is, the inscription on every hundredth cross in France is probably a misnomer… Is it remarkable if someone receives instead of soldier son the body of a coolie from China, or if a citizen should receive what portends to be his own corpse? By risking such accidents the majesty of the dead is offended… Practically understood, there should be no property in the dead bodies of this great war. There is only one totality of death and suffering… But for a dreadful peace, worse than the war, America would be convinced, as was her war-commander Pershing, that it was noble to leave her sacrifices on the altar with the others.22

Graham was a journalist before and during the war, eventually enlisting in the Scots Guards and being deployed to the front in April 1918. He wrote The Challenge of the Dead in 1921 after visiting the frontlines. He demonstrates the idea of a sacred covenant which concerns leaving the war dead behind, the ultimate sacrifice which could be made by combatant nations. One of the remits behind the IWGC’s decision to leave all dead where they fell was due to the lost and unnamed dead. It could not be guaranteed a son would be returned to his mother. Death was the great leveler of the war and all would be the same regardless of rank and creed. To ignore this was to disrespect the sacrifice made by the soldiers who gave their lives in the pursuit of victory. The land in which the soldiers of the Great War fought should remain sacred to all, but above all, it would always be sacred to the men who fought and sacrificed there. However, it is important to acknowledge that not all soldiers found comfort in the work of IWGC. Many veterans believed that, although it was important for the dead to be honored correctly, it was a waste of state funds when so many ex-soldiers were unemployed and destitute.23 The feelings and attitudes of soldiers toward their dead both during and after the war were complex, and certainly do not readily offer themselves to generalizations. However, for many surviving soldiers one aspect of the war which would draw them toward their fallen was the landscape in which they fought.

The Soldiers’ Sacred Ground The battlefields became sacred for soldiers as the ground became sanctified by the sacrifices made by their comrades. For the most part ideas of sacredness coalesced around the areas which experienced the heaviest

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fighting. Civilian monuments litter the old battlefields, but the ones erected in the immediate aftermath were built on the most famous sections of the front and reflected the major offensives such as the Somme and Passchendaele. The Thiepval Memorial commemorates the unnamed dead on the Somme battlefields and the Menin Gate memorial marks the old gateway to the Ypres Salient. The dominance and grandeur of these memorials coupled with where they sit on the landscape brought up conflict concerning who owned the land on which they stood. Civilians, as discussed above, had created a memorial narrative which marginalized the memory of the soldier and sanitized the lands they had sacrificed themselves for. These huge, front line state-led memorials were another way in which the soldiers’ memory of the war was forced to the periphery. However, soldiers found their own ways to remember the fallen at the front, away from civilian memorials. As John Pegum has argued, if a man is asked to risk his life to win ground then surely the ground belongs to him—it is his reward for his sacrifice.24 Soldiers came to see the land as belonging to them; more specifically it came to be owned by the dead of their military unit. These sites were away from large memorials and, as will be explored, are grounded in the old sections of the line soldiers fought on. Through the strong bond which was retained with the dead, these sites of great sacrifice became part of the identity of their military communities. For example, the Devonshire Trench, a small but permanent memorial which sits outside the cemetery at Mametz, is a soldiers’ memorial to commemorate their fallen.25 The land on which the soldiers of the Great War fought became sanctified for them, not because they risked their lives to win it, but because they left their dead behind on it. L. I. Wyn Griffiths comments in his memoir: Added to the burden of fatigue and grief, we were governed by a dark feeling of personal failure. Mametz Wood was taken, but not by us, it seemed; we were the rejected of Destiny, men whose services were not required. The dead were the chosen and fate had forgotten us in its eager clutching at the men who fell; they were the richer prize. They captured Mametz Wood, and in it they lie.26

Echoing Pegum, Griffiths here demonstrates the belief that if a man gives his life in the act of trying to win ground, then it belongs to him, even if the actual objective is never obtained. Rather than belonging to

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the survivors, Mametz Wood came to belong to the dead. As the dead lay there unrecoverable they had “captured” it. Those left could not retrieve the bodies of the fallen and the woods became a makeshift cemetery, further demonstrating why the Unknown Soldier did not resonate with veterans. Soldiers knew where the unknown dead were buried—they were not lost to them but were represented by the land on which they fell. The land became their everlasting memorial, but in a military covenant that civilians could not grasp. Furthermore, this sentiment is taken from Griffith’s memoir; he had time to consider what Mametz Wood meant to him following the cessation of the war. His was haunted by the fact they could not take the wood and justify the sacrifices made in the attempt to take it, and the emotion attached to these losses was exacerbated by survivor guilt.27 The action that Griffiths recalled was the Battle of Mametz Wood, part of the Somme Offensive in 1916. The 38th (Welsh) Division (Griffiths served with the 15th Royal Welch Fusiliers, part the Division) sustained such huge casualties that the Division did not see action again till mid-1917. At the time of writing, the landscape had returned to its prewar state but to Griffiths it still belonged to the dead. Even though more enduring memorials had been built to the memory of the dead, the landscape retained its memorial status for the soldiers due to the sacred nature it had come to hold for them. The absence of soldiers from postwar commemorations was perhaps not as forced as some may have suggested. Soldiers already had their focal points to remember the dead, provided by the landscape in which they fought, and therefore had no need to partake in civilian memorial culture. For some soldiers leaving the dead behind where they fell at the end of war was a difficult process to cope with. This was, in some cases, even more difficult for members of the expeditionary forces of the Dominion armies, such as E. P. F. Lynch. Lynch served with the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) and saw action at both the Somme and Passchendaele. Throughout the conflict, he lost close friends and on numerous occasions buried his fellow countrymen. He survived the war and wrote a memoir in secret that was not discovered until after his death. He recorded: It’s 15th April, our last day in France, and teeming rain. All morning we sit in huts watching the rain and thinking. Somehow there’s a sadness behind our apparent gladness at leaving France, for we’re not only leaving France but leaving dozens of fine mates who fell whilst we lived through it all.28

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Lynch demonstrates the mixed emotions some soldiers had when it was time to finally leave the war behind, because this meant leaving their dead behind in a foreign land. This was not linked to straightforward feelings of grief but was exacerbated by strong feelings of survivor guilt.29 As many postwar writings reveal, some soldiers struggled to come to terms with the fact they had survived unscathed when their comrades had been killed. Furthermore, Lynch demonstrates that for some soldiers of Dominion expeditionary forces having to leave the dead seemed to create a deep sadness. These troops had traveled halfway around the world to fight. Their chances of returning to the land in which they had fought were slim. Some members of these Dominions, in the first place, had not seen the worth in traveling to the other side of the globe to fight a European war with which they had nothing to do and from which they had little or nothing to gain. Therefore, Lynch shows that even though men were happy to leave the war behind them, they still felt the pain of their losses and these were worsened by having to leave their dead behind. However, this was not the same for all soldiers. Leaving the dead behind did not bring as much pain to others as it did for some and it could be opportunity for men to put space between themselves and the traumas of war, a chance to forget what they had lost. As BrigadierGeneral F.P. Crozier records in his memoir: I drive to “Wipers” to see the ruins. I walk over the battlefields of Thiepval, Bourlon, Ervillers, Mory, Lys and the Somme, for the last time. The silence in these places is uncanny – as I pass over the sacred spots sanctified for ever to the sacrifices and valour of… men… my soul seems to rebel within me. I think of the wasters who avoided military service “for conscience sake”; or who sought security at home doing their bit in uniform – and yet well out of it all. “Good heavens,” I say to my companion… “I can’t stand this, let us to Boulogne and Blighty, to forget – every inch of this ground hides tragedy.”30

He was clearly moved by the memories the landscape provided him, however, the landscape appeared to give rise to feelings of grief concerning the war, not feelings of sadness at leaving the dead behind. For many men, being a member of an expeditionary force offered comfort in the knowledge that they could leave behind the scenes of great tragedy and try to forget what happened overseas during the war. Although distance

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was not a complete healer, the ability to sever the link with the land so finally, and not have to return unless one wanted to, offered men some comfort from their war experience. It is important to acknowledge the impact rank could have on the men when it came to leaving France for the final time. Crozier was an officer and naturally shared a different bond with his military community. Crozier led men into battle and was responsible for them, he was not their friend. However, officers did form close friendships with men of their own rank. Therefore, his grief was doubled as he not only felt his own losses keenly but also the responsibility of leading men to their deaths.31 Perhaps, when looking over the battlefield he did not just want to forget his grief but put his own personal failings behind him. Leaving the dead behind was not necessarily a negative outcome of the war for all concerned. However, Crozier confirms the concept that the landscape had an emotional pull for soldiers, whether it was positive or negative. Being at the old frontlines or returning to them evoked the bond the living soldier had with the dead. The battlefields, rather than man-made monuments, provided veterans with their memorials where they could reconnect with their fallen and feel a sense of community in the postwar era.

A Memorial by a Soldier for Soldiers As demonstrated to this point, soldiers had a strong connection with the dead and the landscape in which they fought. The civilian memorials erected postwar were not suitable for them and they needed their own. For soldiers, it was important that their memorials should be rooted in the war, unlike many of the civilian memorials which focused on grand shapes and designs. The soldiers’ memorials should either stand on hallowed ground which represented part of the history of the regiment or they should remind the soldier of his military identity. For some regiments and battalions, there was a desire for their memorial to be built on the land in which their great sacrifices had been made. The most significant soldier-designed memorial which stands on the Western Front is the Canadian war memorial, the Brooding Soldier, designed by the architect Frederick Chapman Clemesha. Before discussing Clemesha’s memorial in detail it is important to consider how the Brooding Soldier came to be and the part the monument plays in Canada’s broader commemorative narrative. The Canadian

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war memorial program demonstrates that the British commemorative narrative was not suitable for the Dominion counterparts of the army. Canada and Australia are nations that saw their sense of national identity forged in the fires of the Great War.32 The war was at the very beginning of their histories as newly formed countries bidding for independence from the Empire. As Britain had a long independent history this was not a concept familiar to the British soldier or civilian for 1914–1918. Compared to their British counterparts there was a glorious sacrifice made on the battlefields of the war, one which benefited the building of their nation, a demonstration of military prowess for both countries which could win their emancipation onto the world stage.33 For Canada, it was important that their commemorative practice reflected this, as well as the sacrifices that had been made. Canada, along with the other Allied nations, joined the land grab for their postwar memorials. General Sir Arthur Currie was instrumental in securing the land which was of seminal importance to Canada’s war narrative, with Canada being awarded eight sites overall in France and Belgium. Although this chapter has focused strongly on the soldiers’ construction of a sacred landscape, it was also a trope reflected in civilian memorial culture as well. The Canadian Battlefield Memorial Commission was conscious in designing a memorial narrative which was strongly linked to how Canadians saw their nation’s history built from the fires of war, and landscape was a significant part of this ideal. The narrative focused heavily on scenes of victory and martial triumph. The Commission took a very different approach to the other nations of the Empire, in that, rather than having state-designed memorials they opened a public competition for architects to submit designs for the national war memorials overseas. The initial plan, once the eight sites chosen had been secured, was to have one national memorial (this was Walter Seymour Allwards design, which would eventually be erected at Vimy Ridge) and the seven other sites would all have the same design, this being Clemesha’s Brooding Soldier. The two memorial designs chosen by the Commission represented two different notions of war; Vimy Ridge is, in design, a grandiose and victorious memorial despite the symbolic sacrifice the figures which adorn it represent. However, the image of the soldier is absent, and the figures represent Home Front grief, in particular female sorrow. Conversely, the Brooding Soldier is illustrative of a different side of the war, focusing on the stark realities of the cost of combat (Fig. 11.1).34

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Fig. 11.1  “The Brooding Soldier,” Canadian Memorial, St. Julien, Belgium

Clemesha enlisted in the Canadian Army after 2nd Battle of Ypres in 1915, the battle the Brooding Soldier commemorates. He only served two months at the front in the same year, before being invalided home. Although he was only in France for a short period of time, he certainly would have been exposed to the true horrors of war, particularly having been injured himself. Clemesha said of his reason for the design:

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Cultured Europe will look to Canada for something more than good taste – something of bigness, vigour and untrammelled youth should find expression – for our part we do not wish to brag or glorify militarism. To the citizen soldier and the parents of the 50,000 who did not return the thought of achievement and victory cannot be disassociated from the thought of sacrifice. To this end the military position “resting on Arms Reversed” will be recognised as a soldierly expression of such a thought, the emblem and inscription may claim victory.35

Clemesha was rebelling against what he believed was the state’s remit for its memorial program. This acutely demonstrates the tensions present between soldier and state over the memory of the war. For the Western Powers who had essentially won the war, victory was theirs to celebrate. However, for soldiers there was little sense that victory was theirs, for the war had not been conclusively won and the sacrifices had not been justified. Designed by a veteran, the Brooding soldier is more representative of the soldiers’ view of the war than any other on the Western Front, and demonstrates how Home Front commemorations can both conflict and mix with those of veterans. Although the ideas of how the war should be remembered on foreign soil clashes in Canada’s memorial landscape, it is important to acknowledge that they were two sides of the same coin which saw the land where soldiers died as sacred, albeit in different ways and for different reasons. Furthermore, as Clemesha acknowledged himself, the memorial should also have been representative of the sacrifices made by the bereaved on the Home Front. For Clemesha, the commemoration of the war should have been a place where civilian and soldier could meet to share an understanding of collective grief. Furthermore, Johnathan Vance has argued that for Canada, the “cult of the service roll” developed and soldiers were not alienated by their war experience. They were instead venerated and seen as a representation of Canada abroad.36 However, the Brooding Soldier was not repeated and stands at St. Julien only, where the memorial commemorates all the soldiers who suffered the first gas attacks of the war. It was believed, once the Brooding Soldier had been erected, that it was not suitable for all the other sites which had been chosen, particularly not sites where the CEF had achieved a great victory. Those who disliked the memorial saw too much of the true face of sacrifice in the design. Although St. Julien was seen as the site of a victory by Canada, it was not one of traditional

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land taking but one where the CEF, new to the line, had prevented a German breakthrough early on in the war. The memorial commemorates the short action which took place from April 22–24, 1915. Over 6000 Canadian soldiers of the 1st Division became casualties, approximately a third of the division’s strength. The Canadian soldiers withstood two gas attacks from the Germans, as well as heavy fighting and bombardment. With French colonial troops having abandoned the line on the left flank, the Canadians were forced to fill a five-mile gap to prevent a German breakthrough.37 This feat was made all the more impressive as the Canadian forces had been in the line for less than a week. The CEF was hailed at the time for stopping what would have been a disastrous outcome for the British Army. Had the Germans broken through they would almost certainly have reached the channel, or at least would have punched a huge hole in the allied defenses. Abandoned by all other forces on that section of the line, had the CEF faltered the war may have had a very different outcome.38 This episode was considered the birth of the CEF as an elite fighting force. In concluding that the design was not fit for repetition, the Canadian Battlefield Memorial Commission were admitting that Home Front memory could not accommodate the experience of its soldiers and how they wished to have themselves and their fallen comrades remembered. It would ultimately always be the civilian interpretation of the war which would win out. The form of the memorial itself tells the story of the soldiers’ war, their sacred ground, and their memory. To brood is to “think deeply about something that makes one sad, angry or worried.” Through designing a soldier in this form Clemesha embodied this feeling within a serving soldier, in juxtaposition to the idea that men who served at the front became hardened to death. It was not a violent or overt display of emotion that would greet the bereavement of a vast number of comrades, but a quiet reflection and meditation on what their loss had meant, and still meant after the war. Arguably, it was designed as a contradiction to what is understood as a feminine outpouring of emotion on the Home Front. However, it is the stance of rest on arms reversed which is the most important aspect of the memorial. The rest on arms reversed has been used at ceremonial military funerals for hundreds of years and is one of the rituals used to signify the reversal of the normal order of things. It signifies that a soldier has departed, and the killing is a tragic event; the barrel of the rifle is reversed in acknowledgment of this.39 Clemesha perhaps used this form to mediate the fact that many

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of the men buried on the battlefront did not receive a military funeral, and the missing certainly never would. Furthermore, the form claims an identity for the soldier that has been marginalized; as a bereaved man in mourning for his lost comrades.40 The Brooding Soldier serves as the proxy funeral rites for many of the men that had been lost and remained unrecoverable. As already outlined, burial, throughout almost all human societies, has always been a significant ritual. When someone dies within a community it causes great chaos within that social grouping. Funerals and the rites which go along with them are used to restore order to the world. Burial confirms to the living that the “dead are dead,” severing the link with the physical body but creating a bond with the memory of the deceased, ultimately allowing the living to move on.41 By depicting the soldier as eternally alive the monument chooses to deny death.42 Clemesha’s monument reunites the living with the dead, for a survivor will perpetually stand watch over his dead comrades. With the amount of uncoverable losses caused by the war, it is likely that not just the Home Front, but soldiers as well, were looking for comfort in their losses, and through this design they were being offered closure by Clemesha. As already observed, the Unknown Warrior did not resonate with the soldiers for this very reason. Furthermore, a huge number of casualties were sustained on this land, and the significance of this was highlighted by Marshall Foch in his unveiling speech: “The Canadians paid heavily for their sacrifice and the corner of earth on which this monument of gratitude and piety rises has been bathed in their blood. They wrote here their first page of that Book of Glory which is the history of their participation in war.”43 Through his comments, Foch set the memorial on a site which was sanctified by the blood of the Canadian fallen, as well as providing the site with a status important to the building of Canadian national identity. It is on this site that the Canadian army began its assent to an elite fighting force. Although Clemesha did not choose the site his memorial would stand upon, it was the sanctification of Canadian blood on foreign soil which made this site unique and important for the men who fought there, and the civilians who lost their loved ones at St. Julien. Memorial sites and commemorations were not, and did not, always need to be divisive. However, by not repeating this memorial, Canada demonstrated a willingness to place the soldier at the center of the memory of the war, on the land where he served, but also that there was a time and place for this.

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The state had very different reasons for memorializing the war abroad. Although much thought went into commemorating the dead and offering comfort to the bereaved, it is not difficult to identify the triumphalism in such memorials as the Menin Gate and Vimy Ridge. Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker have argued that there is evidence to suggest that the building of monuments was influenced by “the immeasurable bereavement suffered,” and not as a deterrent to war.44 Therefore, there was no reason that the memorials could not be designed with an air of victory or triumphalism. In their outward form, even many powerfully evocative memorials depict little of the sacrifices of war, such as The Cenotaph in its spare simplicity and Thiepval in its geometric brutality. However, through his memorial, Clemesha attempted to depict the true human face of the sacrifices in war, and in his mind that was the soldiers. This memorial truly is a memorial designed by a soldier for soldiers, rooted in a sacred site of their sacrifice. It bridges the tensions between the Home Front and front line, allowing a small part of soldiers’ losses in war to be acknowledged.

Conclusion An anxiety of separation from the dead, in the traditional sense, does not exist here. The soldier has been mistakenly judged by the understandings of the Home Front. Although some men found comfort in a physical distance from the battlefields, many felt sadness at having to leave the fallen behind. Not all the dead could be buried and the notion of memorial as a landscape honored those who could not be commemorated properly through a permanent burial. Through the shedding of blood, the dead came to own the old battlefields in the mind of the veteran. Through being part of the sacred brotherhood, the survivors came to identify places and not sculptures with the fallen. The work of Clemesha claimed the soldiers’ narrative in a public way and acknowledged soldiers as a group in mourning. This narrative constructed by soldiers ran alongside and sometimes conflicted with that of the Home Front. Men whose lives came to exist solely in the struggle of life and death naturally viewed death in war from a different perspective, therefore their commemorative manifestations should say something which reflected their war experience. Men returning from war were marginalized by Home Front commemorations and civilian grief. However, although this assertion has

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some truth to it, there is evidence to suggest that some men chose to remain on the periphery. The memorials and rituals of the Home Front were not meant for them, and many found their own sites and memories to observe. These were private, a continuation of the war experience that only those who were there could truly understand. Although civilian memorials dominate the old Western Front, soldiers retained ownership of the old frontline through their connection with the dead. Some men were repulsed by this, others were bereft to leave, but many sought to maintain their connection with foreign lands. As members of expeditionary forces they left an unmistakable and permanent mark in the foreign fields they both fought on and for.

Notes

1. Rupert Brooke, “The Soldier,” in The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, ed. John Silkin (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1979), 81. 2. For a detailed account of the work of the IWGC, see Phillip Longworth, The Unending Vigil: The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2010). 3. Prior to the outbreak of the First World War Major General Sir Fabian Ware had been a civil servant and journalist. Too old to enlist in 1914 he was given charge of a mobile ambulance unit by the British Red Cross Society. 4. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 27. 5. For more information on the history of the IWGC, see Longworth, The Unending Vigil. 6. Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day 1919–1946 (Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1994), 10, 51. 7. This concept is covered in detail by Gregory in The Silence of Memory. 8. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 169. 9. Gregory, Silence of Memory, 27–28. 10. Malcolm Brown, Tommy Goes to War (Gloucestershire: The History Press, 1978), 46. 11. Winter, Sites of Memory, 80–94. 12. The process in which the mass civilian army was turned into a fighting force is covered in David French, Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army and the British People c. 1870–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

308  N. SILK 13. Harry Patch and Richard van Emden, The Last Fighting Tommy: The Life of Harry Patch, the Only Surviving Veteran of the Trenches (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 111. 14. Patch and van Emden, Last Fighting Tommy, 203. 15. Gregory, Silence of Memory, 28. 16. Stephan Graham, The Challenge of the Dead (London and New York: Cassell, 1921), 176. 17.  These ideas are covered in more detail in Natasha Silk, “Witnesses to Death: British Soldiers and the Battle of the Somme,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War: Volume 1: Australasia, the British Isles, and the United States, ed. Martin Kerby, Margaret Baguley, and Janet McDonald (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 18. Mark VII, A Subaltern on the Somme in 1916 (London: The Imperial War Museum, Department of Printed Books and the Battery Press, 1996), 99–100. 19.  Lieutenant Norman Collins in Joshua Levine, Forgotten Voices of the Somme (Croydon: Ebury Press, 2008), 251. 20. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), 128. 21. Ideas surrounding the general importance of burial are covered in Jon Davies, “One Hundred Billion Dead: A General Theology of Death,” in Rituals and Remembrance: Response to Death in Human Societies, ed. Jon Davies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) and William Hay, Do Funerals Matter? The Purpose and Practice of Death Rituals (New York: Routledge, 2013). 22. Graham, Challenge of the Dead, 124–25. 23. Stephen Ward, “Great Britain: Land Fit for Heroes Lost,” in The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, ed. James Shenton (Port Washington and London: National University Publications, 1975), 29–30. 24. John Pegum, “British Army Trench Journals and a Geography of Identity,” in Publishing in the First World War: Essays in Book History, ed. M. Hammond and S. Towheed (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 40. 25. For analysis of the Devonshire Trench, see Pegum, “British Army Trench Journals.” 26. L. I. Wyn Griffith, Up the Line to Mametz (London: Faber and Faber, 1931), 238. 27. The definition of survivor guilt in use here is: “ever present feeling of guilt accompanied by conscious or unconscious dread of punishment for having survived the very calamity to which their loved ones succumbed,” with “loved ones” being taken to include comrades and friends.

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This definition is taken from, Samuel Juni, “Survivor Guilt: A Critical Review from the Lens of the Holocaust,” International Review of Victimology 22, no. 3 (2016), 321. 28. E. P. F. Lynch, Somme Mud: The Experiences of an Infantryman in France, 1916–1919 (London: Transworld Publishers, 2006), 319. 29. For definition of survivor guilt, see note 27. 30. Brig.-General F. P. Crozier, A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land (London and Toronto: Johnathan Cape and Harrison Smith,1930), 239. Crozier is a controversial figure. On his command of the 119th Brigade of the 40th Division and the reliability of his autobiographical accounts, see Michael Anthony Taylor, “The History of 119 Infantry Brigade in the Great War with Special Reference to the Command of Brigadier-General Frank Percy Crozier” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2016). 31. Crozier ultimately became an outspoken pacifist and author of, among other books, The Men I Killed (London: Michael Joseph, 1937). 32. This concept and the legacy of the First World War for Canada is covered in detail in Johnathan Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997). 33.  For more information on the First World War and the building of the Canadian nation, see Jacqueline Hucker, “‘Battle and Burial’: Recapturing the Cultural Meaning of Canada’s National Memorial on Vimy Ridge,” The Public Historian 37 (2009), 89–109; Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993), 169; Alexander McKee, Vimy Ridge (London: Souvenir Press, 1966), 230; Pierre Burton, Vimy (Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military, 2012). 34.  All the information concerning Canada’s memorialization process is taken from the book compiled by the Battlefield Memorial Commission. Canadian Battlefield Memorial Commission, Canadian Battlefield Memorials (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1929). A poignant contrast of visits to the two monuments is offered by Andrew Iarocci, Shoestring Soldiers: The 1st Canadian Division at War, 1914–1915 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 268–69. 35.  Fredrick Clemesha in Ryan B. Flavelle, “The Second Battle of Ypres and 100 Years of Remembrance,” Canadian Military History 24, no. 1 (2015): 211. 36. Vance, Death So Noble, 136. 37. A detailed account of the CEF’s participation in the 2nd Battle of Ypres in given in the introduction of N. M. Greenfield, Baptism of Fire: The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2007). 38.  Canadian Battlefield Memorial Commission, Canadian Battlefield Memorials.



310  N. SILK 39. G. Shah, The Excellence in You (For Army Personnel) (New Delhi: Fusion Books, 2004), 240. 40. An exploration of the marginalization of the soldiers’ grief can be found in Silk, “Witnesses to Death.” 41. Davies and Hay both explore the significance of burial for human societies in more detail. Davies, “One Hundred Billion Dead,” 24–40; Hay, Do Funerals Matter?. 42. Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker, 14–18, 190. 43. Marshall Foch in Canadian Battlefield Memorial Commission, Canadian Battlefield Memorials, 73. 44. Audion-Rouzeau and Becker, 14–18, 189.

Bibliography Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, and Annette Becker. 14–18: Understanding the Great War. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002. Brooke, Rupert. “The Soldier.” In The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, edited by John Silkin, 81. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1979. Brown, Malcolm. Tommy Goes to War. Gloucestershire: The History Press, 1978. Burton, Pierre. Vimy. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military, 2012. Canadian Battlefield Memorial Commission. Canadian Battlefield Memorials. Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1929. Crozier, Brig.-Gen. F. P. A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land. London and Toronto: Johnathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930. Crozier, Brig.-Gen. F. P. The Men I Killed. London: Michael Joseph, 1937. Davies, Jon. “One Hundred Billion Dead: A General Theology of Death.” In Rituals and Remembrance: Response to Death in Human Societies, edited by Jon Davies, 24–40. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994. Flavelle, Ryan B. “The Second Battle of Ypres and 100 Years of Remembrance.” Canadian Military History 24, no. 1 (2015): 209–45. French, David. Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army and the British People c. 1870–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Graham, Stephen. The Challenge of the Dead. London and New York: Cassel, 1921. Greenfield, Nathan M. Baptism of Fire: The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2007. Gregory, Adrian. The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day 1919–1946. Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1994. Griffith, L. I. Wyn. Up the Line to Mametz. London: Faber and Faber, 1931.

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Hay, William. Do Funerals Matter? The Purpose and Practice of Death Rituals. New York: Routledge, 2013. Hucker, Jacqueline. “‘Battle and Burial’: Recapturing the Cultural Meaning of Canada’s National Memorial on Vimy Ridge.” The Public Historian 37 (2009): 89–109. Iarocci, Andrew. Shoestring Soldiers: The 1st Canadian Division at War, 1914– 1915. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Juni, Samuel. “Guilt: A Critical Review from the Lens of the Holocaust.” International Review of Victimology 22, no. 3 (2016): 321–37. Levine, Joshua. Forgotten Voices of the Somme. Croydon: Ebury Press, 2008. Longworth, Phillip. The Unending Vigil: The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2010. Lynch, E. P. F. Somme Mud: The Experiences of an Infantryman in France, 1916– 1919. London: Transworld Publishers, 2006. Mark VII. A Subaltern on the Somme in 1916. London: The Imperial War Museum, Department of Printed Books and the Battery Press, 1996. McKee, Alexander. Vimy Ridge. London: Souvenir Press, 1966. Morton, Desmond. When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993. Patch, Harry, and Richard Van Emden. The Last Fighting Tommy: The Life of Harry Patch, the Only Surviving Veteran of the Trenches. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Pegum, John. “British Army Trench Journals and a Geography of Identity.” In Publishing in the First World War: Essays in Book History, edited by Mary Hammond and Safquet Towheed, 129–47. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Shah, G. The Excellence in You (For Army Personnel). New Delhi: Fusion Books, 2004. Silk, Natasha. “Witnesses to Death: British Soldiers and the Battle of the Somme.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War: Volume 1: Australasia, the British Isles, and the United States, edited by Martin Kerby, Margaret Baguley, and Janet McDonald, 147–61. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Taylor, Michael Anthony. “The History of 119 Infantry Brigade in the Great War with Special Reference to the Command of Brigadier-General Frank Percy Crozier.” PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2016. Vance, Johnathan. Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. Ward, Stephen. “Great Britain: Land Fit for Heroes Lost.” In The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, edited by James Shenton, 3–38. Port Washington and London: National University Publications, 1975. Winter, Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

CHAPTER 12

Conclusion Alan Beyerchen and Emre Sencer

As we said at the end of the introduction, we seek with this collection to propose ideas rather than impose them, and to open a conversation rather than end a debate. This conclusion, therefore, is only the beginning of a discussion of the many topics raised first by the concept and nomenclature of expeditionary forces in the First World War, and then the conduct and consequences of expeditionary force projection and action. There are five major themes that have emerged from our deliberations and the literature on the Great War to which we would like to draw attention. The basic one was the primary subject of the introduction, namely the purpose and meaning of an “expeditionary force” as a military force sent to fight temporarily in a foreign land. Such forces were dispatched for a limited duration to fight and return rather than stay and acquire territory. In our view, this is what distinguishes them from the mission of the German army (with the exceptions we have included in our chapters), and what makes the Allied forces injected into the German colonies in Africa fundamentally different from those sent to Europe and the Ottoman lands.1 There are four other overarching themes. A. Beyerchen (*)  Portland, OR, USA E. Sencer  Knox College, Galesburg, IL, USA © The Author(s) 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_12

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The first is the fundamental importance of logistics. Whenever e­xpeditionary forces are dispatched, and before other important issues such as language and cultural dissonance become factors for the troops in the foreign land, the most crucial underpinnings of success are the needs to recruit, equip, assemble, transport and sustain the force sent to war. For Allied expeditionary forces, these activities were intensely complicated beyond normal military requirements by the need to coordinate with the forces already in place (especially regarding compatibility of training, equipment and munitions), the daunting task of transporting and supplying armies at a distance, and the shortages of shipping caused by both the demands of distance and the dangers posed by enemy action. The problems posed by distance and coordination with forces already in place also posed special problems for the German and Turkish expeditionary forces considered in this volume. Once a mission has been decided upon and military units assigned or created, manpower becomes the most urgent concern. Given that most countries, like Great Britain, relied on volunteers at the outset, propaganda and advertising to generate recruits became increasingly energetic. Kimloan Vu-Hill’s chapter indicates the characteristic mixture of enticement and tacit coercion that was widespread, whether in French colonies or any of the British Dominions. Prewar professional common soldiers had seldom been held in high regard, but the new troops represented the young manhood of their generation and the vigor of their homelands. They remained distinct from the professionals, because, as Chris Kempshall says of the British, “They were not soldiers. More to the point they seemed to know they were not soldiers.”2 Much the same could be said for most troops brought from the Dominions and French colonies to replace their few professionals lost in the initial months of fighting. Maintaining a flow of replacements for the incredible losses during the years of the War also becomes a part of the logistics story. The same root as in “logic” embedded in “logistics” betrays the fact that this is military affairs at their most rational: it is about materiel, movement, and maintenance.3 Equipping and training the expeditionary forces were crucial tasks of fundamental importance even if they lacked the drama of the journey to the war zone and the combat once there. Given the increasingly desperate need for firepower, particularly in artillery, compatibility of weapons and munitions was a high priority. In most instances, such as the troupes indigènes or the Indian and other Dominion forces, artillery had not been a significant factor in homeland

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defense and therefore there had been little call for field guns or training. And the manufacturing base in these countries was absent or quite thin, often by colonial design. The French therefore supplied most of the artillery (and training on the guns and ammunition) for incoming expeditionary forces. As Kempshall points out, for instance, when the Americans entered the War, French and British personnel crossed the Atlantic to become instructors. The French took primary responsibility for artillery and staff training, while the British came to the fore in gas and machine gun instruction (as Americans initially used the Vickers gun).4 Transportation of troops was a massive undertaking throughout the War. At the outset, German surface raiders, such as the Emden in the Indian Ocean, had the ability to hinder Allied shipping considerably. Soon, however, the British Navy swept the surface clear and the threat went underwater. We pay most attention to submarines in the Atlantic, but those in the Mediterranean operating out of the Austro-Hungarian Adriatic coast were also a serious menace. Justin Fantauzzo and Rob Nelson address the daily lives and perceptions of troops on the Salonika Front, but getting there was more dangerous than the voyage across the Atlantic was for the Americans. Two of the greatest maritime losses of life in the War were the troopships SS Gallia and SS La Provence, both torpedoed in February 1916, with the loss of over 1300 French and Serbian troops on the first and nearly 1000 French troops on the second—both bound for Salonika.5 As was the case for Hill’s Vietnamese, these were private vessels, as every government normally contracted with shipping companies to deliver troops and cargoes.6 Over 2,000,000 Americans sailed to France during 1917–1918, primarily in British and American ships. Among the first of them was the 5th Regiment of America’s standing expeditionary force, the US Marines. Eventually the Leviathan, a reflagged German ocean liner, ferried 12,000 troops a month, while specially refitted cargo carriers delivered almost 1800 100-ton locomotives, some 650 of which were set on their own wheels, so that they could be unloaded onto French tracks and moved inland under their own steam within hours. Some of Alison Fell’s nurses served in conjunction with the thirty trains the British government bought from private railways as hospitals on tracks, with nineteen more supplied to the Americans.7 The numbers become staggering and pride in these prodigious feats of transport and supply leaps off the pages of books that attend to the subject.8 When the Order of Battle was

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published in 1937, the first chapter of volume 1 detailed the activities of General Pershing and his staff at General Headquarters in France. The second chapter was devoted to the nearly 650,000 personnel in Services of Supply (i.e., logistics), covering everything stretching from the seaport to the combat forces in the fields, including dockyards, depots, maintenance points, ammunition or medical stores, roads and even forestry units to acquire construction materials. All the fighting armies, corps, divisions, regiments and support units came afterward in the volumes, as they did in the field.9 Logistics involves not only getting the troops to the scene of action; the troops must be sustained there to accomplish their mission. Labor troops were critical everywhere, but among our chapters, this comes into highest relief with the German and Turkish expeditionary forces.10 Emre Sencer’s reading of the memoirs of Turkish soldiers demonstrates how even troops well-equipped by Ottoman standards were forced to rely on the Germans and Austro-Hungarians for nearly all their needs—and how glad they were to do so. He also reveals the surprising amount of contact these Ottoman soldiers had with the civilian populations near them. The German division sent to the Caucasus was chronically short of supplies of everything from railway material and horses to fuel and basic foodstuffs, and, again, interactions with the local populations are a significant part of the story. Gavin Wiens shows the inability logistically to sustain this expeditionary force was at least as much the root source of its troubles as tensions between its Prussian and Bavarian members or the hubris of the High Command. Victoria Bucholtz argues convincingly that the primary pressure the Berlin government was able to apply to constrain the activities of the Freikorps break-away units was to starve them of logistical support and replacements. All these examples stand in stark contrast to the ability of Allied countries to sustain their expeditionary forces in the field. The second major overarching theme is the amplification for expeditionary personnel of dissonance in language and culture, particularly as displayed in communication, responses to the landscape and its peoples, and relations among the sexes. Both logistical and combat environments had inherent cultural dimensions as soldiers communicated with each other and with civilians.11 In addition to colonial troops, labor forces were recruited from as far away as China.12 Race and religion offered obvious social and cultural barriers to communication and interaction inherent in unfamiliarity and stereotypes, fears and prejudices. Religious food

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restrictions, particularly among Muslims, could compound and complicate cultural distances. Negotiating among those impediments was highly complex, but essential for expeditionary soldiers to fulfill their mission. Richard Fogarty has addressed some of these issues in his chapter and in other writings.13 There were effectively six channels of communication for soldiers: with members of their own unit, members of adjacent units, personnel to the rear (generally upward in the chain of command), enemy opposing, nearby civilians and those back home. For expeditionary force troops, mail with home usually took longer than for troops in the homeland, and thus could become a morale issue, but communication with adjacent units and civilians could pose particular problems of language. In the front lines, interpreters were crucial to communication between adjacent units at the most basic level of language and tactics (the vast majority were Frenchmen who had spent time in English-speaking lands), but also higher up the chain of command in strategic and coalition conversations.14 There were seldom enough of them. Communication by most soldiers with foreign civilians is concrete rather than abstract; it is about where to find something to drink or eat, where to find entertainment or sex. This makes interaction as much about pointing and hand-waving as vocabulary, and pidgins often emerge, such as British “trench French.”15 As Chris Kempshall demonstrates, communication with allies was widely non-verbal, for instance, with the unkempt and muddied appearance of the poilu signaling embrace of the soil of the homeland, while the British stress on military tidiness (whenever possible) conveyed disdain for the French. Language is perhaps the primary medium of culture, but not far behind is the landscape and the built environment, particularly their sights, smells, and “feel.” Encountering unfamiliar flora and fauna on the landscape abroad is a given, but Vu-Hill relates how Vietnamese soldiers were “shocked” by the motorized activity, wide streets and high buildings of Marseille. Estrangement and alienation swirled with fascination and fantasy, especially for those forces sent to Mediterranean regions such as the Salonika Front or Egypt. As described by Fantauzzo and Nelson, the cultural intermingling natural to the Balkans was amplified by the incredible variety of Allied forces crammed into the coastal salient. The lack of trees was a common observation, as was the disappointment generated by cultural preconceptions wrought by the storied glory of ancient Greece. Allied soldiers found the Salonika urban landscape filled

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with unfamiliar minarets and bazaars, street scenes of everyday cacophony and kaleidoscopic dress and color. Everywhere sounds and spices uncommon in western Europe, compounded by the results of lack of familiar norms of sanitation and hygiene, assaulted the senses. Germans sent to Turkey were often deeply attracted or repulsed by similar curiosities and wonders. As Sencer tells it, there is a certain degree of soldier tourism in all this, complete with an effort to capture the sights in a photograph album put together by a member of the Asienkorps. At the same time, one of the most common problems of expeditionary soldiers everywhere in the War was not just the clash of ethnic cultures or foods, but also the assault on the set of biological norms we call the immune system. The locals might have been used to the water, but the natural microbes and extra stress on the water supply by all the men and animals (horses and mules were essential for hauling munitions and supplies) meant expeditionary soldiers almost everywhere faced an onslaught of enteric diseases—foremost among them dysentery.16 One could expect the cultural lenses and norms through which relations between men and women were perceived to be noticeably distorted when large numbers of young and fit men were posted away from the homeland, leading to another kind of cultural dissonance. Fetishization of European women by colonial and Ottoman troops and exoticization of Middle Eastern women by European soldiers became common tropes. Every army made some provision for at least partially controlling the interactions likely to lead to either of what were regarded as the most serious threats to military discipline and efficiency—love and venereal disease. The former raised unsettling questions not of momentary liaison, but of marriage and its postwar consequences, especially when the expeditionary soldier was not white. Anecdotes abound, such as in the chapters by Fogarty and Hill in this volume, but comparative study of marriages and marriage requests, including those denied, would be illuminating. Were women drawn in unusual numbers to the uniformed strangers in their land?17 Analyses for venereal disease do exist, because it often medically removed a soldier from duty and was viewed as a form of malingering.18 This could become a serious manpower issue: among the British divisions in the Italian Expeditionary Force, for example, venereal disease was second only to influenza as the most common reason for hospitalization.19 Among Canadians, venereal disease hospitalizations numbered well above influenza cases.20 Culture is in one sense a pattern of norms and expectations, which were undermined more readily when

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only local leave far from home was available. It would be revealing to analyze comparative figures for homeland and expeditionary soldiers to see whether the violation of peacetime sexual norms differed as much as one might expect.21 Aside from the usual suspects of brothels, estaminets or in hospitals, where did women and expeditionary soldiers encounter one another? The most likely occasions were the same as for homeland soldiers, namely when the men were on regular or convalescent leave, their unit was withdrawn from the front for rest, refit or reconstitution (a kind of convalescent leave for the unit as a whole, when billeting in towns or villages was more likely), in rear training areas, awaiting transit, or near their labor battalion work areas (either in cities or the countryside). Besides local women and refugees, there were in the course of the War an increasing number of places women employed by the BEF (and later also the AEF) could be found in one form of uniform or another. Nurses were to be found from forward clearing stations to rear area hospitals, trains, and ships, but they were joined by women auxiliary and support personnel in a wide variety of tasks, from drivers to telephone operators, from supply clerks to mechanics.22 Social propriety and both military and civil authority imposed restrictions on interactions, but contact was unstoppable and language and cultural barriers were hardly impenetrable. An important contrast of the Germans with the Allies needs to be made clear, and Todd’s chapter offers it. Generally, expeditionary soldiers coming to the aid of an ally are welcomed by the local populations, even with all the dislocations and difficulties. The women and men view each other within a broad sense of solidarity, despite all the forms of exploitation that are certain to occur. For the Germans as occupiers rather than expeditionary soldiers, women were a problem not only due to the threats of love or illness. They were viewed as vectors of disease, but also as vectors of espionage or sabotage. Espionage could certainly occur in intimate moments; but so could sabotage, by making a man unfit for duty. When the Germans were perceived in expeditionary mode on a temporary mission, as by the Turks in the Ottoman Empire, the Georgians in the Caucasus or initially by populations in the Baltic lands fighting Bolsheviks, they were much more welcome and more positive about local women than in Belgium, France, Italy, Romania, Serbia or in the lands expected to be annexed on the Eastern Front.23

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The remaining two themes to which we would like to draw attention can be treated more succinctly. The reason troops were sent abroad is implicit or explicit in the accounts and sources that underlie all our chapters. To send a military force to a foreign land requires no special rationale for a professional army, but to send abroad non-professional soldiers, even temporarily, requires a compelling justification that will bridge the space between home and the fighting. Commercial or colonial motives were clearly insufficient for the kind of war that quickly emerged, one of massive casualties and sacrifice. The French, Russians, and Serbians were waging a defensive war on their home soil. The French colonial citizens and subjects who came as de facto expeditionary forces were steadfast in their support of the homeland, even when their loyalty was doubted, as in the case of Muslim North Africans that Fogarty examines. Volunteers were paid for their service, but the motive was almost always more than pay; it was also honor, manhood, loyalty, or desire for recognition. We might discount such sensibilities today, but they were powerful cultural forces in the societies of the time. British (and later American) explanations centered on defense against aggression by the Central Powers, in particular the violation of “poor little Belgium” and international law. This motive may seem pale when one considers that Belgium only recently had received deep international opprobrium for its brutal treatment of the peoples of the Congo. Again, we misread the times if we discount the claim of the British government to be upholding Great Britain’s honor as a guarantor of that law. The British and Dominion publics did not have to be cajoled or persuaded; German aggression in Belgium framed the War in moral terms from the outset.24 Coming to the aid of an ally under attack was a noble cause. British and French support for the Serbs on the Macedonian Front fit within this justification, as did support of Italy on the defensive in 1917, even if the rationale in the latter case was always a bit less noble and more overtly calculated.25 To attack the Ottoman Empire in Mesopotamia, the Dardanelles, or Palestine was to weaken the aggressor’s partner and was also sustainable among the troops. Wherever they fought, Fell’s nurses recognized the sensibilities noted above were all bound ultimately to “home.” The Americans came to the War with their own slogans that expanded the mission from supporting Belgium and defeating the Kaiser to ending war itself. Interestingly, although there were a few small, isolated mutinies over specific issues, there was no broad mutiny among any expeditionary

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forces comparable to the French army mutiny in 1917, much less the general breakdown of the Russian army that same year.26 The disparate units of the German Free Corps in the Baltic in 1918–1919 had their own agendas and were never fully under the control of the German High Command or the politicians in Berlin. Their romanticized vision of “home” simply did not match that of the authorities. Their case indicates what can happen when an expeditionary force has a less than coherent and unified purpose. The final theme of memories of fighting in a foreign land is, we believe, tied more closely to the third than is often acknowledged because the reason for serving leaves its legacy. Memories shade into memoirs and memorialization. The Germans who saw themselves as aiding the Turks in an exotic land put up no monuments, but their memoirs and accounts of the Asienkorps veterans’ meetings (which served as ersatz memorializations) are replete with exhortations not to forget their sacrifices and accomplishments. Threads of exoticism run through their publications. Even the titles can sound like an adventure story: “With the Asian Corps to the Palestine Front” (Mit dem Asienkorps zur Palästinafront), “From the Tigris to the North Sea Strand” (Vom Tigris zum Nordsee-Strand), “Between Caucasus and Sinai” (Zwischen Kaukasus und Sinai). This is not unique to the Germans. There is probably at least a hint of adventure in most first-person narratives of the expeditionary experience. The purpose of the War affected all veterans, but expeditionary force members often returned with new purposes that grew out of experiences during the conflict. One of the worries of authorities in the colonial empires was that subject peoples would become restive if their soldiers returned with new confidence and a sense that the European masters were not so superior, after all. This was certainly the case for some of the Vietnamese and many others. But it would take time for the full impact of participation in the War to be felt, even in Australia and Canada, where specific battles were commemorated (Gallipoli, Vimy Ridge) as igniting the fire of national consciousness. A special case was the return of southern Irish veterans of the BEF, who came home to a country more changed than they were, leaving them adrift as having fought for what had become domestically the wrong side.27 When the expeditionary forces returned home, monuments and memorial ceremonies were established. (Some emerged even during the War.) As Natasha Silk points out, these were primarily at home for the

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sake of the family members who could not readily undertake the journey to the sacred battlefields where the fallen were interred. Also, disinterring the enormous number of bodies would be a massive task, and a very large number of soldiers remained in the “missing” or “unknown” category.28 (Silk also makes clear that the “missing” were not lost to their comrades, who knew very well where they had fallen.) We usually think of Europe when we consider the dead and commemoration, but the Mediterranean and Middle East were also sites of mourning and memorialization.29 Most countries agreed to leave the expeditionary dead where they had given their lives and commemorate them at home. The Americans were unusual in that they gave families the choice to bring their soldiers home at personal expense. This was largely possible because the Americans had fought in the later stages of the War, in which advance and Allied control of the battlefields made for relatively few soldiers in the missing or unknown categories. The process was surprisingly rancorous: the French tended to regard the removal of the soldiers from French soil as a form of disrespect, and some blamed the funeral directors’ lobby in the United States. Some Americans charged that the French were simply angling for macabre American tourism to help rebuild their economy. In the end, Americans decided to take most of their dead back across the Atlantic, while some 30,000 AEF personnel remained buried in France. The symbolism of those who remained mollified the French to some degree.30 The process of memorialization of the War was not fulfilled in the cemeteries, monuments, and commemorations alone. Jay Winter has broadened the concept of sites of memory and mourning to include visual media such as paintings, photographs, and films.31 Today there are new ways to render silent, black and white film from the period into faithful sound and color, and thus create New Zealander Peter Jackson’s masterful memorialization They Shall Not Grow Old (2018). The reason he generated this labor of love? His British grandfather had fought at Gallipoli alongside members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force—still remembered over all the intervening years and on the other side of the world.

Notes

1. We are certainly aware that Sykes-Picot and other wartime agreements could support an argument that the Ottoman Empire during the War was merely another area of colonial contest. Allied designs, however, grew with battlefield success. And the interaction between the Ottomans and

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the Germans was qualitatively different from the colonial context. This is a debate one could have. 2. See also Helen McCartney, Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2005). 3.  James A. Huston, The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775–1953 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1997), viii. 4. Of the 286 French instructors, 71 were in artillery; of the 261 British, one was in artillery. Leonard P. Ayres, The War with Germany: A Statistical Summary, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), 31. 5. “List of Maritime Disasters During World War I,” Wikipedia, accessed May 10, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_ World_War_I. 6. On the US Merchant Marine in the War, see Edward N. Hurley, The Bridge to France (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1927). 7. See Edwin A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War: Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements, Vol. 1 (London: Selwyn and Blount, 1921), 201–08. 8. See Ayers, War with Germany, 37–48; Huston, Sinews of War, 340–97; Leo P. Hirrel, Supporting the Doughboys: US Army Logistics and Personnel During World War I (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2017). On the British, see Pratt, British Railways; Christopher Phillips, “Early Experiments in Civil-Military Cooperation: The SouthEastern and Chatham Railway and the Port of Boulogne, 1914–15,” War & Society 34, no. 2 (May 2015): 90–104; Clem Maginniss, An Unappreciated Field of Endeavor: Logistics and the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Warwick, UK: Helion, 2018). On the Canadians, see A. Fortescue Duguid, Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War, 1914–1919, General Series, Vol. 1 (Ottawa: J. O. Patenaude, 1918), esp. 73–161. 9. War Department, Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1937; Center for Military History facsimile reprint, 1987). 10.  Although primarily concerned with Allied railways, the Germans also receive attention in Andrew Roden, Trains to the Trenches: The Men, Locomotives and Tracks That Took Armies to War, 1914–1918 (London: Arum Press, 2014). 11. Logistical units dealt extensively with civilians and thus form a natural subject for war and society research, and they accounted in all armies for a large portion of the troops. Unfortunately, this fact seems obscured by the drama of the battlefield and perhaps the sense that logistics is merely about numbers rather than human beings.

324  A. BEYERCHEN AND E. SENCER 12. On the nearly 140,000 Chinese who worked for the French, British and Americans, see Xu Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 13.  Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); in regard to language and religion, see particularly 133–201. 14.  Franziska Heimburger, “Fighting Together: Language Issues in the Military Coordination of First World War Allied Coalition Warfare,” in Languages and the Military: Alliances, Occupation and Peace Building, ed. Hilary Footitt and Michael Kelly (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 47–57. The first inkling Pershing received that he might get an assignment to Europe in 1917 was a query about the quality of his French. John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War, Vol. 1 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1931), 1. 15. The role of language tension and opportunity at various levels in the Great War has recently come under scrutiny, with some excellent studies as a result. See Julian Walker and Christophe Declercq, eds., Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Julian Walker, Words and the First World War: Language, Memory, Vocabulary (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 16.  See the letters of Canadian army nurses who served mostly in the Mediterranean region, Andrea McKenzie, ed., War-Torn Exchanges: The Lives and Letters of Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2016). 17. Commanding officers had to approve marriages, which were routinely denied in many instances. One could hypothesize that labor battalion personnel had more opportunities for long term relationships than soldiers in combat battalions, but we know of no figures to support or refute this proposition. On French women, the likeliest candidates for marriage with expeditionary soldiers, see Margaret H. Darrow, French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Susan R. Grayzel, “Mothers, Marraines, and Prostitutes: Morale and Morality in First World War France,” International History Review 19, no. 1 (1997): 66–82. 18. For the British, see T. J. Mitchell and G. M. Smith, Medical Services: Casualties and Medical Statistics of the Great War (London: HMSO, 1931). 19. John Dillon, ‘Allies Are a Tiresome Lot’: The British Army in Italy in the First World War (Solihull, West Midlands: Helion, 2015), 98. 20. Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993), 200.

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21. Generating figures to compare would not be simple, since one would have to include not just homeland versus expeditionary forces, but numerous categories such as combat soldiers, support troops, and labor battalions within them. It is also the case that many VD cases originated at home before soldiers shipped out. On the French relationships among masculinity, venereal disease and pronatalism, see Michelle K. Rhoades, “Renegotiating French Masculinity: Medicine and Venereal Disease During the Great War,” French Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (2006): 293– 327. French wartime venereal disease was apparently up 50% over peacetime rates. Rhoades, “Renegotiating,” 301. 22. See Elisabeth Shipton, Female Tommies: The Frontline Women of the First World War (Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2014); Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor, eds., Gender and the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 23. On the views for annexation in the East, see Kristin Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), esp. 124–32. 24. Isabel Hull argues that, “The government’s steadfast position built upon a long tradition of self-understanding shared by both leaders and the public.” That is, its position was fundamentally cultural as much as political. A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 38–41, quotation on 40. 25. Dillon, ‘Allies are a Tiresome Lot’, 45–50. 26. In considering the mutinies that occurred, Kaushik Roy in a recent history says flatly, “Overall, the Indian Army remained loyal to its British master.” Indian Army and the First World War, 1914–1918 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018), 363. 27. Paul Taylor, Heroes or Traitors? Experiences of Southern Irish Soldiers Returning from the Great War, 1919–1939 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015). 28.  See Geoff Dyer, The Missing of the Somme (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1994). The violence particularly of artillery often rendered men more unrecognizable and unknowable than unknown. See Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 29.  See Justin Fantauzzo, The Other Wars: The Experience and Memory of the First World War in the Middle East and Macedonia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020). 30. Thomas H. Conner, War and Remembrance: The Story of the American Battle Monuments Commission (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2018), 15–23. 31. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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Bibliography Ayres, Leonard P. The War with Germany: A Statistical Summary. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919. Bourke, Joanna. Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Conner, Thomas H. War and Remembrance: The Story of the American Battle Monuments Commission. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2018. Darrow, Margaret H. French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Dillon, John. ‘Allies Are a Tiresome Lot’: The British Army in Italy in the First World War. Solihull, West Midlands: Helion, 2015. Duguid, A. Fortescue. Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War, 1914–1919, General Series. Vol. 1. Ottawa: J. O. Patenaude, 1918. Dyer, Geoff. The Missing of the Somme. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1994. Fantauzzo, Justin. The Other Wars: The Experience and Memory of the First World War in the Middle East and Macedonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020. Fogarty, Richard S. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Grayzel, Susan R. “Mothers, Marraines, and Prostitutes: Morale and Morality in First World War France.” International History Review 19, no. 1 (1997): 66–82. Grayzel, Susan R., and Tammy M. Proctor, eds. Gender and the Great War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Heimburger, Franziska. “Fighting Together: Language Issues in the Military Coordination of First World War Allied Coalition Warfare.” In Languages and the Military: Alliances, Occupation and Peace Building, edited by Hilary Footitt and Michael Kelly, 47–57. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Hirrel, Leo P. Supporting the Doughboys: US Army Logistics and Personnel During World War I. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2017. Hull, Isabel. A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. Hurley, Edward N. The Bridge to France. Philadelphia and London: Lippincott, 1927. Huston, James A. The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775–1953. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1997. Kopp, Kristin. Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. “List of Maritime Disasters During World War I.” Wikipedia. Accessed May 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_ World_War_I.

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Appendix: A Provisional Compilation of Expeditionary Forces, 1914–1918

Expeditionary Forces by Designation American Expeditionary Forces (incl. US Marine 4th and 5th Brigades) Belgian Expeditionary Force of Armoured Cars in Russia (Corps expéditionnaire belge des Autos-Canons-Mitrailleuses en Russie), 1915–1918 British Expeditionary Force (incl. the Royal Naval Division, whose units saw separate action in Belgium and Gallipoli and were incorporated into the BEF in 1916) Canadian Expeditionary Force Egyptian Expeditionary Force (overseeing the Sinai and Palestine campaigns) Indian Expeditionary Force (by letter designation)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0

329

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A.  Western Front (infantry divisions transferred mostly to Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in 1916, and cavalry divisions later reassigned to Egypt for the Sinai and Palestine campaigns) B. East Africa C. East Africa D. Mesopotamia (by far the largest Indian force; later reorganized within Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force) E. Egypt (and later the Sinai and Palestine campaigns) F. Egypt (formed to defend the Suez Canal, but eventually disbanded as units assigned to other formations) G. Gallipoli Italian Expeditionary Corps in the East (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Oriente, an Army corps in Albania under direct Italian General Headquarters command) and Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Macedonia (the 35th Division under the Armées alliées en Orient) Italian Expeditionary Force (British, French and later a few American forces sent to Italy 1917–1918) Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (Allied forces at Gallipoli 1915) Mediterranean Expeditionary Newfoundland and Indian later joined with the Force Expeditionary Force, serving Empire)

Forces (British, ANZAC, Canadian, units in the Gallipoli campaign, in Egypt to become the Egyptian as the strategic reserve for British

Expeditionary Corps of the East (Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient, which was the French Gallipoli campaign, later named the Corps expéditionnaire des Dardanelles and still later subsumed on the Macedonian front into the Armée d’Orient) Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force (formerly Indian Expeditionary Force D) New Zealand Expeditionary Force (after Gallipoli, the brigade was expanded into the New Zealand Division within the ANZAC Corps) Portuguese Expeditionary Force (Corpo Expedicionário Portuguêse)

APPENDIX: A PROVISIONAL COMPILATION …

  331

Russian Expeditionary Forces (Corps expéditionnaire russe en France, 1st and 3rd Brigades in France) and Corps expéditionnaire russe sur le front d’Orient (2nd and 4th Brigades under the Armée d’Orient in Macedonia) South African Overseas Expeditionary Force (different elements fought in East Africa, Egypt, the Western Front, and in Palestine) North Russia: American North Russia Expeditionary Force (“Polar Bear Expedition”) British-led intervention sometimes called the North Russia Expedition (see below) Italian Expeditionary Force in Murmansk (Corpo di spedizione italiano in Murmania) Siberia: American Expeditionary Force Siberia (incl. the US Russian Railway Service Corps) Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force Italian Expeditionary Corps in the Far East (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Estremo Oriente)

Occupation Forces with “Expeditionary” Designation Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (1914 force that conquered and occupied south Pacific German territories for the duration of the war) Samoa Expeditionary Force (New Zealand force that seized and occupied German Samoa August 1914–March 1915) Various forces fighting in Africa, such as the British East African Expeditionary Force or Cameroons Expeditionary Force, including Askari, British, Indian, French, Portuguese, Belgian Force Publique, West India Regiment and South African Overseas Expeditionary Force troops. Even when carrying the designation “expeditionary,” other than in East Africa these turned quickly into occupation forces with intention to acquire the German colonies after the War. Altogether perhaps as many

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as 2 million carriers suffered approximately 10% casualty rates. In East Africa the fighting continued through the November 1918 armistice in Europe.

Allied Expeditionary Forces Without the Designation Allied Armies of the East (Armées alliées en Orient), i.e., Salonika front: British, French, Italian, Serbian, Russian, and Greek military units, as well as Maltese and Egyptian labor battalions Armée d’Orient, which was renamed the Armée française d’Orient and formed partially from units that had been at Gallipoli British Army of Salonika (formed partially from units that had been at Gallipoli) Australian Imperial Force Détachement français de Palestine 1917 (expanded into the Détachement français en Palestine et Syrie 1918, French contingent in Egyptian Expeditionary Force) French colonial troupes indigènes (i.e., from North Africa, West Africa, Indochina, Madagascar) Italian contingent in Egyptian Expeditionary Force Japanese Siege of Tsingtao 1914 (Japanese 18th Division and British forces, including a regiment of Sikhs) Newfoundland Regiment (Newfoundland was at this time a separate Dominion from Canada) West India Regiment (action in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in addition to the Cameroons and East Africa)

Allied Intervention Forces Not Termed Expeditionary “Dunsterforce” (December 1917–September 1918, British, including Canadian, Australian and New Zealand troops, expedition to Baku to thwart Ottoman expansion and quest for oil)

APPENDIX: A PROVISIONAL COMPILATION …

  333

Malleson Mission (July 1918–April 1919, British expedition in opposition to German and Ottoman [and ultimately Bolshevik] interests in support of Transcaspian government north of India) Various Allied units intervening in European Russia after collapse of Tsarist army, namely the British North Russian “Allied Intervention in the Russian Ports of the Arctic Ocean” (under Allied Supreme War Council Collective Note No. 31, sometimes referred to as the North Russian Expedition— which also included other forces in addition to the American and Italian forces mentioned above), and French-led forces in southern Russia. Japanese Siberian Intervention (Shiberia Shuppei or “Siberian Dispatch,” comprising 70,000 troops, 1918–1922)

Central Powers Expeditionary Forces Without the Designation Troops serving in the Ottoman Empire either in German military units (Asienkorps) or often in Turkish uniform in Turkish military units (Deutsche Militärmission) Turkish divisions on the Galician, Romanian or Macedonian “Front” (Cephe) under direction of the German High Command German “Delegation” to the Caucasus 1918–1919 Free Corps (Freikorps) units in the Baltic lands

Labor Forces Illustrative List In No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour During the First World War (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Spellmount, 2009) Starling and Lee recount the activities of fourteen separate military labor forces for the British and Dominions alone, plus seven foreign labor units in British service. This list is for illustrative purposes only. AEF Line of Communications (later named Services of Supply) units British West Indies Regiment (battalions served on the Western Front, in Italy and in the Middle East; some elements saw combat in Palestine) Canadian Overseas Construction Corps (light railway workers and operators)

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Cape Coloured Corps in East Africa and in the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces Chinese Labour Corps (under BEF and AEF military discipline; treated as civilian by the French) Maltese Labour Corps South African Labour Corps in Europe Vietnamese Battalions de l’Infanterie Coloniale, fourteen of which served as Labor Battalions.

Index

A Africa European colonialism in, 6, 28–29, 34, 42, 186, 313 German troops perpetrating sexual violence in, 85 Muslim troops from, 35–46 Portugal-German conflict in, 187 African Americans citizenship rights, 40–42, 44 and racial unrest in the United States, 40 return to the US after the war, 38–39, 42, 195 African American troops combat vs labor, 43–44, 195 equal treatment of by French, 195 in the French army, 44, 193, 195 martial skill of, 195 opposition to as soldiers, 43–44 race relations in France, 35–46 Albania, 124 Algerian troops, 4

France’s reserve army, 12 and Islam, 31 Allied Military Commission, 247 Allwards, Walter Seymour, 301 American Expeditionary Forces, 3 arguments over deployment, 192 arrival in France, 126, 194 in France, 35–46 placement of African Americans in, 43–44 relationship with France, 194–195 repatriation of war dead, 322 transportation of, 315 American Expeditionary Force Siberia, 3 American North Russia Expeditionary Force, 3 American troops. See also African American troops denigrating French troops, 194 fighting ability of, 127 trained by British and French, 191–192

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 A. Beyerchen and E. Sencer (eds.), Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0

335

336  Index views of British troops, 193 Anatolia description, 276 German plans for troop recruitment from, 209 hygenic conditions in, 276 suitability of recruits from, 279, 282 victory over the Allied occupation, 278 Anglo-Portuguese Alliance of 1386, 186 Angola, 187 Annamites, 12, 42, 117, 130, 157 Arıkan, İbrahim, 266 Armée d’Orient at the Macedonian Front, 149–169 named, 150 reinforced with troops from Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient, 33 Armistice Agreement, 235, 238 Army of Islam, 209, 218, 220, 222 Army of the East. See Armée d’Orient Army of the Orient. See Armée d’Orient Aryan race, 159 Asien-Korps, 264, 277–281 defeat and return to Germany, 281 denigration of Ottomans, 278 logistics, 274–276 mental maps, 273 morale, 280 officer reflections on the expedition, 279–280 Ottoman-German officer relationships, 280 quality of the recruits, 273 views of Ottoman troops and officers, 282 Australian Imperial Force, 3 Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, 3 Australian troops

as veterans, 298–299 wounded soldiers, 63–64 Austria cultural dissonance with Ottoman troops, 267 decision to use Ottoman troops on the Eastern Front, 265 Austrian troops lack of fighting spirit, 269 prisoners of war in Serbia, 71 B Babut, Ernest, 112 Baku, 209, 218, 222. See also maps of Europe the Near East and the Ottoman Empire oilfields, 209, 210, 216, 220 Balkan Wars, 154, 155, 164–165, 212 Baltic region armistice, 248 German troops in, 235–254 Bataillons de l’Infanterie Colonial, 119 battlefields as sacred ground, 296– 300, 303, 322 Battle of Mametz Wood, 297, 298 Battle of the Aisne. See Chemin des Dames Battle of Ypres, 302 Bavarian army independence of, 207, 211 officers, 211–212 units in the Caucasus, 213, 214 Belgium expeditionary force, 6 neutrality, 180 relief work for women and children, 92 supported by allies, 320 Bischoff, Josef attacks Red Army, 241, 245, 246 and Germandom, 243

Index

refusal to return to the homeland, 242, 248, 249 Bolshevism in the Baltic region, 235, 238, 239, 246 in the Caucasus, 218 fears of, in eastern Europe, 5 in Finland, 209 Freikorps crusade against, 244 British Expeditionary Force civilian recruits in, 183 deployment to France, 180 formation of, 2 Irish veterans of, 321 lack of planning for after war broke out, 180 women in, 319 British Salonika Force, 150, 153 British troops criticized by the French, 184 isolated due to lack of news from home, 180 in Italy, 190 language barriers, 181 negative views of Portuguese troops, 188–189 professionalism and appearance of, 181–182 as a superior force, 180 train American troops, 191–192 uniforms of, 182 views of American troops, 193–194 views of Salonika, 157–158 British West Indies Regiment, 6 Brooding Soldier memorial, 302–306 brothels in Germany, 87 operated by German military, 87–88 organization and economics of, in France, 88–89 Brusilov Offensive, 265 Bulgaria

  337

as ally of Germany, 160 pressured to make peace, 125 relationship with Turkey, 160 war aims, 160 Bulgarian troops on the Macedonian Front, 151, 152, 154 racialization of by Germans, 159–160 Bund der Asienkämpfer, 264, 272 C Cambon, Paul, 184 Canada commemoration of the War, 300–306 Canadian Battlefield Memorial Commission, 301 Canadian Expeditionary Force, 2, 5, 304 memorialized, 305 veneral disease in, 318 Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, 3 Canudo, Ricciotto, 167 Caucasus. See also German expedition to the Caucasus food and fodder shortages in, 218 natural resources in, 207, 209, 210, 216 censorship of the press in Great Britain, 180 of soldiers’ mail, 113 Central Powers, 123, 160 collapse, 208 Germany as center of, 178 Ottoman Empire admiration of, 269 chasseurs d’Afrique, 12 Chemin des Dames African troops in, 39

338  Index German Spring offensive of 1918, 125–126 Vietnamese troops in, 120, 122– 123, 128 Christmas, 58 circular of October 1916, 213, 215 classes, lower and labor forces, 7, 11–12 in nursing care, 66–67 in Portuguese troops, 188 recruitment of in Vietnam, 116–117 Clemesha, Frederick Chapman, 300, 302–303 colonialism in Africa, 5, 28–29, 313 color line in France, 36, 37, 43, 46 in the United States, 41 Committee for the Aid and Protection of Women through Work, 92 communism. See also Bolshevism in the Baltic region, 242 in France, 132, 135 German fears of, 239, 242 in Germany, 238, 242 in Vietnam, 132–134 Communist Party of Germany, 238 condoms, 92–93 Constantinople, 263, 275, 280 Corpo di spedizione italiano in Murmania, 3 Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient, 3, 12, 27, 32, 33 cultural dissonance. See also mental maps among Vietnamese troops, 120–122 between Ottoman troops and Austrians, 267 experienced by expeditionary forces, 7–9

experienced by German troops in Macedonia, 153–156 surrounding landscape and environment, 156–158, 316–318 with languages, 9, 155, 157, 181, 185, 316 with nurses and wounded soldiers, 66–72 Currie, Arthur, 301 D Dardanelles campaign. See Gallipoli campaign Das Volk in Waffen, 263 Détachement français de Palestine, 3, 34 Deutschtum. See Germandom Devonshire Trench, 297 Diagne, Blaise, 44 diseases, 71, 118, 121, 276, 318. See also venereal disease Du Bois, W.E.B., 10–44 Dunsterforce, 3 E Eastern Front, compared to Macedonian Front, 153 Ebert, Friedrich, 220, 235, 238, 251–253 Entente Alliance, 178 Enver Pasha, 218, 266 covets the Caucasus, 209 espionage, 84, 319 estaminets, 83–84 Estonia, 208 Freikorps in, 246, 248 exoticism, 17, 19, 155, 321 Expeditionary Force in Egypt, 3 expeditionary forces

Index

British first use of, 2 considerations of race for deployment, 6–7 defined, 1–2, 4, 6, 13–14, 235–236, 313 distinguished from home front forces, 7–9 experiences of cultural dissonance, 7–9, 318 feelings on leaving the battlefields behind, 298, 299 German advisors as, 12–13 ignorance of geography, 152–153, 266 labor battalions in, 6, 9–10 logistics, 17, 18, 265, 267, 314–316 naming, 3–4, 150 and political alliances, 3, 5–6, 186–187 purposes of, 4–5 rationale, 320–321 reliability of, 18, 28–35, 237, 253, 320 their ideas of home, 10, 236, 272 Expeditionskorps Pascha I, 263 Expeditionskorps Pascha II, 263 F First World War commemoration. See also memorials by Canada, 300–301 cemeteries, 290, 291, 294 civilian grief, 291 soldiers’ own memorials, 297–298, 300 state aims vs. soldiers’, 303, 304 Unknown Warrior memorials, 292, 297, 305 First World War in memory, 289–307 of German veterans, 272

  339

in Germany, 263, 264 in Turkey, 262–263 Foch, Marshall, 305 food supply for Asien-Korps, 273 in Georgia, 218 for German troops in Macedonia, 155 for German troops in the Middle East, 275 for Ottoman troops, 266, 267, 270 for Vietnamese troops, 122, 133 Force publique, 6 France advises America on military training, 191–192, 315 agreement with Great Britain in the event of war, 180 civilians’ knowledge of English, 181 colonialism in Africa, 28–29, 34 communism in, 132, 135 equal treatment of soldiers, 42–43 fear of Bolshevism, 185 and Portugal’s attempt to enter the War, 186 race relations in, 43–46 recruiting campaign in Indochina, 114–115 treatment of Vietnamese troops after the war, 129–131, 133 use of African troops, 33–35 use of colonial troops, 12 Vietnamese settlers in, 129, 132, 134 franc-tireurs, 85, 86 Frappa, Jean-José, 166 Freikorps conception of Germandom in, 243–246, 254 contstraints on logistics, 249, 250, 253, 254

340  Index crusade against Bolshevism, 244, 247, 249, 250 defined as expeditionary, 235–236 distrust of, 239 engages Red Army, 242, 246 fight against Estonia, 246–248 final return to Germany, 248–251 formation, 236–240 and Germanness, 243, 244 idea of homeland in, 246, 254 independence and autonomy of, 240–241, 247 involved in Latvian civil war, 246–248 nationalism in, 244, 245 negotiations over disbanding, 250 refusal to leave the Baltic region, 242–243, 247–249 use of violence, 243, 246, 251, 253 French Army in the Orient Armée d’Orient, 125 French Communist Party, 132, 135 French Indochina soldier-workers from, 111–135 French, John, 181 French League of Human Rights, 112 French Postal Control Bureau, 113 French troops appearance of to the British, 182 critical of British troops, 184 disillusions with Salonika, 158 in the Middle East, 34–35 relationship with American troops, 194–195 as superior to new British recruits, 183 train American troops, 191–192, 315 views of Salonika, 156–157 G Galicia. See maps of the Eastern Front and Europe and the Near East

Galician campaign brutality of, 269 logistics, 265–266, 271 in memory, 262 Ottoman troops in, 265–271 Gallipoli campaign, 3 in memory, 262, 263 Muslim troops in, 28–35 troops from sent to Galicia, 265 gas (weapon), 113, 128, 149, 165, 269, 303, 304 General Government Warsaw, 80 Georgia food and fodder shortages in, 218 Germany’s interest in troops from, 207, 209, 210 railway system, 216–217 transportation system, 216–218 German army structure of, 210–213 German Christian Students’ Association, 93 Germandom, expressed in Freikorps, 243–246 German expedition to the Caucasus, 221–223 communication problems, 219–220 factors affecting decision, 207, 209 food and fodder shortages in, 218 insufficiency of troops, 216 logistics and transportation problems, 216–218, 220 makeup of military units, 213–215 Supreme Command’s decision, 206 troops departing for, 205–206 withdrawl, 220–221 German League for the Combatting of Venereal Disease, 92 German Military Mission in the Ottoman Empire, 13, 263, 265 Germanness, 159, 236, 237, 244 in Freikorps, 243, 244

Index

in Jünger’s work, 245 German troops. See also Asien-Korps; Freikorps cultural dissonance in Macedonia, 153–156 demobilization, 238–240 on Eastern Front compared to Macedonian Front, 153 ethnic tensions in, 215 experiences of prostitution, 83 food supply; in Macedonia, 155; Middle East, 275 interest in Islam, 155 at Macedonian Front, 151–152 negative views of Macedonian cities, 154–156 not defined as expeditionary, 13–14, 264 regulation of sexual relations, 79–96 sexual hygiene, 89–90, 92–93 shirking, 206 treatment of women, 86, 95, 319 venereal disease in, 79, 81–82 Germany attempt to end Freikorps mission, 243 communism in, 238, 242 conflict with Portugal in Africa, 187 First World War in memory, 263 historical ties to the Ottoman Empire, 263 interest in Caucasus’ natural resources, 207, 209, 210, 216 interest in raising Georgian army, 207, 209, 210 looks east at the end of the War, 208–210 in the Middle East, 271–281 moral reform organizations in, 93–94 nationalism in, 244, 245

  341

objects to Turkey’s advance in the Caucasus, 210 peace treaty with Russia, 208 political and military structure, 210–211 population politics in, 93, 82 Republic established, 220, 238 role in Central Powers, 178 veterans in, 264, 272 Gleich, Gerold von, 279–280 Goltz, Colmar Baron von der, 13, 263 death of, 276 Goltz, Friedrich Freiherr von der, 222 Goltz, Rüdiger von der, 239, 241, 247 Graham, Stephen, 295, 296 Graves Registration Unit, 290 Great Britain advises America on military training, 191–193 agreement with France in the event of war, 180 Dominion forces, 2, 5 expeditionary forces in Africa, 3 opposition to German troops remaining in the Baltic, 242 relations with Portugal, 3, 186–187 treatment of Germans in the Middle East, 278 use of expeditionary forces vs territorial forces, 2 Great Powers dynamics, 179 manifested in troop interactions, 193 and Portugal’s place in the War, 189 Greece annexation of Salonika, 154 described as oriental, 163–164 independence, 162 modern compared to ancient, 166–168 neutrality of, 151, 161 Greeks

342  Index British admiration for, 162 described as oriental, 168 in Salonika, 154 Groener, Wilhelm, 238, 252, 253 Gypsies. See Roma H Hababam Sınıfı, 261 Haig, Douglas, 125, 126, 184 Halil Pasha, 280 Heeresgruppe F, 263 Heimat, 242, 243, 246, 254, 272 Hemingway, Ernest, 36 hierarchies in the Entente Alliance, 178 in European power dynamic, 177, 178, 189 in military planning, 179 redefined between French and British troops, 183 High Command of Army North, 243 Hồ Chí Minh, 115, 132, 133 home front defined for Americans, British, and French, 191 expeditionary forces distinguished from home front forces, 7–9 grief, 290, 301, 303, 304 homeland concept of for expeditionary forces, 10 idea of in Freikorps, 246 nurses as symbol of, 60 hospitals Austrian and Hungarian in Galician campaign, 270 as domestic spaces, 58–66 rituals in, 58 on trains, 315 Hussein Ibn ’Ali, Sharif of Mecca, 34 hygiene in Anatolia, 276

lack of in Macedonia, 155, 156, 158, 167, 318 for Ottoman troops, 267 sexual, among German troops, 89–90, 92–93 sexual, regulated for prostitutes, 87–88 I Ilgaz, Rıfat, 261 Imperial German Delegation in the Caucasus, 208, 213. See also German expedition to the Caucasus Imperial Government General in Belgium, 80 Imperial War Graves Commission, 290 decision on repatriation of soldiers’ remains, 290–291, 296 and proper burials, 294 purpose, 290 veterans’ criticism of, 296 Indian Expeditionary Force, 2, 12, 36 Indochina. See also Vietnam recruiting campaign by France, 114–115 Inter-Allied Baltic Commission, 251 interpreters French on the Western Front, 181, 317 use of by French, 33 Vietnamese, 115 Iraq, 277 Irish troops in British Expeditionary Force, 321 Islam. See also Muslim troops fears of by French, 29–35 and German toops, 155 and jihad, 7, 29–31 Islam noir, 29, 32 Italian Expeditionary Force, 3, 318

Index

Italian Expeditionary Force in Murmansk, 3 Italy Allied support of, 320 Austrian offensive against, 4 British troops in, 190 and Entente Alliance, 178 J Jews German attitude towards, 150, 154 in Salonika, 154 jihad, 7, 29–31 Joffre, Joseph, 122, 187, 194 Jünger, Ernst, 35, 245 K Kampf, 98, 257 Kitchener, Herbert, 2, 180 Kosch, Robert, 205 Krafft von Dellmensingen, Konrad, 212 Kress von Kressenstein, Friedrich Freiherr commands expeditionary force to the Caucasus, 206, 210, 212 comments on German-Georgian relationship, 218 dislikes Prussian violence, 215 founds German veterans organization, 272 on German naval strategy, 222 heads Imperial German Delegation in the Caucasus, 213 on lack of resources, 216, 219 on logistics, 223 personal interests in Georgia, 221 Kurds, 217, 219 Kut al Amara, Siege of, in memory, 262, 263

  343

L labor forces African Americans in, 43, 195 compared to combat, 43–44, 195, 316 as expeditionary, 6, 9–10 and logistics, 12, 316 and lower classes, 7, 11–12 Vietnamese, 119, 121, 125 language barriers with British troops in France, 181 coping strategies among troops, 177, 317 for German troops in the Middle East, 274 and nurses, 64–65 with Portuguese troops, 188 for Russian troops in France, 185 for Vietnamese troops in France, 122 languages. See also interpreters Bulgarian, spoken by German troops, 159 English, spoken by the French, 181 French; British troops’ lack of knowledge of, 181; difficulty of learning by Russians, 185; spoken in Macedonia, 155, 160 spoken in Macedonia, 155 Latvian civil war, 246–248 League of Asian Fighters. See Bund der Asienkämpfer Levante-Korps. See Asien-Korps Leviathan (ship), 315 Linard circular, 44–45 Linard, J.A., 44 Łódź, 80, 88 logistics for the Asien-Korps, 274–276 communication problems and, in the Caucasus, 219–220

344  Index constraints on in Freikorps, 249, 250, 253, 254 for Galician campaign, 265–266, 271 in the German expedition to the Caucasus, 216–218, 223 importance of for expeditionary forces, 17, 18, 265, 267, 314–316 and labor forces, 12, 316 on the Macedonian Front, 151 in military planning, 179 for Vietnamese troops, 117–118 Lossow, Otto von, 210, 212 Ludendorff, Erich, 126, 161 on objectives in the Caucasus, 216 his failed advances on the Western Front, 206 ponders expedition to the Caucasus, 207, 213 praises American soldiers, 127 Lüders, Marie-Elisabeth, 92 Lutaud, Charles, 31, 32 Lüttwitz, Wolfgang von, 252 M Macedonia. See also Salonika backwardsness of, 154–155, 163–168 as a biblical place, 157, 163 described as oriental, 163–164 description, 163, 164 as a multicultural region, 153–158 religious diversity of, 153–154, 157 Turkish influence on, 155 Macedonian Front, 149–169 compared to Eastern Front, 153 logistical issues, 151 Maercker, Ludwig, 245 mail delivery, 8, 113, 279 Malleson Mission, 3 Mangin, Charles, 36

marriage between Ottoman troops and local women, 268 between soldiers and local women, 318 between Vietnamese soldiers and French women, 132 martial races. See under race Medem, Walter von, 242, 249 medicine. See hospitals; nurses; nursing Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, 3 memorials Brooding Soldier, 302–306 The Cenotaph, 306 Devonshire Trench, 297 Gallipoli, 321 Menin Gate, 297, 306 soldiers’ own, 297–298, 300 Thiepval, 306 Thiepval Memorial, 297 Unknown Soldier, 292, 305 Vimy Ridge, 301, 306, 321 mental maps, 7, 8, 57. See also cultural dissonance of Asien-Korps, 273 of the Orient, 150 Mesopotamian Front. See Asien-Korps; Palestine Front Meyer, Ihno, 243, 245 Middle East, 271–281. See also AsienKorps; Palestine Front British treatment of Germans in, 278 French forces in, 34–35 German ideas about backwardness of, 275–276 German nostalgia for, 277 German views of in photographs, 277, 280 German war in as a colonial war, 279 Muslim troops in, 34–35 military uniforms

Index

of African American troops in the French army, 44 of Bulgarian and Russian troops, 160 French confusion over British, 182 of labor battalions, 11 red pants of the tirailleurs, 38 Mitteilungen des Bundes der Asienkämpfer, 264, 277 Moench, Friedrich, 277 Monastir, 155 Morocco, 30, 32 Mozambique, 187 Muslim troops and jihad, 7, 29–31 efforts to sway based on appeals to religion, 29–32 food restrictions, 29, 267, 316 in the Gallipoli campaign, 28–35 in the Middle East, 34–35 prisoners of war, 30, 32, 33 reliability of, 28–35 religious practices, 28–30, 267 mutiny, 11, 222, 321 N naval forces, 3, 6, 315 Needra, Andreas, 246 Newfoundland Regiment, 3 New Zealand Expeditionary Force, 2 Nguyễn Ái Quốc. See Hồ Chí Minh North African troops excluded from Gallipoli campaign, 31–33 and Islam, 28–29 loyalty of, 30–31, 33–35 Noske, Gustav, 249 Nuri Pasha, 209, 218 nurses Australian, 63, 66 caring for lower classes, 66–67 as conduits to home, 62–63

  345

dealing with death, 64–66 images of in propaganda, 60 as mother figures, 60–61, 67 performing surgery, 70 and religious work, 64–66 serving on hospital trains, 315 and sexual harassment, 67–68 treating prisoners of war, 68–72 views of African soldiers, 61 nursing, 57–74 O Order of the Supreme Command, October 6, 1916. See circular of October 1916 orientalism, 150, 160 in descriptions of Greece and Macedonia, 163–164, 167, 168 exhibited by Asien-Korps, 273 expressed by French soldiers, 158, 163–164 expressed by Russian soldiers, 164 expressions of by nurses, 61 and German soldiers, 150, 155, 156, 263 Ottoman Empire. See also Turkey commitment to Central Powers, 265, 271 Galician campaign, 265–271 German advisors in, 13, 212, 263, 265 German memories of, 263 historical ties to Germany, 263 as holy land to all Muslims, 32 in North Africa, 30 in Southeastern Europe, 154, 155 Ottoman troops in the Galician campaign, 265–271 behavior and discipline of, 266–267 fighting ability of, 269 inadequacy of training, 266

346  Index interactions with local women, 268–270 logistics, 265–266, 316 morale, 266, 269 and Muslim practices, 267 P Palestine Front. See also Asien-Korps German military commitment to, 264 German troops at, 263 logistics and transportation, 274–275 Pan-German League, 248 Pershing, John J., 36, 44, 192, 193, 296 Plan XVII, 180 Poland, 80, 208 political alliances and expeditionary forces, 3, 5–6, 186–187 hierarchies in, 178–179 Portugal ambivalence over being in the War, 187–188 attempt to enter the War, 186 conflict with Germany in Africa, 187 and Entente Alliance, 178 neutrality, 186 relations with Great Britain, 3, 186–187 seizes German shipping, 187 Portuguese Expeditionary Force collapse of, 190 formation of, 187 seen as inferior by British troops, 188–189 prisoners of war, 282 German, from the Caucasus, 214 and nurses, 68–72 Portuguese, 190

prostitution combatted by German moral reform organizations, 93–94 German soldiers’ experiences of, 83–84 regulation of by German military, 86–91 regulation of prostitutes’ sexual hygiene, 87–88 Q Quast, Ferdinand von, 239 Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service, 57 Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service Reserve, 57 R race color line, 36–40 equal treatment of soldiers by France, 42–43 factor in deployment of expeditionary forces, 6–7 in French society, 43–46 and martial prowess, 6, 158–162, 195, 269 Serbian troops accepted as white, 162 violence in the United States, 40 racialization of Bulgarians and Slavs by Germans, 159–160 of Greeks, 163–168 of groups as fighters, 158–162 of Prussians, 215 Red Army, 239, 251. See also Bolshevism as threat, 239 defeated by Freikorps, 241–242, 246

Index

fear of in eastern Europe, 239 Red Cross, 58, 60, 68, 73, 92, 290 Red Pants (story), 36–40 religion. See also Islam in Macedonia, 153–154, 157 and nursing, 64–66 René-Boisneuf, Achille, 45 Ritter, Gerhard, 207 Roma, 156 Russia Allied forces in, 3, 5 and Entente Alliance, 178 expeditionary force, 3 peace treaty with Germany, 208 peace treaty with Ukraine, 208 Russian Expeditionary Force, 185–186 Russian Revolution, 185, 208 Russian troops cultural isolation in France, 185 S Said, Edward, 150 Salomon, Ernst von, 245 Salonika description of, 150, 156, 158 German approaches to capture of, 151–152 as a multicultural city, 149, 154, 156–158 nurses in, 66 as unknown territory to soldiers, 152–153 Sanders, Otto Liman von, 13, 263, 265 Sarrail, Maurice, 123 Sarraut, Albert, 115, 127 Schulenburg, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der, 209 Second Battle of Marne, 126 Seeckt, Hans von, 216, 239 Serbia, 123

  347

Allied support of, 320 description of, 154–155 nurses in, 71 Serbian Relief Fund, 71 Serbian troops British views of as fighters, 161–162 Services of Supply, 316 sex regulation of by Germany, 79–96 sexual hygiene among German troops, 89–90, 92–93 regulated for prostitutes, 87–88 sexual violence and German colonial forces, 84–85 propaganda about, 85–86 Skopje, 154, 159, 160. See also map of Macedonian Front Slavs, 150, 153, 159 Society for the Preservation and Growth of the Strength of the German People, 93 soldiers’ councils, 239 soldiers’ homes, 94 South African Native Labor Corps, 6 South African Overseas Expeditionary Force, 2, 6 Spartacus League, 237, 238, 242 Spears, Edward, 182 Stallings, Laurence, 36 Steeksma, John, 149 stereotypes, 9, 66 of Africans by nurses, 61 of the enemy in hospitals, 69, 71 of Italians, 190 of Middle Eastern peoples, 275, 279 of Prussians, 215 of the Turks, 276 Storm of Steel, 36 Sultan of Constantinople, 30, 32

348  Index T Tamagnini de Abreu, Fernando, 188, 189 Tatars, 217, 219 Thessaloniki. See Salonika Thomason, John W., 36 tirailleurs, 12 tirailleurs de la réserve, 114 tirailleurs de militaire, 114 tirailleurs sénégalais, 37, 39, 61 Transcaucasian Republic, 209, 210 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 208, 209, 236 troupes indigènes, 28–36 Tunisia, 30 Turkey. See also Ottoman Empire First World War in memory, 262–263 interest in the Caucasus, 209–210, 221, 222 relationship to Bulgaria, 160 War of Independence, 262 Turkish troops. See also Ottoman troops in the Galician campaign in the Caucasus, 210, 218–220 Turkish War of Independence, 262 U Ukraine German forces in, 209, 213 peace treaty with Russia, 208 war in Galicia, 265–271 Ulmanis, Karlis, 246 United States attempts by France to rally support of, 194 entry into the War, 190 expeditionary forces, 3 US Army Nurse corps, 57 US Marines, 315

V venereal disease among German forces, 79 German regulations for fighting, 87 history of in the German military, 81–82 inspections for among German troops, 89 in Ottoman troops, 269 prevalence of, 95, 318 prevention, 92–93 self-infecting to escape military duty, 94–95 treatments, 89–91 veterans. See also First World War commemoration in Freikorps, 237 German, 264, 272 Irish, 321 Vietnamese, 127, 129–133 Vietnam Annam region, 12, 115, 117, 130 communism in, 132–134 political reform after the war, 129–130 soldier-workers from, 111–135 Tonkin region, 115, 116, 124, 130, 132 Vietnamese Communist Party, 132 Vietnamese troops Annamites, 12, 42, 117, 130, 157 in the Balkans, 123–125 casualities, 128 in Chemin des Dames, 120, 122–123, 128 compensation, 130–131 conscripts vs volunteers, 112–113, 115–117 and culture shock, 120–122 denied French citizenship, 131 food supply, 122, 133

Index

in the German Spring offensive 1918, 125–126 honored, 125, 128, 131 labor forces, 117–119, 125, 121 logistics, 117–118 peasants, 116–117 re-enlistment, 129 settling in France after the War, 129, 132, 135 transport to France, 117–118 as veterans, 127, 129–133 views of Americans, 127 W war dead, 293–296 burial and marking on the battlefield, 295 feelings about by Dominion soldiers, 298–299 repatriation of remains, 64, 290– 291, 295, 322 soldiers’ views on burials, 294 Ware, Fabian, 290 West African troops, 40 in Chemin des Dames, 39 in the Dardanelles campaign, 32 fighting ability, 37 in France, 36–40 and Islam, 28–29 loyalty of, 32, 35 nurses views of, 61

  349

White Cross, 93 women as auxiliary and support personnel, 319 in the British Expeditionary Force, 319 denounced as disease carriers, 91 encounters with German forces, 79–96 interactions with Ottoman troops, 268–269 nurses, 57–74 sex workers, regulated, 86–91 supervising camps in the Middle East, 278 as threats to soldiers, 15, 79, 86, 319 as vectors of disease, 96, 319 working, 92 Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, 237 Y Yazman, M. Şevki, 266 Yıldırım Orduları Grubu, 263 Z Zouaves, 12, 121