A British bomber soars over the clouds.
A Scottish factory worker shows off her tattoos. Her right arm bears emblems from her sweetheart’s Royal Navy warship. On her left are the names of friends who died minesweeping the North Sea. July 1917.
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June 24, 1918 - British Drop War’s Heaviest Bomb
Pictured - The “SN” bomb weighed 1650 lbs. Puny by the standards of the next war’s “blockbusters” it was nevertheless the heaviest type of bomb used in World War One.
When the Great War began, planes were useful only for reconnaissance. Nevertheless some pilots tried their hand at war by dropping bricks, darts, or grenades out of the cockpit onto troops down below. Nothing showed how rapidly airspace had been weaponized since then as the RAF’s use of a 1,650-lb bomb on June 24, the war’s heaviest explosive dropped by a plane. The bomb was dropped by one of the massive new Handley Page Type O machines, used for strategic bombing over Germany and occupied France and Belgium.
Mountain Warfare on the Italian Front
The white war.
In May 1915, Italy joined the Entente and attacked Austra-Hungary, its neighbor and great rival, along their Alpine border. Four years of mountain warfare commenced, which some of the most brutal fighting of World War I in its least hospitable conditions.
Geography and strategy did not align well for Italian planners. Most Italians had not been particularly enthusiastic for war, and Rome wanted a quick victory that would take Austria’s last Italian possessions, like Trentino and Trieste. Therefore Italy’s army needed to attack. But virtually the entire Austro-Italian border consisted of the Alps, running from the virtually impassible Dolomites at Trentino, to the somewhat gentler east, where stood the Isonzo River and the rocky, barren, Karst Plateau. This is where Italy’s Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna made eleven vigorous attacks during the war, heading eastward over the Isozo into Slovenia, coming to a head at the town of Gorizia.
The Austrians had suffered severely on the Eastern Front by 1915, but Cadorna’s opposite number, General Conrad von Hötzendorf, knew precisely where to deploy his limited men. The Austrians heavily fortified the Isonzo, blasting trenches, dugouts, and artillery positions into Alpine rock. The highest peaks became crucial observation points. Even if they ran out of machine gun bullets and gun shells, the Austrians could probably roll rocks down the mountains and still have an advantage over the Italians attacking uphill.
Austrians keep watch over the Isonzo.
The following four years covered the Alps in blood. Italy fought four battles alone for the Isonzo in 1915. Each proved indecisive and costly. The Austrians gave better than they got, but had too few men to counter-attack themselves. In the higher ranges of the Alps, a “white war” started in the snow and ice. Ski-troops and mountain climbers were the norm, avalanches caused by artillery killed thousands in seconds. Even supplying the men here required Herculean logistical efforts: guns, soldiers, horses, etc. were brought up mountain peaks with complex pulley-systems, elevators, and even ziplines.
An Italian Alpini mountain specialist ziplines from one peak to another.
The pattern of failed Italian offensives changed suddenly in October 1917, when Austrian and German troops launched a surprise attack at Caparetto that routed the defending Italians. Some 20,000 prisoners fell into Central Powers hands within a few days. Thousands of demoralized Italian soldiers were abandoned by Cadorna as he pulled forces back; yet the general had no sympathy for his men - some claim he literally reintroduced the ancient Roman practice of decimation, killing one man in ten in some units. More likely he had individual stragglers executed for cowardice.
A tough place for a war.
Despite this poor showing of Italian arms, they turned defeat into victory in 1918, halting a final Austrian attack on the Piave and launching their own counteroffensive which soon turned into a full-scale pursuit of terrified and starving Austrian troops. The cherished revanchist territory of Trentino and Trieste finally fell into Italian hands. But the unpopular war had come at terrible cost: at least 600,000 dead, almost twice that wounded. These are only estimates. To this day, the frozen corpses of Italian and Austrian soldiers show up every summer in the Alps. Perhaps it is no surprise that so many Italian soldiers, like Benito Mussolini, returned home bitter, anxious for rapid political change, and full of hate.
June 27, 1918 - Canadian Hospital Ship HMHS Llandovery Castle Sunk and Survivors Massacred
Pictured - A propaganda drawing shows the German U-Boat surfacing to destroy the Llandovery Castle’s lifeboats, which was confirmed by survivors’ testimony.
While sailing from Nova Scotia to Liverpool the hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle was torpedoed by a submerged U-Boat on June 27, 1918. The ship carried 600 beds for wounded troops, but fortunately was returning to take more casualties onboard instead of fully loaded. Nevertheless, her destruction was one of the war’s worst atrocities.
Sinking a hospital ship was against both the laws of war and the code of the German Navy. After torpedoing Llandovery Castle, the U-boat U-86 surfaced to try and destroy the evidence of the sinking The German sailors began firing on survivors in the water, and then the U-boat itself ran down and rammed all but one of the lifeboats.
One lifeboat, carrying 14 of the 97 nursing sisters onboard, was sucked into the whirlpool creating by the sinking ship. Only one Canadian soldier onboard it survived by clinging onto wreckage. Later he vividly remembered the nurses’ last moments:
“Unflinchingly and calmly, as steady and collected as if on parade, without a complaint or a single sign of emotion, our fourteen devoted nursing sisters faced the terrible ordeal of certain death–only a matter of minutes–as our lifeboat neared that mad whirlpool of waters where all human power was helpless. I estimate we were together in the boat about eight minutes. In that whole time I did not hear a complaint or murmur from one of the sisters. There was not a cry for help or any outward evidence of fear. In the entire time I overheard only one remark when the matron, Nursing Matron Margaret Marjory Fraser, turned to me as we drifted helplessly towards the stern of the ship and asked: "Sergeant, do you think there is any hope for us?” “I replied, ‘No.”
Then the nurses were sucked into the whirlpool. They died along with 234 other nurses, doctors, soldiers, and seamen. Only 24 survived. The officers commanding the submarine were prosecuted for war crimes after the war, but escaped conviction by fleeing the country.
June 26, 1918 - Americans Take Belleau Wood
Pictured - Doughboys fire a 37mm cannon in the shattered wood.
American forces captured Belleau Wood, a copse of trees near the Marne River, on June 26. The battle had begun on June 6 when the American Marine Brigade attacked across open fields versus German machine-guns. Advancing with bayonets level and taking horrendous casualties, one American sergeant asked his company “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
The Marines took a toehold in the forest at ferocious cost and were reinforced by more fresh divisions. They impressed both their allies and their enemies. At this point American troops were still fighting under British and French corps commanders. Canadian Prime Minister Robert Bordon agreed to send Canadian troops to help train the Americans, and was impressed by the enthusiasm the Yankees showed. They were “splendid men,” he wrote, “and very keen to be in the fight.” The Germans conceded as much. Although they had believed the Americans would be weak opponents, an intelligence officer wrote after Belleau Wood that “The moral effect of our fire-arms did not materially check the advance of the infantry. The nerves of the Americans are still unshaken.”
Conscripts line up in New York.
A Canadian soldier puts on makeup to play a woman’s role in a play. Theatrical productions were a very popular entertainment for the troops, and required soldiers to play both male and female parts.
A group of POWs in a German prison camp representing eight nationalities fighting for the Allies. From left: Vietnamese, Tunisian, Senegalese, Sudanese, Russian, American, Portuguese, and English.
A German ammunition column destroyed by artillery.
June 25, 1918 - Pershing Demands Three Million Americans in France by 1919
Pictured - American troops parade through London before heading to the Western Front. American reinforcements were decisive to turning the tide of World War One.
American troops were involved in one of their first pitched battles in June 1918 as they struggled at Belleau Wood, where the Marine Brigade had taken a foothold in a German stronghold. This American force, however, was only the spearhead of a much larger planned deployment. On the Western Front three million Allied soldier faced three-and-a-half million Germans; American reinforcements were still needed to tip the scale in the Allies’ favor.
Pershing hoped to bring more men to France as quickly as possible. in June he wrote to President Wilson’s confidant Colonel House, urging rapid action. “The Allies are done for,” warned Pershing, “and the only them (especially France) in the war will be the assurance that we have enough force to assume the initiative.” To have that, Pershing demanded a doubling of Allied strength by expanding the 800,000 strong American army to three million in sixty-six divisions: “the least that should be through of.” He wanted them ready by 1919, which Allied leaders believed would be the decisive year of the war.
