First World War

Unprecedented war devastates Europe “No one realized that the war that broke out that summer would soon be called a world war,” Dorothy Goldman explains in Women Writers and the Great War (3). “Though the action was concentrated in France and Belgium, it would be a war that was fought in Central and East Africa, in Serbia, in Russia, Egypt, Austria, and Gallipoli” (3).

Several years ago, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired a documentary on World War I called The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century. Here is some information from the pbs.org website (http://www.pbs.org/greatwar:

“The Great War was without precedent ... never had so many nations taken up arms at a single time. Never had the battlefield been so vast… never had the fighting been so gruesome....

“World War I marked the first use of chemical weapons, the first mass bombardment of civilians from the sky, and the century's first genocide. The Great War had been the worst disaster in history. Nine million soldiers were killed. Four empires had collapsed and large parts of France, Belgium and Russia lay devastated. The old

order had been decimated and a new one was taking shape -- and this struggle would prove even bloodier than the war itself. “Most of the leaders in 1914 had no real idea of the war machine they were putting into motion. Many believed the War would be over by Christmas 1914. But by the end of the first year, a new kind of war emerged on the battlefield that had never been seen before -- or repeated since: total war-producing stalemate, the result of a war that went on for 1,500 days.

“Before the official Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918, nine million people had died on the battlefield and the world was forever changed. Millions of people - military and civilian - in every combatant nation had to cope with the war experience and its aftermath. Some people tried not to remember the war, while others built monuments to those who had died. Many went to the grave burdened by the unanswered question: "What did it all mean?"

“The after shocks of the earthquake we call the Great War are still being felt today, in the 21st century. In countless ways, World War I created the fundamental

elements of 20th century history. Genocide emerged as an act of war. So did the use of poison gas on the battlefield. The international system was totally transformed.

“On the political right fascism came out of the war; on the left a communist movement emerged backed by the Soviet Union. Reluctantly, but unavoidably, America became a world power. The British Empire reached its high point and started to unravel. Britain never recovered from the shock of war, and started her decline to the ranks of the second-class powers. At the peace conference of 1919, the German, Turkish, and Austro-Hungarian empires were broken up. New boundaries were drawn in Europe and the Middle East, boundaries -- as in Iraq and Kuwait -- which were still intact at the end of the century.

“Just as the war was ending, German Nationalists like Hitler gathered millions who rejected the peace and blamed Jews and Communists for their defeat. The road to the Second World War started there.”

--from http://www.pbs.org/greatwar

At the beginning of 1914 few people suspected that by the end of the summer Europe would be plunged into one of the bloodiest wars known to mankind. World War I was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century.

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Rosenberg’s poem focuses on lice problemIsaac Rosenberg’s poem, “Louse Hunting,” focuses attention on the ever-present problem of lice in the trenches. Most troops were infested, British as well as German--see photo, left. Rosenberg died in the war in 1918.

From spartacus.co.uk: Lice were a huge problem in the trenches. One soldier writing after the war described them as "pale fawn in colour, and they left blotchy red bite marks all over the body." They also created a sour; stale smell. Various methods were used to remove the lice. A lighted candle was fairly effective but the skill of burning the lice without burning your clothes was only learnt with practice. George Coppard described how this worked: "The things lay in the seams of trousers, in the deep furrows of long thick woolly pants, and seemed impregnable in their deep entrenchments. A lighted candle applied where they were thickest made them pop like Chinese crackers. After a session of this, my face would be covered with small blood spots from extra big fellows which had popped too vigorously." In his autobiography, Harry Patch explains the problems he had with lice:"The lice were the size of grains of rice, each with its own bite,

each with its own itch. When we could, we would run hot wax from a candle down the seams of our trousers, our vests - whatever you had - to burn the buggers out. It was the only thing to do. Eventually, when we got to Rouen, coming back, they took every stitch off us and gave us a suit of sterilised blue material. And the uniforms they took off, they burned them - to get rid of the lice."

Where possible the army arranged for the men to have baths in huge vats of hot water while their clothes were being put through delousing machines. Unfortunately, this rarely worked. A fair proportion of the eggs remained in the clothes and within two or three hours of the clothes being put on again a man's body heat had hatched them out.

Lt. Robert Sherriff described his men going into battle: "At dawn on the morning of the attack, they assembled outside the huts. I lined up my platoon and went through the necessary inspection. Some of the men looked terribly ill: grey, worn faces in the dawn, unshaved and dirty because there was no clean water. I saw the characteristic shrugging of their shoulders that I knew so well. They hadn't had their clothes off for weeks, and their shirts were full of lice.” (Gross!)

Weapons of war:Poisonous gas takes toll on all army forces From worldwarone.com

Considered uncivilized prior to World War One, the development and use of poison gas was necessitated by the requirement of wartime armies to find new ways of overcoming the stalemate of unexpected trench warfare.

First Use by the FrenchAlthough it is popularly believed

that the German army was the first to use gas, the French in fact initially deployed it.  In the first month of the war, August 1914, they fired tear-gas grenades (xylyl bromide) against the Germans.  Nevertheless the German army was the first to give serious study to the development of chemical weapons and the first to use it on a large scale.

Initial German ExperimentsIn the capture of Neuve Chapelle in

October 1914 the German army fired shells at the French which contained a chemical irritant whose result was to induce a violent fit of sneezing.  Three months later, on 31 January 1915, the Germans employed tear gas for the first time on the Eastern Front.

Fired in liquid form contained in 15 cm howitzer shells against the Russians at Bolimov, the new experiment proved unsuccessful, with the tear gas liquid failing to vaporize in the freezing temperatures prevalent at Bolimov.

Not giving up, the Germans tried again with an improved tear gas concoction at Nieuport against the French in March 1915.

Introduction of Poison GasThe debut of the first poison gas

however - in this instance, chlorine - came on 22 April 1915, at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres. At this stage of the war the famed Ypres Salient, held by the British, Canadians and French ran for some 10 miles and bulged into German occupied territory for five miles.  A combination of French territorials and Algerian troops held the line to the left,

with the British and Canadians tending the centre and line to their right.

During the morning of 22 April the Germans poured a heavy bombardment around Ypres, but the line fell silent as the afternoon grew.  Towards evening, at around 5 p.m., the bombardment began afresh - except that sentries posted among the French and Algerian troops noticed a curious yellow-green cloud drifting slowly towards their line.

Puzzled but suspicious the French suspected that the cloud masked an advance by German infantry and ordered their men to 'stand to' - that is, to (continued, next page)

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During the morning of 22 April the Germans poured a heavy bombardment [of poison gas] around Ypres, but the line fell silent as the afternoon grew.  Towards evening, at around 5 p.m., the bombardment began afresh - except that sentries posted among the French and Algerian troops noticed a curious yellow-green cloud drifting slowly towards their line. The effects of chlorine gas were severe.  Within seconds of inhaling its vapor it destroyed the victim's respiratory organs, bringing on choking attacks.

German soldiers tackle the ever-present problem of lice. In the absence of a candle, the only way to deal with them was to catch them individually and crush them between the fingernails. British troops were similarly infested.

Poison gas afflicts soldiers fighting at war front

(continued from page two)mount the trench fire step in readiness for probable attack. The cloud did not mask an infantry attack however; at least, not yet.  It signaled in fact the first use of chlorine gas on the battlefield.  Ironically its use ought not to have been a surprise to the Allied troops, for captured German soldiers had revealed the imminent use of gas on the Western Front.  Their warnings were not passed on however. The effects of chlorine gas were severe.  Within seconds of inhaling its vapor it destroyed the victim's respiratory organs, bringing on choking attacks. 

A Missed German Opportunity: Panic-stricken the French and Algerian troops fled in disorder, creating a four-mile gap in the Allied line.  Had the Germans been prepared for this eventuality they could potentially have effected a decisive breakthrough.  However the results of their experiment caused as much surprise to the German high command as confusion among their opponents. German infantry did advance into the gap, but nervously and with hesitance.  Outflanking the Canadian and British troops to their right, the ensuing fighting was difficult.  Although the Germans succeeded in seizing control of a significant portion of the salient the Allies nevertheless managed to re-form a continuous line, though in parts it remained dangerously weak.

Condemnation - and Escalation:The Germans' use of chlorine gas provoked immediate widespread condemnation, and certainly damaged German relations with the neutral powers, including the U.S.  The gas attacks were placed to rapid propaganda use by the British although they planned to respond in kind.

The attack had one clear benefit at home however, for it brought to an end German hesitancy (and disagreement) over its use.  The cat was out of the bag; and the use of poison gas continued to escalate for the remainder of the war.

Allied Retaliation: Once the Allies

recovered from the initial shock of the Germans' practical application of poison gas warfare, a determination existed to exact retaliatory revenge at the earliest opportunity.  The British were the first to respond. Raising Special Gas Companies in the wake of the Germans' April attack (of approximately 1,400 men) operating under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Foulkes, instructions were given to prepare for a gas attack at Loos in September 1915. Interestingly the men who comprised the British Special Gas Companies were not allowed to refer to the word "gas" in their operations, such was the stigma attached to its use.  Instead they referred to their gas canisters as "accessories"; use of the word "gas" brought with it a threatened punishment. On the evening of 24 September 1915, therefore, some 400 chlorine gas emplacements were established among the British front line around Loos.  The gas was released by turning a cock on each cylinder.

British Setback at Loos: The retaliatory attack began the following morning at 5.20 am.  A mixture of smoke and chlorine gas was released intermittently over a period of about 40 minutes before the infantry assault began. However, releasing gas from cylinders in this manner meant that the user had to be wary of wind conditions.  The wind shifted; quantities of the smoke and gas were blown back into the British trenches. More British gas casualties were suffered that morning than German. Although the numbers are arguable, there is little doubt but that the exercise proved a failure: and the resultant infantry attack similarly failed.

Need for a New Delivery Mechanism:Although it was the British who chiefly

suffered on 25 September 1915 all three chief armies - Britain, France and Germany - suffered similar self-inflicted gas reversals during 1915.  It became apparent that if gas was to be used, a more reliable delivery mechanism was called for.

Phosgene: Following on the heels of chlorine gas came the use of phosgene.  Phosgene as a weapon was more potent than chlorine in that while the latter was potentially deadly it caused the victim to violently cough and choke.

Phosgene caused much less coughing with the result that more of it was inhaled; phosgene often had a delayed effect; apparently healthy soldiers were taken down with phosgene gas poisoning up to 48 hours after inhalation.

The so-called "white star" mixture of phosgene and chlorine was commonly used on the Somme: the chlorine content supplied the necessary vapor with which to carry the phosgene.

Mustard Gas: Mustard gas, an almost odorless chemical, was distinguished by the serious blisters it caused both internally and externally, brought on several hours after exposure.  Protection against mustard gas proved more difficult than against either chlorine or phosgene gas.

The use of mustard gas - sometimes referred to as Yperite - also proved to have mixed benefits.  While inflicting serious injury upon the enemy the chemical remained potent in soil for weeks after release: making capture of infected trenches a dangerous undertaking.

Over the course of the war, gas poison resulted in some 1,240,863 casualties. Worse, it yielded 91,198 deaths. Russia suffered the most losses to gas: an unimaginable 56,000.

The Battle of the Somme began on 1 July 1916. It lasted for five months and was one of the most bitterly contested and costly battles of the First World War. On the first day alone, the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead, making it the single bloodiest day in British Military history. The Somme Offensive (as it was also called) lasted 138 days and it remains one of history’s most destructive battles.

Historian Martin Gilbert notes in the opening of his book, The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War, that “the battle of the Somme was one of the most costly battles in the history of warfare. On the first day alone, 19,240 British soldiers were killed and more than 36,000 wounded. Between 1 July 1916, when it began at the height of summer, and 19 November 1916, when it ended in the snow and fog of winter, more than 300,000 British, Commonwealth, French and German soldiers had been killed, and twice that number wounded” (xvii).

One of the British divisions that suffered unimaginable losses and casualties the first and second days of the Somme Offensive was the 36th (Ulster) Division, battalions of soldiers from Northern Ireland, Ulster. After only two days at the Somme, 5,500 officers and men of the 36th Ulster Division were killed, wounded, or missing. Writer Philip Gibbs wrote “Their attack was one of the finest displays of human courage in the world”; and prominent British Captain Wilfred Spender wrote, “I am not an Ulsterman but yesterday, the 1st of July, as I followed their amazing attack, I felt that I would rather be an Ulsterman than anything else in the world.” Karl Murray wrote that “At home, to start with, the newspapers printed vaguely hopeful stories about the attack; but gradually as news and reports filtered back the truth was realised. The General Staff and politicians - ever keen to keep up civilian morale - tried to understate the defeat which had been inflicted. But with the delivery of the dreaded War Office telegrams and the return of the wounded, the public learned the truth.

“Whole towns such as Belfast went into mourning. Few families in the land were not touched by the injury and death suffered by the men of the Somme. On 12th July all business and traffic halted in Belfast and the whole City fell silent for five minutes.” (from http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/dnetDkjs/sommewww.htm)

There’s a good short film on youtube about the 36th Ulster Division. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFPWQDNLstI

The Battle of the Sommeproves relentless and costlyBy Claire Culleton

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In two days of fighting, the Ulster Division had lost 5500 officers and men – killed, wounded and missing. The first day of the battle had been the original anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne and as the 36th Ulster Division went over the hill, many shouted the old battle cries "NO SURRENDER" and "REMEMBER 1690". Many wore orange ribbons and one sergeant of the Inniskilling had on his orange sash. The Belfast newspapers, as elsewhere on 3rd July, reported the Somme Offensive, and spoke of brilliant successes. It was several days before the true horror of the casualties was known, and as day by day the lists in the newspapers grew longer, the whole Province went into mourning. No division was more closely-knit because its core had been the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F) and besides, the Ulster community was small and compact. In the streets of Belfast, as in other towns and villages throughout Ulster, mothers looked out in dread for the red bicycles of the telegram boys. In house after house, the blinds were drawn until it seemed that every family in the city had been bereaved. The casualty lists were full of familiar names, and always after them in brackets appeared the U.V.F units to which the casualty belonged. That year the Lord Mayor requested the suspension of business for five minutes at noon. In a downpour of rain, traffic stopped, and passers by stood silent in the streets. (From Kyle Thompson at flickr)

More than five million British women joined the civilian call to arms within one year of Britain’s engagement in the First World War. Ironically, those who weren’t lured into the war effort by pay, patriotism, or propaganda were attracted by their sense of pacifism and believed that they were working for the “war to end war.” Women who didn’t want to participate in manufacturing weaponry and aircraft, or assist those who did by volunteering to work in factory canteens and local hostels that supported essential industries, turned to other sorts of volunteer or charity work. Others canvassed door to door collecting funds or selling bonds to support the war for peace.

It was a war that was supposed to be “over by Christmas”; but as early as August 23, 1914, after the Battle of Mons, and especially after the Battle of Loos in September 1915, when British soldiers first fired poisonous gas at the enemy, women all over Britain were beginning to sense that they had been had, that the war had little to do with peace, and that their lives, like their culture, would never be the same.

What consequences these circumstances and perceptions had on Britain’s working-class women would stay with them for generations and certainly would influence their and their daughters’ participation

in the Second World War; but they also would affect women’s immediate lives in significant and unexpected ways: increasing on the one hand the health and life expectancy of the working classes after the war but affecting an immediate rise, on the other hand, in women’s work-related deaths during the war and an acute rise in maternal mortality rates after the war; affecting the size of the postwar family via newly won freedoms in women’s sexual and family planning practices, and refashioning women’s employment, educational, economic, and political privileges.

When British worker Jane Cox, for example, was asked at the end of the war whether she thought the war accomplished anything, she replied, “Yes. It learned women to stand on their own feet. It was the turning point for women. During the war, all women learned and they’re still learning” (IWM Sound Archive, Item 705, Reel 4).

Taken from Claire Culleton. Working-Class Culture, Women, and Britain, 1914-1919. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2000).

British women answer the call and join workforce and service sectors by millionsBy Claire Culleton

During the First World War, an unknowable number of women workers died in industry accidents; hundreds of others died from toxic jaundice or trinitrotoluene (TNT) poisoning; others suffered from black powder poisoning, or were poisoned by cordite ingestion, one of the most dangerous explosives handled by the women. Hundreds of others died from protracted exposure to acid fumes, varnish, asbestos, gas, and emery dust. Women who worked with the severely poisonous TNT powder were nicknamed “canaries” because their skin would turn a bright yellow, their hair a fluorescent bronze, an early result of the toxic effects of TNT poisoning. Claire Culleton

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The extensive collections of oral histories and photographs on Women’s Work at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London document the experiences of women war workers. Hundreds of black and white photos chronicle the in-house lives and spirits of the “canaries,” for example. Ten years after the canaries’ photographs were taken, 50 percent of the women were dead, according to Mr. Willis from the Department of Photographs at the IWM. Most of the women worked without masks, he explained; the floors characteristically were dry when they should have been wet down at appropriate intervals throughout the day to minimize trafficking of the deadly TNT dust. Working conditions were better guarded during the Second World War, Willis explains. To reduce any daily carry-over of TNT dust, during the Second World War women workers were supplied with a new pair of skirted overalls every week and given a week’s worth of different colored underwear. All of the workers would wear the same specified color each day--for example, white on Mondays, blue on Tuesdays, and so forth. In fact, mirrors installed on the factory floors during the Second World War enabled female supervisors to check and see whether the worker had on the specified color. If not, and if it was the worker’s first offense, she was warned. The second time it happened the worker was docked two or three days’ pay. The third time she was caught not wearing the scheduled color, she was sentenced to fourteen days in jail with hard labor. The punishments were, no doubt, extreme. Though workers were reproved for jeopardizing their own health and the health of others in the factories, offenders shouldered the blame for spreading the poisonous dust that factory officials insisted they work with in the first place.

Uniform precautions in the factories were inconsistent during the First World War, though some did exist. One factory in Cardonald looked after the supplying and cleaning of the different uniforms and overalls worn by the girls, seeing that each suit or overall was washed at least once a week, and in some operations where soiling was more frequent, as many as two to three changes per week were supplied. Those women not fortunate enough to work in a plant like the one in Cardonald, well-equipped with a generous linen room, were threatened by the daily carry-over of TNT powder. It endangered the lives of not a few women workers, especially those who were too poor to wear a fresh set of clothes every day or too busy or too exhausted to make it home in time for an evening washload. As a result, many of them lost their lives.

Caroline Rennles’s experience as a canary is important to our understanding of the conditions of war work. Her oral history at the IWM--because it comes from a person rather than from a written document--brings this historical episode to life. She describes with great candor what it was like to be a canary, and because of this, her testimony is invaluable. She recalls:

It was all bright ginger, all our front hair, you know, and all our faces were bright yellow. They used to call us canaries, of course, all over our clothes, like. We used to do aerial torpedoes. Well they were a good 2 feet 6 and oh they were heavy, heavy. So we used to fill ‘em up with powder and we used to put ‘em like that, between our legs, know what I mean, and, you know, swing ‘em up like that. That’s all you could do,

swing ‘em up in the front to where you had to take them up the other end of the hut, you see. And I remember this doctor he was looking at us girls one day and he said, “Half of you girls will never have babies,” he said. “You’re pulling your stomachs to pieces. And the other half are too sick, God help you.” (IWM Sound Archive, Item SR 566, Transcript 8-9)

The recovery process from toxic jaundice / TNT poisoning was a long one. In her interview, Rennles says that when she left the powder rooms at Slades Green for a job at the Woolwich Royal Arsenal, she remembers that her skin was still a frightening yellow “‘cos all the men said, ‘What’s the matter with you, kid?’ and all that” (Transcript 54). After she left the factory at the end of the war, it took Rennles about one year, she says, to be rid of the yellow. (from C. Culleton, Working Class Culture, Women, and Britain: http://us.macmillan.com/author/claireaculleton

During the war, Agnes Conway sought to erect a Women and War exhibit at the IWM and received letters from anguished parents who praised her efforts to memorialize dead women workers. Grieved father Mr. Bunce wrote the following note to Conway in honor of his lost daughter. You can almost hear his heart breaking. I found his letter in the archives at the IWM:

Dear Sir or Madam I am sending you one off the Photo of Miss Mary Bunce which I think is very kind of you she met her death on September 3th 1917 at the Old Parks Works Wednesbury she was a Crane Driver her age was 19 Last buirthday. thanking you very much

from Mr Bunce --IWM Department of Printed Books, MUN 34 2/4

Oral histories and photos tell the dangers of women’s munitions work

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Women respond to the call: British and American women joined the workforce and volunteer service by the millions during the First World War. These photos show British munitions workers (right) and African American Red Cross canteen workers from the USA (far right).

“After the introduction of conscription in Britain in March 1916, the government encouraged women to take the place of male employees who had been released from their normal occupations to serve at the front. The attractions were higher wages, better conditions and greater independence. Few would return to the poor wages and conditions of domestic service if they could possibly help it. The fact that some Home Front jobs were dangerous provided a further bond with men serving at the front. However, there were several spectacular accidents in the munitions factories, for example, and around 400 women died from overexposure to TNT whilst handling shells during the war.” -- www.bbc.co.uk

War Ends in November 1918;wounded troops come home and nations begin the healing processby Claire Culleton

If we agree with Winston Churchill’s statement that “the story of the human race is War,” then as this part of the story drew to a close, working-class women found their lives transformed in a number of ways. Many working-class women were now without partners, or without fathers or brothers as a result of war casualties that were made up of a majority of working-class soldiers (Winter, The Great War and the British People, 282). Others lost mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers or friends to workplace accidents, or to the influenza epidemic that quickly spread across Britain. During the war, women’s standard of living had increased, bringing to them and their families the benefits of better health and nutrition, and allowing them to contend with the near-60% rise in the food bill, which cost the average working-class family about £2 per week. Their homes most likely were equipped with a modest number of new purchases that helped to improve their living conditions. But as they and their nation were anticipating the end of this terrible war, more than three million working-class women were beginning to sense, as well, that their work in Britain’s arsenals and factories was drawing to a close.

*American poet Muriel Rukeyser said that she wrote her 1942

biography of physicist Willard Gibbs because it was a book she needed to read (Rukeyser Reader,xiv). More than two decades later, she would write in her poem “The Speed of Darkness” that “The universe is made of stories/not of atoms” (231), thereby fusing her Gibbs project with her office as a poet. To reanimate the stories of working-class women in Britain during the war, I have tried in my book to coax them from the shadows of history, knowing full well that to ask life of them is as dangerous an enterprise as asking life of words, since in both instances the writer runs the risk of being crushed by them (Auster, The Art of Hunger, 21).

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11th November 1918: Crowds celebrating the armistice in London, at the end of World War I.

Culleton EnterprisesKent State University

Major Modern Writers 2011