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Posted on 04/20/2005 9:30:57 PM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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Did American commanders needlessly send doughboys to their deaths during the hours before the 1918 armistice went into effect?  The encounter was amicable and respectful since members were dealing with the officer who had led America to victory in the Great War. However, a Republican committee member, Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts, deferentially posed a provocative query: "This question is somewhat irrelevant to the matter under discussion," Fuller began, "but I would like to ask General Pershing if American troops were ordered over the top on the other side on the morning of the day when under the terms of the Armistice firing was to cease...and that those troops who were not killed or wounded marched peacefully into Germany at 11 o'clock. Is that true?" Pershing answered with his customary crisp confidence: When the subject of the armistice was under discussion we did not know what the purpose of it was definitely, whether it was something proposed by the German High Command to gain time or whether they were sincere in their desire to have an armistice; and the mere discussion of an armistice would not be sufficient grounds for any judicious commander to relax his military activities....No one could possibly know when the armistice was to be signed, or what hour be fixed for the cessation of hostilities so that the only thing for us to do, and which I did as commander in chief of the American forces, and which Marshal Foch did as commander in chief of the Allied armies was to continue the military activities....  General John J. Pershing Just days later, however, the congressman forwarded to Pershing a letter from a constituent with a cover note saying, "I have been deluged with questions on this subject." The enclosed letter had been written to Fuller by George K. Livermore, former operations officer of the 167th Field Artillery Brigade of the black 92nd Division, stating that that force had been engaged since 5 a.m. on November 11 and had been ordered to launch its final charge at 10:30 a.m. Livermore lamented "the little crosses over the graves of the colored lads who died a useless death on that November morning." He further described the loss of U.S. Marines killed crossing the Meuse River in the final hours as "frightful." Congressman Fuller closed his letter to Pershing asking for "a real frank, full answer to the question as to whether American lives were needlessly wasted." Fuller had Pershing's answer within the week, and it was categorical. By allowing the fighting to go forward, Pershing reiterated that he was simply following the orders of his superior, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, commander in chief of Allied forces in France, issued on November 9, to keep up the pressure against the retreating enemy until the cease-fire went into effect. Consequently, he had not ordered his army to stop fighting even after the signing of the armistice, of which, "I had no knowledge before 6 a.m. November 11." The possibility of an armistice had begun the evening of November 7 when French soldiers of the 171st Régiment d'Infanterie near Haudroy were startled by an unfamiliar bugle call. Fearing they were about to be overrun, they cautiously advanced toward the increasingly loud blaring when out of the mantle of fog three automobiles emerged, their sides gilded with the imperial German eagle. The astonished Frenchmen had encountered a German armistice delegation headed by a rotund forty-three-year-old politician and peace advocate named Matthias Erzberger. The delegation was escorted to the Compiègne Forest near Paris where, in a railroad dining car converted into a conference room, they were met by a small, erect figure--Marshal Foch--who fixed them with a withering gaze. Foch opened the proceeding with a question that left the Germans agape. "Ask these Gentlemen what they want," he said to his interpreter. When the Germans had recovered, Erzberger answered that they understood they had been sent to discuss armistice terms. Foch stunned them again: "Tell these gentlemen that I have no proposals to make."  During World War I, doughboys of the 28th Infantry Regiment crowd a trench in France. No proposals, perhaps, but he did have demands. Foch's interpreter read aloud the Allied conditions, which struck the Germans like hammer blows: All occupied lands in Belgium, Luxembourg, and France--plus Alsace-Lorraine, held since 1870 by Germany--were to be evacuated within fourteen days; the Allies were to occupy Germany west of the Rhine and bridgeheads on the river's east bank thirty kilometers deep; German forces had to be withdrawn from Austria-Hungary, Romania, and Turkey; Germany was to surrender to neutral or Allied ports 10 battleships, 6 battle cruisers, 8 cruisers, and 160 submarines. Germany was also to be stripped of heavy armaments, including 5,000 artillery pieces, 25,000 machine guns, and 2,000 airplanes. The next demand threw the German delegates into despair. Though the German people already faced starvation, the Allies intended to paralyze the enemy's transportation by continuing its naval blockade and confiscating 5,000 locomotives, 150,000 railway cars, and 5,000 trucks. The translator droned on through thirty-four conditions, the last of which blamed Germany for the war and demanded it pay reparations for all damage caused. Foch informed Erzberger that he had seventy-two hours to obtain the consent of his government to the Allies' terms, or the war would go on. On average, 2,250 troops on all sides were dying on the Western Front every day. "For God's sake, Monsieur le Marechal," Erzberger pleaded, "do not wait for those seventy-two hours. Stop the hostilities this very day." The appeal fell on deaf ears. Before the meeting, Foch had described to his staff his intention "to pursue the Feldgrauen [field grays, or German soldiers] with a sword at their backs" to the last minute until an armistice went into effect. To Pershing the very idea of an armistice was repugnant. "Their request is an acknowledgment of weakness and clearly means that the Allies are winning the war," he maintained. "Germany's desire is only to regain time to restore order among her forces, but she must be given no opportunity to recuperate and we must strike harder than ever." As for terms, Pershing had one response: "There can be no conclusion to this war until Germany is brought to her knees." The French and British Allies might be exhausted and long for peace, but Pershing saw his army akin to a fighter ready to deliver the knockout punch who is told to quit with his opponent reeling but still standing. Conciliation now, he claimed, would lead only to future war. He wanted Germany's unconditional surrender.  The Germans finally yielded and signed the armistice at 5:10 on the morning of the eleventh, backed up officially to 5 a.m. and to take effect within Foch's deadline: the eleventh month, eleventh day, eleventh hour of 1918. Pershing's postwar claim that he had had no official knowledge of the impending armistice before being informed by Foch's headquarters at 6 a.m. was disingenuous. The moment when the fighting would cease had been clear from the time Foch handed Erzberger the deadline, information to which Pershing was privy. On the evening of November 10 and through that night, news of the impending end was repeatedly affirmed from radio transmissions received at Pershing's AEF headquarters in Chaumont. After the general was apprised that the signing had taken place, the order going out from him merely informed subordinate commanders of that fact. It said nothing about what they should do until 11 o'clock, when the cease-fire would go into effect. His order left his commanders in a decisional no man's land as to whether to keep fighting or spare their men in the intervening hours. The generals left in that limbo fell roughly into two categories: ambitious careerists who saw a fast-fading opportunity for glory, victories, even promotions; and those who believed it mad to send men to their deaths to take ground that they could safely walk into within days. Congressman Fuller's mention of the loss of marines that final day referred to an action ordered by Maj. Gen. Charles P. Summerall, Pershing's commander of the V Corps. No doubt had clouded Summerall's mind as to how all this talk of an armistice on the eleventh should be treated. The day before he had gathered his senior officers and told them, "Rumors of enemy capitulation come from our successes." Consequently, this was no time to relax but rather to tighten the screws.
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Among the ranks of the 313th engaged on armistice morning was Henry N. Gunther, a fine-looking soldier in his mid-twenties, erect, with a clear-eyed gaze and a guardsman's mustache that suggested a British subaltern rather than an American private. Gunther, however, had had difficulty with army life. He came from a heavily German neighborhood in east Baltimore where the culture of his forebears remained strong. When the United States went to war, Gunther and his neighbors began to experience anti-German prejudice. In this poisonous atmosphere, Gunther felt no impulse to enlist. He was doing nicely at the National Bank of Baltimore and had a girlfriend, Olga Gruebl, who he intended to marry.
After arriving in France in July 1918, he wrote a friend back home to stay clear of the war since conditions were miserable. An army censor passed the letter along to Gunther's commanding officer, who broke the sergeant to private. Gunther then found himself serving under Ernie Powell, once his coequal, a chafing humiliation. Thereafter, Powell observed Gunther becoming increasingly brooding and withdrawn.
www.worldwar1.com
www.32nd-division.org
www.markchurms.com
www.army.mil
one-six-one.fifthinfantrydivision.com
www.100megsfree2.com
www.usgennet.org
This persuasive evidence of the approaching end was further confirmed, he said, when soon after midnight a wireless message intercepted from the Eiffel Tower reported: "The Armistice terms had been accepted and...hostilities were going to cease. My recollection is that in that wireless message the hour of 11 o'clock was stated as the time." Sherburne's testimony made clear that the men in the trenches had persuasive information nearly twelve hours in advance that the war's end was at hand, though Pershing had told Congress that he had had no knowledge that the armistice was about to be signed until he was notified at 6 a.m. Brig. Gen. John Sherburne At Ansell's urging, Sherburne went on to describe how he and his operations officer, Captain George Livermore, author of the letter to Congressman Fuller, had then telephoned divisional, corps, and army headquarters to find out, since the armistice had been signed, if an attack by the 92nd from the Bois de Voivrotte set for that morning could be called off. All up and down the chain of command, Sherburne testified, he was informed that the order stood. Ansell asked the effect of this order on the troops. "I cannot express the horror that we all felt," Sherburne said. "The effect of what we all considered an absolutely needless waste of life was such that I do not think any unit that I commanded took any part in any cel-ebration of the armistice, and even failed to rejoice that the war was over."  "Who in your judgment was responsible for this fighting?" Ansell asked. Sherburne hesitated. "It is pretty poor testimony to have gossip," he answered. Ansell pressed him to go on. Sherburne then said: I cannot feel that Gen. Pershing personally ordered or was directly responsible for this attack. If there is any obligation or liability upon him it is from not stopping what had already been planned....Our Army was so run that division and brigade and even corps commanders were piteous in their terror and fear of this all-pervading command by the General Staff which sat in Chaumont....They did not look upon human life as the important thing. In this, to a certain extent, they were right; you cannot stop to weigh in warfare what a thing is going to cost if the thing is worthwhile, if it is essential. But I think on the 9th and the 10th and the 11th they had come pretty near to the end of the War and knew they were pretty near the end. But they were anxious to gain as much ground as possible. They had set up what, in my opinion, is a false standard of excellence of divisions according to the amount of ground gained by each division....It was much like a child who had been given a toy that he is very much interested in and that he knows within a day or two is going to be taken away from him and he wants to use that toy up to the handle while he has it....A great many of the Army officers were very fine in the way that they took care of their men. But there were certain very glaring instances of the opposite condition, and especially among these theorists, these men who were looking upon this whole thing as, perhaps one looks upon a game of chess, or a game of football, and who were removed from actual contact with the troops.  It was, Sherburne went on, difficult for conscientious officers to resist direction from Chaumont, no matter how questionable. He admitted that even in a situation where his own life was at stake, he would have yielded to pressure from the general staff. "I would far rather have been killed," he told the subcommittee, "than to be demoted." The 33rd was another division engaged to the last minute. As the unit's historian later described the final day: Our regimental wireless had picked up sufficient intercepted messages during the early hours of the morning to make it certain that the Armistice had been signed at 5 o'clock that morning; and the fact that the prearranged attack was launched after the Armistice was signed...caused sharp criticism of the high command on the part of the troops engaged, who considered the loss of American lives that morning as useless and little short of murder.  "Last two minutes to fight" Photo taken at 10:58 November 11, 1918 The 81st Division took the severest blow that morning. One of its regimental commanders had told his men to take cover during the last hours, only to have his order countermanded. With forty minutes left in the war, the troops were ordered to "Advance at once." The division reported 461 casualties that morning, including sixty-six killed. The army claimed to have put a hundred clerks to work on the subcommittee's request for the number of AEF casualties that occurred from midnight November 10 to 11 o'clock the next morning. The figures provided by the adjutant general's office were 268 killed in action and 2,769 seriously wounded. These figures, however, failed to include divisions fighting with the British and French north of Paris and do not square with reports from individual units on the ground that day. The official tally for the 28th Division, for example, showed zero men killed in action on November 11, but in individual reports from field officers requested by the subcommittee, the commander of one brigade alone of the 28th reported for that date, "My casualties were 191 killed and wounded." Taking into account the unreported divisions and other underreported information, a conservative total of 320 Americans killed and more than 3,240 seriously wounded in the last hours of the war is closer to the fact.  By the end of January 1920, Subcommittee 3 concluded its hearings. Chairman Johnson drafted the final report, arriving at a verdict that "needless slaughter" had occurred on November 11, 1918. The full Select Committee on Expenditures in the War chaired by Congressman W.J. Graham initially adopted this draft. Subcommittee 3's Democratic member, Flood, however, filed a minority report charging that Johnson's version defamed America's victorious leadership, particularly Pershing, Liggett, and Bullard. Flood saw politics at work. The country had gone to war under a Democratic president. By 1918 the Republicans had won control of Congress, and it was they who had initiated the Armistice Day investigation. By the time the inquiry ended, Wilson's hopes for the United States' entering into the League of Nations were fast sinking and critics were questioning why America had gone to war in the first place. Flood suspected that the Republicans on the subcommittee were inflating the significance of the events of the last day, "trying to find something to criticize in our Army and the conduct of the war by our government." The committee, he claimed, had "reached out for those witnesses who had grievances...." As for Ansell, whom he repeatedly referred to as the "$20,000 counsel," he had "been permitted to browbeat the officers of the Army." Flood also hinted that the lawyer had left the War Department, "with whom he is known to have quarreled," under a cloud. Finally, Flood argued that the select committee had been created to investigate wartime expenditures and not to second-guess generals on "matters beyond the jurisdiction of the committee."  "CALAMITY JANE" AND HER CREW This gun, serial No. 3125, 11th F. A., 6th Div., fired the last shot of the war for the Allies, in the bois de le Haie, on the Laneuville-sur-Meuse, Beauclair Road, France. It is rumored that the gunners' watches were slow. Flood's dissent, with its patriotic ring, found enough sympathy that Chairman Graham took a rare step. He recalled the already approved Johnson report. Three hours of acrimonious debate followed. In the end, Johnson bowed to pressure not to hold up the select committee's report any further, and on March 3 he struck from his draft any imputation that American lives had been needlessly sacrificed on Armistice Day. The New York Times took the Dan Flood view, editorializing that the charge of wasted life "has impressed a great many civilians as being well founded....[But,] the civilian view [that] there should have been no shot fired if the commander of a unit had been notified of the signing is, of course, untenable....Orders are orders."  American forces weren't alone in launching assaults on the last day. The British high command, still stinging from its retreat at Mons during the first days of the war in August 1914, judged that nothing could be more appropriate than to retake the city on the war's final day. British Empire losses on November 11 totaled some twenty-four hundred. The French commander of the 80th Régiment d'Infanterie received two simultaneous orders that morning: one to launch an attack at 9 a.m., the other to cease fire at 11. Total French losses on the final day amounted to an estimated 1,170. The Germans, in the always-perilous posture of retreat, suffered some 4,120 casualties. Losses on all sides that day approached eleven thousand dead, wounded, and missing.  Indeed, Armistice Day exceeded the ten thousand casualties suffered by all sides on D-Day, with this difference: The men storming the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, were risking their lives to win a war. The men who fell on November 11, 1918, lost their lives in a war that the Allies had already won. Had Marshal Foch heeded the appeal of Matthias Erzberger on November 8 to stop hostilities while the talks went on, some sixty-six hundred lives would likely have been saved. In the end, Congress found no one culpable for the deaths that had occurred during the last day, even the last hours of World War I. The issue turned out much as General Sherburne predicted in his testimony. Soon, except among their families, the men who died for nothing when they might have known long life "would all be forgotten." |
Teaser
1993 Brazil votes against a monarchy.
/Teaser
To all our military men and women past and present, military family members, and to our allies who stand beside us, 
Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.
To idle away our last years is to rob ourselves of what could be the best years of our lives and to deprive the church of gifts God has given to enrich it. There is still service to be rendered and there are victories to be won. Some older folks may not have the energy or inclination for leadership, but they are an invaluable asset to the next generation of leaders. John Wesley was asked what he would do if he knew he had only a short time to live. He responded, "I should meet with my young men till the moment came that I was called to yield my spirit back to Him that gave it." The psalmist also desired to pass along his understanding of the Lord to others, and he prayed, "When I am old and grayheaded, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare Your strength to this generation" (Psalm 71:18). We too should remain open to being used by God to enrich others' lives. Our greatest usefulness may be to pass our understanding of God on to others. -David Roper
Old age is the time for wisdom to show; Who knows how much good some word we might say Could do for the leaders of some future day. -Bosch To forget the elderly is to ignore the wisdom of the years.
Finishing Well |
Good morning All. We are supposed to have a chance of T storms today. I hope we miss them.
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on April 21:
1488 Ulrich von Hutten German poet/humanist/patriot
1619 John A van Riebeeck colonial director/founder (Cape Colony)
1729 Catharina II the Great, writer/emperess/strumpet of Russia (1762-96)
1774 Jean-Baptiste Biot French physicist/astronomer (balloonist)
1775 Alexander Anderson US, engraver/illustrator (Shakespeare)
1803 Levin Minn Powell Commander (Union Navy), died in 1885
1809 Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter Secretary of State (Confederacy)
1816 Charlotte Brontë Tornton England, novelist (Jane Eyre)
1816 Louis Trezevant Wigfall Confederate Army, died in 1874
1834 William Rufus Terrill Brigadier General (Union volunteers), died in 1862
1838 John Muir US, naturalist (discovered glaciers in High Sierras)
1849 Oskar Hertwig Germany, embryologist, discovered fertilization
1864 Max Weber German sociologist/economist/historian (“The Protestant and the Spirit of Capitalism”)
1892 ? 1st buffalo born in Golden Gate Park
1905 Edmund G "Pat" Brown (Governor-Democrat-CA)
1911 Leonard Warren New York NY, baritone (Metropolitan Opera 1939-60) died on stage
1913 Choh Hao Li biochemist professor (isolated growth hormones)
1913 Norman Parkinson England, fashion photographer (Harper's Bazaar)
1915 Anthony Quinn Chihuahua México, actor (Zorba the Greek, Lawrence of Arabia)
1915 Frick [W Groebli] Swiss clown (Frick & Frack)
1924 Ira Louvin Rainsville AL, country singer (Louvin Brothers)
1930 Don Tyson founder, Tyson Foods)
1935 Charles Grodin Pittsburgh PA, actor (Beethoven, Woman in Red, Lonely Guy, Heartbreak Kid)
1937 Charles Lee Herron Kentucky, FBI most wanted fugitive (Jan 1 1986)
1939 Ernie Maresca singer/songwriter (Runaround Sue, Wanderer)
1942 Bobby McClure US gospel singer (Don't Mess Up a Good Thing)
1947 Iggy Pop [James Newell Osterberg] Ypsilanti MI, rocker (Zombie Birdhouse)
1951 Tony Danza Brooklyn, (Tony Banta-Taxi, Tony Micelli-Who's the Boss)
1958 Andie [Rosalie Anderson] MacDowell Gaffney SC, actress (Groundhog Day, Multiplicity, Greystoke)
1962 Sergei Viktorovich Zalyotin Russia, Major/cosmonaut
1963 AshlieinTX aka the HOTTEST thing in Texas. Reportedly said that her fondest wish when she grew up was to join Ma and cause as much trouble as possible while having the most fun possible while staying as close as possible to the right side of the law.
(Remember, you have your whole life to be mature, why start now?)
1971 Samantha Druce youngest woman to swim the English Channel
In honor of Wneighbor's "dad". Present Arms.
Great flag-o-gram!
Wonderful tribute. Thanks PE.
Hey radu.
Good morning EGC.
Good morning Mayor.
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Getting older doesn't mean becoming obsolete. It can mean growing, maturing, serving, ministering, venturing, enjoying ourselves to the end of our days. "Old men ought to be explorers," author T. S. Eliot said. One of my friends says, "Have a blast while you last."