PASSCHENDAELE ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT, NAVY NEWS, OCTOBER 2007 i
A MEETING IN THE WARRIOR OF 1917
WASHINGTON
JACK, NOT TOMMY
THE FATAL DECISION
LIKE his comrades in the Army,
ONE BATTLE, MANY NAMES
the sailor-soldier of the Royal
Naval Division wore the standard-
At ten minutes past four on the last
issue khaki fi eld jacket.
day of January 1917, Robert Lansing
Indeed the uniform and kit
prepared to welcome a visitor. It was
of Jack was almost identical to
coming to the end of the working
Tommy.
day in Washington, but Lansing’s
The Lee Enfi eld rifl e, plus
guest would ensure the lights on the
bayonet, was his friend.
Capitol burned into the night.
On his chest was a ‘small box’
Johann Heinrich Graf von
respirator – gas mask – in a
Bernstorff removed his trademark
haversack. In the cold or wet he
bowler hat perched precariously on
donned a leather jerkin.
his head and his long flowing coat
He carried a mess tin, water
and rather limply offered Lansing
bottle, a tool for digging trenches.
his hand.
And on his head he wore a ‘Brodie
Bernstorff was renowned in the
helmet’ – also known as the
US capital as a bon viveur. He loved
‘Tommy helmet’ or ‘tin hat’ – with
all the things a gentleman should
its distinctive wide brim to provide
love: women, cigars, golf, poker. He
some protection against shrapnel.
could hold court for hours on end
Proud of their maritime roots,
and, atypically for a Prussian, he
however, the men of the Royal
welcomed journalists with open arms.
Naval Division maintained the
And as the German Ambassador to
traditions of their seaborne
the United States, Johann Heinrich
comrades.
Graf von Bernstorff had a singular
Officers wore the distinctive
task: to keep the country out of the
rings and curls on their sleeves,
European conflagration.
not in gold braid but usually in a
But on this Wednesday afternoon
lighter shade of khaki (they also
Bernstorff knew his mission had
wore the equivalent Army pips
failed. Gone was his customary smile.
on their shoulders); ranks wore
He glumly handed the US Secretary
traditional badges on their sleeves,
of State a note: within eight hours
as well as their battalion badge
Germany’s vaunted U-bootwaffe
and a colour flash signalling their
would unleash a war without limits
company.
and restrictions against the world’s
The customs of the division
● ‘The ground presented the most God-forsaken spectacle I had seen’... A shell crashes into the desolate moonscape east of Ypres, where
merchant trade. The United States
a British tank has been abandoned in the mud Picture: Naval Historical Branch
were distinctly naval: the White
would be permitted to send one
Ensign flew over its camps.
passenger ship across the Atlantic – High Seas Fleet – had failed to “They will not come because our in March 355 were sunk; the toll for actions by the Army for 1917 and
Officers relaxed in ward rooms,
to Falmouth each week – provided wrest command of the ocean from U-boats will sink them,” declared reached its peak in April, 458 vessels 1918, Jellicoe interjected.
ranks in messes; all were fed from
it was painted in red and white the Royal Navy at Jutland. Admiral Eduard von Capelle, the lost. But the sinkings continued: in “There is no good discussing plans
the galley, not the field kitchen;
stripes and flew a huge red and white There was, perhaps, one last State Secretary of the Navy. “From May 357; in June 352. Over five for next spring – we cannot go on,”
the wounded were treated in a
checkered flag from every mast. card to play. The Unterseeboot, the a military viewpoint they mean months, more than three million tons the admiral warned; if shipping losses
sick bay, not the field hospital.
The normally taciturn Lansing U-boat, that “damned un-English nothing, nothing, and yet again of shipping, half of them British fell continued at the same rate into the
Army officers tried to rid the
looked up from the note. “You know weapon” which struck fear into the nothing.” victim to German submarines. One autumn, the Empire would be forced
RND of its ‘peculiar’ customs.
what the result will be.” heart of the enemy. The German volk, too, were in in four merchantmen setting sail for to sue for peace by November.
“But so stubborn was the
Bernstoff nodded. “I know it is For two years, the U-boats had favour of an all out war against or from the British Isles would never The news, observed the
resisting power which all ranks
very serious, very. I deeply regret been on a leash, ordered to obey Britain’s lifeline; the Reich was return. Commander-in-Chief of the Army
developed in a perfectly obedient
that it is necessary.” The ambassador the very strictest rules of warfare. being strangled by the Royal Navy’s It could not go on like this. No Douglas Haig, “was a bombshell”.
and respectful manner, and so
bowed and left. Unleashed they had brought blockade. Now the British would nation, not even the world’s greatest Perhaps he did not intend to, or
high was their conduct in action,
Robert Lansing did not know it. Germany to the brink of war with the suffer likewise. seafaring nation, could withstand perhaps he did, but John Jellicoe had
that after six months the essential
Johann Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff United States – most infamously they “There’s a sigh of relief among such crippling losses indefinitely. played into the hands of Douglas
character of the Division was
did not know it. But the note the dispatched the liner Lusitania – until the entire German people,” Munich’s “I must call attention to the Haig.
unchanged,” wrote Churchill.
German official handed to the
the shackles were put back in place. Münchner Zeitung commented. great and to the growing menace
American would ensure that British
Even on a leash, the German “A single word comes out of of Germany’s piratical devices,”
SECOND FIDDLE
sailors would be locked in a life
submarine was a formidable foe, everyone’s mouth: Finally!” warned Lord Carnarvon in a speech
and death struggle that autumn with
condemning roughly 180 merchant And so at midnight on January 31 that bleak spring of 1917.
MUTINY IN FRANCE
the ‘Hun’ in Flanders, the low-lying
ships to a watery grave each month 1917, the chains were released. “We “It is nothing new in essence. It is
poplar-studded terrain straddling
– more than 300,000 tons of shipping must attack ferociously, but we must a development, it is an advance along
THE FLANDERS OFFENSIVE
northern France and Belgium, east
every four weeks. also attack particularly quickly,” the road to complete barbarism. The
of the historic cloth trading town of
It was not enough. For all the Hermann Bauer, the head of the U- peril is great.”
Throughout the winter and spring
Ypres.
sinkings, for all the deaths, for all the bootwaffe, told his men. “So wage The peril was indeed great.
of 1917, Douglas Haig had played
The Germans would call it Ypern
raw materials sent to the bottom of war with the greatest energy. No ship Even before the U-boats began
second fiddle to the French. The
or, more usually, Flandernschlacht
the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the which can be sunk after this order their concerted campaign, First Sea
Scottish general lacked the flair
– Flanders battle. The official
North Sea, Britain was still in the should remain afloat.” Lord Admiral Sir John Jellicoe had of his Gallic counterpart Nivelle,
historians of the Great War named it
war. Her merchant fleet had shrunk ● ● been worried. Britain had too few whose charm, zeal, and erudition
◆
the Third Battle of Ypres. The world
by barely one twentieth since the On the day the shackles were removed, merchant ships to sustain her. Now, persuaded Allied leaders to
has come to know it by a single
beginning of the war. one in four of the Kaiser’s front-line in the spring of 1917, Jellicoe cut a unleash the French soldier
world: Passchendaele.
Unchaining the shackles, argued U-boats was under the command of sepulchral figure in the corridors of against the Chemin des Dames,
Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, the Unterseebootsflotille Flandern the Admiralty. an imposing ridge north-west
CHAINS REMOVED Germany’s Chief of the Naval Staff, – the ‘Flanders Flotilla’ – based in As Commander-in-Chief of the of Reims where he would reap
would ensure the destruction of the historic Belgian city of Bruges. Grand Fleet, the grandest fleet indeed “a splendid harvest of glory”.
TERROR ON THE OCEANS
600,000 tons of shipping monthly And Bruges was, in the words of which the Empire had ever sent The British role in Nivelle’s
and deal England – Germans rarely American journalist Lowell Thomas, to sea, Jellicoe had been the only grand plan had been little more
THE U-BOAT PERIL
referred to Britain – a mortal blow. “the Flanders lair for the German man who could “lose the war in an than a sideshow, a bloody sideshow
“Terror will strike into seafarers, under-sea corsairs – a particularly afternoon”. But now he was losing at that – a diversionary attack at
The road to Passchendaele began in into the English people and neutrals, irksome threat to the Allies, a thorn the war, slowly, inexorably. Arras. The Battle of Arras in April
the court of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the guaranteeing the success of the in the side”, with canals connecting “It is impossible for us to go and May of 1917 had largely been
300-room castle of Prince Hans von unrestricted U-boat war,” the admiral it with Ostend and Zeebrugge. on with the war if losses like this a success; Nivelle’s offensive did
Pless near the great Silesian city of declared. “I expect success with Unleashed, the Flanders Flotilla continue,” he confided in American not merely fail, it almost cost France
Breslau and the rather more modest certainty within five months at the and the rest of the U-bootwaffe admiral William Sims. “Is there no the war.
Château Beaurepaire, 20 miles south latest. That success will suffice to wrought the destruction their masters solution for the problem?” asked Even before the offensive, morale
of Boulogne, home to General Sir make England bow to an acceptable had hoped for. Sims. “Absolutely none that we in the French Army had been waning.
Douglas Haig. Both sought outright peace.” “There are two things which can see now,” Jellicoe responded In its wake, it collapsed.
victory: the Kaiser on the high seas, There were objections. Johann are going to win or lose this war,” forlornly. The failure of Nivelle’s attack
Douglas Haig along the Channel Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff observed Admiral Sir David Beatty, The admiral’s despondency was the final straw for the poilu,
coast. opposed an all-out campaign. So the dashing, headstrong, Commander- reached its nadir in Downing Street the ordinary French soldier. He
Victory was something Wilhelm too Germany’s chancellor, Theobald in-Chief of the Grand Fleet. on Wednesday June 20 1917 at the mutinied.
II had sought in the summer and von Bethmann-Hollweg, U-boat “Our armies might advance a mile War Cabinet. The mood of ministers Between mid-April and mid-June
autumn of 1914 as his armies warfare had almost made an enemy a day and slay the Hun in thousands, was already depressed. Public morale 1917 54 divisions of the French
smashed through neutral Belgium of the United States once before. but the real crux lies in whether we was sagging: raids by heavy German Army were rocked by indiscipline.
and Luxembourg into northern Washington would not be so forgiving blockade the enemy to his knees, or bombers, Gothas, were pounding the The poilu rolled through the streets
France, stalling on the Marne and a second time. The hawks arrogantly whether he does the same to us.” capital. of la Patrie crying: “Vive la paix!
in the flooded plains of Flanders. He dismissed the threat of war with In the spring of 1917, it was ‘the Gothas would not win the war, but Vive la Révolution!” Above all, the
had sought victory too at Verdun in America: not a single ‘doughboy’ Hun’ in the ascendancy. The first that other ‘piratical device’ beloved Frenchman refused to attack. For
1916, again to no avail. The mighty would set foot on the European month of the unrestricted campaign by the foe, the submarine, might. the rest of 1917, the Tommy, not
dreadnoughts of his Hochseeflotte continent. accounted for 291 merchant ships; As the ministers discussed plans Continued on page iimarina
Passchendaele copy.indd 1 19/9/07 18:29:02
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