[Jabberwalker]

Princess Patricia ... Hamilton Galt's patron ... was the Governor General's daughter.

Quite pretty for a royal. She was the "Princess Diana" of her age.

[Batsy2]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

Talk of WWI naturally seems to lead to the same about WWII. It really was the same war, in many ways.

So, the little British army in August 1914, only about 230,000 strong worldwide was able to spare 100,000 for France. It was a professional army but they were up against 1,800,000 Germans mobilized in the first phase. The fleet was an instrument of siege and defence but not of offence. So, Lord Kitchener appealed to his people to build a volunteer "New Army" to take it to the foe.

On 4th August 1914, the day that Great Britain entered the war, the British Army numbered 400,000 men. That is huge in comparison for today (when it is being cut to 120,000 by 2020) but was small at that time, smaller than many of its continental European counterparts. As an archipelago Britain's military strength traditionally lies mainly in its navy - which was, by some distance, the biggest in the world during WWI.

During the war, there were three distinct British Armies. The "first" army was the small volunteer force of 400,000 soldiers, over half of which were posted overseas to garrison the British Empire. This total included the Regular Army and reservists in the Territorial Force. Together, they formed the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which was formed for service in France and became known as the Old Contemptibles. The 'second' army was Kitchener's Army, formed from the volunteers in 1914–1915 destined to go into action at the Battle of the Somme. The 'third' was formed after the introduction of conscription in January 1916, and by the end of 1918, the army had reached its maximum strength of 4,000,000 men and could field over 70 divisions.



The vast majority of the army fought in the main theatre of war on the Western Front in France and Belgium against the German Empire. Some units were engaged in Italy and Salonika against Austria-Hungary and the Bulgarian Army, while other units fought in the Middle East, Africa and Mesopotamia—mainly against the Ottoman Empire—and one battalion fought alongside the Japanese Army in China during the Siege of Tsingtao.

When the war ended in 1918, British Army casualties, as the result of enemy action and disease, were recorded as 888,246 dead, with another 1,643,469 wounded. Add to the tally the 125,000 or so British civilians who were killed - Britain became the first country in the world to be bombed from the air during Germany's zeppelin raids on the country - and total British deaths in WWI stand at over 1 million. More Britons died in WWI than in WWII.


Residents inspect damaged houses after a zeppelin raid on my hometown of Bolton. During the night of 26 September 1916 L21, a Zeppelin commanded by Oberleutnant Kurt Frankenburg of the Imperial German Navy, dropped twenty-one bombs on the town, five of them on the working class area of Kirk Street, killing thirteen residents and destroying six houses. Further attacks followed on other parts of the town, including three incendaries dropped close to the Town Hall.

The rush to demobilise at the end of the war substantially decreased the strength of the army, from its peak of 4,000,000 men in 1918 to 370,000 men by 1920.

888,246 ceramic poppies are being placed into the dry moat of the Tower of London, with the last one to be ceremonially placed in the moat on 11th November. Looking at the photos of the poppies in the moat just gives you an idea of the scale of British deaths.





Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Ar ... orld_War_I

[andyt]

complete waste of human lives. Would have been better if Germany had won. (Although that is unlikely). No Hitler, no WWII, since Germany would not have been in a position, had it won, barely, to exact the kind of punishment on Britain/France that was visited on it. Also, the middle east would look much different than today, possibly a lot better. No Israel either.

The victors justified the insane slaughter and sacrifice of their men by making it a heroic war - it wasn't, just more Empires having a go except with industrial scale killing. Canada, especially had no reason to enter the war, but had to justify all those Canadians lost somehow, so we glory it up, make it seem like war is a wonderful thing. We lost 2/3 the number of men that the US did with a far smaller population. What a waste.

[Jabberwalker]

Would have been better if Germany had won.

You have no idea whether that is true or not. This would be an utterly different world and none of us can say. There is a very high probability that an open and free internet, like the one that you are posting on, would not exist, though. Something as egalitarian and counter-authoritarian is very Anglo-Saxon (indeed, that is exactly where the concept originated) and not very German at all.

[Jabberwalker]

I know that Martin is following a time line but this doesn't diverge from it. This was going on a hundred years ago, today.

Sam Hughes was Canada's Minister of Militia and when war was declared. Hughes was a veteran of the Boer War and had been involved in the militia for decades. He was a strong believer in the value of volunteer forces and he had a low opinion of military regulars. He thought that the regular army was too "dull witted" and slow to learn new things and adapt. This was no doubt a result of his experience in the South African war with the Imperial army who's asses were saved by Colonial troops on several occasions.

Sam romanticized the Canadian volunteer to the point that he believed that there was no battles in the War of 1812 that were won on our side without the presence of Canadian fighters. That was a real stretch as, except for during the final big battles of the war, Canadian militiamen were used primarily as labourers. (What Sam completely ignored is that a number of those battles were fought with hardly any Redcoats around ... or even white men of any kind). Anyway, his prejudices and bias against the Imperial regular army led directly to an autonomous Canadian Corps. who fought together for the entire war. This became a cutting edge military unit that learned how to win in an unwinnable situation.

Sam was also a Member of Parliament and an old-fashioned crony politician in the Canadian tradition. Buddies got works contracts in Canada (maybe right up to today) and Sam gave important, lucrative war contracts to people around him. That was his ultimate undoing ... that and his total lack of knowledge to be a proper military leader.

[Jabberwalker]

0:

canadiansniperww2051fn.jpg [ 35.95 KiB | Viewed 108 times ]

The most famous of Sam Hughes's crony deals was the selection of the Ross Rifle. It was a superb hunting rifle that was accurate and deadly at long range. It did not like rapid fire at all and the tolerances were so close it it's manufacture that there was no room for the expansion of the metal in the breech as they heated up and they jammed tight soon into a battle. Because of the same tight tolerances, they had to be kept scrupulously clean and oiled ... neither condition was possible in the mud of Flanders and hundreds of Canadians died while trying to operate their Ross rifles. The Canadians switched them out for Enfield as soon as they could, often taking them off of British corpses.


The good news about the Ross is that one of the original criterion for its selection: long range accuracy and power ... remained valid. It was a terrible general infantry rifle but it was a superb sniper rifle and it became the firearm of choice for that particular military speciality.

[Jabberwalker]

It went from bad to worse when contracts to supply boots to Hughes newly expanded army went to buddies who cut corners wherever they could. The First Canadian division was equipped with sub-standard footwear that didn't survive the winter camp on Salisbury Plain, well before they went into battle, or barely the first assembly camp at Valcartier. So, the British were saddled (no pun intended) with having to supply an extra 30,000 pairs of boots o the 1st Canadian Division at t time when all of their resources were stretched to the absolute limit. I believe that Sam Hughes buddies got paid, though.

[Jabberwalker]

The real kicker ... the one that makes him a laughing stock a century later is the Macadam shovel. This was an entrenching tool with holes in it (!) so that it could be used as a gun shield. The idea came from his secretary Edna MacAdam and Hughes both patented the idea and manufactured the shovels. They were quite useless as both shovels and shields and the British must have shat themselves laughing when they first turned up in the trenches.

[GreenTiger]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

PJB PJB:

Can anyone think of a time after that the world did not have some sort of conflict?

September 21st, 1931 between 1400 and 1445 GMT.

Was it that long?

[Jabberwalker]

One bit of damage that Hughes did to his army that didn't last in the end was to take away the identities of Canadian regiments. The Canadian army had been slowly creating their own identity dating from the Incorporated militia of the War of 1812. The first discernible Canadian regiments dated to that time ... the Lincoln and Wellington Regiment, the York Rangers (back to the Revolutionary War with them), the Queen's Own Rifles (goes back to the Fenian raids)all had their own regimental identity and traditions by WWI, as did all of the other regiments that had formed across Canada after Confederation. Hughes tore all that up, intentionally suppressed all of that military tradition and all through the war, Canadians fought in numbered battalions. if you know the code, you can decipher the regiment name from the battalion numbers (often a regiment recruited three or even four 1000 man battalions)and in the case of the Van Doos, their battalion number (22) is also their Regiment name (vingt-deux). After the War, it was all put back the way that it was and in WWII, Canadian regiments went into battle with their regional identities and traditions intact.

[martin14]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

I know that Martin is following a time line but this doesn't diverge from it. This was going on a hundred years ago, today.

Sam Hughes...

No problem Jabby, I started this thread hoping it would be a conversation, not a lecture.


So let's have a quick look at Sir Sam Hughes and some of his doings, I'm not sure it's all bad.


First, let's agree Sam was tasked, when he became Minister, to continue the process of trying
to build a distinct Canadian army inside the British Empire.


The Ross rifle: great for the fields of South Africa, shit in the trenches.

OK, but did you know the British refused us a license to make the Lee Enfield during and after the Boer War ?

Very nice of them. So Robert Borden decided to use a rifle that could be manufactured in Canada... a distinct Canadian army

So we got the Ross, and it wasn't very good in the mud, blood, and shit in the trenches.

$1:

By the time of the Somme battles of July 1916, Sir Douglas Haig, the new Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, had ordered the replacement of all Ross rifles in the three Canadian Divisions by the Lee-Enfield, which was finally available in quantity

Available in quantity... remember the shell crisis of 1915 ?
It wasn't just shells, the Brits were having problems with all arms.
It's fine to say the Ross was no good for the trenches, but what do you replace it with
when there is nothing else ? Should we throw rocks at the Germans ?

Hughes' mistake was continuing to push for the Ross when it was obviously no good for a general infantry job.
Just like the generals insisting on going 'over the top' again and again and again, wasting millions of lives.

And let's remember when the M16 was first brought to Vietnam.
Lots of complaints, wouldn't work in the jungle, etc. and let's keep the M14,
I'm sure Bart can inform us about the rumours of US soldiers wanting to use the AK47 in Vietnam.

[martin14]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

the Macadam shovel.

Yeah, OK, I'm not touching that. It was shit.

$1:

Boots.

Can you expand on who got the boot contracts, and how they were connected to Hughes ?

I am interested, it is very difficult to figure out why we got such shit boots in WW1.


However, we aren't alone.
I have read accounts of US paratroopers jumping in Holland during Market Garden with combat boots instead of jump boots.
Apparently the extra ankle support in jump boots become a real PIA after a few days on the ground.


Oh, and under the "some things never change" category...

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-cand ... mbat-boots

The Canadian Forces Still Can't Buy Decent Combat Boots

$1:

In a move aimed at replacing the old pair one soldier aptly described as “clunkers,” the Canadian Forces began distributing new spiffy “Arid Region Combat Boots” in mid-2012. They cost the Canadian government a cool $3.1 million for 20,000 pairs of what ended up being partly defective boots. Recent reports by David Pugliese of Postmedia are even suggesting the boots suffered discoloration problems, and literally fell apart at the seams. The government returned 10,300 pairs of boots to the contractor for inspection and correction then continued reissuing the boots in May. This isn’t a new issue: Canadian troops have been hating the old one-type fits all army issued combat boot, for at least as many years as they’ve been fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“No one likes the (new) boots. Everyone just rolls their eyes every time a high ranking member attempts to justify the quality of them,” says one Afghan vet still in the Forces who wished to remain anonymous because he wasn’t authorized to speak with the media. “A clunker may work for the logistician, but may not be ideal for someone hunting insurgents.”

While quality footwear may not seem to be high on most people's "list of things to be upset about," in the military it's a different story. “Boots are a big fucking deal,” the soldier tells me. “The best soldiers, often athletes, hunt out superior footwear,” he says pointing out that the long marches, gun shooting, and general life risking, naturally requires a decent pair of kicks. According to him, most guys in his platoon (and most Afghan vets) usually end up buying their own boots with their own money, because they don’t trust the terrible Canadian ones.

I'm not sure it's fair to paint Sam Hughes as the only guy to screw up boots for soldiers.

Seems quite a common thing.

[martin14]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

One bit of damage that Hughes did to his army that didn't last in the end was to take away the identities of Canadian regiments. The Canadian army had been slowly creating their own identity dating from the Incorporated militia of the War of 1812. The first discernible Canadian regiments dated to that time ... the Lincoln and Wellington Regiment, the York Rangers (back to the Revolutionary War with them), the Queen's Own Rifles (goes back to the Fenian raids)all had their own regimental identity and traditions by WWI, as did all of the other regiments that had formed across Canada after Confederation. Hughes tore all that up, intentionally suppressed all of that military tradition and all through the war, Canadians fought in numbered battalions. if you know the code, you can decipher the regiment name from the battalion numbers (often a regiment recruited three or even four 1000 man battalions)and in the case of the Van Doos, their battalion number (22) is also their Regiment name (vingt-deux). After the War, it was all put back the way that it was and in WWII, Canadian regiments went into battle with their regional identities and traditions intact.

And all those regiments were formed to help the Imperial British Army.


Now we witness the start of creating a distinct Canadian army, and all the infighting
that creates.

So, what to do when creating something new ?
Use all the old stuff, or do something different ?
And what do you do with the 550,000 men who came into the war from no regiment at all ?


I'm guessing ( and just guessing ) that since Sam Hughes was not on the General Staff, not a big fan of the Imperial Army staff,
and since he was charged with a distinct Canadian army, it was probably just easier to start all new,
rather than trying to incorporate men from this regiment or that regiment, or no regiment, all with this uniform, that uniform, or no uniform.

Time for some uniformity.


He also had some legendary fights with the Imperial Staff to keep Canadian units together at the Division level.

We weren't 'given' that by the British. We had to fight for it. Sam Hughes fought for it.

The PPCLI, for all it's history, did not start off as a very 'Canadian' unit.
It was thrown into the British 27th Division, and if it was not transferred at the end of 1915, would have finished the war in Macedonia.
Just imagine if all our units were treated like that.



Sam Hughes was no doubt a bombastic, arrogant son of a bitch. But he was our son of a bitch.

[Jabberwalker]

I will find out about the origins of the Sam Hughes "Boot" scandal, It really did happen, though. Apparently, their webbing fell apart in Salisbury as well. Everybody says that it happened but it appears I will need to dig to to find out the "who" part. Don't you love the internet.

Anyway, while doing just that, I stumbled upon this really interestiong forum exchange on the Ross Rifle.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/c ... r_one_era/

The problems with it are far more complex than those that I suggested about tolerances alone but I do know that temperature jammed them up. I have held just two of them in my life and one had been modified post-war to be used as a hunting rifle. Cooling holes had been drilled through the wood stock where it overlapped the barrel and that, apparently, made it work quite a bit better. Alas, I was never offered the opportunity to fire one (shot many rounds through Lee-Enfields, though ... love that vernier sight!)

Just as an aside, when I was in the Navy early, mid 1970's, our boots came from a company called "Biltrite". There was nothing wrong with them, per se but Biltrite was owned by Sinclair Stevens who was a prominent Tory parliamentarian (and all-purpose know-it-all) of the time. The Tories were out of power for that period but there are still echoes of that old "family compact" cronyism that still lingers in Canadian (and every one else's, I guess) politics and the connections with Defense acquisition. If there had been a Chretien working for Augusta Westland, we probably would have had the EH-101 after all.

[Batsy2]

The Germans were terrified of the Daily Mail and Helena Bonham Carter's great-granddad ran the country: 100 amazing things you didn't know about WWI

By Event Reporter
4 May 2014
Daily Mail

It was the war to end all wars – and inspired some of the most stirring words and arresting images of the last 100 years


World War I: All the classes did their duty

1. The nation was sworn to secrecy. The Defence of the Realm Act of 1914 forbade British citizens from talking about military or naval matters in public or buying binoculars. It also outlawed talking on the phone in a foreign language or hailing a cab at night, and proscribed the use of invisible ink when writing abroad.

2 Russia tried to go sober for the war... In August 1914, Tsar Nicholas outlawed vodka production, closing down 400 distilleries and 28,000 off-licences.

3...And George V got Britain on the wagon. On April 6, 1915, the King announced that he would abstain from alcohol for the duration of the war (elsewhere, alcoholic drinks were watered down and pubs closed at 9.30pm). But no wine, beer or spirits were served in Royal residences until November 11, 1918, when an 1815 cognac was opened – by Royal command.

4 The storm also raged in a teacup. The Lyons Corner House chain of teashops, founded by Jewish immigrants from Prussia in the 19th century, took out a high court injunction in 1914 to prevent rivals the Lipton Tea Company referring to them as German.

5 Crumbs! Our boys went to war in a biscuit barrel. The British Expeditionary Force was so short of transport in 1914 that many units went to France in lorries that were usually used for transporting biscuits.

6 British troops were clean fighters. In 1915 the Sunlight Soap Company declared the ‘British Tommy’ to be the ‘cleanest fighter in the world’. The Wirral-based company was so confident of the soap it sent to the trenches that it offered a £1,000 ‘guarantee of purity’ on every bar.

7 Not all the top ranks were posh... Of the 144,075 officers demobilised in May 1920, 1,016 had been coal miners before they were called up.

8...But British officers were definitely dandies. Burberry opened a new branch in Paris and fitting rooms in Flanders to accommodate servicemen wanting new uniforms.

9 All the classes did their duty. Despite the public perception, private schools suffered disproportionately heavy losses during the Great War – 20 per cent of public school boys who enlisted to fight in the war died, compared to 11 per cent of all those who served in the war. Eton’s Memorial to the fallen during the Great War lists 1,157 names.

10 It gave us Tiger Woods. So many top-class British golfers were killed during the war that the U.S. became dominant for the first time. American Walter Hagen won the British Open in 1922, 1924, 1928 and 1929, with compatriot Bobby Jones doing so in 1926, 1927 and 1930. No Bobby, no Jack Nicklaus; no Nicklaus, no Tiger Woods...


The Sunlight Soap Company declared the 'British Tommy' to be the 'cleanest fighter in the world'

11 Eight million horses were killed on the Western Front. Around the same number as human casualties.

12 It marked the beginning of the end for buttons. When the American Expeditionary Force set sail for France in 1917, it was the first army ever to go into war with zip fasteners – thanks to Swedish– American inventor Gideon Sundback. British uniforms – which were popular with children back home who often wore faithful replicas – had more traditional fasteners.

13 Laid end to end, the WWI trenches would stretch around the Earth. There were 25,000 miles of trenches between the English Channel and Switzerland; many had nicknames like Bond Street or Death Valley.

14 Mickey Mouse turned up too late to fight. Walt Disney, then aged 17, trained to be an ambulance driver in 1918 alongside Ray Kroc, the man who turned McDonald’s into an international chain. Luckily for lovers of Mickey Mouse and Big Macs, they arrived in France after the Armistice.

15 Smoking and drinking became seriously hazardous pastimes. ‘Put that bloody cigarette out’ – the last words of British humourist Saki before he was shot by a sniper on the Somme in 1916. The year before, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George said that Britain was ‘fighting Germans, Austrians and drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these foes is drink’.

16 Mustard gas wasn’t all bad. It killed thousands on the battlefield but was later used as the basis for chemotherapy treatment, as its ability to stop blood production had a similar effect on cancer growths.

17 It gave birth to Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf. JRR Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashires on the Somme during the desperate summer of 1916. After all but one of his comrades had been killed, he was invalided out with trench fever and started writing about dead marshes and dark lords. Tolkien’s service revolver is exhibited at the Imperial War Museum North.


Laid end to end, the WWI trenches would stretch around the Earth. There were 25,000 miles of trenches between the English Channel and Switzerland; many had nicknames like Bond Street or Death Valley

18 It gave women the sanitary towel. French nurses on the Western Front discovered that new cellulose bandages made effective sanitary towels. U.S. nurses took the discovery home and in 1921 Kotex launched the cellulose sanitary towel.

19 We joined the Japanese to battle for a beer. Japan and Britain were allies in the war and fought alongside each other in China, capturing the German colony of Tsingtao – where the locals had established the famous brewery – on November 6, 1914.

20 They shot spies at the Tower of London. The first execution of a German spy by firing squad took place on November 6, 1914, when Hans Carl Lody met his end at the Tower of London. His guard noted that Lody ‘walked as easily and unconcerned as if he were going to a tea party, instead of to his death.’ A further ten spies would be shot at the Tower by the end of the war.

21 Many Americans were pro-German. When the U.S. went to war in 1917, Germans were the biggest ethnic community in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the frankfurter had been the national snack for over 20 years.

22 It gave us pilotless drones 90 years before Afghanistan. In 1917 aviation designers Elmer Sperry and Peter Hewitt designed a pilotless plane for the U.S. Navy. The machine completed its first flight on Long Island on March, 1918. However, as the machine could go only in one direction and was not capable of coming back, the project was abandoned in 1925.

23 It started (and ended) in Africa. The first shot fired by a British soldier came from Alhaji Grunshi, a Ghanaian in the Gold Coast Regiment, on August 7, 1914, during the invasion of Togoland. The war also ended in Africa; the last German troops in the field, under the command of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, surrendered in present day Tanzania on November 25, 1918, 14 days after the armistice.

24 It was big business for the red-light districts. During 1915, brothels on just one street in Le Havre were visited by British and French soldiers 171,000 times. By 1917 there were 137 official brothels along the Western Front, segregated by coloured lamps – blue for officers and red for men.

25 Now you see it, now you don’t. On September 11, 1914 the lake in London’s St James’s Park was drained so that it could not be used as a marker for German bombing.


Actress Helena Bonham Carter is the great-granddaughter of Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister during the first half of World War I



For the remaining 75, go here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/a ... z3AMzKaNg3