July 2006 |
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TRENCH REPORT: Welcome to our special edition on the Battle of the Somme which is undergoing its 90th Anniversary. This is the largest issue of the Trip-Wire ever published. We have a special insert on the battle following Page One and a number of our regular features scattered around the issue discuss the long struggle. . .Some readers have scolded me that I must have been in a coma when "Cow Art" was riding high here in the States. I need not fear the insidious invasion of the bodeful bovines I spotted all over Paris, I am told; the cows have already had their shot and have been driven from our shores. We shall see. . .Andrew Rigby [photo below] died in June at 105. Not technically a veteran of the war, he enlisted in 1914 at the age of 14 in the Lancaster Fusiliers. Soon discovered, he was summarily discharged. Andrew went on to lead a religious and most meritorious life including service in WWII in RAF intelligence. MH This and That on the Somme
 Lochnagar Mine Crater at the Somme Afterwards
Section, Stained Glass Window Village Church, Marbotte France (St. Mihiel Sector). The Church had Served as a French Morgue and Field Hospital.
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New WWI Aviation Film - Flyboys: Directed by Great War Society Member Tony Bill and starring French actor Jean Reno and American James Franco, this Franco-American production fictionalizes the story of the Lafayette Escadrille and is due for release in October 2006. The 38 young American volunteers of the Lafayette Escadrille are credited with some 57 German aircraft before American entered the war in April 1917.  Scene from the Film |
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In the Third Wave at Gommecourt
The scene that met my eyes as I stood on the parapet of our trench for that one second is almost indescribable. Just in front the ground was pitted by innumerable shell-holes. More holes opened suddenly every now and then. Here and there a few bodies lay about. Farther away, before our front line and in No Man's Land, lay more. In the smoke one could distinguish the second line advancing. One man after another fell down in a seemingly natural manner, and the wave melted away. | |||||||||||||||||||
(Herbert: The Secret Battle) On the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme it perhaps seems strange to ask whether it is at last time to leave this battle in the dust (not mud: the Somme had chalky soil and therefore afforded better drainage). Yet for many years, the Somme has been the premier battle through which readers have found connection to the war, and even then it is the first day, the first set of casualties, the first to enlist that are highlighted.The literature of 1 July 1916 is endless. Salutary at first, a proper corrective to the streams of propaganda claptrap about "laughing heroes" and "the Great Adventure" which had previously gushed forth, after a time it developed into a most mischievous mythology. John Terraine The Smoke and the Fire In Richard Holmes' The Western Front the author comments ironically that the Western Front, and most specifically the Battle of the Somme, is seen by the majority of readers as not only the definitive battle of the war, but also a shallow attempt by General Haig to 'move his drinks cabinet 10 metres closer to Berlin', a quote taken from Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's Blackadder Goes Forth. This act of bloodshed and pointless slaughter is seen as the ultimate representation not only of World War One, but also war's futility in general.So many people have written descriptions of trench life in France; there have been so many poems, plays and speeches about it that the majority of our nation must have a much clearer picture of life on the Western Front than they have of life at the Savoy, or life in East Ham. (Herbert: The Secret Battle) Why do we love the war so much, and specifically, why Somme? Situated in the approximate centre of the war, the Battle of the Somme now goes a long way to defining all of our cultural baggage about the war. In today's age where opposition to war is seen as a natural social response, the battle epitomises all that can go wrong. At the same time it is the point at which the innocence of an era is lost, and the real men start to come home with their eyes opened:Idealism perished on the Somme. (Taylor, The First World War Illustrated) It is ironic that modern fiction is almost totally responsible for this representation. The war writers of the 1930s did not really focus on the Somme, although many of them served there, and their joint descriptions of this battle have helped to cement it in the public mind. Blunden speaks of the Battle in a diffracted manner, and his descriptions focus more on Thiepval Wood:South of the Ancre was a broad-backed high ground, and on that ground a black vapour of smoke and naked tree trunks or charcoal, an apparition which I found was called Thiepval Wood. The Somme indeed! In more recent fiction however, the Somme takes precedence over the narrative. Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong (1993) devotes exactly 100 pages to a description of the battle, and for Susan Hill in Strange Meeting (1971), Somme has become so definitive that she does not even need to name the battle to explain why John Hilliard is so disillusioned: Since going to the front in April, he had found out so many things. . .He was wounded during the second week of the offensive, in July. (Hill) The Somme, it seems, has a perverse romanticism. The death toll and the perception that mainly young, naïve soldiers fresh from Britain died in their droves gives it an alluring nature somewhat akin to drivers slowing down to watch pile-ups on the other side of the motorway. A macabre aspect of human nature perhaps, but a distasteful one, I feel. The makers of the television programme The Great War, who wanted to show that the battle took huge casualties but was a success, and completely failed to do this:The romantic and tragic elements of the Kitchener Army and its fate in the summer of 1916 means that not even The Great War could stop the Somme being the British byword for futility. (Emma Mahoney) Whilst I feel very strongly that respect for those who fought should remain, I also feel it is time to move further afield. More recently, popular authors have tried to move away from the Battle of the Somme, looking at the roles of women, the 'sideshows', the civilians and other parts of the Western Front. For the people living at the time, 3rd Ypres became the more important battle, perhaps for the simple reason that it came later on. It is, I believe, a mistake to see Somme as the ultimate expression of the war, and worse to only look at the first day. There is so much more to see, and so many more voices that deserve to be listened to.Click on the icon below to visit her site.  |
The First Day on the Somme, Martin Middlebrook, Penguin, 2003, 365 pages, paperback. First published in 1971, this work -- a near classic -- has sustained its value as a first-class analysis of the opening phase of the battle, the day when the attacking British Expeditionary Force sustained 57 thousand killed, wounded and captured. The Somme, Robin Pryor & Trevor Wilson, Yale, 2005, 352 pages hardcover. Written by two established Australian historians, this book offers a fresh analysis of the entire battle from July to November 1916. The German Army on the Somme, Jack Sheldon, Pen & Sword, 2005, 352 pages. A rare work in English drawing on German sources to analyze the this massive engagement, which, despite its seemingly indecisive result obliged Imperial German Army to shorten its front by some 50 kilometers, withdrawing to the Sigfried Stellung in early 1917. The Old Front Line, John Masefield, Pen & Sword, 2003, 128 pages, paperback. Still in print after nearly 90 years, England's poet laureate writes of his of his wartime experiences on the Somme. Twelve Days on the Somme: a Memoir of the Trenches, Sidney Rogerson, Greenhill/MBI, 2006, 172 pages + xxviii pages, cloth. Memoirs first published in 1933 of a British subaltern who found both honor and comradeship in the last days of the Somme battles.
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2006 Western Front Battlefield Tour
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 Tour Montage |
 French Army Memorial, Paris, | ||
 Shell Discovered By Group at Navarin Farm, Champagne |
 Gary Compares French & German Trenches at Bois Brulé |
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 Trip-Wire Editor |
 Fort Troyon, River Meuse [Played Critical Role in First Battle of the Marne] |
 The Group at Thiacourt |  Michael Harwood Read Rouge Bouquet at |
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Verdun |
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The Somme | |
The start date for the joint operation in the Somme region had been brought forward from August at the anxious request of Joffre but that action had little immediate effect on the continuing horrific events at Verdun. On July 11th, the Germans struck again. Again the assault troops crossed the evil Fleury road and advanced into the wilderness beyond their struggling front line. Again they came under fire from their flanks on the Froidterre ridge, from the guns round Fort Souville and from the French forces on the left bank of the River Meuse.Click Here to See a Large
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The initial assault at the Somme, begun at 0730, was a ghastly race between heavily laden soldiers walking over overgrown ground and enemy machine gunners. They needed to cover two or three hundred yards before they got to the German trenches, and German soldiers racing up from their dugouts needed to get their guns into action before the British arrived.
Click Here to See a Large
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Chautauqua Women In World War I |
The renowned Chautauqua Institution was founded in 1874 by Lewis Miller, an Akron, OH, inventor and manufacturer; and John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist minister (later bishop). Since its founding, the Institution has become a mecca for art, music, opera, theater, sports. education and religion during July and August.
Registration Desk at Chautauqua
Throughout the Country during the war, women were leaving the confines of their homes, entering the work force once dominated by men. Such was happening at Chautauqua as women began serving in war related programs. Many of the Domination Houses were given over to the American Red Cross.
These women were recognized in July 1918. The week beginning the 15th was "Women's Service women week." Women were billeted in tents in on the encampment grounds. In military tradition there day was comprised of Reveille at 6am, Military Calisthenics, Colors, Sick Call, Inspection and Classes in food conservation, first aid, dietetics, Telegraphy, surgical dressing, typewriting and Braille. Taps was at 10pm.
Military Tattoo, Chautauqua Style
Scottish Troops Examining a Damaged Village Chapel
In Flanders, the 2/7th met with heavy resistance while on a raid against enemy trenches at Port Arthur. Whale's battalion marched westward to a training area near Wavans where they prepared to take part in the fighting on the Somme River. The 2/7th arrived just days before the end of the battle and the Fifth Army came to a standstill as the weather made further action impossible. Whale was part of the British forces that settled down for the winter, holding the line and training for the spring offensive. The winter of 1916-1917 was very wet and cold. The Western front was drenched with heavy rains and no major offensives occurred. On New Year's Day, the first shots of 1917 were fired from the trenches by the 2/7th on the heights above Grand Court. By February the Germans withdrew some 30 miles from the Somme to a new trench system the Allies called, "The Hindenburg Line." On July 11th, the 1917 Flanders campaign started and continued for the next three months. The 2/7th came forward on August 15th and moved up. Whale's commander, Lt. Colonel L.C. Dorman established headquarters at Pommern Castle. On the line northeast of the castle, Somme Farm and Hindu Cott had been captured by the British but Aisne Farm in between was still in enemy hands. The first attack on Aisne Farm occurred on the night of August 24th, 1917 but was repelled. The second attack on the 25th was part of a broader assault that included the Schuler and Gallipoli Farms to the east. Whale and a platoon of "A" Company crawled through the barbed wire and fought their way in. According to Whale, "My platoon had been told to do a stunt on a pillbox at midnight, and we had gone straight into a well-laid trap." Four men were killed, while Whale and two others were taken prisoner. "It all happened so suddenly, I was stupefied and found it impossible to believe myself cut off from everything British and in their hands." Whale was processed in a sorting camp at Karlsruhe, then moved to Holzminden in Brunswick where he would spend the remaining 15 months of the war. Often an attendee of the theatre, it was after being captured by the Germans that he became involved in theatrical performances as a POW. He also passed the time doing charcoal portrait sketches and playing bridge. He won about 4,000 Pounds and cashed in the IOUs when back in England.
In Journey's End, Whale was faced with a difficult task, he needed to retain the dramatic impact of the original talky and static stage play yet at the same time he wanted to use the inherent power of cinematic techniques to enhance the dramatic experience. He succeeded and Journey's End was a major critical and commercial success . Some of Whale's distinctive directing flourishes are found in Journey's End- introducing characters in darkness or delaying their entrances and building up interest in the unseen characters through dialogue and then having them casually appear, providing a surprise anticlimactic jolt. Whale also uses lateral tracking shots in the battle scenes which predate their use in All Quiet In The Western Front. With the film version of Journey's End (1929) a success despite the primitive sound recording then available, Whale was put under contract at Universal Pictures. His first picture was Waterloo Bridge (1931), a Great War romantic tragedy about a love affair between a London prostitute and a soldier. With the success of Waterloo Bridge Whale was given his choice of projects. He selected Frankenstein. Whale later said "It was the strongest meat and gave me a chance to dabble in the macabre. I thought it would be amusing to try...." Frankenstein was one of the most successful films of the decade. The post-World War One period saw the rise of horror films as a very profitable genre for Hollywood. A case can be made this was due to the many disfigured veterans who survived the war. The public's interest in disfigurement was often reflected in the horror films of the time. And the dark gallows humor that evolved during the years of trench warfare was reflected in the black comic overtones in Whale's film work. Between 1931 and 1935 Whale directed four of the best horror films ever made, Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935). His friend, R.C. Sherriff wrote the scripts for The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man. The Bride Of Frankenstein is considered the best of the original Frankenstein trilogy and features Whale's sardonic wit at its height. In addition to the horror films, Whale also directed other more conventional pictures, By Candlelight (1933), A Kiss Before The Mirror (1933), One More River (1934) and Remember Last Night (1935).
Whale continued working in Hollywood and some of his later pictures are of particular interest, The Great Garrick (1937), The Man In The Iron Mask (1939) and Green Hell (1940). In 1941 he walked off the set of They Dare Not Love which was finished by Charles Vidor, In 1949 he directed an interesting short experimental film in the expressionistic style, Hello Out There starring Henry "Harry" Morgan. After leaving film directing behind Whale directed plays, painted and did set design. He was financially well off with investments in real estate. On May 29th, 1957 he was found drowned in his swimming pool. For years, Whale's reputation was based solely on his horror films and he was written off as a mere horror film director. Then, in the 1970s, a new interest in his work was sparked by noted film historian, William K. Everson with an article on Journey's End in the May 1975 issue of Film In Review. Shortly, Everson would teach a graduate course on James Whale at the New York University Cinema Studies Program. From June 1977 to January, 1978 the New York Museum Of Modern Art ran a retrospective series, Universal Pictures 65 Years, that presented many of Whales features to the public for the first time in decades. With the availability of VCRs, tapes were soon circulating of Whale's titles and now of course many of his titles air regularly on Turner Classic Movies and are available in restored prints on DVD. His last days are the subject of the Academy Award-winning movie, Gods And Monsters (1998). I highly recommend the Gods And Monsters DVD from Universal Studios. It masterfully depicts a man still haunted 40 years later by his experiences in The Great War. Andrew Melomet, Proprietor of Andy's Nickelodeon will answer your Great War film or video inquiry. He is also soliciting your recommendations for the WWI Filmography he is compiling for our readers. Just click HERE. |
| The following are thanked for their contributions to this issue of the Trip Wire:Gary Van Loon, Jackie Winspear, Edith & Nicoll Galbraith, Sidney Clark, Christina Holstein, Bob Denison, Bob Ford, Tony Noyes, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Andy Melomet, Len Shurtleff. Until next month, your editor, Mike Hanlon. |
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