Welcome to another exciting episode of "Out of the Trenches"
Where i sit here, in the Chair of Wisdom, and answer all your questions about the First World War.
When the Battle of the Somme began, it was the height of summer, and the ground was solid.
It was only later as the weather worsened, that the Somme became a quagmire.
The British commander, Sir Douglas Haig, he envisioned a big breakthrough,
and the stalemate of the trenches would be 'swept away'.
He was fixated on the idea that the Cavalry would win the day, and mop up the retreating Germans,
having been a cavalryman himself in his earlier career.
Obviously, as the offensive failed to remove the Germans from their trenches,
No mass cavalry charge took place.
There was actually, a cavalry charge at the Battle of High Wood, during the offensive.
The 20th Deccan Horse Brigade, which was a brigade made up of Indian soldiers,
were concealed in a cornfield (high corn).
The wood itself had remained largely intact at the beginning of the battle.
Which left loads of cover for attacking and defending troops.
When the Cavalry advanced on the 15th of July, they were supported by a single Royal Flying Corps aircraft,
that strafed the German positions, then dropped a rough sketch of the German lines to the cavalry.
The Calvary enjoyed success, initially, as their own machine gun fire was able to help silence, some of the enemy machine guns.
The Germans, for a while at least, panicked when they heard the British Cavalry, had broken through entirely,
and were organizing a counterattack, until they discovered the truth, that the attack had been halted.
The Cavalry had been forced to retire.
The story of the crucified Canadian solider was used repeatedly in allied propaganda,
to highlight to brutality of the Germans.
The crucifixion itself however, was most likely on a story and nothing more.
There were three witnesses who claimed to see the body, of a Canadian, strung up in such a way.
But all of their accounts were contradictory. Some say he was crucified on an actual cross, others reported
that it was in reality on a barn door.
Now, that story was reported in the British newspaper 'The Times'
Reporting that the soldier in question, had bayonets planted into each of his limbs, and once he was
immobile, the Germans repeatedly plunged more bayonets into his torso and his throat.
An inquiry was even launched by the House of Commons (the British House of Commons),
to investigate the incident.
But the truth was never discovered. Most likely, again, because such an incident never took place.
A possible explanation was that the soldier was pinned up in an awkward position by an artillery shell
that had killed him, giving him the appearance of being crucified (maybe).
In spite of the lack of evidence, this did not prevent the Allies from using the story for their own propaganda
purposes, portraying the Germans as monsters.
The Olympic continued to be used, commercially, as a passenger liner after the outbreak of the First World War.
Shipping Americans back to New York since many of them were eager to leave the European continent.
The Captain of the ship, actually, was the appropriately named Herbert Haddock,
who had the ship painted grey and all the deck lights turned off at night to enemy U-Boats.
During the ship's final commercial voyage on October 26th 1914, she received a signal from the HMS Audacious,
indicating that its crew needed to be rescued, after the cruiser hit a mine off the southern coast of Ireland.
The crew were saved, yes, but the sinking of the Audacious was a huge embarrassment for the Royal Navy,
and Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, ordered that all passengers be kept on the Olympic, until they agreed, to never-ever speak of the event again.
In May 1915, Olympic was requisitioned by the Admiralty, to be used as a troop transport.
Although it was not their first choice for such a role, since it was a large and rather obvious target, for U-Boats.
She was stripped of all her peacetime fittings and fitted with 12-pounders cannons and 4.7-inch guns.
The new troop transport, with a capacity for 6,000 soldiers, was put under the command of Captain Bertram Hayes,
to carry British forces to Mudros, Greece for the Gallipoli Campaign.
During their journey, they actually came across a group of life boats carrying the stranded crew,
of the French ship 'Principia', which had been sunk by a German U-Boat.
The Olympic rescued the survivors, but Hayes came under serious criticism for stopping his ship, to bring those men on board.
Since the Olympic was such a large target, its speed was its main defence against torpedoes,
and stopping entirely meant that if a U-Boat was in vascinity, it would be almost impossible for it to miss,
and 6,000 men on board, was a heck of a lot of men.
The Olympic continued to move troops to the Mediterranean until the end of Gallipoli.
And then its purpose changed from transporting British troops to transporting those from Canada, across the Atlantic.
She also transported American troops to Britain when America joined the war.
At this time as well, that ship was given the distinctive dazzle camouflage as we have talked about many times.
On May 12th, 1918, the Olympic came up against a surfaced U-Boat
The Olympics guns opened fire immediately and Hayes gave the order to ram the submarine.
The ship's propeller, struck the conning tower of the sub, and the German crew abandoned the U-Boat.
It turned out, the U-Boat was preparing to fire a torpedo, but was unable to flood its torpedo tubes for launch.
Hayes was awarded the DSO for his actions and after the war he was knighted for his service,
as it was estimated that the Olympic had transported over 200,000 troops during the war.