The United States had joined the Allies two months ago and had begun building an army,
basically from scratch, to bring to Europe and one day join the fight.
For the Allies, that distant day couldn’t come soon enough, but just thinking about
it had begun to create incredibly unrealistic expectations.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week an enormous explosion of nearly 20 mined tunnels heralded the Battle of Messines
as the British blew up a large part of Messines Ridge and attacked a stunned enemy.
On the Italian front the 10th Battle of the Isonzo River came to an end.
It was an Italian victory, but at the cost of over 150,000 casualties.
General mutiny continued in the French army, and the draft was instituted in the United
States.
There was more news from the US this week.
On June 15th, the Espionage Act was passed.
Although it did not provide for the censorship of the press that President Woodrow Wilson
wanted, it did make it a crime to provide information with the intent to interfere with
the operations of the US armed forces, or information that helped the enemy achieve
success.
This was punishable by death or imprisonment of not more than 30 years.
It also made it a crime to distribute false reports designed to aid the enemy or interfere
with US military operations, or to cause insubordination or disloyalty in American troops, or to obstruct
recruiting or enlistment.
These carried a fine of $10,000- a hell of a lot of money back then- or a prison term
of up to 20 years.
It also allowed the Postmaster General to impound or to refuse to deliver publications
that he believed violated the act.
And on the 13th, General John Pershing, chosen to lead the American Expeditionary Force,
arrived in France from Britain.
Pershing had spoken with King George V while in Britain, and the King mentioned rumors
that the US would soon have 50,000 aircraft in the air.
Pershing was embarrassed by this exaggeration and told the king it would take some time
to send over any planes at all.
Which was true- at the moment the US army had exactly 55 training planes, 51 of which
were obsolete.
There was action in the skies over Flanders this week, as the Battle of Messines drew
to a close.
Within four days of last week’s explosion, the Germans had abandoned Wytschaete and Messines
and retreated eastward.
During the withdrawal, a 24-year-old German pilot got his first aerial victory.
With his whole squadron watching from the ground, Herman Göring, yes, that Herman Göring,
shot down an allied plane after a dogfight.
For the battle, all British objectives were taken within days, but the cleaning up phase
of the battle had been dear, and they had still taken 24,562 casualties (Hart).
Messines Ridge was now under British control and the way was open for British Commander
Sir Douglas Haig’s offensive against the German lines that nearly encircled Ypres.
There was action in the skies over Britain as well this week.
On the 13th, came a daytime raid on London by 14 German bombers.
162 people were killed, 432 injured.
This was that city’s highest daily death toll of the war.
I’m actually going to mention another future Nazi now.
German officer Rudolf Hess wrote to his parents about the state of the post revolutionary
Russian army facing him, “Yesterday we saw heavy fighting, but only among the Russians
themselves.
A Russian officer came over and gave himself up.
He spoke perfect German.
He told us that whole battles are going on behind their lines.
Their officers are shooting each other and the soldiers are doing the same...
We invited him to eat with us and he thanked us...
There was a lot of noise coming from the Russian side yesterday.
They were fighting each other in the trenches.”
Some of that sounds similar to what was going on in France, where the mutiny in the French
army continued in force.
Tens of thousands of soldiers had taken part by now, many of them simply deserting, some
waving the Red Flag and singing the Internationale, some uncoupled rolling stock on the railways,
some even attacked the military police but for most of them, the mutiny meant a simple
and blunt refusal to go over the top.
They would still man the trenches but would take part in no more suicidal offensives like
the one two months ago.
And as I said last week, the main complaints were low pay and lack of leave.
Think about it, in the entire ten month Battle of Verdun last year, the average soldier had
gotten no leave at all.
They faced death daily and lived in terrible conditions while, say, an industrial worker
back home lived with his family and got higher wages to boot.
It seemed like it would take pretty strict measures to stop the mutiny and restore order
to the French army, and by now arrests were being made en masse, but so far French Commander
Philippe Petain showed no signs of coming down with anything seriously repressive, though
on June 10th, the first two mutineers sentenced to death were shot.
Petain began the formidable task of going around and speaking in person to every single
regiment that had seen mutiny.
Another offensive from two months ago was also now seeing repercussions.
The British had fought two battles at Gaza against the Ottomans, losing them both.
The second was a particularly harsh defeat, with the British failing in all of their tactical
objectives and taking over 6,000 casualties, even though they had outnumbered the enemy
two to one.
Repercussions were swift.
Sir Charles Dobell was relieved of his command in the field by Lieutenant-General Sir Philip
Chetwode, who had commanded the desert column of the ANZAC and Imperial Mounted Divisions.
Major General Sir Harry Chauvel took command of them now.
The biggest change though was the arrival in June of General Sir Edmund Allenby, commander
of the British Third Army on the Western Front, who had recently fought the Battle of Arras
over there.
He was now in the Middle East to replace Sir Archibald Murray, and this was a pretty big
sign that the British were not planning on letting this campaign falter.
Murray had done wonders with logistics and administration, and it was hoped that Allenby
would do the same to field operations.
He would move headquarters forward to the Palestine border and reorganize his army’s
structure on more formal lines, creating the Desert Mounted Corps under Chauvel, the XX
Corps under Chetwode, and the XXI Corps under Lieutenant-General Edward Bulfin.
There was one disastrous offensive just getting started this week, on the Italian front.
This was an Italian attack in the Trentino and Italian army Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna
resolved to overwhelm the enemy.
The 6th army under General Ettore Mambretti had 200,000 men and 100,000 reserves.
The Austrians had a third of that, but they had very strong positions and their artillery
was very well positioned.
They also had details of the plans from Italian deserters (Gilbert) so they were ready.
The objective was a chain of four peaks.
The attack was a disaster.
Low clouds meant that the Italian artillery couldn’t target the Austrian barbed wire
and heavy rains had turned the mountainsides into mud.
The men of the 52nd Alpine division who went over on the 10th did manage to take Mount
Ortigara, hacking their way up with daggers and bayonets, but Austrian storm troops retook
it with gas and flamethrowers.
However, the Italians took enormous casualties and were trapped on the mountainside the rest
of the week waiting for an order to retreat that never came.
And there they remain.
But to the southeast, someone didn’t remain.
King Constantine of Greece abdicated in favor of his son Alexander.
This was after an Allied ultimatum on the 11th.
Constantine, whose wife was the Kaiser’s sister, had kept Greece neutral in spite of
repeated Allied demands.
The opposition, led by Eleftherios Venizelos, had long ago declared its support for the
Allies and the country had kind of been in a state of civil war.
Now the Allies blatantly disregard Greek neutrality and occupied Corinth and Larissa.
And that brings the week to an end.
A new and deadly offensive in Italy, the end of a brief one in Flanders, chaos in the Russian
army and the French army, and new British leadership in the Middle East.
And exaggerated British dreams at home.
50,000 aircraft.
That’s what the King thought the Americans were bringing.
Britain had fewer than ONE thousand currently on the Western Front, so that’s a pretty
fantastic dream, but think of the King.
After three years of seeing his army at a stalemate, being unable to breakthrough on
any front, and seeing millions of his young men killed and maimed, I guess sometimes all
you really can do is dream.
If you actually want to see a handful - yeah, not 50,000 of them - of the original remaining
World War 1 airplanes at an original World War 1 aerodrome.
And if you also want to meet yours truly and the crew of THE GREAT WAR there.
You should check out Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome and their event Stow Maries At War.
Details in the dublidu.
If you want to learn more about about the British Army Uniforms and equipment, check
out our episode right here.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Brian Tanner - if you want more maps and more animations,
please support us on Patreon.
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See you next time.