‘… the infantry reckon that every German had a machine gun’

Diary of Battle of the Somme found in Leicestershire barn.

From This Ain’t Hell

A British soldier’s battered World War I diary recounting the bloody Battle of the Somme has been discovered in a U.K. barn.

The diary, which was written in pencil by Private Arthur Edward Diggens of the Royal Engineers, starts on Feb.13, 1916 and ends on Oct. 11 of that year. His diary entry for July 1, 1916, describes the first day of the Battle of Somme.

“Something awful,” he wrote. “Never witnessed anything like it before. After a bombardment of a week the Germans mounted their own trenches and the infantry reckon that every German had a machine gun.”

Hansons Auctioneers in the U.K. will be auctioning the diary on March 20.

Diggens’ diary was in a box found in a barn in Leicestershire, which is in England’s Midlands region. Other unrelated military items were also in the box, according to Hansons. “The owner had no idea who any of the items related to but said his mother had been the recipient of old family heirlooms,” said Hansons’ expert Adrian Stevenson, in a statement. “It’s a complete mystery how this Somme diary ended up in the Midlands, particularly as Arthur was born in London. I’m just relieved such an important piece of military history has been found and can now be preserved.”

After its discovery in the barn, the diary was brought to a Hansons valuation event. Stevenson said that, when he saw that the diary ended abruptly on Oct. 11, 1916, he feared the worst for Diggens. “Because of this we feared Arthur must have been a casualty of the conflict but my research proved otherwise,” he explained. “Not only did he survive the First World War, he returned to his loved ones in England and became a husband and father.”

https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=95327

Action by U-9 wasn’t ‘the gentleman’s way,’ you see

“’The loss of nearly 60 officers and 1400 men would not have been grudged if it had been brought about by gunfire in an open action, but it is peculiarly distressing under the conditions which prevailed.’ While praising the courage and discipline of crews, the Admiralty lamented ‘the absence of any of the ardor and excitement of an engagement.’”

https://www.aei.org/publication/the-u-9-and-the-realm-of-the-unexpected/

Well, yes, of course. Officers and men did not see the weapon which destroyed their ships and took their lives. Going broadside to broadside would be in keeping with naval traditions, concomitant with grapeshot, solid shot and massive wooden splinters piercing human flesh.

Modern war, then, taught sailors the lesson known by many a dirt dog soldier – Death can take you at any time and at any place, at any range.

That Transylvanian actor

Blasko, Be'la Ferenc Dezso – Hungarian army officer World War I, wounded three times before discharge in 1916. Later went to Hollywood and became a vampire.

The perfect trench

In the last 200 years, no war sucked more than the First World One. Other wars had the same mud and dust and rain, the same rotted bodies, the same fear and carnage brought by artillery. Infantry weapons of other wars produced larger body wounds -- .70-caliber smoothbore flintlocks or .58-caliber Springfield and Enfield cap and ball, vs. .303-caliber or 8-millimeter center-fire metallic cartridges.

Until the second year of the World War, no other conflict had produced the number of artillery pieces, and none had both sides armed with machine guns. No soldiers had ever spent as much time in such mind-breaking circumstances.

More soldiers and many more civilians died in World War II, but the first of anything is more memorable.

At Ypres in Spring 1917, “There was mud waist-deep around support and front-line trenches. As we tried to cope I remembered the ideal trench we had seen somewhere near the base. It was dug to a depth of 10 feet with a row of sandbags neatly dovetailed on the top of the trench. A real show piece, and as dry as a bone that had been well licked by a dog.

“It was said that King George V, accompanied by high-raking army officers, had inspected this show trench, and had been most impressed. When I saw it, so was I. …

“What a joke it all seemed when one became acquainted with reality – holes in the ground surrounded by evil smelling muddy water which filled up the huge craters around Ypres. According to men I talked to who had, by the grace of God, survived a year or more in the Ypres Salient, there had never been any ideal trenches. ‘Brass-Hats’ very rarely went anywhere near the front line in the Salient. … Machine Gunner No. 66518 118, quoted in Machine Gunner 1914-1918, Personal Experiences of The Machine Gun Corps, compiled and edited by C.E. Crutchley, Pen and Sword Military, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

It was 100 years ago. All is forgiven, right?

“SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Marking the centennial of the beginning of World War I in their own way, Bosnian Serbs have unveiled a monument in their part of Sarajevo to the man who ignited the war by assassinating the Austro-Hungarian crown prince on June 28, 1914.

“At the other end of the city, the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra was rehearsing Friday for Saturday's grand EU-sponsored performance planned as a symbolic start to a new century of peace at the place where the century of wars started 100 years ago.

“The two evidence testify to the depth of lingering divisions, with one side promoting peace to the tunes of Joseph Haydn's ‘God save the Emperor’ while the other erects a monument to the assassin of the emperor's heir.”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/bosnian-serbs-erect-ferdinand-statue

At fark.com.

(Really? A “new century of peace”? Does the writer know anything of Balkan history, or of Eastern Europe?

(I wish; therefore it is.)

"I thought about going to Sarajevo," Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic told reporters. But, he said, "I was supposed to stand beside a plaque that speaks of the 'Serbian fascist aggressors'. Sorry, with all due respect, I cannot do that."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/26/us-wwi-anniversary-bosnia-idUSKBN0F10ZH20140626

The war that made the modern world

In six days, some of the world’s citizens will note the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the greatest event of the last century.

On June 28, 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. A month later, Austria-Hungary and Germany were at war with Russia, France and Britain.

One hundred years. It is an unusual thing, marking the century anniversary of anything; especially so in knowing that every international event had a link back to that summer day in a city that later would host a winter Olympics and still later would be the focus of a tearing apart of a country – Yugoslavia – deemed an absolute necessity by the makers of the Versailles Treaty.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/world-war-i-the-war-that-changed-everything-1403300393?tesla=y&mod=djemLifeStyle_h&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303384304579628672537150700.html?mod=djemLifeStyle_h


(Right now I am reading Prit Buttar's Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front 1914, and Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.)