Author: First Ringer

Despite the potential dangers of touring a front-line trench, Winston Churchill had more reasons to be grateful for his early-morning assignment.  Gallipoli had tarnished his once promising political career, forcing the one-time First Lord of the Admiralty and key war-time cabinet member to a parliamentary backbencher with little voice in the conduct of the war. …

Sorry for the long delay in continuing/finishing our World War I series – professional & personal duties stood in the way.  But we’re back and going to continue the series to see through to the end of the Great War… The sun had yet to rise when the first artillery shells fell at 4:40am on…

The German and Austro-Hungarian troops stationed at Pskov near the modern Estonian border might have thought their orders were a mistake.  After months of inaction, as the Eastern Front fell quiet following the fall of the Russian Provisional Government the prior November, 53 divisions of the Central Powers were launching a massive offensive.  Despite hundreds…

For three and a half years, President Woodrow Wilson had envisioned himself as Europe’s peacemaker.  From the earliest days of the conflict, through and even beyond his re-election campaign, Wilson had repeatedly held himself out as a potential mediator.  The President had taken a number of steps to try and intervene in Europe’s war, including…

In the modern era, there’s nothing to see in Santa Fe, Kansas.  The tiny town is now abandoned, with only a large feed lot marking what is otherwise considered a “ghost town” in the 21st Century.  There wouldn’t have been much more to notice in January of 1918, as Santa Fe was already crumbling, only…

It was early in the morning in Halifax, Nova Scotia on December 6th, 1917 but the burgeoning city’s harbor was already hard at work. Although far from the front lines of Europe’s global conflict, Halifax had found itself as the tip of the spear of Canada’s involvement in the Great War.  Part of the United…

Since it’s founding in the 4th millennium BC, Jerusalem had known many masters.  In that time, Philistines, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Jews, Romans, Greeks, Europeans and Turks had all held claim to the ancient city – all part of being besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and completely destroyed twice. On…

By 10am on November 6th, 1917, the soldiers of the Russian Provisional Government in St. Petersburg/Petrograd were taking a break from an already busy morning.  Earlier that day, thousands of loyalist troops had fanned out across the capital, seizing a number of newspaper offices – almost all of them Bolshevik-allied – under the charge of…

The attendees at Rapallo, Italy – a collection of civilian and military leaders of the Allies – were understandably nervous on November 5th, 1917.  The Russians appeared on the verge of quitting the war.  The French Army had been nearly crippled in mutiny.  The British were still bloodletting at the Third Battle of Ypres.  And…

The Entente had made no shortage of promises as their soldiers had fought across the globe. The Russians had been promised Constantinople.  The Italians had been promised chunks of the Austo-Hungarian Empire.  The Japanese had been promised Germany’s Pacific territories.  The Arabs had been promised independence.  And the British and French had made promises between…

The thuds heard across the Italian line at 2am on October 24th, 1917 were not the usual sounds of artillery.  No explosions followed, only the clanking sound of canisters falling from the sky.  The hiss that followed was unmistakable – the release of poison gas. The weary Italian troops in their trenches had been prepared…

For a conflict that had unleashed countless examples of technological marvels – airplanes, poison gas, flamethrowers, tanks – coordination, not innovation, appeared to be the missing elixir for all the major combatants. Each military breakthrough had been tentatively tested by the warring parties, often in isolation.  The Germans had little idea how powerful poison gas…

To describe St. Petersburg as in a state of chaos on the night of September 10th, 1917 would hardly differentiate the date from any other in the city’s post-Tsar existence.  Already twice in 1917 had the capital appeared on the brink of revolution, successfully casting off Nicholas II in March and enduring a Bolshevik-inspired series…

For every major combatant in the Great War by the mid-summer of 1917, the strategy seemed obvious – wait. The Germans had reached such a conclusion months earlier, retreating behind the Hindenberg Line while waiting for their unrestricted submarine warfare and Russian collapse to change the dynamics of the conflict.  The French had just recently…

There was little reason for the German and Austro-Hungarian units on the Romanian front to believe they would see action again anytime soon. Devastated by counteroffensives following their entry into the war the previous summer, and now seemingly completely dependent on Russian support, Romanian troops clung to what little territory remained of their state.  Despite…

There was very little international fanfare as five signatories placed their ink to paper on July 20th, 1917 on the Greek island of Corfu.  The signers, a mixture of Serbian politicians and Croatian nationalists, had pledged their post-war political unity under the banner of the Serbian Karađorđević monarchy.  But this was no “Greater Serbia” as the…

Apart from it’s mountainous view, the concrete blockhouse atop Abu el Lasan was an otherwise forgotten roadmark within the Arabian desert on July 2nd, 1917.  Situated between the small town of Ma’an and the port of Aqaba on the Red Sea, the blockhouse was home to a Turkish battalion, recently arrived to drive out the…

Recently arrived by rail, Russian troops by the thousands off-loaded themselves in St. Petersburg on the night of July 5th, 1917.  For days, the capitol had been rocked by increased protests from Bolshevik supporters, whose ranks had now included armed soldiers chanting “all power to the Soviets.”  Not even the local Soviet leadership could apparently…

In the early morning hours of July 1st, 1917, Peking was a capital on the edge. From the beginning of the Great War, China had debated whether or not to enter the conflict, even going so far as offering the British 50,000 troops to invade the German colonial city of Tsingtao.  But internal divisions –…

We’ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series.  Over the next few months, we’re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar. For the better part of a year and a half, the British General Staff had tinkered with the plan.  The lessons of failed offensives and technological innovations had repeatedly…

We’ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series.  Over the next few months, we’re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar. After a year that had seen carnage on a historical scale, the opening salvos around the Chemin des Dames region of Western France almost appeared as modest.  850,000 men,…

We’ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series.  Over the next few months, we’re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar. For almost two and a half years, the crew of the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Cormoran had sat in Apra Harbor in the U.S. territory of Guam.  The cruiser, captured from the Russians…

We’ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series.  Over the next few months, we’re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar. For the German prisoners of war in Souilly, a French commune in the Meuse near Verdun, life behind enemy lines hadn’t been much better than their previous life in…