World War I - Horror in the Mud

Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on when you are reading this and doing planning.  November is flying by and I am working on World War I and World War II and I am working on the Last Voices of World War I series.  This is proving to be an excellent series.  It was very interesting to see that it took fifteen years to interview the last survivors.  The run time for this episode is 47:52.  The episode is called Horror in the Mud.

It is 1917, and Arras and Passchendaele are on the horizon.  The British would attack the Germans at Arras and the battle would see some of the highest daily casualty rates.  The ware also shifts to the air and the Red Baron takes to the skies.  Then in the summer, the British advanced for Passchendaele.  Countless soldiers would drown in the mud and Passchendaele would soon become synonymous with the horror of mechanized warfare.  There was a sense that the soldiers were living on borrowed time.

Alfred Henn talks about the battle of Arras.  The villagers welcomed the advance of the British and French troops because they were going to liberate the town.  In the lead-up to the battle, there were minor skirmishes.  It would hope that the final attack would bring the German army to its knees.  Henn talks about how even the horses were afraid of what was to come.  Tommy Thomson as part of an attack on a German trench.  The officer who was going to lead the attack was visibly terrified.  Thomson believes that the officer should not have been in charge of the attack.  The officer believed that he was going to be killed and he was killed.

After the Somme, men had a constant fear of being injured or killed.  The Winter of 1916 was also one of the coldest on record as well.  The men were miserable and the spirits were low.  Henn recalls being cold and wet all the time.  He recalls a shell burst and him wishing that it was closer to warm up even though it probably would have killed him.

Trench foot would become rife in these conditions.  Andrew Bowie recalls suffering from trench foot.  His foot would become so swollen that he was taken to the hospital.  By the time he got to the hospital, the blisters had burst.  It turns out he would have lost the leg if the blisters had not burst.  Bowie was sent to England to recover.

The Germans moved on from the Somme to go to the Hindenburg line.  They left behind a trail of destruction.  The British troops moved to this new line and they would have to face them head on.  Aras would be the site of the battle.  It was here that there was a new breed of soldiers: conscripts.  Harry Patch was one of the soldiers.  He did not want to go but he had to go when he was called up.  Army life had no appeal to him, so he would not have gone off to war.

Many men went to extreme lengths to avoid going to the trenches.  An emerging branch of the military was becoming attractive for many of these reluctant transcripts: the Air Force.  Bill Hall and Sydney James were two men wanting to avoid the trenches and they both joined up with the Royal Flying Corps.  Sydney’s mother did not approve of his decision to fly.  However once the training was done, these new pilots would be found at the battle of Aras.  You can see the new technology that was coming into play during World War I.

At the battle of Aras, the British were making an impact and it is here that the Red Baron and his flying circus were sent to try to reestablish German domination.  To learn more about the Battle of Aras and the Battle of Passchendaele continue to watch the rest of this episode.

Yeah, this time around I did turn on closed captioning.  There is a variety of voices that have come together for these interviews and it seems that every episode had different voices talking about their experiences of World War I.  I still recommend showing this to a history class.