I died in hell – They called it Passchendaele

Some of our finds surveying along the Struma front!

That's so cool! Whose trenches were you digging?

I don't think it's a grenade plug. I think it's the nose end of a fuze, perhaps? I'm still very new to this kind of typologies... Maybe it's clearer in the drawing?

John Ponsonby [2nd Guards Brigade] tells us of some of his men digging up two high explosive shells which had fallen near them without bursting. They set them on a wall and threw stones at them to see if they would go off! Idiots! If they had exploded they would have felt themselves (and really had been) much injured.

"In the German scheme they and the light machine guns are to go straight ahead and not stop for anything; they will not stop in your line. They are followed immediately behind (about 200 yards behind)  by masses of Infantry, so that if you massacre the Storm Troops and get the SOS going you will have a fine time. The Hun idea is that the Storm Troops will make holes and continue their advance past our strong points. They having been training them to go 12 kilometres about 7 miles, the first day. That might do for the Italians and the Russians, but it will not do for you. Not if you are in depth. "

"Then the Infantry following behind is to mop up, moving right and left from the breaches thus made.  There will be a very careful reconnaissance and these will now move up the hollows to avoid being seen by our artillery. That is what they did at Cambrai. One lot goes one way and another lot the other way and the Storm Troops go right on. They expect to paralyse you by the sudden onslaught of these Storm Troops, but you have only got to watch properly and have your men to shoot and then you will be alright."

"With the wire you have in front of you and the arrangements we are making, provided you will patrol No Mans Land and will teach Musketry to your Sections I don’t think the Boche has a dog’s chance." Lieutenant-General Ivor Maxse on the lessons learnt from the Battle of Cambrai, 12/2/1918.

"The venereal will cause us a lot of trouble, and it is very difficult to know what to do about it. We are issuing preventatives as far as possible, and I am perpetually at the Officers and Doctors and Chaplains about it, but it is still very bad. It is of course absolutely impossible to keep the men in camp, and the filthy native liquor, diluted as it is with urine, makes anyone who drinks it quite mad." Major-General Alexander Godley to the New Zealand Minister of Defence, 17/2/15.

I don't think it's usually acknowledged that WW1 officers were VERY concerned about fucking. It's mostly practical, cause a man who's sick with VD isn't fit for duty, and more men getting it is usually indicative of morale or discipline problems. But there's also a very real moral component as well, hence the role of Chaplains in trying to combat it and the strange kind of language that they use to talk about it, full of euphemism and vague generalisations.

“There was no use picking out a few bright-looking chaps and telling them that they were corporals, for there was no way of indicating their rank. We did not even have brassards with stripes on them that they could wear over their coat sleeves. So I counted the men who had moustaches and found that I had just enough, so I made them all lance-corporals there and then …"

an anonymous cartoon i found in an officer's scrap book during my research. probably done by an officer given the specific FSR reference.

i love seltzer jetpack, bomb mage kaiser bill

Dr Buck took charge of him in camp, and I understand prepared for his arrival a singularly nast tin of "Fray Bentos" Bully Beef, which had been exposed to sun before his arrival, and it seems that all they gave the poor wretch to eat was this and biscuit for dinner, and afterwards made him sleep in a tent on the hard ground, on a very cold night, with only a blanket.

But this treatment recoiled on the head of the chief perpetrator of the practical joke, as he woke Dr Buck up in the middle of the night with a violent stomach-ache, and Buck had to spend most of the night relieving his agonies!

But anyhow, he will be able to say that he has endured great hardship among the troops.

Major-General Alexander Godley informing New Zealand Defence Minister Allen about an official visit to the NZEF Base Camp in Cairo, 1916.

the Russians carried fixed bayonets on the march, and this proved a source of danger to mounted men in their neighbourhood, some of whom were blinded by unexpected movements of infantrymen alongside.

Lessons to be learned by Regimental Officers from the Russo-Japanese War, Capt A Barrett, 1907.

Wooden mortars huh. Interesting that he recommended an infantry support mortar a good seven years before WW1. It took until 1915 for the British to get one into production with the Stokes Mortar.