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United States Navy Masters-at-Arms (shore patrolmen), R. Rapp on the left, pose in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy. The two stand on the steps of the rightmost of three flagpoles in front of the cathedral. The main entry and arch would be immediately to the left, outside of the photograph. The Master-at-Arms is the equivalent of the Army's Military Police.
The dazzle ship HMS Justicia photographed from the USS St. Louis. Launched on July 9, 1914 as SS Statendam for the Holland America line, the ship was requisitioned by the British government and used as a troop transport. It sank on July 22, 1918 after a 24-hour fight with German submarines.
Newsboys Memorial to Albert Edward Scott, Company H, 101st United States Infantry, A.E.F., Killed in Action at Epieds, France, July 23, 1918. Designed by Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson (1871-1932), sculptor. Installed 1923 at Brookline, Massachusetts town hall (ww1mproject.org/items/show/765, July 6, 2018). Further information on Scott, who lied about his age and enlisted at the age of 15, can be found (July 6, 2018) at www.wickedlocal.com/x206836716/Age-didnt-stop-young-Brookline-newsboy-from-becoming-a-WWI-legend. © 2018 by John M. Shea
Entrenched German soldiers behind sniper plates at Slota Gora, September 26, 1916. Slota (or Zlota) Gora was in Polish Russia, west of a line running from Warsaw to Cracow. An original watercolor (over pencil) by O. Oettel, 12th company of Landwehr, IR 32 in the field. A sketch in pencil and red crayon is on the reverse.
Wall plaques commemorating the First and Second Battles of the Marne from the Dormans Chapel and Memorial, Dormans, France. © 2014 by John M. Shea
"July 21 [1918].Dear Folks—:I supposed Brummy has written you all about my getting bunged up. So there isnt anything for me to say. I hope that the cable didnt worry you very much but Capt. Bates thought it was best that you hear from me first rather than the newspapers. You see I'm the first American wounded in Italy and I suppose the papers say something about it.There is a peach of a hospital here and there are about 18 American nurses to take care of 4 patients. Everything is fine and I'm very comfortable and one of the best surgeons in Milan is looking after my wounds. There are a couple of pieces still in." ((1), more)
"Depredations of U-boats off Cape Cod were reported in 1918. In view of thousands along the beach, a German submarine shelled and burned a tugboat and sank three barges without warning. Of the 41 persons on board these craft, three men were wounded. Two hydroplanes from the Chatham aviation station, circling over the U-boat, caused her to submerge, only to reappear and resume firing.On July 22d, after a 24-hours' fight with submarines, the White Star liner Justicia sank off the Irish Coast. Four hundred of the passengers and crew were saved." ((2), more)
"The next morning (July 23) after a skillful battering of the German positions with gas and high explosive shells by the divisional artillery, the 101st Infantry assaulted the Bois de Trugny, and by noon had penetrated almost through to the other side of this piece of woods. But in the afternoon the Germans rallied; machine-gun nests firing from every angle of the woods forced the Americans to draw back to the western edge. That night the Corps Commander, General Liggett, reënforced General Edwards with the 56th Infantry Brigade of the 28th Division, Brigadier General Weigle in command." ((3), more)
"On 24 July, I went off to reconnoitre the new C section of the line of resistance, which I was to take over the following day. . . . As we were talking away, I was suddenly grabbed and pulled down. The next second, a bullet struck the sand where I had been sitting. By a lucky chance, Gipkens had noticed a rifle barrel slowly being poked through a loophole in the block only forty paces away. His sharp painter's eye had saved my life, because at that range I was a sitting duck. . . . I was told that this harmless-looking place had seen three men of the 9th Company shot in the head; it was a bad place." ((4), more)
"'The big attack we'd been told about has begun . . . The sky is on fire. The ground shakes. The officers are quiet in their mess this evening. One tinkles on the piano. The others go to bed early. Nothing suggests success.'The Germans finally evacuated the village. After spending several sleepless nights in the cellar, shells bursting all around them, Hue and his family almost missed the actual moment of liberation during the night of 24/25 July. And when a French soldier arrived at their door they at first took him for a spy. But no — 'We really had been liberated! I'd hidden all our flags in the attic beneath the roof. I've brought them down. To-morrow we'll decorate all our windows.'" ((5), more)
(1) Ernest Hemingway writing to his parents on July 21, 1918. An ambulance driver, Hemingway wrote one of the great novels of the war, A Farewell to Arms, in which an American ambulance driver is wounded on the Italian front, and falls in love with an English nurse at the hospital where he recovers. The driver is later caught up in the Italian retreat of the Battle of Caporetto. After the Caporetto disaster, the Italians held on the Piave River, defeating the Austro-Hungarians in the latter's last offensive of the war, the Battle of the Piave. Later in his letter, Heminway writes, 'It was a great victory and showed the world what wonderful fighters the Italians.'
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 504, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
(2) Chatham, Massachusetts is the southeastern-most town on Cape Cod. Further north in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, Guglielmo Marconi built one of his first three wireless stations (the other two being in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and Poldhu, England). SS Justicia was sailing from Belfast to New York when she was hit, first by UB-64 with four torpedoes, then by UB-124 the following morning. Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Justicia; July 19, 2018) dates the attacks on July 19 and 20, 1918.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 511, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(3) The 101st Infantry was part of the 26th (Yankee) Division, the New England National Guard. They moved from Belleau Wood on July 21, 1918, advancing four miles north of the Marne between Trugny and Epieds, through the well-defended Epieds forest.
The History of The A.E.F. by Shipley Thomas, page 175, copyright © 1920, by George H. Doran Company, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1920
(4) Excerpt from German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger's memoir Storm of Steel. Jünger was wounded on the third day of Germany's Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, in March, 1918. He returned to his regiment on June 4. The last German offensive of the war, the Champagne-Marne Offensive, ended on July 17. The counter-offensive that would end with Allied victory, began the next day.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 267, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(5) Excerpt from Ian Sumner's They Shall Not Pass in which he quotes Alfred Hue, Mayor of Beuvardes, a village north of Château-Thierry. His house had been occupied by German officers and he and his family lived in the cellar. Earlier in the month, the Mayor had heard from French and American prisoners that the Allied attack, the Second Battle of the Marne, had begun.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, page 200, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
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