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World War 1 - Personal Interest Activities

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World War 1 - Personal Interest Activities

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A website containing a lot of information about Australian nurses

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Louise Mack
Grace Wilson
Matron Olive Paschke,
Sister Evelyn Conyers,
Captain Vivian Bullwinkel  Barbara Moriarty.
this is just the beginning, feel free to find your own.

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Olive King | The Australian War Memorial

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In England when war broke out, Olive went to Belgium with her own ambulance. The adventure was short-lived when she was suspected of being a spy. In 1915 she was sent with her ambulance called "Ella" to France as part of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service.

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Australian Women's Army Service (AWAS) and Women's Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC)	

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Australian Women's Army Service (AWAS) and Women's Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC)	

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Forging The Nation - Vida Goldstein | The Australian War Memorial

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Introduced into the fight for women's suffrage by her mother, Vida Goldstein took an early interest in politics. In 1903, as an Independent, she became the first woman in the British Empire to stand for election to a national parliament. Her bid for a Senate seat failed, but she continued to fight for women's suffrage, women's rights and social justice.

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Vida Jane Mary Goldstein (1869-1949), feminist and suffragist, was born on 13 April 1869 at Portland, Victoria, eldest child of Jacob Robert Yannasch Goldstein and his wife Isabella, née Hawkins. Jacob, born at Cork, Ireland, on 10 March 1839 of Polish, Jewish and Irish stock, arrived in Victoria in 1858 and settled initially at Portland. He was commissioned a lieutenant in the Victorian Garrison Artillery in 1867 and rose to the rank of colonel. On 3 June 1868 he married Isabella (1849-1916), eldest daughter of Scottish-born squatter Samuel Proudfoot Hawkins.

After living at Portland and Warrnambool, where Jacob ran a general store, the Goldsteins moved to Melbourne in 1877. There Jacob worked as a contract draughtsman. He was a Unitarian, but the family attended Scots Church and later the Australian Church where Dr Charles Strong encouraged a deep involvement in social welfare work. A founding member of the Melbourne Charity Organisation Society, its honorary treasurer and later honorary secretary, Goldstein believed that charity and poor relief should be scientifically organized, not handed out indiscriminately. He was a member of the Women's Hospital Committee for many years and also helped to promote the Cheltenham Men's Home. With Strong, Dr Llewelyn Bevan and others Goldstein assisted with the project which began in 1892 for forming labour colonies, notably at Leongatha. Described by some as irascible, domineering and opinionated, he became estranged from his feminist wife, although they lived under the same roof. He died at their apartment in Bank Place in the city on 21 September 1910.

Although an anti-suffragist, Jacob Goldstein encouraged his daughters to be economically and intellectually independent. Vida and her sisters were all well educated by a private governess; from 1884 Vida attended Presbyterian Ladies' College where she matriculated in 1886. An attractive girl, always well dressed, she led, for a time, a light-hearted social life. In 1892-98, when the family income was affected by Melbourne's bank crashes, she conducted with her sisters a co-educational preparatory school in Alma Road, St Kilda. Of the four sisters, Lina in 1892 married a banker H. J. Henderson, son of Rev. William Henderson; Elsie married Henry Hyde Champion in 1898; Aileen and Vida did not marry, though Vida had many proposals. Selwyn, their only brother, became a mining engineer.

Vida's mother was a confirmed suffragist, an ardent teetotaller and a zealous worker for social reform. Vida's own public career began about 1890 when she helped her mother collect signatures for the huge Woman Suffrage Petition. In the 1890s she also became involved in the National Anti-Sweating League, the Criminology Society and various social welfare activities, particularly those promoted by Strong and by her close friend Annette Bear-Crawford, with whom she helped to organize the Queen Victoria Hospital Appeal for the Queen's jubilee in 1897. She read widely on political, economic and legislative subjects and attended Victorian parliamentary sessions where she learned procedure while campaigning for a wide variety of reformist legislation. In 1899 after the death of Mrs Bear-Crawford, she was undisputed leader of the radical women's movement in Victoria, and that year made her first public-speaking appearance to advocate the vote for woman. Trained initially by her friend, Vida quickly became a remarkably capable and impressive speaker with the ability to handle wittily even the most abusive of hecklers.

Between 1899 and 1908 Vida's first priority was the suffrage. In 1902 she travelled to the United States of America to speak at the International Woman Suffrage Conference, was elected secretary, gave evidence in favour of woman suffrage to a committee of the United States Congress and attended the International Council of Women Conference. Australian women had been granted the Federal vote in 1902 and on her return from America she was one of four women who were the first in the British Empire to be nominated and to stand for election to a national parliament. In her first bid as an Independent candidate for the Senate in 1903, she was proposed and assisted by the Women's Federal Political Association. This association had been formed to organize the women's vote for the first Federal elections, but by July 1903 with Vida as president it had become a vehicle for her platform and opinions. Despite ridicule of her candidacy, at the December election she polled 51,497 votes. Concluding after her defeat that women needed greater organization, she began educating female voters through the renamed Women's Political Association (W.P.A.), through her paper the Woman's Sphere which she owned and edited between September 1900 and March 1905, and by lecture tours around Victoria. She also campaigned untiringly for the State suffrage.

Once the State franchise was won in 1908 Vida returned to national politics and made four more attempts to gain election to Federal parliament: in 1910 and 1917 for the Senate and in 1913 and 1914 for the House of Representatives, always as an Independent Woman Candidate. She polled well except in 1917 when she lost her deposit, partly because of her uncompromising position on pacifism during the war. But there were other reasons for her failures. Her rigidly independent status alienated party supporters, and the press was either antagonistic to her, misrepresented her or ignored her. Yet it is clear that Vida was a candidate of sincerity and integrity. Her beliefs are revealed in her election manifestos between 1903 and 1917. Although they changed in detail, she consistently supported the principles of compulsory arbitration and conciliation, equal rights, equal pay, the appointment of women to a variety of official posts, and the introduction of legislation which would redistribute the country's wealth. She was outspokenly opposed to capitalism, supporting production for use not profit, and public control of public utilities. She opposed the White Australia policy in principle although she believed alien immigration should be restricted until equal pay for equal work had been achieved. Her desire to enter parliament and her avowed ambition to become prime minister were based on her determination to put her ideals into practice.

Vida actively promoted women's rights and emancipation in many other ways over the years from 1891 to 1919. She helped to found or supported many women's organizations including the National Council of Women, the Victorian Women's Public Servants' Association and the Women Writers' Club. She also worked for many social reforms including equal property rights for man and wife and raising the age of marriage and consent, while advocating new laws on land taxation, food adulteration and the sweating of women workers. Her methods included lobbying politicians to urge amendments to proposed legislation; she directly influenced many Acts. In December 1906, for example, she had the satisfaction of seeing passed into law her long-demanded Children's Court Act, the terms of which she had helped to draft. In her article 'Socialism of today-An Australian view' in the September 1907 issue of Nineteenth Century and After, she included in cost-of-living tables her findings on the lowest wage that a man and his family needed to pay for the barest necessities; this information, it is claimed, influenced Mr Justice Henry Higgins in handing down his famous Harvester Judgment which established the legislative concept of a basic wage. In August 1909 Vida launched her second paper, the weekly Woman Voter, of which she was owner-editor.

Of the Australian women connected with the emancipation and suffrage movements of the day Vida Goldstein was the only one to gain a truly international reputation. In February 1911 she visited England at the invitation of the Women's Social and Political Union and her speeches drew huge crowds. Alice Henry wrote that Vida 'was the biggest thing that has happened to the woman movement for some time in England'.

During World War I Vida was uncompromisingly pacifist. She became chairman of the Peace Alliance, formed the Women's Peace Army in 1915, and was involved in much valuable social work including the organization of a women's unemployment bureau in 1915-16 and a Women's Rural Industries Co. Ltd. In 1919, with Cecilia John, she accepted an invitation to represent Australian women at a Women's Peace Conference in Zurich: she was away three years. This trip signalled the end of her active public involvement in Australian feminist and political work: the Women's Political Association was dissolved, the Woman Voter ceased publication and Vida turned her attention increasingly to promoting more general causes, particularly pacifism and an international sisterhood of women.

Throughout the inter-war years, although no longer publicly prominent, Vida continued to lobby for social reforms such as improved provision of birth control and equal naturalization laws, and urged both women and men to support disarmament and to oppose war. She was now deeply committed to internationalism. Among the recurrent themes in her writings were her visionary suggestions for a new social order which was to have a spiritual foundation and be based on the 'brotherhood of man' concept of true socialism and on Christian ethics. Indeed, although she had always refused to join a party, Vida sympathized deeply with labour and the cause of working peoples. Most press reports called her a socialist, but she described herself as a democrat with a vision of society which would enable the complete equality of women with men and decent standards of living for all. She maintained her belief that women had special talents and needs, were potentially the world's civilizers, and therefore had contributions to make to political and international affairs.

In later life, while realizing that people might scoff at her 'simple faith in moral force' and her constant promotion of spiritual solutions for national and world problems, Vida became rather obsessive about the belief which had once been her motivation-that 'Righteousness exalteth a Nation'. In some disillusion, she became increasingly involved in Christian Science as a practitioner or healer, and at one time was a reader and president of its church in Melbourne which she had helped to found. Vida and her mother had first chosen to follow this religion about 1899. In her last years Vida lived quietly with her sisters Elsie and Aileen, who was also a practitioner.

Although Vida Goldstein may appear to have been a visionary idealist, yet by her pioneering efforts, her successes and her failures, she was a trail-blazer who provided leadership and inspiration to innumerable people. Vida summarized her basic attitude to politics and public life as: 'In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity'. She was humane, kind and sincere, genuinely concerned for the underdog of whatever race or nationality. Charming, public-spirited and believing in Christian principles which she consistently practised, she was a born reformer, though she promoted simple solutions to complex social problems. According to a testimonial from her supporters, she 'offered to the people the wit and eloquence of an orator, the knowledge and foresight of a statesman, and the devotion and courage of a brave woman'. She died of cancer at her home in South Yarra on 15 August 1949 and was cremated. Her death passed almost unnoticed. A portrait of her, painted by Phyl Waterhouse from a photograph, is held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra.

Additional Resources

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Vida Jane Mary Goldstein (1869-1949), feminist and suffragist, was born on 13 April 1869 at Portland, Victoria, eldest child of Jacob Robert Yannasch Goldstein and his wife Isabella, née Hawkins. Jacob, born at Cork, Ireland, on 10 March 1839 of Polish, Jewish and Irish stock, arrived in Victoria in 1858 and settled initially at Portland.

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PM&C acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and acknowledges their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay our respects to the people, the cultures and the elders past, present and emerging.

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An interactive and informative website.

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The BBC presents a season of programming commemorating the centenary of World War One.

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Could you hack it in a World War One tank?

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Could you hack it in a World War One tank?

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Presented by Professor William Philpott Historian

Presented by Professor William Philpott Historian

In 1916 the British developed a new weapon designed to break the deadlock on the Western Front. It was codenamed the "water-tank". The pioneers who fought inside them were drawn from various parts of the British Army, and few had any idea what to expect. Before going into action, they would have learned the perils of operating inside one of these deadly machines.

Modern tanks are a jumble of exposed brackets, junction boxes, and hard angles that cut and bruise the ingénue crewman as he learns to slink about the inside. However, inside early vehicles like the Mark IV, there were all manner of additional hazards, like exposed scalding pipes and moving machinery. Once committed to battle, the first tank men also discovered that the armour plate 'spalled', sending small shards of metal around the tank's inside, as it stopped bullets and fragments on the outside. Chainmail face masks were quickly improvised to protect them.

Early tanks were agonizingly slow in their movements and the soldiers inside must have felt like sitting ducks. But the tanks soon spread panic in German lines and demonstrated their potential to change the face of war. When the British tanks went forward, the terrified German soldiers threw everything they had at them - including machine gun fire, grenades and mortars - to try to destroy the metal beasts. They became one of the most dangerous places to be in World War One.

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Could you hack it in a World War One tank?

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Presented by Professor William Philpott Historian Presented by Professor William Philpott Historian In 1916 the British developed a new weapon designed to break the deadlock on the Western Front. It was codenamed the "water-tank". The pioneers who fought inside them were drawn from various parts of the British Army, and few had any idea what to expect.

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Weird and Wonderful Creatures - WW1 Uncut: Dan Snow 

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Weird and Wonderful Creatures - WW1 Uncut: Dan Snow 

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Weird and Wonderful Creatures - WW1 Uncut: Dan Snow

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww1 Dogs however were far from the only animals deployed to help the war effort.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww1 Before the outbreak of WW1, Britain was surprisingly far behind other European nations in the training and deployment of working military dogs. While Germany had around 6000 dogs trained in a variety of support roles the British Army had a sole Airedale Terrier.

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You're looking at a Livens Large Gallery Flame Projector in action, the mother and father of all flamethrowers, capable of torching everything as far as 40m away. They were deployed for the first time in World War I by the British Army and apparently they were quite effective.

World War I was perhaps even more horrible and savage than World War II, with dreadful chemical weapons - like mustard gas, phosgene and chlorine - that have been banned ever since. And yet, the mere sight of these gigantic flames must have caused soldiers to run in panic and never look back.

The full-size unit you can see in action here was built by the British archaeology TV program Time Team after historians from Glasgow University's Centre for Battlefield Archaeology found the remains of one of these infernal machines in Mametz, France, in 2010.

Only four of these experimental dragons were deployed in the war. Two were destroyed at the Battle of the Somme before they could be used in 1916. The other two were used near Diksmuide, and they seemed pretty effective in instilling terror in German troops: "Their use may have helped the British in those sectors of the front as British losses there were comparatively low."
This is a 3D model of the Livens Large Gallery Flame Projectors. These things were 17m long and weighed 2.5 tons.

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This Giant Flamethrower Was The Most Terrifying Weapon Of World War I

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You're looking at a Livens Large Gallery Flame Projector in action, the mother and father of all flamethrowers, capable of torching everything as far as 40m away. They were deployed for the first time in World War I by the British Army and apparently they were quite effective....

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America's original dog of war fought bravely on the Western Front-then helped the nation forget the Great War's terrible human toll.

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker

On July 6, 1921, a curious gathering took place at the State, War, and Navy Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. The occasion was a ceremony honoring veterans of the 102 nd Infantry of the American Expeditionary Forces' 26 th "Yankee" Division, who had seen action in France during the Great War. The hall was packed with dozens of members of the 102 nd-field clerks, infantrymen, generals-but one soldier in particular commanded the spotlight. The attention seemed to bother him; the New York Times reported that the soldier was "a trifle gun shy, and showed some symptoms of nervous excitement." When photographers snapped his picture, he flinched.

The ceremony was presided over by Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American forces in Europe during the war. Pershing made a short speech, noting the soldier's " heroism of highest caliber" and "bravery under fire." The general solemnly lifted an engraved solid gold medal from its case and pinned it to the hero's uniform. In response, the Times reported, the solider "licked his chops and wagged his diminutive tail." Sergeant Stubby, a short brindle bull terrier mutt, was officially a decorated hero of World War I. The award was not a formal U.S. military commendation, but it symbolically confirmed Stubby, who'd also earned one wound stripe and three service stripes, as the greatest war dog in the nation's history. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, he was the first dog ever given rank in the U.S. Army. His glory was even hailed in France, which also presented him with a medal.

Millions of Americans heard tales of Stubby's courage. He had reportedly comforted wounded warriors on bullet-strafed battlefields. It was said he could sniff out poison gas, barking warnings to doughboys in the trenches. He even captured a German soldier. These exploits made the dog nothing less than a celebrity. He met three sitting presidents, traveled the nation to veterans' commemorations, and performed in vaudeville shows, earning $62.50 for three days of theatrical appearances, more than twice the weekly salary of the average American. For nearly a decade after the war until his death in 1926, Stubby was the most famous animal in the United States.

Courtesy of Division of Armed Forces/Smithsonian National Museum of America History

"Stubby's history overseas," a Waterbury, Connecticut, newspaper wrote in 1922, "is the story of almost any average doughboy." But of course Stubby was not a doughboy, and his renown was anything but average. Despite his postwar stardom, Stubby has faded from memory in the century since the war commenced. But his story is worth revisiting, and not just as a cute, curious footnote. Stubby's tale offers a glimpse of the American Army as it prepared to fight its first modern war-and later, of a bruised nation as it commemorated a victory obtained at unthinkable human costs.

Stubby's provenance is unknown. According to several news reports, he first enters the historical record in July 1917 as an ownerless stray. The journey to the theater of war has the quality of legend-a scruffy, peculiarly American brand of myth. Stubby was like a character out of Horatio Alger, or a sentimental one-reel silent movie: an orphan who made his way in the world with perseverance and pluck.

The setting for Stubby's debut was the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University's football stadium was the site of Camp Yale, where the soldiers of the 102 nd Infantry, part of the New England-based 26 th "Yankee" Division, were doing basic training prior to their deployment.

Sergeant Stubby and J. Robert Conroy, March 1919. Courtesy of Division of Armed Forces/Smithsonian National Museum of America History

On a steamy summer morning, news reports would later recount, Stubby wandered onto the massive field, where the soldiers were doing exercises. He was not an impressive sight: short, barrel-shaped, a bit homely, with brown and white brindled stripes. Stubby lingered around Camp Yale after that first appearance. Ann Bausum, author of Stubby the War Dog: The True Story of World War I's Bravest Dog, writes that J. Robert Conroy, a 25-old private from New Britain, Connecticut, forged the closest bond with the mutt. The two were soon inseparable.*

In September 1917, a few months after Stubby first embedded with the troops at the Yale Bowl, the 102 nd prepared to ship out. Conroy faced a problem: What to do about the dog he had adopted and named Stubby? Dogs were forbidden in the U.S. military, but Conroy had managed to keep the stray as a pet throughout his three-month training in Connecticut. Getting Stubby to Europe would be a more daunting challenge.

Stubby was not an impressive sight: short, barrel-shaped, a bit homely.

The troops traveled by rail to Newport News, Virginia, a newly designated port of embarkation for soldiers heading to France. Here the 26 th Division was slated to board one of the largest freighters navigating the Atlantic, the SS Minnesota. The New York Times describes how Conroy eluded the ship guards by concealing Stubby in his Army-issue greatcoat. He then spirited the dog down to the hold and hid him in the ship's coal bin.

At some point during the turbulent Atlantic crossing, Stubby was found out. Here the lore of Stubby, as reported by various newspapers, takes on a suspiciously cutesy cast: The story goes that the dog charmed his way into the good graces of the officers who discovered him by lifting his right paw in a salute. Out of hiding and free to roam the freighter, Stubby proved popular with the crew. A machinist onboard fashioned Stubby his own set of metal "dog tags." By the time the troops disembarked in the port of Saint-Nazaire on France's western coast, Stubby was the 102 nd Infantry's unofficial mascot.

The story of dogs in warfare is an old one, stretching back to antiquity. Persians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Babylonians all used dogs in battle. Dogs were part of Attila the Hun's forces in his fifth-century European conquests. In the Middle Ages, knights outfitted dogs with canine armor; Napoleon used trained dogs as sentinels in the French campaign in Egypt.

Many of the countries involved in World War I had war dog training schools in place prior to the conflict. France, Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Russia all recognized the value of trained dogs on the battlefield. The conventional wisdom favored pedigreed dogs: Jack Russell terriers for chasing rats out of trenches; German shepherds, Chiens de Brie, and Alsatian sheep dogs for sentry duty. Airedale terriers were considered good messenger dogs. Siberian huskies, naturally, were relied on for transport.

Dogs were also a key part of the Red Cross' aid efforts, and every country had its own unit. Red Cross dogs, also called sanitary dogs or Sanitätshunde by the Germans, negotiated battlefields and no-man's lands to aide wounded men. Saddlebags stocked with water and medical supplies were strapped to their backs. Because they wore the Red Cross symbol, these dogs were, in theory, protected from being shot by the enemy. Often, the dogs simply provided comfort and a warm body to dying men on battlefields.

Many dogs, including Red Cross dogs, performed heroically. In one battle, Prusco, a French dog, located and dragged more than 100 wounded men to safety. In 1915, the French government asked Allan Alexander Allan, a Scotsman living in Alaska, to provide its army with sled dogs. Heavy winter snows in the Vosges Mountains were holding back French supply lines; mules and horses couldn't breach the impasse to move artillery and ammunition. Allan managed to transport, in secret, more than 400 sled dogs from Alaska to Quebec, where he and the dogs boarded a cargo ship bound for France. Once there, the dogs hauled ammunition, aided soldiers in the work of laying communication lines, and helped transport wounded soldiers to field hospitals. "It was enough to make one forget all about the war," Allan recalled later. "Even when the shells were singing, to see a line half a mile long of dog teams tearing down the mountain to the base depot, every blue devil whooping and yelling and trying to pass the one ahead."

Germany had a long tradition of military dogs and had the war's best-trained canine force. In the 1870s, the German military began coordinating with local dog clubs, training and breeding dogs for combat. They established the first military dog school in 1884, and by the start of the Great War, they had almost 7,000 trained dogs. At the peak of the war, Germany's dog forces numbered more than 30,000: messengers, Sanitätshunde, draught animals, guards.

Among the allies, France had the largest and most diverse dog units. At one point, the U.S. Army borrowed French-trained dogs for sentry duty, but the plan was eventually aborted because the dogs only responded to commands in French. At the start of the war, the United States was one of the few participants in World War I that did not maintain a canine force.

War dogs weren't the only area in which the U.S. military was wanting. The Army lagged behind its allies in both recruiting and preparedness. " We came into this war without an army ... so now must build an entire new organization," said Gen. Pershing in 1917. Stubby, the foundling mutt, was thus an apt mascot for the U.S. forces: unpedigreed, untrained, an underdog.

In October 1917, one month after landing in France, the American Expeditionary Forces entered the Western Front. The raw troops of the 26 th Division were brought to Neufchâteau, in the Lorraine region of northeastern France, to train with more experienced French forces. The 26 th would end the war as one of America's most battle-scarred. They took part in four major offensives-Aisne-Marne, Champagne-Marne, Saint-Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne-and 17 engagements. They saw more fighting than any other American infantry division: 210 days in total. Stubby was there for the duration. The regiment's leader, Col. John Henry Parker, was a gruff, intimidating man, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and an expert machine gun tactician who eventually received a Silver Star for extraordinary heroism. It was Parker who gave special orders that Stubby remain with the 26 th. The dog, it was said, "was the only member of his regiment that could talk back to [Parker] and get away with it."

Stubby remained with the 102 nd throughout the training period in Neufchâteau. Initially, he didn't serve in an official capacity, but the dog was allowed stay with Conroy, even when he went on assignment as a dispatch rider delivering messages to command posts on horseback. By February 1918, the 102 nd was bunkering along the lines of Chemin des Dames, the French-held "ladies path" on the Western Front, nervously anticipating the Germans' launch of a spring offensive. On St. Patrick's Day, bells and klaxons, the signal of a poison gas attack, rang out along the hillside in the Marne where Stubby and Conroy were stationed. For a full 24 hours, German gas shells rained down. Somehow, the dog and his master survived. (Perhaps gas masks were to thank-man and dog alike were issued masks, though the New York Times reported that "Stubby's physiognomy was of such peculiar contour that no mask could afford real satisfaction.")

It was at Chemin des Dames that Stubby reportedly saved the 102 nd from a gas attack. The Times describes how one morning, while most of the troops were sleeping, the division was assaulted by an early morning gas launch. Stubby first smelled the gas then ran up and down the trenches barking and biting soldiers, working to rouse them from slumber and getting them to safety. On April 5 Stubby became a private first class, his first military rank.

The 26 th Division soon moved from Chemin des Dames to nearby towns of Saint-Mihiel and Seicheprey. The 102 nd Infantry headquarters were set up near a dangerous spot 1½ miles north of Mandres-aux-Quatre-Tours. Known as "Dead Man's Curve" because the hazardous turn required oncoming vehicles to slow down, the location made easy prey for the German artillery. Stubby and company were placed in support positions to wait for a German breakthrough.

Stubby's rage at the sight of German prisoners of war was described as "savage."

On April 20, near Seicheprey, the Germany infantry led one of its first attacks against American troops. Almost 3,000 German Stoßtruppen (shock troops) fired on, and overwhelmed, a small contingent of 600 American soldiers from the 26 th. Fighting was so intense that Maj. George Rau, commander of the 102 nd, ordered his cooks, truck drivers, and even the marching band into the fray. The Germans claimed victory, leaving 81 Allied troops killed, 424 wounded, and 130 captured. Seicheprey sustained the heaviest losses in the Saint-Mihiel sector. Stubby got his first war wound at Seicheprey, when a German shell fragment lodged in his left foreleg.

By June, however, Stubby had recovered and was back in action. When the 102 nd reached Chateâu Thierry in July, the dog had evidently learned to distinguish a khaki doughboy uniform from gray serge Germany garb: He recognized a uniformed enemy soldier. Stubby's rage at the sight of a German was reportedly so "savage," in the words of an Associated Press account, that "it was found necessary to tie him up when batches of prisoners were being brought back, for fear that trouserless Germans would be reaching the prison pens."

In the Argonne, Stubby sniffed out a lost German soldier hiding in nearby bushes. The dog gave chase, eventually dragging the soldier back to the 102 nd. To the victor go the spoils: The Iron Cross medal that had been pinned to the German's uniform thereafter adorned Stubby's Army " coat."

Courtesy of Division of Armed Forces/Smithsonian National Museum of America History

Stubby later took part in the brutal offensives of Saint-Mihiel, Aisne-Marne, and the Champagne-Marne. When the war ended on Nov. 11, 1918,Stubby was in Meuse-Argonne. The process of demobilization was protracted, and troops stayed on for several months after Armistice. While waiting out the trip home from France, Stubby met his first of three presidents, Woodrow Wilson, on Christmas Day 1918 in Mandres en Bassigny. According to Bausum, the two reportedly shook "hands." Four months later, on April 29, 1919, Stubby and Conroy were demobilized at Camp Devens, Massachusetts.

After the war, Stubby was ubiquitous. He attended the 1920 Republican National Convention, which culminated in the nomination of Warren G. Harding. Harding officially received Stubby at the White House in 1921; in 1924, the dog passed review for Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge, three times. When Conroy went to study law at Georgetown, Stubby became the university's official mascot, a predecessor to the Hoya bulldog of the present day.

Usually closed doors were flung open for Stubby. In December 1922, the New York Times reported that for the first time, the exclusive Hotel Majestic on Central Park had broken its own rules and allowed the dog to stay overnight. Stubby was made a member of the Red Cross and the American Legion. The YMCA conferred a lifetime membership on the dog, stipulating that he was entitled to "three bones a day and a place to sleep" for as long as he lived.

In the division of armed forces history at the Smithsonian National Museum of America History in Washington, there is a fascinating artifact, a testament to Stubby's fame and the swath he cut across American popular culture in the immediate postwar years. It is a leather-bound scrapbook, kept by Conroy. The book is crammed with documents and ephemera: fan letters, poems, drawings, an invitation to the White House from President Wilson. And there are newspaper clippings, the closest we have to a comprehensive anthology of the press coverage of Stubby. The accounts collected in Conroy's scrapbook broadly sketch the narrative of Stubby's service that became familiar in the immediate postwar years.

The clippings in Conroy's scrapbook conflict on many particulars of Stubby's story: Was he wounded in the chest or in the left foreleg in Seicheprey? Was he mostly a Boston bull terrier or a bulldog or a fox terrier? The stories are mostly written in a breathless tabloid tone that suggests the truth was less important to their authors than a good yarn:

Over the top he went with the boys on many occasions, and the sight of the enemy was like a red flag to a bull. On one trip "over" he sank his teeth in the seat of a fleeing Hun's trousers and did not let go. "Kamerad," howled the Hun; but Stubby paid no attention, hanging on until the foe laid down and gave up to the Yanks.

Courtesy of Division of Armed Forces/Smithsonian National Museum of America History

We can feel confident about certain details that emerge from the journalistic record: Stubby served in France, he was the beloved mascot for the 102 nd, he was wounded at Seicheprey. There are sepia-toned photographs showing the dog in the French countryside, surrounded by soldiers on a wooden Ford Model T ambulance. Another photo, dated February 1919, captures Stubby in the town of Mandres-aux-Quatre-Tours, in Lorraine in northeastern France. The dog sits in dappled sunlight, in a reflective pose on a wooden chair against a brick wall backdrop. But given the documentation that has survived, it is difficult at times to separate the actions of the real dog from the mythology that sprung up around him upon his triumphant return with the victorious American Army.

But the very fact of Stubby's celebrity itself enlightens our understanding of the war and its aftermath. Surely some measure of his popularity in the postwar period was due to the novelty of a canine hero. But the dog was also the perfect mascot for a war that had introduced human carnage on a scale never previously seen. While Stubby was hailed with newspaper encomiums and ceremonial pomp, something was being glossed over: the grim details of life in the trenches, poison gas attacks, debilitating war injuries, death.

It is a truism that World War I was the first modern war, but it's easy to forget what that meant 100 years ago. The scale and nature of World War I was unprecedented, shocking even to Americans who had lived through the Civil War a half-century earlier. Many veterans were haunted by their experiences in the trenches, but American and military culture did not encourage the airing of battlefield traumas. Shellshock was regarded as a mental illness, the result of cowardice, a shameful disease. In this environment, Sergeant Stubby was an ideal World War I hero, because he was ideally stoic. He was the jaunty little creature who could be trotted out for parades, appear with politicians and military brass in photo opportunities, and was guaranteed to stay on message.

Courtesy of Division of Armed Forces/Smithsonian National Museum of America History

It's impossible to say if Stubby's celebrity was cultivated by the U.S. government or if it was the result of an organic groundswell. While there is very little written record about Stubby's keeper, J. Robert Conroy, we do know that from 1913 on, his life was very much intertwined with the U.S. government. After the war, he worked as a bureaucrat, first for the Bureau of Investigation (predecessor to the FBI) at the Justice Department, then with military intelligence and finally on Capitol Hill as secretary for a Connecticut congressman.

Still, not everyone was captive to Stubby's charms. The most revealing page in the Stubby scrapbook may be the one in which we find a note, inscribed in Conroy's handwriting: "Criticism of Stubby which proves he is famous." It is a single page, but its contents show that Stubby-mania wasn't embraced by all Army veterans. And much of the criticism illustrates that commemorating Stubby did often mean neglecting the story of human veterans.

The page includes an infuriated letter to the editor by Richard L. Richardson, a Great War veteran from San Angelo, Texas. Richardson writes:

If this Boston bull did so much and the boys didn't do anything, why not send an army of bull pups the next time and see who is entitled to these honors? I think the whole thing is nothing but a disgrace to the U.S. Army. I feel that I am insulted ... the thousands of real heroes, the red-blooded American boys who left gallons of their blood and maybe an arm or a leg on the battlefields don't get these honors bestowed on them. They didn't do anything to receive a medal or the name "a real hero." But a dog did.

Stubby died in his sleep in Conroy's arms in 1926. Today, he may be the last decorated World War I veteran that you can still see in the flesh. His taxidermied remains are on view at the Smithsonian, in a crowded display case alongside a mannequin doughboy and another World War I military animal celebrity, the carrier pigeon Cher Ami. Stubby's ears are pointed up, and he wears a gruff expression. He looks like a ramrod sergeant: tough, unsmiling, no nonsense, with a coat covered in medals.

Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History via Carl Malamud

Correction, May 8, 2014: This article originally misspelled author Ann Bausum's first name.

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Meet Sergeant Stubby, America's Original Dog of War

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America's original dog of war fought bravely on the Western Front-then helped the nation forget the Great War's terrible human toll. On July 6, 1921, a curious gathering took place at the State, War, and Navy Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

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World War 1 in 6 Minutes - Manny Man Does History

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Gallipoli Landings- ANZAC Day  - YouTube

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Gallipoli Landings- ANZAC Day  - YouTube

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Why Were the Gallipoli Landings so Disastrous?

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12 Technological Advancements  of World War I

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12 Technological Advancements  of World War I

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Erik Sass has been covering the events leading up to World War I exactly 100 years after they happened. But today he's here to discuss some inventions of The Great War.

1. Tanks

In 1914, the "war of movement" expected by most European generals settled down into an unexpected, and seemingly unwinnable, war of trenches. With machine guns reinforcing massed rifle fire from the defending trenches, attackers were mowed down by the thousands before they could even get to the other side of "no-man's-land."

A solution presented itself, however, in the form of the automobile, which took the world by storm after 1900. Powered by a small internal combustion engine burning diesel or gas, a heavily-armored vehicle could advance even in the face of overwhelming small arms fire. Add some serious guns and replace the wheels with armored treads to handle rough terrain, and the tank was born.

The first tank, the British Mark I, was designed in 1915 and first saw combat at the Somme in September 1916. The French soon followed suit with the Renault FT, which established the classic tank look (turret on top). Despite their later prowess in tank combat in WWII, the Germans never got around to large-scale tank production in WWI, although they did produce 21 tanks in the unwieldy A7V model.

2. Flamethrowers

Although the Byzantines and Chinese used weapons that hurled flaming material in the medieval period, the first design for a modern flamethrower was submitted to the German Army by Richard Fiedler in 1901, and the devices were tested by the Germans with an experimental detachment in 1911. Their true potential was only realized during trench warfare, however. After a massed assault on enemy lines, it wasn't uncommon for enemy soldiers to hole up in bunkers and dugouts hollowed into the side of the trenches. Unlike grenades, flamethrowers could "neutralize" (i.e. burn alive) enemy soldiers in these confined spaces without inflicting structural damage (the bunkers might come in handy for the new residents). The flamethrower was first used by German troops near Verdun in February 1915.

3. Poison Gas

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Poison gas was used by both sides with devastating results (well, sometimes) during the Great War. The Germans pioneered the large-scale use of chemical weapons with a gas attack on Russian positions on January 31, 1915, during the Battle of Bolimov, but low temperatures froze the poison (xylyl bromide) in the shells. The first successful use of chemical weapons occurred on April 22, 1915, near Ypres, when the Germans sprayed chlorine gas from large cylinders towards trenches held by French colonial troops. The defenders fled, but typically for the First World War, this didn't yield a decisive result: the Germans were slow to follow up with infantry attacks, the gas dissipated, and the Allied defenses were restored. Before long, of course, the Allies were using poison gas too, and over the course of the war both sides resorted to increasingly insidious compounds to beat gas masks, another new invention; thus the overall result was a huge increase in misery for not much change in the strategic situation (a recurring theme of the war).

4. Tracer Bullets

While the Great War involved a lot of futile activity, fighting at night was especially unproductive because there was no way to see where you were shooting. Night combat was made somewhat easier by the British invention of tracer bullets-rounds which emitted small amounts of flammable material that left a phosphorescent trail. The first attempt, in 1915, wasn't actually that useful, as the trail was "erratic" and limited to 100 meters, but the second tracer model developed in 1916, the .303 SPG Mark VIIG, emitted a regular bright green-white trail and was a real hit (get it?). Its popularity was due in part to an unexpected side-benefit: the flammable agent could ignite hydrogen, which made it perfect for "balloon-busting" the German zeppelins then terrorizing England.

5. Interrupter Gear

Airplanes had been around for just a decade when WWI started, and while they had obvious potential for combat applications as an aerial platform for bombs and machine guns, it wasn't quite clear how the latter would work, since the propeller blades got in the way. In the first attempt, the U.S. Army basically tied the gun to the plane (pointing towards the ground) with a leather strap, and it was operated by a gunner who sat beside the pilot. This was not ideal for aerial combat and inconvenient because it required two airmen to operate. Another solution was mounting the gun well above the pilot, so the bullets cleared the propeller blades, but this made it hard to aim. After the Swiss engineer Franz Schneider patented his idea for an interrupter gear in 1913, a finished version was presented by Dutch designer Anthony Fokker, whose "synchronizer," centered on a cam attached to the propeller shaft, allowed a machine gun to fire between the blades of a spinning propeller. The Germans adopted Fokker's invention in May 1915, and the Allies soon produced their own versions. Schneider later sued Fokker for patent infringement.

6. Air traffic control

In the first days of flight, once a plane left the ground the pilot was pretty much isolated from the terrestrial world, unable to receive any information aside from obvious signals using flags or lamps. This changed thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Army, which installed the first operational two-way radios in planes during the Great War (but prior to U.S. involvement). Development began in 1915 at San Diego, and by 1916 technicians could send a radio telegraph over a distance of 140 miles; radio telegraph messages were also exchanged between planes in flight. Finally, in 1917, for the first time a human voice was transmitted by radio from a plane in flight to an operator on the ground.

7. Depth Charges

The German U-boat campaign against Allied shipping sank millions of tons of cargo and killed tens of thousands of sailors and civilians, forcing the Allies to figure out a way to combat the submarine menace. The solution was the depth charge, basically an underwater bomb that could be lobbed from the deck of a ship using a catapult or chute. Depth charges were set to go off at a certain depth by a hydrostatic pistol that measured water pressure, insuring the depth charge wouldn't damage surface vessels, including the launch ship. After the idea was sketched out in 1913, the first practical depth charge, the Type D, was produced by the Royal Navy's Torpedo and Mine School in January 1916. The first German U-boat sunk by depth charge was the U-68, destroyed on March 22, 1916.

8. Hydrophones

Of course it was a big help if you could actually locate the U-boat using sound waves, which required a microphone that could work underwater, or hydrophone. The first hydrophone was invented by 1914 by Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian inventor who actually started working on the idea as a way to locate icebergs following the Titanic disaster; however, it was of limited use because it couldn't tell the direction of an underwater object, only the distance. The hydrophone was further improved by the Frenchman Paul Langevin and Russian Constantin Chilowsky, who invented an ultrasound transducer relying on piezoelectricity, or the electric charge held in certain minerals: a thin layer of quartz held between two metal plates responded to tiny changes in water pressure resulting from sound waves, allowing the user to determine both the distance and direction of an underwater object. The hydrophone claimed its first U-boat victim in April 1916. A later version perfected by the Americans could detect U-boats up to 25 miles away.

9. Aircraft Carriers

The first time an airplane was launched from a moving ship was in May 1912, when commander Charles Rumney Samson piloted a Short S.27 pontoon biplane from a ramp on the deck of the HMS Hibernia in Weymouth Bay. However, the Hibernia wasn't a true aircraft carrier, since planes couldn't land on its deck; they had to set down on the water and then be retrieved, slowing the whole process considerably. The first real aircraft carrier was the HMS Furious, which began life as a 786-foot-long battle cruiser equipped with two massive 18-inch guns-until British naval designers figured out that these guns were so large they might shake the ship to pieces. Looking for another use for the vessel, they built a long platform capable of both launching and landing airplanes. To make more room for takeoffs and landings, the airplanes were stored in hangars under the runway, as they still are in modern aircraft carriers. Squadron Commander Edward Dunning became the first person to land a plane on a moving ship when he landed a Sopwith Pup on the Furious on August 2, 1917.

10. Pilotless Drones

The first pilotless drone was developed for the U.S. Navy in 1916 and 1917 by two inventors, Elmer Sperry and Peter Hewitt, who originally designed it as an unmanned aerial bomb-essentially a prototype cruise missile. Measuring just 18.5 feet across, with a 12-horsepower motor, the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Aircraft weighed 175 pounds and was stabilized and directed ("piloted" is too generous) with gyroscopes and a barometer to determine altitude. The first unmanned flight in history occurred on Long Island on March 6, 1918. In the end, the targeting technique-point and fly-was too imprecise for it to be useful against ships during the war. Further development, by attempting to integrate remote radio control, continued for several years after the war, until the Navy lost interest in 1925.

11. Mobile X-Ray Machines

With millions of soldiers suffering grievous, life-threatening injuries, there was obviously a huge need during the Great War for the new wonder weapon of medical diagnostics, the X-ray-but these required very large machines that were both too bulky and too delicate to move. Enter Marie Curie, who set to work creating mobile X-ray stations for the French military immediately after the outbreak of war; by October 1914, she had installed X-ray machines in several cars and small trucks which toured smaller surgical stations at the front. By the end of the war there were 18 of these "radiologic cars" or "Little Curies" in operation. African-American inventor Frederick Jones developed an even smaller portable X-ray machine in 1919 (Jones also invented refrigeration units, air conditioning units, and the self-starting gasoline lawnmower).

12. Sanitary Napkins

Women traditionally improvised all kinds of disposable or washable undergarments to deal with their monthly period, all the way back to softened papyrus in ancient Egypt. But the modern sanitary napkin as we know it was made possible by the introduction of new cellulose bandage material during the First World War; it wasn't long before French nurses figured out that clean, absorbent cellulose bandages were far superior to any predecessors. British and American nurses picked up on the habit, and corporate America wasn't far behind: In 1920, Kimberly-Clark introduced the first commercial sanitary napkin, Kotex (that's "cotton" + "texture"). But it was rough going at first, as no publications would carry advertisements for such a product. It wasn't until 1926 that Montgomery Ward broke the barrier, carrying Kotex napkins in its popular catalogue.

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Hurricane Dorian skimmed the United States' East Coast last week, creating a trail of damage residents are still dealing with. But it wasn't just trash and debris the storm surges left behind: As WCSC reports, two cannonballs dating back to the Civil War were discovered on Folly Beach in South Carolina in the aftermath of the storm.

Aaron Lattin and his girlfriend Alba were walking on the beach on September 6 when they saw what looked like rocks nestled in the sand. As they examined them more closely, they realized they had found something much more special. The weathered objects were actually cannonballs that have likely been buried in the area for more than 150 years.

Incredibly, this isn't the first time Civil War cannonballs have been discovered on Folly Beach following a hurricane: In 2016, Hurricane Matthew unearthed 16 of them. Folly Island was used as a Union base a century and a half ago, and items leftover from the artillery battery built there are still scattered around the shoreline. The couple behind this latest discovery believes there are more waiting to be found.

Old cannonballs may look like cool artifacts to treasure hunters, but they should still be treated with caution. Police and bombs disposal technicians were called to the scene at Folly Beach to confirm the cannonballs were no longer functional.

It was after midnight on May 15, 1918 when William Henry Johnson began to hear the rustling. Johnson was a long way from his home in Albany, New York, guarding a bridge in the Argonne Forest in Champagne, France. Sleeping next to him was Needham Roberts, a fellow soldier. Both men had enlisted in the New York National Guard just a few months earlier and were now part of the French Army, donated by U.S. forces to their understaffed allies in the thick of World War I.

As Johnson continued hearing the strange noises late into the night, he urged his partner to get up. A tired Roberts waved him off, believing Johnson was just nervous. Johnson decided to prepare himself just in case, piling up his assortment of grenades and rifle cartridges within arm's reach. If someone was coming, he would be ready.

The rustling continued. At one point, Johnson heard a clipping noise-what he suspected was the sound of the perimeter fence being cut. He again told Roberts to wake up. "Man," he said, "You better wake up pretty soon or you [might] never wake up."

The two began lobbing grenades into the darkness, hoping to discourage whoever might be lurking around the perimeter. Suddenly, in the middle of the French forest, Johnson saw dozens of German soldiers come charging, bayonets pointed toward him. They began to fire.

What transpired over the next hour would become an act of heroism that prompted former President Theodore Roosevelt to declare Johnson one of the bravest Americans to take up arms in the war. Johnson would even lead a procession back in New York City, with crowds lined up along the street to greet him.

Johnson may or may not have felt like a hero, though he certainly was. But he must have also felt something else-a sense of confusion. A man of color, he had been dispatched to a segregated regiment, where he received paltry combat training and was assigned menial tasks like unloading trucks. Even his homecoming parade was split up according to race. Henry Johnson, decorated virtually head to toe in French military honors, returned to a country that considered him both hero and a second-class citizen.

Though officers would later verify much of Johnson's account of that night in the woods, his early life is harder to pin down. It has been reported that Johnson himself wasn't quite sure when he was born. No one appeared to have kept a close eye on his birth certificate, which came out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The official U.S. Army website honoring Johnson's service lists an approximate birth date of July 15, 1892. Other research indicates he could have been born as early as 1887 or as late as 1897.

After moving to New York as a teenager, Johnson took on an assortment of odd jobs; he was a chauffeur and a soda mixer, among other occupations. Depending on the account, he was living in Albany working either in a coal yard or as a railway porter when he opened a newspaper in the spring of 1917 and read that the 15th New York Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard was accepting enlistees. The regiment was comprised entirely of black soldiers.

Johnson showed up on June 5, 1917, weighing a slight 130 pounds and standing 5 feet, 4 inches tall. Assigned to Company C of the 15th-which later became known as the 369th U.S. Infantry Regiment-he was quickly dispatched to Camp Wadsworth in South Carolina, where he trained along with the rest of the segregated unit. Though minorities had served in the U.S. military since the Revolutionary War, they often lacked support from officials and got inferior training compared to their white counterparts. At Camp Wadsworth, Johnson was said to have been used primarily as labor, unloading supplies and digging latrines. If there was one bright spot during this time, it was that he married his wife, Georgina Edna Jackson, that September.

Johnson and the 369th were sent to France on January 1, 1918. There they continued laboring, which frustrated their commander, Colonel William Hayward. Hayward lobbied his superiors to give his men a chance in combat. Since France was experiencing a shortage of men, the 369th-which later became known as the Harlem Hellfighters because many of their members had come from Harlem in New York City-joined the 161st Division of the French Army, even wearing the jackets and helmets of the foreign military.

To the French, Johnson and his fellow soldiers were a welcome solution to their lack of manpower. Sent to the front lines in March 1918, Johnson and the others learned enough French to understand commands from superiors. They were armed with rifles and held on to the bolo knives used by the U.S. Army. The imposing 14-inch blades weighed more than a pound and had much of their weight running along the back, giving them a cleaving action similar to a machete. Johnson would soon be glad he had such a weapon on his waist.

Along with Needham Roberts-a man from Trenton, New Jersey-Johnson was assigned sentry duty on the western edge of the Argonne Forest. Patrolling near a bridge, Johnson and Roberts were given the late shift, on patrol until midnight on the evening of May 14. It would be a night neither he nor Roberts would ever forget.

As their shift wound down, Johnson saw two relief soldiers approaching. The soldiers were young and inexperienced, and Johnson felt uncomfortable leaving them alone. He stayed put and surveyed the area while Roberts went to rest in a trench. Shortly thereafter, he began to hear the rustling noises, which eventually became German soldiers rushing through the darkness. Johnson realized they were surrounded, and urged Roberts to run for help. But Roberts didn't get far before he decided to come back and help, and was soon hit by the shrapnel of a grenade in his arm and hip.

Still conscious, Roberts handed Johnson grenades to toss. When those ran out, Johnson began firing his rifle while being hit by bullets in his side, hand, and head. Quickly, Johnson shoved an American cartridge into his French rifle, but the ammunition and the weapon were incompatible. The rifle jammed. As the Germans swarmed him, Johnson began using the rifle like a club, smashing it over their heads and into their faces.

After the butt of the rifle finally fell apart, Johnson went down with a blow to the head. But he climbed back up, drew his bolo knife, and charged forward. The blade went deep into the first German he encountered, killing the man. More gruesome work with the weapon followed, with Johnson hacking and stabbing bodies even as bullets continued to strike him.

At one point, Johnson noticed the Germans had grabbed Roberts and were attempting to haul him away. He intervened, stabbing more soldiers, including one in the ribs.

The melee went on for roughly an hour, he said. When reinforcements finally arrived, the remaining Germans fled. Johnson was given medical attention. So was Roberts. Both lived.

The next day, military officials visited the scene of the battle. German helmets rested on the ground, along with puddles of blood. Four bodies were left behind. The officials estimated Johnson had wounded up to 24 others. Some men who walked the site said the death toll was six, with Johnson injuring 32 men. After all the fighting, Johnson had prevented the Germans from breaking the French line.

The nicknames came fast. The bridge was declared "the Battle of Henry Johnson." Johnson himself was given the unofficial label "the Black Death" and the official rank of sergeant. He was headed back home.

Before they departed, the French honored Johnson and Roberts with the Croix de Guerre, one of France's highest awards for valor. They were the first two Americans to receive it. Johnson's was amended with the addition of the Gold Palm, intended to signify extraordinary valor.

It was an honor, though one that came with a heavy price. Johnson later estimated he had been shot five times, the bullets striking both feet, his thigh, his arm, and even his head. A scar stretched over his lip. A bayonet had been plunged into his torso-twice. He had to have a metal plate inserted into his left foot. In all, Johnson endured 21 injuries as a result of his defiant stand against the Germans.

Back home, he convalesced as the country sang his praises. Often, such reports of his bravery took pains to note he was a man of color. "When proudly speaking of fighting races we must not overlook the American Negro," read an editorial in the New York Evening Telegram. Other times, Johnson found himself in the peculiar position of being celebrated while simultaneously being reminded of his purportedly inferior status. The parade that honored the Harlem Hellfighters in February 1919 ran for seven miles, with Johnson leading the procession in an open-topped cab. But the Hellfighters could not march with their white counterparts.

Unfortunately, Johnson's postwar life remains as murky as his earliest years. He reportedly received disability payments from the government as well as medical care, but it's unknown to what extent that supported him or how badly his injuries kept him from employment opportunities. (He did ask for, and received, as much as $100 per minute during speaking engagements in cities such as St. Louis-well over $1000 in today's money.) An attempt was made by the Albany Afro-American Association to raise money to build him a home as a way of expressing gratitude for his service, but it's unclear whether the effort was successful. On July 1, 1929, Johnson died of myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart muscle) while living in Washington, D.C. He was awarded a posthumous Purple Heart in 1996.

For years, it was unclear what became of Johnson's remains. In 2002, when the historians at the New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs researched his service at the behest of his descendants (though it was later discovered they were mistaken and not actually related to Johnson), the historians determined Johnson was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. With confirmation of the gravesite, Johnson also became eligible for and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 2002.

In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded him the Medal of Honor, which was accepted on Johnson's behalf by Sergeant Major Louis Wilson of the New York National Guard. And every June 5, Albany celebrates Henry Johnson Day in acknowledgement of the day he enlisted. The city also gives out a Henry Johnson Award for Distinguished Community Service for those making contributions in the area.

Those honors joined the Croix de Guerre, which Johnson was said to have worn with humility. He sometimes needed to be prodded into discussing his act of bravery, as if it were of no major consequence. "There wasn't anything so fine about it," he said. "[I] just fought for my life. A rabbit would have done that."

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12 Technological Advancements of World War I

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Erik Sass has been covering the events leading up to World War I exactly 100 years after they happened. But today he's here to discuss some inventions of The Great War. 1. Tanks In 1914, the "war of movement" expected by most European generals settled down into an unexpected, and seemingly unwinnable, war of trenches.

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Second Battle of Ypres - The Dawn of Chemical Warfare

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Second Battle of Ypres - The Dawn of Chemical Warfare

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Second Battle of Ypres - The Dawn of Chemical Warfare

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100 years ago, the Germans used chemical weapons for the first time on the Western Front. It was the start of the second battle of Ypres.

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From the 1850s German settlers escaping the rising nationalist sentiment in Germany began arriving in the Australian colonies looking to start a new life. Port Adelaide was the point of arrival for the majority of German settlers. The Germans moved onto Western Australia, the Barossa Valley, the Riverina and South East Queensland where they found the regions suitable for wheat and dairy farming, the planting of vineyards and wine making. They formed close communities transforming the dry marginal environment into good farming land. The German Australians maintained strong cultural ties with their German heritage up until World War One.
Wagner's Store, Jindera, NSW, c.2005. Courtesy of the Museum of the Riverina

By 1914 over 100,000 Germans lived in Australia and they were a well established and liked community. With the rising tension between the British and German Empires this began to change and German Australian communities often found themselves the subject of suspicion and animosity. When war broke out in 1914 this changed to outright hostility. In 1914 Australia was besotted with war fever and people were keen for ways to get involved to 'do their bit'.

The sinking of the German light Cruiser SMS Emden by the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney in the Cocos Islands was one of Australia's first actions of the war and it excited the nation. The event created hysteria about possible German naval attack thus establishing immediately the cultural and national divisions within the community.

San Francisco Call & Post, 10 November 1914. Courtesy Wikimedia

In 1915, Germans and Austrians who were old enough to join the army were put into German Concentration Camps across the continent. In New South Wales the three main internment camps were at Trial Bay Gaol, Berrima Gaol and Holsworthy Army Barracks. Women and children of German and Austrian descent, detained by the British in Asia, were interned at Molonglo. Others were carefully watched by the police and neighbours. Germans lost their jobs or had their business destroyed. Some voluntarily went into camps so their wives and children could survive on a government allowance.

In other changes that affected Germans living in Australia their:

schools and churches were closed

music was banned

food was renamed

place names (42) were changed to British ones - Blumberg became Birdwood & German Creek became Empire Bay

traders, businessmen, sailors and tea planters in South East Asia were arrested and transported to Australia to be interned in the camps.

(The Australian Government sought to...) destroy the (German) community as an autonomous, socio-cultural entity within Australian society.... through many different avenues, the closing of German clubs and Lutheran schools, the internment of the leaders, so as to deprive German-Australians of their spokesmen, their representatives in the mainstream public sphere of Australian society. Together with the destruction of what might be called the socio-cultural infrastructure of the community, this would have the effect - it was thought - of intimidating and keeping in check the rest of the community: it would lead to its disintegration and eventual disappearance. Prof Gerhard Fischer history; Internment at Trial Bay during World War One, MHC:PHM, 2005, p.30.

Anti German sentiments intensified in Australia after the Battle of the Ypres, Passchendaele and Pozieres saw significant Australian casualties in France and Belgium. Nationalism was rising as the main reaction to the war on the home front. Nationalistic propaganda posters and newsreels were created demonising the German community. Nationalistic and anti- German propaganda was rampant in the Prime Minister Billy Hughes' push for conscription.

A German pill-box at Ypres France, a place that saw large Australian casualties. Pill-boxes were built of concrete with sides 1 - 2 metres thick to allow soldiers to endure bombardments. Photograph Capt. F. Hurley, August 1917- August 1918. Courtesy State Library of New South Wales.

During World War One four out of every ten Australian men aged 18 - 45 enlisted. Gallipoli was just the introduction to the newly formed Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) of the realities of industrial mechanised war. After Gallipoli came the horror of France and Belgium. Battles at Passchendaele and Ypres waged a heavy casualty toll on a generation of young men from all over Australia. Out of a Australia's population of 2 million, 59,000 men were killed and 176,000 were wounded. This toll manifested itself in the growing 'Roll of Honour' monuments that mushroomed through out the cities and regional Australia from 1919 onwards.

Case Study: Albert Hucker was 22 when he enlisted in the AIF and embarked for training in England in 1916. He was transferred to France in November 1916 where he received severe bullet wounds to his right arm in battle and was hospitalised. He returned to the front in France in 1917 where he was killed in a bombardment at Thames Wood at the First Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium on the 30th of October 1917. He was one of four men in his company killed by the same shell. A letter from his friend to his mother said he had been buried, but the AIF couldn't find his grave. It was destroyed soon after the burial by the continuing battle. Hucker has no known grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate. His parents attended Anzac Day ceremonies every year until their deaths after the World War Two. This was a common experience for families across the nation and fed the anti German sentiments at home.

By 1916 fewer men were volunteering for the army. The war was taking longer than people had expected and many thousands of soldiers had been killed. Prime Minister Billy Hughes wanted to introduce compulsory military service or 'conscription' to maintain the supply of solders required reinforce the AIF. Australians had to make an important decision as Billy Hughes decided to put the question to a referendum in October 1916. Hughes led the Australian Labor Party and most of its members did not support conscription. One way Hughes and the pro - conscription lobby sought to sway voters was to create a visual target to blame for wartime losses and pain. Hughes turned the Australian German community into scapegoats for his conscription cause. In the conscription debates of 1916 and 1917 Hughes conducted a campaign of rumour mongering, harassment, persecution and the creation of a large internment camp on the outskirts of Sydney at Holsworthy Army base at Liverpool. Hughes was defeated but it was a close result.

Claude Marquet, "I'll have you!" An anti conscription cartoon, Australian Worker, 13 December 1917, p.9. Newspaper Collection, Courtesy State Library of Victoria. Anti conscription campaigns tried to use the same tools as Hughes did in vilifying the Australian German community. Here Hughes is depicted as a monster. The suspicion of anything not deemed 'normal' is a persistent feature of Australian culture.

Case Study: Many sons and grandsons of German migrants joined the AIF and went to fight for Australia on the Western Front. Many, such as Tumbarumba's George and Herbert Heinecke died in France. George and Henry's father George senior, despite having lost two sons in the war, was constantly harassed because of his family's German heritage. In a letter to the Tumbarumba Times in August 1918 he wrote, "I already have 17 [relatives at the front], including two sons who were killed, and one sister's son also killed, and another sister's son a prisoner of war in Germany; my wife's brother's three sons, two dead and one wounded".

In 1917, when German submarines began to attack American cargo and passenger ships, the United States entered the war, committing over one million soldiers to the war in Europe. A socialist revolution in Russia deposed the old government, and led to a pull-out of Russian troops and a treaty with Germany. Germany's allies, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, were severely weakened by the war and had to withdraw. Without support, and in the face of a fresh army from the United States, Germany had to accept defeat. In November 1918, fighting stopped and an Armistice was signed. The world would never be the same again.

Meanwhile throughout Australia many German families changed their names to stop harassment from the government and a war mad community, German schools and churches were closed, German music was banned, German food was renamed, German place names were changed to British ones (in South Australia under the Nomenclature Act) - Blumberg became Birdwood, Germanton became Holbrook & German Creek became Empire Bay.

General View of Germanton, c.1910, State Library of Victoria

During World War One the NSW government changed the name Germanton to Holbrook amid anti German hysteria. The town was originally called Ten Mile Creek in 1836. A German migrant, John Pabst, became the publican of the Woolpack Hotel in 1840 and the area became known as 'the Germans'. By 1858 the name had evolved in to the official name of Germanton. In 1876 the name Germanton was officially gazetted. On 24 August 1915 the town was renamed Holbrook in honour of Lt. Norman Douglas Holbrook, a decorated wartime submarine captain and winner of the Victoria Cross. Lt. Holbrook commanded the submarine HMS B11.

During the campaign for the Conscription Referendum the large German community in the Riverina were selected for special attention. To some it seemed that people of German origin were to blame for the lack of success of the first conscription referendum in 1916. After the failure of the second Conscription Referendum in 1917 the anti-German campaign was increased further. People of German descent were stopped from joining the Army, holding civil positions such as local councillors or Justices of the Peace.

In March 1918 Australian secret service officers were sent to Jindera and Walla Walla to spy on the Community. Four Australian men of German decent, Hermann Paech, John Wenke, Edward Heppner and Ernest Wenke were arrested for unspecified un-Australian activities and delivered into the custody of military police, who took them to Holsworthy Concentration Camp.

The secret service officers reported that 'the use of the German language has thoroughly Germanised the bulk of the population of the Riverina which would otherwise have become gradually Anglicised as each generation grew up'.

The outbreak of war was greeted in Tasmania with enthusiastic expressions of loyalty to the British Empire. Enemy aliens were quickly identified usually by German or foreign heritage and speculation. An internment camp established at Claremont then moved to Bruny Island. The town of Bismarck was renamed Collinsvale, and many Tasmanians of German descent, the largest non-British national group in the population, were persecuted. In one case Gustav Weindorfer was accused of being a German spy and using his chalet at Cradle Mountain as a radio station to contact German ships. He was expelled from the Ulverstone Club and his dog was poisoned.

In Western Australia the German community were immediately placed under surveillance on the outbreak of war. Prominent members of the German Community were investigated. Karl Fink, the owner of Fink's Hotel, the largest in Perth, fled to Sweden and his hotel was confiscated by the Public Trustee.

In Broome, Western Australia Toni Ulbrich worked on a pearling vessel. As all enemy aliens on neutral ships had to be interned he was arrested in 1916 in order to 'secure the public safety and the defence of the Commonwealth. Ulbrich was sent to Holsworthy where he remained until 1918.

German business and individuals were under constant scrutiny. The Alhambra Café, Schruth's Beaufort Arms Hotel and Mrs Carlshausen's Wine Saloon in Beaufort St Perth, Western Australia were under surveillance. It was reported that the wine saloon was 'frequented by a number of Alien Enemies and Naturalized Aliens amongst are a large percentage who are disloyal'.

A Health Inspector in Geraldton, Western Australia claimed in a memo that there was a fleet of sea going yachts owned by Germans that appeared to be on fishing trips and often disappeared for weeks and were capable of carrying wireless equipment.

'British' trade unions, business and the Western Australian State Government took advantage of the situation. Reports by informers were never ending and suspicion was everywhere. Austrian, Croatian and Italian miners were sacked and run out of town in the Kalgoorlie Mines on demands from the mining trade unions.

The New Guard conservatives saw the war as an opportunity to get at their old rivals the Communists and maintain the 'Britishness' of Australia through the War Precautions Act of 1914. Business leaders had Communist Party members listed as unpatriotic enemy sympathisers and interned with the assistance of compliant State and Commonwealth Governments. The communists had opposed the war and nationalism maintaining that workers would kill other workers in the interest of capitalism, which largely proved to be correct.

For home front Australia the Great War became a blur of the many themes that had dominated nineteenth century Australian life- the working mans paradise vs. free trade and capitalism, the aspiration of a British Australia and a undying loyalty to the concept of the British Empire. However for German Australia it meant sustained scrutiny, suspicion and persecution that eventually erased nearly all traces of the Australian- German community from the cultural landscape in a hysteric ethnic purge. Many families continued to Anglicise their names. At Temora there is evidence of at least one local 'German' family changing their name by deed poll. Many other families clandestinely changed the spelling of their names.

What remains are places and objects whose heritage is nearly forgotten. Many families are aware of a German presence in their history, but the stigma of World War One and Two has erased almost all traces of it from many families' and community memory.

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From the 1850s German settlers escaping the rising nationalist sentiment in Germany began arriving in the Australian colonies looking to start a new life. Port Adelaide was the point of arrival for the majority of German settlers.

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German experience in Australia during World War I

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German experience in Australia during World War I

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A 'view from tower' reveals the long rows of huts at Holsworthy internment camp, where Germans were interned during the First World War. Paul Dubotzki/Dubotzki Collection

The Gallipoli centenary provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the many wartime legacies - human, political, economic, military - that forged independent nations from former colonies and dominions. The Conversation, in partnership with Griffith Review, is publishing a series of essays exploring the enduring legacies of 20th-century wars.
On September 26, 1999, Governor-General Sir William Deane delivered the opening address at the inaugural Australian Conference on Lutheran Education at a Gold Coast resort. In his speech, he offered an apology to members of the German-Australian community present at the meeting:

The tragic, and often shameful, discrimination against Australians of German origin fostered during the world wars had many consequences. No doubt, some of you carry the emotional scars of injustice during those times as part of your backgrounds or family histories. Let me as Governor-General say to all who do how profoundly sorry I am that such things happened in our country.

The little-known apology invites reflection on a number of issues, particularly in the context of the centenary commemorations and the privileged role the Anzac myth as Australia's foundation narrative has been accorded in recent years. The story of the German-Australian community offers an alternative view of Australia's history as a nation.

While Deane referred to "scars of injustice" and family histories, and thus to individual grief and loss, it might be appropriate also to recall the experience of a collective loss the nation incurred when a significant community within its ranks was destroyed during the Great War.

Early migrant movements

During the 19th century and well into the 20th, German-speaking immigrants constituted the largest non-Anglo-Celtic group in Australia. Organised large-scale immigration had begun with the arrival in 1838 of groups of Lutheran farming communities from the eastern provinces of Prussia. They settled in South Australia. The foundation of their first villages, Hahndorf and Klemzig, served as a point of attraction that was to bring many more immigrants to the Barossa Valley.

A smaller wave in the wake of the failed German revolution of 1848 brought a different group of immigrants: urban professionals and intellectuals, outspoken democrats and liberals who were dissatisfied with the lack of political reforms in Germany and preferred to live in a country that promised constitutional democracy and progress towards their ideal of a unified nation state.

A third wave of German immigrants was contained within the huge number of fortune-hunters who came to Victoria during the gold rush years of the 1850s. When the goldfields were exhausted, many of the diggers and tradesmen of German origin took up farming in Victoria and New South Wales.

After 1860, government-sponsored immigration and free passages coupled with the prospect of cheap land brought large numbers of agricultural settlers to Queensland. Around 1880, the number of German immigrants in Queensland had surpassed that of South Australia.

There was a sizeable urban community of merchants, tradesmen and labourers living in and around Brisbane. However, most of the German immigrants settled on the land, along the coast and on the Darling Downs, where they played a significant role in the pioneering work of opening up the country for agriculture.

In New South Wales, no such areas of contiguous settlement existed. But a substantial number of German immigrants, mostly skilled tradesmen, chose to live in or near Sydney.

By around 1860, a very visible German-Australian community was well established. It was prosperous, sophisticated and generally highly regarded by their British-Australian compatriots who preferred to think of the immigrants from the Continent, with some patriarchal condescension no doubt, as our Germans. In the towns, German clubs, complete with their marching bands, athletics associations and Liedertafel choirs, constituted centres of social activity that attracted wide audiences not limited to members of their own ethnicity.

There were prominent business establishments that carried German names. Australians of German origin were active in the medical and legal profession, in education, the arts as well as in commerce and industry, science and politics.

In the metropolitan cities, and in Adelaide in particular, one could spend the day easily without having to speak a word of English: shopping, attending doctors' or dentists' surgeries, relaxing over a cup of coffee and a piece of cake while reading the Australische Zeitung in a German Konditorei (coffee shop), or wining and dining in one of the city's two German hotels, the King of Hanover or the Hamburg Hotel, both in Rundle Street.

In 1861, towards the end of the Victorian gold rush, people of German origin comprised 4.32% of the total Australian population. They were by far the largest non-British immigrant group. The Chinese, as the second-largest, came to 3.28% by comparison; the Italians as the third-largest made up only 0.21%, and the total migrant population of 48 other ethnic communities amounted to only 3.25%.

By 1895, the overall number of German-Australians, including the descendants of immigrants of the second and third generations, had been estimated at approximately 100,000. This figure remained stable until 1914. As the total Australian population was approaching five million at the outbreak of war, the percentage of Germans in Australia comprised roughly 2%: hardly a significant number statistically.

The role of the Lutheran religion

Their history, as Augustin Lodewyckx noted in 1932, is the "history of their Anglicisation" - although "Australianisation" is perhaps a better term. To compete socially, in business and on the labour market, it was necessary to speak the language and to become familiar with the vernacular, the customs and norms of the new country.

In rural districts, where the church was the central focus of the community, assimilation was a slower process. But the Lutheran pastors were in no position to resist the process of assimilation, nor - it must be emphasised - was it in their interest to do so.

Loyalty to the state and respect for the secular authorities, based on the concept of the Zwei-Reich-Lehre (that is, the doctrine of the two kingdoms, spiritual and temporal), had been central tenets of Lutheran theology ever since the Reformator's dilemma in having to side with the feudal princes against the rebelling peasants during the Peasants' War of the early 16th century.

This was a point that was emphasised over and over again: as Lutheran Christians, their allegiance was to the government of the state in which they lived, its institutions and constitutional authority.

The Lutheran pastors were very conscious of their identity as representatives of an Australian, not a German, church. They were subjects of the British Crown and citizens of their respective Australians colonies, and of the Commonwealth after 1901. It made no difference to them whether individual parishioners had become naturalised or not. Relations with Germany were of a purely private nature, concerning the maintenance of language, family ties and cultural traditions.

At the same time, the Lutheran clerical establishment fastidiously insisted on its autonomy in religious and cultural-educational matters, including the teaching of German in its schools. The German language reminded the German-Australian Lutherans of their country of origin, but it was above all the language of Martin Luther, his Bible and catechism, and of his wording of the Lord's Prayer.

The decline of the Lutheran schools gives a clear indication of the process of Australianisation. Around 1900, there were 46 Lutheran schools in South Australia, 45 in Queensland, ten in Victoria and one in Sydney. They were all primary schools, small to very small (average size of 35 pupils) with only one or two teachers. English had become the main medium of instruction in most of the schools. Only classes in religious studies were conducted in German.

In the following years, most schools were forced to reduce their operations from five days to one - to become purely denominational Saturday schools, devoted to maintaining the German language for the purpose of reading liturgical texts.

By 1913, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Australia had begun publishing in English. Its monthly periodical, now titled The Australian Lutheran, had a decidedly national tenor, as the foreword of the first edition explained:

The term "Australian" ... is a "national" cognomen, signifying that the paper is published in Australia, by Australians and, first and foremost, for Australians, be they Australians by birth or adoption.

All Lutheran schools were closed during the war, as were all German clubs and German-language newspapers.

The migrant '48ers'

The arrival of immigrants, who left Germany for political reasons after the disappointing failure of the March Revolution of 1848 - known as "48ers" - marked a new beginning in the history of the German-Australian community. Their numbers were comparatively small, but they exerted considerable influence due to their role as journalists and publishers of German-language publications.

The most prominent 48er was Hermann Püttmann, previously arts editor of the Kölner Zeitung, a friend of poets Heine and Weerth and associate of Marx and Engels. Püttmann arrived in Melbourne in 1855 after residing for a few years in London. As author and publisher of journals and calendars he soon played a leading role in the German-speaking community in Victoria.

In Adelaide, Carl Wilhelm Ludwig Mücke, head of a group of like-minded immigrants from Berlin, was no less prominent as the spiritus rector of the South Australian German community. He had studied classical philology and sciences in Bonn and Berlin. His special interest was the propagation of a new curriculum where scientific and technological topics were to be given a prominent role.

In 1847, a year before he arrived in South Australia, Mücke was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Jena for his achievements as a pedagogue. In 1878, the University of Adelaide followed by awarding him an honorary master's degree, the highest academic honour that was available in Australia at the time.

Mücke's Australische Zeitung, a newspaper that grew out of his earlier Tanunda Deutsche Zeitung, eventually became the flagship of the German-language press in Australia.

During the 1850s, Mücke and his journalistic collaborators played a major role in a public debate on the issue of "German rights" that was being discussed in the context of introducing "responsible government" - that is, a local colonial legislature. The German immigrants protested vehemently against plans to exclude them from standing for election to the proposed parliament.

They were supported by a number of British-born Australians, including the governor. But there were many who voiced opposition, arguing:

The Germans should be grateful that they were even allowed to come to South Australia and stop demanding equal rights with Englishmen.

There is no doubt that the writer's sentiment represented a substantial popular feeling, one that would re-emerge time and again in the decades to come.

In the 1850s, however, the German-Australians carried the day. They were granted the right to stand for parliament, and in the first elections of 1857 one of the 48ers, Friedrich Krichauff, became the first legislator in South Australia of German descent.

The winning of both active and passive voting rights was an important step in the integration of the German-Australian community in the public life of the colony. The German-speaking minority now had a voice in the highest constitutional body and their spokesmen were accepted as co-legislators with full equal rights.

German-Australians were assured of being able to participate in the political affairs of their new home country and to enjoy the privileges and liberties the democratic institutions offered, including the privilege of working towards new political goals and of disagreeing with the politics of the government of the day.

Between December 1883 and February 1884, the Australische Zeitung ran a series of articles that amounted to a campaign for Australian independence. A comparison was repeatedly made between US and British-Australian citizenship. The comparative analysis clearly suggested a deficiency in the status accorded to "naturalised British subjects of Australia":

The acquisition of citizenship in the US affords full equality and protection. This is not so in British colonies where the German immigrant gives up his German citizenship for a thing of little significance. Through naturalisation in a colony, he only becomes a citizen of that colony but not of all colonies, and especially not a citizen of Great Britain, although he has sworn an oath of allegiance to the Queen of England. If a naturalised German leaves his own colony, he is completely homeless, a pariah, a member of no nation, whereas the British colonist remains a Briton.

The final article in the series, on February 28, 1884, concluded with an eloquent call for Australian sovereignty in which the alternatives, Australia as a free country or as an inferior colony under the tutelage of Great Britain, were clearly spelled out:

Only with independence can a truly national life develop in which immigrants from everywhere fuse into one free nation. This is impossible as long as there is a mother-country to which Australia is politically subordinated, to which the British colonists look and whose ways they seek to force upon the other non-British colonists.

Developing an Australian identity

Mücke's vision certainly has a very contemporary resonance in terms of suggesting a fusion of different ethnic groups into a multicultural society. But how could a "truly national life develop" in Australia? And how could German immigrants, representing a small minority within a British colony, put forward a claim towards defining Australian nationhood?

To the overwhelming majority of Anglo-Australian immigrants at the time, "home" meant the British Isles, their "nation" was the British Empire.

Mücke and his friends saw Australia as a nation in statu nascendi. They recognised it shared a common fate with the Germany they knew. To become a nation, Australia had what Germany lacked, namely a constitutional form of government that ensured individual freedom and civic rights to guarantee the democratic participation of its citizens in the development of their country.

What Germany had, on the other hand, was what Australia lacked or did not yet possess, namely a consciousness of its mission to become a nation. This was precisely what the 48ers thought they were able to contribute. Their experiences in the struggle towards a unified, democratic nation state in Germany, unsuccessful though it had been in 1848, could be made productive in an effort to create a national consciousness in Australia.

The 48ers were Australian nationalists and early republicans who developed a concept of triple identity: a cultural identity linked to the German language and to the immigrants' intellectual heritage; a political identity that implied loyalty to the King or Queen of England as the constitutional head of Australia; and a national identity as Australians committed to a nation in statu nascendi.

The 48ers firmly believed that Australia would eventually follow the American model and develop into an independent republic. Their concept of an Australian nationalism had a number of things in common with the "Australianism" that was beginning to be propagated by Anglo-Celtic Australians around 1890. It shared a belief in a singular Australian identity, based on an appreciation of the land and of the unique experience of the pioneers who first developed it, on the special geographical, floral and faunal features of the continent, as well as a shared history.

But the inclusive commitment to an Australia made up of "immigrants from everywhere" offered a sharp contrast to the vision of the Australian Natives' Association or the writers of the Bulletin who also advocated a separate Australian identity. The Bulletin's masthead motto, "Australia for the White Man", was clearly incompatible with Mücke's vision that was based on the universal principle of the Rights of Man and the ideals of the European Enlightenment.

On July 16, 1883, a festive banquet was held at the Adelaide German Club to mark the election of Carl Mücke as an honorary member. The occasion was his 68th birthday. It was a special, symbolic event: on this day, Mücke had spent exactly half his life in Germany and the other half in Australia. Before an audience of more than 400 German-Australians, Mücke gave a vote of thanks that spelled out his vision of an Australian nation:

All of us have found in our dear Australia a new home Heimath which we sincerely love and where we can be happy, happier - for the most part - than we perhaps could have ever been in our old home country. Let us therefore return our active thanks to this our new home country. And what could our thanks be?

Let us not forget that it was our fate, when it led us with broken hearts out of the old country to this place here, which destined us to help forming a new nation coming into existence in Australia, a nation made up of citizens of all nations but notably from England.

During the Great War

On August 10, 1914, all "Germans" living in Australia were called upon to report to the nearest police station. It was the beginning of the end of the once prosperous and proud German-Australian community. Registration involved filling out a yellow form which asked a number of personal particulars - name, address, date and place of birth, trade or occupation, marital status, property, length of residence in Australia, nationality, naturalisation details.

It was then up to the local police officers to impose any restrictions they may have thought fit. Usually these took the form of a Provisional Order - the aliens in question had to notify the police of any change of address or to report at daily or weekly intervals.

The officers were subsequently required to fill out a second form ("secret and confidential"), entitled Report on Person reputed to be an Enemy Subject, in which they had to state whether they believed their clients' statements "to be frank and truthful", and whether the aliens were "reputed to be anti-British" or consorted "with persons believed to be of enemy origin". Finally, they had to give an opinion as to whether or not the aliens:

... should be sent forward for examination by the military authorities.

On October 29, 1914, the Commonwealth parliament assented to the War Precautions Act, conferring upon the government and the military authorities a wide range of powers. As Frank Crowley observed, the act:

... gave the Commonwealth Government complete control over the press and the economy, and enabled it to establish a centralised and militarist administration.

The Manual of War Precautions listed no less than 81 separate offences. It contained a bewildering collection of rules, orders and prohibitions - such as measures that forbade enemy aliens the possession of motor cars, telephones, cameras or homing pigeons. Internment was only one, albeit the most severe, infringement of their personal rights and liberty imposed upon German-Australians during the war.

By the end of 1914, the commandants of the military districts had been given the authority to intern "enemy subjects with whose conduct they were not satisfied". Then-defence minister George Foster Pearce reserved for himself the right to order the internment of naturalised subjects when he thought they were "disaffected or disloyal".

In 1915, paragraphs 55 and 56a enlarged the power of the minister:

... to cover the internment of disloyal natural born subjects Australian by birth of enemy descent, and of persons of hostile origin or association.

Once a military intelligence officer had decided an individual "enemy alien" or a person of "hostile association" constituted a "possible danger", that person was arrested and placed in a camp behind barbed wire. It was "internment without trial". The government routinely refused to submit the complaints of internees to the ordinary procedures of legal arbitration.

In October 1916, the registration regulations were extended to apply to "all aliens, whether enemy or otherwise". In the end, the machinery of registration, censorship, surveillance, internment and deportation set up by the department to control the resident "enemy" population in Australia was also being used to investigate and prosecute pacifists, unionists, radical socialists, Irish nationalists, anti-conscriptionists of all ideological persuasion - practically anybody who dared to speak out against the government's commitment to the war.

A precedent was established, involving the use of the state apparatus for the purpose of suppressing political opposition that constitutes one of the ominous features of the political culture first developed in Australia during the war.

On the economic front, too, measures against perceived German business interests were enforced on the basis of comprehensive legislation. The Enemy Contracts Annulment Act and various Trading with the Enemy Acts, passed between 1914 and 1918, imposed restrictions that ranged from the prohibition to buy or sell land to owning or managing a business. Suspected aliens were ordered to disclose holdings in shares, securities or bank accounts. Businesses were wound down and assets transferred to a trustee.

The war provided a welcome opportunity to realise one of Prime Minister Billy Hughes' long-held aims, namely "the eradication of German influences from the trade of all parts of the Empire". This was to be achieved by diverting "trade from enemy to Empire", as Hughes put it.

The Trading with the Enemy legislation was designed not only to prevent Australian products from reaching Germany during the duration of the war, and vice versa. It was meant to destroy permanently what the Commonwealth government considered to be German firms operating in Australia, regardless of whether they were branches of foreign companies or whether they were businesses founded in Australia and run by Australian residents.

Hughes was not afraid to point out that the war was being fought for economic supremacy. This was an argument to support Australia's unreserved commitment to the war rather than to oppose it.

Since it was physically impossible for the Australian authorities to detain all adult German-Australians, the government decided early on to pursue a policy of selective internment, even though "patriotic Britishers" continued to call for the internment of all enemy aliens ("Intern the lot!") throughout the war.

While the internment process was to a large extent improvised and capricious, there were nevertheless distinct policy objectives. The Commonwealth government had announced early in the war that destitute enemy alien males could volunteer for internment if lacking any prospect of being able to pay for their livelihood. Their families, after being means-tested, were granted a small allowance.

Progressively, the government then developed a policy of interning destitute or unemployed enemy aliens even if they did not volunteer. The Aliens Instructions, a military handbook detailing the rules of how to deal with "aliens", explicitly gave district commandants the power to arrest aliens who they considered to be without a regular income. If the intelligence officers found that such individuals had no ties in the Commonwealth and were likely to become a burden on the government, it was routinely recommended that they should be deported after the war concluded.

The internment system thus developed into a tool of social control. It was used to segregate and, after the war, to exclude undesirable residents not only because of their ethnic origin but also because of their poor socioeconomic status. Internees who had been imprisoned because they were considered mentally weak were similarly singled out. Yet other people were interned and later deported because they had criminal records.

In South Australia and Queensland, the Department of Defence also pursued a policy of actively seeking out and interning those residents who were regarded as the political and spiritual leaders of the German-Australian community. The aim of the government was to destroy their community as an autonomous, socio-cultural entity within Australian society.

This objective was pursued through many different avenues: the closing of German clubs and Lutheran schools, the cancelling of German place names and the internment of community leaders in order to deprive German-Australians of their spokesmen in the mainstream public sphere of Australian society.

Thus, the Honorary German Consuls (as opposed to official members of the German diplomatic mission), usually prominent German-Australian businessmen residing in the capital cities of the different states, were all interned. The government firmly believed they were working in alliance with the Lutheran clergy on behalf of the Imperial German government.

In South Australia, Consul Hermann Mücke, son of Carl, was briefly interned during April 1916 and subsequently detained in his home in Adelaide under military guard. At the same time, his youngest son, Francis Frederick, was serving with the Australian Imperial Forces in France after being wounded at Gallipoli.

The Lutheran clergy were also believed to be leaders of the German-Australian community under orders from Berlin. In Queensland, nine pastors were interned. Six of them were naturalised, two of them had been born in Australia. One of the latter two was Pastor Friedrich Gustav Fischer of Goombungee, born in South Australia in 1876. Both his parents had also been born in South Australia.

Fischer's internment was approved by Hughes' cabinet following a recommendation by Pearce, who had based his opinion on an intelligence report prepared by his department. It read, in part:

The situation in the German districts gives great anxiety to British residents, and the best way of relieving their anxiety, as well as of keeping German residents in check, is to intern occasionally a few leading German residents. From this point of view it is considered that the internment of Fischer would be justified.

The government steadfastly maintained in public that its policy was to intern only persons who were considered "angerous". However, the recommendation by Pearce that was accepted by cabinet clearly spells out the actual motivation of the government - to intern the leaders of the German-Australian community, dangerous or not, in order to keep the rest of the community "in check" and, at the same time, to accommodate the wishes of the local "British" community.

After the war

In total, 6890 persons were interned in Australia during the war, including 67 women and 84 children. Despite the official designation "prisoners of war" given to them by the Commonwealth authorities, the internees were mostly civilian Australian residents. They included approximately 700 "naturalised British subjects" and some 70 "native-born British subjects" who were Australian by birth, sometimes second- or even third-generation Australians of German ancestry.

At the end of the war, a total of 6150 persons were "repatriated" - that is, summarily shipped to Germany: a mass deportation unparalleled in Australian history. Of these, 5414 had been interned, the others were family members or non-interned "ex-enemy aliens" who either accepted the government's offer to be repatriated or were ordered to leave the country.

Six hundred and ninety-nine people were compulsorily deported. The internees who had been brought to Australia from British dominions overseas were not allowed to return to their previous places of residence. They were all summarily deported.

Most of the internees consented to leave Australia voluntarily. They were convinced that there was no future for them in a country that had robbed them of their rights and freedom. A few protested and appealed to stay, only to be rejected by the Aliens Tribunal that had been set up by the Department of Defence.

The tribunal, consisting of a single magistrate, rubber-stamped the applications according to the guidelines issued by the government. As a rule, businessmen and importers were to be deported, while farmers - who were said to "have shown themselves of less potential danger than the German businessman" - were allowed to stay, unless there were unspecified "special reasons".

Workingmen were to be deported "if there seems to be any doubt of their obtaining regular employment" after the war. Here, as elsewhere, the official language with its curious linguistic construction - that is, some individuals had shown themselves to be less potentially dangerous - reveals the real political motivation hiding behind the bureaucratic rhetoric.

When the war ended in November 1918, the government was confronted with the task of organising the transport of thousands of deportees. While negotiations were underway with the British government to requisition ships, 104 internees died of the worldwide pneumonic influenza that struck Australia in 1919.

The last prisoners were released on May 5, 1920, a year after the Treaty of Versailles had come into effect. They included 14 "mentally feeble" internees (of the 50 who had been brought to the Holdsworthy camp from insane asylums around Australia) who were transferred back to their original institutions. The other 36 had either died or had already been put on ships to be "repatriated".

By the end of the war, the once proud and highly visible German-Australian community had disintegrated. German immigrants, if they had not been deported, had gone into assimilationist hiding. It was the end of a process towards a multicultural society that would eventually lead to an independent Australian nation - or so had been the hope of the spokesmen of the German-Australian community who had publicly proposed the notion of a republican Australian citizenship as early as the 1870s.

How can one explain the Australian homefront experience during the Great War: the extraordinary conversion by which an apparently peaceful, largely homogenous, "optimistic" society with strong traditions of British-style liberal democracy based on constitutional rule of law, turned into a violent, aggressive, conflict-ridden society, torn apart by invisible lines of sectarian division, ethnic conflict and socio-economic and political upheaval?

How did domestic co-operation and laissez faire change into spiteful intolerance and blatant injustice?

The war at home against an imaginary enemy, waged by a government that called on the Australian people to assist in every way possible, fuelled a jingoistic atmosphere of demarcation and exclusion. Its aim was to emphasise the "Britishness" of Australian society and to reinforce its links to the Empire.

As a civil, pluralistic, liberal and democratic society, Australia did not pass the test of the crisis brought about by the Great War in Europe. The country suffered a setback in its political culture from which it did not recover until long after the next world war which, with regard to the treatment of "enemy aliens", was largely a repetition of the experiences of 1914-18.

It was another 60 years before Carl Mücke's 19th-century dream of an Australia with citizens who felt able to embrace multiple identities began to be revived following the postwar immigration program, which doubled the population and gave birth to a new multiculturalism. In a forerunner of other apologies, it took almost a century before the "shameful discrimination" and its consequences were to be acknowledged.
You can read a longer version of this article and others from the Griffith Review's latest edition on the enduring legacies of war here.

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German experience in Australia during WW1 damaged road to multiculturalism

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The Gallipoli centenary provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the many wartime legacies - human, political, economic, military - that forged independent nations from former colonies and dominions. The Conversation, in partnership with Griffith Review, is publishing a series of essays exploring the enduring legacies of 20th-century wars.

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Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), a joint facility of UTS and UNSW Faculties of Law.

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Changing a town's name for boxes of butter

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Changing a town's name for boxes of butter

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The reactions to German's living in Australia during war time.

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Posted September 13, 2016 10:48:45

It is a story of butter, a German chancellor and a Scottish general.

While World War I was raging and many young Australian men were signing up to fight, it was certainly not the rage to have a town in country Queensland linked to the enemy.

Bismarck was the name of a small town on Queensland's Darling Downs. It got its name from a nearby mountain, named after Otto von Bismarck, when a local cattle farmer rode past it in the 1800s.

"There were a lot of German settlers here," said Royce Jensen, who has lived in the area for most of his life.

The area had a thriving dairy industry, and the town's main butter factory was named the Mt Bismarck Butter Factory.

"It could have even had a picture of Otto von Bismarck on the [butter] wrapping," Mr Jensen said.

That presented a problem when the war started.

Town legend says when wharfies in Brisbane and England unpacked the boxes at the docks - and saw a portrait of Bismarck on it - the butter didn't last long.

"There's a story that it was thrown in the water," Mr Jensen said.

"It was the wrong name for that time."

To keep the butter out of the ocean, the local post office manager decided the town needed a name change.

"He had a son serving under Brigadier General Maclagan, and suggested they call the town Maclagan," Mr Jensen explained.

"And that's what it has been called ever since."

The dairying area had a large German population and Mr Jensen said local families accepted the name change as "something that had to be done to keep selling the butter".

"As far as we know, the German families were mostly treated well during the war but some of them anglicised their names to make them sound a bit better," he said.

Mr Jensen said despite the town's name change, the district had held onto its German roots.

"There's a lot of mettwurst still made in the area," he said.

The butter factory closed down in the 1970s, but the building still stands and Janine Maynard operates a metal works from the site.

"We lost our butter and then they sunk the Bismarck, so the world lost a lot of things with that name on it," she laughed.

Ms Maynard has German heritage, and said time had healed any wounds of the First World War.

"Everybody's quite happy to call themselves German these days," she said.

"But we're not going to change the name of the town back!"

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Century since Queensland town changed its name because of butter

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Posted September 13, 2016 10:48:45 It is a story of butter, a German chancellor and a Scottish general. While World War I was raging and many young Australian men were signing up to fight, it was certainly not the rage to have a town in country Queensland linked to the enemy.

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8 War Heroes That Were Real Animals - Mental Floss

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8 War Heroes That Were Real Animals - Mental Floss

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War heroes comes in all shapes and sizes-and species. You know dogs and horses have served in the military since antiquity, but there are also other species that rose to the occasion with training, loyalty, and bravery. Here are the stories of just a few animal war heroes who represent their species well.

1. Sgt. Bill // Canadian Hero of World War I

A train full of Canadian soldiers bought a goat as a mascot while they were passing through Broadview, Saskatchewan. They managed to avoid quarantine and smuggle the goat into France. Bill stayed with his unit, suffering shrapnel wounds, shell shock, and trench foot. He went missing once, and was once arrested for eating military equipment. Yet he was credited with saving at least three lives when he head-butted men into a trench to avoid an exploding shell.

Sgt. Bill was honored with the 1914 Star, the General Service Medal, and the Victory Medal for his war efforts, and, after being retired, returned to Saskatchewan. After he died, the goat was mounted and is now a part of the Broadview Museum. The hero goat of World War I is the subject of an upcoming movie, The Invincible Sgt. Bill.

2. Siwash // Marine Duck

The First Battalion of the Tenth Marine Regiment managed to acquire a duck named Siwash as a mascot. Supposedly, a Marine won the duck in a poker game in New Zealand. Siwash accompanied the Marines to the Battle of Tarawa in 1943, where the animal engaged in hand-to-hand (or wing-to-wing) combat with a Japanese rooster. A citation was published in LIFE magazine a year later:

For courageous action and wounds received on Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, November 1943. With utter disregard for his own personal safety, Siwash, upon reaching the beach, without hesitation engaged the enemy in fierce combat, namely, one rooster of Japanese ancestry, and though wounded on the head by repeated pecks, he soon routed the opposition. He refused medical aid until all wounded members of his section had been care of.

Siwash was referred to as "he" during the war, and then "she" in her retirement at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Trained zoo personnel probably could tell better than the Marines. Still, it's sad that she had to hide her gender in order to serve. Siwash lived until 1954, when she died of a liver ailment. According to Siwash's obituary, the duck's death had no connection to her "fondness for beer." A service was held at a taxidermist's shop.

3. Sgt. Reckless // Korean War Combat Veteran

In 1952, a young Korean sold his beloved race horse Ah Chim Hai (Flame in the Morning) to the U.S. Marines so he could purchase a prosthetic leg for his sister, who had lost her limb to a land mine. The Marines renamed the mare Reckless. She was very friendly with the troops, sharing their rations, entering their quarters, and snuggling with them on cold nights. Reckless's appetite was famous: She loved candy, beer, eggs, and coffee-anything the Marines ate-and would even eat poker chips or a hat if she was feeling stubborn.

Reckless was used to carry ammunition. Her finest hour came during the five-day Battle of Outpost Vega in March of 1953, when she made 51 trips to the front in just one day -most of them unaccompanied-to ferry ammunition in and wounded Marines out. That was a total of 9000 pounds of ammunition, and over 35 miles of walking under enemy fire. Reckless was wounded twice, but kept going.

For her bravery, Reckless was promoted to Staff Sergeant. She was eventually awarded two Purple Hearts and a slew of other medals. After the war, Sgt. Reckless was shipped to the U.S. She arrived in San Francisco on November 10, 1954 (the Marine Corps birthday), and was feted at the Marine Corps Birthday Ball that evening, where she ate both the cake and the flowers. Just before a parade was held for her promotion, she ate her custom-made blanket, and a substitute had to be constructed quickly to hold her medals. Sgt. Reckless lived peacefully at Camp Pendleton until her death in 1968.

4. Wojtek // Polish Artillery Bear of World War II

Wojtek (also spelled Voytek) was a Persian bear cub who was adopted by a unit of Polish soldiers training under the British Army in the Middle East during World War II. The 22nd Transport Company, Artillery Division raised him the best they could to be a good soldier. Wojtek fit in quite well-his favorite activities included wrestling, drinking beer, and taking showers. When the unit was deployed to Europe, the only way they could take Wojtek with them was to make him an official soldier. So he became Corporal Wojtek of the artillery supply unit. And he was good at that job.

The bear's finest hour came during the Battle of Monte Cassino, when he loaded 100-pound boxes of artillery shells into trucks all day long, every day until the battle was won. The army honored Wojtek's service by putting his image, carrying ammo, on the unit's official badge. After the war, Wojtek was housed at the Edinburgh Zoo until his death in 1963. Wojtek is to be the subject of an upcoming film.

5. Joe // Carrier Pigeon

Quite a few carrier pigeons were honored for their service in war, but Joe was an American pigeon from Fort Monmouth, N.J., the first non-British animal to be awarded the Dicken Medal. Joe performed an important task during a British advance on the town of Calvi Vecchia, Italy. As they were moving in, the Germans abandoned the town, just ahead of a planned U.S. air strike. As Rob Lammle wrote in a piece for mental_floss last year,

Radio communications couldn't reach the airfield 20 miles away, so a message was strapped to Joe and he was sent to the air. The bird flew at an amazing clip, covering the entire 20 miles in only 20 minutes. His message reached the airfield just as the bombers were taxiing for take off. With only five minutes to spare, the bombing run was canceled, saving the lives of at least 1000 British troops.

Joe retired to the Detroit Zoological Gardens until he died in 1961 at age 18. His body was mounted and displayed for years at Fort Monmouth, which closed in 2011.

6. Sgt. Stubby // Hero Dog of World War I

Stubby wandered into the encampment and was adopted by the 102nd infantry of Massachusetts in 1917. When the infantry shipped out to Europe, Stubby was smuggled onto the ship bound for France. During World War I, Stubby kept watch and alerted the troops to German attacks. He was wounded by a hand grenade, gassed several times, and once found a German spy and held him by the seat of the pants until American troops could complete the capture.

When his master, Corporal J. Robert Conroy was wounded, Stubby accompanied him to the hospital and made rounds to cheer the troops. He eventually became a highly decorated dog, amassing medals for service, campaigns, and battles, a Purple Heart, and various veteran's awards. A group of French women made Stubby a chamois blanket decorated with Allied flags to display his medals.

Stubby returned home at the end of the war and became quite the celebrity. He was made a lifetime member of the American Legion, the YMCA, and the Red Cross. He lived at the Y and made recruiting tours for the Red Cross. When Stubby passed on in 1926, he was preserved and displayed with his medals at the Smithsonian Institution.

7. Simon // Ship's Cat

Simon was born in 1947 in Hong Kong. As a half-grown cat, he was taken aboard the HMS Amethyst to control rats. In 1949, the ship was attacked on the Yangtze River in China by communists. Simon was wounded and not found for days. The injured sailors had been evacuated, so the ship's doctor nursed Simon's facial burns and shrapnel wounds. As Simon recovered, he resumed rat catching, but also added visiting sick and wounded sailors to his list of duties.

Upon return to Hong Kong, Simon was presented with a campaign ribbon and news that he would receive a Dicken Medal, an award for animal gallantry. When the Amethyst reached England, Simon had to go into quarantine; sadly, he developed an infection and died just before his planned formal medal ceremony. The veterinarian believed the young cat would have recovered if his war wounds hadn't weakened him. Simon was buried in a specially-made casket with full naval honors.

8. Tirpitz // Swimming German Pig of World War I

Tirpitz was a pig carried on the German warship SMS Dresden in 1914 as a food source. The Dresden was sunk in battle with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Glasgow off the coast of South America during the Battle of Más a Tierra. Tirpitz managed to escape the sinking ship and swam towards the Glasgow. The crew brought him aboard and adopted him as a mascot, named him after German admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, and awarded him the Iron Cross for bravery.

After a year aboard the Glasgow, he was transferred to the Whale Island Gunnery School in Portsmouth. Tirpitz was eventually auctioned off as pork, but in his final act he raised £1785 for the British Red Cross. His head was mounted and can be seen at the Imperial War Museum in London. Tirpitz's trotters (feet) were made into handles for a carving set that traveled with the Glasgow in World War II, giving Tirpitz the dubious honor of serving aboard the ship in two wars.

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War heroes comes in all shapes and sizes-and species. You know dogs and horses have served in the military since antiquity, but there are also other species that rose to the occasion with training, loyalty, and bravery. Here are the stories of just a few animal war heroes who represent their species well.