What Remains



The Somme battlefield 97 years on



     "How did they fight the battle with all these monuments in the way?" was an actual question that was asked at the Gettysburg National Military Park. It was gently explained that the monuments in question were in fact erected after the fighting had ceased. To many, a visit to an actual battlefield can be many things depending on one's level of interest. It can be somber and reflective, intriguing, morbid or it can be confusing. With Gettysburg, it became a tourist attraction quite literally when there were still dead soldiers carpeting the fields. Throughout the long years, as Gettysburg became a national park, the landscape changed somewhat but not dramatically. Today, there is a policy within the National Park Service to return the battlefield exactly to it's appearance as it was in July of 1863. To this end, orchards have been replanted, large areas have been clear-cut of trees and much vegetation has been cleared away. The effect has been a dramatic vision of the battlefield as the soldiers of 1863 saw it. The exception here being the paved roads and monuments, of course.

     For the battlefields of the 20th century, in particular WW1 and WW2, change in the landscape can either be dramatic or nonexistent depending on where one is. In the area around the French town of Verdun which was the scene of brutal fighting in 1916 there are still areas today known as "Zone rouge" (red zone) due to catastrophic damage to the environment which has rendered the land uninhabitable and unusable for farming and forestry due to the soil being poisoned by human remains, gas and unexploded munitions. Two of the main forts near Verdun, Ft. Vaux and Ft. Douaumont have been preserved as they were as well as the surrounding land. Although green grass now grows where only a sea of mud once existed, one can still clearly see the pockmarks of shell holes and shallow trenches. In the red zones, unexploded shells, human bones and rusted equipment litter the surface of the ground and are clearly visible even today.

     Much of the Western Front today has been erased from the land due to farming and expansion. Many of the battlefields were farmland back then and are still farms today. Farmers still regularly plow up shells, grenades and other deadly relics from the intense fighting that once raged over their land. It is estimated that one in four shells from WW1 never detonated and lie sleeping in the soil. To this end, the French Department of Mine Clearance recovers and destroys about 900 tons of rusted ordinance each year and it is estimated that this work will continue for the next twenty five years or so such is the staggering number of shells that were fired during the Great War.

     Many of the battlefields of the Second World War are in a similar state. With housing and industry expanding at an exponential rate, it's almost impossible to find what would be considered a "pristine" battlefield in this day and age. The exception here would be certain islands in the Pacific, such as Peleliu, which up until recently were largely untouched since the fighting ended. As little as ten years ago, one could still walk the trails and find rusted helmets, canteens and human remains in the numerous caves. Today, thanks to relic hunters and looters, this is no longer the case. Over on what was once the Eastern Front, many of the more obscure battlefields remain largely untouched in remote areas in Estonia and Latvia. Recently, some remarkable relics in pristine condition have been found in the numerous peat bogs that dot the area. Tanks, weapons, equipment and even human remains were found in incredible states of preservation due to the natural preservatives of the bogs.

      Despite all this, one constant remains. The land itself changes over time. The war torn landscape heals itself bit by bit. Shell holes and trenches fill in, barbed wire rusts away to dust, concrete bunkers crumble away and trees sprout up and grow thick over what was once barren and shell torn land. With very few exceptions, it's now all but impossible to stand on a battlefield and get a clear vision of what the area once looked like. Perhaps it's really for the best that way.

The Worst Place on Earth

When speaking of the Holocaust in Europe, one tends to think of such monstrosities as Auschwitz, Chelmno, Treblinka and others. Today the names of these appalling places are burned into our collective minds and rightly so. However few have heard of the concentration/extermination camps that existed in Yugoslavia. One in particular, Jasenovac, was the epitome of savage barbarity and cruelty so extreme it’s hard to fathom in this day and age.

Built in August of 1941 by the fascist Ustase regime, Jasenovac became an extermination camp for ethnic Serbs, Jews and Roma. The camp actually consisted of five subcamps spread out over eighty one square miles on both banks of the Sava and Una rivers in what is now the Independent State of Croatia. The actual extermination grounds were located in the village of Donja Gradina.

The exact numbers of people killed is still unknown to this day. The US Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. estimates that between 77,000 and 100,000 people were murdered in the three and a half years the camp was in operation. Some scholars believe that number is actually closer to 700,000.

In April of 1941, the independent state of Croatia was founded and supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Croatia adopted similar racial and political policies that the Nazis followed in that their goal was the complete destruction of Jews and Roma, but the main goal of the Ustase regime was the total annihilation of the Serb people.

The conditions for the inmates were perhaps worse at Jasenovac than at other similar camps. There was no potable water so the prisoners were forced to drink from the Sava River. The barracks were filled with decomposing corpses and unimaginable filth which quickly spread diseases like typhus, dysentery and diphtheria.

The Ustase were particularly adept at generating fear and anxiety through extreme acts of cruelty in which the prisoners were forced to witness. Often, they would be kept standing for hours while a small number were selected at random to be tortured and killed in full view. Many times just for sport, the guards would drown prisoners in the open air latrines by either tossing the weakest ones in, or by physically holding them under.

The guards would often make bets with each other as to how many inmates they could slaughter. One guard, Petar Brizica, used a special curved knife blade normally used for cutting wheat to slash the throats of over 1300 newly arrived prisoners.

The Ustase would also cremate prisoners alive who were still conscious and awake. Others were killed by hammers, saws and blunt instruments and others still would be disemboweled and thrown into the river while still alive. All of this being done with the implicit approval of the Nazi overlords. The Ustase even ran a camp for Jewish, Serbian and Roma children. The Sisak children’s concentration camp housed over 6,000 children aged 3 to 16 in deplorable conditions. Over 4,000 of them perished often at the barbaric hands of the guards who took special delight in killing the tiny helpless victims.

The end of Jasenovac came in April of 1945 as Yugoslavian partisans started to approach the camp. The Ustase attempted to speed up the killings which resulted in a camp revolt on April 22^nd.  Over 600 prisoners revolted and 520 were killed with only 80 escaping into the surrounding woods. The Ustase then killed the remaining prisoners and set fire to the camps leaving nothing but ash and bones behind.

After the war, Yugoslavian president Josip Tito sought to erase the memory of the Ustase crimes as a way of uniting his countrymen and this policy continued into recent times. The Jasenovac Memorial Site was officially opened to the public on July 4^th, 1966 and continues to be reinterpreted to this very day. Most of the physical evidence of the camp has been lost, much of it by the Ustase as they attempted to hide all evidence of their crime. Only depressions in the ground and the occasional foundation can be seen today alongside memorials such as the massive Stone Flower, offer any tangible evidence of the massive and sadistic crime that was committed.

The Mines of Messines

     Captain Oliver Woodward wiped the sweat from his eyes and carefully placed the stethoscope to the clay wall in the gallery. Nothing.........the German sappers were still unaware that beneath their feet lay close to 70,000 pounds of ammonal explosive. Mining under ones enemy was not a new concept and had been a method used in siege warfare since ancient times. Now on the Western Front, it was about to enjoy a brief and violent resurgence in what was to be known as the Battle of Messines.

     With a trench system stretching from the Swiss border to the North Sea, the Western Front was a static battlefield that quickly degenerated into a bloody war of attrition. Ground taken by either side could be measured in yards, not miles. The allies were desperate to break the German lines while avoiding a catastrophic loss of life like they had experiences during the Battle of the Somme in July of 1916. To this end, it was decided to dig a series of mines under the German trenches, pack them with tons of explosives, then right before the assault, detonate the mine which would create a massive crater which could then be occupied and reinforced. This was tried on July 1st, 1916 when the Hawthorne Ridge mine was detonated under a German redoubt near the village of Beaumont Hamel. Unfortunately, the mine was blown ten minutes too early before the main assault was to begin, so the Germans had enough time to occupy part of the massive crater and the assault failed.

     The British, not wishing a repeat of that disaster decided to dig a series of 21 mines under the German lines in the Ypres Salient. A special unit made up of Australian miners, the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, were brought into the area to dig the mines. Largely made up of veteran miners, the Australians began to dig their way under the German lines starting in September of 1916. Working in depths of over 125 feet deep, the miners used a technique known as "clay-kicking", which was a laborious process in which the miner inserts a special tool with a cup-like end into the soil and then withdraws a sizable chunk which is then placed in a sandbag and handed off to the next man. The advantage to clay-kicking, although labor intensive, it's virtually silent which was a huge consideration when digging under the German lines. Often if a mine was discovered, the Germans would try to counter the mining operations by using a technique called "camouflets", which were small explosive charges designed to collapse the mine tunnels of the allies. On several occasions, desperate hand to hand fighting erupted in the underground galleries between the Australian and Germans.

     Overall, the British had the advantage when it came to digging mines due to their experience and techniques. The could dig quickly and silently, which is something the Germans apparently could not do. By the time of the Battle of Messines on June 7th, 1917, the 22 mines were ready. As was the plan, an artillery barrage began six days earlier and continued up until 2:50 a.m. on June 7th. Two parachute flares were then fired, and the German defenders rushed back to their forward positions thinking an infantry assault was eminent. At 3:10 a.m., 19 mines were simultaneously detonated in what at the time was the greatest man-made explosion in history. The blast lit up the night sky around the Messines Ridge in what was described as a "pillar of fire". Over ten thousand German soldiers were obliterated in the explosion that could be heard and felt over 20 miles away. Some even claim the shockwave was felt as far away as London. The largest mine created a crater over 40 feet deep and over 250 feet in diameter. Surviving Germans soldiers were completely disoriented by the blast and many cried in pure terror at what they had just witnessed. Immediately after the detonations, the British artillery fire resumed in a creeping barrage that screened the advance of the infantry. By noon of that day, all the intended target of the assault had been reached and the majority of the Messiens Ridge was now in British hands. Overall, the attack into the Ypres Salient was a resounding success thanks to the tactics of using mines, artillery, tanks and infantry. As for the remaining three mines that did not go off, one was discovered by the Germans prior to the attack and dismantled, one detonated on June 17th, 1955 when lightening struck a steel pylon that had been erected over the location of the hidden mine and the one remaining mine has yet to go off although the authorities believe they have identified it's location. As for Captain Woodward, he survived the war and passed away quietly at the age of 80 in Hobart, Tasmania.

A Most Valiant Action

     It was a little after 4:30 in the morning when 33 year old Captain Edward Bradbury roused the men of “L” Battery, Royal Horse Artillery from their slumber just outside the French village of Nery. It was September 1^st, 1914 and the British and French troops were engaged in a long, fighting retreat to the River Marne on the Western Front. The German army, acting under the Schlieffen Plan, had plowed through the allied attempt to stop their push to Paris. In what was to become known as the Retreat from Mons, the British and French troops were engaged in a desperate fighting retreat to stop the marauding Germans from reaching the capital city. The conflict known as The Great War had begun on July 28^th, 1914 with a declaration of war by Austria-Hungary against Serbia. Great Britain declared war on Germany on August 4^th after Germany ignored a British ultimatum that Belgium be kept neutral. War had now come and the world would never be the same again.

     The men of “L” Battery were stood down to rest due to the fact a thick fog had enveloped the town of Nery and the surrounding countryside. Visibility was down to nothing, so the men were ordered to rest, prepare breakfast, and water their horses. At this time, horses were used to transport the quick firing thirteen pounder guns of the Royal Horse Artillery. Although the men were stood down, they kept the horses harnessed to the guns, but with the limbers lowered to ease their burden. At 5:25 a.m., a patrol from the British 11^th Hussars encountered a large force of German cavalry just outside the village and raced back to alert the gun crews. About 20 minutes later, machine-gun and artillery fire began from the heights overlooking the village. The German 4^th Cavalry Division had signaled it was surrounded by a “considerable hostile force” and were now trying to counter-attack what they thought was a large number of British cavalry. The German commander, realizing what was going on, ordered a dismounted attack on the village itself.

      Down in the village of Nery, the German gunfire caused panic amongst the horses of the cavalry and artillery, many of which bolted leaving the guns immobilized where they now stood.  The overall commander of “L” Battery was knocked unconscious by a shell blast and it was Captain Bradbury who now took command. He managed to get three guns into position to counter the twelve or so German guns up on the ridge. Two of the thirteen pounders were knocked out almost immediately, which just left the one remaining gun. That one remaining gun, under direction of Captain Bradbury, Sgt David Nelson and Sergeant-Major Thomas Dorrell kept up a steady fire, which drew the German artillery fire away from the British cavalry. Captain Bradbury was acting as an ammunition bearer when a shell fragment tore off one of his legs. Although bleeding to death, he continued to direct the gunfire until he died. Sgts Dorrell and Nelson continued to fire the gun until reinforcements arrived around 8 a.m. As a result of the gunfire from the single thirteen pounder gun of “L” Battery, the British cavalry regiments were able to outflank the German cavalry which was attempting an attack on the village itself and were able to force them to retreat taking approximately seventy eight German prisoners. Three Victoria Crosses were awarded to “L” Battery that day, one going to Captain Edward Bradbury who was killed in the action, the other two going to Sergeant-Major George Dorrell and Sergeant David Nelson. Nelson was killed in April 1918 while Dorrell survived the war and would reach the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He served in the Home Guard during the Second World War and died at the age of 90 in 1971. The three Victoria Cross medals as well as the actual thirteen pounder gun used in the engagement, now called the “Nery Gun”, can be seen today at the Imperial War Museum in London. In an unusual honor, L Battery had the title of “Nery” added to their official name. They are now known as “L (Nery) Battery, RHA Tactical Group Battery”.



The Ghost of the Grand Banks

It was close to midnight on a moonless April night when lookout Frederick Fleet spotted the giant iceberg in the path of the great ship. The berg loomed out of the dark, calm sea like a phantom. He rang the bell in the crows-nest three times and then telephoned the bridge of the Royal Mail Ship Titanic where Sixth Officer James Moody was on duty.

“What do you see?” asked Moody into the handset

Fleet replied “Iceberg right ahead!”

Moody relayed the message to First Officer William Murdoch who ordered “Hard a’starboard!” and he also rang “Full Astern” on the ship’s engine order telegraphs. The process of setting the engines in reverse as well as physically turning the ships’s tiller took precious minutes as the berg loomed into view. It would have probably saved the great ship had Murdoch simply turned the wheel while maintaining the forward speed. The forward momentum with the change in direction would have caused the Titanic to miss the berg by several feet.

Sadly, this is not what happened. Instead, the ship hit the massive berg with a glancing blow to the starboard side. It is now thought that a large underwater spur of ice caused sections of the hull to buckle at the seams which caused a fatal amount of water to enter the ship. Scientist in recent years have put the blame on the iron rivets that were used to hold the plates together. It was discovered that the iron used in the rivets was an inferior quality and was in fact quite brittle. Continuous immersion in near freezing sea water did little to help this situation.

It was all over by 2:28 A.M. when the stern section of the RMS Titanic disappeared under the frigid North Atlantic. All told, one thousand five hundred and fourteen souls went to their deaths that dark April 15^th night. Either drowning in the ice cold salt water or freezing to death as they bobbed on the surface.

One hundred years later to the day, the sinking of the RMS Titanic remains a maritime tragedy that continues to haunt and fascinate us to no end. Hundreds of books, films, and songs commemorate the appalling tragedy like no other. In terms of lives lost, the Titanic was nowhere near some of the later disasters that struck. In 1945, the MV Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by a Soviet submarine with a loss of over nine thousand lives and more recently, the passenger ferry MV Dona Paz collided with an oil tanker and sank with the loss of over forty three hundred lives in 1987.

But it is the sinking of the Titanic that continues to haunt our collective imagination for a hundred years now. Many have pointed to the sinking as a metaphor for the end of the Edwardian era with its ferocious class distinction; in death all are equal. Multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor IV went to his death on the Titanic along with hundreds of second and third class passengers. At the time, Astor was the wealthiest passenger aboard.

Today, the wreck of the great ship lies on the sea bed of the Atlantic Ocean in a little over twelve thousand feet of water. Up until 1985, it was assumed the Titanic sank in one piece, however Robert Ballard discovered the wreckage had in fact split in two and was in much worse condition than anyone could have guessed. It has since been decided that the bow section of the ship broke off and plowed into the mud of the sea bed going about 40 MPH. The stern section continued to float for a short while before corkscrewing its way to the bottom. Much of the superstructure was sheared off during the decent which created a massive debris field around the wreckage. The bodies of the victims settled into the debris field as well and over time nothing remained except their leather tanned shoes, which have resisted decay and scavengers. Photos taken of a pair of shoes lying on the ocean floor are a mute witness to the human cost of the tragedy. Recent expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic have revealed that iron-eating bacteria are rapidly reducing the superstructure of the ship and it has been estimated that in less than fifty years time, the entire wreck will collapse as a pile of rust on the sea floor. Fortunately at the urging of Bob Ballard, UNESCO has declared the shipwreck a world heritage site that will protect the remains from future scavenging by souvenir hunters. Perhaps now at long last, the great ship can rest in the watery blackness that has been her grave for a hundred years.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

On April 19th, we observe Holocaust Remembrance Day in the US. The date comes from the Hebrew calendar and coincides to the 27th day of Nisan. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising which began on April 19th through May 16th 1943, which was the largest single revolt by the Jews during the Holocaust. In the end, the uprising was brutally crushed by the Nazis with some 13,000 Jews killed during the fighting and the remaining 50,000 residents captured and sent off to concentration and extermination camps, notably Treblinka.
In protest of the inaction of the western governments to intervene in the wholesale destruction of the Jewish people, Polish socialist politician and a Jew himself, Szmul Zygielbojm committed suicide in London to draw attention to the slaughter. His final statement was “I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people”.
Last week, I was fortunate enough to be in attendance at a talk given by Holocaust survivor Israel Arbeiter, who painfully recalled his experiences at Auschwitz when he was in his early teens. Izzy, as he is known, was the sole survivor of a mass killing at the camp when an entire building full of people, 85 in all, were liquidated by the Nazis….he was number 86. He expressed his very sincere appreciation and thanks to the liberators of WW2, several of whom shared the stage with him.
Remembrance of the Holocaust began even when the fighting was still going on in Europe. As the camps were discovered, the allies began a careful and thorough documentation process, much of which was used as evidence in the Nuremburg Trials. The camps themselves, in many cases, were left standing as a permanent memorial to the largest crime in human history. Today, the remaining concentration and extermination camps are protected as UNESCO World Heritage Sites and stand as a stark contrast to those who would deny the Holocaust happened.
Aiding in the remembrance of the Holocaust is the testimony of the people who were at the camps and ghettos as well as the veterans who liberated these charnel-houses and saw for themselves what human beings are capable of. In one extreme case, US troops from the 157 Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division were so horrified and sickened by what they saw when they liberated Dachau that they rounded up and shot close to 50 German guards in a tearful rage. The young G.I.’s had never encountered anything like this before, but they would carry it with them for the rest of their lives. My late grandfather helped to liberate a sub-camp of Dachau and refused to speak of what he had witnessed there.
Ironically, it was the Nazis themselves that provided some of the best evidence of the Holocaust in the form of meticulous records. Today, these records are a chilling, but effective example of a planned genocide that targeted a specific group of people. It wasn’t some random crime of hate, but a very deliberate attempt to depopulate much of Europe’s Jewry.
At the end of his talk, Izzy Arbeiter uttered the statement that the Holocaust must “Never, ever be allowed to happen again!”, but sadly genocide continues in the 67 years since the end of the Second World War. During the 1970’s it was Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, in the 80’s it was El Salvadorian death squads killing thousands of innocent people, in the 90’s it was Rawanda and the Balkans and more recently it was Dafur. Granted, none of these events reached the level of the Holocaust of the 1940’s, but genocide still continues to be a tool of war in many parts of the world where stability is lacking and warlords are allowed to run amuck. Perhaps the greatest monument to the Holocaust we could ever build would be the complete elimination of genocide in any form. I would like to think that some day in the future we can look back upon these dark events and truthfully say “Never Again!”

Death in a high place

It was late June 2005, in the Hindu Kush mountain range that snaked between Afghanistan and Pakistan like a gossamer barrier. The border meant very little to the legions of hardened Taliban fighters who would routinely cross over into neighboring Pakistan to escape the Americans who were hunting them. These wild men of Afghanistan were seasoned mountain fighters used to moving quickly through impossible terrain and attacking en masse.
To Navy SEALs Mike Murphy, Danny Dietz, Marcus Luttrell and Matt Axelson it was a mission to be completed. The SEALs were part of a reconnaissance and surveillance team inserted just south of a mountain known as Sawtalo Sar and were tasked with observing, identifying and either killing or capturing Ahmad Shah, a local anti-coalition militia leader.
The SEAL team fast-roped from their MH-47 Chinook piloted by members of the elite US Army Special Operations Aviation Regiment and immediately set out for the summit of the mountain near the village where Shah was thought to be holed up in. It was dark and freezing cold by the time the men arrived at their overwatch position high up on the Sawtalo Sar. The real problem was a lack of vegetation or indeed finding anything larger than a pebble to hide behind, but the resourceful SEALs made due. They stayed in their area until mid-morning when the blazing sun half-baked the men alive in their exposed position. It was around this time that the SEAL team had an unexpected visitor in the form of three local shepherds and their flock of sheep. The SEALs forced the three Afghans to sit down while they debated what to do with them. According to survivor Marcus Luttrell, the team discussed possibly killing the unarmed shepherds to avoid compromise, but no one was comfortable with that idea. In the end, they simply let the three men go and almost immediately regretted it when not more than 30 minutes later, they were under attack by a group of 20-30 enraged Talibans armed with AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades. The battle lasted for several hours in a heroic feat of arms that should go down in history alongside Rorke’s Drift and the Lost Battalion. Slowly, the SEALs began to loose the gun battle and take serious injuries. Although the SEALs are trained and schooled to be the best war-fighters on earth, they are not bullet proof and they can only carry so much ammunition per man. The SEALs made several attempts to contact their combat operations center, eventually getting through by using an iridium satellite phone. Despite the calls for help, the only one left alive was Marcus Luttrell, who was discovered by a friendly Pashtun who gave him shelter in his village.
It was around this time that an even bigger tragedy involving the special operations fighters was happening. Knowing that a SEAL team was in peril, a massive rescue operation was under way. A quick reaction force was launched consisting of several helicopters filled with operators from various SEAL teams as well as SOAR personnel.
As the rescue force closed in, one of Shah’s fighters scored a direct hit with an RPG below the rear rotor of one of the MH-47’s. The rocket propelled grenade took out the transmission and rotor which caused the big aircraft to plummet to the ground like a stone killing all aboard. The loss of the three SEALs, combined with the eight on board the ill-fated helicopter as well as eight Special Operations Aviators was at the time the greatest loss of life in the special warfare community to date.
To the Taliban on the ground, it was a great victory. They looted the wreckage and the dead soldiers for weapons and equipment and even found a laptop with sensitive information on it. All in all, it was a disaster and a stunning blow for the Special Operations Command. In keeping with their creed “No man left behind”, the bodies of the sixteen operators as well as the three SEALs were recovered. Ahmad Shah and his cell of fighters returned to the area of the ambush three weeks later and continued to be a hostile presence in the area until he was killed in a gun battle with Pakistani police in April 2008. For survivor Marcus Luttrell, he owes his life to the friendly Pashtun named Gulab Khan and the other villagers who gave him sanctuary and refused to hand him over to the Taliban. Luttrell, through Gulab, was able to contact a Marine commander based in Asadabad who was finally able to extract him despite the fact that Luttrell had been moved several times to avoid capture. For his efforts in aiding an American, Gulab was threatened with death by the Taliban and was forced to relocate to Asadabad, near the American base. On September 14th, 2006, SEAL Team members, Matthew Axelson and Danny Dietz were posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for “undaunted courage and heroism” Marcus Luttrell was awarded the Navy Cross in a ceremony at the White House and in 2007, Lt. Michael Murphy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the battle on the Sawtelo Sar.