The Great War: A Centennial Martin Link

THE GREAT WAR

This ocean freighter was specially designed to carry a dozen or so bi-winged Army planes to England and France. This ship probably carried ammunition and weapons in its hull. Pvt. Lester Grisham took the photo.

By Martin Link

It was a warm, balmy summer day in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo, and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife decided to go out for lunch. Afterwards, as the chauffeur was driving them back to their palace, a young man, an antimonarchist, was waiting. The assassin fired two shots into the car that killed both the Archduke and his wife, Sophie. It was the afternoon of June 28, 1914. The Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph blamed the small countries of Bosnia-Serbia, but their governments refused to apologize. Soon, other neighboring countries took sides and old animosities reared their ugly heads. On August 4th, all the major countries had mobilized their military forces and a state of war engulfed the European continent. The Central Powers included Germany, East Prussia, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey (the Ottoman Empire). The Eastern Allies included Russia, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, Greece, and Romania, while the Western Allies included France, Great Britain, Portugal, Italy, Australia, Belgium, and North Africa. The Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain (which was engulfed in its own brutal civil war), and the United States managed to remain neutral.

For almost four and a half years, these countries pounded each other into rubble, establishing complex defensive lines that ran for approximately 450 miles from the Belgian coast on the North Sea to the border of neutral Switzerland. The generally parallel lines, and the “no-man’s land” in between became the bloody battlegrounds for over a million soldiers on each side.

This Great War saw the introduction of rapidfire machine guns, field telephones, motorized vehicles, flame throwers, armored tanks, and poison gases. Cavalry became obsolete, but air combat and submarine warfare came of age.

In the early months of 1917, the Eastern Front became a bloody shamble. Serbian, Greek, and Romanian forces suffered greatly in their efforts at destroying the remnants of the Ottoman-Turkish Empire, and the Russians and Ukrainians didn’t fare much better in their battles with German and Austrian forces. Then, on March 15th, Czar Nicholas II abdicated, ending the centuries old Romanov Dynasty. He and his entire family were executed a few weeks later. When Russian forces heard of this collapse of their government, whole divisions simply deserted the battle zone, and thousands of soldiers threw down their arms and went home. Later, both a book and a motion picture reflected this dilemma, “All’s Quiet on the Eastern Front.”

This situation also allowed Germany and Austria the opportunity to transfer a large number of divisions over to the Western Front, much to the concern of British and French field commands. At this same time, Germany announced a renewal

This is a picture of my grandfather (on the left) and his brother, my Great-Uncle Otto Garfield Riege. I never got the honor of meeting my uncle Otto as he passed in 1957, 8 years before I was born.

PFC Otto Garfield Riege served in the United States Army during WW1 in Battery E 322 Field Artillery Unit. Unfortunately I do not know much more about him other than stories my dad has shared. My dad has told me that Uncle Otto was gassed during the Meuse Argonne and never fully recovered from that. He never married or had any children. He did say that his uncle loved to fish and to sit out in the yard underneath his favorite tree, read the paper, and smoke his pipe. He was doing just this when he passed. I guess there is no better way to go then to be doing something that you love.

Submitted by Ken Reige

A CENTENNIAL

Eighty-year-old World War I veteran Morris Denetdale from Ft. Defiance could still get into his uniform when he participated in the Navajo Centennial reenactment of the return of the Navajos from Ft. Sumner in 1968.

of unrestricted submarine warfare and soon a number of American ships carrying supplies to England were torpedoed and sunk.

The U. S. Enters the War

President Woodrow Wilson, always a strong advocate for peace and neutrality, now realized that the United States had to get totally involved. On February 3rd, he severed relations with Germany, and on April 2nd, he appeared before Congress and requested that they pass a declaration of war against Germany. On the morning of April 6, 1917, the Senate, and then the House of Representatives, voted to support the President, and the nation was at war.

One of the first appointments was General John J. Pershing, former commandant of Fort Wingate (a street on Gallup’s Northside is named after him), was appointed as overall commander of the U. S. Army, now referred to as the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.). Two of his staff members from his earlier expedition into Mexico against Poncho Villa, Col. George Patton (a street on Gallup’s Eastside is named after him) and Col. Douglas MacArthur (who grew up at Ft. Wingate and then became the most decorated soldier of World War I) were quickly assigned to his staff.

Pershing and his staff faced a monumental problem in getting the U. S. prepared for war. The country had fewer than 200,000 men in the Army and Navy, mostly National Guard units, and its armament from top to bottom was obsolete and hopelessly antiquated. A few new weapons, such as machine guns and cannons that were being produced by American industries, had been shipped off to Britain and France. It took the better part of the year to fully mobilize and arm a military force of over one million men. It was in February 1918 before any American Army Division began to land at Brest, a large docking facility on the west coast of France. As regiments became organized and supplied with arms and mobile units, they were

& Speed Training

Enchantment Physical Therapy 505-863-4199

1900 East Highway 66 Suite A in Butler’s Square

• Customer Service • Sports Medicine • Pain Specialists • Movement Specialists • Strength Training • Neurological Rehabilitation • Functional Retraining • Education • Gym Memberships • Athletic Training • Speed Training

Remember Patients have the Right to Choose their Physical

Therapy Provider!

WE ACCEPT: Medicaid, VA, BC/BS, Tricare, Presbyterian, Summit, Navajo Nation, Worker’s Compensation, AHCCCS, Auto, and many other insurances.

NAVAJO OWNED BUY NAVAJO

assigned to supplement Allied forces from the Belgian province of Flanders to the north to the Chateau-Thierry on the Marne River to the south.

During this time Emperor Franz Joseph died, and his empire, the last remnant of the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire, ceased to exist. Austria, Hungary, and Bosnia soon became separate countries, and their continued involvement on the side of the Central Powers became minimal.

Heavy fighting took place all along the front, but the first major battle involving A.E.F. troops, which included 16 American divisions (665,000 men), took place in the southern sector. Formed up on a 36-mile front, opposite a German salient centered at the medieval castle of St. Mihiel, the British and American forces attacked the Germans on the morning of September 12th. British and French aircraft support, numbering nearly 1,500 planes, was the greatest concentration of airpower yet seen. By Sept. 16th the St. Mihiel salient was eliminated, and A.E.F. forces had reached the Hindenburg line, the German defensive line near their border with France.

For the next two weeks, Allied forces concentrated over a million men along a 45-mile front between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. On the morning of Thursday, September 26th, this massive concentration of troops, tanks, and aircraft launched their offensive. Although some initial gains were made on the right flank, along the Meuse River, the units on the left flank had a horrible time trying to dislodge the Germans from the Argonne Forest, a bloody campaign that would last for 48 days.

Pvt. Paul Jones, who served as Navajo Tribal Chairman for two terms, recalled the time when the Germans shelled his advancing unit with poison gas cylinders. He survived but would have intermittent dizzy spells for the rest of his life.

A member of one of the first U. S. regiments to see action, Pfc. Jessie T. Ritchie of Gallup, died on April 27, 1918, from wounds inflicted by a German machine gun. Pfc. Joseph M. Walling, also from Gallup and a member of one of the early units that supported the British during the battle in Flanders, died of wounds on April 27th.

Most of the Gallup area casualties occurred during the Meuse - Argonne Offensive. Pfc. Charles Harding was killed in action on October 3rd, and Pvt. Chris Peterson was killed in action the next day, October 4th. Pvt. Libracio Jaramillo, from Zuni Pueblo, was killed in action during the early stages of the Argonne Forest campaign.

Doughboy David Yazza, a Navajo from Crownpoint, was with the 60th Infantry and was one of several scouts on a reconnaissance patrol for the 5th Division which was about to cross the Meuse River. By 3:00pm, November 2nd, the scouting party identified five camouflaged machine gun emplacements, but as they began to return to their lines, two machine guns opened fire, and Yazza and a couple of other scouts were killed instantly. On the same day in another section of the line manned by units of the U.S. Marine Corps, 2nd Lt. Palmer Ketner, Jr. died of wounds inflicted a couple of days earlier when his unit stormed a German trench. First Lt. John Wesley Green, who was second in command of Co. G in Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the SpanishAmerican War of 1898, also served in the A.E.F. (Green St. in South Gallup is named in his honor).

On October 30th, Turkey, the last country of what was left of the Ottoman Empire, quit the war, and on November 3rd, Austria concluded an armistice with the Allies. Both German Field Marshalls, Gen. Erich Ludendorff and Gen. Paul Von Hindenburg, met with Kaiser Wilhelm II and other German officials during the week of November 3rd to the 10th, emphasizing the utter futility of continuing the war. At last, the Kaiser relented and abdicated on November 9th (took refuse in the Netherlands), and German officials notified the Allies of their willingness to surrender. An armistice was agreed upon, going into effect on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.

By noon, on November 11, 1918, all units on both sides of the line had stopped firing and an unaccustomed silence fell over the land. However, a new enemy, which respected neither side, continued to bring death to Allies and Germans alike—the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (see related article in the April issue of the Gallup Journey).

Almost ten million men and women had been killed in the fighting during the period 1914 through 1918, and more than six million had been crippled or made invalid for life. Of the American forces, 116,000 had been killed, and over 200,000 were wounded or suffered from poison gases. However, in just one year, more than twice that fatality number, 25 million people world-wide died of the flu. The A.E.F. would suffer 135,000 deaths from the flu, including 2nd Lt. Albert E. Lyon, whom Lyon’s Park (including the Playground of Dreams and former Ceremonial grounds) is named after.

So, a hundred years have come and gone—and all those Doughboys are gone, too. If you should see a veteran soliciting funds and giving you a paper poppy in return, please be generous—that poppy is symbolic of a poem written by Pfc. John McCrae—he was there.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

One last intriguing historical note: remember Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in June 1914, sparked the beginning of this terrible conflict? The license plate on his car bore the numbers 111118, precisely the day, month, and year of the end of the war: 11/11/18.