Plato (c. 427-347 BCE)
“The rational part will do the planning, and the passionate part the fighting. The passionate part will obey the ruling part and employ its courage to carry out the plans.”
Thomas Jefferson, the legendary writer from the American Revolution, and the third President of the United States, was very picky about his rhetoric and wording. Jefferson was, therefore, never enthusiastic when Congress suggested editing sections of his drafts.
Though he was a politician who could write better than almost anyone in the world, Jefferson was no orator. When it came time to give a speech, Thomas Jefferson was abysmal, so he understandably spent most of his time in Congress in silence. He was not afraid, however, to speak his mind if his writing was questioned, and he did so on the floor of the Continental Congress.
When John Dickinson proposed changes to Jefferson’s draft of the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessities for Taking Up Arms,” Jefferson took the suggestion of revision as a personal insult. The Continental Congress managed to negotiate a peace between the two men. Dickinson’s suggestions were worked into the draft, but Jefferson’s style of writing remained intact. Though a compromise was reached, Jefferson continued to believe that his work was mistreated.
Jefferson’s resistance to revisions continued when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. A committee from Congress edited the Declaration, and the rest of Congress approved most of the revisions. Though the wide majority of the Declaration of Independence is Thomas Jefferson’s unaltered words, for the rest of his life, Jefferson firmly believed that the original essence of his document had been corrupted and mangled by the Continental Congress’ revisions.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
Source:
General William T. Sherman (1820-1891)
“The election of Mr. Lincoln fell upon us all like a clap of thunder. People saw and felt that the South had threatened so long that, if she quietly submitted, the question of slavery in the Territories was at an end forever.”
On June 6, 1944, a coalition of mainly British, Canadian and American forces launched their ambitious D-Day invasion. Allied infantry sailed to the beaches of Normandy (Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword) on fairly flimsy landing craft with Allied navy and the air support, which was often unreliable. It was a good day for the largest amphibious invasion in military history; Adolf Hitler overslept on that day, and General Erwin Rommel was away from Normandy, visiting his family in Germany. Ultimately, the invasion would prove to be a huge success, and become one of the key turning points of World War Two. Yet, the invasion was costly. An accepted statistic of casualties suffered by the Allied Powers resulting from the D-Day invasion is 10,000 dead, wounded or missing. The U. S. D-Day Memorial Foundation has identified 4,413 total deaths that resulted from the invasion, with 2, 499 of them being from the United States military.
The remarkable survival story of U. S. Private Harold “Hal” Baumgarten (1925-2016) demonstrated just how chaotic and violent the D-Day invasion was and vividly illustrated some of the dangers and obstacles the invasion force faced in Normandy. At just nineteen years old, Baumgarten would receive five major injuries—three on June 6 and two more on June 7. By the time D-Day was over, he and one other comrade would be the only survivors from their original thirty-person landing crew on Omaha Beach.
Hal Baumgarten had paradoxical good and bad luck. On the one hand, he was exposed to (and hit by) numerous painful and deadly forces. Yet, he was fortunate to have survived all of the gruesome wounds he sustained. First, on June 6, German machine gun fire riddled his landing boat crew. Though many of his company were injured or killed by the incoming bullets, Baumgarten was saved by his rifle, which took the brunt of the impact. Baumgarten was alive and uninjured, but his gun was disabled—it actually snapped in two when he attempted to unjam the damaged weapon.
Next, an explosive shell hit near Private Baumgarten, shredding the left side of his face and blasting shrapnel through his jaw and teeth. Despite half of his face and mouth having been blasted thoroughly into a bloody mess, Baumgarten continued to fight. He kept calm and actually went to rescue an injured soldier. It was at this time, however, that he was once again hit by an explosive projectile. This time, it was a mortar shell. The shrapnel from the shell managed to puncture through Baumgarten’s helmet, causing even more damage to the Private’s already mangled head. Hal Baumgarten shrugged off the blast and succeeded in carrying the wounded soldier to safety.
The battered and bruised forces on Omaha Beach continued to press on, despite their wounds. Hal Baumgarten’s third major injury occurred when he stepped on what he called a “castrator mine.” The mine was designed to fire a projectile upward when triggered, usually hitting between the victim’s legs. Fortunately for Baumgarten, the mine’s projectile passed through his foot, and not his groin, resulting in an unsightly infection and the loss of a toe.
Despite his face being blasted apart and his foot ripped open, Hal Baumgarten continued to limp forward against the Germans. He suffered his fourth major injury under more heavy machine gun fire. Bullets ripped into Baumgarten’s face, blasting out even more teeth and jawbone, this time from the right side of his face. Finally, after having the left, right and top sections of his head hit by bullets or shrapnel—as well as stepping on a mine—Hal Baumgarten injected himself with a large dose of morphine and collapsed, resting among the dead and dying.
Soon, medics picked him up in a military ambulance that had managed to make its way to Omaha Beach. He got the attention of the medical crew by firing a few shots from a submachine gun he had scavenged from the nearby dead. The medics stopped and added him to their already-crowded ambulance. The Germans, however, were not done with Hal—a sniper fired shots at the medics and a bullet smashed into Baumgarten’s knee, resulting in his fifth major injury during the D-Day invasion.
Even though Baumgarten’s final wounds were sustained on June 7, he did not receive official hospital treatment until June 11, when he landed back in England. While in Britain, Baumgarten was—unsurprisingly—awarded the Purple Heart for the many injuries he experienced on behalf of the United States. From there, he began a long string of surgeries and plastic surgery to mend and reconstruct his head and leg. He went on to become a teacher and a doctor, and wrote of his WWII experience in his book, D-Day Survivor: An Autobiography. Finally, in 2015, Dr. Baumgarten received the Silver Service Medallion, which is awarded to veterans who served with distinction in WWII.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Sources:
Anna Komnene (1083-1153)
“I must say I have never seen an evil man who in all his deeds and words did not depart far from the path of right; whenever a man leaves the middle course, to whatever extreme he inclines he takes his stand far from virtue.”
(French soldiers moving into attack from their trench during the Verdun battle, 1916, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
The Great War
In February, 1916, the world was in utter turmoil. A Great War had erupted after Serbian-backed assassins shot to death Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife (and their unborn child) while they drove in their car around Bosnia. In response to the assassination, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, and the two belligerent nations pulled in their broad nets of alliances. Soon major countries from all over the world were called into what would be later named World War I.
At the onset of the war, Germany had pressed quickly through Belgium into France, but became bogged down well shy of Paris, and the war gridlocked into WWI’s iconic trench warfare. In early 1916, however, General Erich von Falkenhayn of Germany believed he knew a way to crush France and weaken Britain’s will to fight—by seizing the French defensive position at Verdun.
On February 21, 1916, German forces barraged the French line at Verdun with an artillery bombardment. In a period of twelve hours, around 1,400 guns fired around 1.2 million shells (100,000 per hour) at the region of Verdun. After the shelling, the Germans advanced against the French positions on the east side of the Meuse River. Overall, this first offensive at Verdun gained little ground against France’s return fire—in two days they only advanced around three miles.
Nevertheless, the Germans were about to have a breakthrough. The advancing German troops were nearing Fort Douaumont, a major fortification near the front line, and possibly France’s most important fort at Verdun. The French commanders defending Verdun were confident that the powerful garrison guarding Douaumont would be able to defend the position, so the commanders focused their attention elsewhere. These commanders, however, made a crucial mistake—there was no great garrison holding Fort Douaumont. In actuality, only a scattering of French soldiers defended the fort.
Fort Douaumont
Fort Douaumont was an impressive sight. The fortress was built mainly during the late 19th century, but construction continued until 1913. The 1,200 foot tall (around 366 meters) Fort Douaumont was built sturdy—its walls were reinforced with two layers of meter-thick concrete and its ceiling was protected with around six meters of material. In addition to the intrinsic defenses of the fort, Douaumont also reportedly had a moat about six meters deep and a jungle of barbed wire around its perimeter around thirty meters wide.
Douaumont was designed to comfortably garrison around 635 soldiers, but many more could be crammed into the fortress. The complex had its own water tank, kitchen, dormitories, and latrines. It even had wiring, presumably for messaging or sounding alarm. Nevertheless, by 1916, Fort Douaumont had been neglected by the French military.
When the German advance reached Fort Douaumont, only 57 French soldiers were manning the fortress that was constructed to house over six hundred men. In addition to the tiny garrison, the fort had also been stripped of nearly all of its heavy firepower. When the Germans attacked, the French garrison had too few men to defend all the entrances to the large fort and too little firepower to repel an assault.
The almost effortless fall of Fort Douaumont was a miracle for Germany. On February 25, 1916, the German 24th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment managed to sneak into the fort without any of the few French soldiers inside realizing what had happened. The German soldiers were able to surprise the garrison of Fort Douaumont, then capture and disarm them without firing a single shot. Without a fight, without discharging any firearms and without causing any bloodshed, a small squad of German soldiers was able to capture the most important French fort at Verdun. Ironically, the bloodless capture of Fort Douaumont would only prolong the Battle of Verdun, which would cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.
New Faces
After losing several miles of ground—including defensive positions like Fort Douaumont—the French forces at Verdun needed some new brainpower. General Henri-Philippe Pétain (future Vichy France Chief of State) arrived at the scene to ensure that the French lines would hold under Germany’s ferocious attack. He made sure his forts were well garrisoned and he maintained and improved the infrastructure between Verdun’s defensive positions. Pétain also reorganized his forces, making sure all of Verdun’s corps had artillery support and employed a new strategy that called for the French defenses to be less rigid and more adaptable to German pressure.
With General Pétain’s measures in place, the German advance began to stall by the end of February. Germany responded by attacking the Verdun defenses to the west of the Meuse River. As with the earlier attack, Germany made progress, but it was frustratingly slow. By the end of March, the German attack had only resulted in two miles of gained ground.
As patience evaporated and restlessness grew unbearable, the Germans launched another attack on Verdun on April 9, 1916. This time they applied pressure from both the east and the west that lasted for around two months, with little result. By August, the Germans had, once again, returned the main force of their attack to the side of Verdun that was east of the Meuse River. Yet, the German and French forces remained locked in a stalemate.
Around this time, Germany made a change in leadership. Paul von Hindenburg usurped power in Verdun from General Erich von Falkenhayn. Even though Falkenhayn had spent months attempting to wrest Verdun from the French, Hindenburg immediately de-escalated Germany’s attack in that region.
The French Fight
Once the German advance broke off, the French launched into a counter-attack with an offensive of their own. They pressed against the German lines that had enclosed on Verdun with a combination of artillery and infantry. Eventually, France regained much of its lost ground, and reestablished the equilibrium between the sides. By the time the Battle of Verdun was officially over, French and German casualties may have reached higher than 700,000 people. Of these casualties, the French suffered 377,231, with 162,308 either killed or missing in action.
Fort Douaumont fell back into the hands of the French on October 24, 1916. The Germans had utilized the fortress much more than the French had—around 3,000 German soldiers may have been garrisoned inside the fort at one point. In another incident, over 800 German soldiers died when an explosion, thought to have been caused by flamethrower fuel, occurred in Fort Douaumont.
In Germany, some called the bloody Battle of Verdun a ‘sausage grinder,’ where opposing armies ground each other’s soldiers into sludge with bullets and bombs. In a similar fashion, the French called the battle a ‘furnace.’ Both are apt names for a battle that caused hundreds of thousands of casualties over a couple miles of land.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Sources:
Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ancient Greek philosopher, 6th and 5th Century BCE)
“Bad witnesses to men are eyes and ears, when they belong to men whose souls cannot understand their language.”
Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff
(German Admiral largely responsible for the reintroduction of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 which encouraged the United States to enter WWI; lived 1853-1919)
“I guarantee upon my word as a naval officer that no American will set foot on the Continent!”
The History of the Kings of Britain, completed in 1136 by a man known as Geoffrey of Monmouth, is admired for popularizing the legends of Merlin and King Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s tales inspired romantic writers throughout Europe to write Arthurian stories of knighthood and chivalry. You can read about that aspect of The History of the Kings of Britain, HERE. In this article, however, let’s look at something even more interesting—the outlandish claims of conquest that Geoffrey of Monmouth attributed to the ancient Britons. Even though almost every page in The History of the Kings of Britain has to be read with extreme caution in terms of historical accuracy, the work was so well written that the bizarre ‘history’ is highly enjoyable and entertaining.
One of the first major historical events that Geoffrey of Monmouth tweaked in favor of the Britons was the sack of Rome around 390 BCE. In the historical version of the sack of Rome by the Gauls, the Senones tribe (led by their chief, Brennus) besieged and pillaged the city of Rome. After the Romans surrendered to the Gauls, they also had to hand over a lot of their wealth. This traumatic event is considered one of the key events that inspired Rome to dramatically develop their military. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s version of this event, however, Chief Brennus was a Briton who had lost his position in Britain to his older brother Belinus, who had also managed to subjugate Norway. Brennus then fled to Gaul, where he was made chief of the Senones. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, after Belinus and Brennus had a few more wars amongst themselves, the two joined forces to invade Rome, leading to the sack of the great city.
Now for the Arthurian stories. Geoffrey of Monmouth seems to place King Arthur’s father, Utherpendragon, in the 5th and 6th century CE, and his adventures mainly revolve around wars between the Britons and the Saxons. Geoffrey placed King Arthur in the 6th century, after King Clovis of the Franks had become Catholic, and he was given a much more elaborate string of conquests in The History of the Kings of Britain.
Geoffrey of Monmouth basically left nothing untouched by King Arthur—he wrote that Arthur went to war in Britain with the Saxons, the Picts, the Scots and the Irish. He also apparently subdued Iceland, Gotland, Gunhpar, the Orkneys and somehow subjugated all of Norway and Denmark. Then Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed that Arthur invaded Gaul (which would have historically been controlled mostly by the Franks), taking Normandy, Gascony and Aquitania. Next, the Romans arrived to challenge King Arthur (even though the Western Roman Empire had already fallen by the 6th century) and the Roman army also fell to Arthur’s Britons. Just when all of Europe seemed ready to fall to the might of the Britons, Mordred rebelled against King Arthur. While suppressing the rebellion, Arthur was injured and was carried away to Avalon, where he disappeared.
So, as you can tell, Geoffrey of Monmouth was very creative with his book, The History of the Kings of Britain. To end with a corny conclusion, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s book only had tiny tidbits of real history mixed into a gigantic soup of fiction and myth—yet, despite it all; it was a very delicious and enjoyable soup.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
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