November in History: 1917, The Great War
Welcome, November, a great month to take a look back into history, and discover what was going on 100 years ago. Maybe we can learn something together.
Did you know that as WWI raged on, and the United States was preparing for its first winter of engagement in the conflict, November brought one of the most devastating battles, with nothing gained? Not to depress you or anything, but the horrific 3rd battle of Ypres, more generally known as the battle of Passchendaele (a small Belgium village captured by Canadian troops), like the battle of the Somme, became symbolic of WWI for two things, mud and casualties. With little gained of that obliterated landscape, half a million lives were lost. Have you ever seen the movie titled after the town? It’s a moving story, and I’d recommend it.
Meanwhile, the German High Command led by Erich Ludendorff was busy at Mons, Belgium laying out strategies so bold for the coming year (intending to drive a wedge between British and French forces), he was willing to accept a million casualties in the effort, thinking Germany might win the war before the Americans arrived in force. About the same time, France gets a new Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau with the nickname “The Tiger”. Why that nickname? Because his strategy was simply this: “I wage war.”
A few days later, the British launched the first ever mass tank attack. They made some terrific gains, and the church bells rang back home in England for the first time in three years. However, they lost their advantage shortly after, when the Germans posed a huge counterattack and took back most of what was gained.
It’s a horrible month, overall, and painted some of the darkest pictures of the war. What the Americans arrived to find were the masses of worn out and beleaguered Allied forces.
This is what some of my characters in The Deepest Sigh arrive to find when they land in France. Strangers in a strange land, must not only face men who have somehow become their enemies while they were busy farming and raising families back home in Wisconsin, but they must struggle for survival against their personal demons as well.
I wrote my novel with a great curiosity for what it might have been like to live on the home front during that time of national and personal crisis, and to consider what my own countrymen were up against when they were sent to fight during those days, a centennial ago.
