The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| From gas to submarines, Great War was crucible for deadly innovation Posted: 13 Feb 2014 10:55 PM PST When World War I broke out in 1914, no European army was prepared for the heavily defensive conflict that was to define the coming years. Faced with a wall of bullets from machine guns and a deluge of shells from above that German writer Ernst Junger later described as a four-year "storm of steel", armies on all sides dug down into trenches and relied on a formidable array of defences. Barbed wire - invented in the United States for fencing cattle - became ubiquitous. Thousands of infantrymen lost their lives entangled in the wires, earning them the grim nickname of "clothes-line" among French veterans. Britain and France made more attempts than Germany to break through enemy lines on the Western Front. They focused on perfecting their heavy artillery. Previously packed with shrapnel, shells were now filled with high explosives that could flatten defences and maximise casualties. Smoke shells and more accurate targeting became major priorities as the war progressed. Tanks and poison gas The British also unveiled a new caterpillar-tracked armoured vehicle - the tank - in 1914. Initially clumsy, plodding and prone to frequent break-downs, it was quickly perfected to become a key tool for penetrating enemy lines in the closing stages of the war. In the early years, Germany was largely content to sit back and wait for attrition to take its toll on the enemy. Indeed, it carried out only one major attack on the Western front in 1915 - at Ypres in Belgium - and this only to test a brutal new weapon: chlorine poison gas. Total war destroyed any moral inhibition in the development of weaponry. The French and Belgian soldiers at Ypres in April 1915 saw thick smoke rising, "then a cloud of green, about 10 metres high, particularly thick at the base, coming towards us, pushed by the wind. Almost immediately, we were suffocating," recalled a French lieutenant, Jules-Henri Guntzberger. Gas brought a previously unknown level of terror to soldiers on the front line. Panicked, blinded and choking, thousands died in agony. The horror of poison gas would permanently scar the collective imagination, and forms the root of international condemnation directed against the Syrian regime's chemical attacks against civilians in August 2013. But it actually had a minimal impact on the outcome of World War I. Soldiers learned to cover their faces in wet handkerchiefs, soon supplanted by goggles, canvas masks and a medical antidote. The lethal effectiveness of gas was further blunted by the public revulsion it stirred on the home front. In the end, gas attacks caused less than one percent of the deaths in the war. Combat aviation takes off Another danger came from the sky. Combat aviation was still in its infancy in 1914, but the war triggered a rapid industrial mobilisation that meant France alone had some 3,700 aircraft by the end of hostilities. Verdun, in eastern France, was host to the world's first large-scale aerial battle. "The Great War may have been the quintessential land battle, but it also highlighted a strategic concept that would dominate conflicts in the 20th century: the importance of airpower as a prerequisite for any successful major ground attack," wrote French historian Jean-Yves Le Naur. Initially, the air was a place for surveillance, helped by improvements in mapping, aerial photography and communications. The dogfights - which alone in the conflict retained some vestige of the romantic warfighting of the past - were primarily geared towards denying the enemy these reconnaissance opportunities. Bombardments emerged only gradually, most notably in the form of the German dirigible balloons named after their inventor, Graf von Zeppelin. They were first used to attack Antwerp in August 1914 and then deployed for night raids in the UK from January 1915. By 1917, long-range German Gotha bombers were carrying out daylight raids in London, and the UK had developed its Royal Airforce for retaliatory attacks in the Rhine, but the technology's deadly potential would not be realised until later. The other major innovation came at sea. Germany had all but given up trying to compete with Britain above the waterline, but turned its attention to the U-boat that it started building after the outbreak of war. Britain's naval blockade in late 1914 triggered the first submarine warfare in the North Sea. By 1917, Germany had set itself a target of sinking 600,000 tonnes of shipping every month, and was at first successful. But the use of convoys to protect ships, produced in vast numbers in US factories, was able to overwhelm the U-boat strategy. None of these weapons proved decisive. It was ultimately the involvement of the vast US industrial war machine that tipped the scales in favour of the West. But the firepower and technologies that emerged during the Great War were to define most of the conflicts since then. – AFP, February 14, 2014. |
| Graves of empire tell of India’s troubled past Posted: 13 Feb 2014 08:27 PM PST It holds the graves of hundreds of British citizens and other foreigners who, for better or worse, played roles in India's colonial past. Soldiers, missionaries, traders and officials rest here, the cracked tombstones giving only hints of their lives. Despite the peaceful air, the Nicholson Christian Cemetery near the Kashmere Gate is also testimony to a history of violence. It was founded after the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and many of its inhabitants died in that conflict, now seen by some as India's first war for independence. The cemetery is named after Brigadier General John Nicholson, who was mortally wounded at the age of 36 leading the assault to relieve the siege of Delhi during the insurrection. His grave is surrounded by a railing fence and features a white marble slab. His ghost is reputed to haunt the cemetery. Nicholson was a controversial character in life and in death. An Ulsterman who fought in Afghanistan and Punjab before meeting his fate in Delhi, he was disliked for his haughty manner by fellow officers but revered by many of his Indian troops who elevated him to a cult-like status. But he detested Indians and Afghans and dealt with them ruthlessly, reputedly displaying the severed head of one of his adversaries on his desk. To a fellow officer, he proposed "the flaying alive, impalement or burning of the murderers of (British) women and children. The idea of simply hanging the perpetrators of such atrocities is maddening". Historian William Dalrymple, in his book "The Last Moghul", calls Nicholson an "imperial psychopath" with a "merciless capacity for extreme aggression and brutality". Still, his grave is designated a national monument by the Archaeological Survey of India's antiquities department. "We don't bear any grudges," said Father Jesuario Rebello, head of the Delhi Cemeteries Commission. Other soldiers buried among the bougainvilleas and tamarind trees include Alexander William Murray of the 42nd Bengal Regiment. According to his gravestone, Murray "fell while encouraging his men to follow his example on the 18th of September 1857 during the siege of Delhi". Plenty of civilians are buried here too. James Cumming was a telegraph master killed by lightning on July 28, 1874, "leaving a widow and infant daughter to bewail his loss". James Daof "died of heatstroke" in August 1907 at the age of 29. Elizabeth Badley Read, daughter of the Reverend B.H. Badley of the American Methodist Mission Society, was born in Los Angeles in 1885 and died in Delhi in 1935. "She loved India," her tombstone says. There are also the graves of many infants and children for whom the rigours of life in India were too much. Father Rebello's problems are with the present, not the past. "The cemetery is closed now. There's no space anymore," he told Reuters at New Delhi's Sacred Heart Cathedral. Only "second burials" are allowed – when relatives move the deceased's cremated remains to a niche and use the vacated lot for a new body. In fact, five of Delhi's 11 old Christian cemeteries are full. The government had allocated land for a new cemetery but that is getting crammed too, said Rebello, a Roman Catholic priest from the former Portuguese colony of Goa. "We're fighting. The government does not give easily. We are a minority," he said. The small staff of grave-tenders often have to chase away drug addicts, who climb over the wall to seek peace and seclusion to indulge their habit, he said. Funds are also a problem. The graveyard charges a small fee from relatives to clean the graves and clear away the weeds which sprout relentlessly. So modern India has encroached on the graveyard. One way to raise money has been to rent it to Bollywood movie productions as a set. But after the plot of one movie involved an assassination attempt on a politician by a bishop, the committee now vets scripts to make sure they are appropriate. Anything too racy – no doubt with the silent approval of the Victorians lying there – will not be allowed. "We don't permit any semi-nudity and things like that here," Rebello said. – Reuters, February 14, 2014. |
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