Battle of the Marne, September 1914, surprise attack on Paris and rallying of French

   

Taxis save Paris!

 After Germany invaded Belgium in early August 1914 and France and Britain declared war on Germany and her allies, the Germans saw that to win the war they should attack France quickly and decisively. They hoped to win the war within days and thus end what might be their biggest nightmare—a two-front war. As they swarmed toward Paris, the French were surprised. And their troops, their 7th Division, had to be repositioned from their railhead to quickly stop the German advance.

     In a valiant maneuver, the Army asked approximately 600 taxi drivers of Paris to aid them by carrying 10,000 French troops to the front lines. The taxi drivers were to meet their so-called passengers in the drive in front of the Les Invalides.

Les Invalides, Jo-Ann Power picture

Troops climbing into the taxis!

The farthest the Germans advanced was within 30 miles of Paris. At Meaux, they were stopped, thanks in part to these taxi drivers! (Do see the map here!)

Dotted line: Sept. 5 positions. Solid line: New front, post Sept. 9

Musee de La Grande Guerre in Meaux
Jo-Ann Power, picture

   
And in Meaux today, you can and should take the train from Gare de L'Est for a 30 minute ride to this quiet little town to visit the most marvelous museum, Musee de La Grande Guerre! (Do see my other posts about it!)

Wounded warriors of WWI, home front knowledge of, and new interest in prosthetics

      The US Archives are filled with hundreds of photographs of American wounded soldiers who had amputations and were maimed in battle.
     Yet, during the war and much afterward, almost all pictures (like most personal letters) were censored, i.e., redacted, meaning they were never published at home in newspapers or magazines. This was by order of the War Department, lest morale at home and among the troops suffer. (Yes, this is very similar to the recent contemporary regulations forbidding media coverage of reception of wounded and deceased soldiers from front lines in the Iraqi war or Afghanistan conflicts.)
     Here first is one rare photo of a nurse with two wounded soldiers, one of few pictures to survive the thick black mark of the censor's slanted on the bias across the center.

http://www.amputee-coalition.org/military-instep/rich-history.html

     Another is of a trio of soldiers in a hospital in Vaucaire, France, and the third of two men recuperating at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hec.11308/

     "During World War I, there were 2,635 major amputations among American soldiers." 
(Reference:  http://www.amputee-coalition.org/military-instep/rich-history.html) 
     After they returned home form the front, many wounded required protheses for arms, hands and legs lost in the fighting. Prosthetics became a new interest among doctors and medical technicians. World War One, known for massive destruction by shrapnel, chlorine gas and bombs, was the first war in which men survived wounds which heretofore had been lethal.  Prosthetics were vital to these soldiers in their attempt to return home and adapt to their physical conditions.
    Here is an American prosthetic arm of wooden fingers and metal joints. From the American History Museum, website beneath the photo, is this description: "Arm is a Carnes model from the late teens, William Carnes being an amputee who fashioned the first workable shoulder harness design around 1915."

http://amhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/exhibition/flash.html

Recruiting posters of World War I are stirring, blunt appeals to enlist

Here are only a few of the hundreds of posters the United States government printed to encourage citizens to enlist as soldiers and Marines. Hundreds of other posters encouraged others to enlist as nurses, medical personnel, ambulance drivers, merchant marine and longshoremen. The rhetoric is a mix of appeals to patriotism and a sense of wonderment that the realities of war quickly negated.

The most well-knownAmerican recruitment poster is Uncle Sam pointing to the viewer. This "I Want You" image has been used and adapted over the past 9 decades to recruit for other wars. Adaptations even discouraged enlistment in such wars as the Vietnam conflict.  Here is the original version and its famous British counterpart and predecessor featuring General Kitchener recruiting for the British Army in 1914.

Public domain in U.S. Archives

Public domain in UK, EU and U.S.

After U.S. Marines won the battle of Belleau Wood, their German opponents nicknamed them Devil Dogs, Teufel Hunden. To this day, the U.S. Marines use this name and their museum in Belleau Wood, France bears the title.

Types of services women volunteered to perform

Recruiting poster,
Red Cross nurse shown with wounded solider.

While nurses were a vital component of any medical department for the United States Army, women served in other groups and other capacities.

The Navy also developed a Navy Nurse Corps during the war.

In addition, the Red Cross is perhaps the most well-known of these other groups. These volunteers wore what we now know as traditional uniforms of white with a red cross donning the front of their caps.

To assist nurses and doctors working behind the lines, women enlisted in the ambulance corps. They, along with many men, drove cars and trucks, designed by Ford Motor Company and by the precursor of General Motors.  (Having had a look at these myself in the Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum in San Antonio, Texas, I must say they look like the most uncomfortable transport I have ever seen.)

Women also volunteered to serve as secretaries in General Pershing's headquarters staff. He, in fact, asked for women to serve in this capacity after he decided he could not and should not spare anyone from his Staff to do this work.

Signal Corps accepted female volunteers to work the telephones for communications all over the front, inter-Army and with American allied forces. These women had to be fluent in French and English, and were known as "The Hello Girls."

http://signal.army.mil/history/history-hello_girls.html#

Then, too, many women traveled abroad to serve in many civilian capacities. Some worked in make-shift canteens making sandwiches and brewing coffee to serve to convalescent soldiers on their way home in mobile hospital trains. Others worked with displaced French populations. A few rescued orphans from temporary shelters and served as teachers in schools and convents.