Articles from 1917
An efficient coal-based fuel has never really been the reality, however the French would make advancements with the technology in the early forties. The accompanying photograph depicts one of the earliest methods for the creation of a coal and gas blended fuel source that was created as a result of the World War I gas rationing in Britain.
Coal-Based Fuel Introduced During Gas Rationing (Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »
The attached magazine illustration is from an ad for a commercially produced musette bag for American officers during World War One.
American Army officers, like the men in their ranks, had no particular need to ever bother with a musette (we have learned that a musette is a small French wind instrument, not unlike a bag-pipe). The bag pictured here was intended for personal effects that would be needed while on the march: stationery,toiletries, housewives).
Due to the French prowess involving all matters military during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the English language is lousey with French military terms, many of which are very much in use today.
American Officer’s Musette Bag (Advertisement, 1917) Read More »
When the United States Congress declared war on Imperial Germany in April of 1917, the New York pamphleteer Halsey William Wilson (1868 – 1954) wasted little time in collecting a list of the numerous war crimes committed by the Germans up to that time in order to launch a mass printing of a 31 page pamphlet that would sell for five cents each. The heinous use of poison gas was listed on page nine.
Gassing as Crime (H.W. Wilson, 1917) Read More »
The 1917 publication of The life of Algernon Charles Swinburne
A bombshell that struck literary England a little past that last mid-century has been re-echoing in the recently published ‘Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne’ by Edmund Gosse. The shell was the volume called ‘Poems and Ballads’ a cursory knowledge of which probably places it in many minds as one of the bad books of literature…
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Reconsidered (Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »
The attached article, How Well Our Chemical Industry Has Been Mobilized for War is an abstract from a 1917 issue of THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE which discussed how readily American chemists embraced their roll after the United States committed itself to the war.
There is much talk of the procurement of potash, toluol and trinitrotoluol which were necessary elements in the manufacture of gas.
The Business End of Gas Warfare (Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »
During the earliest days of the war the British and Empire armies were seldom issued grenades, but the need for such weaponry became apparent once it was clear to all that trench warfare was going to be the norm. The earliest grenades (improvised by both sides) were simply food tins that were jam-packed with an explosive mixed with nails, glass shards and bits of iron. By 1915 grenade production was in full swing and British historians have estimated that throughout the course of the war on the Western Front, British and Commonwealth forces had used fifteen million hand-grenades.
The following article concern a British shrapnel grenade that is of the heavy friction pattern.
A British Shrapnel Grenade (Trench Warfare, 1917) Read More »
Under the French Flag is a W.W. I memoir by M. Macdonald in which the author tells the story of an Englishman who chose to sign up for the French Army due to their lax recruiting regulations which provided for the enlistment of men as old as fifty years of age. The reviewer believed the author recounted some interesting scenes of early-war France and French barracks life.
Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.
An Englishman in the French Army (Times Literary Supplement, 1917) Read More »
The attached mechanical drawing depicts one of the most common ignition grenades that were put to use by British and Commonwealth forces during World War One. The Ball grenade was essentially a cast-iron sphere that measured three inches in diameter and it was one of any number of British grenades that used the Brock lighter.
The British Ball Grenade (Trench Warfare, 1917) Read More »
An Honorable Mention was certainly in order for the British inventor Edward Dartford Holmes who thought up a three tiered, time fuse anti-artillery shell:
Briefly, his scheme calls for a shrapnel shell containing a number of compartments which are each exploded in turn at predetermined intervals.
A Three Part Anti-Aircraft Shell (Scientific American, 1917) Read More »
Here is an architectural plan and a photograph of a German blockhouse that was constructed in Flanders during 1917. The Historian John Laffin is very informative on this subject when he refers to it in his 1997 book, The Western Front Companion:
Blockhouses generally measured 30 ft. along the front, with a width of 10 ft. They were sunk three feet into the ground and stood 7 feet above it. The front was up to 30 inches thick. Massively strong, a blockhouse was virtually impervious to shell-fire; even a heavy shell would merely knock a large chip off the edge.
This article appears on this site by way of a special agreement with L’Illustration.
The German Blockhouse (L’Illustration, 1917) Read More »
