Although World War I did not deliver on its promise to be the “war to end all wars,” its conclusion on November 11, 1918, has been celebrated around the globe as Armistice Day. In the US, it is marked as Veterans Day.
Here are 15 striking photos from the war to commemorate veterans in the US and around the world:
World War I officially began on July 28, 1914, after all the great powers of Europe formed two camps and issued declarations of war. Here, German soldiers leave Berlin for the Western Front on August 1, 1914, while women present them with flowers in gratitude.
Battlefield engagements were stop-and-go in World War I. Here, a British soldier was stitching his shirt only be interrupted by a German shell landing nearby during the British army’s advance toward Bapaume, France, sometime in 1918.
For the first time in history, grueling trench warfare became a defining characteristic of war. A US artilleryman uses some downtime in a trench in France to write home to his family on March 7, 1918.
As the war progressed, previously unseen industrial weapons of war entered the conflict. This undated photo shows a German medic relieving victims of a gas attack.
The new industrial nature of the war laid waste to swathes of territory along the Western Front, illustrated by this nightmarish scene from the Battle of Argonne Forest on September 26, 1918, showing American soldiers in the east of France.
World War I was a total war – everything was a potential target, including Reims cathedral in France, pictured here amid falling bombs in September 1914.
Here a wounded Austrian soldier lies alone in an unknown battlefield.
Although World War I is often associated with the intense trench warfare on the Western Front, the war was waged in Eastern Europe as well. Here, soldiers rush into battle in Russia in 1917.
World War I also had far-reaching consequences outside of Europe, especially in the Middle East. This undated photo shows an officer of the Ottoman Empire, which entered the war on Germany and Austro-Hungary’s side, conducting a military review in Damascus, Syria.
Even though the great powers were fighting largely in Europe, they exploited their colonial subjects around the world to supplement their own forces. Here, Indian soldiers are seen on banks of the Yser River in northern France with a traveling herd of goats they used to make their favorite dishes from home.
Caught between the advancing armies, civilians in Europe and elsewhere paid an enormous toll during the war. In this undated photo, Belgian refugees load onto boats in the port of Antwerp to escape the fighting in their country.
Amid the destruction and horror of World War I, some soldiers managed to maintain their humanity. Here, German soldiers carry wounded Canadian troops, who were fighting against them, to safety so they can recover in April 1917.
Merriment and camaraderie also endured. Here, German soldiers celebrate Christmas on the front line in 1914.
The war ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year in 1918, when the final armistice was signed. Here, people celebrate the war’s end on the Grand Boulevard in Paris.
It was America’s entrance into the conflict that ultimately turned it in the Allies’ favor, and the US joined the victors in celebrating its end. Here, the famous “Lost Battalion” of the Argonne campaign marches down Fifth Avenue in New York City after returning home in spring 1919.
This summer, British divers helped solve a century-old U-boat mystery.
Deep-sea diving experts working for the Royal Navy examined a wreck off the English coast.
They helped confirm the sub’s identity and that of a sub found near France, both sunk during World War I.
Deep-sea diving experts working for the British Royal Navy recently helped submarine historians solve a century-old U-boat mystery, drawing on their past military experience and teamwork to do so.
In 2004, a World War I-era German submarine was discovered at the bottom of the English Channel. Experts narrowed its identity to one of two U-boats, but until this summer, nothing had been confirmed.
An expedition in June was organized by deep-sea diver Steve Mortimer, his wife, Barbara, and Michael Lowrey, a US-based naval historian. They enlisted the help of a larger crew, including two Royal Navy civil servants and diving experts: Dr. Fran Hockley and Dominic Robinson, a retired Army Air Corps lieutenant colonel.
At the time, Robinson and Hockley taught UK service members to dive recreationally at the Navy’s Joint Service Sub Aqua Diving Centre in Devonport Dockyard, part of the British military’s adventure training program.
Robinson himself learned to dive in such a program while flying military helicopters in Germany at the time of the first Gulf War.
“If you’ve encountered risk in a safe and controlled environment, then when you encounter it in a more challenging [environment], you’re better able to cope with it,” he said.
Which U-boat is it?
Robinson has participated in many dives of military or historical importance, but this one was different, he told Insider.
When U-boat experts found the wreck in 2004, they were convinced it was one of two German diesel-powered attack submarines: U-93 or U-95. The problem was that French divers had discovered a similar wreck near the Port de Calais in 2003.
Both subs had prowled the waters around England in 1917 and 1918, during the German U-boat campaign known as the First Battle of the Atlantic.
The sub the French found had its stern blown off, but date markings on its propeller led historians to believe it was U-95, said Lowrey, who has helped identify about a dozen submarine wrecks and contributes to the website Uboat.net.
After the second wreck was found off the Lizard Peninsula, the English mainland’s southernmost point, dives were done to identify it in 2004 and 2006. Neither was successful due to poor video quality and because the diving units didn’t have equipment to scrub the propeller, Lowrey told Insider.
“The purpose of the [June 2021] dive was, let’s identify this wreck,” Lowrey said. “Let’s just … once and for all resolve it.”
The English Channel has an average depth of just over 200 feet, and specialized gear, such as dry suits, is required to dive so deep for lengthy durations.
Robinson and Hockley are both certified to use a rebreather, which recirculates the gas a diver exhales, allowing some or all of it to be recycled. Diving with a rebreather is typically more complicated than open-circuit diving, in which exhaled gas exits into the water, but it allows divers to stay deeper for a longer period of time.
Robinson and Hockley were given the key task of scrubbing the submarine propeller with large Brillo pads in search of dates to identify the wreck. “That’s not seen as a glamorous job, but it’s the important one,” Robinson said.
Prime diving conditions
Deep-sea conditions can vary widely on these types of dives. Luckily they were “absolutely stunning” on this dive, Robinson told Insider. The team easily identified the submarine’s stern side, located the propeller, and scrubbed until the markings appeared.
The date on the propeller convinced the team that the boat off the Lizard was in fact U-95 and that the boat closer to the French coast was U-93, Lowrey said.
The team still dived for a second day to double-check the numbers and try to identify the cause of the sub’s sinking.
Using a technique called photogrammetry, a team member created a 3-D model based on the videos filmed underwater. Those models were then shared with experts to examine. “There was a suggestion that it was rammed,” but even after several months of analysis, no conclusion was reached, Robinson said.
The crews of both U-93 and U-95 were lost when the subs were sunk, according to the Royal Navy. Solving these longstanding mysteries can help provide closure to their families, Robinson and Lowrey said.
Since many of the most obvious submarine wrecks have already been catalogued, it’s increasingly difficult for experts to positively identify the remaining U-boats, and Lowrey expressed relief at finally solving this years-long mystery.
“Sometimes it’s like a detective novel with the last 10 pages ripped out, where you think you know who did it, but you’ll never be able to prove it,” Lowrey said.
Help from a military background
Robinson’s past in the Army Air Corps – where he flew anti-tank, scouting, and counterterrorism helicopter missions – has served him well in deep diving expeditions, teaching him to be disciplined about the key tasks and meticulous with his equipment.
“If you’re at 80 meters and your rebreather stops working, that’s quite a dangerous place to be in,” he said.
Having a teammate on a dive like Hockley, who also works in a military environment, gives Robinson an extra sense of security. “I love diving with her, because I know she’ll be there when I need her,” he added.
These historical dives are privately funded by the crew but can aid their work for the British military, Robinson said. The Joint Service Sub Aqua Training Centre may not offer a rebreather course, but the recreational divers can still benefit from Robinson’s depth of experience.
“We work for the Royal Navy, but the [diving] we do privately does roll into our job,” Robinson said.
In late October, Robinson left the center to become the new head of diving and training for the British Sub-Aqua Club, the UK’s national governing body for recreational diving.
For British military divers, there will be fewer opportunities to get dive training next year. The diving training centre is expected to close in the spring, as the Ministry of Defense reassesses its budget.
A Ministry spokesperson said the timing of the closure is not finalized and that British Armed Forces will still be able to dive at facilities such as the Boot Camp and Military Institute.
“We have the biggest defence budget in Europe and are one of very few countries to not only meet but exceed NATO’s 2% spending target,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In the face of intensifying threats, we are contributing to the cross-government review of national security capabilities and looking at how we best spend the rising defence budget to protect our country.”
Vivienne Machi is an award-winning reporter based in Stuttgart, Germany. Her writing has appeared in outlets including Foreign Policy, Defense News, the Counter, and Via Satellite. Twitter: @VivienneMachi
Crewman aboard a ship owned by A and T Recovery on Lake Michigan dropped cameras into the deep to confirm what sonar was telling them – there was a German U-boat resting on the bottom of the Great Lake.
Luckily, the year was 1992, a full 73 years removed from the end of the Great War that saw German submarines force the United States to enter the war in Europe. How it got there has nothing to do with naval combat.
In the days before a true visual mass medium, the American people were restricted to photos in newspapers to get a view of what the war looked like.
World War I was the first real industrial war, marked for its brutality and large numbers of casualties, not to mention the advances in weapons technology that must have seemed like magic to the people who had never seen poison gas, automatic machine guns, and especially boats that moved underneath the waves, sinking giant battleships from the depths.
So after years of hearing about evil German U-boats mercilessly sinking tons and tons of Allied shipping and killing thousands of sailors while silently slipping beneath the waves, one of those ships began touring the coastal cities of the United States – and people understandably wanted to see it.
The November 11, 1918 Armistice demanded that the German navy turn over its ships to the British but instead of doing that, the Germans scuttled the bulk of their fleet near the British base at Scapa Flow. The submarines, however, survived.
Seeing that there were so many U-boats and that German technology surrounding U-boats used some of the best technology at the time, the British offered them out to other nations, as long as the submarines were destroyed when their usefulness came to an end.
The United States accepted one, UC-97, and toured it around the country to raise money needed to pay off the enormous war debt incurred by the government of the United States.
When they successfully raised that money, the Navy continued touring the ships as a way to recruit new sailors. The UC-97 was sailed up the St. Lawrence Seaway into Lake Ontario and then Lake Erie.
It was the first submarine ever sailed into the Great Lakes.
Eventually, though, the novelty of the ship wore off, and after raising money, recruiting sailors, and giving all the tech she had on board, the boat just sat on the Chicago River. All the other subs taken by the US were sunk according to the treaty’s stipulations.
UC-97 couldn’t really move under her own power and was towed to the middle of Lake Michigan, where she was sunk for target practice by the USS Wilmette, forgotten by the Navy for decades after.
June is usually marked by commemorations of D-Day, when thousands of Allied soldiers landed in Normandy to begin liberating France from the Nazis.
But 26 years before D-Day, 9,500 US Marines fought what became one of the Corps’ most defining battles, facing the Imperial German Army in fields and woods about 45 miles northeast of Paris.
The Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918 was an attempt to halt a German offensive making its way through the battered French and British armies.
It was the first battle for the Marines in Europe and one that had tremendous impact on the Corps. A century later, it still holds a sacred place in Marine Corps history.
A badly needed relief force
The US joined the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917. The French and British armies were exhausted after years of fighting, and the hundreds of thousands of fresh American soldiers were a badly needed relief force.
By the end of June that year, the first American Expeditionary Force soldiers had arrived in France. But the Americans were mostly newcomers to this new kind of warfare and did not join the trenches until October.
At first, American soldiers mostly augmented French and British defensive positions. On March 21, 1918, however, Germany – which had 50 more army divisions available after signing a separate peace treaty that ended Russia’s involvement in the war – launched a push in France to defeat the British and French before US forces could fully deploy.
German successes meant the Americans were soon in the thick of the fighting. On May 28, they went on the offensive and retook lost territory at the Battle of Cantigny – the first major American battle of the war.
But the Germans were still advancing elsewhere. By June 1, they were locked in battle with French and American forces at the town of Château-Thierry and were moving toward Belleau Wood.
Desperate to stop the German advance, the Allies sent the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, which included the 4th Marine Brigade, to hold the line.
The Marines’ orders were clear: “No retirement will be thought of on any pretext whatsoever.”
‘Retreat, Hell!’
Despite facing five German Army divisions, the Marines were determined to hold. When they reached the battlefield just outside Belleau Wood, retreating French soldiers advised them to retreat as well. Capt. Lloyd Williams responded with the now-famous line, “Retreat, Hell! We just got here!”
For five days, the Marines repelled German attacks on their lines outside the woods, due in large part to expert Marine marksmanship. On June 6, the Marines went on the offensive, charging German positions inside the woods.
The assault was brutal. German machine guns mowed down the Marines. It was here that acclaimed Marine Dan Daly, then a first sergeant, rallied his men for a charge by saying, “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
By the end of the day, the Marines at Belleau Wood had taken more casualties than in all previous battles in Marine Corps history. They were unable to dislodge the Germans from the woods but took the neighboring town of Bouresches after house-to-house fighting.
The battle then descended into a brutal slog, as the Marines forced their way through the woods. The Germans made numerous counterattacks, and assaults often descended into hand-to-hand fighting. German artillery also used poison gas to try to halt the Marine advance.
On June 11, Williams was killed by artillery fire after being wounded in an attack. He reportedly told the medics, “Don’t bother with me. Take care of my good men.”
Marine displays of courage were common at Belleau Wood. Gunnery Sgt. Ernest Janson received the Medal of Honor for single-handedly repelling 12 advancing Germans by charging and bayonetting two of them. Gunnery Sgt. Fred Stockton received the Medal of Honor posthumously after he gave a wounded comrade his own gas mask during a gas attack.
On June 26, after a 14-hour artillery barrage and a final assault, the Marines finally drove the Germans out and secured the woods.
A lasting legacy
Of the 1,811 Americans killed at the battle, about 1,062 were Marines. Around 3,615 of the roughly 7,000 American wounded were Marines as well. The Germans are believed to have had over 9,000 casualties.
The French government later renamed the woods “Bois de la Brigade de Marine,” meaning “Wood of the Marine Brigade,” and awarded the Marine units involved the Croix de Guerre and the right to wear a fourragère, a braided cord denoting distinguished conduct.
The battle was a baptism by fire for the Marine Corps, which now had a core cadre of officers and enlisted men with a full understanding of modern warfare.
They were what would be known as the “Old Breed” in the Corps. Five future commandants – John Lejeune, Clifton Cates, Lemuel Shepherd Jr., Wendell Neville, and Thomas Holcomb – saw action at Belleau Wood, as did a number of future high-ranking Marines who had important roles in World War II.
After the battle, the Marines were called “Devil Dogs,” which German soldiers supposedly called them during the battle. The actual origin is disputed, but the nickname has stuck.