If they haven’t already, someone needs to look at the printed material produced during and immediately after the First World War for orientating the foreign soldier and, subsequently, the battlefield tourist or ‘pilgrim’.
Here’s a fine example:
(Rand, McNally & Co., 1919)
The whole of this very helpful guide (its accuracy needs to be tested before it can be recommended!) can be found here.
A further example was not a new publication but a reprint. Cornélis De Witt Willcox’s A French-English military technical dictionary : with a supplement containing recent military and technical terms had originally been published in 1899, but was republished by the United States’ War Department in September 1917.
The detail is simply staggering. But how useful a book using terms for technology from the previous century was in the rapidly changing environment of the First World War is questionable. Judge for yourself from this sample page:
(US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1899)
The variety of anneau (a ring, collar, hoop or link of a chain) is astonishing and some outdated technology (such as the Gardner Gun) feature among the equipment-, harness, pole-chain- and mooring rings.
There’s a growing field of study around language and war but it’s of particular interest to me when it comes to the operational co-operation and liaison between two nations that speak different languages. Specifically, the British and the French. There’s been some work on the methods of liaison in use between the two high commands (particularly on the Somme in 1916, by the late Elizabeth Greenhalgh). My own focus is on this infrastructure, if it existed, under extreme crisis, as it was in the Spring of 1918 during the German Kaiserschlacht offensives.
I’ll add further examples of what might have been less-than-adequate tools of the trade as my research continues. Meanwhile, if you want to maximise your enjoyment of Willcox’s work, you can find viewable and downloadable versions here (courtesy of the Internet Archive).
Debout les Morts! 