(Image: Imperial War Museum, public domain)
War has changed a lot over the centuries, but one thing that hasn’t altered is its spirit. War is bloody and brutal, fought from the cold, muddy trenches, won and lost by men – and women – miles and miles away from their homes and their families. War is countless lives, extinguished in a heartbeat, buried in mass graves that are often forgotten. Many of those who die in war… their names and their faces are forgotten, too. But occasionally, there are moments on the darkest, bloodiest days that remind us even in war, there is still chivalry, there is still compassion. There is still humanity.
10. Oswald Boelcke – Gentleman of the Sky
(Images: R. Sennekke; Rp, public domain; M H.DE, cc-sa-3.0)
Today, too few people know the name of Oswald Boelcke, and for years, his amazing, chivalrous acts have been lost to the mists of time. Fortunately, some things don’t stay lost forever.
Boelcke was Germany’s first ace in World War One, and he was the pilot who trained Manfred von Richthofen, the man who would go on to be known as the Red Baron. On January 5, 1916, he encountered a British plane over Lille, France – the two men on board were running a recon mission. Boelcke shot the plane down – and then landed alongside the crash site to see what had happened.
The two men – Lieutenant William Somervill and Lieutenant Geoffrey Formilli – were injured but alive. Somervill spoke fluent German, and when they met the pilot that had shot them down, they shook his hand. According to Boelcke’s writings on the event, “I went straight up to the Englishmen, shook hands with them and told them I was delighted to have brought them down alive.”
While that seems amazing enough – they were sworn enemies, after all, who’d nearly killed each other – Boelcke then went out of his way to make sure a car came to take both men to a nearby hospital. After their injuries were treated, he visited them there, bringing along photos of the remnants of their plane and some English newspapers for them to read.
Formilli then wrote a letter to his captain, and asked Boelcke to see that it got delivered. It detailed their injuries (he had a shoulder injury, while his partner had suffered a blow to the head), the state of their plane, and specified that they were still alive – and had been shot down by one of the most famous of German pilots.
(Image: Rp, public domain)
Boelcke then went above and beyond – quite literally – to see that the letter was delivered. He took to the skies again, dodging enemy fire to fly over the base of the downed pilots. He dropped the letter, which was retrieved by British soldiers and ultimately forwarded on to Formilli’s mother.
The whole story might have been forgotten, had the letters (one from Formilli and one to his parents from his commander) not come up for auction recently.
Sadly, Boelcke would not survive the war. He would chalk up 40 planes shot down before he was killed himself in a mid-air collision with another German pilot. He was 25-years-old.
9. Justin McKenna and Sydney Sutcliffe
(Image: Frank Hurley, public domain)
Justin McKenna and Sydney Sutcliffe were 21 and 24-years-old when they disappeared behind German lines. For years, their families didn’t know what happened to them, and those that did know, didn’t talk about it. Until, that is, Sutcliffe’s nephew started to do some digging and found an incredible story of honour during war.
The mission that they had been on was classified a “Distant Offensive Patrol”; they were headed home when they ran into a small group of German planes. Sutcliffe and McKenna were at the back of their squadron when they were singled out and swarmed. According to German records, they took out four of their seven attackers before their plane was shot down – a shot that was credited to a man named Vizefeldwebel Hans Oberlander, who ultimately would go on to survive the war.
After the skirmish, the German forces buried the two British airmen with full military honours. Their funeral was attended by other British soldiers who were being held captive by the same German unit that buried their associates, and at some point, photos were taken of the ceremony that later found their way back to the families in England. Word of their deaths – and the funeral service – was passed on by Sergeant T. Nixon, who attended the funeral before being returned to England.
His German captors had also instructed Nixon to report back to his unit, and share the appreciation of the Germans for an honourable fight, and to make sure he spoke of the bravery the two men had shown in the air.
8. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Robert Campbell
(Image: Voigt T H, public domain)
Captain Robert Campbell was captured by the German forces in northern France on August 24, 1914. Like many others, he was sent to a POW camp in Magdeburg, Germany, and it was there that he got word that his mother was dying of cancer. He petitioned Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II for leave to go visit his mother one last time before her death and miraculously, he was granted two weeks leave from the POW camp.
Campbell left the camp in northeastern Germany and headed back to his mother’s home in Gravesend. He stayed with her for a week, then went back to Germany where he turned himself back in as promised. According the Campbell, he knew that he had been granted something extremely compassionate, and going back on his word was never an option. He didn’t want to be the reason others weren’t allowed to do as he had, even though none ever were.
Once he was back in the camp, he and his fellow prisoners set about trying to escape. Escape they did, in fact – they spent the next nine months trying to dig their way free, and when they escaped and tried to flee for the Netherlands, they had just reached the border when they were recaptured.
Campbell was returned to England at the end of the war, continued his military service until 1925, and reenlisted in 1939 to serve in the Royal Observer Corps. He died in 1966, at 81 years old. His mother passed away in 1917.
7. Len Cavinder
(Image: from the documentary ‘Shot at Dawn’ via Hull Daily Mail)
By the time the war was over, more than 1,000 French, British and Belgian soldiers would be executed for desertion. It was done as a lesson to others – take the chance of survival and wade into battle, or be shot by your own companions at dawn. Now, in retrospect, many of the men who were shot weren’t the clever deserters that history often paints them as, just looking for an easy way out. Many were suffering from shell shock, from chronic illness and injuries relating to the gases that they were breathing, and what’s now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. It didn’t matter at the time, though, what mattered was keeping control over the troops and making it clear that desertion would not be tolerated.
An interview given in 1980 tells the story of Sergeant Len Cavinder, a man who, by all accounts, was struggling to make some sense of a horrible situation when he was tasked with overseeing the execution of a deserter. His identity was something of a mystery, although he was thought to be a man named Charles Frederick McColl…. but his battalion was told to refer to him as Private X. At the time, deserters were nothing short of traitors, and extending kindness to them…. it just wasn’t done, and it could get a soldier into trouble.
McColl’s tragic story is made even worse by the fact that he’d already had several chances to avoid the front lines. He worked in the shipyards in Hull, which exempted him from service immediately. He signed up anyway, though, out of a desire to serve his country. Two years after enlisting, he was wounded and sent home, with the opportunity to stay because of a diagnosed heart condition. He returned, but getting back on the front lines proved too much. He was ultimately arrested in Calais, and his execution was ordered.
Cavinder spent the night with the condemned man, smuggling him in whiskey and laudanum tablets, getting him to take the combination in an attempt to calm his nerves…. and perhaps be unaware of what waited for him in the morning. It was an offense that was reportable to commanding officers, and the priest that came to give McColl last rites threatened to do just that. Cavinder, however, was not swayed, staying with the private until the very end and ultimately burying him in the frozen December ground.
6. Albert Marshall
(Image: Imperial War Museums, public domain)
Thought to be the last of the World War One veterans who served on horseback, Albert Marshall remembers not just the cold terror of warfare, but the occasional moment of clarity and humanity as well. Marshall – who was 105 in 2002 – reflected on the war in a time when Britain was debating just what to do about the memory of their own who they had shot and killed for desertion. For Marshall, they had all been in it together, and there was a lingering feeling that they could be next.
He remembered 1917, when one day, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, they received word that a fellow company was to go over the top of the trenches at 6. By 9, the entire company was dead, and all that they could do was bury their own. As they went into no man’s land, an officer from the Royal Army Medical Corps held up a white stick, asking the Germans to stop firing long enough for them to bury their dead. The firing stopped, and they gave their men the best burial they could.
There were small, every day kindnesses, too, that he never thought meant much at the time. He remembered being ordered to stand guard over one of his fellow soldiers who had committed some offense and been tied outside without food or water. He gave the man a cigarette, not thinking anything more of it…. until he met the man again. Years had passed, and it was London this time. They recognized each other, and the other man had said that he’d never forgotten that brief moment of compassion.
5. Aubrey Grey and Launcelot Waters
(Image: via Warships of World War Two)
In 1917, German warships engaged a group of British destroyers and merchant ships heading to Norway. As the HMS Partridge was sinking, two lieutenants – Grey and Waters – stayed behind to make sure the others got off first. They made it to a lifeboat, but the lifeboat capsized and threw everyone off into the water. Grey, the stronger swimmer in spite of his wounds, dragged Waters to another life raft.
There was only enough room on the raft for one.
Grey insisted that Waters take the spot, getting him on board the raft and to – what he thought – was safety.
Grey was ultimately pulled from the water by one of the boats in the German fleet who had just sank the British convoy. He remained a German prisoner in Kiel, and was one of the 24 Partridge crewmembers who survived. Waters was never rescued.
While Grey was being held by the Germans, he struck up a friendship with one of the soldiers. While the friendship was on a brief hold during World War Two, the two remained friends even after the second great war. Grey’s friend was Friedrich Ruge, who served as a Vice Admiral under Erwin Rommel.
As for Aubrey Grey’s military servce, he continued his career in the Navy, helping to design torpedoes. His story – which might have otherwise been forgotten – was recorded by his son after his grandchildren asked him about his exploits during the war. He died in 1979, at 84-years-old.
4. Captain Gerald Gibbs
(Image: via the Daily Mail)
One thing that’s long been undeniable about World War I has been the respect that each side had for the other – and that’s never been better illustrated than by a letter sent to Captain Gerald Gibbs.
When Gibbs captured a pair of German airmen in Macedonia, one of the first things that he did was make sure that they got a good meal. He took them for lunch in the officers’ mess, and the gesture – along with the conversations that undoubtedly took place – earned him the overwhelming respect of the men who suddenly found themselves in the hands of the enemy.
Later, Gibbs’ family found a letter in a scrapbook that he had kept about his time in the war. Included in the scrapbook was a letter from the men and signed by Lieutenant Robert Walther. The letter, written from a British POW camp, requests an autographed picture of the Captain and a photograph of the entire squadron, as a “reminder of the brave and quixotic adversary in aerial combat”. It’s signed “With chummy German airman greetings”, and is later described in other correspondence by the captain as being a very nice letter.
Later, Gibbs would also make it a point to drop a letter behind German lines to let them know that the two soldiers were alive and well, and in later letters about the incident, he details how excited they all were at the chance to be able to take the Germans alive and speak with them.
3. The Funeral of The Red Baron
(Images: C J von Duhren, public domain; Unknown, cc-sa-3.0 DE)
When it came to the aerial battles of World War One, there were few sights that would inspire as much fear in British fighter pilots as the distinctive red Fokker DR-1 Dridecker, flown by Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen – the Red Baron. The feared pilot – whose unprecedented 80 kills puts him well beyond flying ace territory – started out serving in the trenches before he transferred to the German Air Force in 1915. By 1917, he was the commander of the elite Flying Circus. It was a long way from the uncertain observer he’d been the first time he went up in a plane. In his autobiography, he details that first experience in a plane; far from the flying devil he’d be known as only a few years later, he described the wind as a “beastly nuisance”, his helmet that kept sliding off, and he remembered gripping the sides of the plane even before it left the runway.
Only a few years later, he would score 21 kills in a single month – April, 1917.
The notorious Red Baron was killed on May 21, 1918. Just who shot him down has long been up for debate, with several people claiming the honour. But what was never up for debate was the reverence for which the British troops treated the downed pilot – one of their greatest single foes on the battlefield.
(Image: Unknown, public domain)
His plane crashed in a field near Corbie, France. His body was recovered, and he was given a funeral with full military honours bestowed upon him – by his sworn enemies. He was laid to rest by the Australian army troops in a small cemetery in Bertangles, France, although his remains would be moved several more times. The coffin was inscribed with his name, age, rank and day of his death. Several wreaths were brought by allied units stationed nearby – all with German colours – and laid on the grave. One wreath contained the words: “To Our Gallant and Worthy Foe”. A squad of 25 riflemen performed a military salute, and those who attended the funeral noted the presence of high-ranking military personnel, reporters and photographers, all saluting the fallen German hero and remembering him as someone who always fought fairly.
2. Edith Cavell
(Image: edithcavell.org.uk; unknown; public domain)
Edith Cavell was born in Norfolk, England in 1865. The daughter of a vicar who used much of his own money to establish a Sunday school for his parish, she was raised with a very Christian view of the world – and for her, that meant helping others who were in need, regardless of their allegiance.
By 1896, Cavell had completed her training as a nurse, and within a year, she had already been awarded the Maidstone Medal for her work with those suffering from typhoid fever. When World War I broke out, she headed to Belgium to join the Red Cross efforts there.
With the overwhelming amount of wounded soldiers from both sides that found their way to Belgium. Cavell had her hands full not only tending those wounded, but overseeing 25 schools for training new nurses to keep up with demand, three nursing homes, three hospitals and a clinic, as well as overseeing the operations of 13 kindergartens and giving lectures to other medical personnel.
Her work during the war has made her legendary for several reasons. Cavell made it a point not to turn anyone away – she treated the wounded German soldiers with the same care and dedication as she treated the British, never refusing care to anyone because of their allegiance. In 1914, the front lines came to her hospital when it was taken under German control. Cavell soon became part of an underground network that helped shuttle Allied soldiers out of German-occupied territory and into the nearby, neutral Holland.
She had helped more than 200 soldiers escape – as well as aiding in getting other men back to the front lines – before her actions were discovered by the Germans.
Cavell never denied what she had been doing, and she was found guilty of treason. Other nations – including Spain, the United States and her native England – issued appeals for her release. But even her work saving the lives of countless German soldiers didn’t help; she was executed by firing squad on October 12, 1915. She was 49-years-old.
1. The Christmas Truce
(Image: A. C. Michael, public domain)
It’s one of those things that just seems so impossible, so unlikely, and so massive that it has to be nothing more than a fanciful story about a bloody, brutal Christmas in the trenches. But the Christmas Truce of 1914 was very, very real, a snapshot during one of the darkest moments in history when both sides were allowed to remember that in the trenches, everyone – on either side – was terrified and miles away from their homes and families.
The truth of the Christmas Truce has been up for a lot of debate, embellished with the romanticism of hindsight in some cases. The truth seems to be something in between the extremes. In some cases, the ceasefire lasted well past Christmas and even into 1915, as though pockets of soldiers had been reminded that there were bigger, more important things than the killing in the trenches.
Many, many records exist of the Christmas Truce, and it’s the small stories that are the most poignant.
In many places, it started with the songs that drifted out over no man’s land. The Christmas Truce didn’t happen everywhere, but in the places that it did, it seemed to evolve. Singing and shouting to each other turned into making their way out into the debris-strewn wasteland between the trenches, when many soldiers took the chance to give those who had already fallen a proper burial.
Men from both sides often helped.
(Image: Robson Harold B, public domain)
Pvt. Albert Moren remembered the sounds of Silent Night, drifting across the trenches from the German side. Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade later spoke of the candles that lit the makeshift Christmas trees that appeared along the edge of the German trenches, and how both sides began to sing the same song – O Come All Ye Faithful. The chaplain of the Sixth Gordon Highlanders presided over a joint funeral for both German and British troops who had already fallen, while Lt. Bruce Bairnsfather was struck by the sight of a man who had been a hairdresser in his pre-war existence cutting the hair of them who wanted.
For many, the end of Christmas Day brought back the bloodshed and the bullets. Captain Charles Stockwell recounts how the war began again:
At 8:30, I fired three shots into the air and put up a flag with “Merry Christmas” on it on the parapet. He put up a sheet with “Thank You” on it, and the German captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and for down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots into the air, and the war was on again.
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