Category Archives: Military

1625: English invasion thwarted by a booze up

In 1625, two English military commanders – George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and Sir Edward Cecil – sought royal approval for a war against Spain. A successful campaign, they told Charles I, would weaken the Spanish Empire and revive the glory of 1588, when the English repelled the Armada. Villiers and Cecil also hoped to line their pockets by plundering Spanish ships returning from the Americas laden with cash and cargo. Their plan was backed by Charles I but not parliament, which was unwilling and probably unable to provide financial support.

In the summer of 1625, Cecil moved to Devon to assemble his invasion force but was plagued by a shortage of funds and other difficulties. He secured almost 120 English and Dutch ships but many were poorly maintained. Cecil’s land force consisted of 15,000 men, most of whom were pressed into service in and around Plymouth. Cecil’s expedition was also poorly stocked: he was able to obtain provisions for scarcely a fortnight abroad.

The fleet sailed on October 5th 1625 but returned the following day after striking bad weather. It sailed again two days later but suffered damage in heavy weather off the Spanish coast. The English encountered several Spanish ships filled with cargo but dithering, allowed them to escape.

The expedition landed near Cadiz on October 24th but Cecil, having noticed the city’s fortifications, abandoned his plans to attack it. Instead, Cecil marched his men in the opposite direction. With night approaching he allowed his invasion to stop at village in the wine-producing region of Andalusia. Unfortunately for Cecil, this village housed a large quantity of the local product. His ‘army’ quickly fell apart, thanks to:

“…the misgovernment of the soldiers who, by the avarice or negligence of their commanders, were permitted to fill themselves so much with the wine they found in the cellars and other places they plundered, that they became more like beasts than men… if the Spaniards had had good intelligence they might have all been cut off.”

Cecil’s men were so hopelessly drunk that their officers abandoned plans for capturing major cities – or indeed smaller ones. The soldiers were herded back onto the ships. For a time they sailed aimlessly along the Spanish coast, looking for treasure ships to plunder. But poor hygiene and lack of supplies soon took their toll on the men, who began to die, “many each hour”.

In mid-November, the expedition was abandoned and the ships, scattered at sea, began to limp back to England. Cecil was the last to return: his own ship was blown off course and became lost, landing on the south coast of Ireland in mid December. His return ended one of the worst executed military campaigns in English history.

Source: Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England &c., 1684. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1905: An unfortunate sailor is flogged “up and under”

In 1891, English social reformer Henry Salt and several friends set up the Humanitarian League. Active for almost 30 years, the League waged energetic campaigns against animal cruelty, including vivisection, slaughterhouse practices, the fur trade, and blood sports like fox-hunting and deer-stalking.

Salt and his collaborators also lobbied for an end to inhuman practices and conditions like war and militarism, police brutality and corporal punishment in schools, prisons and the military.

In the first years of the 20th century, the League demanded an end to corporal punishment in the Royal Navy, particularly its use of “birchings” or “the cuts” (whippings with bundles of twigs). The Navy conducted hundreds of birchings every year, mostly on young cadets and junior sailors. It was a punishment that combined intense pain and blood letting with public humiliation and an awkward sexual undertone:

“The offender is strapped hand and foot… over the breech of a small gun, his trousers are allowed to fall below the knees. A broad canvas is passed around the middle of his body, and his clothing is strapped up, leaving thighs and buttocks perfectly nude… The strokes are deliberately delivered on the bare flesh, not in rapid succession but with a slight pause between each stroke, making the torture and agony of as lengthy a duration as possible. With each stroke the flesh is seen to turn red, blue and black with bruising. After six or eight strokes the skin usually breaks and copious streams of blood trickle down the unhappy victim’s legs… Splinters of broken birch, wet with blood, whizz and fly in all directions – and not infrequently the exuding excrement of the sufferer…”

Between 1900 and 1905, newspaper correspondents argued ad nauseum over the merits of corporal punishment. In a letter to The Times one flag officer, Vice Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, described the anti-birching campaign as “nonsense”. “British youths have been birched and caned from time immemorial,” said the admiral, “and yet the race has not turned out badly on the whole”.

On the other hand, many middle-class readers were shocked by graphic accounts of naval birchings and canings. In January 1905 Salt’s journal, The Humanitarian, published an eye-witness account of a Royal Navy birching ‘gone wrong’. When one bircher failed to incite his victim to screams, he became overzealous, aimed ‘up and under’, and landed his birch on a particularly delicate part of the anatomy:

“Towards the completion of the number of strokes, the corporal [carrying out the birching] began to be anxious for his reputation, so he resorted to the unfair and terrible ‘upward’ stroke, but his aim was not true. The poor fellow gave a yell which I shall never forget and fainted at once… Until he had been surgically examined there was no anxiety, but when it was known that no permanent injury had been inflicted, the matter became one for jest among those sufficiently lost to all sense of decency.”

Fortunately, the Humanitarian League’s campaign did have some effect. In 1906 the Royal Navy outlawed the use of the birch, replacing it with a single cane. Under new regulations, canings could only be distributed after a formal hearing and were no longer carried out in public.

By the 1930s there were few canings carried out on seagoing ships. Caning continued to be used on young naval trainees until 1967, when it was abolished altogether.

Sources: The Humanitarian, January 1905 and March 1905. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1942: LBJ wins Silver Star for “coolness”

In 1942, future United States president Lyndon Johnson was awarded a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest military decoration – for showing “coolness” during a plane ride.

Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 1937, weeks before his 29th birthday. When Pearl Harbour was bombed in December 1941 Johnson rushed to enlist in the Naval Reserve, probably thinking that military service would enhance his political prospects.

In mid 1942, Johnson, by then sporting the rank of lieutenant commander, travelled to the Pacific theatre as an observer. There he became friendly with Douglas MacArthur, who allowed Johnson to ‘sit in’ on an aerial bombing raid against Japanese targets. On June 9th Johnson arrived at an airstrip in Port Moresby, New Guinea and boarded a B26 Marauder dubbed the Wabash Cannonball.

Needing to “take a leak”, Johnson left the aircraft for a few minutes. On his return he found the seats occupied by other officers, forcing LBJ onto another B26, the Heckling Hare. As it turns out Johnson’s full bladder saved his life: the Wabash Cannonball was shot down over water near Lae, killing all on board.

Johnson’s plane also came under attack from numerous Japanese Zeros and was forced to abandon its bombing mission. While the pilot, Lieutenant Walter Greer, struggled to evade the Zeros, and the air crew manned the guns, Johnson watched the whole show from his window seat. The attack lasted less than 13 minutes before the Heckling Hare slipped its pursuers and headed back to Moresby on one engine.

Despite playing no active part in the mission Johnson was awarded the Silver Star – apparently for showing “coolness”:

“While on a mission of obtaining information in the Southwest Pacific area, Lieutenant Commander Johnson, in order to obtain personal knowledge of combat conditions, volunteered as an observer on a hazardous aerial combat mission over hostile positions in New Guinea. As our planes neared the target area they were intercepted by eight hostile fighters… The plane in which Lieutenant Commander Johnson was an observer developed mechanical trouble and was forced to turn back alone, presenting a favourable target to the enemy fighters, [and] he evidenced marked coolness in spite of the hazards involved.”

The Heckling Hare’s other crew members – including Lieutenant Greer, whose brilliant flying had saved Johnson’s life – were awarded no medal of any kind. Greer was not even aware of Johnson’s Silver Star until reading of it in the press. The men who died on the first B26, the Wabash Cannonball, received only the lower rated Purple Heart.

As for Johnson, he showed some initial embarrassment about his Silver Star, telling a Washington reporter he didn’t deserve the medal and drafting a letter declining to accept it. Nevertheless, accept it and wear it he did. When Johnson returned to the campaign trail in Texas his Silver Star, perhaps the least deserved military decoration in American history, became one of the most worn and referenced.

Johnson continued to wear the Silver Star citation in the Senate, as vice president and during his tenure in the White House.

Source: Silver Star citation, General Orders No. 12, Southwest Pacific Area, June 18th 1942. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1946: German admiral feigns madness, goes ‘bzzz, bzzz’

Karl Doenitz was a German admiral during World War II and, for a brief time after Hitler’s suicide, the president of Germany.

Doenitz served as a junior lieutenant in World War I, remaining in the navy during the interwar period and rising through the ranks. At the outbreak of World War II Doenitz was promoted to rear admiral and put in charge of Germany’s U-boat fleet. Though not formally a Nazi Party member, Doenitz was nevertheless pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic and fanatically loyal to Hitler. He became president on April 30th 1945 and oversaw Germany’s surrender to the Allies, before being arrested three weeks later.

According to an apocryphal story Doenitz, who suffered from poor bladder control, was wearing several pairs of underpants when arrested. He was held by the British for several weeks then charged with war crimes and moved to Nuremberg. While awaiting trial Doenitz admitted to a US Army psychiatrist, Lt Col. Douglas Kelley, that he had feigned insanity while in British custody:

“Two companions and I decided it might aid our efforts to escape if we were adjudged insane. We walked about, our heads hunched down, going ‘Bzzz, bzzz’ and insisting that we were U-boats. But the British doctors were too much smart for us.”

Doenitz was convicted of military war crimes but acquitted of the more serious crimes against humanity. Sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, he was held at Spandau until 1956. After his release Doenitz retired to northern Germany where he penned two memoirs, remaining unapologetic for his role in the war. He died in 1980, aged 89.

Source: Douglas M. Kelley, Twenty-two Cells in Nuremberg: A Psychiatrist examines the Nazi criminals, 1947. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1871: Union general’s war service causes severe rectum issues

George Stoneman was a Union general during the United States Civil War and later, a governor of California. Stoneman was born in the far western corner of New York state, the eldest of ten children. As a teenager he was shipped off to study at West Point, where he shared a room with the better known Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. Stoneman graduated in 1846 and spent the next 15 years as a cavalry officer in California and the Midwest.

When the Civil War erupted in 1861 Stoneman was quickly promoted to flag rank and given commands of both cavalry and infantry divisions. He was captured by Confederates in 1864 and for a few months was their highest ranking prisoner-of-war. Stoneman was released in mid-1864 as part of a prisoner exchange, returning to active service and commanding a division that swept through the South in the final months of the war.

When the Civil War ended in May 1865 Stoneman had spent most of it in the saddle, participating in some long and arduous campaigns. The effect this had on his backside was later revealed in a post-war legal tussle. Retired and pensioned at the rank of colonel, rather than his brevet rank of major-general, Stoneman petitioned the Army for a better pension, citing agonising medical problems he had incurred in the service of the Union:

“The disability he now labours under was occasioned by a continuous series of contused wounds from jolting in the saddle during his raids in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia… At the commencement of his campaigns he was suffering severely from piles, and under this hard service occurred an extreme falling of the rectum, amounting to an extreme protrusion of the bowel, which yet with great difficulty [was] returned and kept in place… Death itself is preferable to the injuries he sustained.”

Stoneman continued this fight until the early 1880s but alas, it was unsuccessful. In 1881, the US Attorney General ruled that Stoneman’s injuries were “not wounds received in battle” but were the result of “the disease from which he was suffering”. Much aggrieved, Stoneman went into politics, serving one term as the governor of California. He later returned to his native New York, where he died shortly after his 72nd birthday.

Source: Medical panel letter to the Secretary of War, November 2nd 1871. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1899: Navy officer slammed for kissing 163 women

Richmond P. Hobson (1870-1937) was an American naval officer. Born and raised in rural Alabama, Hobson enrolled at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis at age 14. In 1889, he graduated top of his class, though Hobson’s rigid discipline and dislike of both alcohol or tobacco made him unpopular with classmates.

When war broke out between the US and Spain in 1898, Hobson was sent to Cuba. In May 1898, he was ordered to seize control of a coal ship, the Merrimac, and scuttle it in the harbour mouth at Santiago, an attempt to trap Spanish ships inside the harbour. Hobson did manage to sink the Merrimac, though not accurately enough to block the harbour mouth. He and his men were captured and detained by the Spanish.

Though Hobson’s mission failed, the jingoistic American press presented it much differently. Hobson was hailed as the “hero of the Merrimac” whose courage and daring had thwarted the Spanish. Newspapers carried stories of his bravery and portraits of the dashing young officer, who became a celebrity and a sex symbol, even as he remained a prisoner-of-war.

Hobson was released later in 1898 and repatriated to the United States. He made a series of public appearances, most of which were flooded with eager young ladies. But these public audiences produced “shocking spectacles” that led to Hobson’s fall from grace with the press:

“The scene in the Chicago Auditorium, when Lieutenant Hobson was kissed by 163 morbid women, was loathsome. It is deplorable. It is sad that a man of his excellent courage and fine intelligence should so far forget the dignity of the American navy as to lend himself to a public exhibition of female hysteria… We shall never tire of boasting of his nerve and his unflinching devotion to duty; but no one is likely ever to hear us boasting about his modesty or his good taste.”

Reports were also scathing about the young women who rushed to kiss the “hero of the Merrimac“:

“We have no doubt they are heartily ashamed of themselves. They ought to be, at any rate.”

Hobson remained in the Navy, reaching the rank of captain, before resigning in 1903. The following year he was elected to the House of Representatives, serving there until 1916. In 1933 he received the Medal of Honour and a special pension for his exploits aboard the Merrimac.

Source: Pullman Herald, January 21st 1899. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1766: Army captain suspended for a year for being insulted

Captain Benjamin Beilby, a British army officer with the 11th Foot Regiment on Minorca, was court martialed in September 1766. Beilby’s ‘crime’ was that he had been abused and insulted by another officer, Captain Robinson, but had done nothing about it. As a consequence, Beilby was charged with:

“..having received from Captain Robinson language unbecoming of the character of an officer and a gentleman, without taking proper notice of it.”

According to witnesses Robinson had been taunting and abusing Beilby for some time, on one occasion being heard to call out:

“Is that the way you march your guard, you shitten dirty fellow? Is that the way you make your men slope their arms, you dirty dog?”

Beilby’s toleration of these grievous slurs outraged his fellow officers, apparently more than the slurs themselves. Honour demanded the insulted party confront Robinson and challenge him to a duel – but Beilby had done nothing, bar write his abuser an angry letter.

Beilby was ostracised by his own colleagues, who refused to dine in the same mess as him. The court martial found Beilby guilty of neglect and he was suspended from duty for one year. When records of the court martial reached the Admiralty in London, however, it was immediately overturned. Captain Robinson was not court martialed or sanctioned for his insults.

Source: Court Martial Records, 71/50, September 1766. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1915: Austrians invent electric underwear for trench warfare

In late 1915, newspapers in Europe and the United States reported that freezing German and Austrian soldiers on the Western Front could soon benefit from a thrilling new invention: electric underwear.

Developed by Max Beck at the University of Innsbruck and Professor Herman von Schroter of Vienna, the underwear were made of non-conductive fabric interwoven with thin wires, in a similar fashion to modern electric blankets. Each pair contained a safety fuse to prevent overloading and electrocution. They cost approximately eight pounds Sterling or $US20 to manufacture. According to American reports:

“For each series of trenches it is necessary to install an electric plant, from which conducting wires are carried. When a soldier feels cold, all he has to do is connect up his underwear with the current wires… As now perfected it will be possible for soldiers to warm themselves with this electrical clothing [up to] 1,500 feet away.”

Source: The Sunday Times (London), November 21st 1915; Keowee Courier, December 29th 1915. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1870: Army officer’s wife unimpressed by Illinois flasher

Frank D. Baldwin served in the United States Army for more than 40 years, enlisting as a teenaged private in 1862 and retiring as a major-general in 1906. During his service, Baldwin fought with distinction in the US Civil War, several campaigns against Native American leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and the Spanish-American War. He was one of only 19 Americans to win the prestigious Medal of Honor twice.

Michigan-born Baldwin married Alice Blackwood in January 1867. For the next few years, husband and wife were separated by Frank’s military postings so corresponded regularly by mail. Alice’s letters suggest she was a devoted wife who adored her husband, as well as being a person of good humour.

Writing in October 1870, Alice informed Frank of an incident during a train trip through Illinois:

“There was a man showed his conflumux [penis] to me at one station where we stopped… while I was looking out the window. I thought he might have saved himself the trouble because I had seen one before.”

Alice’s letters occasionally contained sexual commentary or titillation. In one note from June 1873, she playfully chastises Frank for “casting sly glances at Mrs Sowter’s bubbies. You ought to be ashamed.” She also teases him by writing:

“How are you this hot day? I am most roasted and my chemise sticks to me and the sweat runs down my legs and I suppose I smell very sweet, don’t you wish you could be around just now?”

In another letter from December 1870, Alice taunts her husband about his prior intentions to marry another woman, Nellie Smith. According to Alice, Frank’s alternative wife might have suffered from his generous endowment:

“I felt real queer and strange when I heard you had half a mind to marry another girl. I thought I held undivided your love. Well, it’s too late now. Nellie Smith don’t know what she escaped. She would have been killed at one nab of your old Long Tom.”

Frank Baldwin died in 1923, aged 80. Alice died in 1930 after securing the publication of her late husband’s memoirs.

Source: Letters from Alice Baldwin to Frank Baldwin dated September 5th 1869; October 1st 1870; June 22nd 1873. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1745: Invading Scots beshit the streets of Macclesfield

John Stafford was a lawyer and the town clerk of Macclesfield, near Manchester, at the height of the Jacobite uprising in 1745. Led by the ‘Bonnie Prince’, Charles Stuart, the Jacobite rebels invaded England in November 1745. By the end of the month, the Jacobite advance had reached Macclesfield, where it was warmly welcomed by most townspeople.

John Stafford, a Hanover loyalist, was much less enthusiastic about their presence. Nevertheless, Stafford took an interest in the arrival of the ‘Pretender’s forces, recording observations about their numbers, their personnel and Charles Stuart himself.

Stafford was also required to provide lodgings for two Scottish soldiers. One was a young officer, “exceedingly civil” and a “person of sense and account” who charmed Stafford’s daughters. His second guest was a “very ordinary fellow” who “tried all the locks in my bureau and in my wife’s closet” and pilfered several small items from the Stafford house.

After enduring a sleepless night, Stafford walked across the road to visit his neighbour, who was hosting more than 50 Highland soldiers and their camp followers. To his horror:

“The house floor was covered with straw, and men, women and children lay promiscuously together like a kennel of hounds, some of ’em stark naked.”

Stafford then took a walk around the neighbourhood and discovered that it had been befouled by the visiting Scots:

“As soon as it was daylight the streets appeared in the Edinburgh fashion, being beshit all along on both sides, from one end to the other.”

To Stafford’s “great joy” the Jacobite contingent left the following day and pushed on towards Derby. They passed through Macclesfield again a week later, this time in retreat. In April the following year, Charles Stuart and his army were conclusively defeated at the Battle of Culloden.

Source: Letter from John Stafford, December 2nd 1745. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.