What are the memories of the extraordinary heroes of the First World War: The blackest, the youngest, the most crazy, etc

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The First World War is believed to have actually opened and set the tone for the twentieth century. For many years, she was the main source of amazing, heroic or outrageous stories. Here are just a few of the unusual heroes that make up the legends of the war.

Marseille Pla

The only black aviator of the Russian Empire excited the minds of newspaper readers and ordinary people, who told each other his story. Many were sure that Plia came to Russia as part of a French circus. Very often he was called the Africans. Neither was true. Marseille spent his entire youth in Russia, and by birth he was a Polynesian.

The exact date of birth of the pilot is unknown. It is only clear that in 1907, when he arrived from French Polynesia with his mother in Russia, he was already a teenager. His mother moved to the empire in search of work. In Russia, she got a job as a nanny. She made the right decision, and not only with earnings - she managed to arrange the future of her son by her moving. Marcel learned Russian, unlearned it, met a girl, got married and had a child. True, just in case, he did not change French citizenship for Russian citizenship: you never know how the political situation will turn. At the same time, Plya really worked in the circus.

During the First World War, instead of going to France and joining the French army, as required by law, Plia chose to volunteer for the Russian army. Moreover, he had an excuse: to fulfill his duty to his official homeland, he would have had to go around the front line for a long time, and in any case he was fighting the same enemy.

At first, Marseille was a front-line driver - everyone who knew how to drive (there were not too many of them at the beginning of the twentieth century) were immediately put at the wheel. But soon he finds himself in the team of the legendary bomber "Ilya Muromets", a minder and machine gunner. Plia owes its fame to the service on the bomber.

On one of the sorties after the battle, right on the fly, the former circus performer Marseille climbed out of the cockpit to repair a number of damage to the aircraft engine on the fly. The crew at first decided that he simply fell out and, so to speak, flies to the ground on his own - everyone was busy with the wounded commander and did not go into details of the disappearance of Marseilles. When Plya fell into the plane with a crash from the top hatch, the crew was dumbfounded: alive! He also smiles! The fact that the plane held out to its own and sat down was already regarded on the ground as an undoubted feat, including - Marcel, who managed to save the engines. There were seventy holes in Muromets!

Later, Marseille approached Sikorsky with suggestions for improving the design of the aircraft. In particular, he suggested making the seats folding, because on takeoff and landing it still shakes so much that you have to get up, and, most importantly, the seat interferes with the machine gunner in battle. Sikorsky took into account the remarks of the hero of more than one at that time of the air battle. Alas, what exactly happened to Marcel at the end of the war and after it is unknown. With a high probability, he died.

The youngest officer of the First World War

During the massive recruitment of soldiers in Britain, many teenagers turned out to be in the army - volunteers were signed up at recruiting points in a hurry, without asking for documents. Then the parents came to the authorities with the metrics, demanding that the boys be returned home - and, by the way, they were returned. Some boys themselves betrayed their age, realizing how hard and dirty the war really is, they were sent home.

Against this backdrop, the story of fifteen-year-old Reginald Battersby looks exceptional. His father helped to forge documents for the front. Yes, Buttersby was asked them - because he was not enrolled as a soldier, but applied for an officer's rank, that is, he entered a short-term officer's courses. Battersby's father not only provided his son with a fake ID, but also obtained recommendations with real signatures of dignitaries.

On May 15, 1915, Reginald became the youngest junior lieutenant in the British army, having passed the exams in the courses. He was sent to the front and took command of a platoon there. His first offensive was a failure (many British soldiers were killed) and turned into a serious wound for him. But from the hospital, Battersby chose not to return home, but to the front and served there until his seventeen years, until a German shell took his leg off. But even after that, Battersby refused to leave the ranks of the British army and won a position for himself in the rear, but still in the army.

Thanks to his front-line career after the war, despite the fact that he never graduated from high school, he was accepted into the institute to study theology. Later he made a spiritual career, married a Turkish woman and painted British coats of arms at his leisure. By the way, Battersby is a relative of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Attacking dead

The First World War was remembered for the constant use of poisonous gases. So the Germans decided to take the Osovets fortress using gas. It was a mixture of chlorine and bromine. When inhaled, this mixture entered into a chemical reaction with liquid on the mucous membranes - in the mouth, throat, bronchi and lungs - and turned into hydrochloric acid, which corrodes the respiratory system. It hurt both eyes and sweaty skin. In general, the Germans expected that the gas would deprive the defenders of Osovets, the Russian army, of the opportunity to resist, but something went wrong. And no … The gas worked. Russian soldiers acted strangely in this case.

Before the attack, the Germans expelled the parliamentarian, warning that gas would be used during the assault, and offering to surrender. Brzhozovsky resolutely refused and suggested that the parliamentarian stay with him in the fortress during the assault, play, so to speak, a game: if the Germans succeed, they will hang him at the gate, the commandant, and if they sell him, then the parliamentarian. The parliamentarian refused to play such a game and retired.

Brzhozovsky ordered the soldiers to wrap their faces with cloth. Alas, the German attack was crushing. Very soon there was nothing left of the defenders, the Germans occupied area after area. And then … Brzhozovsky ordered a counterattack. The remains of the thirteenth company (mostly only she remained on her feet) were led forward by Second Lieutenant Kotlinsky. True, soon the command had to be intercepted by Second Lieutenant Strzheminsky - Kotlinsky was killed.

The spectacle of the counterattack, according to the stories, was so amazing that the Germans probably dreamed for a long time. The wet cloth did little to protect the Russian soldiers. She was corroded by the formed acid and she fell from faces in clumps. Faces, eyes were bleeding, blood was pouring from their mouths, but the soldiers stubbornly ran forward, fired, stabbed with bayonets, thrashed with rifle butts. Each of the soldiers was sure that the gas would kill him, and the more fiercely he was eager to fight - to take more Germans with him to the next world.

However, some survived. Vladislav Strzheminsky fought for some time, but soon he was left without his right leg, half of his left arm and with a damaged right eye. After the war, he became an artist, left with his wife for the now independent Poland, developed his own direction in painting. His name now bears the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. Kotlinsky was posthumously awarded. Brzhozovsky became a member of the White movement, after the victory of Soviet power, he moved to live in Yugoslavia.

And this is not a complete list of the heroes of that war. 8 Legendary Women of the First World War: Feats of War and Post-War Fate