#07.16.1903

[alternative-1901to2019]

07.15.1903: USAT Logan arrives at San Francisco from the Philippines with David John Conwill aboard. He has been gone since 08.05.1902. “We were just a few days out of San Francisco when we got the news that Germany had invaded England. I’d lived in America since I was 9 years old, but I’d been born in London, and I still felt a pang…”

07.16.1903: As the German reinforcements slated for Britain are no longer needed there, France feels threatened and withdraws its slow-moving Saar Offensive to consolidate its defensive position.

08.20.1903: D.J. Conwill’s initial enlistment expires and he is discharged at Fort McDowell on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. He returns to Springfield, Illinois, where he becomes a firefighter until reenlisting on 06.13.1904.

09.19.1903: U.S. Navy commissions its final three Plunger-class submarines: USS Plunger (A-1), USS Porpoise (A-6), and USS Shark (A-7), all at Crescent Shipyard in Elizabethport, New Jersey.

10.30.1903: A member of parliament, ex-army officer Winston Churchill, writes to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Selborne, proposing an armored, tracked “land ship" to break sieges.Selborne passes the idea on to Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, who orders him to explore the idea. It will lead to tanks.

11.11.1903: German Kaiser Wilhelm II approves bombing of the British home islands.

[alternative-1901to2019]

Although bound by no formal agreements with Britain, France entered the war six days after the invasion, attacking into the Saar basin with what troops it had immediately available and then planning a larger attack for the spring of 1904 on Alsace and Lorraine. Ten days after the battle of Dorking, the French began to withdraw from Germany, feeling threatened now that the German reinforcements slated to ship to the British Isles were available at the border with France.

Russia meanwhile did not join the war, as it did not feel bound by its 1891-’94 commitments to France since France had been the aggressor with regard to its war with Germany. Britain's sole formal ally, Japan, sent no troops to Europe but did attack German colonies in the Pacific and concessions in China. The Japanese Navy also reinforced the Royal Navy's Asiatic squadrons, freeing up British ships to make good the losses of the home fleet.