TimelineMapsSearch QuotationsSearch Images

Follow us through the World War I centennial and beyond at Follow wwitoday on Twitter


The heck with the Zeppelins!
Screw the Zeppelins!
A French soldier and his lover couldn't care less about the Zeppelin raid in progress. It's hard to tell if he is holding a cigarette in his right hand, or giving a fig to the Zeppelin.
Text:
Zut pour les Zeppelins!
TPFuria 546
Reverse:
Visé. Paris. - L'at. D'Art. Phot. - Bois-Colombes

The heck with the Zeppelins!
Screw the Zeppelins!
A French soldier and his lover couldn't care less about the Zeppelin raid in progress. It's hard to tell if he is holding a cigarette in his right hand, or giving a fig to the Zeppelin.

Image text

Zut pour les Zeppelins!

The heck with the Zeppelins!



TPFuria 546



Reverse:

Visé. Paris. - L'at. D'Art. Phot. - Bois-Colombes

Other views: Larger

Sunday, January 21, 1917

"I found spirits in the village greatly changed since my last home leave. The disaster in Romania, the dispatch of numerous forces to Salonika, the imminent call-up of the conscript class of 1918, the numbers of those exempted from service who had escaped the net of the recruitment boards, the shortages of sugar, coal, and transport—all these had turned a sunny optimism into somber pessimism, as eyes began to open to how things really were."

Quotation Context

Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, who came home to his village in Languedoc in southern France on January 21, 1917. The Allies had opened the Salonica Front in 1915 in a failed attempt to aid Serbia. By early 1916 there were over 500,000 Allied soldiers on the front. Romania entered the war on the side of the Allies in August, 1916, and were quickly defeated, the capital of Bucharest falling on December 6. The remains of the Serbian army was in the Allied line in the Balkans. What was left of Romania's army was in Moldavia, in the country's northeast, holding the front with the Russians. German troops held much of France's coal fields in northern France. The coal shortage was made worse due to rationing, a very cold winter, and its diversion to military uses. The shortage of coal and military demands of course affected transport.

Source

Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 291, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014

Tags

1917-01-21, 1917, January, leave, coal, morale, home front, sugar, transport, sugar shortage, coal shortage, shortage