'December snow.' Hand-painted watercolor calendar for December 1917 by Schima Martos. Particulates from a smoking kerosene lamp overspread the days of December, and are labeled 'December höra,' 'December snow.' The first five days or nights of the month show a couple at, sitting down to, or rising from a lamp-lit table. The rest of the month the nights are dark, other than four in which the quarter of the moon shows through a window, or Christmas, when the couple stands in the light of a Christmas tree.
December höraDecember snow2½ liter petroleum.
"On 26 April Sir William Robertson wrote to Haig: 'It seems to me the right thing to do is to keep on fighting.' And Haig agreed; but he was in a dilemma. He wanted to launch his new offensive in the north, but he couldn't neglect the Arras front while the French were in their present disarray. As he informed the War Cabinet on 1 May: 'We cannot rely on adequate French offensive co-operation. The fact is deeply to be regretted, but it must be recognized. We must maintain the offensive for at least two or three weeks more.'"
Britain's Arras Offensive, part of the Franco-British Nivelle Offensive, commenced on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917. After a first day that saw the taking of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps and a British advance in other parts of the line, the British suffer heavy losses while achieving little more. French delays in launching their offensive — Second Battle the Aisne — led British Commander Douglas Haig to continue attacking to keep the Germans off balance. When the French attacked on April 16, their high hopes quickly came to little. They too suffered heavy losses, and a roundhouse blow to French morale that soon led soldiers to refuse to attack. Haig would get to execute his offensive 'in the north' in July. It would become the disastrous Battle of Passchendaele. William Robertson was Chief of Britain's Imperial General Staff.
Cheerful Sacrifice: The Battle of Arras, 1917 by Jonathan Nicholls, page 192, copyright © Jonathan Nicholls [1990 repeatedly renewed through] 2011, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2010
1917-05-01, May, 1917, Haig, Douglas Haig, Robertson, William Robertson, Battle of Arras, Arras
