We'll join in! Women beneath the flags of and in the uniforms of the Vierbund of Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria, are willing to play their part in the war effort.
Wir machen mit!We'll join in!Reverse:Dated Augsburg, February 3, 1916
"On August 22 [1916], Brusilov's army was confronted, along a twelve-mile sector of the front, by two divisions of Turkish troops, who a year earlier had been fighting at Gallipoli. But still the Austrian forces were driven back. 'The officers on the active list occupy comfortable chairs in the higher Staff appointments, General Hoffman, who was now controlling the battle in Galicia, wrote in his diary on August 27. 'Besides, there are all these different races mixed up together — no less than twenty-three distinct languages. No one understands anyone else.'"
By August, 1917, the offensive in Galicia mounted by Russian General Alexsei Brusilov on June 4 — one that had broken the Austro-Hungarian front — was coming to a halt. German troops reinforced their ally, and German officers began taking command. The Russians began replicating the ineffective assaults that they had conducted through much of the war, and suffered far more casualties than their enemies. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was polyglot, with German-speaking Austrians, the Magyars of Hungary, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Italians, Bosnians, Ruthenians, Romanians, and other ethnic groups. The language of command in the armed forces was German. Adding the Turks and, soon, the Bulgarians — all the forces of the Vierbund — complicated command and coordination. The Turks had defeated the Anglo-French invasion of Gallipoli at the beginning of the year.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 277, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
1916-08-22, 1916, August, language, languages, Brusilov, Brusilov Offensive, women soldiers
