Lithograph postcard of the uniforms of the Belgian military including infantry, cavalry, and bicycle corps beneath a portrait of King Albert I.
Image text: Reverse:Litho - L. Clement & Cie. Rue Ste Anne 23, Bruxelles
Postcard of a German soldier guarding French POWs, most of them colonial troops, the colorful uniforms of a Zouave, Spahi, Senegalese, and metropolitan French soldier contrasting with the field gray German uniform. A 1915 postcard by Emil Huber.
Image text: Emil Huber 1915Reverse:Unsere FeldgrauenSerie II? preussischer Infanterie-SoldatPrussian Infantry SoldierLogo: K.E.B.
Map of the Trentino, part of "Italia Irredenta," unredeemed Italy: Venezia Tridentina (Trentino and Alto Adige)
Image text: Venezia Tridentina (Trentino and Alto Adige)Confine del Regno d'ItaliaConf.[ine] Geografico d'ItaliaConfine fra Trentino e Alto AdigeFerrovieTramvieIst. Geogr. De Agostini-Novara - Riproduzione InterdettaVenezia Tridentina (Trentino and South Tyrol)Border of the Kingdom of ItalyGeographic boundary of ItalyBorder between Trentino and Alto AdigeRailwaysTramwaysGeographic Institute of Agostini-Novara - Reproduction prohibitedReverse:Message dated December 14, 1917
Headstone of Private A.C. Thomas of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Delville Wood Cemetery, Longueval, France. Thomas died July 20, 1916, aged 23. © 2014 John M. Shea
Image text: 12285 PrivateA.C. ThomasRoyal Welch Fusiliers20th July 1916 Age 23In Loving MemoryMother and Maude
Map of the Allied offensives of 1918, from July 18 and the Second Battle of the Marne to the Armistice on November 11. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Image text:
"On the 19th the intensity of the struggle was redoubled along the entire [Belgian] front. The Kaiser had ordered his troops to break through, cost what it might. Three times the German hordes were repulsed. . . .The center of the Belgian army was the object of violent and repeated attacks. It was then that our staff, in order to diminish the pressure on the center, directed the French Marine Fusiliers and a Belgian division to make a sally from Dixmude, delivering a counter-attack on the Beerst-Vladsloo front. On the evening of the 19th we held Vladsloo and the outskirts of Beerst, and were threatening the flank of the enemy army. But it was learned that important German reënforcements were arriving from the direction of Roulers, and we withdrew." ((1), more)
"— Dr. R——— passed through the offensive in the Artois behind the scenes as a Medical Officer. It appears that it failed completely in the South. An O.C. of colonial troops was quite distracted as he told him that his brigade had been ordered to advance against barbed wire which was still quite intact, and that he had not a man left. . . .They never captured Vimy Ridge. . . .— Regimental officers assert that the General Staff failed badly on two occasions : first, in open warfare (Charleroi) ; secondly, in an attempt to break through at a particular point (Champagne and Artois).— Quiet preparations are being made for the winter ; two thousand Adrian huts, ten thousand stoves, forty thousand braziers." ((2), more)
"The sky is overcast, grey and low. Mist is rising from the valley and cutting off the two peaks, ours and the one we are to attack. If we are going to die, we shall die cut off from the world and with a sense that no one is really interested. Once one is resigned to the thought of sacrificing oneself, one would like to think that it might happen in front of an audience. To die in the sun, in full view, on the open stage that is the world—that is how one imagines dying for one's country: but the way it is here is more like a condemned man being strangled secretly." ((3), more)
"Dearest Robert, I am so glad you like Owen's poem. I will tell him to send you any decent stuff he does. His work is very unequal, and you can help him a great deal.Seeing you again has made me more restless than ever. My position here is unbearable, and the feeling of isolation makes me feel rotten. I had a long letter from Cotterill to-day. They had just got back to rest from Polygon Wood and he says the conditions and general situation are more bloody than anything he has yet seen. Three miles of morasses, shell-holes and dead men and horses through which to get the rations up. I should like the people who write leading articles for the Morning Post (about victory) to read his letter." ((4), more)
"(1) The Flanders Group of Armies will march in the general direction of Brussels . . .(2) The British armies (Fifth, Third, First, Fourth) will advance . . . to throw the enemy back upon the almost impenetrable massif of the Ardennes . . . (3) The French armies (First, Tenth, Fifth, Fourth) and the American First Army will operate south of the above-mentioned lineTheir rôles will be as follows:For the French First Army, to support the attack of the British armies by marching towards La Capelle, Chimay, Givet . . .For the French Fifth and Sixth Armies and the American First Army, to reach the region Mézières, Sedan, and the Meuse . . ." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from an address by Carton de Wiart, Belgian Minister of Justice, in London, June, 1915. On October 19, 1914, the Germans were trying to break through the Belgian line from Dixmude to the North Sea, on the left of the Allied line. The Belgians expected French reinforcements, but French General Ferdinand Foch underestimated the number of troops assaulting the Belgians, and was marshaling his men in preparation for an offensive on October 22, hoping for support from the weakened Belgian Army. To aid the Belgians, British destroyers and monitors shelled German positions along the coast.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. II, 1914, p. 319, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Extract from the entry for October 19, 1915 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government. French Commander Joffre's great offensive in Champagne and Artois for autumn 1915, had come to a halt with heavy losses. The attempt at a breakthrough had failed. The Battle of Charleroi had been one of the Battle of the Frontiers during the Allied retreat in August, 1914. In the opening days of the war, Joffre and the General Staff had misread the German war plans, and left the French left wing under General Lanrezac exposed.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 114, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(3) Excerpt from the journal of Paolo Monelli, a soldier in an Italian Alpine regiment, northeast of Trento, on the Italian-Austrian Trentino front. Monelli was writing on October 19, 1916.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, page 310, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
(4) Excerpt from a letter dated October 19, 1917 from Siegfried Sassoon to the Robert Graves, a fellow soldier he had met at the end of 1915 as 'a young poet, captain in Third Battalion and very much disliked.' [p. 21] Sassoon was a British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon had been wounded in April, and by mid-June 15 had concluded that the war begun 'as a war of defence and liberation, [had] become a war of aggression and conquest.' In October he was at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric facility in Scotland, and under the care of W. H. R. Rivers. There he met the poet Wilfred Owen and edited some of his poems. Their relationship is the basis for Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker's trilogy of the same name. Graves was the author of Goodbye to All That. Quartermaster Joe Cotterill had written of the Battle of Polygon Wood, a September 26 action in the Third Battle of Ypres.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, pp. 191 and 192, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(5) Excerpts from the October 19, 1918 order of Allied Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch covering the Allied armies from the Channel coast to Verdun. The Flanders Group of Armies was 'marching' in pursuit of the Germans who were retreating to a shorter, more defensible line. Foch specified that the Flanders Group, which was led by Albert, King of the Belgians, and included the Belgian Army, coordinate with the left flank of the British while on their right flank the British would be supported by the French First Army. As the Germans retreated along the front, they fiercely held their left flank, where the Fifth and Sixth French and First American armies struggled to advance. The American Second Army and remaining French armies held the line from Verdun south to Switzerland.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 431–432, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
