Austro-Hungarian soldiers marching through a city, their officers bawling orders. Women and a child watch and talk, possibly shouting to be heard over the marching feet. An original watercolor on blue paper, signed W. Rittermann or Pittermann, December 26, 1915.
Image text: signed W. Rittermann or Pittermann, December 26, 1915.
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.
La Domenica del Corriere (The Sunday Courier) of March 25 to April 1, 1917, an illustrated weekly supplement to Corriere della Sera, published in Milan, Italy. The front and back covers are full-page illustrations by the great Italian illustrator Achille Beltrame. The front cover depicts Russian troops cheering the deputies entering the Duma after what the paper calls, 'the Russian revolt for freedom and the war.' The secondary story was on the fall of Baghdad to British troops.
Image text: a Domenica del Corriere25 Marzo — 1 Aprile 1917.L'insurrezione russa per la libertà e la guerra. Le truppe acclamano i deputati che entrano alla Duma.The Russian revolt for freedom and the war. The troops cheer the deputies entering the Duma.
A mass of German troops bear an enormous egg striped in the black, white, and red of the german flag. Atop the egg, a cannon is fired by troops with a Hungarian flag. The target, diminutive in the distance, is Paris, Eiffel Tower gray against the brown city.The watercolor is labeled,Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso.The card is a Feldpostkarte, a field postcard, from Asbach Uralt, old German cognac. Above the brand name, two German soldiers wheel a field stove past a crate containing a bottle of the brandy under the title Gute Verpflegung, Good Food. Above the addressee is written Einschreiben, enroll, and Nach Ungarn, to Hungary. The card is addressed to Franz Moritos, and is postmarked Hamburg, 1918-03-30. A Hamburg stamp also decorates the card.A hand-painted postcard by Schima Martos. , Germany on registered fieldpost card, 1918, message: Red Egg for Paris, Easter, 1918.The German advance in Operation Michael in the March, 1918 nearly broke the Allied line, and threatened Paris, putting it once again in range of a new German supergun capable of hitting the city from 70 miles away.
Image text: Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso
"In 1914, 3,500,000 [Austro-Hungarian] men were called up — virtually the whole of the trained reserve, and a section of the untrained territorial army. Losses knocked out a substantial proportion of these — to the end of 1914, 1,250,000, and a further 800,000 to March 1915. . . . The army at the front therefore ran down — not much above 250,000 in December 1914, and not 500,000 in April 1915. . . . in spring 1915 there was a severe manpower crisis." ((1), more)
"— The 31st. The Press still mention 'French soldiers' as if they were a special caste. Do they forget that they are talking about ordinary peasants torn from the land, and that the young soldiers called up since the war were given only a few months' training? Thus, is any case, they are not regular soldiers. The French soldier is merely a peasant in a steel helmet." ((2), more)
"Saturday, March 31, 1917Anarchist propaganda has already contaminated the larger part of the front.From all quarters I am receiving reports of scenes of mutiny, the murder of officers and wholesale desertion. Even in the front line bands of private soldiers are leaving their units to go and see what is happening in Petrograd or at home in their villages." ((3), more)
"March 31st [1918].—Easter Day: blue sky and sunshine, grand black and white cloud effects. A morning mist seemed to rest on the Forest of Nieppe; the reality was the charming effect of sunlight on opening buds. Civilians filled the parish church to the door for morning service. In the afternoon they sat out of doors in groups, gossiping and drinking beer. Our voluntary services did not draw one worshipper among them all, to the padres' unholy indignation.—We are adjured to practise rapid loading. Such is G.H.Q.'s woeful discovery of our Army's training.—At long, long last the French reserve has moved and recovered a little ground." ((4), more)
(1) In eight months of war, Austria-Hungary's Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf had overseen three invasions of Serbia that had come to naught with the loss of 200,000 men. He had lost Galicia and Bukovina, Austria-Hungary's northeastern provinces. With German help, he had regained some of the lost territory, but not the fortresses at Przemyśl, where the Russians took over 100,000 men prisoner, and Lemberg. His winter offensive against Russia in the passes of the Carpathian Mountains had cost him another 800,000 men. Without the aid of Germany, without his forces being augmented by German troops, without his men being led by German officers, he could do little.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, pp. 122, 123, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
(2) Entry from March 31, 1916 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government critical, at least in his diary, of the war and its boosters in the government, the military, the press,and the public.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, pp. 154, 155, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(3) Excerpt from the entry for Saturday, March 31, 1917, from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia in Petrograd, the Russian capital. In the course and immediate aftermath of the February Revolution, some officers were murdered, and some soldiers left the front.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. III by Maurice Paléologue, page 277, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(4) Entry for, Easter Sunday, March 31, 1918 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J. C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. The French reserve Dunn writes of had come to the aid of the British, staggering back from the German Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, which had been launched on March 21, and was still in progress.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 460, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
