To the Dardanelles! The Entente Allies successfully capture their objective and plant their flags in this boy's 1915 war game, as they did not in life, neither in the naval campaign, nor in the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.
Image text: Aux Dardanelles; Victoire; Vive les AlliésLogo and number: ACA 2131Reverse:Artige - Fabricant 16, Faub. St. Denis Paris Visé Paris N. au verso. Fabrication Française - Marque A.C.A
The Western Front, 1914 and 15. The Imperial German eagle is a crow feeding on carrion, perched on a cross bearing scenes of the destruction of its advance and retreat through France and Belgium: the shelled and burned cathedral of Reims, the ruination of the city of Arras, a destroyed town, deaths both military and civilian in Belgium. France held its territory along the border with Germany, and turned back the German advance in the Battle of the Marne, but Belgium and northern France remained occupied through the war.Accused of war crimes, Germany, labeled on the map by "Kulturland?", defended itself by speaking of its superior culture.Spain, Holland, and Switzerland remained neutral during the war, and are show in green. Italy joined the Allies in May, 1915, possibly shortly before the card was printed, which may explain the use of red for its name and border.
Image text: [On the cross:] Reims, Après le Passage des Allemands, Arras!, Belgique[On the map, the countries of] Angleterre, Hollande, Espagne, Suisse, Italie, Belgique, France, Kulturland? [Germany, and the cities of] Douvres, Calais, Paris, Arras, Reims, Maubeuge, Verdun, Nancy, Epinal, and BelfortReverse:M. Mantel édit., Lyon, 3, Rue Mulet
Collier's War Maps of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus, with insets for the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Narrows of the Dardanelles, Constantinople (Istanbul), and the Bosphorus between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea
Image text: Collier's War Maps of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the BosphorusInset:The Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula, an inset from Collier's War Maps of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the BosphorusInset:The Narrows of the DardanellesInset:Constantinople (Istanbul)Inset:The Bosphorus between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea
The disparity in the number of nations arrayed against the Central Powers was a common motif, and was updated as the numbers on each side increased. Italy's entry into the war on May 23, 1915 changed the numbers again.Central Powers (top) Sultan Mohammed V of Turkey, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. Allies (center and bottom rows) Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King George V of the United Kingdom, President Raymond Poincaré of France, King Nikola of Montenegro, King Peter of Serbia, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, King Albert I of Belgium, Emperor Taishō of Japan.In the center, a poem: Drei gegen Acht, Three against Eight.
Image text: Drei gegen Acht.Gebt Acht, Ihr “Acht”, es blitzt und krachtund schlägt manch’ schwere Lücke.Jung-Siegfrieds Schwert schlug unversehrtDen Ambosz einst in Stücke.Und Treue, Mut und EinigkeitGeb’ uns zum Siege das Geleit.- Richard OttThree against eightTake heed, your "night" flashes and crashesAnd suggests some serious gap.Young Siegfried's sword split the anvilYet stayed intact.And loyalty, courage and unityWill lead us to victory.Reverse:Postmarked Frankfurt, July 21, 1915
"On May the twenty-fourth there was an armistice. I was involved in that as an observer, nothing else. I wasn't among the burial parties. My job was to look out for Otago bodies. Actually I only found one. The rest were either buried before I got there or on the Turk side of the line. They put a line of pegs halfway between the two lines, each peg with a little strip of white calico. We buried all the men on our side of the armistice line and they buried all the men on their side. But that wasn't the first idea. The first idea was that we would pick up the Turks on our side of the line and carry them over the centre line. The Turks were to do the same with our fellows on their side. This turned out to be impossible. You couldn't move the bodies." ((1), more)
"There was naturally a cascade of Croix de Guerre distributed, as always, according to the whims of the officers, who began by giving them to each other.For these, the company commanders had to present a list of those most deserving. Lieutenant Cordier responded with these noble words: 'All my men did their duty. To reward a few would be to do an injury to the others. That's an injustice to which I will not subscribe.' . . ." ((2), more)
"The Russians repeated the [mining] operation on the night of 24 May. The Svobodnaya Rossiya and five destroyers were also at sea to cover the operation and a reconnaissance of Sinope by the seaplane carrier Aviator. The Russians varied their original plan slightly. The Pamiat Merkuria now brought the launches to within 12 miles of the Bosphorus in order to spare them the long haul to the minelaying area, and they were then towed by the destroyer Pronzitelni to the edge of the old minefield, roughly 12 miles from the entrance. The operation was successful, the mines were laid undetected." ((3), more)
"As though by chance on the following day, the French Press published a success by the Belgian troops 'under the orders of General de Cueninck, subordinate to General Foch', and on the 24th M. de Broqueville handed the King a memorandum, trying to prove that the Sovereign's command was only fictitious and that the Chief of the Army Staff alone was responsible for the conduct of operations." ((4), more)
(1) Description by George Skerret of the New Zealand Otago Battalion of the May 24, 1915 armistice to bury the dead. After the Turkish attack at Ari Burnu — Anzac Cove — on May 18 and 19, bodies lay between the Turkish and Allied lines in a no-man's land that was, in places, only tens of yards wide, and decayed rapidly in the heat. Fearful of disease, wanting to bury their dead, the two sides arranged a truce. As Skerret says, the men originally planned to bury their own, moving enemy dead across the armistice line. The bodies were so badly decomposed moving them was impossible. This was the only such truce of the Gallipoli campaign.
Voices of Gallipoli by Maurice Shadbolt, page 52, copyright © 1988 Maurice Shadbolt, publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, publication date: 1988
(2) French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas rotated into the Verdun sector on May 6, 1916, moved to the front line on the 11th, and moved out the night of May 18-19. Due to French commander Henri Philippe Pétain's policy of short rotations, some 80% of the French army rotated through Verdun during the Battle. Barthas records that his reserve regiment suffered as many as 1,050 killed, wounded, and missing. When the losses were replaced with young men, the regiment was made an active duty, regular regiment. Barthas, who had previously been broken in rank, was made a corporal again.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 218, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(3) The Russians successfully laid mines in the Bosporus — the strait leading from Constantinople to the Black Sea — the night of May 17, 1917, the action they were repeating on the 24th. Repeating the operation on the 25th, one of the mines exploded while still in the Russian launch, destroying the boat and alerting the Turks who discovered the new mine field. Many of the ships mentioned had been renamed after the Russian Revolution to eliminate imperial references: Svobodnaya Rossiya (Free Russia) had been Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya, Aviator had been Imperator Nikolai I.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 251, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(4) Albert, King of the Belgians, resisted repeated requests by the Allies, including Allied Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to subordinate Belgian troops to non-Belgian command. One request would have deployed forces to Italy. Albert repeatedly pointed out agreeing to any of these requests was constitutionally impossible. He hotly disagreed with his Prime Minister's position, summarized above, pointing out that he had commanded the Army for nearly four years in accordance with Article 64 of the Belgian Constitution. Charles de Broqueville served as Prime Minister of Belgium from June 17, 1911 to June 1, 1918.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 209, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
