Animated foods wear their ration cards in a postcard to commemorate the war year, 1916. A couplet invokes German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg's advice to stick together to fend off the demon of hunger.
Image text: Zur Erinnerung an die Kriegszeit Anno Domini 1916Wenn wir felt zusammenhalten, treu nach Bethmann-Hollwegs Lehren,Dann wird sich der Hungerteufel bald zu allen Teufeln scheeren!To commemorate the war Anno Domini 1916If we stick together firmly, true to Bethmann Hollweg's teachings,Soon the demon of hunger will go to the devil for shearing!Oskar Beringer.Labels:Fleisch-karte, Brot-karte, Zucker-karte, Seife, Butter-karte, Milch-karte, Mehl-karte, Schwammeil-karte[Ration cards:] Meat card, bread card, sugar card, soap, butter card, Milk card, flour card, mushroom cardReverse:C. A. & Co., M. Kriegspostkarte No. 98 (m).
Anzac Cove, Ari Burnu, from John Masefield's 'Gallipoli.'
Image text: View of Anzac, looking towards Suvla.
Wooden cigarette box carved by Г. САВИНСКИ (?; G. Savinskiy), a Russian POW. The Grim Reaper strides across a field of skulls on the cover. The base includes an intricate carving of the years of war years, '1914' and, turning it 90 degrees, '1918.'
Image text: ПДМЯТЬ ВОИНЬ 1914-18To the memory of the soldiers 1914-18Reverse:19141918Г. САВИНСКИ (?)G. Savinskaya
German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
Image text: Der KanalStraße von CalaisThe English Channel and the Strait of CalaisReverse:Panorama des westlichen Kriegsschauplatzes 1914/15 Von Arras bis Ostende.Die Panorama-Postkartenreihe umfaßt mit ihren 9 Abschnitten Nr. 400 bis 408 den gesamten westlichen Kriegsschauplatz von der Schweizer Grenze bis zur Nordseeküste.Panorama of the western theater of operations 1914/15 from Arras to Ostend. The panoramic postcard series includes nine sections, with their No. 400-408 the entire western battlefield from the Swiss border to the North Sea coast.Nr. 408Wenau-Postkarte Patentamtl. gesch.
Victory Monument commemorating the Eighth Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, an African-American unit that served in France reorganized as the 370th U.S. Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division. The bronze sculpture is by Leonard Crunelle and was erected in 1927.The regiment saw action at St. Mihiel, the Argonne Forest, Mont des Singes, and in the Oise-Aisne Offensive. The monument lists the names of the 137 soldiers of the regiment who lost their lives in the war. © 2013, John M. Shea
Image text: Victory
"Count Berchtold read me a telegram from Count Szögyény in which the latter reports that the Berlin authorities consider the utmost rapidity in military operations and the immediate declaration of war to be necessary in order to avoid as far as possible the danger of the intervention of a third party." ((1), more)
"In this war of digging, the daily life in the trenches gives digging enough to every soldier. Men dig daily even if they do not fight. At Anzac in July the Australians had a double share of digging—their daily share in the front lines, and when that was finished their nightly share, preparing cover for the new troops. During the nights of the latter half of July the Australians at Anzac dug, roofed, and covered not less than twenty miles of dug-outs. All this work was done in their sleep time, after the normal days work of fighting, digging, and carrying up stores. Besides digging these hiding-places they carried up, fixed, hid, and filled the water-tanks which were to supply the newcomers." ((2), more)
". . . Before Death came to release him, he became calmer — he was back at home, among those whom he loved. Suddenly he seized my arm and cried, 'I knew that you would come! Elena, little dove, I knew that you would come! Kiss me, Elena, kiss me!' I realized that in his delirium he had mistaken me for the girl he loved. I bent and kissed his damp, hot face, and he became more tranquil. Death claimed him while he was still in a state of tranquillity. How I longed to be able to tell that unknown Elena that her unseen presence had helped him to die in peace." ((3), more)
"In the evening, the shelling waxed to a demented fury. Ahead of us, coloured flares went up in a continual stream. Dust-covered runners reported that the enemy was attacking. After weeks of drumming, the infantry battle was about to begin; we had come at the right time." ((4), more)
"I say plainly that every American who takes part in the action of a mob or gives it any sort of countenance is no true son of this great Democracy, but its betrayer, and does more to discredit her by that single disloyalty to her standards of law and of right than the words of her statesmen or the sacrifices of her heroic boys in the trenches can do to make suffering peoples believe her to be their savior. How shall we commend democracy to the acceptance of other peoples, if we disgrace our own by proving that it is, after all, no protection to the weak? Every mob contributes to German lies about the United States what her most gifted liars cannot improve upon by way of calumny. They can at least say that such things cannot happen in Germany except in times of revolution, when law is swept away!" ((5), more)
(1) Beginning of a telegram from Tschirschky, the German Ambassador in Vienna, to German Secretary of State Jagow, July 26, 1914. The 'danger of the intervention of a third party' is a peace conference including representatives of the great powers.Tschirschky met with Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Berchtold and Austro-Hungarian Army Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf to discuss the beginning of the campaign against Serbia. Conrad says it will be 'somewhere about August 12' which would leave ample time for a conference. Jagow and German Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg are working to make a peace conference moot. German Chief of Staff von Moltke delivered to the Foreign Office a draft of an ultimatum to Belgium in preparation for crossing her territory to attack France.
July, 1914; the Outbreak of the First World War; Selected Documents by Imanuel Geiss (Editor), page 228, copyright © 1967 Imanuel Geiss, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1967
(2) Since the April 25, 1915 Allied landing of the Gallipoli peninsula, the Turkish defenders had confined the invaders to two footholds on the peninsula, one at the southern end, where British, Indian, French, and Senagalese troops had made little headway, the second at Anzac Cove, named for the men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the ANZACs who held the beach and some of the hills above it at the Cove. Just as the Allies had hoped that the invasion would lead to a breakthrough in the war by opening a new front against the Central Powers, they hoped to break the stalemate at Gallipoli by launching a new invasion, at Suvla Bay, north of Anzac. On the same day, August 7, the ANZACs would be reinforced for an advance of their own. In preparation, in July, the men dug.
Gallipoli by John Masefield by John Masefield, pp. 110, 111, publisher: William Heinemann, publication date: 1916
(3) Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross, advancing through Austria-Hungary in the Brusilov Offensive, and writing on July 27 (July 14 Old Style), 1916, of the death the day before of an officer of the Vyatski Regiment who had been severely wounded in both legs. Although the surgeons had been able to amputate, gangrene had set in. In his delirium, the officer had first imagined himself on the battlefield leading his men, and he had to be restrained by two orderlies. He calmed as putrefaction advanced.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 212, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(4) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger left Cambrai, France on June 25, 1917, ordered to Flanders, where the British had already begun their artillery bombardment in preparation for the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 161, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(5) Excerpt from President Woodrow Wilson's July 26, 1918 speech against lynching, made at the urging of Robert R. Moton of the Tuskegee Institute. In 1917, the year the United States entered the war, there were 38 lynchings in the country, 36 of them of Blacks. In 1918, there were 64, 60 of them of Blacks. (Counts from www.famous-trials.com/sheriffshipp/1084-lynchingsyear. Details on some two horrific 1918 examples of this loathsome community crime available at www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings. Both sources as of July 25, 1918.)
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 508, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
