French military aviation, 1914. A Deperdussin monoplane in the foreground which has just landed, and a Farman biplane in the background. The Farman was a pusher, with the propeller positioned behind the pilot. In 1914 planes were used primarily for observation and artillery registration.
Image text: Camp de Sissonne (Aisne) - Aviation Militaire - Biplan Farman - Monoplan Deperdussin venant d'atterrirCamp Sissonne (Aisne) - Military Aviation - a Farman Biplane - a Deperdussin Monoplane having just landedPottelam-Parmite, éditeur, Sissonne (Aisne) - DéposéPottelam-Parmite, publisher, Sissonne (Aisne) - FiledReverse:Message in German dated November 2, 1914 and postmarked the next day.
A portrait of German General Paul von Hindenburg superimposed on a map of his victories in East Prussia and conquests in Russia. In Prussia (in pink) the Russians took Gumbinnen and Insterburg before being defeated at Allenstein (in the Battle of Tannenburg), and in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes in the first two months of war in 1914. Before the year had ended, German troops advanced well into Polish Russia before being driven back. In 1915 von Hindenburg was victorious, taking the fortresses and cities of Ivangarod, Grodno, and Warsaw, in his Gorlice-Tarnow offensive. Tarnow in Galicia is at the bottom of the map, Austria-Hungary being show in yellow.
Image text: Sieges-Sonne im OstenSun of Victory in the Eastv. Hindenburg
Allied soldiers fortifying shell craters after an advance. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot, 1918 Edition.
Image text: A startling new situation confronted the Allies in their recent advance against the Germans. They are fortifying in a concealed way chains of shell craters due to intensive artillery firing of months.
Detail from a 1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks from top to bottom include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, and the Mariyinsky Theater.
Image text: St Petersburg (Petrograd); Neva River, Peter and Paul Fortress; Nevski Prospect, Mariyinsky Theater
A British encampment at Zeitelik on the Salonica Front. Colorized version of a black and white postcard.
Image text: Salonicco - Accampamento Inglese a ZeitelikSalonique - Campement Anglais à ZeitelikSalonica - An English Encampment at ZeitelikReverse:Editeur Hananei Naar - SaloniqueProprieté réservéeProduzione ItalianIPA CT Autocromo
"On the 18th September [1914], however, the redistribution of the British aeroplanes and their equipment with wireless enabled the British batteries to reply more effectively to the German. . . . In every division an aeroplane with an artillery officer as an observer, went up early each day. The observer noted down the positions of German batteries on a squared map, and sent this map to the divisional artillery commander who settled which objectives his batteries could best engage. When any part of our infantry line was shelled, the batteries most capable of bringing fire to bear on the hostile guns were immediately ordered to search their position. . . . our aeroplanes observed this fire, and sent corrections to each group." ((1), more)
". . . by September 18[, 1915] the failure of the encircling movement was sealed.Vilna, of course, was lost to the Russians, and the railway line which went with it, but yet again the salient had been straightened out, and there was little prospect another could be formed. The failure had cost the Germans more than the attempt was worth. The Russians had struck hard at the cavalry at Vilecka on the 23rd, capturing men and eight guns; they inflicted other checks on them at Smorgon and along the line of the Vilia while they made their own retreat good." ((2), more)
"The width of Nomansland diminishes from 1400 yards on the right, where one can sit on the parapet in shirt-sleeves, to 250 yards on the left. There are rats everywhere in numbers hitherto unknown. The C.O. had won an Open Race at a 46th Divisional Horse Show, on Yates's mare, and then gone on leave. He had seen the arrival of another draft of 95, 'awful sights, enough to break one's heart. The others were getting quite good and smart, now this crowd will put us back.' de Miremont is Acting O.C. He joined from West Africa in time to make his only acquaintance with a trench during twenty-four wet hours in reserve at Montauban Alley. He then declared that 'trench warfare is a sort of drill.' To the bewilderment of those who have lived through a year or two of it he is trying to square the fact to that idea (an idea he never gave up)." ((3), more)
"Russians might have resisted Bolshevism if there had been a real alternative; but the collapse of capitalism was there for all to see. Wages became meaningless: strikes came, one after another, and caused a fall of fifty per cent in industrial production in the summer of 1917.The principal problem in all this was that wages could not be translated into food. Industry had done well enough from the inflation, at least in its earlier stages, before the autumn of 1916. Agriculture was not in a position to profit nearly as much, and the result of inflation was to drive the bulk of food-producers back into the subsistence-economy from which they had only recently emerged, if at all. Food-deliveries to the towns ran down after November, 1916; Petrograd had, when the March Revolution occurred, only a few days' grain-reserves, and the bread-riots that sparked off the revolution continued to detonate revolutionary explosions throughout the summer and autumn." ((4), more)
"On this side of the lake the attack began at five on the morning of 18th, and fighting continued all day with tremendous intensity. . . .If the fighting on the west of Lake Doiran was heavy on September 18th it was equally severe on the following day, when the main purpose of the British and Greek troops was decisively attained. This purpose was not merely territorial gain, but the retention of enemy troops, which would otherwise have been used against the Allied advance in the vast area between the Vardar, the Negotin-Prilep road, and the Cerna. Here the Serbs, Jugo-Slavs, French and Greeks were pushing forward with amazing rapidity, and the Bulgar could send no help from the Doiran front to stem the onset." ((5), more)
(1) Early in World War I, planes were used primarily for reconnaissance, observation, and artillery registration. The addition of wireless communications allowed the immediate transmission of current information on troop movements and gun emplacements. Many of the planes were two-seaters manned by a pilot and an observer, both of whom might be armed with revolvers or rifle, although the planes were typically unarmed. Bombs, if used, were initially hand held and had modest destructive capability.
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1914, Vol. I, August to October by J. E. Edmonds, pp. 380, 381, copyright © Second Edition 1925, publisher: MacMillan and Co., Limited, publication date: 1925
(2) Excerpt from an account by Edwin Grewe of Germany's last great prize of the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. The Germans attempted to encircle the defenders of Vilna, but the Russians were able to fight their way out. German forces lost 50,000 men in two weeks in taking the city. Generals Paul von Hindenburg and his chief-of-staff Erich Ludendorff, commanding Germany's armies on the Eastern Front, wanted to continue their offensive, but Commander-in-Chief Erich von Falkenhayn was preparing for an invasion of Serbia and anticipating a French offensive in Champagne.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, p. 322, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) Extract from the entry for September 18, 1916 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 Battalion was then serving in the Somme sector.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 259, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) Major events that followed the Russian Revolution of February (March New Style) 1917 — the Kerensky Offensive of June and July, the suppression of Bolsheviks and their leader Vladimir Lenin, the right-wing coup attempt by General Lavr Kornilov, the release and arming of the Bolsheviks to defend the government and capital of Petrograd from Kornilov — all took place against a backdrop of demonstrations, food shortages, rising unemployment, and a collapsing economy.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, pp. 291–292, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
(5) Excerpts from the official report of British General George Milne, commander of British forces on the Salonica Front. On September 15, 1918 French General Franchet d'Esperey, commander of Allied forces — French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and British — in the theater, opened an offensive through the mountains between Greece and Serbia. East of the initial advance and also on the Greco-Serbian border, the British, with some Greek units, held the sector around Lake Doiran. The British opened their phase of the offensive on September 18 against Bulgarians who had two years of strengthening their defenses behind them. General Milne may have been putting a good face on what looked to be a failed attack.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 315–316, 317, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
