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.
A contingent of the Serbian Army in the firing line facing Widin, Bulgaria. Widin is the primary city in the salient in northwest Bulgaria between Serbia and Romania. The card was used in September 1915, a month before the October invasion of Serbia by German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces.
Image text: ВидиномDas III. Aufgebot des serbischen Heeres in der Feuerlinie vor WiddinIII. Contingent of the Serbian army in the firing line at VidinReverse:Message dated September 16, 1915
Russian troops fleeing a solitary German soldier. The Russian First Army invaded Germany in August 1914, and defeated the Germans in the Battle of Gumbinnen on the 20th. In September the Germans drove them out of Russia in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. In September and October, a joint German, Austro-Hungarian offensive drove the Russians back almost to Warsaw. Illustration by E. H. Nunes.
Image text: Die Russen haben große Hoffnungen auf den Krieg gesetzt, - es ist aber auch eine Kehrseite dabei.The Russians have set high hopes for the war - but there is also a downside to that.Reverse:Kriegs-Postkarte der Meggendorfer-Blätter, München. Nr. 25War postcard of the Meggendorfer Blätter, Munich. # 25
Italy's armed forces at the ready in a 1915 postcard. In the foreground the artillery, infantry, an Alpine soldier (in feathered hat), and a Bersaglieri (in plumed headgear). Behind them are a bugler and lancer; in the distance marines and colonial troops. The Italian navy is off shore, an airship and planes overhead. On the reverse are the lyrics of a patriotic Italian March by Angelo Balladori, lyrics by Enrico Mercatali. It ends with a call to the brothers of Trento and Trieste, Austro-Hungarian territory with large ethnic Italian populations.
Image text: Reverse:Marcia ItalicaD'Italia flammeggin le sante bandiereBaciate dal sole, baciate dal vento,Su l'aspro sentier di Bezzecca e di TrentoDe l'alma Trieste, sul cerulo mar.. . . Fratelli di Trento, Triestini fratelli,La patria s'è desta alla grande riscossa!Dell'aquila ingorda la barbara possaDai liberi petti domata sarà!Parole di Enrico MercataliMusica di Angelo Balladori.Casa Editrice Sonzogno - Milano. 1915.
A British Mark IV tank advances across the red field, star and crescent moon of a Turkish flag under a chain of grey and yellow clouds. Entitled Entente-török fegyverszünet, Entente-Turkish Armistice, it refers to the British-Turkish Armistice signed on October 30, 1918, that took effect on October 31. Original watercolor postcard by Schima Martos.
Image text: Entente-török fegyverszünetEntente-Turkish Armistice
"On the 31st [October], decimated, dejected, defeated, the Germans abandoned their project of crossing the Yser; they retreated abandoning guns and mortars engulfed in mire, enormous quantities of weapons, thousands of corpses, and many wounded.In this epic struggle the Belgians, who numbered 60,000, lost a fourth part of their effectives, but they killed and wounded more Germans than there were soldiers in the Belgian army; they had covered the left wing of the Allies, and shattered the German effort which had threatened Dunkirk and Calais." ((1), more)
"They tried the man with the aid of an interpreter and heard the principal witnesses. It seems that, in spite of repeated warnings from his fellow villagers, he was firing viciously on our soldiers. As he surveys the crowd gather there, he looks half savage, dropped from another world.The sentence is soon passed; the guerrilla must hang.. . .The komidatschi is brought up by two soldiers. He shows no particular emotion but looks around with a truculent stare as if he were insane. They put the sling around his neck and pull the platform from under his feet. The rope is not hung high enough, and, with a supplementary powerful tug, the butcher adjusts it. The man's face is slowly distorted. Long jerking convulsions shake his body, dying. The tongue twists out of his mouth as he swings with stiffening limbs." ((2), more)
"For the last two days all the factories in Petrograd have been on strike. The workmen left the shops without giving any reason, and simply on an order issued by some mysterious committee.'. . . a party of strikers from the Baranovsky works besieged our establishment, shouting: "Down with the French! No more war!" Our engineers and foremen wanted to parley with them. They were received with stones and revolver shots. One French engineer and three French foremen were seriously wounded. The police had already arrived and soon realized that they could not cope with the situation. A squad of gendarmes then succeeded in forcing a way through the crowd, and went to fetch two infantry regiments which are in barracks quite near. The two regiments appeared a few minutes later, but instead of raising the siege of our factory, they fired on the police.'" ((3), more)
"Two carabinieri took the lieutenant-colonel to the river bank. He walked in the rain, an old man with his hat off, a carabinieri on either side. I did not watch them shoot him but I heard the shots. They were questioning some one else. This officer too was separated from his troops. He was not allowed to make an explanation. He cried when they read his sentence from the pad of paper, and they were questioning another when they shot him. They made a point of questioning the next man while the man who had been questioned before was being shot. In this way there was obviously nothing they could do about it. I did not know whether I should wait to be questioned or make a break now. I was obviously a German in Italian uniform. I saw how their minds worked; if they had minds and if they worked. They were all young men and they were saving their country." ((4), more)
"— The 31st. Turkey has accepted the armistice conditions proposed by the Entente. Some joyful demonstrations in the streets. The news was brought by the British general, Townshend, lately prisoner of war in Turkey.— The 31st. On the 31st, Professor Vincent was telling me that the influenza epidemic is graver than is admitted by the authorities, who are concealing the truth to bolster up the public morale. He himself would set up a dictatorship of doctors. Close the theatres, cinemas, and large shops. 'Forbid people to spit, cough, or sneeze, except in their handkerchiefs.'— The Catholics are saying that God has sent this influenza to restore the balance, since twice as many women as men have been struck down. The apathy of the masses is indescribable. Last week 1,800 people died of influenza in Paris—that is, nearly 300 people every day ; in other words, as many as have been killed by aeroplanes and super-guns in four years of war." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from an address by Carton de Wiart, Belgian Minister of Justice, in London, June, 1915. Since mid-October 1914, the Germans had been trying to break through the Belgian line from Dixmude to the North Sea, on the left of the Allied line. Driven nearly entirely from their country, holding a small portion of it on the North Sea coast, and having retreated behind a railway embankment rising above the flat farmland of Flanders, the Belgians inundated the land before them.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. II, 1914, p. 321, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Account from the journal of Pál Kelemen, an Hungarian cavalryman with German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces invading and occupying Serbia in October and November, 1915.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, pp. 175, 176, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
(3) Excerpts from the entry for October 31, 1916 from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia in the Russian capital Petrograd. That evening he attended a dinner in honor of the Japanese Ambassador, Viscount Motono, departing Russia after being appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs. The speaker in the second paragraph is one of two representatives from the Louis Renault motor works in Petrograd. The two infantry regiments that turned on the police were in turn driven back to their barracks by four regiments of Cossack cavalry.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. III by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 73, 74, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(4) A lieutenant in the Italian Army Ambulance Corps and narrator of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry is caught up in the collapse of the Italian Second Army and the Italian retreat in the Battle of Caporetto. Having managed to evade German and Austro-Hungarian troops, he is seized at a bridge crossing the Tagliamento River. As Mark Thompson writes in his history of the Italian Front, The White War, 'an order on October 31 authorized any officer to shoot any soldier who was separated from his unit or offered the least resistance' (page 319). Henry is a junior officer speaking Italian with a foreign accent, and was, in the chaos of the retreat, separated from his unit.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, page 224, copyright © 1957 Ernest Hemingway, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1929
(5) The Cabinet of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George authorized Vice-Admiral Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Fleet, to negotiate an armistice with Turkey rather than a surrender as a way to exclude France from the bargaining table. They held negotiations on HMS Agamemnon, thereby ensuring France representation could be excluded and as a reminder to the Turks of another defeat on their shores. Influenza struck during the spring and summer of 1918 as a three-day fever, but returned in the autumn in a more deadly form. During the war, Paris had been bombed by Zeppelins and Gotha and other bombers, and shelled by a German gun capable of reaching the capital from 80 miles away.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 383, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
