Indian soldiers unload a wagon. The caption on the back refers to the soldiers helping the Allies by 'unloading their baggage,' but Indian soldiers fought on their own. © American Press Assciation
Image text: Reverse:India's army which is helping the allies unloading their baggage. (C) American Press AssociationSEP 14 1914
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
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.
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.
"On leaving St. Omer we took a short cut southward across rolling country. It was a happy accident that caused us to leave the main road, for presently, over the crest of a hill, we saw surging toward us a mighty movement of British and Indian troops. A great bath of silver sunlight lay on the wheat-fields, the clumps of woodland and the hilly blue horizon, and in that slanting radiance the cavalry rode toward us, regiment after regiment of slim turbaned Indians, with delicate proud faces like the faces of Princes in Persian miniatures. Then came a long train of artillery; splendid horses, clattering gun-carriages, clear-faced English youths galloping by all aglow in the sunset. The stream of them seemed never-ending. . . . For over an hour the procession poured by, so like and yet so unlike the French division we had met on the move as we went north a few days ago; so that we seemed to have passed to the northern front, and away from it again, through a great flashing gateway in the long wall of armies guarding the civilized world from the North Sea to the Vosges." ((1), more)
"One night, returning from work, we found the shelter surrounded by thirty or so very young men—volunteers, or forced conscripts from the classes of 1917 and 1918 not yet called up.Skinny, beardless, and with insolent looks and talk full of the cheekiness of a Parisian Gavroche, these were what they called 'seasoned' guys, despite the fact that some of them had the faces of girls or of kids of fifteen. . . . To these kids precocious in vice, they had opened the prison gates in exchange for enlistment for the duration of the war. This was offered as a form of rehabilitation." ((2), more)
"June 23rd, a quiet day, and fresh after rain. The Battle of Arras has fizzled out, but the Division has a programme of mild counter-irritants and blood-lettings. Another bombing of Tunnel Trench is on the bill. First the G.O.C. said that The Cams. would crack the shell and we would get the yolk, then that they were to make June 24th—one bite of it. They didn't. At midnight they bumped on to manned shell-holes in front of uncut wire. Fritz has become an artist in shell-hole defence. An enterprising platoon could walk out and pull up a lot of his wire, but——" ((3), more)
"On the 24th [June 1918], after shooting down a kite-balloon over the Lys, at Warneton, to the south of Ypres—incidentally the observer stayed on in the basket to fire at me with a small machine-gun, jumped too late, and was caught up and enveloped in the flaming gas-bag—I was clumsily attacked by a Hannoveraner that dived upon me from on high, firing as it came. Carried away by its speed, it overshot me and had no time to turn before I got into position on its tail, and opened fire at point-blank range. It broke up in the air and crashed near the Bois de Ploegsteert. This mixed brace, my ninth and tenth victories, had cost me six 1 mm. bullets. . . ." ((4), more)
(1) Edith Wharton toured the Western Front in 1915, reporting from the Argonne, Alsace, Lorraine, and the Vosges. In June 1915 she went to the North and into Belgium, sectors held by the British (including Indians and Canadians) and Belgian armies. On June 19, she had stood in her car to watch 'the river of war,' French 'cavalry, artillery, lancers, infantry, sappers and miners, trench-diggers, road-makers, stretcher-bearers' streaming to the west. On June 24 she admired its British and Indian counterpart.
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 178, 179, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
(2) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, late June, 1916. Barthas' reserve regiment had served at Hill 304 in the Verdun sector from May 6, to May 19, 1916 where the regiment lost as many as 1,050 killed, wounded, and missing. The losses were replaced with young men, and the reserve regiment was made an active duty, regular regiment. Among the young men Barthas describes were some who had come directly from reform school, others who had pocketed some money while working, some were pimps, and one had kidnapped a girl of 14 to marry her against her parents wishes. Gavroche, to quote Barthas's translator Edward M. Strauss, is a 'character in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the quintessential street-smart, wise-cracking urchin of Paris. [p. 401]'
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 225, 226, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(3) Extract from the entry for June 24, 1917 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 Battle of Arras was launched on April 9, 1917, and was suspended May 5. The capture of Vimy Ridge was its greatest success; otherwise, like the Nivelle Offensive, of which it was the British component, the attack was a failure. The G.O.C. is the General Officer Commanding; The Cams, the Cameronians, the Scottish Rifles.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 359, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) Excerpt from Flying in Flanders, a memoir by Willy Coppens, Belgium's greatest ace in World War I with 37 victories, all but two of the victims observation balloons. After repeated attempts to bring down a balloon, Coppens was finally successful on May 8, 1918 after being provided with 20 French incendiary bullets, bullets he used sparingly. Observation balloons were tethered like a kite, and heavily defended with anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes. The Hannoveraner was likely either a Hannover CL.II or CL.III, a two-seater with a distinctive biplane tail, unusual for a smaller plane. Warneton, Belgium is on the Lys River and the French border, about 13 km south of Ypres.
Flying in Flanders by Willy Coppens, page 184, publisher: Ace Books, publication date: 1971
