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.
The German armored cruiser S.M.S Prinz Adalbert under steam. Stationed in the Baltic Sea, Prinz Adalbert had run aground on January 24, 1915, and been torpedoed by the British submarine E.9 on July 2. On October 23 submarine E.8 torpedoed the battleship setting off an explosion in a magazine. Only three survived.
Image text: S.M.S Prinz AdalbertReverse:Message datelined March 30, 1907, Ostsee, the Baltic Sea.
Looking like a model or a piece by Yves Tanguy, a photograph of part of the destroyed city of Lens, France dated September 18, 1918.
Image text: LenzLensReverse:18 September 1918
View from Chemin des Dames looking across the valley of the Ailette River towards Laon Cathedral in the city of Laon, France and barely visible in the distance. The Chapelle St. Berthe is down the slope in the near distance. Laon was one of the first-day objectives of French commander-in-chief Robert Nivelle's offensive in the the Second Battle of the Aisne. © 2014 by John M. Shea
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Map of Syria, Palestine, Turkey, and Mesopotamia from the Baedeker 1912 travel guide Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus.
"The area conquered by the Germans on the 23rd [October], lying within the bend of the Yser between Schoorbakke and Tervaete, was violently bombarded and recaptured. Here it was that a notebook was found on a German corpse in which an officer of the 22nd Reserve Corps recorded the dreadful moral and physical sufferings endured in that hell of bullets and fire and blood; companies reduced to half their strength, units mixed together, the officers nearly all killed, famine and thirst and a sense of the uselessness of all efforts against our redoubtable little army: such was the balance-sheet on the German side." ((1), more)
"Goodhart in E.8 scored one of the more spectacular successes of the submarine campaign while operating off Libau on 23 October [1915]. He encountered the recently repaired armored cruiser Prinz Adalbert escorted by two destroyers and torpedoed her. One of the cruiser's magazines exploded, and there were only three survivors. It was the heaviest loss of the war for the German Baltic forces." ((2), more)
"Time was unnoticed. Night shaded into day. There was no dawn, no quickening, no radiance. A sullen sky, a flattened vault of ashen grey, . . . a wide and bare winter landscape of grey-green stubble stippled here and there with chrome-grey shell-holes, and scarred with trenches. Desolation reigns undisputed now, whatever revolution Spring may bring." ((3), more)
"The Chemin des Dames offensive was even more striking [than that at Verdun]. A six-day-and-night artillery bombardment by some 2,000 guns preceded the attack, with a field gun every 16 metres, a medium gun every 12.20 metres and a heavy gun every 82 metres along a 14-kilometre front. At 5.15 a.m. on the 23rd [October 1917] three army corps launched the infantry attack, accompanied by sixty-eight tanks. The infantry advanced in serried ranks, one unit following another. The Germans were first forced back behind the Ailette River and then compelled to withdraw from the whole Chemin des Dames position. The logistics for this attack included 400 trains each of thirty wagons carrying 120,000 shells. The casualties were small, 2,241 killed, 1,602 missing and 8,162 wounded." ((4), more)
"On the 21st of October our rear guards were abreast of Ma'arrat en Numan, halfway between Hamah and Aleppo. On the following day they were several times attacked by hostile Bedouins and armored cars, and upon orders from Kemal they fell back to Ch. es Sebil and the railroad station of Abu ed Duhur. . . . On October 23rd our outposts at Ch. es Sebil were attacked by numerous Bedouins, armored cars, and British cavalry. They had to fall back to the main position south of Aleppo. One portion was surrounded and captured after hand to hand fighting. The outposts at the railroad station of Abu ed Duhur were now also withdrawn to the main position. The enemy chiefly used armored cars in the pursuit. Heavy air attacks were made on the stations of Aleppo.In the Gulf of Alexandretta, British and French ships were observed. In front of Arsus, southwest of Alexandretta, a ship appeared at dusk on the 23rd, bombarded the coast and attempted to land troops." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from an address by Carton de Wiart, Belgian Minister of Justice, in London, June, 1915. From October 16 to 30, 1914, the primary German offensive was against the Belgian Army on the left wing of the Allied Army, between Dixmude and the North Sea, the Yser Canal before them, France twelve miles behind. The Belgian Army was approximately 60,000 soldiers, and suffered 25% casualties. Estimates of German casualties in the Battle of the Yser (part of the Battle of Flanders) are over 60,000, the size of the Belgian Army facing them.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. II, 1914, p. 320, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Responding to a Russian request for aid in the Baltic Sea, Great Britain dispatched two submarines, E.8 and E.13 on August 15, 1915. Only E.13, under the command of Lieutenant Commander F. H. J. Goodhart, made the dangerous passage from the North Sea through the Skaggerak and Kattegat, the straits between the neutral countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. E.1 and E.8 had reached the Baltic in October 1914. By September 4, 1915, E.18 and E.19 did as well, giving Britain five submarines operating in the Sea. S.M.S Prinz Adalbert had run aground on January 24, and been torpedoed by E.9 on July 2.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 203, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(3) Extract from the entry for October 23, 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, and moved into 'Serpentine Trench, a part of the captured Flers Line, in a fold between Ginchy and Morval.' Dunn's battalion attacked at 2:30 on the afternoon of the 23rd. After early reports of progress, 'the attack, like earlier attacks on the same ground, had failed.'
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 266, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) Chemin des Dames, between Soissons and Reims, France, had been the site of the disastrous Nivelle Offensive in April, 1917. In May and June nearly half the French Army mutinied, refusing to take part in pointless and suicidal attacks. In ending the mutinies, French commander in chief Henri Pétain promised his army that he would make greater use of artillery and other weapons before any infantry assault, and that his objectives would be clear and limited. Beginning in August he demonstrated these principals in actions supporting the British in the Third Battle of Ypres and at Verdun where a six-day bombardment by 3,000 guns firing 3,000,000 shells preceded the attack. The October 23 Malmaison Offensive, named for an old fort retaken by the French in the attack, ended with a German retreat and the capture of the heights of Chemin des Dames.
Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-18 by Anthony Clayton, page 149, copyright © Anthony Clayton 2003, publisher: Cassell, publication date: 2005
(5) Excerpts from German General Otto Liman von Sanders' account of the British and Arab advance northward against Ottoman forces in northern Syria in October, 1918. Aleppo was a communication hub with the Turkish homeland and east to Mesopotamia. Mustapha Kemal, a hero of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, would become famous as Ataturk.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, page 316, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
