A panorama of Loretto Heights including part of Vimy Ridge. Notre Dame de Lorette, a pilgrimage site in 1914, stood on the Heights, and was, with Vimy Ridge, part of the high ground seized by German troops in the Race to the Sea after the Battle of the Marne. French commander Joffre hoped to capture Loretto Heights and Carency, a village the Germans had fortified, in the First Battle of Artois in December, 1914.
Image text: Panorama der LorettohöhePanorama of Loretto HeightsReverse:Message dated June 25, 1916, and field postmarked the next day by the Fourteenth Reserve Corps.
Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Image text: Commanders of the Allies in 1918 and their autographs.Pétain Haig Foch Pershing
French General Robert Nivelle, from a pharmaceutical advertising card
Image text: Général NivelleReverse:Text in Indonesian and Dutch:Indonesian:Sakit pileg jang soedah lama dan jang baharoe, sakit tatoeq, sakit radang derri boeloeh-hoeloeh di-mengobati sampoerna dan sama sekal oleh: Antjoeran Pautauberge jang bekin koewat paroe-paroe dan menegahken sakit tombal (tuberculose).L. Pautauberge10, Rue de ConstantinopleParijs dan segalla roemah obat.Dutch:Oude en pas ontstane verkoudheid, hoest, ontsteking der luchtpijptakken worden afdoende genezen door de: Oplossing Pautauberge die de longen sterk maakt en de Tuberculose voorkomt.L. Pautauberge10, Rue de ConstantinopleParijs en in alle apothekenOld and newly arisen colds, cough, and inflammation of the bronchial tubes are effectively cured by:Pautauberge Solutionwhich strengthens the lungs and prevents Tuberculosis.L. Pautauberge10, Rue de ConstantinopleParis and in all pharmacies
Sleepless Nights, by Kriwub. France standing by her bed, arm raised against a giant German soldier watching her through the window. A Zeppelin passes in the distance. Someone has written the years of sleepless nights in blue: 19-14-15-16-17 and perhaps -18.
Image text: Schlaflose NächteSleepless NightsReverse:Verlag Novitas, G.m.b.H. Berlin SW 68Logo: BO [DO?] in a six-pointed star; No. 245
"It was still only 17 December 1914 . . . We had advanced under machine-gun fire and were approaching the lines of wire when we realized they hadn't been destroyed. We had to wait for three hours while dawn crept upon us, without moving, with no cover, each of us hiding his head behind a clump of grass. The German machine-guns fired continuously. Each time the gunners raised them up a notch, the burst drove into the ground at my feet. The rest of the time it fell [just] in front of me and covered my head with liquid mud. I could recommend three hours resting between two steel curtains like this to anyone who fancies trying it." ((1), more)
"December 17th.—The C.O.'s sickness and removal to hospital was a misfortune. The Commmander-in-Chief's quite-looked-for-supersession stirred no outward sign of regret. Cavalryman to cavalryman succeeds: Haig to French." ((2), more)
"By the end of the year, Joffre had retired with the dignity of Marshal of France, and command of the army on the Western Front was entrusted to the dashing cavalryman, Robert Nivelle. The war machine at Chantilly was dismantled. Nivelle, whose powers were strictly limited to metropolitan France, set up headquarters at Beauvais (moving later to Compiègne), and the overall responsibility for the French military effort was thereafter exercised by the Ministry of War in the Rue St. Dominique, Paris." ((3), more)
"— A dark cloud of heavy fear lies brooding over our city. Perhaps people imagine that the German troops set free by the Russian armistice will immediately be rushed across Germany and flung into the fray?It was on the evening of the 16th that news came of the signing of that armistice, one of the most important events of the present war. But people avoid any reference to it, as they would avoid referring to a bereavement." ((4), more)
(1) Excerpt from an French soldier's account of the first morning of the First Battle of Artois, December 17 to 19, 1914. In the Race to the Sea German forces had seized the high ground of the Loretto Heights and Vimy Ridge in Artois, and since early October had been fortifying their position. In the battle, French Generals Joffre and Foch tried to take Loretto Heights and the village of Carency. Already a pilgrimage site in 1914, Notre Dame de Lorette is today the world's largest French military cemetery.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, pp. 47, 48, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
(2) Beginning of the entry for December 17, 1915 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. General Douglas Haig had been working to replace Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, the British Empire forces fighting in France and Belgium, and learned on December 10, in a letter from Prime Minister Asquith, that he had succeeded: French had resigned on the 8th. The British defeats in the battles of Neuve Chappelle and Loos, Haig's friendship with King George, and his superior political skills ensured Sir John French's forced resignation. That both men were cavalrymen commanding an army that was entrenched was an irony not lost on the men under their command.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 172, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) Chantilly had been the headquarters of French Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre, who was replaced by General Robert Nivelle as part of the resolution of the crisis in the French Government in December, 1916. By limiting Nivelle's command to Metropolitan France, the Government most importantly excluded the Allied forces on the Salonica Front under the command of Maurice Sarrail, who had chafed under Joffre's restrictions.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 109, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(4) Entries for December 17, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. Russia had signed an armistice with the Central Powers on the 16th that sought to limit the movement of troops that Paris feared, but it excluded those deployments 'begun before the agreement was signed.' The Russian Front had been quiet for some months before the armistice was signed, and Germany could easily avoid the restriction.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 302, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
