French postcard celebrating the Allied victory at the Battle of the Marne with the Kaiser tumbling in the river, Germans (in green) fleeing. The French in blue and red advance and tend to German wounded. The British, France's ally, advance in the distance.
Image text: Caption:Dans un élan magnifique, les armées allemandes on passé deux fois la Marne. Tout va bien. Les troupes sont fraîches. (Agence Wolff)With magnificent élan, the German armies have crossed the Marne twice. All is well. The troops are fresh. (Wolff Agency)Signs and text:On demande couturière pour recoudre les bochesVoulez vous que j’écrive a vos parents?Poudres sèches pour la guerre future 1873Sucre pastilles caramelleBaton provisoire de maréchalWe need a seamstress to mend the BocheYou want me to write to your parents?Dry powder for future war 1873Caramel sugar lozengesMarshal’s provisional batonReverse:"Artistic Caricatures" (1re Série de 6 cartes)
The Dolphin Tavern, London, was destroyed by a Zeppelin bomb on September 9, 1915 that killed three people. A clock in the wreckage stopped at 10:30 PM, and and in the rebuilt tavern. © 2014 by John M. Shea
Image text: The Dolphin TavernThe history of the Dolphin ClockA Zepplin bomb exploded on 9th September 1915 destroying these premises and killing three peopleA clock found in the wreckage stopped at 10:40 PM & hangs inside the pub
Headstone of an unknown soldier of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Delville Wood Cemetery. Union of South Africa troops began the assault at Delville Wood on July 15, 1916. It was finally taken in September. On the headstone is superimposed the poem 'To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God' by Lieutenant Tom Kettle of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, killed in action on September 9, 1916 at Guillemont, France, in the Battle of the Somme. He has no known grave. © 2013 John M. Shea
Image text: To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of GodIn wiser days, my darling rosebud, blownTo beauty proud as was your mother's prime,In that desired, delayed, incredible time,You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,And the dear heart that was your baby throne,To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhymeAnd reason: some will call the thing sublime,And some decry it in a knowing tone.So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,And tired men sigh with mud and couch and floor,Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,And for the secret Scripture of the poor.— Tom KettleIn the field, before Guillemont, Somme, 4 September 1916
A Bulgarian postcard of Red Army soldiers at rest, with rifles stacked, and reading newspapers or leaflets.
Image text: Reverse:Чървено-армейци на цочивкаСерия В., 3/13Red Army at restSeries B., 3/13
View of Jerusalem showing Jaffa Road with an inset photograph of British general Edmund Allenby who captured the city from the Turks on December 11, 1917.
Image text: La Ciudad Santa tomado a los turcos. Vista de Jerusalén, en la cual aparece el camino de Jafa. (En el grabado inserto aparece Sir Edmund Allenby, comandante de las tropas británicas que operan en Palestina).The Holy City taken from the Turks. View of Jerusalem, showing Jaffa Road. (Sir Edmund Allenby, commander of British troops operating in Palestine appears in the insert recorded).S1
"All this time, from the 5th to the 9th September, no orders came from the [German] Supreme Command, which was established more than 130 miles away at Luxembourg, in no better communication with the Armies than was possible by wireless and by liaison officers in motor cars. Much of its attention seems to have been directed towards the Russian front. Tannenberg had been fought (26th-29th August) and Samsonov's Army annihilated, but the battle of the Masurian Lakes against Rennenkampf was beginning only on the 8th September." ((1), more)
"The Dolphin TavernThe history of the Dolphin ClockA Zepplin bomb exploded on 9th September 1915 destroying these premises and killing three peopleA clock found in the wreckage stopped at 10:40 PM & hangs inside the pub" ((2), more)
"To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of GodIn wiser days, my darling rosebud, blownTo beauty proud as was your mother's prime,In that desired, delayed, incredible time,You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,And the dear heart that was your baby throne,To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhymeAnd reason: some will call the thing sublime,And some decry it in a knowing tone.So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,And tired men sigh with mud and couch and floor,Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,And for the secret Scripture of the poor.— Tom KettleIn the field, before Guillemont, Somme, 4 September 1916" ((3), more)
". . . the government itself began to release us, for the same reason that it had called the Bolshevik sailors to guard the Winter Palace. I went straight from the Kresty to the newly organized committee for the defense of the revolution, where I sat with the same gentlemen who had put me in prison as an agent of the Hohenzollerns, and who had not yet withdrawn the accusation against me. . . . The Bolsheviks stepped into the harness, and were everywhere in the first line of the defense. The experience of Kornilov's mutiny completed that of the July days: once more Kerensky and Co. revealed the fact that they had no forces of their own to back them. The army that rose against Kornilov was the army-to-be of the October revolution. We took advantage of the danger to arm the workers whom Tzereteli had been disarming with such restless industry." ((4), more)
"Allenby's order were issued on 9 September. As well as virtually all the available infantry and cavalry, every artillery piece in the theatre, 380 guns and 172 howitzers, would be employed, and ammunition was to be available on a scale hitherto unknown. In all, over six hundred lorries and tractor/trailer combinations would be available to haul ammunition and supplies and move heavy guns as required, and in order to facilitate their passage in the all-important coastal strip a total of ten bridges — all but two of them capable of taking 60-pounder guns — had been constructed over the Nahr el Auja between its mouth and Ferrikhiye, eleven kilometers inland. All six of the Royal Air Force's squadrons would be employed, and great store was set on securing German/Turkish aerodromes — especially that at Jenin — for their use as soon as possible." ((5), more)
(1) In the Battle of the Marne, the French and British turned back the German advance on Paris. During its critical days, from the first French attack on September 5 through the counterattack along the French line the next day, and the advance of the French and British on the 7th, 8th, and 9th, German Commander Helmuth von Moltke seems to have thought that his attack on the western front was going well.
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1914, Vol. I, August to October by J. E. Edmonds, page 300, copyright © Second Edition 1925, publisher: MacMillan and Co., Limited, publication date: 1925
(2) The Dolphin Tavern on the corner of Red Lion Street and Lamb's Conduit Passage in London was destroyed by a bomb from Zeppelin LZ.13 commanded by Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant Commander) Heinrich Mathy on September 9, 1915. Twenty-two people were killed in the raid, at least four of them children, most when Mathy's bombs hit two motor omnibuses. The Tavern has since been reconstructed. The 1990 song 'After the Dolphin' by Crosby, Stills and Nash mistakenly attributes the bomb to 'a plane'.
The Dolphin Tavern, London, external wall plaque of the Dolphin Tavern
(3) Tom Kettle, Member of Parliament from 1906 to 1910 as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, and was in Belgium on a gun-running mission when the war began. Appalled at the actions of the occupying army, he volunteered, and was first a recruiting officer, but later, after the apparent government acceptance of Irish Home Rule, became a Lieutenant in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. He returned to Dublin on sick leave after the the Easter Rising (in which his brother-in-law the pacifist Frank Sheehy-Skeffington was murdered), and, although he disagreed with what the rebels had done, believed they would be remembered as heroes. He was killed on September 9, 1916 leading his men at Ginchy in the Battle of the Somme. He has no known grave. He wrote the sonnet to his daughter five days before his death.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 43, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(4) Leon Trotsky had been imprisoned at the Kretsky Prison after the 'July Days' in which anti-war and anti-government demonstrations on July 16 (July 3 Old Style), 1917 resulted in government ministers being threatened and over 100 people being killed. In the crackdown that followed, Bolsheviks were attacked and imprisoned, and some, including their leader Vladimir Lenin, fled Petrograd for safety. A month later, with General Lavr Kornilov attempting to march on the capital to seize power, the Government released the Bolsheviks, and armed them for the city's (and the government's) defense. The Winter Palace was the seat of the Russian government headed by Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky. The Hohenzollerns were the German Royal family headed by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The October Revolution would bring the Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks to power.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 318, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(5) Under the command of General Edmund Allenby, the British entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917, then continued advancing along the Mediterranean coast in Palestine. In an attack launched on March 8, Allenby tried but failed to take Nablus, attacking across the Jordan River at the same time. Further attacks were suspended after the success of Germany's Spring offensives made the Allied position on the Western Front desperate, and demanded men and materiel in France. With the ultimate German failure and the success of Allied offensives beginning in July, Allenby could resume his suspended campaign. He would do so on September 19.
Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford, pp. 373–374, copyright © Roger Ford 2010, publisher: Pegasus Books, publication date: 2010
