View over the battlefield of the Loretto Heights, France. Notre Dame de Lorette, a pilgrimage site, 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 in 1914. 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. He tried to take the hill again in mid-February, 1915.
Image text: Westl. Kriegschauplatz: Kämpfe auf der Lorettohöhe.Western theater of war: fighting on the Loretto HeightsReverse:Kriegshilfe München N. W. 19.Zum Gloria-Viktoria AlbumSammel. u. Nachschlagewerk des VölkerkriegesFor Gloria Viktoria AlbumCollection. and reference work of international warWar Fund Munich N. W. 19th
The 12th company advancing through shell fire to supply the 1st Battalion, 32nd Landwehr Infantry Regiment. A watercolor painting by Otto Oettel of the German 32nd Landwehr dated September 29, 1916.
Image text: signed: Oettel Sep 29 1916 - L32Reverse:12th company goes ahead through shell fire to supply the 1st battalion L32 [Translation courtesy Thomas Faust, ebay's Urfaust]
An advertising card of the Romanian Army from the series Armées des États Balcaniques, published in 1910.Shown, from left to right, a non-commissioned officer and artillery gunners, a staff officer, a rosiori (a red hussar), a mounted policeman (dismounted), a kalarachi (territorial reserve cavalry), a chasseur (venatori or rifleman), and an infantryman.
Image text: Véritable Extrait de Viande Liebig.Voir L’Explication au verso.Reverse:RoumanieLe service militaire general est obligatoire pour les Roumains. Il commence avec la 21me année et dure 25 ans. Le service actif est théoriquement de 7 ans, mais se décompose en réalité en une période de service effectif de 3 à 5 ans et en une seconde période de 2 à 4 ans de congé. L’armée roumaine se divise en quatre corps comprenant 3000 officiers, 48,000 hommes et 360 pièces d’artillerie. Sur pied de guerre, l’effectif pourrait être porté à 3500 officiers et 150,000 hommes auxquels il convient d’ajouter 50,000 miliciens et territoriaux. – Au recto de cette carte figurent, en commençant par la gauche : un sous-officier d’artillerie et des artilleurs, un officier d’état major, un hussard rouge (rosiori), un homme de la gendarmerie montée, un hussard kalarachi, un chasseur (venatori), et un fantassin.RomaniaGeneral military service is compulsory for Romanians. It starts at age 21, and lasts 25 years. Active duty is theoretically seven years, but in reality is divided into a period of active service of 3 to 5 years and a second period of 2 to 4 years of leave. The Romanian army is divided into four army corps consisting of 3,000 officers, 48,000 men and 360 artillery pieces. On a war footing, the number could be increased to 3,500 officers and 150,000 men to which should be added 50.000 militia and territorials [home guard]. - The front of this card shows, starting from the left: a non-commissioned officer and artillery gunners, a staff officer, a rosiori [red hussar], a mounted policeman [dismounted], a kalarachi [territorial reserve cavalry], a chasseur (venatori) [rifleman], and an infantryman.Armées des États Balcaniques. Roumanie.Armies of the Balkan states. Romania.Véritable Extrait de Viande Liebig.Ne concourt plus dan les Expositions depuis 1885.L’Extrait de Viande Liebig sert à preparer ou à améliorer toutes
German expedited advance reserves on the battlefield in the 'Great German West Offensive', likely Operation Michael in March, 1918.
Image text: Vorgehende ReservenExpedited reservesReverse:Die grosse deutsche West-OffensiveThe great German offensive in the west
"During the night of May 29-30 we left Mazingarbe, replaced by the English, who took up positions there. We weren't sure of the direction in which we would be heading. At six in the evening the grenadiers left for the trenches in the 'Ouvrages Blancs' [White Earthworks]. A battalion headed out for the front, soon afterward.Our battalion left around midnight, doubtless following the other one. Upon leaving Mazingarbe we could see the front right nearby, a true volcano lit up by flares of every color. In the continual rumbling of cannon fire you could distinguish the crackling of machine-gun fire and grenades going off.This was the terrible Lorette sector." ((1), more)
". . . today's colour effects were a sheer joy to watch. According as a shell burst in coal, chalk, or soil, there was a dust fountain of black, white, or terra-cotta, or a mixture of two of these; and there were woolly air-bursts that rolled out in whorls—grey-black, pure white, and lemon. Sometimes there was a hint of the human soil on which shells were falling when a largish, flaccid thing rose in the spout, and one was sorry for the men there, whichever side they were on." ((2), more)
"By May, according to reports of French officers, products of all the training programs were beginning to fill the needs of [Romanian] field units. Major Legros with the 2nd Army described recruits arriving at the front as having 'very good instruction with an attitude of youth and enthusiasm.' 'The cadet officers arriving here,' he continued, have made an excellent impression.' Colonel Letellier (1st Army) agreed. On 29 May [1917], Berthelot proudly reported to Paris: 'The cadres have been filled out by ardent young officers instructed in our schools by our officers.'" ((3), more)
"This scattered remnant was disposed along a steep ridge, deep in growing corn, which sloped away towards the left into the wooded valley of the Ardre. Here, among the trees which bordered the river were more French, blue-clad 'poilus' as well as khaki-clad colonials, chattering and laughing and making great play with their Hotchkiss automatic rifles against German planes. In rear the hillside sloped abruptly down to a miniature valley in which nestled the village of Treslon and at which farther side the ground rose sharply up to another ridge of a more wooded nature, which I will call the Bouleuse ridge, from its proximity to the village of that name." ((4), more)
(1) Excerpt from the Notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas. The British took over the left end of the French line, extending their own, and allowing the French to concentrate more troops for the Second Battle of Artois, which had begun on May 9, 1915. The two ridges of Loretto Heights and Vimy dominate the battlefield. The largest French military cemetery is at Notre Dame de Lorette on Loretto Heights, many of the dead having lost their lives in the battle Barthas was joining. An earlier church reputed to have held some bones of John the Baptist had been a pilgrimage site since the late nineteenth century.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 69, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(2) Extract from the entry for May 29, 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. Dunn was in Cambrin Right, the front line at Cambrin, west of La Bassée, France,in Artois. The previous day he recorded rumors that his unit was moving to Vimy or the Somme.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 202, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) Romania entered the war on August 27, 1916, and was overrun by Central Power forces by the end of the year, driven out of Wallachia and Dobruja and back to Moldavia where the Russians held the Allied line. Typhus, typhoid, dysentery, jaundice, and influenza sickened and killed a large part of the Romanian army, peaking in February and March, 1917. General Henri Berthelot led a French military mission to support and then rebuild the Romanian army. In spring of 1917, the Romanians had 112 machine guns per division, more than the Germans they faced, as well as automatic rifles and heavy artillery, neither of which they had in 1916.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 181–182, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(4) Excerpt from Sidney Rogerson's The Last of the Ebb, an account of his experiences in the first days of the German Aisne Offensive launched on May 27, 1918. Rogerson and what remained of his unit had been retreating for two days when they stopped and collected the roughly 250 men he describes. Four British divisions that had been devastated in Operations Michael and Georgette in March and April had been moved to the eastern end of the Chemin des Dames, in what was expected to be a quiet sector, one held by the French. French General Denis Auguste Duchêne ignored General Henri Philippe Pétain's order to strengthen and restructure his line and dismissed reports of German preparations for an offensive. Rogerson had already retreated 30 km before taking up the defensive position at Treslon.
The Last of the Ebb: the Battle of the Aisne, 1918 by Sidney Rogerson, page 68, copyright © Sidney Rogerson, 1937, publisher: Frontline Books, publication date: 2011
