To the Dardanelles! The Entente Allies successfully capture their objective and plant their flags in this boy's 1915 war game, as they did not in life, neither in the naval campaign, nor in the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.
Image text: Aux Dardanelles; Victoire; Vive les AlliésLogo and number: ACA 2131Reverse:Artige - Fabricant 16, Faub. St. Denis Paris Visé Paris N. au verso. Fabrication Française - Marque A.C.A
Detail from Cram's 1903 Railway Map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire showing Galicia and Bukovina.
Image text: Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
Austrian Mountain Rangers 'resting in the shade of southern flora' on the Italian front. The card was postmarked from Berlin on January 5, 1916.
Image text: Reverse:Vom Italienischen KriegsschauplatzRast im Schallen der südlichen Flora.From the Italian frontRest in the shade of southern flora.
Headstones at La Nécropole Nationale de Pontavert. The cemetery contains the remains of 6,815 soldiers, 67 of them British, 54 Russian, and the remainder French. Of the total, 1,364 are entombed in the ossuary. © 2014 by John M. Shea
Image text:
"On the 4th of June [1915] a second great attack was made by the Allied troops near Cape Helles. Like the attack of the 6th-8th May, it was an advance on the whole line, from the Straits to the sea, against the enemy's front-line trenches. As before, the French were on the right and the 29th Division on the left, but between them, in this advance, were the R.N. Division and the newly arrived 42nd Division. Our men advanced after a prolonged and terrible bombardment, which so broke the Turk defence that the works were carried all along the line, except in one place, on the left of the French sector, and in one other place, on our own left, near the sea." ((1), more)
"At dawn on 4 June [1916] Brusilov launched his four field armies against the enemy units opposite him around Lutsk in the Bukovina. Artillery fire and infantry assaults were coordinated, a rare phenomenon in the Russian Army. Reserves were concentrated (and hidden) at each of the major points of attack, ready to exploit any breakthroughs. Outnumbered by almost 132 000 men at the critical centre of the front, Conrad's position at Ocna crumbled like a pastry shell. By the evening of 4 June, the Russians had overrun the first three lines of trenches and punched a gaping hole 20 miles wide and 5 miles deep into the front of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's Fourth Army. In 3 days Brusilov took 200 000 prisoners, enough to man two armies." ((2), more)
"The Austrians would, though, have the last word. On 4 June, Baroević used his reinforcements from the East to launch surprise attacks north of Hermada, regaining some of the ground lost to the Third Army. The Italian losses were huge: 22,000 men, including 10,000 prisoners. Rumour had it that three regiments had surrendered without fighting, complete with the officers and equipment. Cadorna railed at the treachery of men who chose surrender rather than death. Privately, he wished he could ask Baroević to have them flogged. Officially, he wrote a furious letter to Prime Minister Boselli, blaming the government for laxity towards domestic opponents of the war. After three weeks, the Italians had taken more than 150,000 casualties, including 36,000 killed. The Austrians had only 7,300 killed." ((3), more)
"— On the 27th May, on the bridges across the Aisne, for whose destruction no orders were ever issued, German and French soldiers were crossing over side by side. The fact was that the Germans had been ordered to reach their objectives without stopping to make prisoners.— The 4th. A shell from the super-gun fell in the Rue des Gravilliers on some children coming out of school.— The 4th. Clemenceau has secured the adjournment sine die of a question on the military situation. Difficult and stormy sitting. He was tired. He referred to Foch as falling asleep over his map. There were 370 votes against 110." ((4), more)
(1) In June 1915, the Entente Allies held two positions on the Gallipoli Peninsula: the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs) at Ari Burnu (Anzac Cove), and the British and French (including Indians and Senagalese) at the end of the peninsula at Cape Helles. Masefield, author of the above, reports that the Allied advance 'varied in depth from a quarter of a mile to six hundred yards', and extended from the Dardanelles strait to the Aegean Sea. Despite the Allied advance, the Turks still contained the invaders at the end of the peninsula and held the high ground above them.
Gallipoli by John Masefield by John Masefield, page 88, publisher: William Heinemann, publication date: 1916
(2) At the Chantilly Conference in December, 1915, the Allies had agreed coordinated offensives in the summer of 1916. The French and British were planning an offensive on the Somme River when German Commander Erich von Falkenhayn began the battle of Verdun on February 21, 1916, requiring continuous French reinforcements in the sector, an extension of the British line to relieve the French, and the delay of the Allied offensive. On May 15, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf launched his Asiago Offensive which threatened to break through Italian defenses to reach the country's northeastern plain and cut off the Italian Army. Preparing for a July attack, Russian General Aleksei Brusilov was willing and able to respond to urgent Italian requests for an offensive against Austria-Hungary by advancing the date of his Brusilov Offensive, one of the war's most successful. The Bukovina, in Austria-Hungary, was one of the primary battlegrounds for Russian and Austro-Hungarian forces.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 209, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(3) Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna had launched his Tenth Battle of the Isonzo on May 12, 1917, and by the 14th it looked to be another failure despite the heaviest Italian artillery barrage of the war to date. Italian deserters had alerted the Austro-Hungarians to the impending attack, and, with their Russian front quiet after the February Revolution, the Austrians had transferred reinforcements to the west. The defenders held the peaks, and the Italians were attacking, as they had since the beginning of the war, an enemy above them, oftentimes well entrenched.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 254, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(4) Entries for June 4, 1918 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. The German advance in Operation Michael in March 1918 put the French capital within range of 'the Paris gun,' a new weapon that could throw a shell into the stratosphere before its violent end. On May 27, the Germans launched the Aisne Offensive, which quickly crossed that river, and advanced on Paris, reaching the Marne River and within 50 miles of the city before being stopped. Some French politicians demanded the sacking of Allied Commander in Chief Ferdinand Foch and French Army Commander Henri Philippe Pétain, a move blocked by Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. By securing the adjournment sine die, Clemenceau had ensured there was no specification of when the subject of the command of the Army would again be addressed.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 351, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
