Color postcard map of Belgium, its provinces, railroad lines (?), major towns and cities, and North Sea coast and borders with the Netherlands, Germany, Luxemburg, and France. Insets show City Hall in the capital of Brussels, a view from the water of the port of Antwerp, and the Remy factory.
Image text: Text in French and Dutch:"Il n'est pas de meilleur Amidon que l'Amidon REMY, Fabrique de Riz Pur."and"Er bestaat geenen beteren Stijfsel dan den Stijfsel REMY, Vervaardigd met Zuiveren Rijst."(There is no better starch than Remy Starch, made of pure rice.)
Western Front: Aisne & Oise. French folding postcard map of the Aisne and Oise, number 3 from the series Les Cartes du Front. The map includes the Champagne front from Compiègne in the west to Chalons-sur-Marne in the east including Soissons, Chemin des Dammes, Laon, Reims, and Château Thierry.
Image text: Les Cartes du FrontNo. 3 — Aisne & OiseMaps of the FrontAisne & OiseEn vente chez tous les librairesLes Cartes du Fronttirées en 5 couleursFormat Dble. Carte-PostaleNo 1. Les Flandres- 2. Artois, Picardie- 3. Aisne & Oise- 4. Argonne — Côte de Meuse- 5. Lorraine- 6. Vosges et AlsaceA. Hatier. Editeur.8.Rue d'Assas, Paris.Outer front:Correspondence of the ArmiesMilitary Franchise
Gravestone of an unknown soldier of the Seaforth Highlanders, a Scottish regiment, in Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Image text: Cuidich 'n Righ (Aid the King)A Soldier of the Great WarSeaforth HighlandersKnown Unto God
The Serb resurgent, a newly hatched eagle chick triumphant over the Hapsburg eagle. A bi-cephalic eagle was (and is again) the most prominent element on the Serbian coat of arms.
Image text: Le Serbe The SerbReverse:Editions 'Aux Alliés' Paris.Helio. L. Géligné, 255. Bd. Raspail, ParisVisé Paris No. 16'For the Allies' Publishers Paris.A message from Marcel to his parents
A call to Italians to buy war bonds to help fund the powerful weapons needed for the last push to Trieste, a mere 25 kilometers from the Italian front lines. It pays 5%, after all, tax free, for an effective rate of 5.55%!
Image text: La Banca d'ItaliaRiceve e agevola le sottoscrizionial Prestito Consolidato 5% nettoEsente da imposte presenti & futureReddito Effettivo 5,55 per centoItaliani!I nostri avamposti sono a 25 Km da Trieste — date loro armi potenti per l'ultimo sbalzo, sottoscrivendo al Prestito Nazionale Consolidato 5%.The Bank of ItalyReceives and facilitates subscriptionsBorrowing 5% Consolidated NetExempt from present and future taxes5.55 percent effective incomeItalians!Our outposts are 25 Km from Trieste - give them powerful weapons for the last rush, by subscribing to the National 5% Loan Consolidation.
Indian Lancers riding through Jerusalem. The city was taken by the Allies on December 11, 1917.
Image text: In JerusalemIndian Lancers passing through the streetsPrinted in EnglandS 6
"I ask the population of the town to give a fresh example of self-restraint and greatness of soul which it has already so often shown during these sad days.Let us provisionally accept the sacrifice which is imposed upon us; let us take down our flags in order to avoid conflicts, and patiently await the hour of redress." ((1), more)
"On the 19th [of September, 1914], while my army was getting ready to resume its attack north with the idea of capturing the massif of Moronvilliers, the enemy forestalled us. . . . The 52nd Reserve Division was obliged to withdraw from Bethény, which artillery fire had made untenable. The enemy continued to bombard Rheims, and the cathedral was in flames." ((2), more)
"Many arms of the Service are grouped round the little marble-topped tables, for the district is stiff with British troops, and promises to grow stiffer. In fact, so persistently are the eagles gathering together upon this, the edge of the fighting line, that rumour is busier than ever. The Big Push holds redoubled sway in our thoughts. The First Hundred Thousand are well represented, for the whole Scottish Division is in the neighbourhood. Beside the glengarries there are countless flat caps — line regiments, territorials, gunners, and sappers. The Army Service Corps is there in force, recruiting exhausted nature from the strain of dashing about the country-side in motor-cars. The R.A.M.C. is strongly represented, doubtless to test the purity of the refreshment provided. Even the Staff has torn itself away from its arduous duties for the moment, as sundry red tabs testify. In one corner sit four stout French civilians, playing a mysterious card-game." ((3), more)
". . . it was in the early hours of September 19 [1916] that the Drina Division fought their way to the Bulgarian eyrie and sent back to Batachin fifty prisoners as testimony to their achievement. Below them the Serbs could see that the Bulgarians had not yet accepted the loss of the Kajmakcalan. Such a key bastion could never be lightly abandoned; but, for the moment, the Serbian flag flew once more over a few hundred yards of Serbian soil." ((4), more)
"On 19 September [1917], Cadorna halted the battle and ordered all units onto the defensive. The Italians had taken 166,000 casualties, including 40,000 dead, of whom 25,000 died on San Gabriele for trivial gains. Some 400 of the 600 battalions involved in the battle had lost one-half to two-thirds of their strength. Cadorna's and Capello's actions in Eleventh Battle were so careless and self-destructive that historians have struggled to account for them. In truth, the two men acted fully in character. Cadorna's battle plans always tended to incoherence, his command often slackened fatally in the course of offensives, and he had never been able to control Capello (except by banishing him from the Isonzo). Capello's disobedience at critical moments was equally familiar." ((5), more)
"At 3.30 in the morning of September 19th began a tremendous drum fire against the whole front of the right wing of the Eighth Army from the coast to the mountains. Shortly after daybreak squadrons of British fliers appeared over the houses of headquarters of the Seventh and Eighth Armies, over the tent camps of the various corps headquarters, and over the central telephone office of the Army Group in Affuleh; flying low, they threw bombs on them and destroyed part of our wire. . . .Numerous wires in our land lines had been cut in the early morning hours by the Arabs. . . .Between 9 and 10 a.m. headquarters of the Seventh Army wired from Nablus that Colonel von Oppen had reported that the front of the right flank group in the coast sector had been broken through, and that strong cavalry forces were advancing northward along the coast. . . .Up to this day no exhaustive account has appeared of the complete and sudden collapse of the 7th Division in the western part of the coast sector, and of the adjoining two regiments of the 20th Division. . . . After two hours of drum fire they had completely disappeared on September 19th . . ." ((6), more)
(1) Response by Max, Burgomaster of Brussels on September 19, 1914, to a notice from the Military Governor in the city dated September 16 and posted on the 18th, requesting that citizens take down their Belgian flags which were 'regarded as a provocation by the German troops living in or passing through Brussels.' Max was arrested by the German authorities for implying that their reign would not be permanent.
A Journal from our Legation in Belgium by Hugh Gibson, page 241, copyright © Copyright, 1917, by Doubleday, Page & Company, publisher: Doubleday, Page & Company, publication date: 1917
(2) Excerpts from the memoirs of General Ferdinand Foch, for September 19, 1914, when he had been ordered by French Commander Joffre to support the French Fifth Army by attacking the German forces northwest of Rheims. The bombardment of Rheims and its beautiful cathedral would continue.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 105, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(3) Excerpt from the chapter "The Gathering of the Eagles" in The First Hundred Thousand, by Ian Hay, a soldier in K1, the first 100,000 men of Kitchener's Army, those who responded to Lord Kitchener's call for volunteers when the United Kingdom went to war in 1914. The soldiers are anticipating and preparing for the Big Push, the Franco-British autumn offensive of 1915. Ian Hay Beith was a Scot,and wore the glengarry, a traditional Scottish bonnet with a toorie or pompom on top and two ribbons trailing behind. The Territorial Force, some units of which wore tam o' shanters, was established as part of the Army reforms of 1906 and '07. Derided here, the Army Service Corps supplied front line troops with food, fuel, weapons, and other supplies. R.A.M.C. is the Royal Army Medical Corps. General Staff officers could be identified by the red tabs on their lapels.
The First Hundred Thousand; Being the Unofficial Chronicle of a Unit of "K (1)" by Ian Hay, pp. 303, 304, publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, publication date: 1916
(4) Victorious but weakened by Austria-Hungary's invasions in 1914, decimated by typhus in 1915, and overwhelmed by the 1915 invasion by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria, Serbia's government and the remains of its army fled to the Adriatic Sea and eventual transport by its allies to the island of Corfu to recuperate. In the spring and summer of 1916 it joined the Allied forces on the Salonika Front in Greece, forces that had originally deployed to Greece to aid Serbia. In their preemptive attack on August 17, the Bulgarians had struck primarily at the Serbian sector of the Allied line, and drove the Serbs back. The Serbian success on September 19 was a further step in taking their country back.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 81, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(5) In September 1917 Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna called a halt to his Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo since Italy had entered the war in May 1915. In four Isonzos in the first calendar year, five in 1916, and two more by September 1917, Cadorna had crossed the Isonzo River into Austria-Hungary, taken some territory, and cost hundreds of thousands of casualties. Beyond each plateau and mountain peak another awaited. General Luigi Capello had earned his nickname of 'the Butcher' in Italy's conquest of Libya.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 282, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(6) Excerpts from German General Otto Liman von Sanders account of the September 19, 1918 British attack on the Turkish forces in Palestine. British General Edmund Allenby attacked along the coast rather than inland where Arab forces working with T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, staged a raid on Daraa and the Hejaz Railroad. Sanders account on the 19th and subsequent days gives ample evidence of the success of the deception and of Arab and Royal Air Force attacks on communications.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, pp. 275–277, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
