A Swiss postcard of 'The European War' in 1914. The Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary face enemies to the east, west, and south. Germany is fighting the war it tried to avoid, battling Russia to the east and France to the west. Germany had also hoped to avoid fighting England which came to the aid of neutral (and prostrate) Belgium, and straddles the Channel. Austria-Hungary also fights on two fronts, against Russia to the east and Serbia and Montenegro to the south. Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared neutrality, and looks on. Other neutral nations include Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Japan enters from the east to battle Germany. The German Fleet stays close to port in the North and Baltic Seas while a German Zeppelin targets England. The Austro-Hungarian Fleet keeps watch in the Adriatic. Turkey is not represented, and entered the war at the end of October, 1914; Italy in late May, 1915.
Image text: Der Europäische KriegThe European WarReverse:Kriegskarte No. 61. Verlag K. Essig, BaselKunstanstalt (Art Institute) Frobenius A.G. Basel
View of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme 1914–1918 from Mouquet Farm, commemorating the 72,246 British and Empire missing of that sector. It is a monument both to the British Empire and French missing from the Battle of the Somme and other battles in Picardy. © 2013 John M. Shea
Image text:
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
Bourlon and Bourlon Wood. From The Tank Corps by Major Clough Williams-Ellis & A. Williams-Ellis.
Image text: The Bapaume-Cambrai Road.12. L.O. 28.57º Bourlon & Wood2.12.17.10.
". . . there arrived from the Commander in Chief an important dispatch which definitely prescribed the attitude we were to assume from now on. He informed his subordinates that the shortage in artillery ammunition had brought about a situation which, from being critical, might 'even become tragic.' I learned that I would receive no more 75 mm. shell for two or three weeks, and I was directed to regulate my operations accordingly. Moreover, the Commander in Chief's plans now contemplated a manœuvre north of the Oise which aimed at turning the German right. As a consequence the Allied Armies from the Oise to the Swiss frontier would be obliged to stand on the defensive." ((1), more)
"Dawn on the 27th [September 1915] was breaking as I rejoined C Company and, incidentally, the rest of the battalion and once again we were near our original front line from which we made our advance. . . . When dawn broke we found that the ground on which we halted was strewn with dead and wounded — some of the wounded I recognised, having seen them there when we went over the day before.I was very glad to get into some form of shelter as the men were looking very much the worse for wear. We called the roll and the result was shattering to say the least of it as I had little more than half my platoon left, and so far as I could see, other platoons were no better. Rifles were cleaned and examined, but it was a ghastly parade and I am afraid I could not see well enough to know whether a rifle was clean or not." ((2), more)
"The French did not co-operate in the battle [of Flers-Courcelette], and continued to delay entering the heavy fighting which followed. They took little part until the 25th, when another attack was launched. It was the anniversary of the British reverse at Loos, and Charteris, Haig's intelligence chief, wrote in his diary '. . . a great difference between this year and last'. He was not attempting irony. On 27 September the Thiepval spur was at last taken, having held out since 1 July. A battalion of the Bedfordshires were the ones who finally took possession. The land surrounding this stronghold was carpeted with British corpses from the numerous previous attacks which had failed." ((3), more)
"In Britain, questions had begun to be raised about the continuing attrition. Although the Germans were being pushed back a hundred yards here and a hundred yards there, the casualty lists were growing. On September 27 [1917] the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Robertson, wrote to Haig: 'I confess I stick to it more because I see nothing better, and because my instinct prompts me to stick to it, than because of any good arguments by which I can support it.' On the following day Haig wrote in his diary, 'The enemy is tottering.' This was his usual argument for continuing." ((4), more)
"The British part in the great general attack upon the whole German front was timed to begin in the early morning of September 27th. On the evening before a great bombardment opened on a thirty-mile front, from a point about two miles northwest of St. Quentin, as far as the Sensée River northwest of Cambrai. Then in the gray light of early dawn the 4th, 6th, 17th and Canadian Corps, thirteen divisions in all, of Byng's Third Army and Horne's First Army advanced on the Cambrai front, stormed the immensely strong Canal du Nord, swept beyond Bourlon Wood and Fontaine-Notre-Dame, the extreme limits of our advance in the first battle of Cambrai of November, 1917, and captured Sailly, more than six miles from their starting point, taking over 10,000 prisoners and 200 guns." ((5), more)
(1) In 1914, no army was prepared for or had on hand the quantity of munitions being consumed in the war. French Commander in Chief Joffre had begun cautioning his commanders at least two weeks before September 27 of the shortage. (The 75 mm. field gun was one on best weapons in the French arsenal.) Joffre was also planning another outflanking attempt in the 'Race to the Sea.' In French General Foch's sector the Germans were also on the defensive, and for the next week, 'nothing of any importance' took place.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 111, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(2) From an account by Captain Wyllie, Royal Scots Fusiliers writing in 1952 of the Battle of Loos.
The Battle of Loos by Philip Warner, pp. 168, 169, copyright © Philip Warner 1976, publisher: Wordsworth Editions Limited, publication date: 2000 (originally 1976)
(3) The Thiepval spur is the site of the Thiepval Memorial to the 72,246 British and Empire missing of the Somme. The Battle of Loos was Britain's 'Big Push' in the autumn of 1915, a time when the British had not had the resources — of men, artillery, and aircraft — that they mustered in 1916. British General Douglas Haig had been promoted commander in chief after the failures of 1915. The September 15, 1916 Battle of Flers-Courcelette, an engagement in the Battle of the Somme, saw the first use tanks.
The Big Push, A Portrait of the Battle of the Somme by Brian Gardner, page 130, copyright © 1961 by Brian Gardner, publisher: William Morrow and Company, publication date: 1963
(4) General Sir Douglas Haig began the Third Battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917 to achieve breakthrough of the German line on the Western Front, to reach the English Channel coast, and end the war. Rain was a factor from the beginning. Artillery bombardments destroyed the drainage of the flat terrain. Water filled shell holes, turning shelter into deathtraps. Haig and his Generals Hubert Gough and Herbert Plumer continued to throw British, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian troops into the swamp and against German machine guns.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 363, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(5) Returning to his headquarters on September 22, 1918 after a tour of the front, Allied Commander-in Chief Ferdinand Foch settled on a plan for a 'great general attack': four offensives launched on four consecutive days beginning September 26, 1918. The second was the assault British General F. Maurice summarizes above. The British offensive of the First Battle of Cambrai in November, 1917 had demonstrated how successful tanks could be.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 291, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
