World War I Today

No. 1. L'Attaque Brusquée: d'après "le Bystander". The Sudden Attack, August 24, 1914. In French territory, with Luxemburg and much of Belgium behind him, a helmeted Kaiser Wilhelm knocks Joffre back with a powerful uppercut. The western end of the Allied line was held by the British. Their retreat from Mons, Belgium on August 24 brought the full length of the Allied line into France.
From L'Attaque & la Riposte — Originale présentation des phases de la Guerre (The Attack & the Retort — Original Presentation of the Phases of the War)
Ehrmann, Édition Lorraine, a set of six postcards and envelope.
Over maps of the French theater of operations on the western front in 1914 — Luxemburg, Belgium, northern France — cartoon figures of the French and German armies struggle. General Joffre represents the forces he commands. His adversary's upward-pointing mustache indicates Kaiser Wilhelm.
The titles of the cards appear only on the envelope.
1re Série
On the reverse of each card: Carte Postale
Tous les Pays étrangers n'acceptent pas la Correspondance au recto. (Se renseigner a la Poste).
Edition Lorraine

Image text: 24 Aout d'après "le Bystander" (August 24, after "The Bystander")

[No. 1. L'Attaque Brusquée: d'après "le Bystander". The Sudden Attack, August 24, 1914.

1re Série]

On the reverse of each card: Carte Postale

Tous les Pays étrangers n'acceptent pas la Correspondance au recto. (Se renseigner a la Poste).

Edition Lorraine

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Squadron of French Blériot two-seater planes including BL217, 221, and 222. Blériots continued to be used as training planes into at least 1916.

Image text: Campagne de 1914. — Escadrille d'aéroplanes — N D Phot

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Hanging on the wire: dead Russian soldiers entangled in barbed wire. Attacking infantry found it nearly impossible to overcome the combination of barbed wire and machine guns. Many died trying, some left hanging in the grip of the wire.

Image text:

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Photograph of four First World War Italian soldiers. The one on the far right wears a monocle.

Image text:

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Pen and ink drawing on a German field postcard of a field hospital on the Lens-Arras road.

Image text: Sanitäts - Unterstand

Rue de Arras b.[bis] Lens

Medical aid shelter

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Tuesday, August 25, 1914

"On the morning of the 25th we beat a retreat, and I realized that the hope expressed in the lines I have just quoted was misplaced. This immensely bitter disappointment, the stifling heat, the difficulties of marching along a road encumbered by artillery and convoys, and finally, the dysentery with which I was stricken the night before make the 25th of August live in my memory as one of the most painful days I have known." ((1), more)

Wednesday, August 25, 1915

". . . After lunch we went to the aerodrome of Matzeville, by-passing the town of Nancy. It dominates the latter, as well as the valley of the Meurthe. Here a magnificent display had been arranged for us: a simultaneous take-off of sixty planes. The whole sky was full of them. It was an intense and general buzzing which reminded me of a swarm of bees. Major Roisin showed us the ground installations and the machines themselves, with their bombs and rockets. He is a bold pilot and a fine leader." ((2), more)

Friday, August 25, 1916

"When morning paled, the strange surroundings gradually revealed themselves to our disbelieving eyes.

The defile proved to be little more than a series of enormous craters full of pieces of uniform, weapons and dead bodies; the country around, so far as the eye could see, had been completely ploughed up by heavy shells. Not a single blade of grass showed itself. The churned-up field was gruesome. In among the living defenders lay the dead. When we dug foxholes, we realized that they were stacked in layers. One company after another, pressed together in the drumfire, had been mown down, then the bodies had been buried under showers of earth sent up by shells, and then the relief company had taken their predecessors' place. And now it was our turn.

The defile and the land behind was strewn with German dead, the field ahead with British. . . ." ((3), more)

Saturday, August 25, 1917

"The officers held their breath. They had not been able to hear the adjutant's words, but from my replies they had understood only too well. They looked at me silently, in anxious suspense. Then the cavalry lieutenant filled up his glass and said:

'Here's to the Bainsizza!'

His fellow-officers did the same.

'To the offensive on the Bainsizza!'

It was beginning all over again." ((4), more)

Sunday, August 25, 1918

"I drew up my men in the sunken road, and gave orders to advance in two waves. 'Hundred yards apart. I myself shall be between the first wave and the second.'

It was our last storm. How many times over the last few years we had advanced into the setting sun in a similar frame of mind! Les Eparges, Guillemont, St-Pierre-Vaast, Langemarck, Passchendaele, Mœuvres, Vraucourt, Mory! Another gory carnival beckoned." ((5), more)

Quotation contexts and source information

Tuesday, August 25, 1914

(1) An excerpt from the war memoirs of the great French historian Marc Bloch. His regiment took part in the Lorraine Offensive, advancing towards Belgium, then turning from it. By August 23 many wounded were on the roads, and word was there had been 'a great battle and, I believe, a great victory.' Bloch's bitter disappointment lay in learning that the victory was on the German side as his regiment joined the general retreat of the Entente Allies.

Wednesday, August 25, 1915

(2) On August 25, 1915, King Albert of Belgium finished a four-day journey to the French front. From the aerodrome, the King went to Mont. St. Jean, the Grand Couronné of Nancy surmounted with artillery batteries. Throughout his journey, King Albert was struck by 'the good order of everything; the fine behavior of the troops and their discipline, their manner of saluting and their excellent morale.'

Friday, August 25, 1916

(3) Ernst Jünger in what remained of the German forward trenches on August 25, 1916, the eighth week of the Battle of the Somme. His platoon had moved in overnight, frequently walking on the dead.

Saturday, August 25, 1917

(4) The end of Emilio Lussu's Sardinian Brigade, an account of a year fighting on the Asiago plateau, on Italy's northern border. In mid-July 1917, Lussu's battalion was withdrawn from the front build defenses. The men recovered, and some of the wounded returned to the battalion. As Lussu wrote, 'One very soon began to forget. Life regained its ascendancy.' He was dining and joking with fellow officers when word came that they were being sent to the Bainsizza Plateau where the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo was underway.

Sunday, August 25, 1918

(5) Excerpt from German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger's memoir Storm of Steel writing of a German attack on August 24, 1918. Jünger was wounded on the third day of Germany's 1918 Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, in March, 1918, and returned to his regiment on June 4. The last German offensive of the war, the Champagne-Marne Offensive, ended on July 17. The counter-offensive that would end with Allied victory, began the next day. It was Jünger's last battle of the war, as he was seriously wounded, shot through the lung, later in the day. He survives, continues to fight, and eventually, with help from his men, escapes capture, ending in a German hospital the next day. There he resumes reading Lawrence Sterne's Tristam Shandy. Jünger was awarded the Pour le Mérite on September 22.