Mechanical calendar postcard counting down the days to the end of conscription. The date and the days remaining are variable. France extended conscription from two years to three as a measure to counter the fact that's Germany's population was 50 percent larger.
Image text: Calendrier de la ClasseAujourd'huiVendredi 26 JuinEncore 2 jours a faireClass CalendarTodayFriday, June 26Two more days to goLogo:CeKoMarque DéposéeReverse:Marque DéposéeLogo:CeKoParisMade in France[Handwritten:]Toul le 24 AoûtSouvenir de ToulBons baisersMarcelToul August 24 Souvenir from Toul With loveMarcel
A Russian Cossack riding among refugees fleeing before a Central Power advance. The Russians adopted a scorched-earth policy in the months-long retreat before the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive of the spring, summer, and fall 1915, with Cossacks accused of burning homes and crops to deny them to the advancing enemy, and to prevent civilians from remaining behind and providing intelligence to the invader.
Image text: Il Cammino della CiviltàThe Path of Civilization
Intermission at a French theater, 1915. Women and a girl knit, socks perhaps, for soldiers at the front, as does a Red Cross nurse seated between two sleepy soldiers, one — from an Algerian regiment — visibly wounded. An older man reads the news. Illustrated by A. Guillaume, the postcard is captioned in the languages of the Entente Allies, French, English, and Russian.
Image text: 15 minutes d'entr'act.15 minutes intermission.Антрактъ въ 15 минутъ.Pinx. A. GuillaumeА. ГильомъVisé Paris.2260.I.M.L.Reverse:Guerre Européenne de 1914-1915Édition Patriotique.Imp. I. Lapina. - Paris, Rue Denfert-Rochebeau, 75European War 1914-1915Patriotic Edition.Printer I. Lapina. - Paris, Rue Denfert-Rochebeau 75
Photograph of a French heavy mortar in action.
Image text:
Map of the 1918 German offensives on the Western Front from The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Ferdinand Foch. © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Image text: German OffensivesOf Mar. 21 (Picardy)Of May 27 (Aisne-Marne)Of July 15 (Champagne-Marne)Of Apr. 9 (Flanders)Of June 9 (Compiegne)Front and situation of the German Armies March 20, 1918 (on the eve of the offensive)Front at the end of the offensiveScale of miles
"Germany has wished to upset the equilibrium of the two camps which divide Europe by a supreme effort beyond which they can do little more.They did not think that France was capable of a great sacrifice. Our adoption of the three years' service will upset their calculations." ((1), more)
"All day long we jolted along the plains or through woodlands, and wherever we looked we could see the moving figures of homeless people. It was said that the Cossacks had received orders to force all inhabitants of villages and hamlets to leave their homes, lest they be made to act as spies and, in order that the enemy should encounter widespread devastation in his progress, the homesteads were set on fire and crops destroyed.Thus a new word was added to our daily vocabulary — that of refugee, and from that day onward for many weeks to come the life of our Unit was closely interwoven with that of the refugees. Their plight was heart-rending." ((2), more)
"Monday, 13th June, [O.S.; June 26, 1916, N.S.] BuchachThere were two major operations late last night, both stomach wounds; the intestines had been severely perforated and it was by no means easy to cleanse the abdominal cavity of the blood and impurities which had flowed into it. The Surgeons' skilled hands were able to cut away the torn intestinal tubes and join the healthy ends together once again. It would seem a miracle if the patient survived such an intricate operation, but a high percentage did survive and our Surgeons, who kept in touch with many of the Base hospitals, often heard that such and such a soldier was being slowly restored to health. It was a difficult time for us Sisters while these 'stomach' patients were under our care, for they were constantly crying our for water — their thirst must have exceeded their pain — and we knew that nothing must pass through those injured intestines until they had healed. It was even forbidden to allow a drop of water to pass through those parched lips." ((3), more)
"It was frightful there wasn't a shelter that could have withstood them they made holes that were 29 paces across and 4 to 5 meters deep it was beyond anything one could imagine. I left at the regular time and had to throw myself down flat on my stomach several times when I arrived [at the battery] I saw them falling all around . . . With every falling shell I threw my bike to the ground and threw myself flat on the ground finally I made it to my destination but what a spectacle with all these shell holes everywhere there is an enormous one two meters from our canteen at the very spot where I usually put my bike." ((4), more)
"— A doctor tells me of the effects of mustard-gas: burns, blindness, pneumonia, inflammation of the testicles. 'We have a gas which is even more deadly,' he added.He also described the looting of villages by French soldiers when they abandoned them during the retreat. 'It was not for the sake of stealing. They could not take anything away with them. It was just a mania. To break into an empty house, to open drawers, to read letters, to play about with the linen and clothes, and then to leave it all where it was, after a few hours. The English, more methodical, carried off pianos in motor-lorries, on the pretext of organising the villages for defence." ((5), more)
(1) Conclusion of a report of M. de Faramond, Naval Attaché to the French Embassy at Berlin, to M. Baudin, Minister of Marine.Berlin, March 15, 1913France was in the process of extending its military service from two years to three. Germany, in 1913, was commemorating the coalition that defeated Napoleon, and reaction against the proposed French law was strong.On March 17, 1913, M. Jules Cambon, French Ambassador to Berlin, wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs drawing attention to reports by the French military and naval attachés in Berlin to the new Germany military law, part of the response to the French one.
Collected Diplomatic Documents Relating to the Outbreak of the European War, 129, 130, publisher: His Majesty's Stationery Office by Harrison and Sons, publication date: 1915
(2) Frances Farmborough, an English teacher in Moscow when war broke out, trained for and joined a Red Cross unit serving with the Russian Army. By late June, 1915, the joint German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, launched on May 2, had broken the Russian front, splitting the northern and southern armies, and driving the Russians back hundreds of miles. For these months, Farmborough's account is of the ongoing, brutal retreat.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 83, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(3) Entry for June 26, 1916 (June 13 Old Style) from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross behind the front lines of Russia's Brusilov Offensive. The next day, Farmborough and a male nurse could barely restrain one of their 'stomach patients' who was delirious from thirst.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 202, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(4) Excerpt from a letter from Paul Pireaud to his wife Marie from Martha Hanna's Your Death Would Be Mine, based on the couple's correspondence during World War I. On June 26, 1917, Paul was serving with the 112th Heavy Artillery Regiment when his battery came under fire. In April, the unit had fought in the Battle of the Hills, or the Third Battle of Champagne, attacking east of Reims in an action of the Second Battle of the Aisne, itself part of Robert Nivelle's great — and failed — spring offensive of 1917. No one in Paul's unit was harmed, but two men in an adjacent battery were killed. Paul hoped the Germans would follow their usual practice of waiting two or three weeks before launching another heavy bombardment.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, page 211, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
(5) Entry from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. Mustard gas, a poison gas introduced late in the war, caused large, painful blisters of the skin, eyes, and mucous membrane. The German offensives of 1918 forced first the British and then the French to retreat. After two offensives (Operations Michael and Georgette) against the British, the Aisne (Blücher) Offensive (May 27 to June 4) pushed the French back to the Marne River. The Noyon-Montdidier Offensive was anticipated by the French and came to an early conclusion.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 357, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
