Chosen Boy, a 1918 watercolor by Paul Klee. From Paul Klee: Early and Late Years: 1894-1940. © 2013 Moeller Fine Art
Image text:
A woman munitions worker carrying a shell apparently drops another one on the foot of a frightened man who clearly does not realize, as she does, that they are not in danger. No doubt his foot hurt.
Image text: La Femme et la Guerre.Leroy - Aux munitions.Women and the WarTo the munitions.Signed: FFLeroy?Reverse:No. 139 - P, J. Gallais et Cie, éditeurs, 38, Rue Vignon.Paris, Visé no. 139.No. 139 - P, J. Gallais and Company, publishers, 38 Rue Vignon.
The heck with the Zeppelins!Screw the Zeppelins!A French soldier and his lover couldn't care less about the Zeppelin raid in progress. It's hard to tell if he is holding a cigarette in his right hand, or giving a fig to the Zeppelin.
Image text: Zut pour les Zeppelins!The heck with the Zeppelins!TPFuria 546Reverse:Visé. Paris. - L'at. D'Art. Phot. - Bois-Colombes
German postcard map of the Romanian theater of war, with map labels in Bulgarian added in red. From north to south the labels are Russia, the Austro-Hungarian regions of Galicia and Bukovina, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and, along the Black Sea, the Romania region of Dobruja. Romania's primary war aim was the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian region of Transylvania, with its large ethnic Romanian population.
Image text: Vogelschaukarte des rumänischen Kriegschauplatzes.German map labels:Vogelschaukarte des rumänischen Kriegschauplatzes.RuslandGalizienBukowinaUngarnRumaniaBulgariaDobrudschaBulgarian overprint in red:на румънския театър на войнатаБърд око на картата на румънския театър на войната.Лтичи погдедъъ Бърд око на картата на румънския войната театърРусияГалисияБуковинаУнгарияРумънияБългарияДобруджаA 498 E.P. & Co. A.-G. L.
"'The most puzzling thing about this war,' a Russian officer wrote to his mother on January 21 [1915], 'is that we don't come to hate the enemy . . . I think it's because we're united by a common bond; we've all been forced to do the thing most alien to human nature: kill our fellow man." ((1), more)
"The 21st. Visited the Renault factory. Thousands of women are working there on the testing and manufacture of shells and fuses. It is a painful spectacle to see women, in long rows before their lathes, making tiny machines for killing. Copper fuse rings, shrapnel bullets like pearls of steel—jewels of death." ((2), more)
"I found spirits in the village greatly changed since my last home leave. The disaster in Romania, the dispatch of numerous forces to Salonika, the imminent call-up of the conscript class of 1918, the numbers of those exempted from service who had escaped the net of the recruitment boards, the shortages of sugar, coal, and transport—all these had turned a sunny optimism into somber pessimism, as eyes began to open to how things really were." ((3), more)
"Some Russian units were turned back [by the Romanians] without major bloodshed. However, several large-scale pitched battles occurred. At Galaţi, the 9th ID and 10th ID of the IV Siberian Corps engaged the Romanian 4th ID in two days of fighting on 20–21 January 1918. After experiencing some success and taking a number of Romanian prisoners, the Russians were thrown into disorder by a determined Romanian use of bayonets, artillery, and fire from Danube monitors. This convinced the 9th ID to submit to disarmament and seek refuge in German lines to the west on 22 January." ((4), more)
(1)
A Mad Catastrophe by Geoffrey Wawro, page 351, copyright © 2014 by Geoffrey Wawro, publisher: Basic Books
(2) Beginning of the January 21, 1916 entry from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government who contrasts the women workers with middle-class women who wonder if the soldiers at the front are 'still keen.'
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 136, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(3) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, who came home to his village in Languedoc in southern France on January 21, 1917. The Allies had opened the Salonica Front in 1915 in a failed attempt to aid Serbia. By early 1916 there were over 500,000 Allied soldiers on the front. Romania entered the war on the side of the Allies in August, 1916, and were quickly defeated, the capital of Bucharest falling on December 6. The remains of the Serbian army was in the Allied line in the Balkans. What was left of Romania's army was in Moldavia, in the country's northeast, holding the front with the Russians. German troops held much of France's coal fields in northern France. The coal shortage was made worse due to rationing, a very cold winter, and its diversion to military uses. The shortage of coal and military demands of course affected transport.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 291, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(4) Romania entered the war on the side of the Entente Allies on August 27, 1916, and was overrun by Central Power forces by the end of the year, driven out of Wallachia and Dobruja and back to Moldavia where the Russians held the Allied line. After rebuilding with support, training, and weapons from France, the Romanian army returned to battle in July, 1917, in joint Russian-Romanian offensives. After the Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917, Russian soldiers, in many instances, simply left the front, sometimes pillaging. Romania tried to organize and disarm departing Russians, sometimes unsuccessfully.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 268–269, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
