German and Austro-Hungarian forces under the command of generals von Hindenburg and Archduke Friedrich besieged Warsaw, and took it during the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. Austrians von Hötzendorf, Friedrich, and Pflanzer-Baltin form the bottom of the ring; the others are German. The flag and shield of Germany are on the bottom left; those of Austria and Hungary the bottom right.
Image text: Der Ring um Warschau, The Ring Encircling Warsaw.Bottom right: 5258; illegible logo bottom leftReverse: registration lines only.
'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' — the Tower of London poppies — each of the 888,246 ceramic poppies representing one serviceman of the British Empire killed in World War I. The installation was a collaboration of artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper. Since November, 2014 the poppies have been installed in other sites in the United Kingdom. Photographed October 3, 2014. © 2014 by John M. Shea
Image text:
Y Ravine Cemetery, Beaumont-Hamel, France. © 2013 John M. Shea
Neutral Netherlands commiserates with its invaded, war-battered neighbor Belgium. One of a series of 1916 postcards on neutral nations by Em. Dupuis.
Image text: Pauvre petite Voisine va!. . .Poor little Neighbour.HollandeEm. Dupuis, 1916Signed: Em. Dupuis 1916Reverse:Visé Paris. No. 109Logo: Paris Color 152 Quai de Jemmapes
Cover to the sheet music for 'Good-bye Broadway, Hello France,' the 'big song hit of 'Passing Show of 1917' at N.Y. Winter Garden,' lyrics by C. Francis Reisner and Benny Davis, music by Billy Baskette. Standing in New York, General John J. Pershing shakes hands over the Atlantic with a Ferdinand-Foch-like French general.
Image text: Big song hit of 'Passing Show of 1917' at N.Y. Winter GardenGood-bye Broadway, Hello FranceWords by C. Francis Reisner and Benny DavisMusic by Billy Baskette
"Warsaw is in danger from a violent counter-attack by the Germans north of the Pilica. The Russian resistance is magnificent." ((1), more)
"The airship was clearly seen crossing the Thames as she was pick up almost immediately by two searchlights. The big guns added to the Wagnerian scene as the silver dirigible nosed its way from over New Palace Yard to Green Park. Breithaupt and his crew had a different view. Although he later said it was indescribably beautiful, it must have been fantastic and disconcerting as shrapnel burst all around, pasting sequins against the velvet sky. Then, from the gondolas they could see their bombs bursting in the streets while British guns snapped slim tongues of flame. When they raised their eyes from below and looked around they saw balanced on searchlights the other airships of the formation, 'all clearly recognizable against the starlit sky.'Breithaupt headed straight for the heart of London. He made Charing Cross his first impact point, and headed for the Bank of England with intent to plaster Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill. His first bombs struck the theatre district north of the Strand. The historic Lyceum Theatre, where Henry Irving and Ellen Terry had acted, was hit. A bomb dropped in Wellington Street, fractured a gas main and set fire to the escaping gas. Seventeen people were killed in that blast. York Street was also hit, as was the front of the Waldorf Hotel. One bomb fell in the Kingsway, a few hit the Inns of Court, and one incendiary torched the robing room at Gray's Inn." ((2), more)
"Recollection paints these autumn weeks in the Beaumont Hamel sector as a tranquil time. Naturally, there at the edge of the Thiepval inferno, there were ungentle interludes. One night in particular the front line was stubbornly pounded with minenwerfers (it was a 'minnywafer' sector, and one often turned cold in the firetrench as one heard the approaching swish of these monsters). As we had little or no wire in front, and as the line now lay exposed and helpless, Harrison anticipated a German raid, and Cassells and I lay most of the night waiting for it in the new shell-holes, with a set of the trustiest soldiers, fingering bombs in a contemplative fashion. . . ." ((3), more)
"— The 13th. At Gheusi's. It was to-day they shot the lovely Mata-Hari. General Vialon, who came to see Gheusi during the interval, brought the news. Germany offered to liberate from ten to twenty French officers, prisoners of war, if they would spare this woman. Her counsel, Clunet, an old man touched by her beauty, pleaded her case movingly, invoking the memory of his own son killed at the front. Some officials, said to have been her lovers, also made appeals on her behalf." ((4), more)
". . . the following day, October 13, [Foch and Pershing] met. After an extensive discussion Pershing agreed to form the U.S. Second Army, and Foch agreed to elevate him to the same status as Pétain and Haig. Foch's order explained that the Americans had created the U.S. Second Army and that Pershing was now an army-group commander. In his memoirs Foch said nothing about sending Weygand to Pershing's headquarters, but he did observe, 'Having a more complete appreciation of the difficulties faced by the Americans, I could not support the radical solution envisaged by Mr. Clemenceau.' Whatever Foch's 'solution' may have been, he forced Pershing to reorganize American forces and pressed him to get the Meuse Argonne offensive moving." ((5), more)
(1) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Tuesday, October 13, 1914. The German advance reached within a dozen miles of Warsaw by mid-October, 1914.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 167, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(2) The Zeppelins LZ.11, 13, 14, 15, and 16 raided England the night of October 13, 1915 under the command of Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant Commander) Heinrich Mathy of the German Naval Air Service. Four of the five, other than LZ.11, reached London. Joachim Breithaupt commanded LZ.15. London's defenses included a new French antiaircraft weapon just arrived from Paris that fired a shell capable of exploding at a predetermined height, and a B.E.2c plane piloted by Lieutenant John Slessor, that set out to intercept the German airships. Neither the gun nor the plane damaged the Zeppelins, but did alarm their pilots enough to cause them to begin setting a course for home. Arch Whitehouse's account of the raid notes that it 'was one of the deadliest of the war,' killing 71 people and injuring 128.
The Zeppelin Fighters by Arch Whitehouse, page 104, copyright © 1966 by Arch Whitehouse, publisher: New English Library, publication date: 1978
(3) Excerpt from Edmund Blunden, English writer, recipient of the Military Cross, second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, writing of autumn, 1916, while in the Battle of the Somme. Hamel had seen the ruin of the Newfoundland Regiment on July 1, the first day of the Battle. Thiepval Ridge is the site of the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, engraved with 60,000 names, and was taken by the British in September and October, 1916. The Minenwerfer was an accurate, high-trajectory mortar with a range of about 1,000 yards.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, pp. 107–108, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
(4) Beginning of the entry for October 13, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. Mata Hari, a self-made performer and dancer who had been derided for not knowing how to dance, was originally Margaretha Zelle from the Netherlands, and moved to Indonesia with her husband. She left him, moved to Paris, and achieved some success as a performer. At the time of her arrest as a German spy, her career had been in decline for some time. Gheusi was presumably Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi (pseudonym Norbert Lorédan), a theater director, writer, and librettist. Corday's literary friends included French novelist Anatole France.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 281, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was increasingly furious with what he saw as the incompetence and intransigence of American Commander in Chief John Pershing and the defense of him by Allied Commander in Chief Ferdinand Foch. In the first phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive launched on September 26, 1918, American forces, with divisions twice as large as their European counterparts, were in chaos and gridlock behind the front, struggling to move food, materiel, and reserves forward, and casualties back. Clemenceau, who was accustomed to visiting the front, could not, and saw Pershing as responsible for holding up not only the American advance but that of the French army on his left. Generals Henri Philippe Pétain and Douglas Haig were, respectively, commanders of the French and British armies. General Maxime Weygand was the French military representative to the Supreme War Council.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 495, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
