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Map of the Eastern Front, mid-July, 1915 from The Capture of Novo Georgievsk, Volume 8 of the Reichsarchive history Battles of the World War.
Chosen Boy, a 1918 watercolor by Paul Klee. From Paul Klee: Early and Late Years: 1894-1940. © 2013 Moeller Fine Art
French folding postcard map of Verdun and the Meuse River, number 9 from the series Les Cartes du Front. Montfaucon is in the upper left and St. Mihiel at the bottom.
Uniforms of the British Army, 1914, from a series of postcards of uniforms of the combatants in the 1914 European War.
Having stopped unrestricted submarine warfare after sinking the Lusitania in 1915, Germany resumed the policy on January 31, 1917. The campaign peaked in April 1917, and helped bring the United States into the war.
"The offensive was carried out at a time of year that could not have been less suitable if it had been chosen by the Germans. It opened on 18th March [1916]. The winter conditions had given way to those of early spring — alternating freezes and thaws that made the roads either an ice-rink or a morass. Shell would explode to little effect against ground that was either hard as iron or churned to a morass; gas was also ineffective in the cold. Supplies presented problems that the best-trained army would have found impossible to solve: the man-handling of boxes of heavy shell through slush that was a foot deep. The Russian rear was a scene of epic confusion — complicated by the astonishingly large masses of cavalry deployed there, to no effect whatsoever at the front. It was altogether an episode that suggests commanders had lost such wits as they still possessed." ((1), more)
"'. . . the English are arriving here every day.'. . . 'I can't wait to find out where you are going there are a great many from around here who write to say that they are going to Verdun you already know . . . but as for me when will I know too. H. hasn't written for more than a week and he usually writes every day Is it the change of location or has something happened to him everyone wants to know.' . . . 'B's son who belonged to the Twelfth at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette has been at Verdun for the past week.'" ((2), more)
"On 20th March 1916, German artillery suddenly triggered assaults against Hill 304 with a fury which had not been seen since 21st February. A massive assault was brooding. At 3.10 pm, an alarming report from the balloon of the 36th Compagnie d'Aérostiers read: 'Amazingly violent bombing above the trenches in the Bois de Malancourt. Three huge blasts with burst of flames rising at least 100 metres above ground have just taken place.' Twenty minutes later, another incoming message from the balloon said: 'The three huge black clouds first reported were not caused by blasts, but by attacks with inflamed liquid.' The flame-thrower attack was later confirmed by 'tongues of fire' seen on the Avocourt-Malancourt road." ((3), more)
"As he passed from one 1914 man to another he dug is elbow into the C.O.'s ribs and exclaimed, 'You're a lucky fellow.' When it was over he said to the G.O.C., 'That's been a treat. That's the sort we've known for thirty years.' Orderly Room estimated that the Battalion still had 250 originals, mostly in the Transport, Drums, and Signals, and among the N.C.Os. Of the other originals, some 500 had been killed or wounded; some were detached; the balance had gone home sick and become scattered. With comparatively few exceptions the men are Regulars, Reservists, and Special Reserves." ((4), more)
"The Germans lost only four U-boats in the waters around the British Isles in March and April [1916]. One of those losses, U.68 in the southwestern approaches on 22 March, was due to the depth charges of the Q-ship Farnborough. The Farnborough was under the command of Lieutenant Commander Gordon Campbell, considered the most famous of the Q-ship commanders, and the episode was a classic example of Q-ship tactics with the ship blowing off steam and the stokers and spare men pretending to abandon ship in a panic after the submarine had surfaced and fired a shot across the steamer's bow. Once the submarine had closed, Campbell opened fire and finished her off with a depth charge." ((5), more)
(1) The Battle of Lake Narotch was Russia's response to the French requests for offensives by its allies to draw German forces from the siege at Verdun. Russian industry, supplemented by imports from Japan and the United States, was finally able to produce weapons and materiel that could meet the demands of the war. The Russians were numerically superior to the German defenders. Historian Norman Stone calls the offensive the last of the old Russian army — an army commanded by old men fighting the wars of the last century, who had learned little during the current war, where dismissals for incompetence could be overridden by appeals to the Tsar, where artillery and infantry did not coordinate their efforts.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, page 228, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
(2) Excerpts from letters by Paul Pireaud and his wife Marie, the first paragraph from Paul, the second from his wife, both from March, 1916. Paul was with the 112th Heavy Artillery Regiment which was about to be transferred to Verdun where the battle for the sector had been in progress since February 21. Commanding the defense, French General Henri Philippe Pétain kept the sector supplied and reinforced, rotating men and units through in roughly eight days. To free French troops for service at Verdun, the British were extending their line. Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is in Artois, had had been the site of Battles of Artois in 1914 and 1915. Marie's punctuation is minimal.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, pp. 95, 96, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
(3) The German attacked west of Verdun, between the city and the Argonne Forest, on March 20, 1916. A French brigade of 2,800 men were surrounded and surrendered.
The Battle of Verdun by Yves Buffetaut, page 52, copyright © Ysec Éditions 2013, publisher: Ysec Editions, publication date: 2013
(4) Part of the entry for March 21, 1916 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers and dozens of his comrades. That day the Corps Commander, Lieut.-General Haking inspected the men, and found many of them had come out in August 1914 — they were part of the old British Army, one of 100,000 men, that had been destroyed in the battles of 1914: the Allied retreat, the Race to the Sea, the Battle of Ypres.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 185, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(5) The Q-ship was a decoy, typically a steamer with disguised weapons. The depth charge, set to detonate at a predetermined depth, was a new weapon. The submarine U.68 was sunk off the southwest coast of Ireland.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 309, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
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