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As an injured Russian bear and plucked French cock stumble off, Britain's John Bull protects his fleet with the flags of neutral nations, while making his throne on his colonies and allies: Egypt, India, Belgium, Ireland, Transvaal (part of the Union on South Africa), and, at the center, Italy, an ally since May, 1915. A postcard from 1915, labeled in French and German.
Italy's armed forces at the ready in a 1915 postcard. In the foreground the artillery, infantry, an Alpine soldier (in feathered hat), and a Bersaglieri (in plumed headgear). Behind them are a bugler and lancer; in the distance marines and colonial troops. The Italian navy is off shore, an airship and planes overhead. On the reverse are the lyrics of a patriotic Italian March by Angelo Balladori, lyrics by Enrico Mercatali. It ends with a call to the brothers of Trento and Trieste, Austro-Hungarian territory with large ethnic Italian populations.
England's Distress: Postcard map of England and Ireland with the restricted zone Germany proclaimed around the islands, showing the ships destroyed by submarine in the 12 months beginning February 1, 1917.
A photo postcard of a German trench view of barbed wire and a dead patrol. Dated February 22, 1916, and field postmarked the next day, the message is from a soldier to his uncle, and reads in part, 'yesterday we heard that 4 fortresses of Verdun were taken. This have been a lot of shooting . . . Maybe this is the end of Verdun and peace will come soon . . . the barbed wire on the other side of the card is French. You can see dead patrols . . .' (Translation from the German courtesy Thomas Faust.) Evidently the author safely reached the French trench line.
A squadron of the German Imperial Navy under the eye of a Zeppelin off the North Sea island and port of Helgoland.
"3rd November[, 1915] Countries like France and Belgium, which have been dragged into the conflict in spite of themselves and against their wishes, have everything to lose in being chained to an indestructible power like the British Empire. They take all the blows which are not intended for them. The struggle between England and Germany will last for centuries and will have the universe for theatre." ((1), more)
"The last days of the [Third Isonzo] battle, 3 and 4 November, were extremely violent. Brigade diaries reported fears that some units might crack and desert en masse. The attacks on San Michele were weakening under the internal pressures of exhaustion and hopelessness. The Italians had sustained 67,000 losses along the front. On San Michele, the Catanzaro Brigade alone lost almost 2,800 men and 70 officers between 17 and 26 October, nearly half of each category. The Caltanisetta Brigade, deployed alongside the Catanzaro, took even heavier casualties, losing two-thirds of its men and 63 per cent of its officers between 22 October and 3 November. South of Monfalcone, the 16th Division carried out a frontal attack on Hill 121, the nearest point to Trieste that Cadorna's army had yet reached. This one failed attack cost 4,000 Italian casualties." ((2), more)
". . . the logs and code-books recovered from the captured Turquoise provided the German and Ottoman navies with details of the rendezvous locations and of the times of meeting with the other British submarines. On 5 November, Oberleutnant zur See Hugo von Heimburg, commanding UB14, set out from Constantinople to one of the rendezvous positions and at 4 p.m. sighted a conning tower, 5 miles to the north. At 5.10 p.m., and at a distance of 550 yards, he fired one torpedo which hit and sank E20. . . . At 5.20, UB14 surfaced and rescued two officers, including Warren, and six sailors from E20's crew." ((3), more)
"The steady rain brought on landslides which uncovered many French cadavers alongside our trench, which had been taken on September 25. They had been tossed out of the trench and insufficiently covered with a bit of dirt. It wasn't unusual to be grabbed, while passing, by a skeletal hand or a foot sticking out of a trench wall. We were so blasé about it that we paid it no more attention then to a root we might trip upon in our path.Finally, on November 6th, at 6 o'clock in the evening, the 281st Regiment came to relieve us, to pull us out of this hell-hole, and we went back to Agnez until the 13th." ((4), more)
"The fighting spirit of the crew has sunk so low that we would be delighted to get a torpedo in the belly. It's what we would all like to see happen to our despicable officers. If anyone had been heard wishing any such thing a year and a half ago he would have received a good thrashing. There is an evil spirit loose among us and it is only our good upbringing that stops us imitating what happened in the Russian Baltic fleet.[1] We all recognize that we have more to lose than our chains." ((5), more)
(1) A somewhat ungrateful diary entry for November 3, 1915 by Albert, King of the Belgians, whose country, like France, was invaded by Germany in August, 1914. In response, Belgium ask the guarantors of its neutrality, including France and Great Britain, for support in its defense. Britain, which had hesitated coming to France's aid, declared war on Germany after it failed to respond to a demand to leave Belgium. German Commander-in-Chief Erich von Falkenhayn, shared King Albert's view that Great Britain was Germany's primary rival.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 72, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(2) Italian Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna launched the Third Battle of the Isonzo River on October 18, 1915 on a 50-kilometer front with 1,300 guns, most of them 75 mm. field guns that neither cut barbed wire nor destroyed entrenchments. The Adriatic port of Trieste, Austria-Hungary, with a large ethnic Italian population, was one of Italy's war aims.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 130, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(3) During the Allied Gallipoi campaign, French and British submarines made the hazardous journey through the Dardanelles to attack Turkish shipping in the Sea of Marmara. On October 20, 1915, the French submarine Turquoise made its way through the Dardanelles. The ship was plagued with problems that included electric motors that caused short circuits and fires, a leaking periscope, a malfunctioning gyrocompass, and faulty forward hydroplanes. Returning through the Dardanelles on October 30, it surfaced, was seen and fired on by shore batteries, dove, struck bottom, resurfaced, and surrendered. Turquoise was taken with its logs and code-books. Using these windfall, UB14 set out to a rendezvous point, and found the British submarine E20 under Lieutenant Commander C. H. Warren.
Gallipoli — Attack from the Sea by Victor Rudenno, page 244, copyright © 2008 Victor Rudenno, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2008
(4) Extract from the notebooks of French Corporal Louis Barthas whose unit had fought in the Third Battle of Artois, part of the great autumn Anglo-French offensive of 1915, launched on September 25, 1915.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 134, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(5) Journal entry from November 7, 1915 by German Seaman Richart Stumpf on board SMS Helgoland sailing through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to the Baltic Sea. Trapped by the British blockade, and fearful of defeat by the British Royal Navy, the German Imperial Navy stayed in port through much of the war, its inactivity damaging the morale of the seamen. Our source, Peter Englund, footnotes Stumpf's entry: '[1] Stumpf's reference is to the mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin in 1905. His memory, however, fails him on this: the Potemkin belonged to the Russian Black Sea Fleet not the Baltic fleet.'
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, page 177, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
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