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Celebrating the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive that ultimately pushed Russian forces from Polish Russia and Galicia. German, Habsburg, and Hungarian flags fly over portraits of German General August von Mackensen and Austro-Hungarian General Archduke Friedrich, commanders of the Central Power campaign. Beneath them German and Austro-Hungarian artillery are at work. The offensive began with a four-hour hurricane bombardment by 950 guns along a 30-mile front.
To the Dardanelles! The Entente Allies successfully capture their objective and plant their flags in this boy's 1915 war game, as they did not in life, neither in the naval campaign, nor in the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.
The headstone of Private R. Stewart, of the Black Watch, who died May 4, 1915, age 19, and is buried in Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery in Fleurbaix, Pas-de-Calais, France. It is inscribedTo memory ever dearFrom Father and MotherSisters and Brothers © 2015 John M. Shea
Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
Russian troops fleeing a solitary German soldier. The Russian First Army invaded Germany in August 1914, and defeated the Germans in the Battle of Gumbinnen on the 20th. In September the Germans drove them out of Russia in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. In September and October, a joint German, Austro-Hungarian offensive drove the Russians back almost to Warsaw. Illustration by E. H. Nunes.
"On the 2nd of May [1915] at 6 a.m. an overwhelming artillery fire, including field guns and running up to the heaviest calibers, was begun on the [Russian] front many miles in extent selected for the effort to break through. This was maintained unbroken for four hours.At 10 o'clock in the morning these hundreds of fire-spouting tubes suddenly ceased and the same moment the swarming lines and attacking columns of the assailants threw themselves upon the hostile positions. The enemy had been so shaken by the heavy artillery fire that his resistance at many points was very slight. . . .On the evening of the 2nd of May, when the warm Spring sun had begun to yield to the coolness of night the first main position in its whole depth and extent, a distance of some sixteen kilometers, had been broken through and a gain of ground of some four kilometers had been attained." ((1), more)
"A week after the landing we were briefed for an attack on entrenched Turks at the head of Monash Gully, the area best known as the Chessboard. Like everything else on Gallipoli everything seemed to go wrong. We were marched a great and tiring distance to the take-off point and arrived late. We were supposed to make our advance in daylight, but it was dark by the time we were issued with picks and shovels so that we could consolidate the ground we were expected to gain. Our first obstacle was a steep and gravelly cliff down which a rope was suspended; in the pitch dark we had to haul ourselves up it. Believe me, I found it a struggle, with my rifle slung on my shoulder with bayonet fixed and a shovel in one hand. When I reached the top there was a heap of dead. The ground was totally exposed to Turk fire. . . . We weren't in platoon or company formation. We were just individuals arriving by rope at the top of the cliff to meet Turkish fire." ((2), more)
"I was one of thirteen men left behind as a rearguard and we were told exactly what we had to do. What we did was fire a shot — and of course at night you could see the flash of the rifle, the Germans could see it — then we would walk along the trench, maybe for about ten yards, and we could wait a few seconds and fire another shot, and then another chap would come along and do the same and I'd come back to another place and fire off again. That led his nibs across the road to figure the trench was still fully occupied." ((3), more)
"By May 5 [Hamilton] had got his reinforcements from Egypt, and in addition he took six thousand men from Birdwood and put them into the British line at Cape Helles: a force of 25,000 men in all. Through most of May 6, 7, and 8 the fight went on and with the same heroic desperation as before. 'Drums and trumpets will sound the charge,' General d'Amade announced to the French, and out they went in their pale-blue uniforms and their white cork helmets, a painfully clear target against the dun-coloured earth. Each day they hoped to get to Achi Baba. Each night when they had gained perhaps 300 yards in one place and nothing in another a new attack was planned for the following day. . . . A wild unreality intervened between the wishes of the commanders and the conditions of the actual battle on the shore. The battle made its own rules, and it was useless for the general to order the soldiers to make for this or that objective; there were no objectives except the enemy himself. This was a simple exercise in killing, and in the end all orders were reduced to just one or two very simple propositions: either to attack or to hold on." ((4), more)
"Thursday, May 6, 1915.Between the Carpathians and the Vistula the Russian situation is becoming critical. After very severe fighting at Tarnov, Gorlice, and Jaslo they are hastily retiring behind the Dunajec and Wisloka. The losses are enormous: the number of prisoners is said to be 40,000." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpts from a description of the first day of the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive by the victorious German commander August von Mackensen leading the German-Austro-Hungarian forces. The attackers fired as many as 700,000 shells in the devastating opening bombardment. Suffering from a lack of munitions, the Russians could respond with little but the men themselves. Continuing through September 30, Mackensen's campaign would spread across the entire Eastern Front and drive Russian forces back as much as 300 miles.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, pp. 178, 179, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) New Zealand veteran John Skinner describing the attack the night of May 2-3, 1915 at the northern end of Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. Skinner was a sergeant in the Otago Infantry Battalion, which landed on April 25, the first day of the Gallipoli invasion. In the first days, his battalion supported the Australians holding the front line, and lost 200 of 1,000 men. Of the attack at Monash Gully he said, 'we had worse to come.'
Voices of Gallipoli by Maurice Shadbolt, pp. 69, 70, copyright © 1988 Maurice Shadbolt, publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, publication date: 1988
(3) The German success in breaking the Allied line on April 22, 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres, left British forces defending a salient subject to artillery fire from three sides. After fruitless attempts to improve their position, they withdrew to a more compact, defensible line with Ypres at their back, the night of May 3-4. Private J. W. Vaughan of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was among those left behind to feign an active line. When he and his mates finally withdrew, 'all hell broke loose because, as soon as they didn't hear any more firing from the front line, the Germans figured we were coming over.'
1915, The Death of Innocence by Lyn Macdonald, page 272, copyright © 1993 by Lyn Macdonald, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1993 (Great Britain); 199
(4) Within days of the Allied invasion of Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, neither the Turks nor the Allies could advance significantly. The opposing commanders pleaded for reinforcements. The Entente Allies were reluctant to divert men from the fighting in France. General Sir Ian Hamilton had overall command of the Allied campaign and got troops where he could find them, from Egypt and from his commanders. General Sir William Birdwood commanded the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, which had landed at Gaba Tepe — Anzac Cove — barely five miles north of the Anglo-French landing site at Cape Helles at the end of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Achi Baba was a hill 709 feet high that dominated the Allied position at Cape Helles six miles to its south.
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead, page 155, copyright © 1956 by Alan Moorehead, publisher: Perennial Classics 2002 (HarperCollins Publications 1956), publication date: 2002 (1956)
(5) Entry for Thursday, May 6, 1915, from the memoirs of the French Ambassador in Russia, Maurice Paléologue. Commanding a joint German-Austro-Hungarian army, German commander August von Mackensen began his Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive on May 2, 1915 with a bombardment of an estimated 700,000 shells along a 30-mile front. By May 4, the Russian line had broken, and Erich von Falkenhayn, Commander in Chief of the German Army, observed that by then it was obvious the Russians would not be able to halt the offensive 'within an appreciable time.' They would not do so for months.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 336, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
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