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Photograph of a village on Lake Van, an area of Turkey populated largely by ethnic Armenians. The area was one of the first targeted on a large scale when Turkey turned on its Armenian citizens. Photo from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916.
Group of Japanese Red Cross nurses and doctors on their way to Europe. In August, 1918, a Japanese Red Cross Mission arrived in Great Britain to visit the Belgian, French, and Italian fronts. This group? (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/1410082)
The exploding shell of a French 75 mm. field gun blasts the crown from the tree of the Central Powers as the axe of Justice strikes its trunk. A background map shows British towns on the English Channel and Belgian and French cities shelled by German forces burning. A 1915 French postcard.
Design for a memorial in memory of Harold Lionel Isidore Spielmann of Pembroke College, Cambridge, a Captain in the 10th Manchester Regiment, who 'led his men with skill & gallantry & reached his objective.' He was killed in action at Helles on Gallipoli on August 13, 1915, and is buried there in the Pink Farm Cemetery. The upper portion of the design is the coat of arms of Pembroke College at Cambridge University on a field of 'P's for Pembroke College. Signed Nelson Dawson, Inv. et Fecit.
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.
"Under a third measure, [Vice-Governor] Atif and [Police Chief] Behaeddin arrested the city's prominent Armenians, regardless of denomination. And on the night of August 11, 1915, the local military commander and the police chief, having previously taken all 'restrictive,' precautionary measures, arrested all the remaining Armenians. Telling them, 'The police department wants you,' they filled up the prisons and various buildings that had been converted into prisons with Armenians.The prominent prisoners—lawyers, bankers, merchants, and Armenian government officials—were taken out on the road in the first caravan, under the supervision of the police commissioner, the prison warden, police, soldiers, and officers." ((1), more)
"Upon rising the next morning, we found that about 100 versts of our journey still remained to be covered. Our train dragged along at a painful pace, stopping at every station for long, intermediary halts. On one station we made the acquaintance of three Red Cross Sisters who had been in the Retreat from Warsaw. One of them was Japanese, but spoke fluent Russian and was serving in a Russian Red Cross Unit. The elder of her companions described some of their experiences and spoke with horror of the poisonous gas employed by the Germans. In one district near Warsaw, she said, there was a field the memory of which could never be erased. It was heaped with the bodies of soldiers who had been gassed and the terrible positions of the men in death added to the ghastly spectacle: she had heard that over 6,000 men had been forced to vyyte iz stroya [fall out of formation] that day from gas alone." ((2), more)
". . . Compared with the towns of the north, Rheims is relatively unharmed; but for that very reason the arrest of life seems the more futile and cruel. The Cathedral square is deserted, all the houses around it are closed. And there, before us, rose the Cathedral — a cathedral, rather, for it was not the one we had always known. It was, in fact, not like any cathedral on earth. When the German bombardment began, the west front of Rheims was covered with scaffolding: the shells set it on fire, and the whole church was wrapped in flames. Now the scaffolding is gone, and in the dull provincial square there stands a structure so strange and beautiful, that one must search the Inferno, or some tale of Eastern magic, for words to picture the luminous unearthly vision. The lower part of the front has been warmed to deep tints of umber and burnt siena. This rich burnishing passes, higher up, through yellowish-pink and carmine, to a sulphur whitening to ivory; and the recesses of the portals and the hollows behind the statues are lined with a black denser and more velvety than any effect of shadow to be obtained by sculptured relief. The interweaving of colour over the whole blunted bruised surface recalls the metallic tints, the peacock-and-pigeon iridescences, the incredible mingling of red, blue, umber and yellow of the rocks along the Gulf of Ægina. And the wonder of the impression is increased by the sense of its evanescence; the knowledge that this is the beauty of disease and death, that every one of the transfigured statues must crumble under the autumn rains, that every one of the pink or golden stones is already eaten away to the core, that the Cathedral of Rheims is glowing and dying before us like a sunset. . ." ((3), more)
"This Ark was presented in loving memory of Harold Lionel Isidore Spielmann of Pembroke College Camb Captain 10th Manchester Regiment T:F ... Born. Jan 12, 1895 killed in action Gallipoli Aug 13 1915 May his soul rest in peace."He led his men with skill & gallantry & reached his objective"Nelson Dawson Inv. et Fecit." ((4), more)
"At 03:00 on 14 August, the artillery opens up. Under cover of the darkness and thundering guns, the Bersaglieri crawl up the trackless hillside. More than once, Bonamore slithers back 20 or 30 metres. They stop some 200 metres below the enemy line and huddle for warmth. Bonamore sleeps 'for an hour or so leaning on the knees of Sergeant Meda who in turn was leaning against a tree trunk so as not to fall'. The climbing sun reveals them to the Austrians, who rake the mountainside with shrapnel. The Italians press themselves against the rocks, and wait. The wire-cutting detail is highest up the slope." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the account of Grigoris Balakian of the extermination of the Armenians of Ankara, Turkey. Vice-Governor Atif and Police Chief Behaeddin and were sent by Interior Minister Talaat Pasha to replace the prior Governor General of Ankara, Mazhar, who resisted deporting the Armenians and resigned his position. The authorities divided the Armenians into caravans which were individually sent from the city, in some cases the Armenians pulling wagons bearing the weapons that would be used to kill them.
Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918 by Grigoris Balakian, pp. 83, 84, copyright © Introduction and Translation 2009 by Peter Balakian, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2009-00-00
(2) The great Russian Retreat of 1915 continued, taking Frances Farmborough, an English teacher turned Red Cross nurse serving in a unit of the Russian Army, with it. By August 12, 1915, the joint German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, already over three months old, had removed the Russian threat to Austria-Hungary, overrun the great but antiquated fortresses defending Warsaw, and had captured, on August 5, that greatest city of Polish Russia. Japan was allied with Russia, France, and Great Britain, but had limited military involvement in 1914 and 1915, seizing some of Germany's colonies in Asia, such as the port city of Tsingtao.The Russian verst was 2/3 of a mile. Bracketed translation in the original.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, pp. 110, 111, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(3) Edith Wharton toured the Western Front in 1915, reporting from the Argonne, Lorraine, the Vosges, northern France, and Belgium. In August she toured Alsace, stopping in Reims, France on her way. German artillery first shelled the magnificent Cathedral on September 19, 1914 igniting scaffolding that covered the north tower, and beginning a fire that spread to other woodwork within the building. The building was intermittently shelled throughout the war, particularly in the spring of 1917 when it was struck with 70 high-caliber shells.
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 184-186, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
(4) Design for a memorial in memory of Harold Lionel Isidore Spielmann of Pembroke College, Cambridge, a Captain in the 10th Manchester Regiment, who 'led his men with skill & gallantry & reached his objective.' He was killed in action at Helles on Gallipoli on August 13, 1915, and is buried there in the Pink Farm Cemetery. The upper portion of the design is the coat of arms of Pembroke College at Cambridge University on a field of 'P's for Pembroke College. Signed Nelson Dawson, Inv. et Fecit.
Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991: a History by Orlando Figes, front, copyright © 2014 by Orlando Figes, publisher: Picador, publication date: 2015
(5) The Italian attack began 20 minutes after the artillery barrage stopped at 12:15. The artillery had not cut the Austro-Hungarian wire, and the wire-cutters were killed before they could complete their mission. The infantry were slaughtered by the defenders. Those who tried to retreat were cut down. Those who survived were hidden from the Austro-Hungarian defenders, yet too close to the enemy line to call for artillery attacks on it. Some 50 men made it back to their lines after nightfall. The account, in Thompson's The White War, is based on that of Italian infantryman Virgilio Bonamore, who fought the Austro-Hungarians in the Julian Alps. The Bersaglieri were light infantry regiments identifiable by the cockerel feathers that adorned their hats.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 110, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
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