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Postcard map of the English Channel, the strait between England and France with the Channel Ports of Dunkirk and Calais in France and Dover and the mouth of the Thames River in England. Illustration by Eugen Felle, 1915.
What do you want here? Turkish and British child soldiers on the Suez Canal. After crossing the Sinai Peninsula during January, 1915, a Turkish army of approximately 12,000 soldiers reached the Suez Canal on February 2, and tried to cross after nightfall, but were driven back. On the 3rd, the British crossed the canal, and struck the Turkish left flank, driving them back. By February 10, the Turks had evacuated the Peninsula.
Postcard map of the Chemin des Dames between Soissons and Rheims. The view is facing north towards the heights of the 'Ladies Road,' the Aisne River to its south. The Germans held the high ground after the retreat from the Marne in 1914. The French suffered heavy casualties taking the Chemin des Dames in the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917, an offensive that led to widespread mutinies in the French Army. The Third German Drive of 1918, the Third Battle of the Aisne, drove the French, and supporting British troops, from the heights, and again threatened Paris.
National Chicle Chewing Gum card of Major Raoul Lufbery, an American Ace who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille. Credited with 18 victories, he was killed on May 19, 1918.
Metal grave markers at the Laventie German Military Cemetery, Laventie, France. A plowed field is in the background. © 2013 by John M. Shea
"I must draw your attention to the fact that if England and France in this defensive campaign have common war aims, their armies have separate objectives.The French Army must cover Paris and the centre of France; the British Army must defend the coast and, in particular, the Channel Ports, including Dunkirk.I write to you on this point because it concerns the vital interests of Belgium and the action of her Army.The possession of Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne or even one of these ports would be the greatest possible victory for Germany and for us a terrible defeat and a direct danger for England and her naval supremacy." ((1), more)
"Outside, on the decks, one finds the haunted darkness and the sea. One stumbles over the sleeping soldiers, wrapped in their blankets. The sea is darker than the sky, but the escort of destroyers is dimly seen, long shadows, scarcely more than a blur on the water. Nothing is heard but the throbbing of the engines. The sentries loom in doorways, standing upright and silent above the recumbent sleepers, like men watching over a litter of dead bodies.Lights and drinking card-players and wireless operators and navigators within; chart-rooms, and kitchens and engine-rooms; all that is life, struggling to keep above water. And outside the mystery and unpitying hugeness of death and sleep, the terror that walks by night, and the impossibility of escape." ((2), more)
"On May 5, 1918, the battle-weary units of the 8th Division detrained at Fère-en-Tardenois, and, for the second time during the war, British troops founds themselves in the country between the Aisne and the Marne.The Division had been terribly shattered in both German offensives on the Somme in March, and at Villers Bretonneux in April, and sorely needed rest and respite. But rest behind the line was impossible owing to the shortage of men, and on the British front there were no longer quiet sectors where tired divisions could, while holding the line, regain their energy and assimilate their heavy reinforcements. Such homes of rest were only to be found on the front held by the French armies, and so it came about that at the beginning of May the IXth Corps was formed of the 8th, 21st, 25th, and 50th Divisions and, under the recently effected unity in the Allied High Command, was transferred to the 6th French Army taking over a section about 15 miles in length between Rheims and the Chemin des Dames." ((3), more)
"The sole consolation of those antagonistic weeks was the young American airman, to whom I shall always be grateful for the sunny imperturbability which never seemed in the least shaken by my irritable impatience, my moods of black depression. Almost every day for a month or so he 'blew in' to the flat like a rush of wind from the wings of his own 'plane, and extravagantly insisted upon taking me to the Savoy Grill and numerous theatres—which were at least a pleasant contrast to the back of the Western Front—in the intervals of escorting Gaiety girls to less obvious but doubtless more enthralling entertainments. He also, with characteristic generosity, presented me with innumerable meat coupons, which by that time had become far more precious than all the winking diamonds in the empty luxury shops of deserted Bond Street." ((4), more)
"5.7. Splendid weather these days cheers me up, as much as this is possible. Under my very eyes, people are plowing all day long, and from my desk I can see the most beautiful scenes of nature. Moreover, all the apple trees are beginning to bloom. Spring again, the second out here! And another? . . . one day it will all have to end, after all, whether they want it or not. The phonograph is plaguing the barracks again. Poisoned sausages are of no avail: it won't eat them." ((5), more)
(1) Albert, King of the Belgians, writing to British Lord Curzon, a member of the war cabinet, on May 3, 1918 after German offensives in March and April, Operation Michael and Operation Georgette, had driven the British back on the Somme and Lys sectors, threatening to separate the French and British armies. General Douglas Haig's impulse was to save the British Army by falling back to the Channel ports of Dunkirk and Calais. Commanding the French Army, Henri Philippe Pétain's impulse was to defend Paris. Commander in Chief Ferdinand Foch insisted that a united Franco-British front must be maintained.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 207, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(2) Excerpt from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (R.W.F.), and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon had been wounded in April, 1917, and by mid-June had concluded that the war begun 'as a war of defence and liberation, [had] become a war of aggression and conquest.' In October he was at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric facility in Scotland, and under the care of W. H. R. Rivers. Ready to return to the war in February, 1918, Sassoon was deployed to Palestine where British forces had been moving north until the shock and success of Germany's spring offensives Michael and Georgette, and British losses, required every available soldier be on the Western Front. Through the day and into the night Sassoon had been watching the officers and men on the convoyed ship bringing them from Egypt to France, and closer to death. Sassoon continues, 'This is rather portentous stuff. I have obviously been rereading Lord Jim; and the mixture of War and Peace and Howards End contributes to the mental hotch-potch.'
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 244, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(3) The first two paragraphs of Sidney Rogerson's account of the Third Battle of the Aisne which began three weeks later, on May 27. The first two engagements in which his Division 'had been terribly shattered' were part of Operation Michael, the German Somme offensive, after which the Germans attacked on the Lys River further north in Operation Georgette in April. They returned again to the Somme sector at Villers Bretonneux after three relatively quiet weeks. The Chemin des Dames formed part of the German defensive line after the Retreat from the Marne in 1914. It was taken ultimately taken by the French in the Second Battle of the Aisne and subsequent attacks in 1917, but with losses and squandering of lives that led directly to mutinies in the French Army. The French and British would soon be driven from this high ground gained as such cost.
The Last of the Ebb: the Battle of the Aisne, 1918 by Sidney Rogerson, page 3, copyright © Sidney Rogerson, 1937, publisher: Frontline Books, publication date: 2011
(4) Vera Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), and left the French front to care for her mother. England she found difficult, writing of 'those miserable weeks' after her return to a country 'where no one discussed anything but the price of butter and the incompetence' of domestic help. The German offensives of March and April, Michael and Georgette, immediately followed her departure from France. The United Kingdom's food shortages, not of the severity of those of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and elsewhere, worsened as British shipping began transporting American soldiers to Europe rather than food. Gaiety Girls originated in musical comedies at the Gaiety Theatre in London in the 1890s, but here the term is used more loosely.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, page 432, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
(5) Paul Klee's diary entry for May 7, 1918. The artist served with the air corps, varnishing the wings and fuselages of airplanes, transporting airplanes to the front, and, from the beginning of 1918, working as assistant paymaster, a position that meant he no longer needed to fear being transferred to the front, and that left him time to read and work. He would complain of the phonograph again on May 28: 'While I am thinking about this, the phonograph grinds tirelessly. Heads grin around it, devilish masks peer in through the window. The beasts are enjoying themselves. There must be some reason for the fact that there is always a piece of hell near me. This one is at least quite mild. Only a reflection of the real one.'
The Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918, Edited, with an Introduction by Felix Klee by Paul Klee, 392 (and 393), copyright © 1964 by the Regents of the University of California, publisher: University of California Press, publication date: 1968
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