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Illustration of Turkish quarters in the Dardanelles from 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story' by Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey, 1913 to 1916.
A call to Italians to buy war bonds to help fund the powerful weapons needed for the last push to Trieste, a mere 25 kilometers from the Italian front lines. It pays 5%, after all, tax free, for an effective rate of 5.55%!
A map of the Russian-Turkish front from Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918, a 1930s German history of the war illustrated with hand-pasted cigarette cards, showing the Turkish Empire in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas and the Persian Gulf. To the west is Egypt, a British dominion; to the east Persia. Erzerum in Turkey and Kars in Russia were the great fortresses on the frontier.
A Liebig advertising card of the Bulgarian Army from the series Armées des États Balcaniques, published in 1910.The card shows, from left to right, a general, a soldier in summer dress, an aide-de-camp, a staff officer, a horse guard, a detachment of cavalry, and a regular infantry company.
Postcard of a German soldier guarding French POWs, most of them colonial troops, the colorful uniforms of a Zouave, Spahi, Senegalese, and metropolitan French soldier contrasting with the field gray German uniform. A 1915 postcard by Emil Huber.
"18.00 hrs. Heavy rain, driven by violent wind, drenches everything. My dugout is leaking. Would love to see those people who say 'soldiering is easy, the military are overpaid!' spend one night sleeping in the mud. Would they say such things ever again? I don't think so. I'm 21 years old. My hair and beard are already grey. My moustache is white. My face is wrinkled and my body is rotting. I can't bear these hardships and privations any more. Being an Ottoman officer just means putting up with shells and bombs." ((1), more)
"Amid the routine slaughter, 18 November [1915] marked a turning point: the Italians shelled Gorizia for three hours. This was the start of 'total war' on the Isonzo. Until now, both sides had mostly refrained from targeting civilians — though Austrian ships and planes had shelled several Adriatic cities in May 1915. . . ." ((2), more)
"On 25 October [1915] Nixon received the despatch sanctioning the advance on Baghdad, but it was four days before he passed orders on to Townshend, telling him he wished the advance to begin by 14 November. By that date, the build-up at Aziziya, begun on 5 October with the landing of the 18th Brigade, was complete. Townshend's force now numbered approximately 13,500 including engineers and rear-echelon personnel, with thirty-five guns, and was supported by a new gunboat, HMS Firefly, together with Comet, Shaitan and Sumana, and horse-barges mounting 4.7-in naval guns and 5-in howitzers, towed by Shushan and Mahsoudi. The expedition's advanced guard had by now occupied Kutuniya and reconnaissance parties had gone on to Baghdadiya and Zor. On 15 November Townshend more more men up to Kutuniya, and by 19 November his entire main force had reached Zor." ((3), more)
"On November 20 [1915] a newly arrived Bulgarian brigade occupied high ground overlooking the advanced French position. The commander of the 122nd Division, General de Lardemelle, knowing that Sarrail was contemplating a withdrawal, ordered his men to fall back. The retreat was on, although another ten days were to pass before it became general. Gradually the French began pulling out, painfully slowly, one division covering only four miles in twenty-four hours. In heavy snowfalls, broken now and again by spells of fog, it became difficult to shift all the material along the hard-pressed railway and the adjoining tracks, deep in slush. . . ." ((4), more)
"21 November [1915]. I was leading an entrenchment party from Altenburg Redoubt to C Sector. Then Territorial Diener climbed up on a mound behind the trench to shovel some soil over the defences. No sooner had he got up there than a bullet fired from the sap went right through his head, and dropped him dead in the trench. He was a married man with four children. His comrades stayed a long time at their shooting-slits afterwards, hoping to exact revenge. They were weeping with frustration. They seemed to feel personal enmity for the Britisher who had fired the mortal shot." ((5), more)
(1) Turkish Second Lieutenant Mehmed Fasih writing on the Gallipoli Peninsula, November 17, 1915. Some French and British Empire troops had been withdrawn from the Peninsula for deployment to Salonica in a failed attempt to aid Serbia. With fewer troops on the ground, Allied ships had shelled the Turkish positions more heavily.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 141, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(2) Italian Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna's Fourth Battle of the Isonzo followed on the heels of the Third. The Austro-Hungarian border city of Gorizia (Görz) lay on the Isonzo River. Half its population of 31,000 had fled, replaced by thousands of Austro-Hungarian troops. The Fourth and last of 1915's Battles of the Isonzo began on November 10.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 133, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(3) The British, protecting an oil pipeline that ran from Ahwaz and the oil fields in Persia to Basra, a commercial and communications center on the Persian Gulf, expanded their foothold in Mesopotamia, a province of the Ottoman Empire, as the war went on. General Nixon commanded British-Indian forces in Mesopotamia; Townsend the army tasked with taking Baghdad, expanding Britain's territory up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford, page 40, copyright © Roger Ford 2010, publisher: Pegasus Books, publication date: 2010
(4) French General Maurice Sarrail commanded the French forces that had landed at Salonika, Greece, at the beginning of October, 1915, in an attempt to reinforce Serbia. Bulgaria, its army attacking Serbia, also moved into the mountains along the Greek border and barred French and British forces from reaching their ally.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 43, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(5) Wounded in April, 1915 in the fighting in Les Éparges, Ernst Jünger returned as an ensign in September. A sap is a trench extending toward the enemy line, in this case from the British toward the German front lines.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 55, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
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