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A British woman laments the loss of 'poor John' who has been called up. A postcard by D. Tempest, postmarked October 12, 1915.
'Street Life, 1916' by Hans Larwin, a native of Vienna and painter of the war on multiple fronts, including the home front. A bread line, chiefly of women, waits along the shopfronts to buy bread. To the left, a policeman stands guard.
The salute of General Black Jack Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, landing in France, June, 1917. Pershing landed in Boulogne on June 13.
Advertising postcard map of Austria-Hungary from the Amidon Starch Company with images of Vienna, Budapest, and a wheat field.
A shower is so refreshing! A French couple enjoy the Hour of the Tub, the soldier perhaps home on leave.
"'Conditions . . . certainly seem very bad,' I wrote to my family on January 10th [1918]; 'from everyone's people come exactly the same sort of letters I get from you. Everyone is servantless, no one visits anyone else or goes away, and the food seems as hard to get hold of in other places as in London now. But do if you can,' I implored, 'try to carry on without being too despondent and make other people do the same . . . for the great fear in the Army and all its appurtenances out here is not that it will ever give up itself, but that the civil population at home will fail us by losing heart—just at the most critical time. The most critical time is of course now, before America can really come in and the hardships of winter are not yet over. It wouldn't be so bad if the discomfort and inconvenience and trouble were confined to one or two towns or one or two families, but it seems to be general.'" ((1), more)
"More than 2000 women had rioted in Vienna's public market on 11 January; 5 days later 25 000 stood in line at the main meat market. It was not unusual for buyers to line up at markets the night before; many fainted in the process. While the best hotels and butcher shops had beef and port for sale to their regular (and wealthy) clients, the markets in the working-class districts had only horse meat on hand. Butchers there complained bitterly that they were forced to sell at fixed prices. Soup kitchens were besieged by patrons, many of them Landser on leave. Countless 'soldiers in rags' went door to door begging food. The capital's populace, in the words of the police, was on the point of starvation and rebellion." ((2), more)
"France's new allies received a very different welcome [from that given the Russians]. The first American units had disembarked in June 1917, but the build-up over the autumn and winter was slow, and by January only 161,750 men had crossed the Atlantic. By September, however, there would be over 1.5 million American troops in France." ((3), more)
"In January of 1918, Vienna and other substantial Austrian cities experienced the most serious civilian convulsions of the war era. Accumulated resentments among industrial workers due to war-borne hardships and to the trend of diplomatic negotiations at Brest-Litovsk combined with bitterness because of a sudden cut in the slim bread rations in Austria and with faint undertones of Bolshevism to produce concerted mass action. . . . Socialist-organized mass meetings on January 13, 1918 protested furiously against the sabre-rattling tactics of German General Hoffmann at Brest-Litovsk. 'Without any warning or signal from the Socialists,' Viktor Adler explained, 'the idea had suddenly spring up among the masses that if this hope [a peace settlement with the Russians] vanishes, and there is nothing to eat, we have nothing to lose.' Starting spontaneously in a left-wing clique at the Daimler works at Wiener Neustadt, a strike movement spread to locomotive and munitions factories there and thence to other industrial centers." ((4), more)
"I pass over the joy of spending time once again in the midst of my loved ones, and the sadness of returning to duty. I was completely discouraged, broken in body and spirit, when I found myself once again at Les Islettes station, the morning of January 14 [1918].Sad and alone, under a gray sky in which a few snowflakes swirled, I made my way to the trenches.At the village of [Le] Neufour, where the company sergeant-majors were encamped, I hoisted my pack, my weapons, and all the gear with which a poilu was loaded down, and I headed off briskly because I had a dozen kilometers to cover, through the woods, along bad roads unknown to me, as the regiment had now taken up front-line positions near Vauquois." ((5), more)
(1) Vera Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment, and had been in France for the last six months when she wrote in January, 1918. Fewer than 200,000 American troops were in Europe, and were not on the front lines as American commander John Pershing built his army. The United Kingdom's food shortages paled beside those of Russia and Austria-Hungary.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, page 401, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
(2) Food shortages were acute in Austria-Hungary in January, 1918, and a strong impetus for the country to conclude peace with Russia in the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Austria-Hungary had not recovered from the loss of its rolling stock in the battles of 1914, Hungary withheld food supplies from the rest of the empire, and the failure to agree treaties prevented transportation of food from the breadbaskets of Russia and Romania. Landser is a colloquial expression for Landwehrmann, the Austrian home or territorial guard.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, pp. 363–364, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(3) After their revolution in November, 1917, the Bolsheviks agreed an armistice with the Central Powers while a peace treaty was negotiated. Many French, anticipating a German offensive supported by troops recently redeployed from the Eastern Front, spoke ill of their former ally. The United States had declared war in April, 1917, but were not on the front lines.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, page 185, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
(4) Food shortages were acute in Austria-Hungary in January, 1918, and a strong impetus for the country to conclude peace with Russia in the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Count Ottokar Czernin was prepared to make peace with no annexations,but the German negotiators, particularly the military representatives led by General Max Hoffman, were not. On January 12, Hoffman had given a particularly bellicose speech at the conference, in which he made it clear Germany would not evacuate occupied territory. Viktor Adler was a founder of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers' Party.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, Vol. 2, pp. 654, 655, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
(5) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas. He had been in the 296th Regiment which had been implicated in the army mutinies of the spring and early summer. The regiment had been dissolved and its men assigned to other units, Barthas to a regiment from Breton. On December 23, 1917 they went into two weeks of rest, Barthas's sixth leave.Vauquois is 30 km west of Verdun in the Argonne; both Les Islettes and Le Neufour about 20 km from Vauquois. Barthas was from the south of France. Brackets in source.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 351–352, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
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