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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 boy saves his choice seat in a tree, anticipating the great victory parade on Bastille Day, 1916. Illustration by Abel Faivre.
View of the South African Memorial in Delville Wood, Longueval, France. © 2013 John M. Shea
Front cover of La Domenica del Corriere of August 22–29, 1915, an illustrated weekly supplement to Corriere della Sera, published in Milan, Italy. The front and back covers are full-page illustrations by the great Italian illustrator Achille Beltrame. The front cover is an illustration of contemporary trench warfare, with soldiers throwing both ball and stick grenades to turn back an enemy attack. The back cover is an illustration of Italian author, pilot, soldier, and self-promoter Gabriele d'Annunzio dropping streamers in the colors of the Italian flag and bearing patriotic massages over the city of Trieste, Austria-Hungary.
The Serbian lion, wounded, bleeding, turns from the skeletal bodies of its cubs to face its enemy: his time for justice has come. In the background are images of Serbia burning and Serbians hung.
". . . the Russians had destroyed or captured fully a third of the Turkish Third Army — the units linked up against Lyyakhov alone lost 12,000 — and that defeat broke it as a fighting force. Now Yudenich need have no fear of it intervening on the left when he had to face Izzet's Second Army, as he knew he must in the weeks to come. His line was consolidated across the Pontic Alps from the Black Sea coast west of Trebizond to the Eastern Euphrates . . ." ((1), more)
"I'll pass over without comment, July 14 [Bastille Day, the French national holiday]. Only a supplemental ration of pinard and a slightly better bill of fare, which was more than made up for in the following week, barely distinguished this day from any other.We didn't even get any extra rest. In fact, our training course, which could hardly be postponed, began that very day.They introduced us to this new homicidal engine. . . ." ((2), more)
"On July 15[, 1916], the fight for Delville Wood began, the first of fifteen days' hand-to-hand fighting and ferocious artillery bombardments. The battle started when the 3,000 strong South African Brigade, of which Hugh Boustead was a part, was ordered to capture the wood. 'We moved forward through an orchard in single file, led by the platoon officer,' he later recalled. 'Smith, the Second Lieutenant, got through but the next seven who followed him were shot dead in a circle of a few yards, picked off by clean shooting without a murmur.'" ((3), more)
". . . He was drinking and seemed to be in good humour. He knew of the preparations that were being made for the next attack, and I told him of the arrangements made by our battalion commander.'I know,' he said; 'now it's my turn to go first over the top. One by one we all get killed.''This time we shall have artillery support,' I said, to cheer him up.'We shall have the enemy's artillery against us,' he retorted,' and there are barbed-wire entanglements everywhere. . . . There's no point at all in my studying the ground. What does it matter whether we attack to the right or the left? It's all the same to me whether I die in one place or another. Still, since it's the battalion commander's wish, come along.'" ((4), more)
"The Serbs, whom Sarrail planned would form the spearhead of his initial assault, began to move westward on July 17 in order to take over sixty miles of the front from the French well beyond the Vardar and facing the mountain peaks which marked the old frontier of their land. As the Serbs had been encamped ten miles southeast of Salonika, it was necessary for them to be brought through the outskirts of the town. There was little transport available; they marched along, chanting interminable patriotic ballads as they went, and all could see that the Serbian Army was resurrected. A chain of enemy agents, recruited from the peasantry of the Struma valley and the highland east of Salonika, spread the news up to the Bulgarian lines . . ." ((5), more)
(1) From his victory over the Turks in the Battle of Sarikamish in December, 1914 to January, 1915, through his methodical advance into eastern Turkey through July, 1916, Russian General Nicholai Yudenich has repeatedly defeated Turkish forces in the mountains between the Black Sea, Persia, and the Russian frontier. The largely Christian population had suffered through governmental attacks, particularly the Armenian genocide. On July 13, 1916, Yudenich and Vladimir Lyakhov defeated the Turks on the Kara-Su River at Kotur. With this victory, Yudenich threatened the Turkish heartland.
Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford, page 170, copyright © Roger Ford 2010, publisher: Pegasus Books, publication date: 2010
(2) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, July 14, 1916. Barthas' reserve regiment had served at Verdun in May, where it had suffered heavy casualties. With replacements, including boys from reform school, it was made an active regiment, the 296th, and served in Champagne. The 'new homicidal engine' Barthas was introduced to was a 37mm cannon intended for use against targets such as machine-gun nests. The trainees regard it, and its shell, 'barely bigger than a hen's egg,' with some disdain.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 230, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(3) British and French forces launched the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916, the British and Empire forces north of the Somme River, the French to the south. The French advanced rapidly on the first day, their ally more slowly and suffering terrible losses. On July 15, the British attacked at High Wood as the Union of South Africa troops began the assault at Delville Wood.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, pp. 265-266, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(4) Excerpt from an episode during the Asiago Offensive on July 16, 1916, from Emilio Lussu's account of his service on the Asiago front as part of the Sardinian Sassari Brigade. In preparation for an attack the next day, Lussu was ordered to take a Captain of the 9th Company along the front, to show him the Austro-Hungarian position. When Lussu takes the Captain to loophole number 14, the one with the best view of the enemy line, the two are told the loophole is closed because it is too dangerous to use: snipers have a fixed rifle trained on it. Drunk, fatalistic if not suicidal, the Captain pushes aside the stone and within seconds is shot in his face. Some of his men think he preferred 'a bullet through his head' to leading 'his men to the slaughter like a lot of cattle.'
Sardinian Brigade by Emilio Lussu, pp. 106-107, copyright © 1939 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., publisher: Knopf, publication date: 1939
(5) Victorious but weakened by Austria-Hungary's invasions in 1914, decimated by typhus in 1915, and overwhelmed by the 1915 invasion by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria, Serbia's government and the remains of its army fled to the Adriatic Sea and eventual transport by its allies to the island of Corfu to recuperate. In the spring and summer of 1916 it joined the Allied forces headquartered in Salonika, Greece, forces that originally deployed to Greece to aid Serbia. French General Maurice Sarrail planned an attack on the Bulgarian forces that had thwarted the Allies in 1915.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 74, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
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