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Prosperity and victory in 1915: an official New Year's postcard of the Bavarian Red Cross, with a message dated December 31, 1914, postmarked January 1, 1915.
Memorial statue to Prime Minister David Lloyd George in Parliament Square, London, United Kingdom. © 2013 John M. Shea
The conditions British Troops faced in Flanders and Passchendaele.
Neutral Netherlands commiserates with its invaded, war-battered neighbor Belgium. One of a series of 1916 postcards on neutral nations by Em. Dupuis.
A French soldier wearing the uniform of 1914/1915 stands by the side of a water-filled shell crater.
"A railway strike has dislocated rail-transport throughout Russia. Finland has proclaimed herself a republic. Strikes and riots are still rampant, while famine is augmenting the general hardship. At supper there was a pessimistic feeling among us that our Red Cross Otryad was slowly but surely closing down. Alas for our hopes and ambitions! Alas! for poor, suffering Russia." ((1), more)
"What bearing had all this on Third Ypres? By 11 October [1917] it had been raining steadily in Flanders for a week. There could be no reason for taking a more hopeful view of operations there than when Lloyd George, before the weather had broken, had spoken so disparagingly on the subject eight days earlier. Nor was the Prime Minister inclined to do so. . . .Far from being hopeful, the Prime Minister predicted failure in the attempts to capture even the Klerken Ridge. He 'would call the War Cabinet's attention to this in three weeks' time'. . . .Indeed there was a large positive consequence of Lloyd George's chillingly negative announcement that, in three weeks' time, the War Cabinet would assemble to record the lack of success of the operation. This forewarning of failure and futility constituted his authorization for the campaign to continue." ((2), more)
"That evening Gough phoned Plumer and asked him to postpone the attack. Sir Herbert declined. It took place at dawn along a six-mile front and gained an average of four hundred yards. For lack of a better name it was called 'The First Battle of Passchendaele,' though in that direction the crater front was pushed forward only a hundred yards. The New Zealanders were badly mauled. The 2nd Brigade, especially, had been trapped astride the Gravenstafel road as they pressed on to the entanglements under a torrent of small arms and machine-gun fire. This wire was totally unbreached except for a single land along the sunken road. Through it the men poured . . .. . . After the war an official historian coldly asked whether 'any of the higher commanders [were] aware that in these operations the infantry attacked virtually without protection.' The episode had, in fact, almost crossed the line which divides war from murder. Thirteen thousand men were lost in a few hours . . ." ((3), more)
"— The 13th. At Gheusi's. It was to-day they shot the lovely Mata-Hari. General Vialon, who came to see Gheusi during the interval, brought the news. Germany offered to liberate from ten to twenty French officers, prisoners of war, if they would spare this woman. Her counsel, Clunet, an old man touched by her beauty, pleaded her case movingly, invoking the memory of his own son killed at the front. Some officials, said to have been her lovers, also made appeals on her behalf." ((4), more)
"One man left the front line wounded slightly at dusk on the 12th and on the morning of the 13th was discovered stuck fast in a shell hole a few yards from where he started. Repeated efforts were made to get him out with spades, ropes etc. At one time 16 men were working at once under enemy view. But he had to be left there when the Battalion was relieved on the night 13th/14th." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the entry for October 10, (September 27, Old Style), 1917 from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross. Farmborough's unit was then in Romania where the Russians had participated in a Romanian offensive until being ordered on July 25 by Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky to stop all offensive action. The failure of Russia's July 1 offensive was a further step in the collapse of Russian society, the war effort, and the Provisional Government. Some of Farmborough's colleagues in her Otryad (Отряд), her squad, had already left when she was writing. The province of Finland was following Kerensky's proclamation of a Russian republic.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 320, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(2) At the last meeting of the British War Policy Committee on October 11, 1917, there was little discussion about the Third Battle of Ypres, even though the government of Prime Minister Lloyd George anticipated failure and could have stopped the battle, but let it stumble on. Rather there was a lengthy discussion of where to focus attention other than on the western front: Italy? Palestine?
Passchendaele The Untold Story by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, pp. 153 and 155, copyright © 1996 Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2002
(3) British General Hubert Gough had commanded the opening attacks in the first three weeks of the Third Battle of Ypres, but Commander Douglas Haig, disappointed in Gough's results, transferred responsibility to General Herbert Plumer. Plumer was initially successful with actions in which the artillery were adequate to support the infantry, but became less so with each action, as he curtailed the time between attacks, leaving the artillery unable to move into position for adequate preliminary bombardments. He ignored the rain, the murderous mud it created on the battlefield, and Gough's advice, and went ahead on October 12 with the First Battle of Passchendaele.
In Flanders Fields, the 1917 Campaign by Leon Wolff, pp. 237 and 238, copyright © 1958 by Leon Wolff, publisher: The Viking Press, publication date: 1958
(4) Beginning of the entry for October 13, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. Mata Hari, a self-made performer and dancer who had been derided for not knowing how to dance, was originally Margaretha Zelle from the Netherlands, and moved to Indonesia with her husband. She left him, moved to Paris, and achieved some success as a performer. At the time of her arrest as a German spy, her career had been in decline for some time. Gheusi was presumably Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi (pseudonym Norbert Lorédan), a theater director, writer, and librettist. Corday's literary friends included French novelist Anatole France.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 281, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) The commander of the 7 Seaforth Highlanders on a soldier slightly wounded in the October 12, 1917 First Battle of Passchendaele, an action in the Third Battle of Ypres. Artillery bombardments destroyed terrain, turning farmland, irrigation channels, and rain to shellholes, mud, and deadly pools.
Passchendaele The Untold Story by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, page 169, copyright © 1996 Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2002
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