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1898 map of Petrograd, the Russian capital, Kronstadt Bay, and the Russian naval base of Kronstadt, from a German atlas. Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on Kronstadt Bay, an extension of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. Kronstadt was an important naval base. North and east of central Petrograd was the Vyborg district, site of many factories and housing for workers.
Austrian pencil sketch on blank field postcard from Virgil of the 15th air company (Fliegerkomp. 15). On the reverse is a drawing of a fruit basket signed Mesavogl (?) 1917.
Egypt and Sinai from Cram's 1896 Railway Map of the Turkish Empire.
Portrait postcard of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe of the Royal Navy. Appointed Commander of the British Home Fleets on August 2, 1914, Jellicoe was criticized for his leadership of the British fleet during the May 31, 1916 Battle of Jutland in which he failed to decisively defeat the German High Seas Fleet. He was made First Sea Lord later that year. The card was postmarked from Glasgow, Scotland, on January 7, 1915.
Turkish machine-gun crews, from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War.
"On March 1, 1917, bread rationing was introduced and there was a run on the bakeries. This was followed by strikes in the metal works and women's demonstrations. But it was the sort of thing that had happened so often before and there was no general alarm in Petrograd, no real upsetting of the city's life. The first week of March slipped away uneasily but uneventfully, and no really effective precautions were taken beyond the dispatch of a small force of seamen to the capital and a certain tightening-up of discipline by the police." ((1), more)
"March 2nd.—A lot of us watched a clever piece of work by a German flier two or three miles off. He came over at a great speed, made for one of our sausage balloons, manœuvred to keep it between him and our Archie-guns, and set it alight. The observers leapt out. One came down safely; but pieces of the burning balloon fell on the parachute of the other and burned it, so he dropped, and died of his injuries; this was his second leap from a burning balloon." ((2), more)
"Having spent two days watching the line, and having decided that demolitions further south had clearly been ineffective, since trains were running in both directions more or less daily Newcombe opted for a three-pronged attack on the station. His guide, the young and well-respected Sharif Nasir, hoped that the attack would help persuade the numerous Arabs the Ottomans employed on the railway to desert. The Turks repelled the Arabs' direct assault on the station on 3 March, but demolitions on both sides of the station destroyed at least a mile of track and isolated one of the working parties. Reports that the Turks did not trust their mostly Arab railway workmen proved correct. The captives from this raid, reported Newcombe, were '8 most delighted prisoners.'" ((3), more)
"Visit from Admiral Jellicoe.A real sailor and a real Anglo-Saxon.He takes a serious view of the situation as a result of the submarine war. In February 500,000 tons were sunk, and against this between eight and ten enemy submarines were destroyed. It is extremely difficult to know when a submarine has been sunk. . . .The Germans are beginning to lack experienced officers." ((4), more)
"The total strength of the [Turkish] Eighteenth Army Corps, inclusive of the 14th Division, was given as 6,200 rifles and eighty machine guns; there were twenty-two field guns, twelve mountain guns and twenty-one howitzers of various models with limited ammunition. Part of the artillery had been lost in the last heavy battles and in the retreat. The evacuation of Bagdad was now begun, and the lightly wounded from the last battles were removed to Samara.On March 5th the fighting was resumed. A hostile infantry division and a cavalry division advanced. The latter turned the Turkish left. During the night of the 6th of March the Eighteenth Army Corps was withdrawn to the Diala position." ((5), more)
(1) Events in Petrograd, Russia's capital, for the first days of March, 1917 (New Style) including the introduction of bread rationing on March 1. The bitterly cold winter of 1916–17 affected the combatant nations, and in Russia's case it severely hampered the transport system that supplied the cities. Factories and worker housing were located on the northeast side of the city, across the Neva River. The island of Kronstadt, west of the city in Kronstadt Bay, was home to a Russian naval base. March 8, 1917, was International Women's Day.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 136, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
(2) Extract from the entry for March 2, 1917 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. Observation balloons were tethered to the ground, had no means of propulsion, carried one or more observers in a gondola, and were well protected by both anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes. Some pilots became specialists, in most cases briefly, at 'balloon busting.' Unlike pilots who did not wear parachutes, balloon observers did.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 301, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) On February 20, 1917, British Officer Herbert Garland and his guide Abdel Kerim conducted the first successful raid on the Turkish railway in Hejaz on the Red Sea coast of Arabia, derailing and destroying the irreplaceable locomotive. The railway line was well-constructed, well-guarded, and had few bridges. The raids focused on destroying the locomotives, which were irreplaceable during the war. The raid by Stewart Newcombe and Sharif Nasir showed the Turkish railway was vulnerable on multiple fronts.
Setting the Desert on Fire by James Barr, pp. 115–116, copyright © 2008, 2006 by James Barr, publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., publication date: 2009
(4) Entry from the war diary of Albert, King of the Belgians, March 4, 1917, on his visit from Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Great Britain's First Sea Lord. Germany had resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1 in an attempt to starve Britain into submission. 500,000 tons was a significant increase over the average of 320,000 in the preceding four months, a period in which the Allies sank only ten submarines in all theaters. Jellicoe overestimates the Allies' success in destroying U-boats. Halpern, in his A Naval History of World War I, writes that, 'in February, March, and April the Germans lost only nine submarines' (p. 341).
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, pp. 156–157, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(5) After the loss of of British army at Kut-al-Amara on April 29, 1916 — an army that had over-extended its supply lines in a too-hasty advance on Baghdad — command of British forces in Mesopotamia was given to General Frederick Stanley Maude, who, in early 1917, more methodically worked his way up the Tigris River towards Baghdad. The ancient city fell the night of March 10–11.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, pp. 162–163, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
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