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The exploding shell of a French 75 mm. field gun blasts the crown from the tree of the Central Powers as the axe of Justice strikes its trunk. A background map shows British towns on the English Channel and Belgian and French cities shelled by German forces burning. A 1915 French postcard.
Headstones from Martinpuich Cemetery, Martinpuich, France: for J. Reid of the Royal Field Artillery, died October 6, 1916, and R.E. Bullows of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, died November 11, 1916. Martinpuich was in the Somme sector. © 2013 John M. Shea
Tinted postcard of Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Made Commander-in-Chief of all Allied forces on the Western Front April 3, 1918, he led the Allies to victory in November.
Map of Syria, Palestine, Turkey, and Mesopotamia from the Baedeker 1912 travel guide Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus.
German soldiers in a Russian village. The message is dated, and the card field postmarked May 3, 1918. The men's packs and rifles are laid out in the right background; horses can be seen in the left background.
"Three Zeppelins set out for England the following afternoon [March 13, 1918]. Over the North Sea, they were recalled to their bases in north Germany because of high winds. Already within sight of the English coast, one airship commander defied the order. He waited offshore for forty minutes for complete darkness, and then attacked West Hartlepool from above 16,000 feet. The unsuspecting town was brightly lighted. Many bombs found their mark, and nearly fifty people were killed or injured." ((1), more)
"After lunch his sergeant confronted [the Trench Mortar Officer] with a pile of army forms. 'There is one form here, sir, that asks how many English, French, Russian, Belgian and Italians there are in the battery.' 'What about Germans?' 'They are not officially on the strength, sir.' 'Well,' concluded the TMO with dignity, 'please inform the Staff captain that this is a battery, and not a foreign opera company.' The sergeant placed the pile of forms on the table. 'Those must be filled in by 4 o'clock, sir.' An ominous silence. 'Hand me the whiskey' commanded the officer in funereal tones. 'Do not disturb me till 4 o'clock. If by that time I have not mastered these forms, you will find my body hanging from the roof.' 'The roof is not too strong, sir.'" ((2), more)
"At the meeting on the 15th [March, 1918], since this solution on the part of the two governments was still causing me much anxiety, I asked to be heard, and I pointed out the defects existing in the organization of the Allied command at the very moment the coalition was about to engage in a defensive battle of the utmost importance and which all were agreed could not be far off. . . .Under this circumstances now existing, this [centralizing] organ would have been the commander of the Allied General Reserve, had it been formed. In the absence, however, of this Allied instrument, it was much to be feared that the French and the British armies, on which the enemy's blows were about to fall, would each be governed by considerations of its own particular interests and dangers and would lose sight of the common weal, although that was more important than anything else. In a word, the Allied battle might be seriously compromised, under existing conditions, because unity of view and of action would be lacking." ((3), more)
"This place is not soul-less, not soul-deadening, like France (in the war-zone). . . . I should be very contented with life if it would stop raining. I have a strong feeling of escape. I have slipped away 'from fields where glory does not stay.' Here I can start afresh. And if death happens to meet me on these hills—the ragged old Syrian rascal—who cares? I'll go along with him to the Prophet's Paradise, or any dusty old tomb where he's got my number up. But it'll be a wooden cross in France after all, I fear." ((4), more)
"On 17 March [ 1918], after sundown, we left the quarters we had come to love, and marched to Brunemont. The roads were choked with columns of marching men, innumerable guns and an endless supply column. Even so, it was all orderly, following a carefully worked-out plan by the general staff. Woe to the outfit that failed to keep to its allotted time and route; it would find itself elbowed into the gutter and having to wait for hours till another slot fell vacant. On one occasion we did get in a little jam, in the course of which Captain van Brixen's horse impaled itself on a metalled axle and had to be put down." ((5), more)
(1) German Zeppelins had bombed England since 1915, but their effectiveness was diminished as British defenses improved, and their role was increasingly replaced by Gotha and other bombers. In early March, 1918 these were attacking Paris and other targets on the Western Front in preparation for Operation Michael, launched on March 21, 1918. Hartlepool, on the Yorkshire coast in northeast England, had been bombarded on December 16, 1914 by a German cruiser force.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, pp. 193–194, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
(2) Excerpt from 'The Trench Mortar Officer' (TMO) by Adrian Consett Stephen, an Australian serving in the Royal Field Artillery, killed in action on March 14, 1918 at Zillebeke near Ypres, Belgium. 'The Trench Mortar Officer' was one of many pieces that Stephen wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 26, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(3) The offensives of 1917 — the British at Arras and Passchendaele, the French Nivelle Offensive and subsequent army mutinies, the Italian Battles of the Isonzo and the destruction of their Second Army in the Austro-German Battle of Caporetto — and the Bolshevik Revolution and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that led to Russia leaving the war — left Allied commanders anticipating a German offensive with troops released from the Eastern Front. As he had at a January 30—February 2, 1918 meeting of Allied prime ministers at Versailles, French General Ferdinand Foch, our author, at a March 13 through 15 conference in London again made his case for a general reserve under a unified command that could take advantage of opportunities to seize the offensive.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 252, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(4) Excerpt from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (R.W.F.), and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon had been wounded in April, 1917, and by mid-June had concluded that the war begun 'as a war of defence and liberation, [had] become a war of aggression and conquest.' In October he was at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric facility in Scotland, and under the care of W. H. R. Rivers. There he met the poet Wilfred Owen and edited some of his poems, a relationship at the heart of Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker's WWI trilogy of the same name. In February, 1918, Sassoon was transferred to the Palestine Front where the British under the command of General Edmund Allenby had entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917, and were continuing their advance along the Mediterranean coast. Their next objective was Nablus. The quotation, 'from fields where glory does not stay.' is from the poem 'To an Athlete Dying Young' by A. E. Housman.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 224, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(5) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger on preparations days before for what he elsewhere refers to as German commander Erich Ludendorff's, and Germany's, 'mighty do-or-die offensive'. It would be Operation Michael, launched on March 21, 1918. Brunémont, France, is about 30 km east of Arras, and half that distance north of Cambrai.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, pp. 222–223, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
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