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Headstone of Private A.C. Thomas of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Delville Wood Cemetery, Longueval, France. Thomas died July 20, 1916, aged 23. © 2014 John M. Shea
The Sword of Damocles dangling from a Zeppelin over the Tower of London and a cringing John Bull. By. A Johnson.
General Luigi Cadorna, chief of staff of the Italian Army
A German soldier by the side of a water-filled crater, June 15, 1916. The handwritten note says it is 'The crater of St. Elleu', possibly St. Eloi, near Ypres.
View from Chemin des Dames looking across the valley of the Ailette River towards Laon Cathedral in the city of Laon, France and barely visible in the distance. The Chapelle St. Berthe is down the slope in the near distance. Laon was one of the first-day objectives of French commander-in-chief Robert Nivelle's offensive in the the Second Battle of the Aisne. © 2014 by John M. Shea
"Dearest Robert, I am so glad you like Owen's poem. I will tell him to send you any decent stuff he does. His work is very unequal, and you can help him a great deal.Seeing you again has made me more restless than ever. My position here is unbearable, and the feeling of isolation makes me feel rotten. I had a long letter from Cotterill to-day. They had just got back to rest from Polygon Wood and he says the conditions and general situation are more bloody than anything he has yet seen. Three miles of morasses, shell-holes and dead men and horses through which to get the rations up. I should like the people who write leading articles for the Morning Post (about victory) to read his letter." ((1), more)
"The Thames we just dimly saw from the outline of the lights; two great railway stations I thought I saw, but the speed of the ship running almost before the gale was such that we could not distinguish much. We were half frozen, too, and the excitement was great. It was all over in a flash. The last bomb was gone and we were once more over the darkness and rushing onwards." ((2), more)
"As late as 20 October [1917], Cadorna did not expect an Austrian offensive before 1918. On the 21st, two Romanian deserters told the Italians the time and place of the attack. They, too, were ignored. Next day, Cadorna escorted the King to the top of Mount Stol, one of the ridges above Caporetto that link the Isonzo valley to Friuli. They agreed there was no reason to expect anything exceptional. On the 23rd, he predicted there would be no major attack, and said the Austrians would be mad to launch operations out of the Flitsch basin." ((3), more)
"The heavy rains of the last few days had turned the crater field into a morass, deep enough, especially around the Paddelbach, to endanger life. On my wanderings, I would regularly pass solitary and abandoned corpses; often it was just a head or a hand that was left protuding from the dirty level of a crater. Thousands had come to rest in such a way, without a sign put up by a friendly hand to mark the grave." ((4), more)
"The Chemin des Dames offensive was even more striking [than that at Verdun]. A six-day-and-night artillery bombardment by some 2,000 guns preceded the attack, with a field gun every 16 metres, a medium gun every 12.20 metres and a heavy gun every 82 metres along a 14-kilometre front. At 5.15 a.m. on the 23rd [October 1917] three army corps launched the infantry attack, accompanied by sixty-eight tanks. The infantry advanced in serried ranks, one unit following another. The Germans were first forced back behind the Ailette River and then compelled to withdraw from the whole Chemin des Dames position. The logistics for this attack included 400 trains each of thirty wagons carrying 120,000 shells. The casualties were small, 2,241 killed, 1,602 missing and 8,162 wounded." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from a letter dated October 19, 1917 from Siegfried Sassoon to the Robert Graves, a fellow soldier he had met at the end of 1915 as 'a young poet, captain in Third Battalion and very much disliked.' [p. 21] Sassoon was a British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon had been wounded in April, and by mid-June 15 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. Their relationship is the basis for Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker's trilogy of the same name. Graves was the author of Goodbye to All That. Quartermaster Joe Cotterill had written of the Battle of Polygon Wood, a September 26 action in the Third Battle of Ypres.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, pp. 191 and 192, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(2) Description by a crew member of one of the Zeppelins that bombed London the night of October 19–20, 1917. The airships had set out to bomb Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield, but faced gale force winds at 16,000 feet. They had little idea of their position until their unexpected sighting of the British capital. Londoners had no idea of the airship's presence until bombs began exploding in the city — in Cricklewood, PIccadilly Circus, Camberwell, and Hither Green. The attack by the unseen, unheard airships became known as the 'silent raid.' It killed 31 and wounded 48 in London.
The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War by Ian Castle, page 96, copyright © 2015 Osprey Publishing Ltd., publisher: Osprey Publishing, publication date: 2015
(3) After suspending the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo on September 12, 1917, Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna went on vacation with his wife, returning on October 19. Despite the numerous reports of an imminent Austro-Hungarian offensive, Cadorna and Italian King Victor Emmanuel felt no cause for alarm or additional defensive measures. On October 24, German and Austro-Hungarian forces launched the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, the Battle of Caporetto.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, pp. 298–299, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(4) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger on the battlefield over which the Third Battle of Ypres was fought. Men drowned in the water and mud of shell holes, and in mud from which they could not be extricated.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 196, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(5) Chemin des Dames, between Soissons and Reims, France, had been the site of the disastrous Nivelle Offensive in April, 1917. In May and June nearly half the French Army mutinied, refusing to take part in pointless and suicidal attacks. In ending the mutinies, French commander in chief Henri Pétain promised his army that he would make greater use of artillery and other weapons before any infantry assault, and that his objectives would be clear and limited. Beginning in August he demonstrated these principals in actions supporting the British in the Third Battle of Ypres and at Verdun where a six-day bombardment by 3,000 guns firing 3,000,000 shells preceded the attack. The October 23 Malmaison Offensive, named for an old fort retaken by the French in the attack, ended with a German retreat and the capture of the heights of Chemin des Dames.
Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-18 by Anthony Clayton, page 149, copyright © Anthony Clayton 2003, publisher: Cassell, publication date: 2005
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