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Austro-Hungarian trench art pencil drawing on pink paper of a soldier in a ragged, many-times-patched uniform, labeled 'Bilder ohne Worte' (No Comment, or Picture without Words). Kaiser Karl who succeeded Emperor Franz Joseph is on reverse. The printed text on the reverse is in Hungarian and German.
Currency card for the United States, with American coins, currency conversions, and the national flag.
"Flandern 1918 Prosit Neujahr!" — Happy New Year! from Flanders, 1918, a church steeple is in the distance, woods, and a green field. In the foreground ruins of a building and a bare tree. German watercolor.
German Peace Angel pencil sketch from November, 1917, insisting Peace Will Come Soon. In fact, she would not come for another year, on November 11, 1918.
Postcard of Myslowitz and the Dreikaiserreichsecke — the three empire's corner — where the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German empires met. The left pane shows a Bismarck tower. The three emperors are Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Willhelm II of Germany, and Kaiser Franz-Joseph of Austria-Hungary.
"The Austro-Hungarians had never really recovered from the devastating losses in Galicia and Serbia in the first year of the war. Since the beginning of the war, of the 8,420,000 men enrolled in the services, more than 4,000,000 had been lost, of whom 780,000 were dead, 500,000 were wounded and disabled, and over 1,600,000 were prisoners. In addition, industrial development within the empire had been limited and the economy was still predominantly agrarian. To make matters worse, the blockade enforced by the Western Allies was creating desperate shortages of raw materials and food." ((1), more)
"When interested folksWax eloquentIn their praisesOf your patriotism,And nobility,And self sacrifice,And other virtues,Carefully countThe contentsOf your pay envelope." ((2), more)
"At the moment of midnight, December 31, 1917, I stood with some acquaintances in a camp finely overlooking the whole Ypres battlefield. It was bitterly cold, and the deep snow all round lay frozen. We drank healths, and stared out across the snowy miles to the line of casual flares, still rising and floating and dropping. Their writing on the night was as the earliest scribbling of children, meaningless; they answered none of the questions with which a watcher's eyes were painfully wide. Midnight; successions of coloured lights from one point, of white pendants from another, bullying salutes of guns in brief bombardment, echoes racing into space, crackling of machine-guns small on the tingling air; but the sole answer to unspoken but importunate questions was the line of lights in the same relation to Flanders and our lives as at midnight a year before. All agreed that 1917 had been a sad offender. All observed that 1918 did not look promising at its birth, or commissioned 'to solve this dark enigma scrawled in blood.'" ((3), more)
"It had been, as Edward wrote on New Year's Eve, such 'a rotten year in many ways—Geoffrey and Tah dead and we've seen each other about a week all told. . . . F. is in hospital at present so the C.O. and I are the only officers who joined the Bn in 1914.' The War had gone on for such centuries; its end seemed as distant as ever, and the chances of still being young enough, when it did finish, to start life all over again, grew more and more improbable. By 1918 I had already begun to have uncomfortable, contending dreams of the future. Sometimes I had returned, conscience-stricken and restless to civilian lie while the War was still on, and, as in its first year, was vainly struggling to give my mind to learning. In other dreams I was still a V.A.D., at thirty, at forty, at fifty, running round the wards at the beck and call of others, and each year growing slower, more footsore, more weary." ((4), more)
". . . Decorations in the New Year's dish-out are counted by hundreds and thousands; nearly every General has something. Is peace coming? We had Giraud for lunch at H.Q. He is for ending the War now, being very doubtful of the French people sticking it much longer: he says the bulk of their rank and file, and their Labour officials want peace, the old people want revenge, trade wants annexations and privileges: France distrusts Ll. George—says he is all for personal kudos." ((5), more)
(1) Summary of Austria-Hungary's situation at the end of 1917. Austria-Hungary's three 1914 invasions of Serbia failed at great cost. In four battles against Russia the same year, Austria-Hungary lost its northeastern province of Galicia, much of the Empire's rolling stock, and 350,000 men.
Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign: The Italian Front 1915–1918 by John MacDonald with Željko Cimprić, page 176, copyright © John MacDonald, 2011, 2015, publisher: Pen and Sword Books, publication date: 2011
(2) Excerpt from 'The Sayings of Patsy' by Bernice Evans, in the New York Call, a Socialist Party newspaper, December 30, 1917. Evans wrote thirteen poems of that name.
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 446, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
(3) Edmund Blunden, English writer, recipient of the Military Cross, second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, fought in the Third Battle of Ypres, one of the most murderous battles of the war. The battlefield and the city itself were, and are, in Flanders, where Blunden had passed the prior New Year's Eve.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, pp. 233–234, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
(4) Vera Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Tah was Victor Richardson, who was severely wounded on April 9, 1917, in the Battle of Arras. He died on June 9. Geoffrey Thurlow was killed in action at Monchy-le-Preux, southeast of Arras, on 23rd April 1917.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, pp. 399–400, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
(5) Excerpt from the entry for January 2, 1918 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. Giraud was the Corps intepreter; David Lloyd George the British Prime Minister. Peace initiatives — by the Pope and Germany — and the treaty negotiations in Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, raised hopes by many on both sides that peace would come soon.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 430, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
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