Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
Western Front: Aisne & Oise. French folding postcard map of the Aisne and Oise, number 3 from the series Les Cartes du Front. The map includes the Champagne front from Compiègne in the west to Chalons-sur-Marne in the east including Soissons, Chemin des Dammes, Laon, Reims, and Château Thierry.
A woman munitions worker carrying a shell apparently drops another one on the foot of a frightened man who clearly does not realize, as she does, that they are not in danger. No doubt his foot hurt.
Austrian Mountain Rangers 'resting in the shade of southern flora' on the Italian front. The card was postmarked from Berlin on January 5, 1916.
Vote Yes pin for Australian conscription, October 28, 1916, with the flags of Australia and Great Britain. A tin badge or tie-back pin in support of the Australian referendum on conscription, October 28, 1916. Australia voted no on this occasion and again, by a wider margin, in December, 1917.
The fruits of military leave: a French woman wearing the kepi of 1914-15 hold an infant twins, a boy and a girl, one in each arm.
"One of the largest of these mutinies took place on June 2 [1917] outside Cœuvres, a modest town about eight miles southeast of Soissons and situated on the edge of the Forest of Vollers-Cotterêts. . . .On June 2 the 310th received orders to leave Cœuvres and march to Bucy-le-Long, a town northwest of Soissons. The troops knew what this meant—a return to the trenches. They would not go. Colonel Dussange, the regimental commander, reported later, 'About three in the afternoon, one company refused to pack its gear. No acts of violence occurred, just a determined obstinacy. Immediately another company mutinied. The regiment refused to listen to me.'Pushing past their protesting colonel, the troops made their way into the woods on the south of the town. It was useless for Dussange to attempt to block the road. 'The troops passed right by me on either side, without insults or pushing. Some of them saluted me.' The colonel reported that his men 'intended to march on Paris. Other regiments were waiting for them in the Forest of Compiègne.'" ((1), more)
"The strikes of the trade unions had also become an increasing problem to the harassed government. The day before, Poincaré himself witnessed a strike demonstration by several thousand women armament workers. In a mob they marched down the Champs Élysée, turned off on the Avenue Alexandre III and demonstrated outside the Élysée Palace. 'Their clamors rose up for more than two hours,' he wrote in his diary. . . . Vastly more important than strikes, pacifism or the growing agitation by the left-wing political parties, however, was the menace of the mutinies. The night before, the government had received a report from Colonel Herbillon, its military-liaison officer, that fresh mutinies were breaking out in the XXIst Corps—'the troops refuse to go into the trenches.'" ((2), more)
"The Austrians would, though, have the last word. On 4 June, Baroević used his reinforcements from the East to launch surprise attacks north of Hermada, regaining some of the ground lost to the Third Army. The Italian losses were huge: 22,000 men, including 10,000 prisoners. Rumour had it that three regiments had surrendered without fighting, complete with the officers and equipment. Cadorna railed at the treachery of men who chose surrender rather than death. Privately, he wished he could ask Baroević to have them flogged. Officially, he wrote a furious letter to Prime Minister Boselli, blaming the government for laxity towards domestic opponents of the war. After three weeks, the Italians had taken more than 150,000 casualties, including 36,000 killed. The Austrians had only 7,300 killed." ((3), more)
"[Secretary of War Newton D.] Baker and other military and civilian authorities had initially feared widespread resistance to the draft. . . .The actual response of the American people on June 5, a Tuesday, exceeded the most optimistic hopes of Baker and his military advisers. Amid hastily organized local festivities, parades, pageants and processions, some ten million men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty came forward to register before more than 135,000 local board officials. From across the land, reports of enthusiastic and patriotic compliance flooded in. Ocala, Florida was typical. Civic officials organized a parade of almost one thousand citizens. To the strains of 'The Star Spangled Banner' and 'Dixie,' members of fraternal orders, women's clubs, and service organizations marched down Fort King Avenue, the black contingents following the whites." ((4), more)
"The causes of mutinies appear to be:1. Too protracted periods in the front line without relief, after the great offensive—for want (in many cases) of reserves to replace them.2. Leave periods delayed for over four months, contrary to all regulations.3. The moral effect of the set-back of the 16th April, and the troops' determination not to make further attacks.4. Disappointment at the rejection of the peace offers of the 12th December, 1916.5. The veto on passports for Stockholm.6. The general war-weariness." ((5), more)
(1) After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne, begun on April 16 — an offensive that Nivelle had asserted would provide the breakthrough of the German line that would lead to victory, mutinous incidents broke out in the French army, particularly among the troops that had suffered the highest rates of casualties in the offensive. The mutinies were of greater or lesser severity, beginning in April, with increasingly disruptive incidents in May, and the most violent and serious in the first weeks of June. The Russian Revolution of March provided a model for some soldiers including those in the 310th who established their own camp and elected their own leaders.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, pp. 202, 203, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
(2) After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne — mutinous incidents broke out in the French army beginning in April. As the mutinies worsened in May, as many as 100,000 workers also went on strike. The strikes continued into June, and the most violent and serious of the mutinies occurred in the first weeks of the month. Women workers struck for the 'semaine anglaise,' an English work week, one that ended at noon on Saturday. The French were becoming sick of the war, of the government's refusal to consider a peace other than victory, of soldiers being denied leave, of soldiers being thrown into barbed wire and machine gun fire. Raymond Poincaré was President of France throughout the war; the Élysée Palace is the official residence of the nation's president.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, page 201, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
(3) Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna had launched his Tenth Battle of the Isonzo on May 12, 1917, and by the 14th it looked to be another failure despite the heaviest Italian artillery barrage of the war to date. Italian deserters had alerted the Austro-Hungarians to the impending attack, and, with their Russian front quiet after the February Revolution, the Austrians had transferred reinforcements to the west. The defenders held the peaks, and the Italians were attacking, as they had since the beginning of the war, an enemy above them, oftentimes well entrenched.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 254, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(4) The Selective Service Act was passed by both houses of the United States Congress on May 16, 1917 and signed into law by Woodrow Wilson on the 18th. Registration was required between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on June 5th for all those then subject to registration. In his April 2, 1917 address to the joint session of Congress requesting a declaration of war on Germany, the President had stated that 500,000 men should be immediately added to the military with 'subsequent additional increments of equal force' depending on need and the resources to train the men. The United States army was segregated, and would remain so until 1948.
America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience by Robert H. Zieger, page 60, copyright © 2000 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., publication date: 2001
(5) Excerpt from the entry for June 6, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant, writing about the causes of the French army mutinies that followed the failure of the French offensive begun on April 16, the Second Battle of the Aisne. Germany had made peace overtures in December, 1916, and Socialists would hold a conference in Stockholm in neutral Sweden.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, pp. 257–258, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
1 2 Next
