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Western Ottoman Empire showing the travels of Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War, from his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent.
Watercolor of Royal Navy motor launch ML148, by LHS, 1918. The motor launch was a small vessel designed for harbor defense and anti-submarine work. The Elco company built 580 between 1915 and 1918 in three series of different lengths: 1 to 50 (75 ft.), 51 to 550 (86 ft.), and 551 to 580 (80 ft.). The original armament of a 13 pound cannon was later replaced by three depth charges. Signed: L.H.S. 18
A Turkish funeral with Turkish and German soldiers and officers attending and praying. Is this a young Mustapha Kemal praying?
The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, one of Aesop's fables updated for the war by F. Sancha. In Aesop, a farmer slaughters the goose that lays a daily golden egg in expectation of seizing all its wealth at once. Sancha holds Germany responsible for the war that has destroyed its international trade, the source of its prosperity.
Machine Gun Corps Memorial, Hyde Park, London, England. A statue of David is flanked on either side by a wreathed Vickers machine gun. © 2013 by John M. Shea
"A few minutes after our arrival at Beersheba we met a German sergeant who told us, in reply to my question as to where he was going, that he was following Lieutenant Ande, who had set out a half hour previous with his machine-gun detachment, in the direction of Shellal. At once we suspected that something of grave importance was underway. We hurried on therefore to our encampment; and reached it at the precise moment when Essay Bey sallied forth with the entire garrison of Beersheba to take part in the First Battle of Gaza." ((1), more)
"The ship reported having seen another fellow torpedoed off Shelligs', so proceed there at full speed. Sighted her at 10.30 a.m., steering all over the shop. A square hole about 20 feet by 16 lets in insufficient water to put her down by the head a bit. Sighted the crew in two lifeboats under sail and picked them up. While I was aft, 'Action' was sounded and I dived to the bridge to find a submarine panic on. I sighted the Fritz U-Boat 8,000 yards off, high up out of water. I did not see him soon enough and only got as far as 'Control', but did not get a round off. I was very sick about it, 'cos she must have been watching us. We noted her course and steamed full speed for a point over her and dropped a DC [depth charge], but without sending up the Fritz as we hoped." ((2), more)
"The British had to give up their attack from the north and east, and lost height 83 by a bayonet attack of the Turks. By 11 a.m. the relieving troops had established connection with the Gaza group.The British began to retreat to the west bank of Wadi Razze. They left a rear guard on the east bank, but withdrew it during the night so that by morning of the 28th the east bank of the Wadi was free from the enemy. . . .The Turks buried some 1,500 British dead. Twelve machine guns and twenty automatic rifles were captured by them. Among the Turkish troops the 125th Infantry had specially distinguished itself, and Major Tiller among the German officers." ((3), more)
"S——— also mentions the extreme exhaustion of the German soldiers, who were so weakened that a retreat of twenty miles in twenty-four hours tired them out. Their only food was coffee (made with roasted barley and maize) morning and night, with a vegetable soup in the middle of the day. They tried to steal from the local population the supplies furnished by the American Relief.The whole tract is a desert. Not a single animal left alive." ((4), more)
"On 30 March 1914 I was looking forward with acute anxiety to the Atherstone point-to-point meeting (to be held next day). All my world was centred in the desire to steer old Cockbird first past the post in some silly, jolly race over hedge and ditch.And I did it. And the world went on just the same! 30 March 1916 I was in the trenches at Fricourt-Mamets, hating the Germans for killing my friend, and wondering if they'd kill me. But they didn't! And to-night I've been guzzling at the Godbert restaurant with a captain of the Dublin Fusiliers, and a captain of the Caemeronians, and three other Welsh Fusiliers; and the bill was 230 francs; and we drank Veuve Clicquot; and the others have gone into the dark city to look for harlots; and I'm alone in my room; looking out of a balconied window at the town, with few lights, and the moon and silver drifts of cloud going eastward; and the railway station looming romantic as old Baghdad. And next week we march away 'to hazards whence no tears can win us'." ((5), more)
(1) Rafael de Nogales was a Venezuelan mercenary and officer in the Ottoman Army who had been Inspector-General of Turkish Forces in Armenia. In 1916 he served under German General von der Goltz in Mesopotamia. In January, 1917 he was in Palestine where he heard the news that the British had advanced 'beyond El-Arrisch and were at the gates of the city of Gaza.' He had just returned from a failed mission to destroy the chief pumping station of the British pipe line when he found the First Battle of Gaza beginning.
Four Years Beneath the Crescent by Rafael De Nogales, page 326, copyright © 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1926
(2) Robert Goldrich was an officer commanding the British sloop Poppy on patrol on March 27, 1917, battling Germany's submarine campaign. Our editors, Palmer and Wallis, put Poppy in the North Sea, but the Skellig Islands, or Skellocks, are off the Southwest coast of County Kerry, Ireland.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 247, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(3) Excerpts from German General Otto Liman von Sanders' account of the First Battle of Gaza, fought from March 26 to 28, 1917, ending in a British defeat. British forces had constructed roads and supply lines along the Mediterranean coast from Egypt to support an advance on Palestine.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, page 165, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
(4) Entries from March 29 or 30, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant, living and writing in Paris. The 'retreat' of the German soldiers was part of Operation Alberich, a withdrawal to a shorter line and stronger defensive position, the Siegfried Zone, or Hindenburg Line. The winter of 1916–1917 was bitter, with coal and food shortages across Europe. The American Relief Committee had been founded in October, 1914 for the relief of the citizens of occupied Belgium. Its establishment by the energetic Herbert Hoover under the patronage of the Ambassadors of neutral Spain and United States is related in Hugh Gibson's animated Journal from our Legation in Belgium.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 241, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) Siegfried Sassoon writing on March 30, 1917 of March 30ths three years and one year before. Sassoon's trilogy, The Memoirs of George Sherston are comprised of The Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress. After an extended medical leave in England, Sassoon had returned to the front, and was turning against the war. A point-to-point meeting is a steeplechase, a horse race that includes fence-jumping, a 'jolly race over hedge and ditch,' as in a fox hunt.Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Men Who March Away' was published in The Times of London September 9, 1914, four days after Hardy wrote it with both Hardy and the paper foregoing copyright. Sassoon had referenced the poem on January 17, 1917. The lines (line 5, repeated as line 33) Sassoon quotes, 'To hazards whence no tears can win us' is from the original. Hardy later changed it to, 'Leaving all that here can win us.' The first stanza from Hardy's Complete Poems, page 538:What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray,Leaving all that here can win us;What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 146, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
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