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French (and one British) soldiers in what appears to be a hastily-improvised line. An official photograph on the British Front in France taken May 3, 1918. French reserves came to the aid of the British during the German Offensives of 1918. Operation Michael on the Somme had been fought from March 21 to April 5, and Operation Georgette on the Lys River from April 9 to 29.
Postcard map of the English Channel, the strait between England and France with the Channel Ports of Dunkirk and Calais in France and Dover and the mouth of the Thames River in England. Illustration by Eugen Felle, 1915.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie von Hohenberg was the cover story of La Domenica del Corriere for the week July 5 through 12, 1914. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, said he aimed, turned away, and fired, and was not targeting the Countess. The illustrator may have positioned her standing to make sense of the two wounds: the Archduke was shot through the throat, his wife through the groin. Illustration by Alberto Beltrame.The cover story includes a picture of the deceased with their three children. A second photograph shows the new heir to the throne, Karl, holding his son, captioned "I due futuri Imperatori d'Austria" — the two future Emperors of Austria. Karl became emperor when Franz Joseph died in 1916. His son never did, as the Empire had dissolved by the time his father died.
Collage: beneath a ration ticket for bread for the week of March 25 to 31, 1918 is a 1915 five-Korona coin with two angels suspending a crown. On either side of the coin is written in HungarianA tejjel-mézzel folyó — kánaán — ból 1918 egy kenyér-czédula ára = öt koronaFrom Canann, the river of milk and honey, to rationing: in 1918 Czédula Bread cost her a crown. (Speculation: Kenyér-Czédula was a bakery. A web search shows at auction a menu for Étel Czédula, Czédula Food.)The ration ticket reads:kenyér — vagy kenyérliszt-utalványkg. 1.70 súlyú kenyérre vagy kg. 1.20 kenyér lisztre.Érvényes csak 1918 évi március hó 25-31 — igterjed? negyedik hétre.kenyér — vagy kenyérliszt-utalvány xxx való visszaélés kihágas!képez és rendörhatóságilag szigorúan büntettetik8Bread- or bread-flour-voucher1.70 kg. of bread or 1.20 kg. of bread-flourValid only in the year 1918, March 25 to 31 for up to four weeks.Bread- or bread-flour-voucher [. . .] abuse is an offense!and shall be severely punished by the police.The card is hand-made on watercolor paper by Schima Martos. Dated September 12, 1918.
Metal cross grave marker of Corporal Jakob Naumann who died on April 10, 1918, likely in Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive, launched the previous day. From the Laventie German Military Cemetery, Laventie, France. © 2013 by John M. Shea
"On the 26th [April 1918], four tanks of the 1st Brigade had an interesting experience.The Allied forces on this part of the line consisted of a most curious mixture of arms and races.The scene, for example, in a neighboring wood about ten days before is thus described by the historian of the 1st Battalion:'The Bois d'Abbé presented a most picturesque spectacle, and any one taking the trouble to walk through it could have had the unique experience of seeing practically every branch of both the British and French Armies represented. In this wood were to be found Tanks of all descriptions, Mark IV.'s, V.'s, Whippets and French Rénaults, heavy and light infantry, British infantry, Australians, French cavalry and infantry, Moroccans, and lastly a detachment of the Legion of Frontiersmen mounted on little Arab ponies, which presented a strange contract to the heavy Percherons of the artillery.'On April 26, it was in company with the Moroccan Division that the 1st Battalion fought." ((1), more)
". . . there was no more ground to lose in Flanders. Mount Kemmel is only twenty-five miles from Dunkirk, and it commands the whole plain stretching up to that town. . . .I did not succeed, however, in preventing the British front in the Ypres salient from being moved back, on April 27th, to the walls of the city, with, as a consequence, the withdrawal of the Belgian front to the Yperlée Canal. . . .I was now struck with the enormous wastage among the Allied troops, subjected as they had been to incessant attacks and bombardment by a prodigious number of gas shells. In order to meet this situation, I ordered three more French divisions (the 32nd, 129th, and 168th ) to be sent to Flanders; a part of these would be used to relieve the British XXII Corps, which had reached the extreme limit of endurance." ((2), more)
"Princip, deeply grieved by the loss of his friends [Čabrinović and Grabež], and suffering, as they had, from tuberculosis in its most cruel form, died during the last year of the war, on the evening of April 28, 1918, in the hospital of Theresienstadt prison. His illness seems to have made his last years a period of physical torture. Not enough is known of the conditions of Princip's and his friends' imprisonment to pass any judgment on their jailers, or to say what might have been done to ease their final sufferings, but the evidence of three deaths in two years alone reflects little credit on the Austro-Hungarian authorities." ((3), more)
"By late April, the men were starving. Bread and polenta were very scarce, and often mixed with sawdust or even sand. Meat practically disappeared. Soldiers stole the prime cuts from horses killed by enemy fire, and orders went out for carcasses to be delivered directly to the slaughterhouse. Triska's battery horses were dying; only six of 36 were healthy. Even the coffee made of chicory was in short supply. 'Salt was only a memory.' The men were often given money instead of food, but there was nothing to spend it on." ((4), more)
"The Battle of the Lys was for the enemy a tactical success but a strategic failure. He achieved no one of his principal aims, and in the struggle he weakened his chances of a future offensive by squandering some of his best reserves. By the end of April he had employed in that one northern area thirty-five fresh divisions and nine which had been already in action. These troops were the cream of his army, and could not be replaced. He had caused to the British front since March 21st something like a quarter of a million casualties, but his own losses were far greater." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from The Tank Corps by Major Clough Williams-Ellis & A. Williams-Ellis. The Moroccan Division fought at Hangard Wood on April 26, 1918. Percheron is a breed of draft horse that originated in western France and that has been used as a war horse, in agriculture, for pulling stage coaches, and hauling goods.
The Tank Corps by Clough Williams-Ellis & A. Williams-Ellis, pp. 174–175, publisher: The Offices of "Country Life," Ltd. and George Newnes, Ltd., publication date: 1919
(2) Allied Commmander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch on the great losses of the British forces in March and April, 1918. German commander Erich Ludendorff's 1918 drive for victory began on March 21 with Operation Michael, an attack north and south of the Somme River. In April he moved north to the Lys River on the Franco-Belgian border with Operation Georgette, the Battle of the Lys, began on April 9 on the Lys River along the Franco-Belgian border in Flanders. Both sectors were held by the British. French reserves reinforced the British line after it had been driven back with heavy losses on the Lys, but could not hold Mount Kemmel, losing it on the 25th, adding failure to British criticism that they had moved too slowly to support their ally. General Douglas Haig's impulse was to save the British Army by falling back to the Channel ports of Dunkirk and Calais. The British had held Ypres since the First Battle of Ypres in 1914.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 298–299, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(3) In proceedings that began October 12, 1914, twenty-five stood trial for involvement in the murders of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28, 1914, both shot by Gavrilo Princip. Of six would-be assassins, only one was over 20 years of age when the crime was committed, and he, Danilo Ilić, was executed. Under Austro-Hungarian law, the younger men could not be executed. Records for Princip's birth date conflicted, putting him just under or just over 20 years old on June 28: the judge ruled the evidence favoring him must take precedence. Princip, Čabrinović, who had thrown a bomb the exploded behind the royal couple, and Grabež, who had but did not throw a bomb, received the maximum sentence of 20 years. Princip had skeletal tuberculosis which led to the loss of his right arm before his death.
Sarajevo: The Story of a Political Murder by Joachim Remak, page 269, copyright © 1959 by Joachim Remak, publisher: Criterion Books, Inc., publication date: 1959
(4) Excerpt from Mark Thompson's The White War writing of food shortages facing the Austro-Hungarian army in 1918. The army had half the flour it needed, and could strip no more provisions from the territory it had conquered in the Battle of Caporetto. Jan Triska was a Czech non-commissioned officer in the 13th Artillery Regiment. Horses would have drawn his guns.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 343, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(5) Summary of the Battle of the Lys, Operation Georgette, by British novelist John Buchan. Georgette, launched on April 9, was the second of what would be five German offensives in 1918. Operation Michael, the Somme Offensive, was the first, and began on March 21. Both offensives were against the British front. In his 1918 Barrie Pitt puts the numbers of Allied dead and wounded at just under 210,000, and the German at 310,000 (page 134). But he also puts Allied prisoners and missing at 290,000 against 40,000 Germans, bringing Allied casualties to a few hundred shy of half a million men.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 123, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
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