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'Victory Calendar' for the second half of 1916 offered by the department stores of the Louvre. A dove of peace flies over a Croix de Guerre, a military decoration created in 1915. The mini-calendar includes the latter six months of the years, pages for notes, anniversaries, and dates for leaves and transfers.
Austro-Hungarian soldiers marching through a city, their officers bawling orders. Women and a child watch and talk, possibly shouting to be heard over the marching feet. An original watercolor on blue paper, signed W. Rittermann or Pittermann, December 26, 1915.
The Russian Duma: priest deputies and officers. From White Nights and Other Russian Impressions by Arthur Ruhl. Ruhl reported from Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution.
A French soldier wearing the uniform of 1914/1915 stands by the side of a water-filled shell crater.
Map of the North and Baltic Seas (labeledNord-See and Ostsee) from a folding postcard of five battlefronts: the Western and Eastern Fronts; North and Baltic Seas, Mediterranean and Black Seas; and the Serbian-Montenegro Front.
"There was naturally a cascade of Croix de Guerre distributed, as always, according to the whims of the officers, who began by giving them to each other.For these, the company commanders had to present a list of those most deserving. Lieutenant Cordier responded with these noble words: 'All my men did their duty. To reward a few would be to do an injury to the others. That's an injustice to which I will not subscribe.' . . ." ((1), more)
"From 20th May [1916], a series of appeals from Italy reached Stavka, 'each more peremptory in tone than the last'. Joffre, through Laguiche at Stavka; the Italian representative there; the Italian embassy in Petrograd; finally the King of Italy in a personal telegram to the Tsar prevailed on Alexeyev. It seemed that only an immediate Russian offensive could help Italy; and if Italy dropped out of the war, then large numbers of Austrian divisions would be free to take up the battle against Russia." ((2), more)
"This morning P——— brought me somewhat alarming reports of revolutionary propaganda in factories and barracks.. . .At the club this evening I casually overheard the remark: 'If the Duma is not suppressed we are lost!' followed by a long rigmarole proving the necessity of an immediate return of tsarism to the pure traditions of Muscovite orthodoxy.. . . I think it will not be forty years, or even forty months, before the Russian State collapses." ((3), more)
"What's really annoying is that when you have to go you really don't know where to go everywhere is dangerous and so you hold it as long as you can but at some point you just have to go. I am telling you this because this morning at one thirty I wanted to go and I got myself into a shell hole that was two meters deep. I just got there and right away there was a shell whistling by me I lay flat out and right away three more followed one of which exploded in a hole just 30 meters in front of me I grabbed my pants in both hands and ran for the dugout I laughed about it when I got to the shelter but if you could see the poor guys here running like that you would feel sorry for them." ((4), more)
"It was against this background of raid and counter-raid with both sides baiting traps—Jellicoe to catch the High Sea Fleet away from its coast and Scheer to catch an isolated portion of the Grand Fleet—that the great naval battle of the war occurred almost by accident. At the end of May [1916], Jellicoe decided to send two light cruiser squadrons around the Skaw into the Kattegat on 2 June to sweep as far south as the Great Belt and the Sound. There would be a battle squadron in the Skaggerak in support, and Jellicoe and Beatty would be to the northwest with all their forces ready to intervene if the High Sea Fleet moved north out of the Bight. British submarines would also be off the Dogger Bank and south of the Horns Reef, and the minelayer Abdiel would extend the minefields laid on 3–4 May. The seaplane carrier Engadine, escorted by a light cruiser squadron and destroyers, would be off Horns Reef to watch for Zeppelins." ((5), more)
(1) French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas rotated into the Verdun sector on May 6, 1916, moved to the front line on the 11th, and moved out the night of May 18-19. Due to French commander Henri Philippe Pétain's policy of short rotations, some 80% of the French army rotated through Verdun during the Battle. Barthas records that his reserve regiment suffered as many as 1,050 killed, wounded, and missing. When the losses were replaced with young men, the regiment was made an active duty, regular regiment. Barthas, who had previously been broken in rank, was made a corporal again.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 218, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(2) After five Battles of the Isonzo River along the Italian-Austro-Hungarian border in northeast Italy, battles in which Austria-Hungary stood on the defensive, the Austrians struck in northern Italy from Trentino on May 15, 1916 in the Asiago Offensive, and made great advances that threatened to break through from the mountains to Italy's northern plain, isolating the Italian armies. French Commander in Chief Joffre, preparing an Anglo-French offensive on the Somme River, and desperately battling at Verdun, was not yet ready for an offensive. Alexeyev was Chief of Staff to Commander in Chief of Tsar Nicholas II. Stavka was the Russian general staff. General Brusilov was preparing an offensive, and was both ready and willing to strike sooner rather than later.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, page 246, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
(3) Excerpts from the entry for May 26, 1916,from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Imperial Russia. Tsar Nicholas and the royal family were increasingly isolated from Russia's elites, the Duma, Russia's legislative assembly, large segments of workers and the military. An autocrat, the Tsar accommodated representative government and the Duma only under duress. He remain in power little more than 40 weeks from the date on which Paléologue wrote.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 265, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(4) Extract from a letter of French Artilleryman Paul Pireaud to his wife Marie on May 27, 1916. Pireaud's unit, the 112th Heavy Artillery Regiment, moved into the Verdun sector in early April. Although French commander Pétain rotated infantry units after seven or eight days, but it was much more difficult to do so with the artillery.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, page 108, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
(5) In May, 1916 Admiral Sir John Jellicoe commanded the British Grand Fleet, Admiral Reinhard Scheer the German High Sea Fleet. With a superior navy, Britain had cleared the high seas of German warships in the first months of the war, and blockaded the North Sea, constraining the activity of the German surface fleet. On April 25, 1916, German warships had shelled the coastal town of Lowestoft, one of the raids our author refers to, destroying 200 houses, killing three and wounding twelve. The Skaggerak and Kattegat are straits between the North and Baltic Seas, north and east of Denmark's Jutland peninsula. Dogger Bank is a fishing ground in the North Sea, and site of the January 24, 1915 Battle of Dogger Bank as well as an encounter on February 10, 1916. Admiral David Beatty commanded a squadron of battleships that would be used as a lure in the coming days.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, pp. 314, 315, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
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