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Sleepless Nights, by Kriwub. France standing by her bed, arm raised against a giant German soldier watching her through the window. A Zeppelin passes in the distance. Someone has written the years of sleepless nights in blue: 19-14-15-16-17 and perhaps -18.
Children playing 'In the Dardanelles'. From February 19 to March 18, 1915, a Franco-British fleet tried to force its way through the Dardanelles to Constantinople. The Strait was defended by forts, some with modern German artillery. After a failure to break through on March 18, the Allies decided to invade, and in April, landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. Illustrated postcard by Pauli Ebner.
A folding postcard from a pencil sketch of an unsuccessful Allied gas attack in Flanders.
An advertising card of the Greek Army from the series Armées des États Balcaniques, published in 1910.The card shows, from left to right: an artillery detachment, a soldier in battle dress and another in parade dress, a cavalry man, an infantry officer, two hunters of a battalion of evzones, and a mountain artillery officer.
Postwar postcard map of the Balkans including Albania, newly-created Yugoslavia, expanded Romania, and diminished former Central Powers Bulgaria and Turkey. The first acquisitions of Greece in its war against Turkey are seen in Europe where it advanced almost to Constantinople, in the Aegean Islands from Samos to Rhodes, and on the Turkish mainland from its base in Smyrna. The Greco-Turkish war was fought from May 1919 to 1922. The positions shown held from the war's beginning to the summer of 1920 when Greece advanced eastward. Newly independent Hungary and Ukraine appear in the northwest and northeast.
"By the end of 1915, with no sign of the promised breakthrough, morale was beginning to flag. 'It's maddening the way people think,' commented Alfred Joubert (124th Infantry) on 8 December. They've gone off the idea of war and many talk about surrendering. . . . Happily they don't suit action to the word.' Meanwhile Sous-lieutenant Pierre Masson (261st Infantry) wrote with considerable prescience: 'an immense weariness seems to be weighing on everyone and neither side can feel triumphant. We wondered if perhaps we were heading for a worse catastrophe: one of morale.'" ((1), more)
"15.00 hrs. Had hardly taken 10 steps when I hear the hum of an approaching howitzer shell. Realise that if I'm to survive, I need to throw myself into a side-trench. The shell seems to be coming straight at me . . . the explosion is awesome. A violent shock follows. I'm thrown against the ramp. Feel pain on the left side of my groin. Clamp my hand on that spot and run towards my dugout. The path is shattered and covered in earth. Shell fragments are everywhere and a strong smell of acid fills my nostrils. You can come face-to-face with death here any minute . . . Oh my God! For the sake of your holy name, please protect us!" ((2), more)
"If a whiff of gas you smell,Bang your gong like bloody hell,On with your googly, up with your gun—Ready to meet the bloody Hun." ((3), more)
"At this time there was also some concern over the neutrality of Greece and the potential threat to the Allied troops at Salonika. So on 20 November [1915] a special squad was constituted in Malta, under admiral Le Bris, comprising three French battleships, three British battleships and an Italian and Russian cruiser. The squadron then headed for the island of Milos, some 90 miles away from Athens, arriving there on 25 November, in a show of force to the Greeks. This proved to be effective, so that by 11 December the Greeks agreed to remove all but one of their divisions from Salonika." ((4), more)
"To the Bulgarian army and nation, December 12, 1915, will always be a memorable date. On that day our army occupied the last three Macedonian towns still in the enemy's hands—Doiran, Guevgheli and Sturga. The last combats with the French, English and Serbians took place on the shores of Lake Doiran and near Ochrida. The enemy has been driven back at all points: Macedonia is free; there is not a single enemy soldier on her soil." ((5), more)
(1) And after sixteen months of war, German troops still held nearly all of Belgium and a large swath of northern France, including its industrial heartland. French commander Joseph Joffre's spring and autumn offensives had ended with little gain. Nor had France's allies fared well: A combined German and Austro-Hungarian offensive had driven the Russians from Polish Russia, and Italy's May entry into the war had failed to deliver on its promise and had not dislodged Austria-Hungary from any significant territory. In contrast Bulgaria's casting off of neutrality had assured the swift defeat of France's ally Serbia. The Franco-British invasion at Gallipoli was ending in defeat and evacuation. In both the home front and the trenches, there were French who believed a negotiated settlement was needed.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, pp. 94, 95, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
(2) Excerpt from the diary of Turkish Second Lieutenant Mehmed Fasih writing on December 9, 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The British Cabinet had agreed the evacuation of two of the three Allied positions — those at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove — on December 7, leading the Allied fleet to increase its shelling of Turkish positions.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 143, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(3) Trench wisdom found by C. S. Owen, commander of a Royal West Kent battalion, at one of his unit's sentry posts. Owen copied and sent it to his commanding officers, recommending it as a 'model of concise Order that men could understand and remember.' The doggerel is recorded in the entry for December 10, 1915 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. A gas attack indicated an infantry attack was imminent. On the sounding of the gong, men put on their gas masks — their googlies — and prepared to meet the attack.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 171, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) As neutral Bulgaria mobilized for war, signalling its intention to join the Central Powers, Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister of neutral Greece, discussed inviting forces of the Entente Allies to land at Salonika with the French and British ambassadors, and with his King, Constantine. Venizelos favored the Allies; Constantine the Central Powers. On October 3, 1915, Venizelos received the backing of the Greek Parliament, but on the 5th, as an Allied fleet entered the Gulf of Salonika, the King refused to back the Prime Minister who resigned. In the coming weeks, Constantine threatened to intern the British troops in Greece, and the French, retreating from the Bulgarians, feared they would need to fight their way through a Greek army to return to Salonika.
Gallipoli — Attack from the Sea by Victor Rudenno, page 212, copyright © 2008 Victor Rudenno, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2008
(5) December 12, 1915 communiqué of the Bulgarian General Staff quoted in the entry for the following day from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia. Bulgaria had cast off its neutrality by invading Serbia with one army and sending a second to prevent Allied (primarily French) troops trying to advance from Greece to aid Serbia.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 125, publisher: George H. Doran Company
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