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National Chicle Chewing Gum card of Major Raoul Lufbery, an American Ace who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille. Credited with 18 victories, he was killed on May 19, 1918.
View from Chemin des Dames looking across the valley of the Ailette River towards Laon Cathedral in the city of Laon, France and barely visible in the distance. The Chapelle St. Berthe is down the slope in the near distance. Laon was one of the first-day objectives of French commander-in-chief Robert Nivelle's offensive in the the Second Battle of the Aisne. © 2014 by John M. Shea
Martinpuich British Cemetery seen from Martinpuich Cemetery, Martinpuich, France. © 2013 by John M. Shea
A mass of German troops bear an enormous egg striped in the black, white, and red of the german flag. Atop the egg, a cannon is fired by troops with a Hungarian flag. The target, diminutive in the distance, is Paris, Eiffel Tower gray against the brown city.The watercolor is labeled,Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso.The card is a Feldpostkarte, a field postcard, from Asbach Uralt, old German cognac. Above the brand name, two German soldiers wheel a field stove past a crate containing a bottle of the brandy under the title Gute Verpflegung, Good Food. Above the addressee is written Einschreiben, enroll, and Nach Ungarn, to Hungary. The card is addressed to Franz Moritos, and is postmarked Hamburg, 1918-03-30. A Hamburg stamp also decorates the card.A hand-painted postcard by Schima Martos. , Germany on registered fieldpost card, 1918, message: Red Egg for Paris, Easter, 1918.The German advance in Operation Michael in the March, 1918 nearly broke the Allied line, and threatened Paris, putting it once again in range of a new German supergun capable of hitting the city from 70 miles away.
Advertising postcard map of European Russia, with inset images of a mounted Cossack lancer, a troika, and St. Petersburg.
"On Whit-Sunday evening, 19 May [1918], an aircraft was heard circling off the North Foreland on the Kent coast. British observers were puzzled as it hovered in the moonlit sky without flying inland. The mysterious machine left a flare burning brightly over the sea, and its drone faded away. The lull was brief, for German bombers were already winging their way towards England. The flickering light was a signal telling them that the weather to the west was clear.The first warning reached London at 10.42 P.M. From that hour, German aircraft kept coming in at five-minute intervals until long past midnight. Hundreds of observer reports jammed the telephone lines to the defence sub-commands and the Horse Guards. An ominous roar filled the warm night air throughout Kent and Essex. The bomber's courses crossed and recrossed as some passed out to sea, and still more came in." ((1), more)
"Finally, on May 20 the Corps von Conta received orders to take over their sector of the front, and Headquarters moved up to Château Marchais. The divisions also took up their positions. The last stage of the preparations began and was considerably helped by the plentiful cover the district afforded, woods and hills to the north of the Aisne valley screening them from English observation.In the Aisne valley, on the other hand, work could only proceed by night. All possible cover was utilised for the secret concentration of troops. The movement of new divisions and supply work could only be carried out by night. Bivouac fires by night were forbidden. Horses were not allowed out of the woods." ((2), more)
"The march was mostly across country. It took us through the new unfinished lines of wired trench on Senlis Ridge, which must need a lot of labour. A halt was made beside Harponville aerodrome, which had been hurriedly deserted. The sun was still below the horizon when we climbed the ridge on which it was built, and it grew upon us. Its austere lines and form fitted the site on top of a bare down. The half-light, the solitude and the stillness gave to its rude simplicity so strange a grandeur that one could forget it was an empty thing of deal and cloth, and colour camouflage; it might have been a relic of a bygone race or of some forgotten rite. At sunrise there was a scene of splendour as a vast expanse of downland, falling to the west, was unfolded from the shroud of mist rolling slowly off the hollows, and the early sunbeams lighted up here a field, there a wood or red roof, until all was colourful." ((3), more)
"— A raid on Tuesday the 21st [May 1918] from 10.45 p.m. to 1.30 in the morning. I was visiting Victor Margueritte, with Jacques Richepin, and the Weylers. The men in the party lay down on cushions on the drawing room carpet and went to sleep. It was a beautiful night. Bombs fell at Versailles and Saint-Cyr.— On Wednesday the 22nd there was an air raid from 11.30 p.m. until a quarter past midnight, and a further raid from 1.30 to 3.30 a.m., that is, until dawn. A stormy sky with a bright moon. Barrage of fire of unusual violence. Bombs dropped on the Gare d'Austerlitz, the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, the School of Arts and Crafts, the Rue Legendre, and also at Juvisy.— You are no longer allowed hot water for washing in hotels, except on Saturdays and Sundays." ((4), more)
"On May 23 [1918] the British War Cabinet had taken a decision to dispatch a 560-strong military mission to the port of Archangel, and a further six hundred men to Murmansk, to guard the British military stores there, that had earlier been sent through the Arctic as Britain's military contribution to the Russian army. The British also offered to train the hundreds of thousands of anti-Bolshevik Russians to defend themselves against any future Bolshevik assault. Three days later, in Siberia, 60,000 Czech troops, who had made their way through Siberia to the Far East of Russia after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had liberated all Austrian prisoners-of-war, turned actively against the Bolsheviks." ((5), more)
(1) The Whit-Sunday Raid, on London the night of May 19–20, 1918, was the largest raid of the war on London and the last. Thirty-eight Gotha bombers; two small planes, and three Staaken Giants dropped an estimated eleven tons of bombs on London and the counties of Essex and Kent leaving 49 dead and 177 injured. Whit-Sunday is Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, page 208, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
(2) Excerpt from an account of the Aisne Offensive, the Third German Drive of 1918, and German preparations for it, by Major-General A. D. von Unruh, Chief of the General Staff, 4th Reserve Corps (the Corps von Conta he refers to). The Aisne River flows south of Chemin des Dames, held by the Allies, but its source was behind the German line, and it is that part of the Valley of the Aisne Unruh refers to. Four British divisions that had been devastated in Operations Michael and Georgette in March and April had been moved into what was expected to be a quiet sector, one held by the French.
The Last of the Ebb: the Battle of the Aisne, 1918 by Sidney Rogerson, page 129, copyright © Sidney Rogerson, 1937, publisher: Frontline Books, publication date: 2011
(3) Excerpt from the entry for May 21, 1918 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, and fellow soldiers who served with him. Dunn's unit was northeast of Amiens where they gone at the beginning of April to reinforce the British line against the German Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, which was suspended on the 5th. It was quickly followed by Operation Georgette on April 9, the second of five German Offensives in 1918. The Allies were expecting the next attack any day. Harponville is north of the Somme River, the apex of a pyramid with the base following the river from Amiens to Péronne.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 482–483, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) Entries from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. The French capital had been struck in March by Gotha bombers and by 'the Paris gun,' a new weapon that the German advance in Operation Michael put Paris within range of. Corday wrote further that the newspapers of May 23 reported the arrest and imprisonment for two weeks of a chauffeur who observed that, 'the damage was tremendous,' referring to a bombed house. The court found this statement both provided information about military operations and would adversely affect morale. Versailles and Saint Cyr, home to the leading French military academy, are south-southwest of Paris.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 346, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) Russia's inadequate railways resulted in many of the supplies France and Britain sent to support the Russian Empire's war effort never making it from their ports of entry on the Arctic Ocean and White Sea in northern Russia. With control of the railways, the Bolsheviks controlled the supplies. Britain, France, and the United States would send additional troops in an ultimately failed attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik government. The Czech Legion was prepared to fight for independence from Austria-Hungary, but had to cross Russia to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In the course of their journey, the Bolsheviks tried to ensure the Czechs were not a military force that could turn on the Revolution and began to disarm them. The Czechs eventually resisted.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 425, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
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