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A Russian soldier standing guard on a moonlit winter night reflects on his youthful fun and friendships. A Russian postcard with a message from a German soldier to his sister dated March 28, 1915.
Headstone of Sapper E.M. Des Brisay, 2nd Canadian Signal Company, Attd. Royal Flying Corps, died August 3, 1916, age 23, at Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez, France. © 2013 John M. Shea
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his wife Tsaritsa Alexandra, a detail from a portrait of the Russian imperial family in 'An Ambassador's Memoirs' by Maurice Paléologue, the last French Ambassador to the Russian Court.
A photo postcard of a German trench view of barbed wire and a dead patrol. Dated February 22, 1916, and field postmarked the next day, the message is from a soldier to his uncle, and reads in part, 'yesterday we heard that 4 fortresses of Verdun were taken. This have been a lot of shooting . . . Maybe this is the end of Verdun and peace will come soon . . . the barbed wire on the other side of the card is French. You can see dead patrols . . .' (Translation from the German courtesy Thomas Faust.) Evidently the author safely reached the French trench line.
German postcard map of Paris to Liege, northern France and the Belgian border. After the Battle of the Marne, the Race to the Sea continued north. By October 12, 1914, the mutual attempts of the German and Allied armies to outflank each other were focused on Lille.
"It has not been this cold since '93. We leave at night, everyone slipping on the frozen earth. On the plateau, the snow is powdery, like sugar. It crunches under our shoes without melting. When we get to Lavoye in the moonlight, there are no fresh supplies.At eight we move off again and the men's faces are contorted by the cold and exhaustion. Red-rimmed eyes, red noses, pail skin, blue ears, beards hung with icicles. Sweat freezes right away and looks like snow on the horses' backs and on the men's overcoats. Our shoes cannot grip on the frozen earth as we march. Finally, we arrive in Charmontois. The men have to sleep in barns with broken windows! The conditions are criminal. They drink in order to keep warm. I am surprised no one gets a cold." ((1), more)
"During this period the splendid fighting qualities of the infantry were well seconded by the bold support rendered by the artillery, and by the ceaseless work carried out by the Royal Flying Corps. These operations had again resulted in heavy losses to the enemy, as testified to by the dead found, and many prisoners—besides arms, ammunition, equipment, and stores—had been taken, while the Turks now only retained a fast vanishing hold on the right bank of the Tigris." ((2), more)
"The Emperor spent hours over these maps and his plan of a spring campaign, and when he left the billiard room he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. I have never seen him more completely the soldier, the commander in chief of a great army. All this time, from December, 1916 to February, 1917, the Russian front was comparatively quiet, furious snowstorms preventing the advance either of our own or the enemy's forces. Alas! The storms interfered also with railroad transport and Petrograd and Moscow were beginning to feel the pinch of hunger, a fact that gave their majesties constant concern." ((3), more)
"I was a mere boy looking on life with hopeful optimism, and on war as an interesting adventure. When I saw the Hun corpses killed by our shell-fire I was full of pity for the men so suddenly cut off in their prime. Now I was a man with no hope of the War ending for years. I looked at a trench full of corpses without any sensation whatever. Neither pity nor fear that I might soon be one myself, nor anger against their killers. Nothing stirred me. I was just a machine carrying out my appointed work to the best of my ability." ((4), more)
"February 6th.—The frost relaxes, a high easterly wind is blowing.February 8th.—Thaw where the sun strikes. Glad to be away from Camp 17, although we are back to the front in Béthune. The right and left subsectors have been allowed to keep their French names, Girodon and Béthune. Generally the French trench names have been changed, although they were mostly those of dead French officers, thus 'Oursel' has become 'Wurzel.' One was called after Captain Fryatt, one of our splendid merchant skippers." ((5), more)
(1) French Captain Paul Tuffrau returning to the trenches on February 4, 1917. Tuffrau had fought since the Battle of the Marne in 1914, and had been wounded twice. He was deployed to Verdun in September, 1916, and, on February 4, had just returned from two weeks leave.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 206, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(2) Excerpt from the report by General Sir Stanley Maude, commanding British Empire forces in Mesopotamia, reporting on his advance up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers towards Baghdad.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. V, 1917, p. 51, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) Extract from the memoir of Anna Viroubova, confidant to the Empress Alexandra, and one of the few people the Empress associated with. From her description, Viroubova gives the impression Tsar Nicholas, autocrat and Commander of the Army, was planning his spring offensives in isolation. They would never happen. Their majesties, Nicholas and Alexandra, may have been constantly concerned about the state of the citizens of Petrograd, the capital, and Moscow, the two most important cities in the Russian Empire, but they had isolated themselves the rest of the government and the Russian people.
Memories of the Russian Court by Anna Viroubova, page 196, copyright © 1923 by The MacMillan Company, publisher: The MacMillan Company, publication date: 1923
(4) British infantryman Alfred Pollard writing on February 7, 1917. Pollard found the trench of dead British soldiers, slain in a German night raid, while leading a patrol of four men to reconnoiter the village of Grandcourt on the Ancre River. Aerial reconnaissance had reported German forces had pulled back from the village, and Pollard's mission was to verify the reports. Pollard found the village empty. Neither he nor his superiors realized they were seeing the first stages of a German strategic retreat.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, page 330, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
(5) Extract from the entry for February 8, 1917 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. The winter of 1916–1917 — Germany's 'Turnip Winter' — was bitterly cold, and a two-week long cold snap was starting to break when Dunn wrote. Captain Charles Fryatt was in the merchant navy, and skipper of the SS Brussels on March 28, 1915 when U-33 surfaced to torpedo his ship. Fryatt attempted to ram the sub, which crash dived and fled. The British admiralty awarded him with a commemorative watch that included details of Fryatt's action. On June 25, 1916, Fryatt and his ship were captured off Holland by five German destroyers. He was tried for his actions and executed on July 27.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 294–295, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
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