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A Bulgarian postcard of Red Army soldiers at rest, with rifles stacked, and reading newspapers or leaflets.
Grand Harbour in Malta, a British possession that initially served as a base for French as well as British ships. At the Malta conference, March 2 to 9, 1916, the French agreed move their base. They first went to Argostoli in Cephalonia, then to Corfu. In the message, the writer notes that they are no longer in Malta, but in Corfu, and that the enemy submarines are rather numerous.
Russia's 1917 Offensive — the Kerensky Offensive — a pencil sketch of a Russian soldier fleeing his trench as Central Power bayonets rise over it. The failed offensive was Russia's last of the war. By Ger. F. Kollar, addressed to Frau Hermine Kollar of Vienna.
1898 map of Petrograd, the Russian capital, Kronstadt Bay, and the Russian naval base of Kronstadt, from a German atlas. Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on Kronstadt Bay, an extension of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. Kronstadt was an important naval base. North and east of central Petrograd was the Vyborg district, site of many factories and housing for workers.
Watercolor self-portrait by Lance Corporal Hugh F. Ward showing himself bathing, washing, and delousing his uniform. Ward served in the 97th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), 30th Division, B.E.F.
"According to information received from Russia, the offensive in Galicia has given rise to great indignation among the Russian people. In all major towns crowds of people are assembling in protest against the mass slaughters of Russia's sons. Anger at the British, who are considered by everyone to be responsible for prolonging the horrors of war, is steadily growing. Kerensky is quite openly being called a traitor to his country. In Moscow, where the cossacks have been sent to control the outraged populace, there have been mass demonstrations. The present situation cannot last much longer. Russkoye Slovo reports that in the last few days the state of siege in Petrograd has grown worse. In the last few weeks a large number of extreme left-wing socialists have been arrested. The paper reports that the extreme left-wing leaders have had to leave Petrograd and go far inland." ((1), more)
". . . the Malta-Alexandria convoy was introduced on 22 May [1917] with four ships escorted by four trawlers. It proved a success; only two ships were lost between 22 May and 16 July. The French on 18 June formally established a special directorate for the submarine war. The Direction générale de la guerre sous-marine was to a large extent the result of pressure from the French parliament, where there were strong suspicions that the French naval staff had been to tradition-bound and had not paid enough attention to submarine warfare." ((2), more)
"Apprehension about how the Russian troops on the Romanian Front would respond when the offensive began was reinforced by the arrival of negative reports concerning the Russian offensive on the Southwest Front, where, as Berthelot recorded, 'many regiments refuse to march.' There Russian forces had enjoyed initial success, breaking through enemy lines at Zloczow (1–3 July) and Stanislau-Kalusz (6–12 July). But heavy losses and the arrival of Austro-German reinforcements from other fronts stalled the Russian advance. On 17 July, enemy forces launched a counteroffensive that broke through the Russian lines. The entire front began to dissolve." ((3), more)
"On the morning of the fifth [July] I met Lenin. The offensive by the masses had been beaten off. 'Now they will shoot us down, one by one,' said Lenin. 'This is the right time for them.' But he overestimated the opponent—not his venom, but his courage and ability to act. They did not shoot us down one by one, although they were not far from it. Bolsheviks were being beaten down in the streets and killed. Military students sacked the Kseshinskaya palace and the printing-works of the Pravda. The whole street in front of the works was littered with manuscripts, and among those destroyed was my pamphlet 'To the Slanderers.'" ((4), more)
". . . Thirst; Gas; Shrapnel; Very H.E.; Our liquid fire; A first sight of an aeroplane map . . . Does it sound interesting? May God forgive me if I ever come to cheat myself into thinking that it was, and lie later to younger men of the Great Days. It was damnable; and what in relation to what might have happened? Nothing at all! We have been lucky, but it is not fit for men to be here — in this tormented dry-fevered marsh, where men die and are left to rot because of snipers and the callousness that War breeds. 'It might be me tomorrow. Who cares? Yet still, hang on for a Blighty.'" ((5), more)
(1) Article published in Tovarishch, 'a subversive weekly published for Russian soldiers by the German staff in Vilna,' quoted by Alexander Kerensky in his Russia and History's Turning Point. Then-Russian War Minister Kerensky was at the front as his Galicia offensive faltered. The article was dated July 16 (July 3 Old Style), the same day Kerensky read it, and the same day violent demonstrations against the pro-war government broke out in Petrograd. Although some left-wing soldiers and workers — including some Bolsheviks — were prepared to seize power, Bolsheviks leader Vladimir Lenin was not. One hundred or more people were killed, and the threatened government turned on the Bolsheviks in the coming days, with many of them arrested, some killed, and others, including Lenin, going into hiding. Kerensky found the foresight of the article suspicious. Russkoye Slovo is Russian Word.
Russia and History's Turning Point by Alexander Kerensky, page 290, copyright © 1965 by Alexander Kerensky, publisher: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, publication date: 1965
(2)
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 393, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(3) Romania entered the war on August 27, 1916, and was overrun by Central Power forces by the end of the year, driven out of Wallachia and Dobruja and back to Moldavia where the Russians held the Allied line. In July, 1917 they planned a joint Romanian-Russian offensive against German and Austro-Hungerian forces, but watched in dismay as the Russian Kerensky Offensive collapsed.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, page 196, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(4) Leon Trotsky writing of some of the events of July 18, 1917 (July 5 Old Style) and the next days following the July 16 anti-war and anti-government demonstrations in which government ministers were threatened and over 100 were killed. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, did not think the time was ripe for seizing power. Other Bolsheviks, as well as workers and soldiers, clearly did.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 313, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(5) Ivor Gurney, English poet and composer, writing to the composer Marion Margaret Scott, former President of the Society of Women Musicians, in June or July, 1917 between the 1917 British offensives of Arras and Ypres. Gurney was a private in the Gloucestershire Regiment. 'H.E.' is high explosive shells; a 'Blighty' a wound that would send him back to Blighty, to England.
War Letters, Ivor Gurney, a selection edited by R.K.R. Thornton by Ivor Gurney, pp. 170–171, copyright © J. R. Haines, the Trustee of the Ivor Gurney Estate 1983, publisher: The Hogarth Press, publication date: 1984
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