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A poem beneath a United States flag calls on American boys to show the Kaiser.
Memorial statue to Prime Minister David Lloyd George in Parliament Square, London, United Kingdom. © 2013 John M. Shea
Map of Alsace and the Franco-German border from Switzerland north along the Vosges Mountains to Strasbourg. The postcard celebrates the German victory at Mulhouse on August 11, 1914, retaking the city from the French.
Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
The department of the Marne in Champagne was some of the most contested land during the war, site of the initial German invasion, the Battle of the Marne, the First and Second Battles of Champagne, the Champagne-Marne Offensive, Rheims Cathedral, Épernay, Châlons, Vitry-le-Francois, Ste-Menehould, and Perthes-les-Hurlus (First Champagne).
"Throughout June and into the first days of July, the Americans were part of the nail-biting waiting game—waiting for the German assault. Nightly shelling harassed the New Yorkers. Influenza struck, too, afflicting 40 percent of the men in the regiment. Nerves frayed. Sgt. Noble Sissle felt an 'air of tenseness that seemed to show that trouble brooded of a greater magnitude than we had witnessed in our section of the front.'" ((1), more)
". . . the real moment to make peace will be reached as soon as the totality of American reinforcements will have landed in Europe. The enemy will then be really anxious. You must make peace when he fears you most, and very often he fears you more before an offensive campaign than after it.Mr. Balfour found that this was a new way of envisaging the end of the war. In common with Mr. Lloyd George, he did not believe a military victory impossible on account of the weariness of Austria and Turkey . . ." ((2), more)
"This month of waiting, from June 15 to July 15, marked some of the greatest troop movements in the war. The British and French regrouped their reserves, and the American divisions were moved about in conformity as they formed part of these armies. The seasoned divisions were assembled back of the line between the two German salients, while the newly arrived divisions were rushed down to the quiet sectors in the Vosges mountains to relieve more experienced divisions for service on the Marne." ((3), more)
"Henceforth the armies should envisage the resumption of the offensive. Commanders at all echelons will prepare for this; they will focus resolutely on using simple, audacious, and rapid procedures of attack. The soldier will be trained in the same sense and his offensive spirit developed to the maximum." ((4), more)
"The actual command for the operation came very late. I was just sitting and working over it, when a perfectly strange grenadier was announced. With excitement but modestly he asked if it were true that Americans were stationed over there and that our attack was betrayed. I quieted him, but inquired carefully here and there what the general opinions on the attack might be. There was thorough confidence in the leaders; but there was an indefinite feeling that the affair would not succeed. 'The infantry has the right instinct,' veterans of the front used to say.. . . The enemy had taken several prisoners from us, among others an officer of photometry who, contrary to orders, had carried important maps with him. . . .The enemy fire increased each day. When on July 13th we moved to the places of preparation, thick clouds of gas lay on the wood of Jaulgonne. 'It will turn out all right,' was the general consolation." ((5), more)
(1) By July Germany had already mounted four offensives on the Western Front in 1918, the last ending on June 14. Through the following month The Allies expected the fifth offensive at any time. The 'New Yorkers' were Black soldiers in America's segregated army. The country's and the army's racism forbade Black and White soldiers serving together, and kept the former from combat. Our author, Stephen Harris, elsewhere writes (page 175), 'The men of the Fifteenth New York had been moved out of St. Nazaire as common laborers and into the French Fourth Army as combat infantrymen. On 12 March the regiment had been placed at the disposal of the French Sixteenth Division "for service as a combat unit." French Black and other colonial soldiers were an integral part of the French army. The influenza would return in the autumn in a more deadly form.
Hellfighters of Harlem by Stephen L. Harris, page 216, copyright © 2003 by Brassey's Inc., publisher: Brassey's Inc., publication date: 2003
(2) Excerpt from the War Diaries of Albert, King of the Belgians on his July 10, 1918 meeting with the British War Committee in London, a group that included Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. The Committee wanted victory, expecting it in 1919. The King cannot have endeared himself to them when he declared, 'Those who refuse to show a certain good will towards avoiding a fifth year of war would bear a heavy responsibility in the annals of history. It would be criminal to attempt nothing to avoid the further bloodshed which would result.'
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 218, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(3) By July Germany had already mounted four offensives on the Western Front in 1918, the last ending on June 14. Through the following month, the Allies expected the fifth offensive at any time. American Commander-in-Chief John J. Pershing had long resisted placing American units under foreign command, but had relented in the face of the success of Germany's offensives. The Vosges Mountains are in eastern France, in what had been a quiet sector after the Battle of the Frontiers in the beginning of the war.
The History of The A.E.F. by Shipley Thomas, pp. 102–103, copyright © 1920, by George H. Doran Company, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1920
(4) French Commander Henri Philippe Pétain's Directive Number 5, of July 12, 1918 echoed Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch's letter to Pétain on June 28. Although Pétain was much more cautious than Foch, he had claimed in June that, if the Allies survived the month, they could resume the offensive in July.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 464, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
(5) Excerpt from an account of the immediate run-up to Germany's Champagne-Marne Offensive by Kurt Hesse, Grenadier Regiment No. 5, 36th Infantry Division. The attack would begin on July 15, 1918, and was Germany's last offensive of the war.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 250–251, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
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