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Allied soldiers fortifying shell craters after an advance. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot, 1918 Edition.
Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary, his wife Zita, and their son Crown Prince Otto in the funeral cortege of Emperor Franz Josef. Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria walks behind them. Franz Joseph died November 21, 1916, and was buried on November 30.
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.
Postcard of a German soldier guarding French POWs, most of them colonial troops, the colorful uniforms of a Zouave, Spahi, Senegalese, and metropolitan French soldier contrasting with the field gray German uniform. A 1915 postcard by Emil Huber.
German postcard map of the Romanian theater of war, with map labels in Bulgarian added in red. From north to south the labels are Russia, the Austro-Hungarian regions of Galicia and Bukovina, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and, along the Black Sea, the Romania region of Dobruja. Romania's primary war aim was the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian region of Transylvania, with its large ethnic Romanian population.
"During those five days the torrential rain and snow never let up. The walls of the trench were sagging; the precarious shelters which men had dug for themselves collapsed in certain places. Trenches filled with water.It's useless to try to describe the sufferings of the men, without shelter, soaked, pierced with cold, badly fed—no pen could tell their tale. You had to have lived through these hours, these days, these nights, to know how interminable they were in times like these.Proceeding in nightly work details or to and from the front lines, men slipped and fell into shell holes filled with water and weren't able to climb out; they drowned or froze to death, their hands grasping at the edges of the craters in a final effort to pull themselves out." ((1), more)
"On the last afternoon of November, 1916, the massive portal of Vienna's Gothic Cathedral of St. Stephen swung wide so that the corpse of venerable Emperor-King Francis Joseph might pass through on the way to its final resting place in the nearby Church of the Capuchins—in the crowded crypt of the most eminent Austrian Hapsburgs. Emerging from the Cathedral, three close relatives of the deceased ruler took their designated places behind the casket, the new monarch Charles on one side, in the uniform of a Field Marshal, his consort Zita, clothed in the conventional black on the other, and between them the four-year-old Crown Prince Otto, who presumably would one day reign over the strangest and most picturesque realm on the face of Europe." ((2), more)
"Admiral du Fournier made formal demand for the delivery of the first installment of war material; the reply was a definite refusal. Whereupon, Allied troops and marines were landed from the ships into the harbor.As the troops marched into Athens they were fired upon by a mob of Greeks, 47 allies being killed. Returning the fire, the Allies killed 29 Greeks. On the following day, the landing party returned to the ships, while the Greek soldiers began intrenching on the heights overlooking Athens. During the melee, the Allied warships fired 38 shells into the city, some of which seemed aimed at the Royal Palace." ((3), more)
"In my old company, the 21st (Hudelle's company), my old active-duty Sergeant Darles had been killed by a shell. His brother, a private in the same unit, went to his aid, but a second shell killed him, two minutes later.This was a simple fact. What did it matter that it was two brothers, two friends, or two strangers? But think about a father and a mother with two children—their hope, their help in the future, in their old age, upon whom their thoughts settled—who learn, all of a sudden, the brutal news, the horrible death of their two children.Go talk about glory, victory, the fatherland to these poor old people. They'll ask you not to insult their misery." ((4), more)
"Early on 3 December [1916], the Orthodox Sunday, the mass of maneuver prepared to resume its offensive as Prezan had ordered. Officers visited their troops in the early dawn, encouraging them for the attack. They were all unaware that the Bavarian 11th ID, approaching from the north, was virtually upon them. The Romanian 2nd CD and 7th ID (in reserve), charged with covering the rear, remained inexplicably inactive. About midmorning, the 2nd/5th ID was suddenly attacked on three sides by the Bavarians, the Turks, Goltz's cavalry, and the regrouped 217th. The Romanians held their ground until about 1:00 P.M. Then they fell victim to the exhaustion and demoralization resulting from a week of constant marching and fighting that had reduced their ranks by almost half." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, writing of grim conditions he and his men faced in the Somme sector at the end of November, 1916.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 282, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(2) Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary died on November 21, 1916, and was buried November 30. His crowns and titles — Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary — passed to Karl, son of the late brother of the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, page 422, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
(3) The Allied troops had gone to Athens, Greece on December 1, 1916 to seize arms, munitions, and artillery from the Greek Government claiming they might otherwise end up in the hands of German and Bulgarian forces. The pro-German King Constantine of Greece had been educated in Germany, and was married to a sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Eleftherios Venizelos had been Prime Minister of Greece, but resigned in March, 1915 over the King's refusal to support the Allied invasion of Gallipoli. Re-elected that August, he again parted ways with the King over supporting Serbia against Bulgaria which seemed to be preparing for war. Constantine dismissed his Prime Minister when the Allies landed 13,000 troops at the Greek port of Salonica on October 5, 1915, troops Venizelos had invited to support Serbia's defense. During 1916, the Allies expanded their forces in Greece with the addition of Serbian, Russian, and Italian troops. That October, Venizelos arrived in Salonica to head a new Revolutionary Government, one that had been recognized by the Allies.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 224, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(4) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas whose division had been relieved by the British on December 1, 1916. The division moved to Salouel, a suburb of Amiens. Their previous relief had been after the division had attacked, and their casualties were much heavier then, but Barthas notes 'the shells had claimed victims every day, even in the quietest sectors.'
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 284, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(5) Four infantry divisions — two Bulgarian, one German, and one Turkish — and one cavalry division, nearly 100,000 men in total, crossed the Danube River from Bulgaria into Romania between November 22 and 26, 1916, putting them 130 kilometers southwest of the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Romanian General Constantin Prezan collected a 'mass of maneuver' to drive the invaders back into the Danube. One indication of the quality of his troops is 'the 2nd/5th ID', that is, an infantry division composed of the exhausted remnants of the 2nd and the 5th infantry divisions.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 144–145, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
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