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I've killed many Germans, but never women or children. Original French watercolor by John on blank field postcard. In the background are indolent Russian soldiers and Vladimir Lenin, in the foreground stands what may be a Romanian soldier who is telling the Russians, 'You call me savage. I killed a lot of Boches [Germans], but never women or children!'
French folding postcard map of Verdun and the Meuse River, number 9 from the series Les Cartes du Front. Montfaucon is in the upper left and St. Mihiel at the bottom.
Women workers in a German munitions factory. The man on the right is holding a cigarette.
Photo postcard of a German biplane in flight along the coast. Surf can be seen breaking on the shore.
The Royal Palace in Bucharest, Romania. A postcard altered to show the German flag flying over the palace.
"Let us beware of becoming the slaves of our own phrases. In our day wars are won not by mere enthusiasm, but by technical superiority. Give me an army of 100,000 men, an army which will not tremble before the enemy, and I will not sign this peace. Can you raise an army? Can you give me anything but prattle and the drawing up of pasteboard figures? . . . If we retire to the Urals we can resist the pressure of the Germans for two or three weeks, then after a month's delay we shall sign conditions which are a hundred times worse. You must sign this shameful peace in order to save the world Revolution, in order to hold fast to its most important, and at present, its only foothold—the Soviet Republic. . . ." ((1), more)
"This place is called Le Chalet. There was a real little village: dugouts, cabins, hangers, little chalets, supply dumps, and a tacot train station. Night and day there was an intense level of activity, and this just a few hundred meters from the German listening posts! But the sharp declivities of the valley's terrain didn't permit the German gunners, clever as they were, to drop a shell on us.But one detail was hardly reassuring: all the trees were dead. A hideous yellow coating covered their trunks, clearly indicating that a deadly cloud of poison gas had passed by here." ((2), more)
"Don't things look luverly in the East? Well, it removes all doubt. We have to fight until Germany will behave well on this front at least. On the other, nothing save an over-powering defeat can make any difference — and that is hardly likely, is it?Our hopes lie in the fact, that German soldiers, though they may be willing to go on to the end, know perfectly well that the cost has been too great, and that the working classes can not allow themselves so to be cheated, bullied, misused, ever again." ((3), more)
"Frequently, towards sundown, although work for the day was officially over, we used to do an additional patrol. Game was likely then, on the lines, the enemy appearing to find this tail-end of the day to his liking also. . . .At this period in 1918, it was rare to see single-seater fighters flying alone, and as the year proceeded the sight became rarer and rarer. Out litle scouts would leave the ground in twos and threes, or in fives or sometimes more.At this time of the evening (towards sundown), it was too late for photography, and the artillery observation machines one by one were leaving the lines, their work completed. The bombers, on the other hand, would not be operating until later. It was the heroic hour for air combat—the hour at which the fighters went in search of one another." ((4), more)
"Our peace terms are so mild that they are as a generous gift offered to vanquished Rumania and are not at all to be made a subject for negotiations. In no case are these negotiations to assume the character of trading or bargaining. If Rumania refuses to conclude peace on the basis laid down by us our answer can only be a resumption of hostilities.I consider it highly probable that the Rumanian government will run that risk to prove her necessity in the eyes of the Western Powers and her own population. But it is just as probable that after breaking off negotiations she will just as quickly turn back and give way before our superior forces.At the worst a short campaign would result in the total collapse of Rumania." ((5), more)
(1) Vladimir Lenin speaking to the Petrograd Soviet and the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets on the night of February 23–24, 1918, attempting to persuade the members to sign peace terms demanded by Germany. Leon Trotsky, head of the Russian delegation to the Brest-Litovsk peace conference with the Central Powers, left the negotiations on February 10, 1918 saying Russia would not sign peace terms laid down by Germany, but would withdraw from the war. In the following days Trotsky and Lenin debated whether the Germans would accept this situation or resume hostilities. On the 16th General Hoffmann, military head of the German delegation, delivered his response, ending the armistice. Two days later the Germans resumed the war, violating the terms of the armistice which called for a seven-day notice of termination, and advancing against little to no resistance.
Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace; March 1918 by John W. Wheeler-Bennett by John W. Wheeler-Bennett, page 260, publisher: The Norton Library, publication date: 1971, first published 193
(2) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas writing of the end of February, 1918. Barthas served much of the war in the 296th Regiment, one implicated in the army mutinies of the spring and early summer 1917. The regiment had been dissolved and its men assigned to other units, Barthas to a regiment from Breton. Since the beginning of the year he had been in the Argonne, moving into the relative protection of the Meurissons ravine on February 21.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 362, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(3) Ivor Gurney, English poet, composer, and private in the Gloucestershire Regiment, writing to the composer Marion Margaret Scott, on February 25, 1918 from hospital in Newcastle. He had been sent back to the United Kingdom after being gassed in September, 1917. After a failure to reach a peace settlement with Russia in negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, Germany had ended the armistice between Russia and the Central Powers that had held since December 16, 1917, and resumed the war against Russia.
War Letters, Ivor Gurney, a selection edited by R.K.R. Thornton by Ivor Gurney, page 246, copyright © J. R. Haines, the Trustee of the Ivor Gurney Estate 1983, publisher: The Hogarth Press, publication date: 1984
(4) Excerpts from a particularly lyrical passage on evening patrols against enemy planes by Willy Coppens, Belgium's greatest ace in World War I with 37 victories, all but two of them observation balloons. Coppens and his fellow pilots would climb to 18,000 to 20,000 feet, search for shapes of enemy planes emerging from the background, and watch a small and distant object suddenly become 'full-sized aeroplanes moving like comets through space. . . . More often than not the fight would be over almost as soon as it began, and the participants miles apart, with no result on either side.'
Flying in Flanders by Willy Coppens, page 142, publisher: Ace Books, publication date: 1971
(5) Excerpt from a February 27, 1918 pro-memoria by Hungarian Count Stephen Tisza, Royal Hungarian Premier of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, delivered to Ottokar Czernin with the request he pass it to Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl. Czernin, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Austria-Hungary's lead representative at the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations with Russia, moved on to negotiations with Romania. With Russia out of the war, Romania's position was untenable.
In the World War by Count Ottokar Czernin, page 288, copyright © 1920, by Harper & Brothers, publisher: Harper and Brothers, publication date: 1920
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