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View from Chemin des Dames looking across the valley of the Ailette River towards Laon Cathedral in the city of Laon, France and barely visible in the distance. The Chapelle St. Berthe is down the slope in the near distance. Laon was one of the first-day objectives of French commander-in-chief Robert Nivelle's offensive in the the Second Battle of the Aisne. © 2014 by John M. Shea
A crazed Great Britain urges a broken Russia, a nose-picking, dozing Italy, and a sullen France to continued offensives in a German postcard imagining the November 6, 1917 Entente Ally Conference of Rapallo after the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo. The Battle, also known as the Battle of Caporetto, was a disastrous defeat for Italy and the first Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Isonzo Front. The Austrians had significant German support.
Italy's armed forces at the ready in a 1915 postcard. In the foreground the artillery, infantry, an Alpine soldier (in feathered hat), and a Bersaglieri (in plumed headgear). Behind them are a bugler and lancer; in the distance marines and colonial troops. The Italian navy is off shore, an airship and planes overhead. On the reverse are the lyrics of a patriotic Italian March by Angelo Balladori, lyrics by Enrico Mercatali. It ends with a call to the brothers of Trento and Trieste, Austro-Hungarian territory with large ethnic Italian populations.
Wooden cigarette box carved by Г. САВИНСКИ (?; G. Savinskiy), a Russian POW. The Grim Reaper strides across a field of skulls on the cover. The base includes an intricate carving of the years of war years, '1914' and, turning it 90 degrees, '1918.'
From a series on the Great War, a 1916 map on the the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, Italian commander Luigi Cadorna's offensive in August of the same year. The Italians crossed much of the Isonzo, and took Gorizia. The Austro-Hungarians continued to hold high ground to the east. © The Great War
"The Chemin des Dames offensive was even more striking [than that at Verdun]. A six-day-and-night artillery bombardment by some 2,000 guns preceded the attack, with a field gun every 16 metres, a medium gun every 12.20 metres and a heavy gun every 82 metres along a 14-kilometre front. At 5.15 a.m. on the 23rd [October 1917] three army corps launched the infantry attack, accompanied by sixty-eight tanks. The infantry advanced in serried ranks, one unit following another. The Germans were first forced back behind the Ailette River and then compelled to withdraw from the whole Chemin des Dames position. The logistics for this attack included 400 trains each of thirty wagons carrying 120,000 shells. The casualties were small, 2,241 killed, 1,602 missing and 8,162 wounded." ((1), more)
"Between 8 and 9am groups of heavily armed Sturmtruppen advanced, supported by a close rolling barrage. They quickly infiltrated the Italian lines in order to destroy or capture artillery and command centres. During the first day many Italian artillery batteries did not fire a shot because they were awaiting orders. The utter confusion among the Italian defenders caused by a combination of incompetent officers, lack of communication and the devastating impact of the poison gas clouds amazed even the Germans. Halfway through 24 October large units of the Italian Second Army at both ends of the pincer were throwing down their arms, surrendering or running away in headlong retreat. The initial assault had achieved complete success." ((2), more)
"During the morning of the 25th, an image of disaster emerged from the information reaching the Supreme Command: breakthroughs all along the front; morale collapsing; thousands of men making their way to the rear. The first towns west of the mountains were already threatened. Defence on the hoof was not working. Cadorna's best if not only chance of avoiding catastrophe was to pull back the Second Army to a line far enough west to regroup before the enemy reached them. Capello advised a general retreat to the River Torre or the Tagliamento. When Cadorna disagreed, Capello took himself off to hospital in Padua. Next morning, he offered to return; Cadorna declined: he had enough on his plate without an ailing and probably sulking Capello. Where the two men saw eye to eye was in blaming many regiments for not doing their duty." ((3), more)
"Everywhere we saw traces of death; it was almost as though there wasn't a living soul anywhere in this wasteland. Here, behind a disheveled hedge, lay a group of men, their bodies covered with the fresh soil that the explosion had dropped on them after killing them; there were two runners lying by a crater, from which the acrid fumes of explosive were still bubbling up. In another place, we found many bodies in a small area: either a group of stretcher-bearers or an errant platoon of reservists that had been found by the center of a ball of fire, and met their end. We would surface in these deadly places, take in their secrets at a glance, and disappear again into the smoke." ((4), more)
"The momentum of the Austro-German offensive rapidly increased. Before morning of the 25th [October 1917], the Italians had been driven back to their boundary line and were preparing to evacuate the Bainsizza Plateau. More than 30,000 prisoners had been taken by the Germans.By the 26th, the Austro-Germans, with stunning rapidity, had expelled the Italians from the Carso Plateau and were within sight of the Plain of Venice; the number of prisoners had now increased to 60,000 and the captured guns to 450. On the 27th, the German troops had forced their way into the burning town of Cividale on the Venetian Plain.The whole Italian front, from the Alps to the Adriatic, was now wavering." ((5), more)
(1) Chemin des Dames, between Soissons and Reims, France, had been the site of the disastrous Nivelle Offensive in April, 1917. In May and June nearly half the French Army mutinied, refusing to take part in pointless and suicidal attacks. In ending the mutinies, French commander in chief Henri Pétain promised his army that he would make greater use of artillery and other weapons before any infantry assault, and that his objectives would be clear and limited. Beginning in August he demonstrated these principals in actions supporting the British in the Third Battle of Ypres and at Verdun where a six-day bombardment by 3,000 guns firing 3,000,000 shells preceded the attack. The October 23 Malmaison Offensive, named for an old fort retaken by the French in the attack, ended with a German retreat and the capture of the heights of Chemin des Dames.
Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-18 by Anthony Clayton, page 149, copyright © Anthony Clayton 2003, publisher: Cassell, publication date: 2005
(2) After suspending the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo on September 12, 1917, Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna, concluded that his army was in no condition to resume the offensive until the spring, and that the Austro-Hungarian forces arrayed against him would not attack. Although his told his commanders to put their forces on the defensive, General Luigi Capello, commander of the Second Army, did not do so, hoping to launch a further attack. On October 24, German and Austro-Hungarian forces launched the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, the Battle of Caporetto, using 'Hutier tactics' first used in the German capture of Riga in Russia. German General Oskar von Hutier trained his troops for specialized actions: initial infiltration and advance by small groups bypassing enemy strong points, specialized groups to neutralize those defenses including machine gun nests and artillery positions, and 'mopping up' forces to consolidate the advance. Capello's Second Army found the enemy both before and behind it, and began to collapse.
Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign: The Italian Front 1915–1918 by John MacDonald with Željko Cimprić, page 163, copyright © John MacDonald, 2011, 2015, publisher: Pen and Sword Books, publication date: 2011
(3) After suspending the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo on September 12, 1917, Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna, concluded that his army was in no condition to resume the offensive until spring, and that the Austro-Hungarian forces arrayed against him would not attack. Although he told his commanders to put their forces on the defensive, General Luigi Capello, commander of the Second Army, did not do so, hoping to launch a further attack. On October 24, German and Austro-Hungarian forces launched the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, the Battle of Caporetto, using 'Hutier tactics' first used in the German capture of Riga in Russia. German General Oskar von Hutier trained his troops for specialized actions: initial infiltration and advance by small groups bypassing enemy strong points, specialized groups to neutralize those defenses including machine gun nests and artillery positions, and 'mopping up' forces to consolidate the advance. Capello's Second Army found the enemy both before and behind it, and began to collapse.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 311, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(4) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger on the battlefield over which the Third Battle of Ypres was fought. The Canadian Corps attacked on October 26, 1917, advancing 500 yards, and German wounded coming to the rear were making 'exaggerated and unclear statements about a British advance' (p. 197). Jünger was sent to get clear information, noted the new front line on his map, and returned under artillery and machine gun fire, encountering more wounded as he returned across the battlefield he describes. The Canadians suffered 3,400 casualties in the attack. The British Third Battle of Ypres was the German Second Battle of Flanders.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 198, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(5) In eleven Battles of the Isonzo from June 23, 1915 to September 12, 1917 the Italian army under the command of Luigi Cadorna had crossed the border into Austria-Hungary, crossed the Isonzo River, and taken plateaus and mountain peaks, only to look on more peaks beyond. Though they had nearly broken the defending forces, they had done so at great cost to themselves. When German and Austro-Hungarian forces attacked on October 24, 1917 in their first offensive of the Isonzo, the Italian Second Army, and then the entire front, collapsed.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, pp. 344–345, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
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