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'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' — the Tower of London poppies — each of the 888,246 ceramic poppies representing one serviceman of the British Empire killed in World War I. The installation was a collaboration of artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper. Since November, 2014 the poppies have been installed in other sites in the United Kingdom. Photographed October 3, 2014. © 2014 by John M. Shea
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.'
The conditions British Troops faced in Flanders and Passchendaele.
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 Royal Artillery Memorial, London, England and 'Trenches: St. Eloi' by T. E. Hulme who was killed September 28, 1917 while serving with the Royal Marine Artillery. © 2013 by John M. Shea
"For over a week at the end of September 1917, a handful of German airmen held sway over millions of Londoners. In retrospect, their almost nightly visits were but an intimidation compounded of moonglow, concealing clouds, and the sinister throbbing of aeroplanes multiplied thrice over by the inflamed imagination of a much alarmed population. No other attacks 'remained more vividly in the memory of those who lived through the air raids on England' during the First World War." ((1), more)
"There are many instances of men who, on the eve of going into action, had an unshakable idea, a premonition, that they would not come out alive. Morgan Jones tells of one of his fellow-signallers, an intelligent well-read man. 'He asked me to go for a walk with him in the evening after tea. When we had gone a little way he turned to me and said, 'Look here, '95, I know something is going to happen to me to-morrow. I am not going to get through this business alive. I want you to take charge of my letters to-morrow; I'm expecting some money.' . . . My arguments failed to persuade him not to give room to such gloomy thoughts. When H.Q. Company led the way into the line next day one of the first to be killed was '91 Davies.'" ((2), more)
"At 11.45 D Company was forming up under some machine-gun fire. Two platoons of B arrived in time to advance with D at zero, noon. The only covering fire given was a few ineffectual smoke shells, because it was still thought that there were parties of the 98th Brigade in front, and there was no definite German position. Mann had just seen the other two platoons of B away when he was shot through the throat, and died almost immediately. Coster was shot through the head as his Company was entering a scraggy orchard, enclosed by a scraggier hedge, north of Jerk Farm : it is about 550 yards eastwards of Black Watch Corner. At this early stage the two Companies were losing touch. The extent of hedge, orchard and pill-box, and the consequent obstruction to view and control of movement, was underestimated on the map which had been our only source of information." ((3), more)
"In Britain, questions had begun to be raised about the continuing attrition. Although the Germans were being pushed back a hundred yards here and a hundred yards there, the casualty lists were growing. On September 27 [1917] the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Robertson, wrote to Haig: 'I confess I stick to it more because I see nothing better, and because my instinct prompts me to stick to it, than because of any good arguments by which I can support it.' On the following day Haig wrote in his diary, 'The enemy is tottering.' This was his usual argument for continuing." ((4), more)
"Trenches: St EloiOver the flat slope of St EloiA wide wall of sand bags.Night,In the silence desultory menPottering over small fires, cleaning their mess-tins:To and fro, from the lines,Men walk about as on Piccadilly,Making paths in the dark,Through scattered dead horses,Over a dead Belgian's belly.The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets.Behind the line, cannon, hidden, lying back miles.Before the line, chaos:My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on." ((5), more)
(1) From Monday, September 24 to October 1, 1917, ninety-two German Gotha bombers took part in the Autumn Moon Offensive against England. Fifty-five of the two-engine planes reached England with twenty or fewer making it to London. A handful of Staaken Giant bombers also took part in the raids, with one reaching the capital. On six of the eight nights the bombers struck. A total of 69 people were killed and 260 wounded, some by shell casings from the British defensive barrage. Before the raids had ended, over 300,000 people had taken shelter in the London Underground. The quotation within our quotation from Fredette's excellent The Sky on Fire, is from The War in the Air by Henry Jones.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, page 137, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
(2) Excerpt from the entry for September 25, 1917 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J. C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. Dunn was writing the night before the Battle of Polygon Wood. On September 28, he would write that his battalion had lost one-third of its men in the action, with more than 60 dead. Overall, the British suffered 15,375 casualties in the Polygon Wood battle, an engagement within the Third Battle of Ypres, then two months old.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 393, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) Excerpt from the entry for September 26, 1917 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J. C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. Dunn's entry covers his Battalion's part in the Battle of Polygon Wood. On September 28, he would write that his battalion had lost one-third of its men in the action, and 'more than 60 were dead. Mann was the greatest loss. He was an outstanding figure during the two years to a day he served with the Battalion.' Overall, the British suffered 15,375 casualties in the Polygon Wood battle, an engagement within the Third Battle of Ypres, begun two months before.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 395–396, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) General Sir Douglas Haig began the Third Battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917 to achieve breakthrough of the German line on the Western Front, to reach the English Channel coast, and end the war. Rain was a factor from the beginning. Artillery bombardments destroyed the drainage of the flat terrain. Water filled shell holes, turning shelter into deathtraps. Haig and his Generals Hubert Gough and Herbert Plumer continued to throw British, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian troops into the swamp and against German machine guns.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 363, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(5) Trenches: St Eloi by T. E. Hulme, killed September 28, 1917 by a German shell. Hulme served with the Royal Marine Artillery at Oost-Duinkerke behind Nieuport on the Belgian channel coast.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 51, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
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