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Portrait postcard of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe of the Royal Navy. Appointed Commander of the British Home Fleets on August 2, 1914, Jellicoe was criticized for his leadership of the British fleet during the May 31, 1916 Battle of Jutland in which he failed to decisively defeat the German High Seas Fleet. He was made First Sea Lord later that year. The card was postmarked from Glasgow, Scotland, on January 7, 1915.
King Constantine of Greece in military uniform.
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.
Detail from Cram's 1903 Railway Map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire showing Galicia and Bukovina.
Russian troops fleeing a solitary German soldier. The Russian First Army invaded Germany in August 1914, and defeated the Germans in the Battle of Gumbinnen on the 20th. In September the Germans drove them out of Russia in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. In September and October, a joint German, Austro-Hungarian offensive drove the Russians back almost to Warsaw. Illustration by E. H. Nunes.
"During the night the British heavy ships were not attacked, but the Fourth, Eleventh and Twelfth Flotillas, under Commodore Hawksley and Captains Charles J. Wintour and Anselan J. B. Sterling, delivered a series of very gallant and successful attacks on the enemy, causing him heavy losses.It was during these attacks that severe losses in the Fourth Flotilla occurred, including that of Tipperary, with the gallant leader of the Flotilla, Captain Wintour. He had brought his flotilla to a high pitch of perfection, and although suffering severely from the fire of the enemy, a heavy toll of enemy vessels was taken, and many gallant actions were performed by the flotilla. . . .At daylight, June 1st [1916], the battle fleet, being then to the southward and westward of the Horn Reef, turned to the northward in search of enemy vessels and for the purpose of collecting our own cruisers and torpedo-boat destroyers . . . I was reluctantly compelled to the conclusion that the High Sea Fleet had returned to port." ((1), more)
"Friday, June 2, 1916.The attitude of the Greek Government has become impossible; the fact of its collusion with the Bulgarian Government is obvious. The personal complicity of King Constantine cannot be doubted.I have had a long talk with Sazonov on this subject, and he has empowered me to telegraph to Paris that he approved here and now of any measures France and England may think necessary to take against Greece.Between the Adige and the Brenta the Italians are beginning to recover. The Austrian offensive has been almost held up." ((2), more)
". . . the French gendarmerie took over the railway installations, all postal and telegraph services and established a censorship of the newspapers published in Salonika. Milne, unwilling to advertise his disapproval of Sarrail's actions, put units of the British military police under the command of the French gendarmerie.Salonika thus became an occupied city, as effectively under alien military administration as Brussels or Warsaw or Belgrade; and, not unnaturally, there were demonstrations against the Entente Powers in Athens. But the French had not yet finished chastening the Greeks for the Rupel incident. A blockade was imposed on all the Greek ports, and a squadron of Allied warships, under a French admiral and with one of Sarrail's brigades aboard, sailed from Salonika from the Cyclades to put pressure on the government in Athens. The French and British demanded demobilization of the Greek Army, new elections, the replacement of the allegedly pro-German Government of Skouloudis by a 'neutral' ministry and the dismissal of police officials who had tolerated insults to the Allied diplomatic representatives. With battleships and cruisers anchored in the bay of Melos and thus able to appear off Athens at eight hours' notice, the Greeks gave in." ((3), more)
"At dawn on 4 June [1916] Brusilov launched his four field armies against the enemy units opposite him around Lutsk in the Bukovina. Artillery fire and infantry assaults were coordinated, a rare phenomenon in the Russian Army. Reserves were concentrated (and hidden) at each of the major points of attack, ready to exploit any breakthroughs. Outnumbered by almost 132 000 men at the critical centre of the front, Conrad's position at Ocna crumbled like a pastry shell. By the evening of 4 June, the Russians had overrun the first three lines of trenches and punched a gaping hole 20 miles wide and 5 miles deep into the front of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's Fourth Army. In 3 days Brusilov took 200 000 prisoners, enough to man two armies." ((4), more)
"The Russian bombardment continued for most of 4th June [1916]. The next day, infantry attack followed—preceded by 'testing' patrols. In practice, the Austro-Hungarian defence had already been ruined. Two-thirds of the available troops were put in the front position—the three foremost trenches, in a belt perhaps a kilometre in depth. There were huge dug-outs in this belt that could sustain the heaviest artillery. But two great errors had been made: the Russian lines had been allowed to within seventy-five paces of the Austrian trenches, and the reserves did not emerge from their dug-outs until the last moment. Not surprisingly, the defenders of the second trench and the reserves in their dug-outs, and the Russians—pumping reserves in fast from their own dug-outs only a few hundred yards away—came up to the dug-out mouths only shortly after the bombardment had ended. The Austrian dug-outs were therefore traps, not strong-points: each a miniature Przemyśl." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the June 24, 1916 official report of Admiral John Jellicoe to the British Admiralty on the May 31st Battle of Jutland between the British Grand Fleet and German High Sea Fleet. Although battle squadrons had first exchanged fire at 3:48 PM on the 31st, the battle fleets were not engaged until 6:00 PM. Dusk and smoke concealed ships on both sides, but allowed the smaller German fleet to slip away and return to port, dashing Jellicoe's hopes to re-engage on June 1. Flotillas of destroyers used their small-caliber guns and torpedoes to damage the fleeing Germans through the night, but at the cost of several destroyers including Tipperary.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. IV, 1916, pp. 176-177, 178, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Friday, June 2, 1916. On May 26, 1916, a German-Bulgarian force advanced on Fort Rupel near the Bulgarian border in northeast Greece. Initially resisting, the garrison was ordered by the Greek Government to surrender the fort. The loss of this defensive barrier in ostensibly neutral Greece threatened the Allied forces in Salonica, and made blatant the pro-German position of Greek King Constantine and his Government. The Entente Allies would move against the Greek Government the next day. Sergei Sazonov was the Russian Foreign Minister. After being driven back for two weeks by the Austro-Hungarian Asiago Offensive, the Italians were slowing the invaders.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 268, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(3) In 'the Rupel incident', the garrison of Fort Rupel near the Bulgarian border in northeast Greece surrendered the fort, on orders of the Greek Government, to a German-Bulgarian force. The loss of this defensive barrier in ostensibly neutral Greece threatened the Allied troops in Salonica, and made blatant the pro-German position the Greek Government. On June 2, 1916, the Russian Foreign Minister told the French Ambassador to telegraph Paris that the French and British, Russia's Entente Allies, should take whatever means they considered necessary to deal with the Greeks. Brussels, Belgium had been occupied by German forces in the first days of the war, and Warsaw in the advance into Russia in 1915. Austro-Hungarian troops took Belgrade, capital of Serbia, on October 9, 1915. French General Maurice Sarrail commanded Allied forces in Greece; Lt. General George Milne was the commander of British forces. Athens was, and remains, the capital of Greece.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, pp. 68, 69, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(4) At the Chantilly Conference in December, 1915, the Allies had agreed coordinated offensives in the summer of 1916. The French and British were planning an offensive on the Somme River when German Commander Erich von Falkenhayn began the battle of Verdun on February 21, 1916, requiring continuous French reinforcements in the sector, an extension of the British line to relieve the French, and the delay of the Allied offensive. On May 15, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf launched his Asiago Offensive which threatened to break through Italian defenses to reach the country's northeastern plain and cut off the Italian Army. Preparing for a July attack, Russian General Aleksei Brusilov was willing and able to respond to urgent Italian requests for an offensive against Austria-Hungary by advancing the date of his Brusilov Offensive, one of the war's most successful. The Bukovina, in Austria-Hungary, was one of the primary battlegrounds for Russian and Austro-Hungarian forces.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 209, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(5) Russian General Alexsei Brusilov prepared for his great Offensive in ways other Russian generals had not. In 1916 Russian industry had risen to the production levels demanded by the war, and had adequate shells, cannons, rifles, and ammunition for its artillery and infantry. In the month before the attack, the Russians had extended saps (trenches) to within seventy-five paces of the Austro-Hungarian front trenches, and had dug shelters for reinforcements. Rather than a long bombardment preparing the way for troops concentrated on a short front to achieve a break-through at a single point, Brusilov began with a short bombardment, and followed with four points of attack on a broad, 20-mile front. Aware of the Russian preparations, the complacent Austro-Hungarians did little to counter them. By the end of June 5th, the Russians had broken through, the Austro-Hungarian troops fleeing before them. Przemyśl, on the San River, Austria-Hungary's greatest fortress in Galicia, had been taken by the Russians in March, 1915 and held for three months.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, page 249, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
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