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Postcard of a building on Rue du Faubourg du Temple destroyed in the Gotha bomber raid on Paris the night of March 11, 1918. The street runs between the 10th and 11th arrondissements, northeast of the city center.
Panorama of the Western theater of war 1914/15 from Compiègne to Arras, with the North Sea coast in the distance.
The exploding shell of a French 75 mm. field gun blasts the crown from the tree of the Central Powers as the axe of Justice strikes its trunk. A background map shows British towns on the English Channel and Belgian and French cities shelled by German forces burning. A 1915 French postcard.
Headstones from Martinpuich Cemetery, Martinpuich, France: for J. Reid of the Royal Field Artillery, died October 6, 1916, and R.E. Bullows of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, died November 11, 1916. Martinpuich was in the Somme sector. © 2013 John M. Shea
Tinted postcard of Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Made Commander-in-Chief of all Allied forces on the Western Front April 3, 1918, he led the Allies to victory in November.
"On March 11 [1918] French intelligence reported that the Germans had changed their codes for encrypting wireless transmissions. In the past the Germans had changed their codes about a dozen days before an offensive." ((1), more)
"His Majesty commands:(1) That the Michael Attack take place on 21st March. First penetration of the hostile position 9:40 a.m.(2) The first great tactical objective of Crown Prince Rupprecht's Group of Armies will be to cut off the British in the Cambrai salient and, north of the river Omignon and as far as the junction of that river with the Somme, to capture the line Croisilles-Bapaume-Péronne . . . Should the progress of the attack by the right wing be very favourable it will push on beyond Croisilles. The subsequent task of the Group of Armies will be to push on towards Arras-Albert, left wing fixed on the Somme near Péronne, and with the main weight of the attack on the right flank to shake the English front opposite Sixth Army and to liberate further German forces from their stationary warfare for the advance. All divisions in rear of Fourth and Sixth Armies are to be brought forward forthwith in case of such an event." ((2), more)
"Three Zeppelins set out for England the following afternoon [March 13, 1918]. Over the North Sea, they were recalled to their bases in north Germany because of high winds. Already within sight of the English coast, one airship commander defied the order. He waited offshore for forty minutes for complete darkness, and then attacked West Hartlepool from above 16,000 feet. The unsuspecting town was brightly lighted. Many bombs found their mark, and nearly fifty people were killed or injured." ((3), more)
"After lunch his sergeant confronted [the Trench Mortar Officer] with a pile of army forms. 'There is one form here, sir, that asks how many English, French, Russian, Belgian and Italians there are in the battery.' 'What about Germans?' 'They are not officially on the strength, sir.' 'Well,' concluded the TMO with dignity, 'please inform the Staff captain that this is a battery, and not a foreign opera company.' The sergeant placed the pile of forms on the table. 'Those must be filled in by 4 o'clock, sir.' An ominous silence. 'Hand me the whiskey' commanded the officer in funereal tones. 'Do not disturb me till 4 o'clock. If by that time I have not mastered these forms, you will find my body hanging from the roof.' 'The roof is not too strong, sir.'" ((4), more)
"At the meeting on the 15th [March, 1918], since this solution on the part of the two governments was still causing me much anxiety, I asked to be heard, and I pointed out the defects existing in the organization of the Allied command at the very moment the coalition was about to engage in a defensive battle of the utmost importance and which all were agreed could not be far off. . . .Under this circumstances now existing, this [centralizing] organ would have been the commander of the Allied General Reserve, had it been formed. In the absence, however, of this Allied instrument, it was much to be feared that the French and the British armies, on which the enemy's blows were about to fall, would each be governed by considerations of its own particular interests and dangers and would lose sight of the common weal, although that was more important than anything else. In a word, the Allied battle might be seriously compromised, under existing conditions, because unity of view and of action would be lacking." ((5), more)
(1) Since the Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917, and the armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, an armistice that ultimately resulted in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Entente Allies had been anticipating a great German offensive bolstered by troops recently redeployed from the Eastern Front. The order for the offensive, Operation Michael, was drawn up on March 10, and issued on the 12th.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 429, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
(2) Beginning of the order by German Commander in Chief General Paul von Hindenburg approved by Kaiser Wilhelm on March 12, 1918. The Michael Attack was Operation Michael that Germany launched on March 21, 1918. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria commanded the Second and Seventeenth German Armies, two of the three in the offensive.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, page 765, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
(3) German Zeppelins had bombed England since 1915, but their effectiveness was diminished as British defenses improved, and their role was increasingly replaced by Gotha and other bombers. In early March, 1918 these were attacking Paris and other targets on the Western Front in preparation for Operation Michael, launched on March 21, 1918. Hartlepool, on the Yorkshire coast in northeast England, had been bombarded on December 16, 1914 by a German cruiser force.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, pp. 193–194, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
(4) Excerpt from 'The Trench Mortar Officer' (TMO) by Adrian Consett Stephen, an Australian serving in the Royal Field Artillery, killed in action on March 14, 1918 at Zillebeke near Ypres, Belgium. 'The Trench Mortar Officer' was one of many pieces that Stephen wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 26, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(5) The offensives of 1917 — the British at Arras and Passchendaele, the French Nivelle Offensive and subsequent army mutinies, the Italian Battles of the Isonzo and the destruction of their Second Army in the Austro-German Battle of Caporetto — and the Bolshevik Revolution and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that led to Russia leaving the war — left Allied commanders anticipating a German offensive with troops released from the Eastern Front. As he had at a January 30—February 2, 1918 meeting of Allied prime ministers at Versailles, French General Ferdinand Foch, our author, at a March 13 through 15 conference in London again made his case for a general reserve under a unified command that could take advantage of opportunities to seize the offensive.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 252, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
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