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General Luigi Cadorna, chief of staff of the Italian Army
Painting of a view from an airplane of an attack by the Austro-Hungarian fleet on the Italian coast. The message on the reverse is dated November 2, 1918.
Registration Certificate — draft card — for John Edward Barlow of Columbus, Ohio. Both houses of Congress passed the Selective Service bill on May 16, 1917, and President Wilson signed it into law two days later. All men then eligible — that is, between the ages of 21 and 30, both inclusive — were required to register on June 5, 1917, as Barlow and ten million others did.
Gravestone of an unknown soldier of the Seaforth Highlanders, a Scottish regiment, in Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery. © 2013 by John M. Shea
A woman tramway worker operating a manual switch, changing the direction of her trolley. As men entered or were conscripted into the military, women took on unaccustomed roles.
". . . The feeling at the [Italian] Supreme Command was that Capello had made 'very slight progress' at a heavy price: 5,000 or 6,000 dead and wounded in three days. Cadorna was rattled. He had not expected such fierce resistance. Accusations were flung around, and heads rolled. In keeping with his original plan, Cadorna was minded to halt operations on the middle Isonzo and bolster the Third Army with mobile batteries. Capello promised that if he could keep the 200 medium and heavy guns, he would capture Vodice and Monte Santo. Cadorna let himself be talked around. As soon as Monte Santo had fallen, the guns would be sent to the Third Army." ((1), more)
"The most damaging attack on the drifters took place on 15 May 1917 and led to the largest action of the war in the Adriatic. . . . The three Austrian cruisers when they passed through the line of drifters between Cape Santa Maria di Leuca and Fano were at first assumed in some places to be friendly and no alarm was given. The attack on the drifters began at approximately 3:30 A.M. and continued until after sunrise. The cruisers were armed with 3.9-inch guns and were able to overwhelm the little drifters, armed with six pounders or 57-mm guns. The Austrians at times behaved with considerable chivalry, blowing their sirens and giving the drifter crews time to abandon ship before they opened fire. Some of the drifter men chose to put up a fight, and Skipper J. Watt of the Gowan Lee, which survived in battered condition, was later awarded the Victoria Cross. There had been 47 drifters on the line that night, 14 were sunk and 4 damaged, 3 badly. Seventy-two of the drifter crews were picked up by the Austrians as prisoners." ((2), more)
". . . all male persons between the ages of 21 and 30 inclusive shall be subject to registration in accordance with regulations established by the President: And upon proclamation by the President and other public notice given by him or by his direction stating the time and place of such registration it shall be the duty of all persons of the designated ages, except officers and enlisted men of the army, the navy and the National Guard and Naval Militia while in the service of the United States, to present themselves for and submit to registration under the provisions of this act." ((3), more)
"Officially, the Battle of Arras ended on 17 May — but in reality it ceased at the termination of the last major British attack, which was on 4 May, 1917. For most of the troops, however, the war still had a long, terrible path to follow.On the Arras battlefront the village of Bullecourt finally succumbed to the 58th (2nd/1st London Division on 17 May." ((4), more)
". . . the introduction of meat and sugar rationing had failed to stem the rise in the cost of living. In Paris the purchasing power of the franc had fallen by about 10 per cent since the beginning of the war. Elsewhere in the country the rising cost of food was far outstripping any wage increases; for example, in the Loire-Inférieure, around Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, the cost of food had risen by 169 per cent since the start of the war, wages by only 119 per cent.In January 1917 some 400 women staged an anti-war protest in Limoges, while in May strikes in Paris reportedly involved about 100,000 workers." ((5), more)
(1) Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna had launched his Tenth Battle of the Isonzo on May 12, 1917, and by the 14th it looked to be another failure. Italian deserters had alerted the Austro-Hungarians to the impending attack. With their Russian front quiet after the February Revolution, the Austrians had transferred reinforcements to the west. The defenders held the peaks, and the Italians were attacking, as they had since the beginning of the war, an enemy above them, oftentimes well entrenched. General Luigi Capello's men took Vodice, and captured, then lost, Monte Santo.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 252, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(2) In his Naval History of World War I, Paul Halpern describes the three Austro-Hungarian ships involved in the action of May 15 — Novara, Helgoland, and Saida — as 'the three best Austrian light cruisers that bore the brunt of the war in the Adriatic.' A drifter was a navy version of a trawler, used in mine-sweeping and anti-submarine operations and typically armed with a cannon and depth charges.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, pp. 162–163, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(3) Excerpt from Section 5 of the Selective Service Act, which was passed by both houses of the United States Congress on May 16, 1917 and signed into law by Woodrow Wilson on the 18th. Registration was required between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on June 5th for all those then subject to registration. President Wilson included Sections 5 and 6 of the Act in his Proclamation Establishing Conscription. In his April 2, 1917 address to the joint session of Congress requesting a declaration of war on Germany, the President had stated his opinion that American males should be universally liable to service, and that 500,000 men should be immediately added to the military with 'subsequent additional increments of equal force' depending on need and the resources to train the men. There are slight discrepancies (e.g., 'the ages of 21 and 30, both inclusive') between the text Dos Passos provides and other sources.
Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, page 215, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
(4) The British suffered 159,000 casualties in the 1917 Battle of Arras, a battle that lasted 39 days at an average cost of 4,076 casualties per day. In Cheerful Sacrifice, his history of the battle, Jonathan Nicholls compares Arras to other deadly offensives by the British, noting that the Battle of Arras had the highest daily rate: the Battle of the Somme (1916) 141 days, 2,943 casualties per day; the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele, 1917) 105 days, 2,323 daily casualties; Britain's final offensive of 1918, 96 days, 3,645 casualties per day.
Cheerful Sacrifice: The Battle of Arras, 1917 by Jonathan Nicholls, page 209, copyright © Jonathan Nicholls [1990 repeatedly renewed through] 2011, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2010
(5) With the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive, the Second Battle of the Aisne, and as mutinies broke out in the French army, strikes spread among the civilian population. Among the strikers in Paris were the 'midinettes', Parisian shop girls or seamstresses.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, page 166, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
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