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Stereo card view of wounded Belgian soldiers in an Antwerp hospital attended by a Red Cross nurse. The nurse attends to a severely wounded soldier whose head, face, and hands are swathed in bandages.
The Royal Palace in Bucharest, Romania. A postcard altered to show the German flag flying over the palace.
Photograph of four First World War Italian soldiers. The one on the far right wears a monocle.
Field gun at the city of Verdun memorial statue. © 2015 John M. Shea
British soldiers pushing an ambulance through the mud. A mounted horseman is on the road ahead.
"I've been meaning to write to you again & again—but I've been so vastly bitter that I can produce nothing but gall and wormwood.The war is utter damn nonsense—a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don't do the fighting.Of all the things in this world a government is the thing least worth fighting for." ((1), more)
"Ludendorff eliminated the option of extending the offensive when he informed Mackensen on 24 August [1917] that the Alpine Corps and the Austrian 13th ID would be transferred to Italy at the beginning of September. . . . The decision handed down from OHL caused much frustration among Austro-German commanders on the Romanian Front, beginning with Mackensen. He realized now that he would not be able to add the conquest of Moldavia to his many laurels. He left the front and returned to Bucharest on 23 August. A few days later he recorded his disappointment: ' Under tactically favorable conditions, a very promising operation could have been made which would have had significant political consequences. It is very regrettable that they make me dependent on events on other battlefields.'" ((2), more)
"The officers held their breath. They had not been able to hear the adjutant's words, but from my replies they had understood only too well. They looked at me silently, in anxious suspense. Then the cavalry lieutenant filled up his glass and said:'Here's to the Bainsizza!'His fellow-officers did the same.'To the offensive on the Bainsizza!'It was beginning all over again." ((3), more)
"Word of these limited assaults, their success, their meticulous preparation and, most important, the low casualties suffered by the attackers spread like wildfire throughout the French Army. And as it did, some of the poilu's lost confidence in himself and his leaders began slowly to return. Perhaps, he thought (but only perhaps), the pacifists and their papillons might be wrong. Maybe the thing could be done. Not all at once, to be sure, but perhaps the Germans could be beaten." ((4), more)
"August 27th.—A wet night and day, but quiet. The Division is coming out. We go to the Second Army, Plumer's, to be put in, as usual, where it's sticky—and it's been sticky as blood beyond Ypres." ((5), more)
(1) John Dos Passos, an American ambulance driver serving with the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, with the French army at Verdun, writing to his friend Rummy back in the States. The French offensive begun August 20, 1917 was recapturing territory lost to German forces in the 1916 siege of Verdun. Quoted in World War I and America.
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 409, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
(2) The German Mărăşeşti offensive began on August 6, 1917 in hopes of destroying Romania's army and seizing Moldavia, the only part of the country not occupied by Central Power forces. The German-Austro-Hungarian Oituz offensive began two days later. German General August von Mackensen had commanded a Central Power army in the initial invasion of Romania in 1916. With Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, General, Erich Ludendorff commanded the German army. Bucharest was and remains the capital of Romania. OHL, Oberste Heeresleitung, was German Supreme Army Command.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 231–232, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(3) The end of Emilio Lussu's Sardinian Brigade, an account of a year fighting on the Asiago plateau, on Italy's northern border. In mid-July 1917, Lussu's battalion was withdrawn from the front build defenses. The men recovered, and some of the wounded returned to the battalion. As Lussu wrote, 'One very soon began to forget. Life regained its ascendancy.' He was dining and joking with fellow officers when word came that they were being sent to the Bainsizza Plateau where the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo was underway.
Sardinian Brigade by Emilio Lussu, page 274, copyright © 1939 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., publisher: Knopf, publication date: 1939
(4) The offensive of French commander in chief Henri Pétain to recapture lost territory at Verdun opened with a bombardment on August 11, 1917 that lasted until the 20th, with 3,000 guns firing 3,000,000 shells. The infantry assault began on the 20th and went on until the 26th when Pétain had achieved his objective. In ending the French army mutinies, Pétain had 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. His Verdun offensive met these conditions, and demonstrated how successful they could be. His soldiers responded, seeing that every battle need not be a slaughter. Pétain was recapturing territory lost in the German siege of 1916.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, page 245, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
(5) Entry for August 27, 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. British commander in chief General Douglas Haig had assigned General Herbert Plumer, already commanding the British Second Army, to take command of the II Division from General Hubert Gough who had been unsuccessful in the Third Battle of Ypres, started on July 31.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 379, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
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