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French troops advancing at a run, their red trousers and caps visible. The kepi offered no protection against machine gun fire or artillery shells. The French Adrian helmet was introduced not introduced until 1915.
A battery of French Rimailho 155mm Howitzers, a gun capable of delivering up to 15 rounds per minute. With a range of 6,500 yards, it was obsolete by 1916.
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.
The poet, novelist, and political activist Gabriele d'Annunzio speaking in favor of Italy's entry into the war on the side of the Entente Allies, and against 'Giolittismo' at the Costanzi Theater in Rome, May, 1915. Giovanni Giolitti was five-time Prime Minister of Italy, and opposed intervention in the Great War. Illustration by Achille Beltrame.
British soldiers pushing an ambulance through the mud. A mounted horseman is on the road ahead.
"I fall to the ground on one knee. A sudden jolt goes through my left arm. It's [forced] behind me, bleeding copiously. I want to get up but I can't . . . [Now] my arm shudders with the shock of a second bullet and blood starts to flow from another wound. My knee presses into the ground as if my body is made of lead. My head droops; then then the dull thud of a third bullet rips off another shred of cloth right before my eyes. Unwisely, I look down at my chest and see a deep furrow of red flesh by my left armpit." ((1), more)
"It will be seen that this was a very important and satisfactory day. Only thirty-one 15-inch shells had been fired in all, besides eighty-one British 12-inch and fifty from the corresponding French guns. The bombardment clearly proved the power of the ships anchored at about 12,000 yards, if good observation at right angles to the range was available, to destroy the Turkish guns without undue expenditure of ammunition. It was now possible to sweep the approaches and the entrance to the Straits, which was done on the evenings of the 25th and 26th. Three battleships entered the Straits and completed the ruin of the Outer Forts from inside." ((2), more)
"[Austro-Hungarian Commander in Chief] Conrad, undeterred as always, resumed the offensive on 27 February [1915] by sandwiching his Second Army between the Third Army and the Südarmee. The result was the same: 40 000 of its 95 000 men were captured or lost in the snow and 6000 incapacitated by hostile fire. The 'South Army' was down to one-third of its strength. Nearly 800 000 casualties attested to the severity of the fighting in the east early in 1915." ((3), more)
"The cannon were booming without a pause, and seemingly so near that it was bewildering to look out across empty fields at a hillside that seemed like any other. But luckily somebody had a field-glass, and with its help, a little corner of the battle of Vauquois was suddenly brought up close to us — the rush of French infantry up the slopes, the feathery drift of French gun-smoke lower down, and, high up, on the wooded crest along the sky, the red lightnings and white puffs of the German artillery. Rap, rap, rap, went the answering guns, as the troops swept up and disappeared into the fire-tongued wood; and we stood there dumbfounded at the accident of having stumbled on this visible episode of the great subterranean struggle.. . . the attack we looked on at from the garden at Clermont, on Sunday, February 28th [1915], carried the victorious French troops to the top of the ridge, and made them masters of a part of the village. Driven from it again that night, they were to retake it after a five days' struggle of exceptional violence and prodigal heroism, and are now securely established there in a position described as 'of vital importance to the operations.'" ((4), more)
"Most important of all were the effects upon Greece. We have seen how on February 11 M. Venizelos, in spite of his friendship with the Allies and his deep desire to join them, had refused to be drawn into the war by the futile offer of a British and French division. But the attack on the Dardanelles produced an immediate change. On March 1 the British Minister in Athens telegraphed that M. Venizelos had put forward a proposal that a Greek army corps of three divisions should be sent to Gallipoli. Sir Edward Grey promptly replied that H.M Government would gladly accept this aid, and added that the Admiralty were very anxious that the Greeks should assist with ships as well as troops in the Dardanelles." ((5), more)
(1) Account of his wounding by three bullets on February 25, 1915 by Lieutenant Maurice Genevoix of the 106th Infantry in an assault on the ridge of Les Eparges.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, page 48, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
(2) Excerpt from Winston Churchill's history of World War I. The first Anglo-French naval attack on the Dardanelles was launched on February 19, 1915, and met with some success, severely damaging the outer forts and guns guarding the entrance to the Strait. Bad weather delayed further attacks until the 25th. Breaking through the Straits, forcing them, could allow the Allies seizing the Turkish capital of Constantinople and replacing its government with one more amenable to the Allies.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, pp. 374, 375, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
(3) Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf launched a winter offensive in January 1915 to recapture Galicia and Bukovina, Austria-Hungary's northeastern provinces and territory he had lost in 1914. He also hoped to end the threat of the Russians advancing through the passes of the Carpathian Mountains, which would put them in a position to strike Budapest, the Hungarian capital. The Südarmee was a German-led, primarily Austro-Hungarian army.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 137, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(4) Excerpts from Edith Wharton's 1915 account of her travels behind the French lines. The village of Vauquois was west of Verdun in the Argonne Forest, and of the same sandstone as the forest. The French captured the south side of the Butte de Vauquois in the series of attacks Wharton describes. They soon began tunneling into the sandstone and setting mines beneath the Germans, who responded with their own tunnels. By September, 1918, the two sides had dug tunnels totaling nearly 25 miles, and had exploded 531 mines. [Thanks to woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/2010/08/16/battle-of-the-mines-vauquois-1915-1918/.]
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 64, 66, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
(5) An attempt to reach Constantinople and drive Turkey out of the war, the first Anglo-French naval attack on the Dardanelles was launched on February 19, 1915, and met with some success. By February 26, the outer forts had been reduced, and Allied ships had entered the Strait. The government of Greece was divided, its King pro-German; Prime Minister Venizelos favoring the Entente Allies. Sir Edward Grey was the British Foreign Secretary.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, page 379, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
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