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Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
Map of northeastern Italy, the border with Austria-Hungary, and the northern Adriatic. Red lines mark railroads and red dots forts.
A Swiss postcard of 'The European War' in 1914. The Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary face enemies to the east, west, and south. Germany is fighting the war it tried to avoid, battling Russia to the east and France to the west. Germany had also hoped to avoid fighting England which came to the aid of neutral (and prostrate) Belgium, and straddles the Channel. Austria-Hungary also fights on two fronts, against Russia to the east and Serbia and Montenegro to the south. Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared neutrality, and looks on. Other neutral nations include Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Japan enters from the east to battle Germany. The German Fleet stays close to port in the North and Baltic Seas while a German Zeppelin targets England. The Austro-Hungarian Fleet keeps watch in the Adriatic. Turkey is not represented, and entered the war at the end of October, 1914; Italy in late May, 1915.
A German Fokker Eindecker flying over the front in the Meuse/Verdun sector.
Zeppelin Kommt! Children play a Zeppelin raid on London. Holding his bomb in the gondola is a doll of the airship's inventor, Count Zeppelin. The other children, playing the English, cower, and the British fleet — folded paper boats — remains in port. Prewar postcards celebrated the imposing airships and the excitement they generated with the same expression, 'Zeppelin Kommt!'. Postcard by P.O. Engelhard (P.O.E.). The message on the reverse is dated May 28, 1915.
"A dull, implacable ennui began to settle on the Allied Army. It was not exactly hopelessness, not cynicism, it was an absence of purpose in their lives, a mechanical focusing down of their minds on to the simplest and the nearest things, the next meal, the last mail from home. The 'awful, horrible, lethargic flies' persisted, and the high dry winds of the early autumn sent the dust billowing through the air. Once more the soldiers began to report sick. Many of them were so weak with dysentery they moved at no faster pace than a crawl, and on the Anzac sector in particular, it was noticed that the former panache had gone . . ." ((1), more)
"On the same day, 29 August, the Second Army tried to capture Mount Rombon, at the northern limit of the Isonzo front. After belatedly occupying Flitsch, the Italians were pinned down by fire from Rombon, towering overhead. Boroević had wisely garrisoned Rombon with the 2nd Mountain Rifles, a regiment that was almost 90 per cent Slovene. The soldiers were fighting to save their nation from Italian domination as well as defending their emperor against traitors. Rombon was a bulwark, guarding over a million Slovenes, and the troops were packed onto a narrow summit, still snowbound in late August." ((2), more)
"The losses of the Russian army have been colossal. From 350,000 men a month in May, June and July, the figure has risen to 450,000 in August. Since the first defeat on the Dunajec the Russian army has thus lost approximately 1,500,000 men." ((3), more)
"Britain's only nominal fighter at that time was the Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus, which had begun full-squadron operations at about the same time as the Fokker E.I was making its combat debut. Among the first of No. 11 Squadron's pilots to directly challenge the Eindeckers was an aggressive Welsh warrior named Captain Lionel Wilmot Brabazon Rees, who with his observer, Flight Sergeant J. M. Hargreaves, was credited with 'driving down' an Eindecker on July 28. On August 31, the duo destroyed an LVG C.II near Achiet le Grand . . ." ((4), more)
"P.S. There are two important items of news. One is that I have just had a birthday — my 25th. The other that we had Zeps here about a fortnight ago. Two bombs were dropped on Chelmsford itself, both on or near the Glosters billetting area. The damage was perhaps 5£ worth. It cured an old lady of muscular rheumatism, indeed it made an athlete, a sprinter of her — she went down the street in her nightgown like a comet or some gravity-defying ghost. One of the bombs was terrifying and must severely have shocked the elm tree which it mostly affected. Our supply guard did a roaring trade in old iron, and if it ever occurs to some wealthy enthusiast to buy up the two bombs in bits for purposes of reconstruction, he will probably get prostrated either by worry or rage; some of the guard may also suffer prostration." ((5), more)
(1) The Allied Campaigns in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had failed. The naval campaign to force the Dardanelles, the April landings at Helles and Anzac Cove, the August 6 landing at Suvla Bay in an attempt to end the stalemate had all failed. The Allies could not advance; the Turks could not drive them into the sea. Bodies lay unburied between trench lines that were in some places only yards apart. Heat, flies, disease, and failure oppressed those men who were still alive. The last major Allied offensive took place on August 29, 1915. It failed.
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead, page 289, copyright © 1956 by Alan Moorehead, publisher: Perennial Classics 2002 (HarperCollins Publications 1956), publication date: 2002 (1956)
(2) The Italians failed in their attempt near the end of the Second Battle of the Isonzo to capture Mount Rombon. Along most of the Italian-Austro-Hungarian front, the Hapsburg army held higher ground including alpine summits. The Second Battle cost Italy 42,000 casualties, Austria-Hungary 47,000.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 111, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(3) Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, writing on August 30, 1915. He had met earlier with General Bielaïev, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army. The German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive — begun on May 2 on a line lying, in part, along the Dunajec River — had broken the Russian line, and the Russian army's retreat extended from the Baltic Sea to Romania. The ambassador also recorded that Russia was producing more shells and rifles, and importing more weapons, and that Moscow lay far from the front, that four armies defended the capital of Petrograd, and that autumn rains would soon slow the German advance. The two cities were likely safe.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 62, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(4) Introduced in early 1915, Dutch aircraft designer Anton Fokker's E.I (Eindecker (monoplane) I) had a single fixed-position machine gun that could fire through the revolving propeller by using an interrupter gear. (An earlier innovation by French pilot Roland Garros had no such gear, and protected the propeller with metal plates that deflected bullets.) The Allies at first struggled to match it, but responded with the French Nieuport, with a machine gun mounted on the upper wing firing over the propeller, and pusher planes, such as the Vickers F.B.5 (Fighting Biplane) Gunbus, with its rear-mounted engine and front-mounted machine gun. The L.V.G. C.II two-seat reconnaissance plane was introduced in late 1915.
The Origin of the Fighter Aircraft by Jon Gutman, page 34, copyright © 2009 Jon Gutman, publisher: Westholme Publishing, publication date: 2009
(5) Postscript to an undated letter by Ivor Gurney, composer, poet, and soldier in the 2nd 5th Gloucesters. As Gurney was born on August 28, 1890, and a Zeppelin raid struck Chelmsford on August 17, the letter is likely from about August 31, 1915.
War Letters, Ivor Gurney, a selection edited by R.K.R. Thornton by Ivor Gurney, page 39, copyright © J. R. Haines, the Trustee of the Ivor Gurney Estate 1983, publisher: The Hogarth Press, publication date: 1984
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