A medal suspended on a green triangular ribbon with red stripes, bleeds. The medal reads 'Laeso Militibi' (or 'Militiri') MDCCCCXVIII (1918). Beneath the medal is written 'M?gegy', Another, or One More.The image is based on the Austro-Hungarian wound medal which was instituted under Kaiser Karl whose profile is on the obverse. The red stripes indicate the number of wounds, three in this case. The actual medal reads 'Laeso Militi', To the Wounded Soldier (Latin), and shows the year as MCMXVIII.The card was sent to Franz Moritos, and is postmarked Budapest, Hungary, November 16, 1918.
Black and white postcard with an embossed floral border, and a calendar for 1914. Two girls play at a water trough fashioned from a log, ribbons in their hair, and toy boats floating. On the trough, a poem:"This little card I send, and prayThat round about your path each dayThe light of love may shine alway."E. Hutchinson806J Copyright. Beagles' Postcards © Beagles' Postcards
Calendar from the French magazine Le Petit Journal with scenes including (clockwise from top left) the capture of a German battle flag by Zouaves and Chasseurs à pied, a French artillery crew manning a 75mm. field gun, a dragoon moving into position, a heavier gun firing, entrenched troops, and marines advancing. The calendar includes Roman Catholic holy days, saints days, fête nationale (Bastille Day), and the time of sunrise and sunset. Illustration by L. Bomblec (?).
Children dressed as Allied soldiers run to bring the New Year, 1916. France carries the 1, the United Kingdom (in a kilt) and Belgium — his national roundel on his hat — the 9, Serbia and Russia the 1 of the decade, and Italy the 6. Japan, bearing a flag, hurries to catch up. A folding calendar card for 1916 by G. Bertrand.Reverse: the calendar for 1916Inside:With best wishes for a happy Christmas with love from Wallis
1917 Wedgwood Calendar Tile with the United States Navy Yard in Boston on the face, and the 1917 calendar on the reverse.
1918 YMCA folding calendar card of two child French and American soldiers dancing beneath a ball of mistletoe and the words "With much Love", by Ray or R.A.Y.
"The most important question for us is, what, if any, are the intentions of the Austro-Hungarian Government as regards the Serajevo outrage. Until now I have been unable to find this out, and my other colleagues are in a similar position. The word has now been passed round here not to tell anybody anything.. . . In the Hungarian Parliament Count Tisza has replied to the interpellations of the opposition concerning the Serajevo incident; you are acquainted with his statements. His speech was not clear, and I believe it was intentionally obscure. . . . (The Bourse has now recovered; both the War Minister and the Chief of Staff have gone on leave.) I am loath to express an opinion. In the above-mentioned speech it is to be noted that the possibility of war is not excluded, in the event of the demands of Austria-Hungary in regard to the Serajevo outrage not being complied with." *
". . . the fifth [production Fokker E.I], 5/15, went to Leutnant Kurt Wintgens.. . . Wintgens had previously earned the Iron Cross 2nd Class as an observer over the Eastern Front. He had then trained to be a pilot and demonstrated sufficient skill to be assigned Fokker E.I 5/15, which he flew while with Flieger Abteilungen 67 and 6b. It was with the latter Bavarian unit that Wintgens claimed a Morane-Saulnier L east of Lunéville on July 1, 1915, which went down too far in French lines for witnesses to confirm. . . .Finally, on the 15th [July], Wintgens was credited with a Morane-Saulnier over Schucht—although it is is curiously ironic that the French recorded no casualties between July 14 and 18." *
"On July 15[, 1916], the fight for Delville Wood began, the first of fifteen days' hand-to-hand fighting and ferocious artillery bombardments. The battle started when the 3,000 strong South African Brigade, of which Hugh Boustead was a part, was ordered to capture the wood. 'We moved forward through an orchard in single file, led by the platoon officer,' he later recalled. 'Smith, the Second Lieutenant, got through but the next seven who followed him were shot dead in a circle of a few yards, picked off by clean shooting without a murmur.'" *
"In the middle of July [1917] the brigade was withdrawn for a rest. My battalion encamped between Asiago and Gallio, on the reserve line along Monte Sesemol, to carry out defensive works. We were still within range of enemy artillery fire, but well sheltered in narrow valleys. Occasionally a single enemy reconnaissance machine flew over us at a great height and was quickly chased away by our fighting squadrons from the base at Bassano. Bombing planes never disturbed our rest. So it was that the tragic days through which we had just passed were followed by others almost happy. Men who had been lightly wounded rejoined the battalion, and new arrivals, both officers and men, came to fill the gaps that had been made in the ranks. . . . One very soon began to forget. Life regained its ascendancy. My orderly, who had also been wounded, rejoined from hospital. He once more took up his study of the book on birds and I that of Baudelaire and Ariosto." *
"At midnight on Sunday, July 14th, Paris was awakened by the sound of great guns. At first she thought it an air raid, but the blaze in the eastern sky showed that business was afoot on the battlefield. She waited for news with a solemn mind, for she knew that the last phase had begun of the struggle for her possession. The 'preparation' lasted till four o'clock; but before the dawn broke the Germans were aware of a new feature in the bombardment. The French guns were replying, and with amazing skill were searching out their batteries and assembly trenches, so that when zero hour came the attacking infantry in many parts of the line were already disorganized. Foch's intelligence service had done its work; he had profited by the enemy's bravado, and he read their plans like an open book.About 4 a.m., just at dawn, the German infantry crossed the parapets." *
* Quotation contexts and sources
During the four and half years of the Great War from the summer of 1914 to November 11, 1918, over eight million combatants and six million civilians died. In battle, they were killed by new and increasingly powerful weapons, 70% by artillery fire, and in higher percentages than in Europe's wars of the previous century. Civilians died from starvation, from being shelled and bombed, and from genocidal operations against ethnic minorities.
In the war and its aftermath, the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey were destroyed, and new nations were born and reborn.
New technologies were invented and young ones advanced rapidly - the airplane, poison gas, the machine gun, the tank, flame-throwers, submarines. Industrial production of the technologies, of shells, of bullets, of barbed wire, grew to unprecedented levels.
Societies changed. Women entered the wage labor market to free men up for combat and to meet the production demands of the war. Passports, identity cards, and increased border controls became increasingly common.
When the war itself ended, related wars continued: in Russia, Civil War between the new Bolshevik government and its enemies, both foreign and domestic; in Turkey, war by Greece to seize islands in the Aegean Sea and parts of the mainland of Turkey itself; in Ireland, war for independence from Great Britain.
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of Austria-Hungary, a team of seven conspirators with grenades, pistols and cyanide capsules/tablets, joined the crowds that had turned out to see Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie von Hohenberg. A failed assassination attempt - a grenade that slightly wounded spectators and two in the royal couple's entourage - altered some plans and led to other events. A planned visit to City Hall went ahead, but a decision to visit the victims in hospital necessitating a changed route, a failure to inform the drivers of the change, the lead driver's attempt to back to correct the mistake - put the Archduke's stopped car in front of the most determined of the assassins, the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. He stepped forward, averted his eyes, and fired twice, shooting the Archduke through the throat and his wife through the groin. The couple was dead within an hour. The gun, the bombs, the cyanide Princip took, and some of the conspirators would be traced to Serbia.
The Archduke was not popular in Austria-Hungary, and the reaction to his death was muted. But Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, polyglot nation with populations that wanted to leave the empire. Princip had acted to advance his vision of a union of South Slavs that included Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Vienna, the capital, government officials feared the rise of Serbia, which had been victorious and doubled its size in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.
Initial concerns in other European capitals of an Austro-Hungarian response to the assassination lessened as July passed. In Petersburg, the Russian capital, government officials felt they must support Serbia if Austria-Hungary acted. The French and Russian governments communicated their support of their alliance and mutual commitment to aid the other in the event of war. The government of Great Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente with Russia and France, heard little that alarmed it. In Berlin, capital of the German Empire, which was allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, there was support for a quick and limited military action by Austria-Hungary.
Defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and humiliated in 1908 when it failed its Balkan ally Serbia, and did not prevent Austria-Hungary's incorporation of Slavic Bosnia-Herzegovina, many government officials in Russia felt the country must act in the next crisis when it inevitably arose. Many in the French government wanted to restore the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but feared a Germany that had a population half again as large as that of France, and worked to strengthen its ties with Russia, in part by financing its ally's rapid recovery from the 1905 war. Having seen the creation and rise of the Balkan states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, that had all wrested land and nationhood from the Ottoman Empire, and had come close to eliminating Turkey in Europe, Austria-Hungary feared losing its peoples and territories to these nations and to nations that did not yet exist. Great Britain, with the most powerful fleet in the world, and rule over one quarter of the world's population, but with a small army that was not structured for a European land war, was troubled by Germany's expansion and strengthening of its fleet. Many in the German military thought that war with Russia was inevitable, and that, with the recovery of Russia from the war and revolution of 1915, it should come sooner rather than when Russia had become even stronger. The military also feared a two-front war, facing France to the west, and Russia to the east. The military plan to address this, the Schlieffen Plan, aimed for a rapid defeat of France so that troops could be transported by rail across Germany to face the slowly-mobilizing Russians.
When Austria-Hungary's response to evidence that Serbia had played a role in the assassination came, there was little time for governments to react. Austria-Hungary submitted demands of Serbia that included unconditional acceptance within 24 hours. As European governments learned of the response, and hurried to react, Serbia accepted all by one of Austria-Hungary's demands, that which most impinged upon its sovereignty. The ambassador receiving the response left immediately for Vienna. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and on the next day bombarded Belgrade, its capital.
Russia mobilized its army in support of Serbia, but with a mobilization plan that activated troops facing not only Austria-Hungary but also Germany. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Luxemburg to begin its assault on France. France ordered general mobilization effective August 2, and began executing its plan to attack Germany along their border, through Alsace and Lorraine. On August 3, Germany declared war on France, and requested passage of its troops through Belgium to attack France along its northern border. Belgium, defending the neutrality that France, Germany, and Great Britain had pledged to support, refused. On August 4, Germany invaded Belgium. In Great Britain, where there was significant opposition to the war, the invasion of Belgium shifted the opinion of the public and the government. Britain declared war on Germany.
Across Europe, millions of men were in motion, on trains, horseback, and on foot. France and Britain were bringing troops and laborers from its colonies and the British Commonwealth, France from Algeria, Senegal, and Dahomey, Britain from Egypt and India. Generals had not assembled armies this large before, and had not put them into motion, nor led them into battle. Most generals, most soldiers, most civilians thought the war would end in months, that their their army would be in Berlin, in Paris, in Petersburg, by Christmas, before 1915. Only a few saw this war would be different, and would not end for years.
