Wooden cigarette box carved by Г. САВИНСКИ (?; G. Savinskiy), a Russian POW. The Grim Reaper strides across a field of skulls on the cover. The base includes an intricate carving of the years of war years, '1914' and, turning it 90 degrees, '1918.'
ПДМЯТЬ ВОИНЬ 1914-18To the memory of the soldiers 1914-18Reverse:19141918Г. САВИНСКИ (?)G. Savinskaya
"There are many instances of men who, on the eve of going into action, had an unshakable idea, a premonition, that they would not come out alive. Morgan Jones tells of one of his fellow-signallers, an intelligent well-read man. 'He asked me to go for a walk with him in the evening after tea. When we had gone a little way he turned to me and said, 'Look here, '95, I know something is going to happen to me to-morrow. I am not going to get through this business alive. I want you to take charge of my letters to-morrow; I'm expecting some money.' . . . My arguments failed to persuade him not to give room to such gloomy thoughts. When H.Q. Company led the way into the line next day one of the first to be killed was '91 Davies.'"
Excerpt from the entry for September 25, 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. Dunn was writing the night before the Battle of Polygon Wood. On September 28, he would write that his battalion had lost one-third of its men in the action, with more than 60 dead. Overall, the British suffered 15,375 casualties in the Polygon Wood battle, an engagement within the Third Battle of Ypres, then two months old.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 393, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1917-09-25, 1917, September, death, premonition, Polygon Wood, Battle of Polygon Wood, Third Battle of Ypres, Third Ypres
