A folding postcard from a pencil sketch of an unsuccessful Allied gas attack in Flanders.
Erfolgloser feindlicher Gasangriff in FlandernUnsuccessful enemy gas attack in FlandersOutside:FeldpostkarteNachdruck verboten.Field postcardReproduction prohibited.
". . . [we] marched to Roulers, or, to give it its Flemish name, Roeselare. The town was in the early stages of destruction. There were still shops with goods in them, but the inhabitants were already living in their cellars, and the ties of bourgeois existence were being loosened by frequent bombardment. With the war raging on all sides, a shop window opposite my quarters containing, of all things, ladies' hats, seemed the height of absurd irrelevance. At night, looters broke into the abandoned houses."
German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger had fought in the first days of the Third Battle of Ypres, begun on July 31, 1917, but on August 10 was redeployed to the front southeast of Verdun where he was wounded in a trench raid in which he also lost 10 of his 14 comrades. After a leave, he returned to Flanders where Third Ypres ground on.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 192, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
1917-10-18, 1917, October, Roulers, Roeselare, Flanders snow, Flanders gas attack