Regimental Command Post. A 1917 German pencil sketch of a farm house and barn in Flanders serving as a regimental command post. I cannot make out the name of the artist.
Regt. Gefechtsstand 7.2 22.? Flandern 1917
"February 28th [1918]—It was a blackbird, not yet in good voice: so Winter has gone though Gerry is coming.—I was immersed in arranging to-morrow's dinner when all preparations were thrown out of gear: there's a whisper of impending attack, so relief is uncertain; and the Mess Corporal has been arrested by the police in Estaires: Mills says he has no head, he had only one glass of 'red wine.'"
Entry for February 28, 1918 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. Even with the breakdown of peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, the Allies expect a massive German offensive on the Western Front bolstered by soldiers redeployed from the east. Estaires, France, is about 80 km southeast of Calais, 30 km south-southwest of Ypres. 'Gerry' is, of course, the Germans.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 449, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1918-02-28, 1918, February, bird, blackbird, attack, Flanders 1917 command post, Leur Victime
