Sculpture of a dead artillery man from The Royal Artillery Memorial, London, England. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Egypt, France, Flanders, Italy1914 † 1919A Royal Fellowship
"On Sunday morning, June 16th [1918], I opened the Observer, which appeared to be chiefly concerned with the new offensive—for the moment at a standstill—in the Noyon-Montdidier sector of the Western Front, and instantly saw at the head of a column the paragraph for which I had looked so long and so fearfully:"ITALIAN FRONT ABLAZEGUN DUELS FROM MOUNTAIN TO SEABAD OPENING OF AN OFFENSIVE""
Excerpt from Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), and left the French front to care for her mother. After the Italian disaster of the Battle of Caporetto, the French and British sent troops to Italy to help prevent another collapse. Brittain's brother Edward, serving with the Royal Artillery, was among them. The Germans hoped to tie down these troops on the Italian Front, and prevent them and Italian troops from being sent to the Western Front where their Noyon-Montdidier Offensive had just been suspended. Brittain knew the code in which the war was reported: "The loss of a 'few small positions,' however quickly recaptured, meant—as it always did in dispatches—that the defenders were taken by surprise and the enemy offensive had temporarily succeeded." It would be nearly two weeks before she would receive word her brother had been killed on June 15 in that opening assault.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, pp. 435–436, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
1918-06-16, 1918, June, Italian Front, Battle of the Piave, Royal Artillery, Royal Artillery Memorial
