Zweibund — the Dual Alliance — Germany and Austria-Hungary united, were the core of the Central Powers, and here join hands. The bars of Germany's flag border the top left, and those of the Habsburg Austrian Empire and ruling house the bottom right.
Schulter an SchulterUntrennbar vereintin Freud und in Leid!'Shoulder to shoulderInseparably united in joy and in sorrow!
". . . crowned with thousands of half-naked and still bleeding bodies, lying in heaps, tangled, as if in a last embrace in death. Fathers, brothers, sons and grandsons lay as they fell from the bullets or the murderers' yatagans. Heartbeats were still pumping the life-blood out of some slashed throats. Flocks of vultures sat on top of the heap, picking the eyes out of the dead and dying, whose rigid gaze still seemed to mirror terror and inexpressible pain, while carrion dogs sank their sharp teeth into entrails still pulsing with life."
Rafael de Nogales was a Venezuelan mercenary and officer in the Ottoman Army who had taken part in the Turkish attack on the Armenian rebellion in the city of Van. Sairt (Siirt) is a city southwest of Lake Van. Along with the Armenian population that fell victim to the Turkish Government's genocide, the Assyrian population was also targeted. The yatagan was an Ottoman knife or short sword.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, pp. 139, 140, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
1915-06-18, 1915, June, Armenia, Armenian genocide
