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!
"A new front line was dug in Nomansland in the Cambrin sector. Everywhere assembly trenches were dug behind the support line, and gun-emplacements were dug in it. Stores for bridging trenches, ladders for getting out of them, had to be carried. Large and heavy metal cylinders, slung from a pole, that weighed on the shoulders of two men, were carried from Annequin cross-roads to be dug into the front line. The official name for the content of these cylinders was 'accessory.' It was a crime to call it 'gas.' . . . New batteries rolled in behind us, flung up emplacements in the chalky soil, and registered: all with the barest pretence of secrecy. Troop, train, and wagon movements were unconcealed. There was so much to be seen and sought for by both sides . . . And air activity increased greatly on both sides."
Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, describing on September 4, 1915 some of the preparations for the Champagne-Loos-Artois Offensive, the great Anglo-French autumn offensive. With the Russians ongoing retreat since the beginning of the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, Italy's failures in the First and Second Battles of the Isonzo, and French political pressure to drive German forces from occupied territory, French commander Joseph Joffre continued planning for the offensive despite reservations from French and British generals including Noël Édouard de Castelnau and Douglas Haig, who thought the first British use of poison gas might lead to victory.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 146, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1915-09-04, 1915, September, gas, trench, airplane
