'December snow.' Hand-painted watercolor calendar for December 1917 by Schima Martos. Particulates from a smoking kerosene lamp overspread the days of December, and are labeled 'December höra,' 'December snow.' The first five days or nights of the month show a couple at, sitting down to, or rising from a lamp-lit table. The rest of the month the nights are dark, other than four in which the quarter of the moon shows through a window, or Christmas, when the couple stands in the light of a Christmas tree.
December höraDecember snow2½ liter petroleum.
"At Verdun, the high daily death toll led on February 28 [1916] to an emergency conference of the German Crown Prince, commanding the German Fifth Army, and General Falkenhayn. Although surprise had been lost, the Crown Prince commented, the prospects of a 'considerable moral and material victory' remained. What was needed to secure this was the necessary quantity of men and materials to continue the offensive 'not by driblets, but on a large scale'. This was agreed."
German Commander-in-Chief General Erich von Falkenhayn launched the Battle of Verdun on February 21, 1916 with a crushing bombardment from over 1,000 guns. Infantry joined the assault on the 22nd and suffered heavy losses despite ill preparations by the French defenders. On February 28 the week-old siege had only begun.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 233, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
1916-02-28, 1916, February, Verdun, Battle of Verdun, Crown Prince, Falkenhayn,
