Captains and sailors of the German battleships Goeben and Breslau signing up for the Turkish Navy. After shelling Allied ports and sinking Allied ships in the Mediterranean, the two ships had entered Turkish waters at the Dardanelles on August 8, 1914. Claiming the ships and their crews as Turkish allowed Turkey to maintain a veil of neutrality for a time. This was dropped on October 29 when the ships sank a Russian gunboat in the Crimean Black Sea port of Odessa. The postcard's caption compares the captain to Leonidas who died leading the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 during Xerxes's invasion in the Second Persian War.
Image text: Gli eroi della Goeben e della BreslauThe heroes of the Goeben and Breslau - Desideran signori?- Il testamento Vogliam dettar.- Sono a' vosti comandi, Nobili cuori! All'epico cimento Leonida del mar, sarete grandi!- Si; lo giuriam per tutti i patrii avelli: In fondo . . . scapperem ai Dardanelli.- What do you wish, gentlemen?- We want to dictate our wills.- I am at your service, Noble hearts! In this epic ordeal, Leonidas of the sea, you will be great!- Yes, we swear it on the graves of our countrymen: In the end … we will escape to the Dardanelles.
Embossed postcard of the flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand, the first flag of New Zealand, used until the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.
Image text: Neuseeland-Nouvelle-ZélandeNew Zealand (German and French)Reverse:Logo: HGZ & Co. No. 11658. Dép.
Austrian Mountain Rangers 'resting in the shade of southern flora' on the Italian front. The card was postmarked from Berlin on January 5, 1916.
Image text: Reverse:Vom Italienischen KriegsschauplatzRast im Schallen der südlichen Flora.From the Italian frontRest in the shade of southern flora.
German postcard map of the Romanian theater of war, with map labels in Bulgarian added in red. From north to south the labels are Russia, the Austro-Hungarian regions of Galicia and Bukovina, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and, along the Black Sea, the Romania region of Dobruja. Romania's primary war aim was the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian region of Transylvania, with its large ethnic Romanian population.
Image text: Vogelschaukarte des rumänischen Kriegschauplatzes.German map labels:Vogelschaukarte des rumänischen Kriegschauplatzes.RuslandGalizienBukowinaUngarnRumaniaBulgariaDobrudschaBulgarian overprint in red:на румънския театър на войнатаБърд око на картата на румънския театър на войната.Лтичи погдедъъ Бърд око на картата на румънския войната театърРусияГалисияБуковинаУнгарияРумънияБългарияДобруджаA 498 E.P. & Co. A.-G. L.
Fingers of Fate: tightening grip on Kaiser Wilhelm by King George V of Great Britain, Wilson of the United States, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, President Poincare of France, King Albert of Belgium, Emperor Taishō of Japan. Russia is conspicuously absent dating the postcard after the Bolshevik seizure of power and cease fire on the eastern front.
Image text: Fingers of Fate"The Tightening Grip"British Empire, U.S.A., Italy, France, Belgium, JapanH 202.S; logo: Rotary PhotoReverse:Illegible
"'We were lunching yesterday on deck,' my daughter told me, 'when I saw two strange-looking vessels just above the horizon. I ran for the glasses and made out two large battleships, the first one with two queer, exotic-looking towers and the other quite an ordinary-looking battleship. We watched and saw another ship coming up behind them and going very fast. She came nearer and nearer and then we heard guns booming. Pillars of water sprang up in the air and there were many little puffs of white smoke. . . . The captain told us that the two big ships were Germans which had been caught in the Mediterranean and which were trying to escape from the British fleet. He said that the British ships were chasing them all over the Mediterranean, and that the German ships are trying to get into Constantinople." ((1), more)
"The mates we left behind back in the ravine, they're still on Gallipoli. Colonel Malone is too. When there was a roll call of the Wellingtons, after the battle, they reckoned there were only forty-seven fit men left of all the 700 who went up Chunuk Bair on the morning of August the eighth.I got taken off Gallipoli two days after, on the tenth of August. I never was in any other war. That one was enough for me. It never did anything, never gained nothing, but I been thinking about it ever since, all the years of my life, most of all that day on Chunuk Bair." ((2), more)
"More than 100 wounded came during the night. They have been arriving in numbers all day and in the late evening were still being brought in. We have all been working in tremendous haste; most of the bandaging has been left to our hospital-orderlies; we, the surgical staff, have been cleaning, operating, dressing. Austrians of all ranks were among the wounded. All night long, the operating-table was occupied: eight major operations had been performed before daylight." ((3), more)
"Three assaults were made under a glowing August sun. The Germans answered each with counterattacks of their own. The battle of Doaga ended in a bloody stalemate. French Major Caput, reporting to Berthelot, summed up the fighting of 10 August [1917]: ' The combat has been very severe, 5000 have been killed and wounded, a true battle.' Postwar calculations have established that Romanian casualties alone on 10 August were 4,795, including 1,200 prisoners. Virtually all these losses were suffered by the 5th ID and the 9th ID. The latter's 9th Rifle Regiment was reduced to seven officers and 400 men in the line. For the Romanians, 10 August stands out as one of the bloodiest days of the Battle of Mărăşeşti." ((4), more)
"I see that we must strike a balance. We are at the end of our reserves. The war must be ended." ((5), more)
(1) The daughter of Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to Turkey, traveling from Venice to Constantinople with her husband and three daughters, witnessed the approach of the German battleships Goeben and Breslau, pursued by the British light cruiser Gloucester, to the Dardanelles leading to Constantinople. Turkey would not enter the war until the end of October, but its welcome of the ships greatly worried the Entente Allies.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. II, 1914, pp. 94, 95, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Excerpt from an interview by Maurice Shadbolt of Corporal Charlie Clark who served on Gallipoli with the New Zealand Wellington Battalion. Their mission on August 8, 1915, was to take the summit of Chunuk Bair, which they did after an Allied bombardment. Men who reached the summit could see the Narrows of the Dardanelles, and might have had the hope the attack would continue across the peninsula and cut off the Turks. Looking to the north, they could see the British troops who had landed at Suvla Bay the night of August 6, who did little against a thin Turkish defense. Clark was wounded in the leg by a Turkish bullet that left a wound so big he couldn't cover it with his hand. The ravine to which Clark dragged himself early in the day soon filled with 200 wounded with no water, no medical attention, under bombardment, and with little chance to make their way down the hill.
Voices of Gallipoli by Maurice Shadbolt, page 67, copyright © 1988 Maurice Shadbolt, publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, publication date: 1988
(3) Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross, advancing through Austria-Hungary in the Brusilov Offensive, and writing on August 10 (July 28 Old Style), 1916.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, pp. 219-220, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(4) The German Mărăşeşti offensive began on August 6, 1917 in hopes of destroying Romania's army and seizing Moldavia, the only part of the country not occupied by Central Power forces. The village of Doaga, south of Mărăşeşti, was taken the next day. General Henri Berthelot led the French Military Mission to Romania which trained, re-armed, and supplied the Romanian army after its defeat in 1916.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 218–219, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(5) German Kaiser Wilhelm II on August 10, 1918, two days after the devastating Allied advance in the Battle of Amiens. His Commander, Erich Ludendorff, who was thought be some of his staff to be on the verge of nervous collapse, would refer to the 8th as 'the black day of the German Army.'
World War I in Outline by B.H. Liddell Hart, page 255, publisher: Westholme Publishing (originally Faber and Faber), publication date: 2012 (originally 1936)
