Russian troops fleeing a solitary German soldier. The Russian First Army invaded Germany in August 1914, and defeated the Germans in the Battle of Gumbinnen on the 20th. In September the Germans drove them out of Russia in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. In September and October, a joint German, Austro-Hungarian offensive drove the Russians back almost to Warsaw. Illustration by E. H. Nunes.
Image text: Die Russen haben große Hoffnungen auf den Krieg gesetzt, - es ist aber auch eine Kehrseite dabei.The Russians have set high hopes for the war - but there is also a downside to that.Reverse:Kriegs-Postkarte der Meggendorfer-Blätter, München. Nr. 25War postcard of the Meggendorfer Blätter, Munich. # 25
The Kasaba of Kut-el-Amara, Mesopotamia, where a British Indian army was surrounded and besieged by Turkish forces from the end of 1915 until the British surrender on April 29, 1915. Photograph from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War.
Image text: The Kasaba of Kut-el-Amara
Greetings from the aviator city of Gotha! Postcard with a view of the city of Gotha, Germany, of a pilot in a bi-plane, and an Albatros bi-plane (evidently the same plane and pilot) at the Gotha airfield. Field postmarked December 12, 1916 by the Ersatz Flieger Abteilung, the Reserve Flying Section, Gotha.
Image text: Gruß aus der Fliegerstadt Gotha.Doppeldecker vor dem Start.Albatros-Doppeldecker auf dem Flugplatz Gotha.Greetings from the aviator city Gotha.Biplane before starting.Albatros biplane at the airfield of Gotha.
National Chicle Chewing Gum card of Major Raoul Lufbery, an American Ace who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille. Credited with 18 victories, he was killed on May 19, 1918.
Image text: Maj. Raoul LufberyReverse:No. 22Maj. Raoul LufberyEarly in the Great War, Raoul Lufbery, the great American Ace, enlisted as a mechanic in the French Foreign Legion. Later he transferred to the Escadrille Lafayette. Flying and fighting to avenge the death of a friend, he was a model of coolness and courage. He was officially credited with 18 victories. On May 19, 1918, his machine fell to the ground a mass of flames. Raoul Lufbery was dead.This is a series of 48 cardsSky BirdsNational Chicle CompanyCambridge, Mass., U.S.A.Makers of Quality Chewing GumCopr. 1933
"Thursday, May 6, 1915.Between the Carpathians and the Vistula the Russian situation is becoming critical. After very severe fighting at Tarnov, Gorlice, and Jaslo they are hastily retiring behind the Dunajec and Wisloka. The losses are enormous: the number of prisoners is said to be 40,000." ((1), more)
"When the armistice was concluded it was found that of 2,680 British N.C.O.s and privates taken at Kut, 1,306 had died and 449 remained untraced: that is, over 65 per cent. perished. Of the 10,486 Indians, combatants and followers, 1,290 died and 1,773 were untraced. 'These figures,' says the report, 'give the exact measure of the meaning of captivity in Turkey.' Most of the Kut prisoners perished in the terrible crossing of the desert between Samarrah and Aleppo in June." ((2), more)
". . . before Brandenburg could launch his first raid, another daring attack by a single aircraft, an Albatross C VII of Feldflieger Abteilung Nr. 19, on the night of 6/7 May [1917] did reach London. The crew dropped five 10kg bombs between Hackney and Holloway, killing one man and causing two injuries, before returning unmolested to Belgium." ((3), more)
"The sole consolation of those antagonistic weeks was the young American airman, to whom I shall always be grateful for the sunny imperturbability which never seemed in the least shaken by my irritable impatience, my moods of black depression. Almost every day for a month or so he 'blew in' to the flat like a rush of wind from the wings of his own 'plane, and extravagantly insisted upon taking me to the Savoy Grill and numerous theatres—which were at least a pleasant contrast to the back of the Western Front—in the intervals of escorting Gaiety girls to less obvious but doubtless more enthralling entertainments. He also, with characteristic generosity, presented me with innumerable meat coupons, which by that time had become far more precious than all the winking diamonds in the empty luxury shops of deserted Bond Street." ((4), more)
(1) Entry for Thursday, May 6, 1915, from the memoirs of the French Ambassador in Russia, Maurice Paléologue. Commanding a joint German-Austro-Hungarian army, German commander August von Mackensen began his Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive on May 2, 1915 with a bombardment of an estimated 700,000 shells along a 30-mile front. By May 4, the Russian line had broken, and Erich von Falkenhayn, Commander in Chief of the German Army, observed that by then it was obvious the Russians would not be able to halt the offensive 'within an appreciable time.' They would not do so for months.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 336, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(2) Excerpt from an account of the investiture by Turkish forces of a British-Indian army under the command of General Townshend in Kut-el-Amara, Mesopotamia by Edmund Candler, an official British observer with the Relieving Force that was unable to break the Turkish siege. Attempting to seize Baghdad, the British had been defeated 22 miles short of their goal, and fell back to Kut to regroup and await reinforcements. They were instead surrounded by increasingly strong Turkish forces, and all attempts by the relieving force to break the siege failed. The armistice would not come for two and a half years.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. IV, 1916, pp. 143, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) Hauptmann Ernst Brandenburg formed the Englandgeschwader — the England Squadron — in early 1917, preparing to bomb the United Kingdom. The Zeppelin and Schüte-Lanz airships that had done so the previous two years had proven vulnerable to bad weather and newer fighter planes that could reach the altitudes at which the airships operated. Feldflieger Abteilung is a field aviator department, and an 'Albatross' is an Albatros, manufactured by Albatros Flugzeugwerke, the Albatros Aircraft Works. Hackney and Holloway are in north London.
The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War by Ian Castle, page 117, copyright © 2015 Osprey Publishing Ltd., publisher: Osprey Publishing, publication date: 2015
(4) Vera Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), and left the French front to care for her mother. England she found difficult, writing of 'those miserable weeks' after her return to a country 'where no one discussed anything but the price of butter and the incompetence' of domestic help. The German offensives of March and April, Michael and Georgette, immediately followed her departure from France. The United Kingdom's food shortages, not of the severity of those of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and elsewhere, worsened as British shipping began transporting American soldiers to Europe rather than food. Gaiety Girls originated in musical comedies at the Gaiety Theatre in London in the 1890s, but here the term is used more loosely.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, page 432, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
