A postcard welcoming Samoa to the German Empire. Samoa was a German protectorate from 1900 until its seizure by New Zealand on August 29, 1914. The German East Asia Squadron reached the islands on September 14, 1914, but Vice Admiral von Spee concluded he would not be able to hold the islands."Talofa" is the Samoan equivalent of "Aloha".
Image text: Talofa Samoa - Aloha (Samoan greeting)"Ausstellung Samoa", unsere neuen LandsleuteGreetings,Samoa!"Samoan Exhibition", our new countrymen
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.
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and some of his troops.
Image text: Reverse:'Ste Russia' - 32 bis, rue Lacépede, Paris V. (Bogdanova)
A photo postcard of a German trench view of barbed wire and a dead patrol. Dated February 22, 1916, and field postmarked the next day, the message is from a soldier to his uncle, and reads in part, 'yesterday we heard that 4 fortresses of Verdun were taken. This have been a lot of shooting . . . Maybe this is the end of Verdun and peace will come soon . . . the barbed wire on the other side of the card is French. You can see dead patrols . . .' (Translation from the German courtesy Thomas Faust.) Evidently the author safely reached the French trench line.
Image text: Reverse:France Feb 22 1916 - Dear Uncle, yesterday we have heard that 4 fortresses of Verdun were taken. This have been a lot of shooting ... Maybe this is the end of Verdun and peace will come soon ... the barbed wire on the other side of the card is French. You can see dead patrols ... (Translation from the German courtesy Thomas Faust (Ebay's Urfaust).)
British infantry, artillery, cavalry, and a tank, likely on the Arras front, 1917. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot 1918 Edition.
Image text: British troops going to relieve their comrades in the front line trenches. A British tank is seen at the extreme left© Underwood & Underwood
"An enterprising Captain had already on the outbreak of war invaded the Germany colony of Togoland. We now proposed, in conjunction with the French, to attack the Cameroons — a much more serious undertaking. General Botha had already declared his intention of invading German South-West Africa. The New Zealand and Australian Governments wished at once to seize Samoa and the German possessions in the Pacific. An Anglo-Indian expedition was authorized for the attack of German East Africa." ((1), more)
"On the same day, 29 August, the Second Army tried to capture Mount Rombon, at the northern limit of the Isonzo front. After belatedly occupying Flitsch, the Italians were pinned down by fire from Rombon, towering overhead. Boroević had wisely garrisoned Rombon with the 2nd Mountain Rifles, a regiment that was almost 90 per cent Slovene. The soldiers were fighting to save their nation from Italian domination as well as defending their emperor against traitors. Rombon was a bulwark, guarding over a million Slovenes, and the troops were packed onto a narrow summit, still snowbound in late August." ((2), more)
"The Emperor is judicious, moderate and hard-working. As a rule his ideas are very sensible. He has a lofty idea of his functions and the strongest sense of duty. But his education is inadequate and the scale of the problems it is his mission to solve only too frequently exceeds the measure of his intelligence. He does not know men, affairs or life itself. His distrust of himself and others means that he is always suspicious of superiority, and the result is that he can only tolerate nobodies around him. He is also very religious, in a narrow and superstitious way, and this makes him very jealous of his authority, as he receives it from God." ((3), more)
"We crawled towards a gap in the enemy wires, which Kloppman had cut the night before. We were unpleasantly surprised, then, to find it had been patched up; therefore we cut it again, rather noisily, and climbed down into the trench. After looking around for a long time behind the nearest traverse, we crept on, following a telephone wire to its end in a bayonet stuck in the ground. We found the position blocked off several times by wire, and once by a heavy gate, but all of it unoccupied. After taking a good look at it all, we went back the same way, and patched the wire to conceal the fact that we'd been." ((4), more)
"The battle during the latter part of the week was really a preparation for a coming greater blow. We were clearing up ugly corners and securing good 'jumping-off' places. The Canadians were working in the closest coöperation with the British. The famous British division on our left flank, under the direction of the Canadian command, was pushing forward. British artillery coöperated. One never knew, moving behind our lines, whether one were coming on a Canadian or an Imperial battery. A degree of unity was attained between Imperials and Canadians such as had never been reached in any previous operation of the war.Every one knew at the week-end that a fresh blow was coming." ((5), more)
(1) Winston Churchill describing how, 'On an August morning, [one could] behold also the curious sight of a British Cabinet of respectable Liberal politicians sitting down deliberately and with malice aforethought to plan the seizure of the German colonies in every part of the world!' General Louis Botha was the first Prime Minister of South Africa, part of the British Empire. From Churchill's The World Crisis 1911-1918.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, pp. 171, 172, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
(2) The Italians failed in their attempt near the end of the Second Battle of the Isonzo to capture Mount Rombon. Along most of the Italian-Austro-Hungarian front, the Hapsburg army held higher ground including alpine summits. The Second Battle cost Italy 42,000 casualties, Austria-Hungary 47,000.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 111, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(3) Former President of Russia's Imperial Council of Ministers Count Vladimir Kokovtsov speaking to Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, on August 29, 1916. Kokovtsov had been Prime Minister from September 18, 1911 to January 30, 1914 and had also served as Finance Minister.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. III by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 14–15, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(4) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger had fought in the first days of the Third Battle of Ypres, begun on July 31, 1917, but on August 10 was redeployed to the front southeast of Verdun, on the hills above Regniéville, a Village Détruit, a village destroyed in the war and never rebuilt. Kloppmann was 'an NCO, an older, married man who distinguished himself by his great zest for battle.' The two men planned the raid described above, and carried if off on August 29. Kloppman went again the following night and was met by rifle fire and hand grenades. Both Jünger and Kloppman went again on August 31, returning safely after being fired upon.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 183, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(5) Excerpt from a piece by Frederick Arthur McKenzie on the Canadian role in the Batle of Amiens and subsequent offensives. Our quotation is from the description of the Third Battle of the Scarpe, fought from Monday, August 26 (during which the town of Monchy-le-Preux was taken) to Friday the 30th, 1918. Some Canadians, like others in the colonial troops of the British Empire, believed the British commanders were incompetent and less sparing of the lives of Empire soldiers than of those of Great Britain.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 285–286, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
