A gleeful Russian Cossack skewers Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph in Galicia, the Empire's northeastern region isolated from the rest of the country by the Carpathian Mountains. The caption is a play on words echoing the name of the mountain range in telling Franz Joseph, 'it seems your soldiers took to their heels.' After twin defeats in the Battles of Gnila Lipa and Rava Russka, the Austro-Hungarian Army lost the great fortress at Lemberg, and was being driven out of Galicia and back through the Carpathians. Russia's attempts to break through the Carpathians continued through April 1915, with heavy losses on both sides. The Austro-Hungarians, with German support, held.
Image text: Parait que tes soldats se CarapathentSeems that your soldiers took to their heelsDix 701Reverse:Dixo-Couleur Paris, Visé Paris, Numéro au Verso.
Detail from the Memorial to the French Moroccan Division at Vimy Ridge. The theaters and battles in which the division played a role are recorded on the sides of the monument. © 2013, John M. Shea
Image text: 1915BelgiumJanuary 28 - Nieuport, la Grande DuneArtoisMay 9 - la Cote 140June 16 - Ravin de SouchezChampagneSeptember 25 - Butte de Souain, Bois Sabot1916the SommeJuly 4 - Assevillers, Belloy en Santerre, Barleux
Parted red curtains; in the center, in a trench, a German soldier, eyes closed, hands in overcoat pockets, leans against one side of a trench, smoking a pipe, his rifle resting on the other side of the trench. To the right, a Red soldier, red from red fur hat to red boots, holds two rifles. To the left, a Russian soldier casts away his his hat, backpack, and rifle. Across the bottom of the stage it reads, 1918. Operett: "Trockij", Operetta Trotsky. A watercolor postcard by Schima Martos.
Image text: 1918. Operett: "Trockij", Operetta Trotsky
Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Image text: Commanders of the Allies in 1918 and their autographs.Pétain Haig Foch Pershing
"Mackensen's reorganised Army Group resumed the offensive on 12th June [1915], launched its main assault on the following day, and by the 17th had forced the Russians back to the line Rava Russkaya — Zolkiew, while Austrian Second Army had reached the vicinity of Lemberg.That day STAVKA met at Cholm to consider the situation. The front along the Vistula was threatened with outflanking on both sides — from East Prussia to the north, since the Mazurian winter campaign, and now from Galicia and the Bukovina. There was no possibility of a counter-offensive to restore the situation, since the deficiency of small arms existing in July 1914 had never been made up, and shortage of artillery and shells precluded adequate support for any infantry attacks that might be essayed. There was no alternative to the abandonment of Galicia, . . ." ((1), more)
". . . At 0600 that morning [Jean] Navarre, in concert with Sous-Lieutenant Pelletier d'Oisy of N.69, had shot down a two-seater, but soon afterward Navarre came down in French lines near Samogneux, severely wounded.At that time Navarre was the leading Allied fighter pilot with 12 victories, a record outdone by only two Germans, Boelcke and Immelmann. A succession of events would prevent his adding any further to his tally. Navarre had always been a mercurial individual whose relentless combat activity had undoubtedly taken a psychological toll that nobody, including himself, could fully understand at the time. While he was convalescing, however, his mind was pushed over the edge by news that his twin brother Pierre, recovered from his own wounds and eager to return to action, had fatally crashed during a training flight . . ." ((2), more)
"On June 4, a declaration that I had submitted concerning Kerensky's preparation for an offensive at the front was read by the Bolshevik faction at the congress of the Soviets. We had pointed out that the offensive was an adventure that threatened the very existence of the army. But the Provisional government was growing intoxicated with its own speechifying. The ministers thought of the masses of soldiers, stirred to their very depths by the revolution, as so much soft clay to be moulded as they pleased. Kerensky toured the front, adjured and threatened the troops, kneeled, kissed the earth—in a word, clowned it in every possible way, while he failed to answer any of the questions tormenting the soldiers. He had deceived himself by his cheap effects, and, assured of the support of the congress of the Soviets, ordered the offensive." ((3), more)
"If we can hold until the end of June, our situation will be excellent. In July we can resume the offensive. After that, victory is ours." ((4), more)
(1) When German General August von Mackensen began his combined German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive on May 2, 1915, he did so with an overwhelming artillery barrage for which the Russians had no response. More than any other major combatant nation, Russia failed to address its shell shortage, which included artillery, shells, rifles, and ammunition of all kinds. Although Russia had conquered, lost, and reconquered Bukovina and most of Galicia in 1914 and 1915, Stavka, the Russian High Command, began a retreat of hundreds of miles that would not stop for months.
Carpathian Disaster: Death of an Army by Geoffrey Jukes, page 54, copyright © Geoffrey Jukes 1971, publisher: Ballantine, publication date: 1971
(2) After his recovery and his twin brother's death, French fighter pilot twins Jean Navarre rejoined his squadron in January, 1917, but was soon arrested for fighting, and was subsequently committed to an institution to recover from a breakdown. He died in a flying accident on July 10, 1919. German pilot Oswald Bölcke formed the first Jadgstaffel, or hunter squadron, composed entirely of fighter planes, a specialization that was an improvement on the combining of planes with different functions in the same unit. German ace Max Immelmann was credited with inventing the Immelmann turn, reversing direction by turning the plane 180 degrees while climbing, beginning and ending the maneuver with the plane level. French squadrons were designated by the plane type flown by the squadron. N.69 was a fighter squadron of Nieuport planes.
The Origin of the Fighter Aircraft by Jon Gutman, page 58, copyright © 2009 Jon Gutman, publisher: Westholme Publishing, publication date: 2009
(3) Russian Minister of War Alexander Kerensky returned to Petrograd on June 14, 1917 after a three-week tour of the Russian Front to attend the All-Russian Congress of Soviet and Front Line Organizations. The declaration our author, Leon Trotsky, wrote was delivered on June 17, 1917 (June 4, Old Style.) The Russian army, which had suffered mutiny, enormous numbers of desertions, and incidents of officers being killed by their men in the months since the February Revolution, was beginning to stabilize when the Congress began, with increased support for the Provisional Government and for waging war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and other Bolsheviks voted against the resolution for Kerensky's offensive.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 311, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(4) Commander of the French Army Henri Philippe Pétain in June, 1918, after the fourth of five German offensives intended to seize victory before American soldiers arrived in force. The first two, Operations Michael and Georgette, had been against British forces in an attempt to separate them from their French allies, who come to their support. The second two, the Second Battle of the Aisne and the Noyon-Montdidier Offensive, were intended to prevent the French from supporting their ally. The Aisne offensive was successful beyond German commander Ludendorff's imagining, and distracted him from his original goal. By June 250,000 American troops were arriving each month.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 459, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
