A folding postcard from a pencil sketch of an unsuccessful Allied gas attack in Flanders.
Image text: Erfolgloser feindlicher Gasangriff in FlandernUnsuccessful enemy gas attack in FlandersOutside:FeldpostkarteNachdruck verboten.Field postcardReproduction prohibited.
'All for their Good,' a cartoon by Dutch artist Louis Raemaekers, from 'Through the Iron Bars (Two years of German occupation in Belgium)' by Emile Cammaerts Illustrated with Cartoons by Louis Raemaekers.
Image text: All for their Good
'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.
Image text: December höraDecember snow2½ liter petroleum.
1917 original pen and ink drawing of a sentry in the dunes of the Belgian coast viewing a ship on the horizon. Possibly by W Wenber, Leading Seaman.
Image text: Gescreiben den . . . 1917 (Written the . . . 1917; printed text, the '7' handwritten)Küstenwacht an der belgischen Küste Gaz. A. Wenber ObermatroseCoastguard on the Belgian Coast, by? W Wenber, Leading Seaman
"It was a heavy, low cloud, as far as the eye could see; they described it variously as 'greyish-yellow' or 'greenish-yellow,' and also as 'two clouds . . . which appeared to merge into each other.' As the thing roiled toward them, the Canadians were baffled. . . . It was not long before the cloud reached the French lines to the north, which were joined to the Canadians' immediate left. As the dense cloud enveloped the French, nothing could be seen of them. Suddenly the Canadians heard the French fire begin to slacken, then stop altogether. Not long afterward, the French artillery also ceased to fire. Those Canadians nearest the French began to experience burning in their eyes, and coughing, and then the inability to breath; in effect strangling.Men in the reserve trenches in the rear were shocked to see thousands of the Algerian and African troops streaming past, eyes rolled up white, stumbling, staggering, falling, clutching their throats. Those few who could speak at all were gasping, 'gaz! gaz! gaz!' . . . As a Canadian artilleryman, Major Andrew McNaughton, described it: 'They literally were coughing their lungs out; glue was coming out of their mouths. It was a very disturbing, very disturbing sight.'" ((1), more)
"On Holy Saturday [April 22, 1916], at three in the morning, methodical raids began at Lille in the Fives quarter, in the Marlière quarter of Tourcoing, and at Roubaix. After a suspension on Easter Sunday, the work went on all the week, ending up in the Saint Maurice quarter of Lille.About three in the morning, troops, with fixed bayonets, barred the streets, machine guns commanded the road, against unarmed people.Soldiers made their way into the houses. The officer pointed out the people who were to go, and, half an hour later, everyone was marched pell-mell into an adjacent factory, and from there into the station, whence the departure took place." ((2), more)
"The troops of all the German tribes under your command, with steel-hard determination and strongly led, have brought to failure the great French attempt to break through on the Aisne and in Champagne. Also there the infantry again had to bear the brunt, and, thanks to the indefatigable assistance of the artillery and other arms, has accomplished great things in death-defying perseverance and irresistible attack. Convey my thanks and those of the Fatherland to the leaders and men. The battle on the Aisne and in Champagne is not yet over, but all who fight and bleed there shall know that the whole of Germany will remember their deeds, and is one with them to carry through the fight for existence to a victorious end. God grant it." ((3), more)
"There was a moment immediately [after the wind change dispersed the smoke screen] when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim coast and the hidden harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells; the wavering beams of the searchlights swung round and settled to a glare; the wildfire of gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank; and the darkness of the night was supplanted by the nightmare daylight of battle fires. Guns and machine guns along the Mole and batteries ashore awoke to life, and it was in a gale of shelling that Vindictive laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the Mole, let go an anchor, and signed to Daffodil to shove her stern in. Iris went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise." ((4), more)
(1) Description of the war's first effective gas attack that launched the Second Battle of Ypres on April 22, 1915. The Germans had released chlorine gas from cylinders, having delayed their offensive for several days due to wind conditions. The Germans struck along a line held by French Colonial troops with the Canadians on their right. The Germans had first used poison gas in January in the Battle of Bolimow against the Russians, but the cold weather limited in its effectiveness. The Russians did not report its use to their Allies.
A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front by Winston Groom, page 99
(2) Excerpt from an Official Statement of the French Government by Aristide Briand, Prime Minister of France. German authorities seized about 25,000 civilians in April, 1916 from the occupied French cities of Lille, Roubaix, and Tourcoing. Mothers with children under 14 were spared. Girls under 20 were seized if accompanied by a family member. Men were put to work in agriculture, road repair, trench digging, and munitions manufacturing. Women labored as cooks and laundresses for soldiers, and as servants for officers. The order by General von Graevenitz authorizing the deportations claimed they provided a means to provision the population of the occupied territories, which had become 'more and more difficult' because of the 'attitude of England', presumably as evidenced by its blockade of Germany.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. IV, 1916, pp. 105, 106, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) Telegram of April 22, 1917 from German Kaiser Wilhelm II to his son the Crown Prince,commanding in Champagne where German forces had halted the the attack in the Second Battle of the Aisne launched on April 17, and part of French commander Robert Nivelle's spring offensive. The Aisne River was south of the heights of Chemin des Dames, and had been held by the German's since their retreat to it in September, 1914 after the battles of the Marne and Aisne.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, Vol. V, 1917, p. 163, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
(4) Excerpt from a British Admiralty statement on the April 22–23, 1918 raid on Ostend and Zeebrugge, ports on the North Sea connected to the German submarine base at Bruges (Brugge) by canals. Under the command of Roger Keyes, the British raided the two coastal cities to block the canals, sinking aging warships across them. The flotilla had already set out twice before, but had been turned back by weather conditions. But on the 22nd, eight monitors, six old cruisers, eight light cruisers, fifty-two destroyers, sixty-two motor launches, twenty-four coastal motorboats, two submarines, two Mersey River ferryboats, and one picket boat, bearing nearly one thousand men, made their way, the coastal motorboats laying and maintaining the smokescreen. At 11:56 PM the wind shift exposed the fleet to the batteries on shore and on the two-mile long breakwater, the Mole. The Vindictive was the primary landing craft, and was held in place against the Mole for much of the operation by Daffodil, one of the ferries.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 134, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
