The destruction of the Italian airship, City of Ferrara by an Austro-Hungarian seaplane on June 8, 1915.
Image text: Vernichtung des italienischen Luftschiffes 'Città di Ferrara' durch einen österreichischen-ungarischen HydroplanDestruction of the Italian airship 'Città di Ferrara' by an Austrian-Hungarian seaplaneHarry Heugger 1915City of FerraraReverse:Postkartenverlag Brüder Kohn, Wien I.B.K.W.I. 259-145
A Russian advance across a pontoon bridge is stopped by an artillery bombardment. A postcard from a painting by K. Flechine, a student of the State School of Applied Arts, Hamburg.
Image text: K. FlechineReverse:Deutsche Kriegsausstellung Hamburgzugunsten des Hamburgischen Landesvereins vom Roten Kreuz.Kriegsbilder, gezeichnet von Schulkindern in der Staatlichen Kunstgewerbeschule, Hamburg.Hamburger Opfertag 1916 für Heer und MarineHartung & Co., HamburgGerman war exhibition HamburgFor the benefit of the Hamburg National Association of the Red Cross.Images of war, drawn by school children in the State School of Applied Arts, Hamburg.Hamburger victims day, 1916, for the Army and NavyHartung & Co., Hamburg
A French machine gun crew from the 227th Infantry Reserve. It was sent as a souvenir to his little sister by Georges.
Image text: Reverse:Souvenir a ma chere petite soeurton Georges
View across No Man's Land between Ypres and Messines in 1917 by Lance Corporal Hugh F. Ward, 97th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps. Ward painted this while he was in the sector before, during, and after the June, 1917 Battle of Messines Ridge. Initialed 'H.W.'.
Image text: Initialed 'H.W.'.
"Italy struck first, along a five-hundred-mile front. Her armies quickly spread over the Trentino and, on the [east], crossed the Isonzo River, and reached Montfalcone within four days of the declaration of war. It seemed for the time as though there were to be no effective resistance by the Austrians, who had indeed been forced by a Russian menace to send to their eastern front an army of 700,000 men . . ." ((1), more)
"It has been another hard-working night. Some of the wounds have been dreadful to look at. Several men were dead on arrival; seven died during the night. . . .An adjutant from our divisional staff came in the evening. He affirmed that the Austrians were retreating fast before our advancing troops. . . .In the midst of our elation at the success of our fighting-men, there came a flash of bad news from England. Lord Kitchener, the great English General, had died: drowned off the northern coast of Scotland when the cruiser on which he was sailing was torpedoed." ((2), more)
"In the camps of some of the most famous of the army corps, mutineers seized the barracks and promised to shoot any officers who might try to arrest them.There seemed to be no limit to the revolt. Most frightening was the fact that four weeks of mutiny had succeeded in contaminating the troops manning the front lines and they had begun to threaten their officers: 'We will defend the trenches, but we won't attack.' 'We are not so stupid as to march against undestroyed machine guns.' 'We have had enough of dying on the barbed wire.'" ((3), more)
"The landscape here is of the deadly-conventional Armageddon type—low green-grey ridges fringed with the usual decorations of a few isolated trees, half-smashed, with a broken wall or two, straggling trench-grey silhouettes that once were villages. Then there are open spaces broken only by ruined wire-tangles, old trenches, and the dismal remains of an occasional rest-camp of huts. The June grass waves, poppies flame, shrapnel bursts with black puffs, an aeroplane drones, larks sing; someone comes along the trench, clinking a petrol-tin. And this is about all one sees, as one stumps along the communication-trenches, dry and crumbling, with a dead mole lying about here and there." ((4), more)
(1) Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915, while the Austro-Hungarian Army was advancing against Russia in its northeast province of Galicia in the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. Despite the strain of opening a new battle front, Austria-Hungary benefited from natural defenses against Italy, holding the high ground along their shared border, and having the Isonzo River as a barrier in Italy's northeast.
The Nations at War, a Current History by Willis John Abbot, page 250, copyright © 1917, Doubleday, Page & Company, publisher: Leslie-Judge Co., publication date: 1917
(2) Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross, writing on June 8, 1916 (May 26 Old Style) as Russia's Brusilov Offensive continued to collapse the Austro-Hungarian front. Herbert Lord Kitchener, formerly the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for War, was on a mission to Russia when his ship struck a mine on June 5.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, pp. 191-192, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(3) After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne, begun on April 16 — an offensive that Nivelle had asserted would provide the breakthrough of the German line that would lead to victory, mutinous incidents broke out in the French army, particularly among the troops that had suffered the highest rates of casualties in the offensive. The mutinies were of greater or lesser severity, beginning in April, with increasingly disruptive incidents in May, and the most violent and serious in the first weeks of June. The Russian Revolution of March provided a model for some soldiers, but few officers were harmed in France. Among the mutineers were soldiers who had survived three years of the suicidal attacks they now refused to continue.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, page 197, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
(4) Excerpt from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (R.W.F.), and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon was deployed to Palestine in early 1918, then returned to France after the successful Germany's spring offensives Michael and Georgette, when British losses required every available soldier on the Western Front. As he wrote he was near Mercatel, 7 or 8 km south of Arras.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 264, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
