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Zweibund — the Dual Alliance — Germany and Austria-Hungary united, were the core of the Central Powers, and here join hands. The bars of Germany's flag border the top left, and those of the Habsburg Austrian Empire and ruling house the bottom right.
German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
Shared headstone of Otto Waldow, replacement reservist, and Hans Jobst, infantryman, in the Belleau German Cemetery, Belleau, France, died June 25, 1918, possibly during the final American assault to seize Belleau Wood, a battle begun on June 6.
Map of the 1918 German offensives on the Western Front from The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Ferdinand Foch. © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Photograph of Marshal Ferdinand Foch and General John Pershing meeting at Chaumont, General Headquarters on June 17, 1918.
"Now we undertake a strategic withdrawal — a strategic withdrawal always succeeds! (A few cries of 'Hurrah!' and scattered cheering.) And I have been certain from the start that the enemy will not prevent the manoeuvres we have envisaged for years and now been implementing for days. Our operations are being carried out according to plan. We have simply disengaged from the enemy and now we are drawing him after us! Then we'll give 'em a kicking! The men's morale is sky-high! Gentlemen, we shall be as firm as a rock and we shall never yield! The more opportunity we give the enemy to push forward, the more chance we have to wear him out! That is the tactic we put to the test on the Somme. That is the tactic which shall also succeed on the Piave. So, let's have no defeatist talk! God is on our side! We'd pull it off — against a world full of devils! The enemy — be assured, gentlemen — the enemy will shatter against us as against a bronze wall of flame —" ((1), more)
"On the 24th [June 1918], after shooting down a kite-balloon over the Lys, at Warneton, to the south of Ypres—incidentally the observer stayed on in the basket to fire at me with a small machine-gun, jumped too late, and was caught up and enveloped in the flaming gas-bag—I was clumsily attacked by a Hannoveraner that dived upon me from on high, firing as it came. Carried away by its speed, it overshot me and had no time to turn before I got into position on its tail, and opened fire at point-blank range. It broke up in the air and crashed near the Bois de Ploegsteert. This mixed brace, my ninth and tenth victories, had cost me six 1 mm. bullets. . . ." ((2), more)
"Clearly this had been all along a job for the artillery. On June 25 the northern fringe of Belleau Wood was shelled for fourteen hours. In the late afternoon the marines advanced again behind a rolling barrage. 'Come on you sonsofbitches do you expect to live forever?' the sergeants yelled. This time the losses weren't too heavy.They found the great trees blasted to splinters, the German defenders stunned and helpless. By 9:30 that night Belleau Wood really was in American hands. Two hundred and fifty German prisoners and many machineguns. The Germans fell back on a defensive line along Clignon brook, and gave little more trouble in that sector." ((3), more)
"— A doctor tells me of the effects of mustard-gas: burns, blindness, pneumonia, inflammation of the testicles. 'We have a gas which is even more deadly,' he added.He also described the looting of villages by French soldiers when they abandoned them during the retreat. 'It was not for the sake of stealing. They could not take anything away with them. It was just a mania. To break into an empty house, to open drawers, to read letters, to play about with the linen and clothes, and then to leave it all where it was, after a few hours. The English, more methodical, carried off pianos in motor-lorries, on the pretext of organising the villages for defence." ((4), more)
"June 27 thus marked the final step in Foch's rise to power. Like previous selections of Joffre, Nivelle, and Pétain, Foch's elevation had a profound effect on French strategy, operations, and doctrine. The day after the War Committee met, Foch sent Pétain a letter that began, 'It is important to envisage henceforth the resumption of the offensive by the allied armies in 1918 as soon as means permit.' Bowing to Foch's new powers, on July 2 Pétain sent his army-group commanders a copy of Foch's memorandum of June 16 on doctrine. Neither Foch nor Pétain realized how close they were to the end of the war." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from one of the Prussian Colonel's speeches in Act V, Scene 55 from Karl Kraus's play The Last Days of Mankind. Much of the scene takes place over a ceremonial banquet of Austro-Hungarian (including Czech, Polish, Romanian, and Croatian) and German officers. In 1917's Operation Alberich the Germans had conducted a strategic retreat to a stronger, more easily defensible line. In the Battle of the Piave, launched on June 15, 1918, the Italians, with aid from their French and British allies, stopped the Austro-Hungarian offensive, and drove the attacker back to his starting line, inflicting roughly 120,000 casualties in the course of the battle.
The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus, page 538, copyright © 2015 Translation and Afterword Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2015
(2) Excerpt from Flying in Flanders, a memoir by Willy Coppens, Belgium's greatest ace in World War I with 37 victories, all but two of the victims observation balloons. After repeated attempts to bring down a balloon, Coppens was finally successful on May 8, 1918 after being provided with 20 French incendiary bullets, bullets he used sparingly. Observation balloons were tethered like a kite, and heavily defended with anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes. The Hannoveraner was likely either a Hannover CL.II or CL.III, a two-seater with a distinctive biplane tail, unusual for a smaller plane. Warneton, Belgium is on the Lys River and the French border, about 13 km south of Ypres.
Flying in Flanders by Willy Coppens, page 184, publisher: Ace Books, publication date: 1971
(3) The American assault by U.S Marines and Army infantry to take Belleau Wood began on June 6, 1918 against well-entrenched German defenders. The battle continued for three weeks. The Marine casualties were 113 officers and 5,598 men killed, wounded and missing; the Army 9th and 23rd Infantry lost 65 officers and 3,496 men.
Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, page 343, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
(4) Entry from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. Mustard gas, a poison gas introduced late in the war, caused large, painful blisters of the skin, eyes, and mucous membrane. The German offensives of 1918 forced first the British and then the French to retreat. After two offensives (Operations Michael and Georgette) against the British, the Aisne (Blücher) Offensive (May 27 to June 4) pushed the French back to the Marne River. The Noyon-Montdidier Offensive was anticipated by the French and came to an early conclusion.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 357, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) Joseph Joffre, Robert Nivelle, and Henri Philippe Pétain were the Commanders-in-Chief of the French Army during the war. Ferdinand Foch path to becoming Allied Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies began in late 1917 as the French and British Prime Ministers Georges Clemenceau and David Lloyd George struggled to guide military policy after a year that saw the disasters of the Nivelle Offensive, the French army mutinies, and the Battle of Passchendaele. Foch consistently pressed for a unified command and reserve force that could seize the offensive when the opportunity presented itself. Foch's rise was incremental, but after four German spring 1918 offensives that stunned first the British and then the French, the French, British, American, and Italian civilian and military leaders agreed the role required authority to command and not simply coordinate.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 460, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
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