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A night raid by German troops at Château Noulette near Lens. The hilltop church, Notre Dame de Lorette, a pilgrimage site in 1914, stood on Loretto Heights, with Vimy Ridge part of the high ground seized by German troops in the Race to the Sea. French commander Joffre hoped to capture Loretto Heights in the First Battle of Artois in December, 1914.
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.
To the Dardanelles! The Entente Allies successfully capture their objective and plant their flags in this boy's 1915 war game, as they did not in life, neither in the naval campaign, nor in the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.
Zeppelin Kommt! Children play a Zeppelin raid on London. Holding his bomb in the gondola is a doll of the airship's inventor, Count Zeppelin. The other children, playing the English, cower, and the British fleet — folded paper boats — remains in port. Prewar postcards celebrated the imposing airships and the excitement they generated with the same expression, 'Zeppelin Kommt!'. Postcard by P.O. Engelhard (P.O.E.). The message on the reverse is dated May 28, 1915.
The destruction of the Italian airship, City of Ferrara by an Austro-Hungarian seaplane on June 8, 1915.
"Lorette — a sinister name, evoking scenes of horror, gloomy woods, sunken roads, plateaus and ravines taken and retaken twenty times, where for months, night after night, we cut each other's throats, massacred each other incessantly. We made that little corner of the earth a human charnel house, by the criminal obstinacy of our top brass, who knew quite well that nothing decisive would come from this petty style of fighting a war, these nasty little attacks. But they imagined that in this war of attrition, this cruel game, the Germans would be the first ones to be worn down.'Je les grignote [I'm nibbling away at them],' says paunchy old Joffre — a phrase that the press picks up like a rare pearl, and this futile, bloody offensive dragged on for several months." ((1), more)
"A combined Austro-Hungarian-German force advanced against Przemyśl and on 3 June [1915] Bavarian units entered the fortress. Captain Otto Kohler of the 9th Pioneer Company, Bavarian 11th Infantry Division, remembered the assault that dawn in bright sunshine. His men advanced over fields littered with dead soldiers, their guns and their kits. The troopers of the 11th Division decorated themselves with oak leaves and made bouquets in the Bavarian blue-white colors from corn-flowers and wind-flowers. Unfurling their regimental banners and Bavarian flag, they entered Przemyśl lustily singing. The remaining German residents threw flowers at their feet." ((2), more)
"On the 4th of June [1915] a second great attack was made by the Allied troops near Cape Helles. Like the attack of the 6th-8th May, it was an advance on the whole line, from the Straits to the sea, against the enemy's front-line trenches. As before, the French were on the right and the 29th Division on the left, but between them, in this advance, were the R.N. Division and the newly arrived 42nd Division. Our men advanced after a prolonged and terrible bombardment, which so broke the Turk defence that the works were carried all along the line, except in one place, on the left of the French sector, and in one other place, on our own left, near the sea." ((3), more)
"That day, June 5 [1915], was one of the bloodiest days of this futile battle of Artois.The French communiqué of the following day claimed that our artillery had fired 500,000 projectiles. I can speak for those who lived through that hell, when I say that the German artillery gave us back just as many. . . .Explosions filled the air, without ceasing. Strange, sharp, piercing sounds, first the whistling, sometimes like a cat meowing, then crashing down like a steady rain of steel." ((4), more)
"Daybreak. The sun rises, indifferent to the field of horror. Everywhere we see nothing but cadavers and shapeless human remains, pasturage for the rats which were more courageous than the crows, whose fear kept them away. . . .But what is this? Has Hell opened up under our feet? Are we right at the rim of a furious volcano? The trench is filled with flames, with sparks, with bitter smoke, the air is unbreathable. I hear hissing, crackling, and alas, yes, the cries of pain. Sargeant Vergès has scorched eyes. At my feet two miserable creatures are rolling on the ground, their clothes, their hands, their faces on fire, like human torches. And in the trench everything is on fire — blankets, tent cloths, sandbags. The Germans had just fired some sort of incendiary liquid on us." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry corporal Louis Barthas whose unit took part in the Second Battle of Artois. French Commander Joseph Joffre was trying to capture the high ground of Artois, including Loretto Heights, site of the church Notre Dame de Lorette, and Vimy Ridge. The battle had begun on May 9, and had some success on the first day.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 72, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(2) Begun on May 2, 1915, the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive continued to push back the Russian Army on an increasingly broad front, and threatened to encircle the Russians holding the great fortress of Przemyśl in Austria-Hungary's northeast province of Galicia. The Russians, who had taken the city on March 23, 1915, evacuated it on June 2, evading capture. On June 3, German and Austro-Hungarian forces entered, welcomed by ethnic Germans, less so by Polish.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 142, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(3) In June 1915, the Entente Allies held two positions on the Gallipoli Peninsula: the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs) at Ari Burnu (Anzac Cove), and the British and French (including Indians and Senagalese) at the end of the peninsula at Cape Helles. Masefield, author of the above, reports that the Allied advance 'varied in depth from a quarter of a mile to six hundred yards', and extended from the Dardanelles strait to the Aegean Sea. Despite the Allied advance, the Turks still contained the invaders at the end of the peninsula and held the high ground above them.
Gallipoli by John Masefield by John Masefield, page 88, publisher: William Heinemann, publication date: 1916
(4) Excerpt from the entry for June 5, 1915 from the notebooks of French infantry Corporal Louis Barthas. Barthas was a combatant in the Second Battle of Artois, a struggle from May 9 to June 25 for the high ground of Loretto Heights and Vimy Ridge, and the nearby villages: Carency, Souchez, Neuville-St.-Vaast. Ordered to seize the woods of Bois-de-Carré, Barthas and his men immediately came under artillery fire, and spent a stifling day under constant bombardment, the men calling one to another for assurance each was alive. One shell that struck near Barthas exhumed a corpse, immediately drawing thousands of flies, the flies that plagued the sector and the men in it.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 75, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(5) French infantry Corporal Louis Barthas documented his war experiences in a series of notebooks. On June 6, 1915 he was fighting in the Second Battle of Artois when he turned into a trench that had just been subjected to a flamethrower attack, a weapon first used in February, 1915 by the Germans. Barthas remained in the same trench as two man burned in the attack, he and his men expecting the two to die shortly. One died the same night, the other lingered, sometimes delirious, before being taken to a first-aid station the next day.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 77 & 80, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
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