Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
Photograph of four First World War Italian soldiers. The one on the far right wears a monocle.
Field gun at the city of Verdun memorial statue. © 2015 John M. Shea
British soldiers pushing an ambulance through the mud. A mounted horseman is on the road ahead.
Russian soldiers resting in the field. Card postmarked November 28, 1916.
A photo postcard of a German trench view of barbed wire and a dead patrol. Dated February 22, 1916, and field postmarked the next day, the message is from a soldier to his uncle, and reads in part, 'yesterday we heard that 4 fortresses of Verdun were taken. This have been a lot of shooting . . . Maybe this is the end of Verdun and peace will come soon . . . the barbed wire on the other side of the card is French. You can see dead patrols . . .' (Translation from the German courtesy Thomas Faust.) Evidently the author safely reached the French trench line.
"The officers held their breath. They had not been able to hear the adjutant's words, but from my replies they had understood only too well. They looked at me silently, in anxious suspense. Then the cavalry lieutenant filled up his glass and said:'Here's to the Bainsizza!'His fellow-officers did the same.'To the offensive on the Bainsizza!'It was beginning all over again." ((1), more)
"Word of these limited assaults, their success, their meticulous preparation and, most important, the low casualties suffered by the attackers spread like wildfire throughout the French Army. And as it did, some of the poilu's lost confidence in himself and his leaders began slowly to return. Perhaps, he thought (but only perhaps), the pacifists and their papillons might be wrong. Maybe the thing could be done. Not all at once, to be sure, but perhaps the Germans could be beaten." ((2), more)
"August 27th.—A wet night and day, but quiet. The Division is coming out. We go to the Second Army, Plumer's, to be put in, as usual, where it's sticky—and it's been sticky as blood beyond Ypres." ((3), more)
"We drove quickly over the hill, for we saw enemy foot-soldiers on the neighbouring hills. Just before Khatna, we met many Russians soldiers. I was sitting by the driver. One soldier looked at me and shouted to his companions: 'Kakoy tam zvyer sidiyt? [What kind of wild beast is sitting there?]' And a chorus of derisive mirth greeted his words. I willed myself not to think of those offensive words but I was deeply hurt. I had thought that the bands of unruly soldiers would somehow have contrived to remain in Russia; but here they were at large in Roumania too. Would they infect the Roumanian Infantry? What would happen then?" ((4), more)
"We crawled towards a gap in the enemy wires, which Kloppman had cut the night before. We were unpleasantly surprised, then, to find it had been patched up; therefore we cut it again, rather noisily, and climbed down into the trench. After looking around for a long time behind the nearest traverse, we crept on, following a telephone wire to its end in a bayonet stuck in the ground. We found the position blocked off several times by wire, and once by a heavy gate, but all of it unoccupied. After taking a good look at it all, we went back the same way, and patched the wire to conceal the fact that we'd been." ((5), more)
(1) The end of Emilio Lussu's Sardinian Brigade, an account of a year fighting on the Asiago plateau, on Italy's northern border. In mid-July 1917, Lussu's battalion was withdrawn from the front build defenses. The men recovered, and some of the wounded returned to the battalion. As Lussu wrote, 'One very soon began to forget. Life regained its ascendancy.' He was dining and joking with fellow officers when word came that they were being sent to the Bainsizza Plateau where the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo was underway.
Sardinian Brigade by Emilio Lussu, page 274, copyright © 1939 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., publisher: Knopf, publication date: 1939
(2) The offensive of French commander in chief Henri Pétain to recapture lost territory at Verdun opened with a bombardment on August 11, 1917 that lasted until the 20th, with 3,000 guns firing 3,000,000 shells. The infantry assault began on the 20th and went on until the 26th when Pétain had achieved his objective. In ending the French army mutinies, Pétain had promised his army that he would make greater use of artillery and other weapons before any infantry assault, and that his objectives would be clear and limited. His Verdun offensive met these conditions, and demonstrated how successful they could be. His soldiers responded, seeing that every battle need not be a slaughter. Pétain was recapturing territory lost in the German siege of 1916.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, page 245, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
(3) Entry for August 27, 1917 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J. C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. British commander in chief General Douglas Haig had assigned General Herbert Plumer, already commanding the British Second Army, to take command of the II Division from General Hubert Gough who had been unsuccessful in the Third Battle of Ypres, started on July 31.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 379, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) Entry for August 28 (August 15, Old Style), 1917 from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross. She had first encountered rude, and sometimes threatening, Russian soldiers in the retreat following the collapse of Russia's Kerensky Offensive in July. Her unit then accompanied Russian troops moving into Moldavia to support the Romanian Mărăşti offensive. The German counter-attack, the Battle of Mărăşeşti, began on August 6, the Austro-German Battle of Oituz two days later.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, pp. 305–306, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(5) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger had fought in the first days of the Third Battle of Ypres, begun on July 31, 1917, but on August 10 was redeployed to the front southeast of Verdun, on the hills above Regniéville, a Village Détruit, a village destroyed in the war and never rebuilt. Kloppmann was 'an NCO, an older, married man who distinguished himself by his great zest for battle.' The two men planned the raid described above, and carried if off on August 29. Kloppman went again the following night and was met by rifle fire and hand grenades. Both Jünger and Kloppman went again on August 31, returning safely after being fired upon.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 183, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
1 2 Next
