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Entrenched German soldiers behind sniper plates at Slota Gora, September 26, 1916. Slota (or Zlota) Gora was in Polish Russia, west of a line running from Warsaw to Cracow. An original watercolor (over pencil) by O. Oettel, 12th company of Landwehr, IR 32 in the field. A sketch in pencil and red crayon is on the reverse.
The conditions British Troops faced in Flanders and Passchendaele.
A call to Italians to buy war bonds to help fund the powerful weapons needed for the last push to Trieste, a mere 25 kilometers from the Italian front lines. It pays 5%, after all, tax free, for an effective rate of 5.55%!
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.
Map of Romania and the Allied and Central Power campaign plans for 1917. 'Romanian Territories under Foreign Rule' include Transylvania, Austria-Hungary, northwest of the Carpathian Mountains, and Bessarabia, Russia, to the east between the Prut and Nistru Rivers, regions with large ethnic Romanian populations. From Romania in World War I, a Synopsis of Military History by Colonel Dr. Vasile Alexandrescu.
"In the evening, we sat in front of the old tiled stove, sipping a stiff grog, and listening to the renewed thunder of the battle. A sentence caught my eye from a military communiqué in a newspaper: 'The enemy was held along the line of the Steenbach.'It was an odd thing that our apparently confused actions in the depths of the night had had such pronounced and public consequences. We had done our part towards bringing the attack, which had begun with such mighty force, to a halt. However colossal the quantities of men and matériel, the work at decisive points had been done by no more than a few handfuls of men." ((1), more)
"A lull set in; even the big guns quieted down. Haig was in despair as the Germans collected themselves. Air reconnaissance dropped to zero. The officers at tank headquarters, those brash and peppery young men, issued a typically sharp memorandum: 'From a tank point of view the Third Battle of Ypres may be considered dead. . . . From an infantry point of view the Third Battle of Ypres may be considered comatose. It can only be continued at colossal loss and little gain. . . .' Fogs blanketed the salient sporadically for the rest of the week, and the rain varied between drizzles and near cloudbursts." ((2), more)
"By early August, Cadorna had more than half a million men ranged along the front, maintaining but not exceeding the 10:4 advantage in manpower that he had enjoyed since 1915. What was new was a crushing superiority in firepower. The factories were working flat out to supply the front with guns and munitions, while Austrian heavy industry had ground almost to a halt. The Italians had 3,750 guns on the Isonzo, including a handful of British and French batteries, and 1,900 mortars, against the Austrians' 430 heavy guns and 1,250 field guns. For the first time, the Italians could match the power of offensives on the Western Front." ((3), more)
"August 5th, our first fine day. The weather broke just after we entrained to come north. Until yesterday it has rained almost continuously, at time very heavily, but with a blessed absence of mud, the soil being pure sand.—A great strafe has started Ypres way: it did not quieten down for 48 hours." ((4), more)
"The offensive of the German Ninth Army in the Focşani-Mărăşeşti-Adjud direction was triggered off on the morning of August 6, 1917, after an intense artillery preparation making extensive use of poisonous gas. The sector of the strike devolved on the I Army Corps, with the 12th, 76th and 89th Infantry Divisions employed in the first line, over a 15 km-wide front, and other two large units in the second line. The two Russian divisions in the area of contact (the 13th and the 34th) could not withold enemy pressures and started retreating northwards." ((5), more)
(1) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger left Cambrai, France on June 25, 1917, for Flanders, where the British artillery bombardment in preparation for the Third Battle of Ypres was in progress. The Germans suffered as many as 30,000 casualties in the intense bombardment. When the British advanced on July 31, some of the German troops at the front fled before them. Jünger rallied his men and passing stragglers, some at the point of the gun, to defend the ruins of a building. After nearly being surrounded, they fell back to defend another improvised line. He and his men saw the British advancing as if there were no danger, and made it clear there was. They hindered the British through the day, subject at times to intense bombardment to drive them out. Gentle rain that began to fall around midnight was 'bucketing down' by dawn on August 1, further hindering the British offensive. Jünger was resting by the stove the evening of August 2.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, pp. 173–174, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(2) The commander of British forces in France, General Douglas Haig launched the Third Battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917. French and British forces to the north, on the Allied left, achieved their first day objectives, advancing as much as a mile. Some British forces on the right matched them. But the divisions at the center of the line were blocked far short of their goals. Gentle rain that began at midnight had turned to drenching downpours by dawn on August 1, making it impossible for tanks, troops, horses, or guns to move further.
In Flanders Fields, the 1917 Campaign by Leon Wolff, page 152, copyright © 1958 by Leon Wolff, publisher: The Viking Press, publication date: 1958
(3) Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna launched four offensives on the Isonzo River in 1915 and five in 1916. His Tenth Battle of the Isonzo raged from May 12 through June 8, 1917. At the beginning of August he prepared for the next Battle of the Isonzo, the Eleventh.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 279, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(4) Entry for August 5, 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. Dunn arrived in Dunkirk on the English Channel coast on August 1, the second day of the Third Battle of Ypres, a day of which Dunn wrote, 'Never in Europe have I seen a heavier downpour of rain than fell on us.' The rain stifled British hopes, already disappointed in the failure to reach the goals of July 31. On arrival in Dunkirk, Dunn moved up the coast to Bray-Dunes, on the Belgian border, roughly 40 km. from Ypres.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 371, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(5) The Battle of Mărăşeşti, German commander August von Mackensen's response to Romanian victory in the Battle of Mărăşti, began on August 6, 1917. The Mărăşti offensive began on July 24, 1917 with an attack by the recovered and newly re-armed Romanian army in Moldavia, the only part of the country not occupied by Central Power forces. The Romanians suspended the battle on August 1. To avenge his loss, Mackensen hastened plans to destroy the Romanian army and seize Moldavia.
Romania in World War I, a Synopsis of Military History by Vasile Alexandrescu, page 52, copyright © 1985, publisher: Military Publishing House, publication date: 1985
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