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Metal grave markers at the Laventie German Military Cemetery, Laventie, France. A plowed field and village is in the background. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Postcard celebrating the 1908 military rebellion by the Young Turks that restored the constitution of 1876. Among the revolutionary leaders were Enver Bey, later Enver Pasha, and Nyazi Bey. Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed in 1909, replaced by his brother Mohammed V.
Cover to the sheet music for 'Good-bye Broadway, Hello France,' the 'big song hit of 'Passing Show of 1917' at N.Y. Winter Garden,' lyrics by C. Francis Reisner and Benny Davis, music by Billy Baskette. Standing in New York, General John J. Pershing shakes hands over the Atlantic with a Ferdinand-Foch-like French general.
King Albert of Belgium decorates Willy Coppens, Belgium's Ace of Aces. Coppens describes this June 30, 1918 ceremony, in which he was awarded the Ordre de la Couronne in his memoir Flying in Flanders.
Map of the Allied offensives of 1918, from July 18 and the Second Battle of the Marne to the Armistice on November 11. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
"Frenchman, from Brest, Bordeaux, Garonne;Ukrainian, Cossack from the Urals, from Dnjestr and Don;Austrians, Bulgarians, Turks and Serbs,All of you in the raging whirlpool of action and dying —Britisher, from London, York, Manchester,Soldier, comrade-in-arms, truly fellow human being and best of men —American, from the populous states of freedom:Throw away partisanship, national pride and antagonism!If you were an honourable enemy, become an honourable friend.Here is my hand, so that hand in hand may now be linked togetherAnd our new day find us sincere and humane." ((1), more)
"The fact was that the Allied breakthrough in Macedonia, and the German collapse coming in its wake, had undermined any possible negotiating leverage the Sublime Porte still had, whether on the Americans or anyone else. On October 12, 1918, Franchet d'Esperey's forces cut the Balkan rail link between Berlin and Constantinople, rendering a defense of the capital effectively impossible, even had the Young Turks wanted to fight to the bitter end. To be sure, there were still battle-hardened Ottoman divisions occupying the Transcaucasus, and in northern Syria, what remained of the Yildirim Army Group was waging a fighting retreat." ((2), more)
". . . the following day, October 13, [Foch and Pershing] met. After an extensive discussion Pershing agreed to form the U.S. Second Army, and Foch agreed to elevate him to the same status as Pétain and Haig. Foch's order explained that the Americans had created the U.S. Second Army and that Pershing was now an army-group commander. In his memoirs Foch said nothing about sending Weygand to Pershing's headquarters, but he did observe, 'Having a more complete appreciation of the difficulties faced by the Americans, I could not support the radical solution envisaged by Mr. Clemenceau.' Whatever Foch's 'solution' may have been, he forced Pershing to reorganize American forces and pressed him to get the Meuse Argonne offensive moving." ((3), more)
"At 5 A.M., it was too dark to leave the ground. The sky was overcast and a damp mist lay across Flanders. Our aeroplanes were brought out, but were almost invisible in the half-light. At 5:30 A.M., the preliminary artillery bombardment opened with terrible intensity in the east, where a red glow now heralded the day.I thought of Alfred Mouton's remark, and said to Kervyn de Meerendré, who was standing by my side: 'Is this what they call the end of the War?' Never had the guns fired so fiercely in our sector.At 5:35 A.M., Gusto de Mévius came from the office and handed me a telephoned appeal from our artillery asking for the Thourout balloon to be destroyed. The observer in this balloon, it appeared, was directing the enemy's batteries on to our own, and seriously interfering with our preparation." ((4), more)
"On October 15th the Franco-American armies between the Oise and the Argonne, headed towards Mézières, had come into contact with a strong German position (Hunding Stellung and Brunehilde Stellung) established along the general line La Fère—Crécy-sur-Serre—Sissone—Château-Porcien—Vouziers—Grandpré.North of the Oise, the British armies, marching on Mons and Avesnes, reached that same day the front Wassigny—Le Câteau—Solesmes—Douai. They had thus, from the south, turned the region of Lille, which was likewise threatened from the north by the Flanders Group of Armies between the Lys and the sea.. . . the Flanders Group of Armies continued uninterruptedly its movement towards Thourout, Courtrai, and Menin, gaining ground rapidly. On the 14th, it got possession of Hooglede, Roules, and Moorseele, on the 15th it marched beyond Cortemarck, reached the gates of Courtrai, and entered Menin and Werwicq." ((5), more)
(1) Stanza from 'An die Soldaten des Grossen Krieges' ('To the Soldiers of the Great War', translated by Patrick Bridgwater) by Gerrit Engelke, German writer and soldier, wounded on October 11, 1918, dying on the 13th. Engelke served at Langemarck, Verdun, the Somme, Champagne, and St. Mihiel and was a recipient of the Iron Cross.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, pp. 89–90, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(2) French General Louis Franchet d'Esperey commanded Allied forces — French, British, Italian, Greek, and Serbian — on the Balkan Front, where for over two years the Bulgarians had kept the Allied forces bottled up. In the two weeks between the opening of d'Esperey's offensive into Serbia on September 15, 1918 and the end of the month, the defenders collapsed, the Bulgarian home front rose up, and a new Bulgarian government signed an armistice. The rail link that connected Berlin and Constantinople was the Balkan Zug, passed through Bulgaria, Serbia, and Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary, and was broken by Franchet d'Esperey's advance in Serbia. In and beyond the Caucasus Mountains, Turkey had fought Russia before the latter left the war. Turkey continuing its adventure into Russian and Persia as the empire was being defeated in Syria and Mesopotamia. The 'Sublime Porte' is a reference to the gate leading to the government buildings in Constantinople and a metonym for the Turkish government. The Young Turks has seized power in 1908. In the ten years that followed, War Minister Enver Pasha's military incompetence had helped lead his country to ruin, and Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat had slaughtered a large part of the country's Armenian population as well as other ethnic groups.
The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923 by Sean McMeekin, page 404, copyright © 2015 by Sean McMeekin, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2015
(3) French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was increasingly furious with what he saw as the incompetence and intransigence of American Commander in Chief John Pershing and the defense of him by Allied Commander in Chief Ferdinand Foch. In the first phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive launched on September 26, 1918, American forces, with divisions twice as large as their European counterparts, were in chaos and gridlock behind the front, struggling to move food, materiel, and reserves forward, and casualties back. Clemenceau, who was accustomed to visiting the front, could not, and saw Pershing as responsible for holding up not only the American advance but that of the French army on his left. Generals Henri Philippe Pétain and Douglas Haig were, respectively, commanders of the French and British armies. General Maxime Weygand was the French military representative to the Supreme War Council.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 495, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
(4) Excerpt from the memoir of Willy Coppens describing the morning of October 14, 1918 on which the Belgian Army Group, under the command of Albert, King of the Belgians, resumed the offensive in Flanders. The day before, Coppens met Alfred Mouton, another Belgian pilot who had told Coppens he was lucky as the war would 'be over in a day or two and you will have come through unscratched.' After downing an observation balloon over Praet-Bosch at 6:00 AM, his thirty-sixth victory, Coppens was seriously wounded by an incendiary bullet through his left shin in the course of downing a second balloon over Thourout. He made it back to the Belgian lines and began a months-long convalescence that included multiple surgeries, the loss of his leg, and life threatening infections.
Flying in Flanders by Willy Coppens, page 227, publisher: Ace Books, publication date: 1971
(5) Allied Commander-in-Chef Ferdinand Foch writing of the advances of October 15, 1918 along the Western Front. The Franco-American Meuse-Argonne Offensive advanced slowly. The Flanders Group of Armies included the Belgian Army and French and British units. On the 14th, Belgian airmen were the first to see the German forces retreating eastward across Belgium.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 428–429, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
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