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Verdun Ossuary and Cemetery, France. © 2015 John M. Shea
Postcard from a series on the Armies of the European War of 1914. The French Army included units from its African colonies including Morocco and Senegal, and the Départment of Algeria.
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%!
Postcard map of Galicia, one of the Austro-Hungarian theaters of war, from Cracow to Tarnopol along the north of the Carpathian Mountains. The region includes the fortress city of Przemyśl.
Headstone of Sapper E.M. Des Brisay, 2nd Canadian Signal Company, Attd. Royal Flying Corps, died August 3, 1916, age 23, at Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez, France. © 2013 John M. Shea
"The Germans held [Fort Vaux] until November 2d, then suddenly evacuating the position and retiring to the Woevre Plain. With the restauration of Vaux, the circle of Verdun defences was once more complete.Eight months before the French had said: 'They shall not pass.' And the Germans did not pass Verdun. Instead they had retired a defeated army, leaving half a million of their dead on the slopes round about Verdun." ((1), more)
"What the French do with their weaklings is a mystery. Their gunners may be picked, but here are infantry and supply all as big as our average; they have no such little men in this part of their line as a great many of ours. Their A.S.C. and ours differ also in age; their men are in early middle age, ours are lusty youths." ((2), more)
"With the beginning of November 1st, the Italians once more resumed their drive again against Trieste, and in four days of fighting on high mountain peaks advanced their lines, taking 10,000 prisoner. But their own losses also were heavy, compelling a cessation of hostilities. Excepting for a series of artillery duels during November, neither side undertook any important engagement." ((3), more)
"On the Eastern Front, other shortages were impeding any hope of a renewed Russian success. 'The plain truth is,' wrote Colonel Knox in his diary on November 5, 'that without aeroplanes and far more heavy guns and shell and some knowledge of their use, it is butchery, and useless butchery, to drive Russian infantry against German lines.' In the previous five months, Knox was told by General Dukhonin, the Quarter-Master General, Russian losses 'may well have exceeded a million men' killed and wounded.. . . On November 5 the German-sponsored Kingdom of Poland was proclaimed, with Warsaw as its capital." ((4), more)
"Look here, Kid. Take a tip from me an[d] stop wanting to enlist. You could do nothing but go in the home guards and stay there awhile, and it would be a deuce of a awhile. You hold your horses awhile and go to school every day, and by the time you are seventeen you can get out and enlist.Don't be afraid that the war will be over by then, because if you ask me, it is going to last some time after 1920. So be a good boy and stay on the farm for a while, and go to school every day you possibly can, as that is the best thing you can ever do. I am haveing a pretty good time just now, but I don't know how long it is going to last. Most of the men here are not near as well off as I am by a long sight." ((5), more)
(1) German forces launched the Battle of Verdun with a massive bombardment the night of February 21–22, 1916, and continued assaults and bombardment of the Verdun salient through the spring and summer. The July 1 beginning of the Anglo-French assault on the Somme forced the Germans to wind down the Verdun offensive. One of the principal forts defending Verdun was Fort Douaumont, which had fallen to the Germans on February 25, in the first days of the battle. Fort Vaux fell on June 7. The reconquest of the forts was a major French objective in the autumn. Under intense bombardment since October 20, the German defenders of Fort Douaumont had evacuated on the night of the 23rd after a French shell had ignited a fire inside the Fort. A small group of German soldiers re-occupied the Fort the morning of the 24th, but were easily overwhelmed by the French. Fort Vaux was evacuated by the German defenders on November 2, and French troops reoccupied it that night.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, pp. 217–218, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(2) Extract from the entry for November 3, 1916 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. The Battalion was then serving in the Somme sector, on the British right, on the French left. Dunn and French Corporal Louis Barthas, author of the memoir Poilu, seem to have been in close proximity in late 1916. A.S.C.: Assistant (or Adjutant?) Staff Captain
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 272, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) The curious syntax and redundancy of our author's summary — 'the Italians once more resumed their drive again against Trieste' — may be appropriate for the Ninth of Twelve Battles of the Isonzo, which Italian commander-in-chief Luigi Cadorna launched on November 1, 1916. Although Trieste was roughly 25 kilometers from the Italian front lines, mountains intervened.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 233, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(4) Russia's Brusilov Offensive, begun brilliantly on June 4, 1916, and one of the great offensives of the war, had broken the Austro-Hungarian front until Germany came (once again) to it's ally's aid. Since September the Russians had done little more than throw men into battle with inadequate support, as Knox notes. The former Kingdom of Poland was divided between Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. In an attempt to rally Polish nationalists to their side, the German declaration was cynical, but more than Russia could muster.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 295, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(5) Better part of a letter from Winnie McClare to his brother Herbert, November 6, 1916. From Nova Scotia, Canada, McClare was writing from a training camp in Upper Dibgate in Kent on England's southeast coast.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, pp. 226–227, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
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