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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.
Map of the the Balkan Front — Germany's Southeast Front — with the mountain passes between Austria-Hungary and Romania. From the Reichsarchiv history of the wars in Serbia and Romania, Herbstschlacht in Macedonien; Cernabogen 1916.The capitals of Belgrade (Serbia), Bucharest (Romania), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Constantinople (Turkey) are prominent, as is Salonica, Greece, the Allied entry port into the country.
"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." ((1), 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." ((2), 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." ((3), 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." ((4), more)
"It was a dull morning. We packed our belongings, wrote letters and mended some of our torn clothing. Our head doctor arrived, and told us that plans had been altered and that our flying detachment was to go south into Roumania. We were delighted! Roumania was our ally and Russian troops had already joined forces with the Roumanian Army and were carrying on a slow but successful campaign. So once again, we were buoyed up with high hopes, knowing that a new period of work was about to begin for us. But we did not overlook the stern fact that the Germans had driven the Russian Armies out of Galicia and beaten them back over the Russian frontier. It was the truth — a terrible tragic truth, and had to be faced. All day long we heard distant firing, despite the fact that the Russian retreat had reached an end." ((5), more)
(1) 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
(2) 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
(3) 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
(4) 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
(5) Entry for August 7 (July 25, Old Style) from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross. On July 31, her unit had at first unwittingly crossed from Austria-Hungary into Russia in the retreat following the collapse of Russia's Kerensky Offensive. A week earlier, on July 24, the Romanians, with Russian support, had launched their Mărăşti offensive in Moldavia, the only part of the country not occupied by Central Power forces. The German counter-attack, the Battle of Mărăşeşti, began on August 6, 1917. Galicia was the northeastern region of Austria-Hungary.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 297, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
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