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Etinehem Military Cemetery, France holds the remains of 1,004 soldiers, primarily French — including colonial troops — and some British, victims of the Battles of the Somme. © 2013 John M. Shea
Italy's armed forces at the ready in a 1915 postcard. In the foreground the artillery, infantry, an Alpine soldier (in feathered hat), and a Bersaglieri (in plumed headgear). Behind them are a bugler and lancer; in the distance marines and colonial troops. The Italian navy is off shore, an airship and planes overhead. On the reverse are the lyrics of a patriotic Italian March by Angelo Balladori, lyrics by Enrico Mercatali. It ends with a call to the brothers of Trento and Trieste, Austro-Hungarian territory with large ethnic Italian populations.
The Stages of Love: the Barometer of the Poilu, the French soldier. The soldier on active service burns. The soldier in the reserve is less passionate but shares a sacred love. The territorial home guard soldier and his wife share a tempered love, while the new recruit is candid and frank. Love, in this barometer, is ultimately extinguished, and the old soldier prefers the company of his pipe. The shoes at the top of the barometer illustrate the urgency of the active soldier and his mate.
Detail showing the plaque for 1918 from the monument to the Tank Corps, Pozières, France. The base bears plaques commemorating the Tank Corps and the years 1916, when tanks were first used in battle, 1917, when they were proven to be a weapon that could change the war, and 1918, when tanks were decisive in the Allied victory. The plaques for each year list the engagements in which the Corps fought. © 2013 by John M. Shea
German postcard map of the Romanian theater of war, with map labels in Bulgarian added in red. From north to south the labels are Russia, the Austro-Hungarian regions of Galicia and Bukovina, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and, along the Black Sea, the Romania region of Dobruja. Romania's primary war aim was the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian region of Transylvania, with its large ethnic Romanian population.
"At 13:05 on 12 September [1916], Colonel Adolphe Messimy received a message at his command post, a makeshift shelter hollowed out of the shell-scoured plateau south of Combles. The news was excellent. His chasseurs alpins had seized the trenches of the German third position west of the Bapaume-Péronne road. As sector commander, he requested reinforcements. Two fresh battalions from 44 and 133 RIs were ordered forward. At 18:39 they advanced from the third position, over the road where today Foch's statue stands staring defiantly eastwards, across the final line of trenches protecting Bouchavesnes village. Three companies of chasseurs followed them across, without orders, but determined to press their advantage." ((1), more)
". . . On 13 September [1916], the skies cleared; that afternoon, with the sun at their backs, the Italians sighted their targets. With the help of aerial observers, the heavy batteries reduced much of the Austrian front line to rubble, blowing broad holes in the wire, shattering their communications. Cadorna took heart; he believed the Austrians were packed into their front-line bunkers. In fact they had left only a token force in the front lines, so their losses were relatively slight; their men were nearby, and ready. So were their skilfully disguised batteries." ((2), more)
"On September 14 I had the great joy of obtaining my second home leave, seven months after my first one. In the night of the 16th–17th, having come on foot from the station at Moux, I had the pleasure of seeing my loved ones, once again, and forgetting for a few days, too quickly gone by, the hard reality, the primitive life of the trenches, so far from civilization.On the morning of the 24th I had to pull myself away from the sweetness of family life, to take the rough road back to the front lines." ((3), more)
"On the Somme, a potentially dramatic turn in the Entente fortunes took place on September 15 [1916], when tanks were used for the first time in battle. Forty-nine tanks took part in the attack, moving forward on a wide front. Ten of the tanks were hit by German artillery fire, nine broke down with mechanical difficulties, and five failed to advance. But those that did manage to go forward were able to advance more than 2,000 yards, capturing the long-sought High Wood, and three villages, Flers, Martinpuich and Courcelette. Churchill wrote to Admiral Fisher, both of them then out of office and out of power: 'My poor "land battleships" have been let off prematurely and on a petty scale. In that idea resided one real victory.' Recognising the potential of the new weapon, Haig asked the War Office for a thousand of them. The Germans were far behind in their tank experiments." ((4), more)
"Under the increasing pressure of the Bulgarians the Rumanians are progressively evacuating the Dobrudja, and every day and night Austrian airmen bomb Bucharest from their base at Rustchuk.From the moment the Rudeanu agreement was thrown over these misfortunes were easy to foresee. The Rumanian Government is paying dearly for the mistake it made in directing its whole military effort towards Transylvania, allowing itself to be taken in by vague rumours from Sofia and particularly in imagining that the Bulgarians had abandoned the idea of a military revenge for the disaster and humiliation of 1913." ((5), more)
(1) The British and French renewed the Battle of the Somme at the beginning of September with separate but coordinated attacks. That of the French on September 12 was a predecessor to one by the British planned for the 15th. The German defenders were increasingly stretched by the Franco-British assault. Our quotation, from William Philpott's Three Armies on the Somme, describes the entry into a chiefly intact village poorly held by a largely drunken garrison. The advance could have been the beginnings of a French breakthrough, but the gap was too narrow, allowing enfilade fire on the flanks, and reinforcements could not be brought in quickly enough to exploit the breach in the German line.
Three Armies on the Somme by William Philpott, page 316, copyright © 2009 by William Philpott, publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, publication date: 2009
(2) In an attempt to build on the success of his Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, Italian Commander in Chief Luigi Cadorna launched his Seventh on September 13, 1916. General Svetozar Boroević's Austro-Hungarian troops mimicked the defensive tactics of German troops, lightly defending a front line supported by machine gun nests, so that casualties would be relatively light during the bombardment that typically preceded an infantry assault. Cadorna thought the Austro-Hungarians had two defensive lines; they had four.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, pp. 219–220, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(3) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, writing of his leave, September 14 to 24, 1916. Saying goodbye to his children, Barthas and his wife walked to Moux, a nearby village midway between Carcassonne and the Mediterranean coast, where he could catch a tram to begin his journey back to the front in Champagne. When he arrived he found his regiment had already left for the Somme.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 254–255, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(4) The September 15, 1916 British attack in the Battle of the Somme — the Battle of Flers-Courcelette — was the first use of the tank in battle. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill had been a member of the Asquith cabinet until being forced out in May, 1915 in the aftermath of the failed Gallipoli campaign. Churchill, an imaginative man, believed a surprise attack of tanks in great numbers could achieve the breakthrough the Entente allies so ardently desired. British Commander in Chief Douglas Haig, a man of more limited imagination, looked for some advantage in a battle that had already cost enormous numbers of British causalities. Although their use was premature, Haig recognized the tank's value. Asquith's son Raymond was killed in the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 286, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(5) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Saturday, September 16, 1916. A combined German, Bulgarian, and Turkish army under German General August von Mackensen attacked Romania from the south in Dobrudja, a region between the Danube River and the Black Sea. Colonel Rudeanu was the Romanian military attaché in France, and Paléologue had written of his work in July. The agreement he had negotiated with the Allies was that Romania would attack Bulgaria immediately upon entering the war in an attempt to link up with the Entente ally forces on the Salonica Front. Romania instead sent three of its four armies through the passes in the Transylvanian Alps to invade Transylvania, a region of Austria-Hungary with a large ethnic Romanian population. In the Second Balkan War of 1913, Romania had launched a surprise attack on Bulgaria which was already at war with Turkey and its allies in the First Balkan War, Serbia and Greece. Romania's political and military decisions seem hopelessly if not criminally naive. Bucharest and Sofia were and remain the capitals of Romania and Bulgaria respectively.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. III by Maurice Paléologue, page 26, publisher: George H. Doran Company
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