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Map of the North and Baltic Seas (labeledNord-See and Ostsee) from a folding postcard of five battlefronts: the Western and Eastern Fronts; North and Baltic Seas, Mediterranean and Black Seas; and the Serbian-Montenegro Front.
A photo postcard of a German trench view of barbed wire and a dead patrol. Dated February 22, 1916, and field postmarked the next day, the message is from a soldier to his uncle, and reads in part, 'yesterday we heard that 4 fortresses of Verdun were taken. This have been a lot of shooting . . . Maybe this is the end of Verdun and peace will come soon . . . the barbed wire on the other side of the card is French. You can see dead patrols . . .' (Translation from the German courtesy Thomas Faust.) Evidently the author safely reached the French trench line.
Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
A folding postcard from a pencil sketch of an unsuccessful Allied gas attack in Flanders.
Headstone of Private A.C. Thomas of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Delville Wood Cemetery, Longueval, France. Thomas died July 20, 1916, aged 23. © 2014 John M. Shea
"During the night of 14–15 October [1917], the Pripyat assisted by three motorboats laid a field of mines in Kassar Wick north of Cape Pawasterort. According to one account, the Pripyat's mutinous crew had been replaced by more reliable men drawn from the destroyers and torpedo boats. When the German flotillas returned to the inlet the next day, the destroyer B.98 had her bow blown off and had to be towed back to Libau. The destroyer B.112, in seeking a path around the new minefield, grounded and was put out of action. Nevertheless, the heavy fighting in the waters around the north of Ösel was really over." ((1), more)
"Of those comrades who departed for the West hardly one has stayed alive. There were a few great characters among them who I would gladly have met up with again. I can still picture them at the station, waving from the departing train. 'Pity that you can't come with us!' shouted Erichson, the Mecklenburger who with Wurche and me had formed the third leaf of the clover in the command of the 9th company at Augustovo. Now he lies buried before Verdun. Had he guessed that we would shortly be part of the assaults on Tarnopol and Riga, he would probably have stayed with us. . . . I am once more thankful for my balanced faith, which has never been seriously shaken. Do not suppose that I believe myself to be preserved and protected to the prejudice of others — but I have the tranquil, inner knowledge that everything that happens and can happen to me is part of a living development over which nothing dead has any power." ((2), more)
"Marshall Haig has embarked upon this giant offensive in Flanders at the risk of exhausting the entire British Army. They are in their eighth battle! The weather is becoming quite unfavourable. This operation has been badly staged: a narrow front, and a pivoting movement demanding an advance on the part of the right flank, which could not be realised. Furthermore, the enemy had time to bring all his reserves up to Flanders, as a result of the inaction of the French troops and the growing weakness of the Russian Army.Marshall Haig is supported in his obstinacy by several politicians who look upon this offensive from the standpoint of political advantages, which bear no relationship to the military point of view." ((3), more)
". . . [we] marched to Roulers, or, to give it its Flemish name, Roeselare. The town was in the early stages of destruction. There were still shops with goods in them, but the inhabitants were already living in their cellars, and the ties of bourgeois existence were being loosened by frequent bombardment. With the war raging on all sides, a shop window opposite my quarters containing, of all things, ladies' hats, seemed the height of absurd irrelevance. At night, looters broke into the abandoned houses." ((4), more)
"Dearest Robert, I am so glad you like Owen's poem. I will tell him to send you any decent stuff he does. His work is very unequal, and you can help him a great deal.Seeing you again has made me more restless than ever. My position here is unbearable, and the feeling of isolation makes me feel rotten. I had a long letter from Cotterill to-day. They had just got back to rest from Polygon Wood and he says the conditions and general situation are more bloody than anything he has yet seen. Three miles of morasses, shell-holes and dead men and horses through which to get the rations up. I should like the people who write leading articles for the Morning Post (about victory) to read his letter." ((5), more)
(1) In the spring of 1917, German forces on the Russian front waited to see what would come of the Russian Revolution, and whether Russia wound continue to fight. The July Kerensky Offensive provided one answer, and the collapse of the Russian army in its aftermath a fuller one. German forces advanced in late summer, taking the Russian Baltic Sea port of Riga on September 3. The German fleet simultaneously advanced, threatening to enter the Gulf of Finland leading to Petrograd. The island of Ösel is, in 2017, Saaremaa, Estonia.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, pp. 216–217, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(2) Excerpt from an October 16, 1917 letter by German writer and officer Walter Flex to his family, written on the last day of his life. Flex took part in Operation Albion against Russia in the Baltic Sea and its coast including the port of Riga. He was shot and killed on the island of Ösel now, in 2017, Saaremaa, Estonia. 'Wurche' was Ernst Wurche, the subject of Flex's novella 'A Wanderer Between Two Worlds.' Augustovo and Tarnopol, Poland, were then in Russian Poland, east of Warsaw.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 186, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(3) Excerpt from the entry for October 17, 1917 from the diary of King Albert I of Belgium. British commander General Douglas Haig and his general Gough and Plummer continued attacks in the Third Battle of Ypres. British politicians, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George, expected Haig to fail, but did not stop him.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, pp. 178 and 179, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(4) German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger had fought in the first days of the Third Battle of Ypres, begun on July 31, 1917, but on August 10 was redeployed to the front southeast of Verdun where he was wounded in a trench raid in which he also lost 10 of his 14 comrades. After a leave, he returned to Flanders where Third Ypres ground on.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 192, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
(5) Excerpt from a letter dated October 19, 1917 from Siegfried Sassoon to the Robert Graves, a fellow soldier he had met at the end of 1915 as 'a young poet, captain in Third Battalion and very much disliked.' [p. 21] Sassoon was a British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon had been wounded in April, and by mid-June 15 had concluded that the war begun 'as a war of defence and liberation, [had] become a war of aggression and conquest.' In October he was at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric facility in Scotland, and under the care of W. H. R. Rivers. There he met the poet Wilfred Owen and edited some of his poems. Their relationship is the basis for Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker's trilogy of the same name. Graves was the author of Goodbye to All That. Quartermaster Joe Cotterill had written of the Battle of Polygon Wood, a September 26 action in the Third Battle of Ypres.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, pp. 191 and 192, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
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