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A German gunner and his anti-aircraft gun from 1914.
A stylish woman joins a line of Italian soldiers setting off. From a watercolor by Bianchi.
Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
An illustration of the French 75 mm. field artillery cannon in action with portraits of its developers, Deport and Sainte Claire Deville. The sender of the card credits it with the victory of the Marne. Illustration by A. Chrimona [?] Ehrmann [?]. Thanks to kgwbreadcrumbs.blogspot.com/2015/07/briefly-along-western-front.html for clarifying some of the text.
Relief map of Great Britain and Ireland, the North Sea, English Channel, and Atlantic Ocean, with northwestern Europe: France, Belgium, Holland, and Scandinavia. The war-zone outlined on the map was declared on February 4, 1915. On May 7, the Lusitania entered the war zone southwest of Ireland.
". . . far overhead a double-decker English aeroplane suddenly sailed over us. It seemed to be about six thousand feet above us, so high that the sound of its motors was lost, and its speed seemed but a lazy, level drifting across the blue. . . . we watched with peculiar interest the movements of this tiny hawk.. . . A little ball of black smoke suddenly puffed out behind that sailing bird, and presently a sharp crack of bursting shrapnel shell came down to our ears. Another puff of smoke, closer, one in front, above, below. They chased round him like swallows. In all the drab hideousness of modern warfare there is nothing so airy, so piquant, so pretty as this." ((1), more)
"So this is what these young soldiers had come to — here is the real thing. Drums beat, trumpets blare, the Klingelspiel jingles at the regiment's head, and with flowers in your helmet, and your wife or sweetheart shouldering your rifle as far as the station — and you should see these German women marching out with their men! — you go marching out to war. You look out of the window of various railway trains, then they lead you through a ditch into another ditch, and there, across a stretch of mud which might be your own back yard, is a clay bank, which is your enemy. And one morning at dawn you climb over your ditch and run forward until you are cut down." ((2), more)
"On the morning of March 26 [1915] we landed at the port of Gallipoli where the headquarters of the Third Corps had been for some time, and established temporary headquarters there.. . . The British gave me four full weeks before their great landing. They had sent part of their troops to Egypt and perhaps also to Cyprus. The time was just sufficient to complete the most indispensable arrangements and to bring the 3rd Division under Colonel Nicolai from Constantinople." ((3), more)
"After we had left Sainte Menehould the sense of the nearness and all-pervadingness of the war became even more vivid. Every road branching away to our left was a finger touching a red wound: Varennes, le Four de Paris, le Bois de la Grurie, were not more than eight or ten miles to the north. Along our own road the stream of motor-vans and the trains of ammunition grew longer and more frequent. Once we passed a long line of 'Seventy-fives' going single file up a hillside, farther on we watched a big detachment of artillery galloping across a stretch of open country. The movement of supplies was continuous, and every village through which we passed swarmed with soldiers busy loading or unloading the big vans, or clustered about the commissariat motors while hams and quarters of beef were handed out. As we approached Verdun the cannonade had grown louder again; and when we reached the walls of the town and passed under the iron teeth of the portcullis we felt ourselves in one of the last outposts of a mighty line of defense." ((4), more)
"He spoke without rhyme or reason about how the front stood two months ago in the south and east, about the importance of exact communications between individual units, about poison gas, shooting at enemy aeroplanes and catering for the men in the field. Then he passed to conditions about the troops.He spoke of the relationship of the officers to the men, of the men to the N.C.O.s, of deserting to the enemy at the front, of political events and of the fact that fifty percent of the Czech soldiers were 'politically suspect." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from 'In the German Trenches at La Bassée' in Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, a journalist from the neutral United States. In March, 1915 he traveled from Cologne, Germany to the front lines, arriving a few miles north of Neuve Chapelle, France, where the Battle of Neuve Chapelle had ended on March 12.
Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, pp. 132, 133, copyright © 1916 by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1916
(2) Excerpt from 'In the German Trenches at La Bassée' in Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, a journalist from the neutral United States. In March, 1915 he traveled from Cologne, Germany to the front lines, arriving a few miles north of Neuve Chapelle, France, where the Battle of Neuve Chapelle had been fought a few days before, ending on March 12. Ruhl points out that experience — a mere eight months into the war — shows that it is not worth keeping a trench unless the attack has taken at least 300 yards, and that the battalion will retire to try again another day if it has not achieved that standard.
Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, pp. 137, 138, copyright © 1916 by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1916
(3) On March 24, 1915, six days after the failure of the Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles in a naval assault, Turkish War Minister Enver Pasha asked German General Otto Liman von Sanders to take command of the Turkish Fifth Army and organize it to defend the Dardanelles.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, pp. 57, 58, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
(4) Excerpt from the chapter 'In Argonne' in Edith Wharton's Fighting France, her 1915 chronicle of travels behind the French lines.
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 70, 71, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
(5) The antihero of Jaroslav Hašek's novel the Good Soldier Švejk, was part of a battalion crossing Galicia on its way to battle the Russians in March, 1915. Švejk (or Schweik) has been laxly manning the telephone, missing and delaying messages. Like his character Švejk, Hašek was an Austro-Hungarian Czech, significant numbers of whom deserted to the Russians.
The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, page 421, copyright © Cecil Parrott, 1973 (translation), publisher: Penguin
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