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Front cover of La Domenica del Corriere of August 22–29, 1915, an illustrated weekly supplement to Corriere della Sera, published in Milan, Italy. The front and back covers are full-page illustrations by the great Italian illustrator Achille Beltrame. The front cover is an illustration of contemporary trench warfare, with soldiers throwing both ball and stick grenades to turn back an enemy attack. The back cover is an illustration of Italian author, pilot, soldier, and self-promoter Gabriele d'Annunzio dropping streamers in the colors of the Italian flag and bearing patriotic massages over the city of Trieste, Austria-Hungary.
The Serbian lion, wounded, bleeding, turns from the skeletal bodies of its cubs to face its enemy: his time for justice has come. In the background are images of Serbia burning and Serbians hung.
A Sanke postcard of a captured British Sopwith Triplane being wheeled along.
Monument to the Third Australian Division on Route D1 in Sailly-le-Sec, France.
The Cobbers memorial, Fromelles, France. In the aftermath of the July 19-20, 1916 Battle of Fromelles, hundreds of wounded Australian soldiers lay in No Man's Land. For three days and nights these wounded were carried to their trenches. Among the soldiers bringing in the wounded was Sergeant Simon Fraser of the 57th Battalion, who heard a soldier call, 'Don't forget me, cobber.' With others, Fraser brought back this and another wounded man. © 2013 John M. Shea
". . . He was drinking and seemed to be in good humour. He knew of the preparations that were being made for the next attack, and I told him of the arrangements made by our battalion commander.'I know,' he said; 'now it's my turn to go first over the top. One by one we all get killed.''This time we shall have artillery support,' I said, to cheer him up.'We shall have the enemy's artillery against us,' he retorted,' and there are barbed-wire entanglements everywhere. . . . There's no point at all in my studying the ground. What does it matter whether we attack to the right or the left? It's all the same to me whether I die in one place or another. Still, since it's the battalion commander's wish, come along.'" ((1), more)
"The Serbs, whom Sarrail planned would form the spearhead of his initial assault, began to move westward on July 17 in order to take over sixty miles of the front from the French well beyond the Vardar and facing the mountain peaks which marked the old frontier of their land. As the Serbs had been encamped ten miles southeast of Salonika, it was necessary for them to be brought through the outskirts of the town. There was little transport available; they marched along, chanting interminable patriotic ballads as they went, and all could see that the Serbian Army was resurrected. A chain of enemy agents, recruited from the peasantry of the Struma valley and the highland east of Salonika, spread the news up to the Bulgarian lines . . ." ((2), more)
"By the time the first [Sopwith] Pups arrived at No. 1 Wing RNAS at Dunkerque in July 1916, the prototype of another variant was joining them for front-line evaluation. Completed on May 30, 1916, Sopwith Triplane N500 combined the Pub's fuselage with a 130-hp Clerget engine and three sets of narrow-chord, high aspect ratio wings that gave the pilot a better view from the cockpit, a faster climb rate and superior maneuverability, even than the Pup's. Flying the new Triplane on July 1 was Flight Lieutenant Roderic Stanley Dallas of No. 1 Wing's 'A' Squadron, an Australian who already had three victories in Nieuports. To these he added a fourth in N500, when he drove down a German two-seater out of control southwest of St. Marie Capelle." ((3), more)
"The assault began on the late afternoon of July 19, preceded by a day-long artillery barrage. The first Australian casualties were caused by their own shells falling short, and by some heavy German artillery fire. When the attack began, the German machine guns in the salient opened fire: the artillery had failed to silence them.An hour after the first men had gone over the top, General Elliott reported: 'Every man who rises is being shot down. Reports from the wounded indicate that the attack is failing from want of support.' The wounded were streaming back. A British attack on the other side of the salient was also driven back with heavy British casualties." ((4), more)
"Amid the hundreds of cemeteries on the Western Front, one, a mile north of Fromelles, contains the graves of 410 Australians, and the names of 1,298 more 'missing' amid the mud and detritus of the battlefield. The battle at Fromelles was a brief interlude, far from the Somme, during that vaster battle. Yet its casualties were high: 1,708 Australian dead and nearly 4,000 wounded. The British dead were at least four hundred. The German dead and wounded were less than 1,500 in all." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from an episode during the Asiago Offensive on July 16, 1916, from Emilio Lussu's account of his service on the Asiago front as part of the Sardinian Sassari Brigade. In preparation for an attack the next day, Lussu was ordered to take a Captain of the 9th Company along the front, to show him the Austro-Hungarian position. When Lussu takes the Captain to loophole number 14, the one with the best view of the enemy line, the two are told the loophole is closed because it is too dangerous to use: snipers have a fixed rifle trained on it. Drunk, fatalistic if not suicidal, the Captain pushes aside the stone and within seconds is shot in his face. Some of his men think he preferred 'a bullet through his head' to leading 'his men to the slaughter like a lot of cattle.'
Sardinian Brigade by Emilio Lussu, pp. 106-107, copyright © 1939 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., publisher: Knopf, publication date: 1939
(2) Victorious but weakened by Austria-Hungary's invasions in 1914, decimated by typhus in 1915, and overwhelmed by the 1915 invasion by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria, Serbia's government and the remains of its army fled to the Adriatic Sea and eventual transport by its allies to the island of Corfu to recuperate. In the spring and summer of 1916 it joined the Allied forces headquartered in Salonika, Greece, forces that originally deployed to Greece to aid Serbia. French General Maurice Sarrail planned an attack on the Bulgarian forces that had thwarted the Allies in 1915.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 74, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(3) Thomas Sopwith was an aviator and founder of the Sopwith Aviation Company that produced some of the most successful aircraft of the war, including the Sopwith Snipe, Sopwith Pup, Sopwith Camel, and Sopwith Triplane. Germany's Fokker Eindekker (monoplane), designed by the Dutch Anton Fokker, had dominated the skies until the introduction of the French Nieuport planes. Many of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) planes were seaplanes with pontoons rather than wheels.
The Origin of the Fighter Aircraft by Jon Gutman, pp. 86-87, copyright © 2009 Jon Gutman, publisher: Westholme Publishing, publication date: 2009
(4) Fought on July 19 and 20, 1916, the Battle of Fromelles, French, was a relatively small engagement fought 30 miles north of the ongoing Battle of the Somme, but one in which the Australians suffered heavily.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, pp. 267-268, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(5) Fought on July 19 and 20, 1916, the Battle of Fromelles, France, was a relatively small engagement fought 30 miles north of the ongoing Battle of the Somme, but one in which the Australians suffered heavily. The Australians attacked on the left flank, the British on the right, with the plan calling for the two to meet at the Sugar Loaf salient in the center. The British failed to make it to Sugar Loaf, leaving the Australians with no support on their right. A later, second advance, was cancelled, but orders only made it to the British, again leaving the Australians to their fate.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 268, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
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