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Headstone of Able Seaman J. Wilkinson at Martinpuich Cemetery, Martinpuich, France. Wilkinson died March 25, 1918, age 24. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Panorama of the Western theater of war 1914/15 from Compiègne to Arras, with the North Sea coast in the distance.
Map of the Ottoman Empire showing the travels of Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War, from his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent.
Cover to the sheet music for 'Good-bye Broadway, Hello France,' the 'big song hit of 'Passing Show of 1917' at N.Y. Winter Garden,' lyrics by C. Francis Reisner and Benny Davis, music by Billy Baskette. Standing in New York, General John J. Pershing shakes hands over the Atlantic with a Ferdinand-Foch-like French general.
His reach exceeds his grasp. A German fox eyes grapes — the cities of Calais, Paris, Verdun, and Petrograd — he hadn't conquered, and wouldn't in the war. The twining vines labeled Belgium, Italy, England, Russia, France, Japan, Serbia, Portugal, Montenegro, and Romania, the last of which joined the Allies in October 1916. In the distance is a rolling battlefield of smoking cannon and barbed wire. A postcard by F. Sancha.
"The whole of the troops holding the British line south of the Somme were now greatly exhausted, and the absence of reserves behind them gave ground for considerable anxiety. As the result of a conference held by the Fifth Army Commander on the 25th of March, a mixed force including details, stragglers, schools personnel, tunneling companies, Army troops companies, field survey companies, and Canadian and American engineers, had been got together and organized by General Grant, the Chief Engineer to the Fifth Army. On the 26th of March these were posted by General Grant . . . [who] was directed to hand over command of his force to General Carey.Except for General Carey's force there were no reenforcements of any kind behind the divisions which had been fighting for the most part continuously since the opening of the battle." ((1), more)
"'General Foch is charged by the British and French governments with coördinating the action of the Allied armies on the western front. To this end he will come to an understanding with the commanders in chief, who are requested to furnish him with all necessary information.' . . . Instead of a British battle to cover the Channel ports and a French battle to cover Paris, we would fight an Anglo-French battle to cover Amiens, the connecting link between the two armies." ((2), more)
"Other disturbing news also curtailed Allenby's operations. The same day that he launched the abortive Amman attack, the Germans began their spring offensive on the western front: the gains they made were devastating. After two days Lloyd George telegraphed the British ambassador in Washington, telling him to try to speed up the deployment of American soldiers in Europe by informing President Wilson that 'the situation is undoubtedly critical and if America delays now she may be too ate.' Within two more days the Germans had taken over 45,000 British and French soldiers prisoner. On 27 March the War Office contacted Allenby to tell him that its plans to send him troops from Mesopotamia were canceled and that British troops and heavy artillery would be taken from him for France as soon as shipping became available. 'You will adopt a policy of active defence in Palestine as soon as the operations you are now undertaking are completed,' Allenby was told." ((3), more)
"I have come to tell you that the American people will hold it a high honor that their troops should take part in the present battle. I ask you to permit this in my name and in theirs. At the present moment there is only one thing to do, to fight. Infantry, artillery, aëroplanes — all that I have I put at your disposal — do what you like with them. More will come — in fact, all that may be necessary. I have come expressly to tell you that the American people will be proud to take part in this, the greatest and most striking battle in history." ((4), more)
"The Secretary of State has received from Ambassador Sharp in Paris a graphic report of his visit to the scene of the horrible tragedy which occurred on the afternoon of Good Friday in a church by the explosion of a German shell projected from far back of the enemy lines a distance of more than seventy miles. The appalling destruction wrought by this shell is, as the Ambassador remarked, probably not equaled by any single discharge of any hostile gun in the cruelty and horrors of its result.In no other one spot in Paris, even where poverty had gathered on that holy day to worship, could destruction of life have been so great. Nearly a hundred mangled corpses lying in the morgues, with almost as many seriously wounded, attested to the measure of the toll exacted. Far up to the high, vaulted arches, between the flying buttresses well to the front of the church is a great gap in the wall, from which fell upon the heads of the devoted worshipers many tons of solid masonry. It was this that caused such a great loss of life." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from General Douglas Haig's July 1918 account of Operation Michael, the German Somme Offensive, and the first of five German drives in 1918 to end the war in victory. On March 21, German troops hit the British line, striking the Third and Fifth Armies. The Third Army held, but the Fifth did not, and the Third had to retreat to maintain contact. In the first three days, German commander Erich Ludendorff's forces drove the British from 700 square miles of territory that had been gained and held at great cost.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 69–70, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) The first paragraph is from the agreement signed by Lord Alfred Milner, a member of the British War Cabinet, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau on March 26, 1918, appointing General Ferdinand Foch commander over the French and British Armies on the Western Front to ensure the two did not separate and fall back to the national capital or the evacuation ports for transfer to Britain. The second paragraph is a summary of Foch's immediate plan, first sent to Clemenceau two days earlier. The 'commanders in chief' were British General Douglas Haig and French General Henri Philippe Pétain. Amiens was a critical communication center in northern France. Germany's Operation Michael, the Somme Offensive, was on the verge of breaking the Allied line and seizing Amiens.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 264, 265, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(3) Under the command of General Edmund Allenby, the British entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917, and continued advancing along the Mediterranean coast in Palestine. In an attack launched on March 8, Allenby tried to take Nablus, and attacking across the Jordan River at the same time. British forces in Mesopotamia had steadily advanced against the Turks. The success of Germany's Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, had made the British position on the Western Front desperate.
Setting the Desert on Fire by James Barr, pp. 234–235, copyright © 2008, 2006 by James Barr, publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., publication date: 2009
(4) March 28, 1918 address of American commander General John Pershing to Ferdinand Foch, made at Bombon, France, offering to subordinate American forces. Both Pershing and American President Woodrow Wilson had insisted on an independent American Army under sole American command, but the success of Germany's Somme Offensive, Operation Michael, made the situation desperate. When Pershing spoke, there were fewer than 150,000 American soldiers in France.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 101, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(5) Beginning of the April 3, 1918 report of William Sharp, United State Ambassador to France, to the Secretary of State concerning the March 29, 1918 German bombardment of Paris. The German advance in Operation Michael put Paris within the range of a new German gun. Among the 91 killed at the Church of St. Gervais were the Secretary of the Swiss Legation and Rose-Marie Ormond, niece and muse of American painter John Singer Sargent. Sixty-eight more were wounded. In a letter of October 20, 1914, Henry James wrote to Edith Wharton of the death of Ormond's husband Robert André-Michel, a French art historian and author of Avignon: the Frescoes of the Palace of the Popes: 'Mrs. C., who had been lunching with Emily Sargent, further brought me in the dismal news of the death of the so distinguished little French husband of her niece, Violet Ormond's daughter, the Rose-Marie whom Sargent so exquisitely painted a year ago; the said André Michel having been killed in one of these last engagements.' (Henry James Letters, Vol. IV: 1895–1916, pp. 722–723.)
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 93, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
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