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A large German bomber, capable of bombing England. The plane is powered by two engines, and holds a crew of three with a pilot and front and rear gunners. The plane is likely a Gotha bomber, originally built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik, then built under license by Siemens-Schukert Werke and Luft-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (LVG). Note the ground crew pushing on the lower wing and the men holding the tail up as the plane is moved backwards. Sanke postcard number 1040.
Will's Cigarettes card of General Aleksei Brusilov (Brusiloff).
The Royal Palace in Bucharest, Romania. A postcard altered to show the German flag flying over the palace.
Detail of a German postcard map of the Western Front, showing the northwestern end of the line and the Channel coast. German forces occupied Ostend, Belgian and Allied forces Nieuport. The Belgian Government was based in Furnes (Veurne).
The salute of General Black Jack Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, landing in France, June, 1917. Pershing landed in Boulogne on June 13.
"That night, a large throng assembled at London Fields. From there, they marched through the streets of Hackney, smashing store fronts. Several butchers' shops, bearing such names as Strumm and Wenninger, were looted. Breaking into one house, the mob heaped bedding, a piano, and other furniture in the middle of the street and set it ablaze. Harassed constables were rushed to five different places in Tottenham, where the homes and business places of naturalized aliens were attacked. In the Highgate district, two baker's shops were wrecked with stones. Violence flared anew two nights later. The property of foreigners, not always German, was heavily damaged in various districts. At one place, the crowd numbered five thousand." ((1), more)
". . . the Offensive, under our intrepid General Brusilov, might, so far, be regarded as highly successful. It had taken place along a 50 — or more — verst line and the many divisions concentrated on that part of the Galician Front had had little difficulty in ousting the Austrians from their trenches and driving them far back into their hinterland. The Russians had better guns, more men, and enormous supplies of ammunition. Everything was in our favour; if only the morale of the soldiers endured, Russia might soon see the complete collapse of the Austrian Army." ((2), more)
"At the end of the first decade of July 1917, the troops belonging to the Romanian Second Army (the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 8th Infantry Divisions and the 2nd Cavalry Brigade) deployed on the hills west of the locality of Mărăşti, in contact with large units belonging to General Gerock Group, were awaiting for the attack order. The Second Army under command of General Alexandru Averescu was entrusted the mission of piercing the Austro-Hungarian and German lines and of advancing beyond the valley of the Putna river; it was from there that later on, together with the Romanian First Army and the neighbour Russian troops, the decisive strike was to be delivered on the enemy forces in the Focşani zone.The ratio of forces was, in the main, in favour of the Romanians . . ." ((3), more)
"The Germans on July 10th violently bombarded the British lines north of Nieuport, on the Belgian coast, leveling all the British defenses in the dune sector, destroying the bridges over the Yser River and capturing a mile of trenches. The British losses were 3,000 in killed and captured. During this engagement the superiority of the German air forces was apparent. The British airmen retaliated the next day by dropping several tons of bombs on five towns in Flanders occupied by the Germans, setting fire to German ammunition dumps." ((4), more)
"It is evident that a force of about 1,000,000 is the smallest unit which in modern war will be a complete well-balanced and independent fighting organization. However, it must be equally clear that the adoption of this size force as a basis of study should not be construed as the maximum force which will be needed in France. It is taken as the force which may be expected to reach France in time for an offensive in 1918, and as a unit and basis for organization. Plans for the future should be based, especially in reference to the manufacture etc. of artillery, aviation, and other material, on three times this force—i.e. at least 3,000,000 men." ((5), more)
(1) The early afternoon of Saturday, July 7, 1917 saw the second Gotha raid on London, one of twenty-one Gotha bombers that dropped 81 bombs, many extending in a line from Shoreditch on the north to London Bridge Station to the south. In the raid, 57 were killed, and 193 wounded. There was virtually no defense against the planes which came in daylight, and delivered bombs with far greater accuracy than the Zeppelins that had troubled the city in the two previous years. Londoners felt helpless against the bombers, and saw little response to protect them. Ninety-five British aircraft attempted to stop the bombers or pursued them on their flight back to Belgium, but shot down only one bomber, though four more crashed on landing.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, pp. 80–81, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
(2) Excerpt from the entry for Sunday, July 8, 1917 (June 23 Old Style) from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross, her unit then attached to the Russian 7th Army, and writing of the Kerensky Offensive launched on July 1, Russia's last offensive of World War I. Alexsei Brusilov was Russia's most successful commander during the war, and he had attacked along a front of about 33 miles in Galicia, Austria-Hungary. (A verst is roughly two-thirds of a mile.) Throughout the war the Russians were frequently successful fighting Austro-Hungarian troops, less so against the Germans. Russian industrial output had increased dramatically during the war, and it was less reliant on imports form the United States and Japan than it had been in previous years.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 280, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(3) Romania entered the war on August 27, 1916, and was overrun by Central Power forces by the end of the year, driven out of Wallachia and Dobruja and back to Moldavia where the Russians held the Allied line. Typhus, typhoid, dysentery, jaundice, and influenza sickened and killed a large part of the Romanian army, but after peaking in February and March, 1917, with the return of warmer weather, and with the help of a French military mission under General Henri Berthelot, the Romanians were able to rebuild. In July, 1917 they planned an offensive against German and Austro-Hungerian forces under Friedrich von Gerock.
Romania in World War I, a Synopsis of Military History by Vasile Alexandrescu, page 47, copyright © 1985, publisher: Military Publishing House, publication date: 1985
(4) After the French army mutinies that peaked in May and June, 1917, French Commander in Chief Henri Philippe Pétain launched limited offensives, and asked for a British offensive while his army recovered. British commander Douglas Haig settled on an offensive in Flanders, where his preparations on the flat terrain were visible to his enemy.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 337, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(5) Preliminary statement by United States commander General John Pershing to the 'General Organization Project' prepared by his staff and War Department board to define the structure of the United States Army for the war effort. In his April 2, 1917 address to Congress asking it to declare war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson had stated his opinion that American males should be universally liable to service, and that 500,000 men should be immediately added to the military with 'subsequent additional increments of equal force' depending on need and the resources to train the men. The United States armies would be twice as large as the European ones, but would play little part in the fighting of 1917.
Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, page 254, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
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