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Edito Card of an Hanriot HD.1. Introduced in late summer, 1916, the French Hanriot HD.1 was primarily flown by the Belgian and Italian air services. This plane is in the colors of the Belgian Air Corps. The white thistle on the fuselage was the symbol of the squadron of Willy Coppens, Belgium's leading ace of the war. The sawtooth pattern on the tail identified an individual pilot. Each patrol of three planes had an identifying cowling color. Coppens, as the leading ace, insisted on an all-blue plane.
American troops parade in Paris, July 4, 1918.
The disparity in the number of nations arrayed against the Central Powers was a common motif, and was updated as the numbers on each side increased. Italy's entry into the war on May 23, 1915 changed the numbers again.Central Powers (top) Sultan Mohammed V of Turkey, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. Allies (center and bottom rows) Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King George V of the United Kingdom, President Raymond Poincaré of France, King Nikola of Montenegro, King Peter of Serbia, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, King Albert I of Belgium, Emperor Taishō of Japan.In the center, a poem: Drei gegen Acht, Three against Eight.
Advertising postcard map of European Russia, with inset images of a mounted Cossack lancer, a troika, and St. Petersburg.
War or early post-war photograph of the Belleau Wood American Cemetery. The American assault by U.S Marines and Army infantry to take Belleau Wood began on June 6, 1918 against well-entrenched German defenders. The battle continued for three weeks. The Marine casualties were 113 officers and 5,598 men killed, wounded and missing; the Army 9th and 23rd Infantry lost 65 officers and 3,496 men.
"After a hurried lunch, I slipped away to Paris, my first visit being to the Hanriot works. Monsieur René Hanriot, who was one of the pioneers of aviation, was one of its staunchest supporters and had devoted his life to the new science. His little Hanriot H.D.1, graceful and manoeuvrable, designed by Dupont and first adopted by the Belgian Flying Corps, was his outstanding achievement, and he was always delighted to meet any of the Belgian pilots. He took me out to Villacoublay and showed me some of the new types of aeroplanes that were undergoing their tests. In addition, I saw a Fokker D.VII captured from the Germans, a curious-looking machine with its thick wings. Our eyes were so used to thin planes. I met Heurteaux, the great French 'ace' there, and generally enjoyed myself; a real bushman's [sic] holiday in fact!" ((1), more)
"On July 4, [1918,] American Independence Day, as the culmination of a nation-wide shipbuilding 'crusade' to build transport ships for the needs of the Western Front, ninety-five ships were launched in American shipyards, seventeen of them in San Francisco. That day, President Wilson declared in a speech at Mount Vernon that the Allies had four main aims: the 'destruction of arbitrary power', national self-determination, national morality to be like individual morality, and the establishment of a peace organisation to prevent war.American troops were in action [on] the Somme on July 4, alongside the Australians, when more than a mile of ground was gained, the village of Hamel was captured, and 1,472 German soldiers were taken prisoner. It was during this attack that the first airborne supply to troops in battle took place, when British aircraft dropped 100,000 rounds of ammunition to the Australian machine gunners." ((2), more)
"At the beginning of July [1918] a new assault was expected in Champagne. But the situation had lost its critical aspect. The British Army was able to fill its gaps, the American Army totalled more than twenty divisions and its effectives were increasing rapidly. The Franco-British disposed of an incontestable superiority in tanks and aviation. In fact, for the first time under the far-sighted impulse of General Pétain the French Army was to practise a reasonable defence tactic similar to that adopted by the Belgians on the day of Merckem.No serious danger seemed to threaten the Belgian sector, and the King and Queen could accept an invitation which both gladdened and flattered them: a visit to the British Fleet which was cruising in Scottish waters.On the 5th July Their Majesties flew over the Pas de Calais in a Belgian military seaplane." ((3), more)
"The spring and summer of 1918 were unusually hard. All the aftermath of the war was then just beginning to make itself felt. At times, it seemed as if everything were slipping and crumbling, as if there were nothing to hold to, nothing to lean upon. One wondered if a country so despairing, so economically exhausted, so devastated, had enough sap left in it to support a new régime and preserve its independence. There was no food. There was no army. The railroads were completely disorganized. The machinery of state was just beginning to take shape. Conspiracies were being hatched everywhere." ((4), more)
"The individual soldiers are very good. They are healthy, vigorous, and physically well developed men of ages ranging from 18 to 28, who at present lack only necessary training to make them redoubtable opponents. The troops are fresh and full of straightforward confidence. A remark of one of the prisoners is indicative of their spirit: 'We kill or get killed.' . . .Only a few of the troops are of pure American origin; the majority is of German, Dutch, and Italian parentage, but these semi-Americans, almost all of whom were born in America and have never been in Europe, fully feel themselves to be true-born sons of their country." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from Flying in Flanders, a memoir by Willy Coppens, Belgium's greatest ace in World War I with 37 victories, all but two of the victims observation balloons. Coppens first flew a Hanriot HD.1 in June, 1918. The German Fokker DVII was one of the most successful fighter planes of the war. French ace Albert Heurteaux ended the war with 21 victories. His eighth victory was over the German ace Kurt Wintgens.
Flying in Flanders by Willy Coppens, page 188, publisher: Ace Books, publication date: 1971
(2) After four German offensives in 1918, the last ending on June 16, the Allies were anticipating a fifth. It would come on July 15. The Somme River sector had seen the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and Operation Michael, the first of the 1918 German offensives.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 437, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) The War Diaries of Albert, King of the Belgians were assembled by General R. Van Overstraeten from the monarch's diary and other sources. This selection is from what Van Overstraeten refers to as his 'general succinct framework' for Albert's entries. Germany had already mounted four offensives on the Western Front in 1918, the last ending on June 14. French General Henri Philippe Pétain had rebuilt the French Army after the mutinies of 1917, both men and materiel. In April 1917, the Belgians repulsed a German attack at Merckem.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 216, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(4) Leon Trotsky writing of Russia in the spring and summer 1918. The Russian Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the armistice that quickly followed in December, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between Russia and the Central Powers in March all occurred as ethnic groups within Russia and Europe's remaining empires increasingly called for independence. Trotsky continues: 'In the West, the Germans occupied Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, White Russia and a large section of Great Russia.' Ukraine had declared independence, French and British troops were in Murmansk and Archangel, the Czech Legion — former Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war — had crossed Russia and taken Vladivostok on the Pacific, and anti-revolutionary leaders were battling Russia's new government.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 395, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(5) Excerpt from an official German report on American prisoners of the Second US Infantry Division (5th, 6th, 9th, and 23rd Regiments) captured in the Bouresches sector between June 5 and 14, 1918.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 207–208, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
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