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Salonica (Thessaloniki), a base of Allied operations in the Balkans, suffered enormous damage in the fire of August 18, 19, and 20, 1917. In the postcard, the Quay: Olympos-Palace.
Italian Front: Birdseye view relief map of the Italian-Austro-Hungarian border and battlezone from Udine in the west to Trieste in the East, and looking north from the Adriatic to the Alps. It includes the city of Goriza, Karfreit (Caporetto), and labeled mountain peaks.
Stereo card of French Generals, Henri Philippe Pétain, Paul Henrys, and Émile Fayolle and French Raymond President Poincaré in the Verdun sector. Pétain is on the left and Poincaré behind him. Henrys is in the foreground, back to the camera, and Fayolle on the right.
Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Postcard view of the county of Kent, England, bounded by the River Thames on the north and the English Channel and Dover Strait to the east. The city and White Cliffs of Dover are in Kent. In November 1914, British naval and military authorities feared Germany was preparing to invade England.
"The Great Fire [of Salonica] began in the middle of the afternoon siesta on August 18 [1917] up in the oldest quarter, where jutting stories jostled each other so closely that the narrow street became a wood-roofed arcade. After four rainless months every balcony was tinder dry, and with a fierce northwest wind blowing, the city had as little hope of escaping destruction as Chicago in 1871 or London in 1666. The two oval watering tanks, which formed the municipal fire brigade, were hurriedly pulled up the steep alleys by a noisy and confused crowd of men and boys. But this was little more than a pathetic gesture. Soon people were pouring out of their houses, loading possessions onto donkeys or into carts or dragging beds and clothes and household utensils after them in a panic flight toward the waterfront. With virtually no water in the upper town, the walls in street after street began to crash as though they were trees in a flaming forest." ((1), more)
"The month of the most continuously fierce fighting in the whole Italian war opened on August 18, 1917, with a general bombardment from Tolmino to the sea. The guns massed along the Corada ridge searched the Austrian positions beyond the Isonzo. Next day, along the front from Plava northwards to Doblar, the infantry bridged and crossed the rapid river in face of the enemy, and began to ascend the eastern bank of the gorge. A more difficult operation, in face of machine-gun posts and a determined foe entrenched in ground of such vantage, has seldom been allotted to any force in the world war." ((2), more)
"At 4:30 A.M. on August 20 [1917], eight divisions of French infantry swept forward. By August 26 they had driven the Germans off the heights and had captured ten thousand prisoners and hundreds of artillery pieces and machine guns. The French bombardment had been overwhelming. More than a thousand Germans died when one tunnel in the Mort Homme defenses was sealed up by accurate gunfire. And now, his objective accomplished, Pétain stopped the attack. His troops were amazed—'it has been too easy!'—and, as their trucks drove back from the victorious assault, observers marveled that men 'were singing, bursting with enthusiasm, their faces radiant with hope!'" ((3), more)
"The arithmetic of German casualties was in British numbers so enormous that, from forty years of hindsight, one wonders how any but the most gullible could have been deceived by them. Haig reported an even hundred thousand on August 21 and flatly stated that the end of Germany's resources was at hand—this on the basis of a paper written by Charteris, who, however, protested in his diary (he does not seem to have protested elsewhere), 'D. H. has not only accepted in toto my report . . . but he has gone much further.'" ((4), more)
"The British coast was looming ahead, and only ten of the original fifteen Gothas remained.Within minutes, the sky before them was smeared with the black smoke of exploding shells. The fire was coming from picket ships stationed off shore. Even more disturbing, aircraft were flying in small clusters just beyond the coast. The fighters, fifteen in all, were incoming bombers. They were British naval machines which had come up from air stations at Manston, Eastchurch, Walmer, and Dover on the Kent coast." ((5), more)
(1) The Great Fire of Salonica broke out on August 18, 1917, apparently ignited by a small cooking fire. People who fled to the waterfront for safety found themselves threatened from land and sea when petrol from a burning ship set the surface of the harbor near them ablaze. The port of Salonica, Greece, was the primary port for the Allied armies — French, British, Serbian, Russian, and Greek — on the Salonica Front.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 152, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(2) Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna's Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo came at a time when Italian moral was low, and desertion rates climbing. Tolmino, Austria-Hungary, now (2017) Tolmin, Slovenia, is situated at the confluence of the Tolminka and Isonzo Rivers. The latter flowed through Austro-Hungarian territory just east of its border with Italy to the Adriatic Sea. Much of the battle took place along ridges two to three thousand feet high. Our excerpt is from an account of 11th Isonzo by Dr. G. M. Trevelyan, head of the British Red Cross in Italy during the campaign.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. V, 1917, p. 306, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) In ending the French army mutinies, commander in chief Henri Pétain had promised his army that he would make greater use of artillery and other weapons before any infantry assault, and that his objectives would be clear and limited. His offensive at Verdun in August, 1917 met these conditions, and demonstrated how successful they could be. His soldiers responded, seeing that every battle need not be a slaughter. Pétain was recapturing territory lost in the German siege of 1916, and providing support for British commander Douglas Haig's offensive in Flanders, the Third Battle of Ypres.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, page 225, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
(4) Brigadier General John Charteris was Chief of Intelligence to General Douglas Haig, commander in chief of British forces in France. Haig had launched the Third Battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917. He failed to reach his first day objectives, and rain and heavy artillery had made his battlefield impassable by the second day. Our author, Leon Wolff, writes (page 150) of Charteris: 'It can safely be said that from July 31 to the end of the Flanders campaign Charteris lied steadily to the press, to the War Cabinet, and to his own chief, Field Marshall Haig.' 'D. H.' was, of course, Haig.
In Flanders Fields, the 1917 Campaign by Leon Wolff, page 156, copyright © 1958 by Leon Wolff, publisher: The Viking Press, publication date: 1958
(5) Fifteen Gotha bombers set out on August 22, 1917 to bomb Dover, Chatham, and either Southend or Sheerness on the United Kingdom's English Channel coast. Five soon turned back with engine or other problems leaving ten that quickly encountered antiaircraft fire and fighter planes coming to challenge them. Two of the bombers were shot down near Margate, a third near Dover. Bombs fell on Margate, Ramsgate, and Dover, with two killed and thirty-five wounded, one fatally. The attack was the last daylight raid of the war by the Gotha bombers.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, page 107, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
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