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Dive Copse British Cemetery in Sailly-le-Sec, France.
Detail from a 1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks from top to bottom include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, and the Mariyinsky Theater.
A British encampment at Zeitelik on the Salonica Front. Colorized version of a black and white postcard.
From a series on the Great War, a 1916 map on the the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, Italian commander Luigi Cadorna's offensive in August of the same year. The Italians crossed much of the Isonzo, and took Gorizia. The Austro-Hungarians continued to hold high ground to the east. © The Great War
Collier's War Maps of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus, with insets for the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Narrows of the Dardanelles, Constantinople (Istanbul), and the Bosphorus between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea
"May 20 [1917]When I woke early this morning to hear the bird-voices, so rich and shrill in the grey misty dawn, piping hoarse and sweet from the quiet fragrance of the wet garden and from the green dripping woods far off—lying in my clean white bed, drowsy and contented, I suddenly remembered 'At zero the infantry will attack'—Operation Orders! Men were attacking while I lay in bed and listened to the heavenly choruses of birds. Men were blundering about in a looming twilight of hell lit by livid flashes of guns and hideous with the malignant invective of machine-gun fire. Men were dying, fifty yards from their trench—failing to reach the objective—held up.And to-night the rain is hushing the darkness, steady, whispering rain—the voice of peace among summer foliage. And men are cursing the downpour that drenches and chills them, while the guns roar out their challenge." ((1), more)
"'Men and women citizens!' I heard my voice say. 'Our mother is perishing. Our mother is Russia. I want to help to save her. I want women whose hearts are loyal, whose souls are pure, whose aims are high. With such women setting an example of self-sacrifice, you men will realize your duty in this grave hour!'—Before I had time to realize it I was already in a photographer's studio, and there had my portrait taken. The following day this picture appeared at the head of big posters pasted all over the city, announcing my appearance at the Mariyinski Theatre for the purpose of organizing a Women's Battalion of Death—" ((2), more)
"The Army of the Orient had captured a few outposts at Doiran, on the Struma and at the foot of the Dobropolje. And for these pitiable acquisitions, 14,000 Allied soldiers—more men than Montgomery was to lose in the twelve victorious days of Alamein—had died, or been incapacitated, or taken prisoner. In any other war Sarrail's offensive would have been written off as a major failure and its author discredited for all time. But by the grim standards of 1917 these casualties were not exceptional. In that same month on the Western front eleven times as many died in front of Arras alone, with no gain of any strategic significant; and the French losses on the Aisne were even greater." ((3), more)
"On the 23rd [May], the Third Army batteries belatedly opened the second phase of the battle. Although still lacking those 200 extra guns, the shelling was fiercer than anything before on the Carso. Supported from the air and by floating batteries at the mouth of the Isonzo, the infantry's surprise attacks on the 24th and 25th widened the salient, rolling over three Austrian lines to capture a band of territory two kilometres deep from the central Carso to the sea. The Austrians melted away in front of the Italian right. Habsburg prisoners reported a crisis of morale, yet the Austrians did not buckle." ((4), more)
"The Russians repeated the [mining] operation on the night of 24 May. The Svobodnaya Rossiya and five destroyers were also at sea to cover the operation and a reconnaissance of Sinope by the seaplane carrier Aviator. The Russians varied their original plan slightly. The Pamiat Merkuria now brought the launches to within 12 miles of the Bosphorus in order to spare them the long haul to the minelaying area, and they were then towed by the destroyer Pronzitelni to the edge of the old minefield, roughly 12 miles from the entrance. The operation was successful, the mines were laid undetected." ((5), more)
(1) Entry for May 20, 1917, from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon had been wounded, shot through the shoulder by a sniper, in an April 16 attack on the village of Fontaine-lès-Croisilles in the Battle of Arras.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, pp. 170–171, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(2) Maria Bochkareva followed Alexander Kerensky, newly appointed Russia's Minister of War, and his wife, in speaking at Petrograd's Mariyinski Theater on May 21, 1917 to raise recruits for a Women's Battalion of Death. When she spoke, Bochkareva had already been serving in the Russian army since November, 1914. After winnowing 2,000 volunteers down to a fighting force of about 300, her battalion of women would fight in the Kerensky Offensive in July, 1917, a battle in which she would be wounded for the third time. By August, 1918, Bochkareva had traveled to the United States, where she dictated her memoir and met with President Woodrow Wilson, and to the United Kingdom, where she met with King George, before returning to Russia. In the Russian Civil War, she opposed the Bolsheviks, who captured and executed her on May 16, 1920.
The Virago Book of Women and the Great War by Joyce Marlow, Editor, page 276, copyright © Joyce Marlow 1998, publisher: Virago Press, publication date: 1999
(3) French General Maurice Sarrail commanded an Allied Army of French, British, Serbian, Russian, and Italian units opposing a Bulgarian army supported by German troops on the Salonica Front extending across northern Greece and into Serbia. Sarrail's spring 1917 offensive began May 8 with British troops attacking on the eastern end of the line, with the other national forces attacking on the 9th. The battle continued for 12 days with little success, and when the Serbs prepared an attack for May 22 they found Sarrail had already canceled the offensive. The attacks in France — the British in the Battle of Arras and the French in the Second Battle of the Aisne — were failures. The Struma River flows from Bulgaria through Greece to the Aegean Sea; Lake Doiran and the peak of Dobro Pole are both on the border of Greece and, in 1917, Serbia. During World War II British General Bernard Montgomery led Allied forces to victory in the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa against German and Italian forces at the end of October to the beginning of November, 1942.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 131, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(4) Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna's Tenth Battle of the Isonzo began with more artillery than he had been able to muster in any of his 1915 and 1916 offensives. It was still not enough. He had launched his offensive on May 12, 1917, and within two days it showed all signs of being another failure. With their Russian front quiet after the February Revolution, the Austrians had transferred reinforcements to the west. The defenders held the high ground, such as the Carso Plateau, and the Italians attacked, as they had for two years, an enemy oftentimes above them, oftentimes well entrenched.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 253, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(5) The Russians successfully laid mines in the Bosporus — the strait leading from Constantinople to the Black Sea — the night of May 17, 1917, the action they were repeating on the 24th. Repeating the operation on the 25th, one of the mines exploded while still in the Russian launch, destroying the boat and alerting the Turks who discovered the new mine field. Many of the ships mentioned had been renamed after the Russian Revolution to eliminate imperial references: Svobodnaya Rossiya (Free Russia) had been Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya, Aviator had been Imperator Nikolai I.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 251, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
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