Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
Turkish infantry from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War.
Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
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.
Anzac Cove, Ari Burnu, from John Masefield's 'Gallipoli.'
Turkish machine-gun crews, from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War.
"10.00 hrs. Go to see how my men are doing. Each time I pass by the olive grove I am profoundly affected by the memory of all our martyrs buried there. My heart keeps telling me that at the end of the war they will come back to life. Oh my God! Show mercy to those of us who are still living! And guide us!18.00 hrs. My men are singing their traditional songs. They tell of deep sadness and a sense of mourning. They were singing these same sad songs when we left Mersin. But most of the men who were singing then now lie covered with earth." ((1), more)
"The year 1915 ended with the Third and Fourth Battles of the Isonzo, fought between 18 October and 14 December. Winter came early. Snow between 6 and 8 yards deep covered up natural caves and trenches hacked into the rough rocks with the result that troops on both sides sought 'safety' in defensive works of ice and snow. Life at the front became a living hell. Snow and ice storms as well as almost unbearable cold ravaged soldiers huddled in makeshift shelters at 2000 to 3000 yards altitude — only to be offset by warm Mediterranean winds that turned valleys and roads into raging streams and rampaging mud slides. Avalanches were a constant danger. Pack animals hauled 37 million cartridges, 706 000 artillery shells, and 76 000 hand-grenades up to the front. By the time the fighting was ended by total exhaustion on both sides, Boroević's Fifth Army had suffered 71 691 casualties, the Italians 116 000." ((2), more)
"The kasaba of Tel-Armeni, to which we proceeded, had among other points of interest the ruins of an ancient Christian temple. . . . Among the dark mass of ruins two kiosks of marble or limestone gleamed like white swans. I was attracted to them not only by the inscriptions but by a certain aroma with which I was already familiar. Setting myself to find whence it emanated, I recoiled in horror from a couple of wells or cisterns filled with Christian corpses in an advanced state of putrefaction. A little further on I came upon another subterranean receptacle which, to judge from its insupportable stench, must have been likewise replete with carrion. As if that were not enough, on every hand were unburied corpses and corpses barely covered with heaps of stone from which emerged here and there a bloody tress or an arm or leg gnawed by hyenas. . . . I learned from [the housekeeper of the military chief of Tel-Armeni] who was a Nestorian and the only Christian survivor of the massacre, that the gendarmes and the Arabs, supported by the population of Tel-Armeni, had suddenly attacked the Christian population, cutting them down ruthlessly without giving them time to defend themselves. . . . I seemed to hear at my ear, vibrating like a hyena's laughter, the cynical words of the Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha, 'The massacres? Oh, well! They merely amuse me!'" ((3), more)
"Thursday, 16, December 1915: Our H.Q. signals orders cancelled. Only two men are to stay and man the phones, Sgt Calame and myself. All barges busy getting troops off. The last one's to go are Walker's Ridge, Quinn's and Courtney's and all are heavily mined. Very busy at Williams' Pier. Password Strawberry." ((4), more)
"December 17th.—The C.O.'s sickness and removal to hospital was a misfortune. The Commmander-in-Chief's quite-looked-for-supersession stirred no outward sign of regret. Cavalryman to cavalryman succeeds: Haig to French." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the diary of Turkish Second Lieutenant Mehmed Fasih writing on December 13, 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Fasih did not know that the enemy he and his men had faced and had fought since April had begun evacuating two of their three positions.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 143, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(2) Italian Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna had launched his Fourth Battle of the Isonzo on November 10 on the heels of the Third. Rescued by Germany on the Russian Front, and by Germany and Bulgaria on the Serbian Front, Italy held its own on the Isonzo Front, where it mostly held higher ground than the Italians.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 172, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(3) Rafael de Nogales was a Venezuelan mercenary and officer in the Ottoman Army who had been Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia. In December 1915 he was in Jerusalem when he was ordered to Baghdad in Mesopotamia to serve under German General von der Goltz. He set out from Jerusalem to Damascus, Aleppo, and was on his way to Mosul when he came upon the bodies of victims of Turkey's massacre of its Armenian and other Christian citizens. The Grand Vizier and Interior Minister Talaat Pasha was an overseer of the massacres.
Four Years Beneath the Crescent by Rafael De Nogales, pp. 207, 208, copyright © 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1926
(4) Excerpt from the diary of New Zealander C.J. Walsh during the evacuation of the Allied positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli peninsula. Walsh was at Anzac, and learned that the order of the December 15 — that seven men would remain for the last twenty-four hours to man telephones — which he had thought 'rather nervy,' was to be reduced to two. As late as December 13 and 14 Walsh had been uncertain that an evacuation was underway. Australians and New Zealanders held Quinn's Post, Australians Courtney's Post and Walker's Ridge. The risk of being killed or captured only increased as the Anzac line thinned.
Men of Gallipoli: The Dardanelles and Gallipoli Experience August 1914 to January 1916 by Peter Liddle, page 263, copyright © Peter Liddle, 1976, publisher: David and Charles, publication date: 1976
(5) Beginning of the entry for December 17, 1915 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers. General Douglas Haig had been working to replace Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, the British Empire forces fighting in France and Belgium, and learned on December 10, in a letter from Prime Minister Asquith, that he had succeeded: French had resigned on the 8th. The British defeats in the battles of Neuve Chappelle and Loos, Haig's friendship with King George, and his superior political skills ensured Sir John French's forced resignation. That both men were cavalrymen commanding an army that was entrenched was an irony not lost on the men under their command.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 172, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1 2 Next
