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Map of the Ypres Salient on April 30, 1915 after the German gas attack of April 22, and prior to the British withdrawal to a more defensible line.
Russian troops fleeing a solitary German soldier. The Russian First Army invaded Germany in August 1914, and defeated the Germans in the Battle of Gumbinnen on the 20th. In September the Germans drove them out of Russia in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. In September and October, a joint German, Austro-Hungarian offensive drove the Russians back almost to Warsaw. Illustration by E. H. Nunes.
German and Austro-Hungarian forces under the command of generals von Hindenburg and Archduke Friedrich besieged Warsaw, and took it during the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. Austrians von Hötzendorf, Friedrich, and Pflanzer-Baltin form the bottom of the ring; the others are German. The flag and shield of Germany are on the bottom left; those of Austria and Hungary the bottom right.
To the Dardanelles! The Entente Allies successfully capture their objective and plant their flags in this boy's 1915 war game, as they did not in life, neither in the naval campaign, nor in the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.
The headstone of Private R. Stewart, of the Black Watch, who died May 4, 1915, age 19, and is buried in Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery in Fleurbaix, Pas-de-Calais, France. It is inscribedTo memory ever dearFrom Father and MotherSisters and Brothers © 2015 John M. Shea
". . . this meant leaving his troops exposed on three sides to artillery fire and suffering heavy wastage with little opportunity to reply.During the evening, however, one relief was carried out: the 12th Brigade (4th Division) (Br.-General F.G. Anley) arrived, and, passing the canal under heavy fire, took over the left sector of the front of the 10th Brigade and the whole of that of the 13th Brigade. By this change the three infantry brigades of the 4th Division, re-united, occupied the left of the British line supported by the artillery of the Canadian Division, which still remained in action. Br.-General Wanless O'Gowan on relief withdrew the 13th Brigade west of the canal, eventually collecting it in the wood a mile north-west of Vlamertinghe. Its numbers, after its battles at Hill 60 and before Ypres, in spite of reinforcements totalled barely fourteen hundred of all ranks." ((1), more)
"History shows that Russia is never so strong as at the beginning of a war. We haven't that wonderful faculty for adaptation and improvisation which enables you French and English to make good all your omissions in peace in the very middle of a war. With us war only aggravates the evils of our political system because it sets our bureaucrats a task they are utterly incapable of performing. Would that I were mistaken! But I expect that things will go from bad to worse. Look what a tragic position we are in! We cannot make peace without dishonouring ourselves, and yet if we continue the war we are inevitably heading straight for a catastrophe!" ((2), more)
"On the 2nd of May [1915] at 6 a.m. an overwhelming artillery fire, including field guns and running up to the heaviest calibers, was begun on the [Russian] front many miles in extent selected for the effort to break through. This was maintained unbroken for four hours.At 10 o'clock in the morning these hundreds of fire-spouting tubes suddenly ceased and the same moment the swarming lines and attacking columns of the assailants threw themselves upon the hostile positions. The enemy had been so shaken by the heavy artillery fire that his resistance at many points was very slight. . . .On the evening of the 2nd of May, when the warm Spring sun had begun to yield to the coolness of night the first main position in its whole depth and extent, a distance of some sixteen kilometers, had been broken through and a gain of ground of some four kilometers had been attained." ((3), more)
"A week after the landing we were briefed for an attack on entrenched Turks at the head of Monash Gully, the area best known as the Chessboard. Like everything else on Gallipoli everything seemed to go wrong. We were marched a great and tiring distance to the take-off point and arrived late. We were supposed to make our advance in daylight, but it was dark by the time we were issued with picks and shovels so that we could consolidate the ground we were expected to gain. Our first obstacle was a steep and gravelly cliff down which a rope was suspended; in the pitch dark we had to haul ourselves up it. Believe me, I found it a struggle, with my rifle slung on my shoulder with bayonet fixed and a shovel in one hand. When I reached the top there was a heap of dead. The ground was totally exposed to Turk fire. . . . We weren't in platoon or company formation. We were just individuals arriving by rope at the top of the cliff to meet Turkish fire." ((4), more)
"I was one of thirteen men left behind as a rearguard and we were told exactly what we had to do. What we did was fire a shot — and of course at night you could see the flash of the rifle, the Germans could see it — then we would walk along the trench, maybe for about ten yards, and we could wait a few seconds and fire another shot, and then another chap would come along and do the same and I'd come back to another place and fire off again. That led his nibs across the road to figure the trench was still fully occupied." ((5), more)
(1) British, including Canadian and Indian Commonwealth forces, had suffered heavily in their defense of Ypres since the April 22, 1915 German poison gas attack broke the French line on the British left and created a gap of as much as 8,000 yards which the British struggled to close. Preparing for their Artois offensive, the French provided little support. Limited by their lack of shells to as little as two shells per gun per day, the British struggled to respond to heavy German shelling or mount an offensive. Their salient having been compressed from the north, the British prepared to withdraw to a shortened line they could maintain. At the request of the French, they postponed their withdrawal.
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915, Vol. I, Winter 1914-15: Battle of Neuve Chappelle : Battle of Ypres [Second] by J. E. Edmonds, page 285, copyright © asserted, publisher: Macmillan and Co., Limited, publication date: 1927
(2) Russian General Stackelberg speaking to Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador in Russia at a dinner at the French Embassy on Saturday, May 1, 1915. Before this statement, the general had said that Russia was headed for defeat and revolution because it could 'never beat the Germans.' The Ambassador responded that Russians were fighting splendidly, but lacked 'heavy artillery, aeroplanes, and munitions of war,' which it would have 'in a few months.' The General would prove to be right; the Ambassador wrong.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 335, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(3) Excerpts from a description of the first day of the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive by the victorious German commander August von Mackensen leading the German-Austro-Hungarian forces. The attackers fired as many as 700,000 shells in the devastating opening bombardment. Suffering from a lack of munitions, the Russians could respond with little but the men themselves. Continuing through September 30, Mackensen's campaign would spread across the entire Eastern Front and drive Russian forces back as much as 300 miles.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, pp. 178, 179, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(4) New Zealand veteran John Skinner describing the attack the night of May 2-3, 1915 at the northern end of Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. Skinner was a sergeant in the Otago Infantry Battalion, which landed on April 25, the first day of the Gallipoli invasion. In the first days, his battalion supported the Australians holding the front line, and lost 200 of 1,000 men. Of the attack at Monash Gully he said, 'we had worse to come.'
Voices of Gallipoli by Maurice Shadbolt, pp. 69, 70, copyright © 1988 Maurice Shadbolt, publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, publication date: 1988
(5) The German success in breaking the Allied line on April 22, 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres, left British forces defending a salient subject to artillery fire from three sides. After fruitless attempts to improve their position, they withdrew to a more compact, defensible line with Ypres at their back, the night of May 3-4. Private J. W. Vaughan of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was among those left behind to feign an active line. When he and his mates finally withdrew, 'all hell broke loose because, as soon as they didn't hear any more firing from the front line, the Germans figured we were coming over.'
1915, The Death of Innocence by Lyn Macdonald, page 272, copyright © 1993 by Lyn Macdonald, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1993 (Great Britain); 199
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