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German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
The Cripple Entente: Great Britain, Russia, and France. Their flags behind them, King George V, Tsar Nicholas II, and President Poincaré show the effects of the initial German victories in 1914.
Map of Syria, Palestine, Turkey, and Mesopotamia from the Baedeker 1912 travel guide Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus.
British soldiers pushing an ambulance through the mud. A mounted horseman is on the road ahead.
Prosperity and victory in 1915: an official New Year's postcard of the Bavarian Red Cross, with a message dated December 31, 1914, postmarked January 1, 1915.
"We marched at 10.15 by Wisques to Wizerne, in a lime-stone district. There was more or less rain nearly all the way. To have some warmth and comfort to-night I carried a full pack and a bundle, and wondered all the time how the men carry what they must, let alone rations, dixies and what not as well. We waited about from noon until 4 to entrain. News came in of a lucky stroke at Passchendaele Ridge, plainly quite a good Show. The whole of the line attacked was thrown into confusion, the front overrun, the reserves staggered. The local civilians know all about the tactical idea of the Ypres moves; they are in high spirits, and talk about a German withdrawal from Belgium." ((1), more)
"A newspaper printed a report that the English and French armies, on account of the disorder in Russia, wished to sever the alliance. I refused to believe such a thing. In another newspaper I read that the report had been denied. I read also that the British Army had gained much territory in Mesopotamia." ((2), more)
"3. The Seventh Army pertaining to Jilderim will be transported to the Sinai front. The troops now on the Sinai Front will be under the Army Group Jilderim as long as the Seventh Army remains on the Sinai front.4. The Army Group Jilderim will conduct its operations independently on the Sinai front and in the separate Sanjak of Jerusalem, but Jilderim will keep the commander in chief in Syria and West Arabia informed." ((3), more)
"In No Man's Land the wounded still lay in the mud. Their shouting and sobbing kept everyone's nerves on edge. Those in shell holes generally drowned there. Slowly they slipped down the muddy banks into the water below, too weak to hold themselves up. Their feeble whispers could not be heard by comrades passing by. As time went on No Man's Land thus became converted into a vast limbo of abandoned dead and dying. Each shell hole with blood on its water usually meant another corpse entombed below." ((4), more)
"A railway strike has dislocated rail-transport throughout Russia. Finland has proclaimed herself a republic. Strikes and riots are still rampant, while famine is augmenting the general hardship. At supper there was a pessimistic feeling among us that our Red Cross Otryad was slowly but surely closing down. Alas for our hopes and ambitions! Alas! for poor, suffering Russia." ((5), more)
(1) Entry for October 6, 1917 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, and fellow soldiers who served with him, then fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres, started on July 31. The Battle of Broodseinde was fought on October 4. Dunn's unit had fought in the Battle of Polygon Wood
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 406–407, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(2) Excerpt from the entry for September 24, (October 7, New Style), 1917 from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross. Farmborough's unit was then in Romania where the Russians had participated in a Romanian offensive until being ordered on July 25 by Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky to stop all offensive action. Kerensky supported the war and the Triple Entente, and urged the July 1 Russian offensive that proved to be the last gasp of the Provisional Government's army, and undercut support for the war. British forces in Mesopotamia had captured Baghdad on March 11, 1917, and advanced west to Ramadie, taking it on September 29 to forestall any attempt by the Turks to advance on Baghdad from Aleppo.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 320, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(3) Excerpt from the order of Turkish War Minister Ismail Enver to his commanders in October, 1917, quoted by German General and commander of the Germany military mission to Turkey Liman von Sanders. Sanders notes that the Group Jilderim — Turkish for 'lightning' — was organized not with military assistance from German officers as was common during the war, but as a German army group with German officers and a German commander. The army was being collected at Aleppo, whence it could be directed to Mesopotamia and the reconquest of Baghdad or to Palestine for the defense of Gaza and Jerusalem, or for an offensive against Egypt. Enver chose the latter.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, page 180, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
(4) Excerpt from Leon Wolff's In Flanders Fields, the 1917 Campaign on the horrendous conditions in which men lived and died in British general Douglas Haig's Flanders campaign. The Battle of Poelcapelle, yet another British attack in the Third Battle of Ypres, was fought on October 9, 1917 with less preparation than its predecessors. Men drowned in mud from which they could neither extricate themselves, nor be extricated.
In Flanders Fields, the 1917 Campaign by Leon Wolff, page 230, copyright © 1958 by Leon Wolff, publisher: The Viking Press, publication date: 1958
(5) Excerpt from the entry for October 10, (September 27, Old Style), 1917 from the diary of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross. Farmborough's unit was then in Romania where the Russians had participated in a Romanian offensive until being ordered on July 25 by Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky to stop all offensive action. The failure of Russia's July 1 offensive was a further step in the collapse of Russian society, the war effort, and the Provisional Government. Some of Farmborough's colleagues in her Otryad (Отряд), her squad, had already left when she was writing. The province of Finland was following Kerensky's proclamation of a Russian republic.
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