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A French artillery crew moving a 75mm. field gun into position in Bougainville, France, behind the lines, west of Amiens. Bougainville is a commune in the Somme Département in Picardie. The Adrian helmet the soldiers wear was introduced in mid-1915.
Montage of the destroyed village of Fleury, France, a village of several hundred destroyed during the Battle of Verdun and never rebuilt. Insets are the Chapel and a sculpture of a poilu. The door of the chapel states it is in memory of Fleury-devant-Douaumont, the village's full name. © 2015 John M. Shea
A mine explosion in Flanders. From The Nations at War, 1918 Edition, by Willis J. Abbot.
Chosen Boy, a 1918 watercolor by Paul Klee. From Paul Klee: Early and Late Years: 1894-1940. © 2013 Moeller Fine Art
The Tiroler Volksbund — the Tyrolian People's League — kicking Italian irredentists out of the region. Bozen, Trient, and Gatren See are now Bolzano, Trento, and Lago di Garda, Italy. Die Sieben Gemeinden — the Seven Churches — was a German-speaking enclave on the Asiago plateau, and included the town of Asiago.
"I've already told you that I'll remember 1 June 1916 for a long time to come. On that day there was a terrible bombardment one could not go out of the shelter shells were falling everywhere I ate my soup cold in the shelter a mate brought it to me, running all the way. I stepped back to make room for him at that very moment a shell fell in the corner of the shelter and shattered his jaw four splinters in the leg, three in the arm . . . If it were not for him I would have been the one to catch it and because he was a bit taller than I am and the splinter hit him in the jaw it would have hit me in the temple and you wouldn't have had your little guy any more . . . The guys of the Eleventh Battery who replaced us saw a shell explode in their very midst . . . Another one fell in the middle of them and killed four guys, one of whom was cut in two . . . and that happened pretty close to my head. I tell you this because I came out of it alive." ((1), more)
"The last major German attempt to capture Verdun took place on the evening of June 22, when a German artillery bombardment was launched, using a new phosgene gas: Green Cross. Men and horses were caught and killed by the terrible fumes. Doctors treating the wounded weere themselves struck down. For several hours the rain of death continued, then 30,000 Germans attacked. Near Fleury a whole French division, 5,000 men, was wiped out, and Fort Thiaumont, two miles north of Verdun, was captured. . . .. . . Fleury was taken, but the Germans were halted before they could enter Fort Souville, the last but one fort between them and Verdun itself. The Germans did not have enough Green Cross gas for a second gas attack." ((2), more)
". . . I had just stepped off the fire-step into the sap—Pattison was about 5 yards from me—when I felt my feet lifted up beneath me and the trench walls seemed to move upwards. There was a terrific blast of air which blew my steel helmet heaven knows where. I think that something must have struck me then on the head—it was said in hospital that my skull was fractured—anyhow, I remember nothing more until I woke to find myself buried up to the neck and quite unable to move hand or foot. I do not know how long I had been unconscious. I was told afterwards that there was a heavy bombardment of our trenches lasting nearly an hour after the explosion of the mine." ((3), more)
"One night, returning from work, we found the shelter surrounded by thirty or so very young men—volunteers, or forced conscripts from the classes of 1917 and 1918 not yet called up.Skinny, beardless, and with insolent looks and talk full of the cheekiness of a Parisian Gavroche, these were what they called 'seasoned' guys, despite the fact that some of them had the faces of girls or of kids of fifteen. . . . To these kids precocious in vice, they had opened the prison gates in exchange for enlistment for the duration of the war. This was offered as a form of rehabilitation." ((4), more)
"On 25 June [1916], the Austrians withdrew to well-prepared defenses. Arsiero and Asiago were ransacked, burned and abandoned, their streets strewn with rubble, faeces and dead horses. Cadorna dissolved the Fifth Army, its task fulfilled. But the Italian counter-attacks were hasty, uncoordinated, and very costly; only a third to a quarter of the territory lost since 15 May was regained." ((5), more)
(1) Extracts from letters by French artilleryman Paul Pireaud to his wife Marie on on June 9 and 21, 1916. Pireaud's unit, the 112th Heavy Artillery Regiment, moved into the Verdun sector in early April. Although French commander Pétain rotated infantry units after seven to ten days, it was much more difficult to do so with the artillery, which stayed significantly longer. The last great German attack in the Battle of Verdun was launched the next day, June 22.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, page 113, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
(2) The Battle of Verdun began on February 21, 1916, with one of the greatest bombardments of the war, and the shelling was frightful in the weeks and months that followed. The German attack of June 22 threatened the city of Verdun itself, taking yet another of the forts defending fortified Verdun. Fleury itself was destroyed and never rebuilt, remaining, 100 years after the battle, a memorial to it and its horrors.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, pp. 255, 256, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) Excerpt from the account by Captain H. Blair of his being buried in the largest German mine exploded on the Western Front, one that created a crater 120 yards long by 75 yards wide, at 2:00 AM on June 22, 1916. It would be nearly 24 hours before Blair was freed. He woke to a German raiding party running nearby, and feared he would be kicked in the head. Another soldier was buried immediately behind him, both buried and suffering a broken leg. Blair freed an arm, and began digging, attracting the attention of a German sniper. Fear and thirst and desperation ruled their day. By 3:00 AM a rescue party, after nearly three hours of work, freed them. The narrative is 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 dozens of his comrades. The unit was west of La Bassée, France, in Artois.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 210, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, late June, 1916. Barthas' reserve regiment had served at Hill 304 in the Verdun sector from May 6, to May 19, 1916 where the regiment lost as many as 1,050 killed, wounded, and missing. The losses were replaced with young men, and the reserve regiment was made an active duty, regular regiment. Among the young men Barthas describes were some who had come directly from reform school, others who had pocketed some money while working, some were pimps, and one had kidnapped a girl of 14 to marry her against her parents wishes. Gavroche, to quote Barthas's translator Edward M. Strauss, is a 'character in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the quintessential street-smart, wise-cracking urchin of Paris. [p. 401]'
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 225, 226, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(5) Austro-Hungarian Commander-in-Chief Conrad von Hötzendorf began his Asiago Offensive against Italy on May 15, 1916, halted it on June 16, and then pulled back to the new defensive position above. Italian Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna had created the Italian Fifth Army to stop Conrad even as Russian General Alexsei Brusilov's offensive smashed through Conrad's troops on the Eastern Front.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 166, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
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