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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.
An Italian soldier lying in the snow waving a handkerchief to a plane overhead. The logo is for Societa Italiana Aviazione, founded in 1916, which became part of Fiat Aviation in 1918.
The Kasaba of Kut-el-Amara, Mesopotamia, where a British Indian army was surrounded and besieged by Turkish forces from the end of 1915 until the British surrender on April 29, 1915. Photograph 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.
A French officer charging into battle in a watercolor by Fernand Rigouts. The original watercolor on deckle-edged watercolor paper is signed F. R. 1917, and addressed to Mademoiselle Henriette Dangon.
British troops drawing water. A Susini tobacco / cigarette card.
"03.35 hrs. Battalion commander arrives. 'Hurry! Prepare a reconnaissance patrol. The enemy has withdrawn from Anafarta and the entire right flank.' Offer him tea. The patrol is readied. Explain it will move into no-man's-land from the spot where the mine was detonated." ((1), more)
"Too late in moving here, too late in arriving there. Too late in coming to this decision, too late in starting with enterprises, too late in preparing! In this war the footsteps of the Allied forces have been dogged by the mocking specter of "too late", and unless we quicken our movements damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which so much gallant blood has flowed." ((2), more)
"Another incident occurred on 20 December [1915] at Kammo, on the middle Isonzo, directly below Krn, when a regiment of the Salerno Brigade was ordered back to the first line. Apparently fuelled by drink, someone fired a shot at the officers' mess. The divisional command surrounded the regiment with four battalions, complete with machine guns and artillery. The following morning, an extraordinary court martial considered the charge of 'revolt in the presence of the enemy' — a dubious charge, as the rebels were not in the line. Eight were sentenced to death, others to hard labour for 20 years. The condemned men wept as they were led away. After witnessing the executions, the regiment was escorted back up the line by carabinieri (military police)." ((3), more)
"One hears a sudden crack just ahead like the sharp snapping of a stick, and in the early days of one's initiation a duck is inevitable. I don't say one ducks, but one finds one has ducked. For a time everyone ducks. It is no use telling people that if the bullet had been straight one would have been hit before hearing it strike the palm. Some people go on ducking for ages." ((4), more)
"23 December: 'Mud and filth are getting the better of us. This morning at three o'clock an enormous deposit came down at the entrance to my dugout. I had to employ three men, who were barely able to bale the water that poured like a freshet into my dugout. Our trench is drowning, the morass is now up to our navels, it's desperate. On the right edge of our frontage, another corpse has begun to appear, so far just the legs.'" ((5), more)
(1) Last entry from the diary of Turkish Second Lieutenant Mehmed Fasih writing on December 19, 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Over the course of several days, the British troops had been evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove, and had managed to do so without raising suspicions of the Turks. It was the most successful part of their invasion of Gallipoli. Anafarta was the Turkish name for the area of Suvla Bay, the Allied left flank and the Turkish right.
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) Minister of Munitions and future Prime Minister David Lloyd George speaking in the House of Commons on December 20, 1915. The Allies had suffered many disappointments in 1915. French commander Joseph Joffre's spring and autumn offensives had ended with little gain. A combined German and Austro-Hungarian offensive had driven the Russians from Polish Russia. Italy's entry into the war had done little to drive Austria-Hungary from the war. Bulgaria's casting off of neutrality had assured the swift defeat of Serbia and defeated a Franco-British attempt to come to their ally's aid. The Franco-British invasion of Gallipoli was ending in defeat with two of three positions completely evacuated the day Lloyd George spoke. British defeats in the battles of Neuve Chapelle and Loos had just led to the replacement of British commander Sir John French by General Douglas Haig.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 216, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) From Mark Thompson's account of mutinous incidents in the Italian Army in December, 1915. The first was by men of the 48th Regiment of which, from 3,000 men, 700 survived after four months in the trenches. When 200 were granted rest and the other 500 were sent back to the front line, shots were fired. A court martial condemned two men to death, both shot the day after the incident. Krn was one of the peaks of the Dolomites the Italians and Austro-Hungarians had fought and died over in the four Battles of the Isonzo River in 1915.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 153, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(4) New Zealander Edward Mousley, an artilleryman in the British army, writing on December 22, 1915 in Kut-el-Amara in Mesopotamia, besieged by the Turks. His artillery is dug in in a grove of date palms. This night, some horses are killed by Turkish machine gunners, and one man is hit. Stopped in their attempt to advance to Baghdad, the British retreated to Kut and await relief and reinforcements.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, page 193, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
(5) Sebastian Jünger quoting his diary for December 23, 1915. Western front troops and commanders had not anticipated a stationary front, and the dead were sometimes buried where they fell, sometimes with little earth upon them, sometimes incorporated into trenches and ramparts. Heavy rains and shelling could unearth the dead of the prior 16 months.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 58, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
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