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Metal cross grave marker of Corporal Jakob Naumann who died on April 10, 1918, likely in Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive, launched the previous day. From the Laventie German Military Cemetery, Laventie, France. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Peoples of Austria-Hungary in 1914 from Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd. The empire's population included Germans, Magyars, Romanians, Italians, and Slavs including Croats, Serbians, Ruthenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Slovenes.
Map of United States troop sailings from Canada and the United States to Great Britain, France, and Italy. Over 2,000,000 Americans sailed, divided roughly equally between Britain and France.
Postcard map of the English Channel, the strait between England and France with the Channel Ports of Dunkirk and Calais in France and Dover and the mouth of the Thames River in England. Illustration by Eugen Felle, 1915.
What do you want here? Turkish and British child soldiers on the Suez Canal. After crossing the Sinai Peninsula during January, 1915, a Turkish army of approximately 12,000 soldiers reached the Suez Canal on February 2, and tried to cross after nightfall, but were driven back. On the 3rd, the British crossed the canal, and struck the Turkish left flank, driving them back. By February 10, the Turks had evacuated the Peninsula.
"The Battle of the Lys was for the enemy a tactical success but a strategic failure. He achieved no one of his principal aims, and in the struggle he weakened his chances of a future offensive by squandering some of his best reserves. By the end of April he had employed in that one northern area thirty-five fresh divisions and nine which had been already in action. These troops were the cream of his army, and could not be replaced. He had caused to the British front since March 21st something like a quarter of a million casualties, but his own losses were far greater." ((1), more)
"On May 1, 1918, an estimated throng of 70,000 parading in Prague set up chants to 'Hang the Kaiser,' demanded more food, independence, and peace, and a fortnight later, Czech patriots converted the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Bohemian National Theater into a gala patriotic demonstration. Representatives of other Hapsburg national communities attended the Prague celebration, which took on the quality of a version of the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities recently held in Rome; spokesmen of Slav nationalities impressively demonstrated their solidarity with the Czechs." ((2), more)
"This was done at Abbeville, on May 1st and 2d, when the following arrangements were agreed to:(1) The British Government undertook to furnish the tonnage necessary to transport from the United States to France 130,000 men in May, and 150,000 in June, consisting solely of infantry and machine-gun detachments.(2) The American tonnage would be used for the transport of artillery, engineers, services, etc.(3) A further examination of the situation would be made at the beginning of June and the program for the future decided upon." ((3), more)
"I must draw your attention to the fact that if England and France in this defensive campaign have common war aims, their armies have separate objectives.The French Army must cover Paris and the centre of France; the British Army must defend the coast and, in particular, the Channel Ports, including Dunkirk.I write to you on this point because it concerns the vital interests of Belgium and the action of her Army.The possession of Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne or even one of these ports would be the greatest possible victory for Germany and for us a terrible defeat and a direct danger for England and her naval supremacy." ((4), more)
"Outside, on the decks, one finds the haunted darkness and the sea. One stumbles over the sleeping soldiers, wrapped in their blankets. The sea is darker than the sky, but the escort of destroyers is dimly seen, long shadows, scarcely more than a blur on the water. Nothing is heard but the throbbing of the engines. The sentries loom in doorways, standing upright and silent above the recumbent sleepers, like men watching over a litter of dead bodies.Lights and drinking card-players and wireless operators and navigators within; chart-rooms, and kitchens and engine-rooms; all that is life, struggling to keep above water. And outside the mystery and unpitying hugeness of death and sleep, the terror that walks by night, and the impossibility of escape." ((5), more)
(1) Summary of the Battle of the Lys, Operation Georgette, by British novelist John Buchan. Georgette, launched on April 9, was the second of what would be five German offensives in 1918. Operation Michael, the Somme Offensive, was the first, and began on March 21. Both offensives were against the British front. In his 1918 Barrie Pitt puts the numbers of Allied dead and wounded at just under 210,000, and the German at 310,000 (page 134). But he also puts Allied prisoners and missing at 290,000 against 40,000 Germans, bringing Allied casualties to a few hundred shy of half a million men.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 123, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) The fault lines in the Austro-Hungarian Empire deepened and widened at the war progressed, as casualties mounted, as shortages of food and fuel bit. Hungarians asked why they were being sent across the Empire to fight on the Italian Front, and refused shipments of food to Austria. Czech prisoners of war held in Russia formed a Czech Legion fighting alongside Imperial Russian troops against Austria-Hungary. After the Bolshevik Revolution and peace between Russia and the Central Powers, these Legionnaires would make their way eastward to the Pacific port of Vladivostok in the next stage of a journey to circle the globe to return them home to fight for an independent Czech state.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, Vol. 2, p. 676, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
(3) Allied Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch's summary of the key decision at the Abbeville Conference of May 1–2, 1918. United States Commander in Chief John Pershing resisted putting American troops into the line to fill gaps suffered by the French and especially the British in Operation Michael and Operation Georgette, the German offensives of March and April, 1918. The agreement reached at Abbeville meant the Britain would reduce shipments of food to the United Kingdom, but instead transport the American soldiers desperately needed on the Western Front.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 308, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(4) Albert, King of the Belgians, writing to British Lord Curzon, a member of the war cabinet, on May 3, 1918 after German offensives in March and April, Operation Michael and Operation Georgette, had driven the British back on the Somme and Lys sectors, threatening to separate the French and British armies. General Douglas Haig's impulse was to save the British Army by falling back to the Channel ports of Dunkirk and Calais. Commanding the French Army, Henri Philippe Pétain's impulse was to defend Paris. Commander in Chief Ferdinand Foch insisted that a united Franco-British front must be maintained.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 207, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(5) Excerpt from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (R.W.F.), and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. Sassoon had been wounded in April, 1917, and by mid-June had concluded that the war begun 'as a war of defence and liberation, [had] become a war of aggression and conquest.' In October he was at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric facility in Scotland, and under the care of W. H. R. Rivers. Ready to return to the war in February, 1918, Sassoon was deployed to Palestine where British forces had been moving north until the shock and success of Germany's spring offensives Michael and Georgette, and British losses, required every available soldier be on the Western Front. Through the day and into the night Sassoon had been watching the officers and men on the convoyed ship bringing them from Egypt to France, and closer to death. Sassoon continues, 'This is rather portentous stuff. I have obviously been rereading Lord Jim; and the mixture of War and Peace and Howards End contributes to the mental hotch-potch.'
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 244, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
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