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Pen and ink sketch of the Ypres Cloth Hall dated 1916 by N. Faeror? Faeroir? On November 22, 1914, German forces shelled the Hall and St. Peter's Cathedral with incendiary shells. In his memoirs, French General Ferdinand Foch, wrote that they did so to compensate themselves for their defeat in the Battle of Flanders.
A French soldier wearing the uniform of 1914/1915 stands by the side of a water-filled shell crater.
'Street Life, 1916' by Hans Larwin, a native of Vienna and painter of the war on multiple fronts, including the home front. A bread line, chiefly of women, waits along the shopfronts to buy bread. To the left, a policeman stands guard.
Portrait of British soldier Harry Mulvaney, son of Edith (Hughes) and Peter Mulvaney, who was killed in France aged about 19 years in the 1914-18 war.
A woman tramway worker operating a manual switch, changing the direction of her trolley. As men entered or were conscripted into the military, women took on unaccustomed roles.
"As intelligence officer, I, too, was many times out in No Man's Land here. It may be well to say more, since those times and tortures are now almost forgotten. The wirers were out already, clanking and whispering with what seemed a desperate energy, straining to screw their pickets into the granite. The men lying at each listening-post were freezing stiff, and would take half an hour's buffeting and rubbing on return to avoid becoming casualties. Moonlight, steely and steady, flooded the flat space between us and the Germans. I sent my name along, 'Patrol going out,' and, followed by my batman, blundered over the parapet, down the borrow-pit, and through our meagre but mazy wire. Come, once again.The snow is hardened and crunches with a sort of music. Only me, Worley. He lays a gloved hand on my sleeve, puts his head close, and says, 'God bless you, sir—don't stay out too long.' Then we stoop along his wire to a row of willows, crop-headed, nine in a row, pointing to the German line. . . ." ((1), more)
"'I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last four days. I have suffered seventh hell. I have not been at the front. I have been in front of it. I held an advanced post, that is, a 'dugout' in the middle of No-Man's land.' The dugout held twenty men 'packed tight,' he explained. 'Water filled it to a depth of 1 or 2 feet, leaving say 4 feet of air. One entrance had been blown in and blocked. So far, the other remained. The Germans knew we were staying there and decided we shouldn't.'" ((2), more)
"— Either vanity or shame prevents certain aspects of life from being reflected in our illustrated papers. So posterity will find the pictorial documentation of the war very defective. For instance: they do not show us the insides of houses almost completely dark, owing to the lighting restrictions; the fruit stalls lit by candles in the deep gloom of the streets; the dustbins lying about on the the pavement, owing to the shortage of staff, until three in the afternoon; the queues of three thousand people waiting for their ration of sugar outside the large grocery stores. And, conversely, they do not record the enormous crowd thronging restaurants, tea-rooms, theatres, music-halls, and cinemas." ((3), more)
"A draft of a hundred and fifty 'proceeded' to France to-night. Most of them half-tight, except those who had been in the guard-room to stop them bolting (again), and the Parson's speech went off, to the usual asides and witticisms. He ended: 'And God go with you. I shall go as far as the station with you.' Then the C.O. stuttered a few inept and ungracious remarks. 'You are going out to the Big Push which will end the war' etc (groans). And away they marched to beat of drums—a pathetic scene of humbug and cant. How much more impressive if they went in silence, with no foolishness of 'God Speed'—like Hardy's 'men who march away . . . To hazards whence no tears can win us.'" ((4), more)
"The woman chauffeur has reached the height of her ambitions — she is to be allowed at last to drive the royal mail vans. A start will be made in London next Monday, beginning with the eleven o'clock night shift, when six women drivers, wearing the uniform of the Women's Volunteer Reserve, will drive the one-ton lorries which convey the outgoing mails from the G.P.O. to the railway stations, where they will wait for the incoming mails. The six are only the pioneers of a large number of women drivers wanted to drive the royal mail vans, in order to release as many as possible of the 300 men now employed. The first women drivers of H.M. Stationary Office wear uniforms of a military character." ((5), more)
(1) Edmund Blunden, English writer, recipient of the Military Cross, second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, writing of going on a patrol into No Man's land, one moonlit night in January, 1917. He was then stationed near Ypres, Belgium. 'The granite' is frozen ground.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, page 160, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
(2) British poet Wilfred Owen, Second Lieutenant in the 5th Manchesters, quoted in Martin Gilbert's The First World War. Owen's unit was in the line in Serre, immediately north of Beaumont-Hamel in the Somme sector. He had taken up the position on January 12, 1917 and stayed for 50 hours, returning on the 16th when he wrote to his mother. Owen continued, 'I nearly broke down and let myself drown . . .'
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 307, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) Entry for January 16, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. Corday often comments on the 'enormous crowd thronging restaurants' not more than 50 miles from the front.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 225, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(4) January 17, 1917 entry from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action, then on convalescent leave in Britain. 'The Big Push' was used to describe the 1915 Battle of Loos and 1916's Battle of the Somme, neither of which ended the war, as the Big Pushes of 1917 would not. Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Men Who March Away' was published in The Times of London September 9, 1914, four days after Hardy wrote it with both Hardy and the paper foregoing copyright. The lines (line 5, repeated as line 33) Sassoon quotes, 'To hazards whence no tears can win us' is from the original. Hardy later changed it to, 'Leaving all that here can win us.' The first stanza from Hardy's Complete Poems, page 538:What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray,Leaving all that here can win us;What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 120, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(5) January 18, 1917 item from the Daily Sketch, a British tabloid published in Manchester, on the breaking of another workplace barrier to women.
The Virago Book of Women and the Great War by Joyce Marlow, Editor, page 242, copyright © Joyce Marlow 1998, publisher: Virago Press, publication date: 1999
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