Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
Russian Infantry preparing for action, their commanding officer looking through his binoculars. A Susini tobacco / cigarette card.
Russian troops fleeing a solitary German soldier. The Russian First Army invaded Germany in August 1914, and defeated the Germans in the Battle of Gumbinnen on the 20th. In September the Germans drove them out of Russia in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. In September and October, a joint German, Austro-Hungarian offensive drove the Russians back almost to Warsaw. Illustration by E. H. Nunes.
A pencil sketch of a barn from Eberhard, an Austrian soldier in Gleisdorf, July 20, 1915, to 'L. Frl. Olga!' — liebe Fräulein Olga, dear Miss Olga. In the left foreground is a field kitchen, labeled 'Küche'. It is addressed to 'Sehrgeehrtes Fräulein Olga Pichler' — Dear Miss Olga Pichler, in Graz, and was postmarked on the 21st. Gleisdorf is about 170 km south of Vienna, and 28 km east of Graz.
Turkish Interior Minister Talaat Pasha from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales.
In July 1915, British and German forces fought three engagements in Hooge, a village near Ypres with a destroyed chateau held by the Germans, and its stables held by the British. A British mine on July 19 opened a crater 120 feet across. On July 30, the Germans attacked with flamethrowers, the first time the British had faced the weapon. Map from Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915, Vol. II, by Brigadier-General J.E. Edmonds and Captain G.C. Wynne. Map by Major A.F. Becke R.A. (Retired) Hon. M.A. (Oxon.)
"16th July [1915], MakovIt is raining heavily. Shells are already exploding nearby. Refugees are walking and driving from all directions. We are ordered to pull out of Makov immediately. It turned out that two of the injured are actually dead, so they were taken to the cemetery and I think they managed to bury them. The battle is raging, everything is shaking. In Makov there is a crush of people, an endless procession of carts, no way to get out of here fast. Screaming, noise and crying, everything is confused. We are supposed to be retreating, but in two hours we only make it down one street. In the end, we hardly make it to the bridge, where the longest queue is. Everyone is desperate to avoid being taken prisoner by the Germans. We cross the bridge and just about reach the road when the shells start exploding all over town. Several fall next to the bridge. We march six and a half miles in an hour and turn off to the side of the road to await further orders." ((1), more)
". . . By 17th July, the Germans had advanced perhaps five miles, but they had inflicted seventy percent losses on the defenders (including 24,000 prisoners, a quarter of the Russian numbers). This coincided with Mackensen's successes at Krásnik and Krasnostaw. Alexeyev pulled back his troops to the Narev, with corresponding withdrawals to left and right.. . . On 17th July, both Falkenhayn and Gallwitz—commanding the offensive—felt that they had planned things well enough. As the Germans came forward, they stumbled against increasing numbers of Russian troops, such that the 62 battalions and 188 guns that had faced the initial German attack rose to 100 and 600 respectively once the Germans arrived on the Narev. German attacks fared badly—the guns unprepared for Russian resistance, the troops defeated by machine-gunnery . . ." ((2), more)
"I was ready to follow my two buddies, when, all of sudden, I was overcome by an indefinable sensation of worry, anguish, fear. I was sure of it; this was the imminence of danger which I was feeling. . . .Many have escaped death, guided by intuition that they didn't even know they had. Everything may depend on the degree of sensitivity of our nerves, or how impressionable they are. . . .Therefore, of all the veterans of the 13th Squad, I was the only one left still fighting, along with the rationer Terrisse. All the others were killed or wounded. When would my turn come?" ((3), more)
". . . Under the circumstances now prevailing and in the presence of an enemy organization long since established, it seems wise not to base all our hopes upon the possibility of breaking through, or risk all our available reserves in an attempt to effect a victorious and decisive piercing of the line by mere force of numbers. On the contrary, our plan should be directed towards the conquest of certain dominant points of the terrain; each one of our attacks should have a distinct object, and one whose accomplishment would lead to some further result." ((4), more)
"You know all about the dearth of munitions. We are not producing more than 24,000 shells a day. It's a pittance for so vast a front! But our shortage of rifles alarms me even more. Just think! In several infantry regiments which have taken part in the recent battles at least one third of the men had no rifles. These poor devils had to wait patiently, under a shower of shrapnel, until their comrades fell before their eyes and they could pick up their arms." ((5), more)
(1) Entry for July 16, 1915 from the journal of Vasily Mishnin, part of the Russian forces and refugees retreating before the German offensive launched on July 13.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 106, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(2) The German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, now in its third month, continued. Still holding the city of Warsaw and some of its defensive fortresses, the Russians mounted a defense that temporarily held the invaders at bay. Stavka, the Russian High Command, did not think the line would hold, and soon, on July 22, ordered a resumption of the Russian retreat. Mackensen and Gallwitz were German generals, Falkenhayn the German Commander in Chief.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, page 180, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
(3) Extracts from events of July 18, 1915, from the notebooks of French Corporal Louis Barthas. Barthas had joined two friends at their company's field kitchen, set up at a crossroads, when the sense of 'the imminence of danger' struck him. Thinking his comrades would deride him if he spoke of his fear, he went into a shop, and was browsing postcards when shells landed at the crossroads, wounding twelve men of his company including four critically injured cooks.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 101, 102, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(4) General Ferdinand Foch writing to French Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre in a paper dated July 19, 1915. Both sides had hoped for a breakthrough of the enemy lines as the path to victory — a breakthrough that Germany had achieved in Russia in the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive even as Foch was writing. Foch was concluding that a general offensive on a broad front that aimed—or hoped-for a breakthrough was inadequate. The fighting the First and Second Battles of Artois earlier in 1915 had led to heavy losses for the Allies.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 209, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(5) Entry for July 20, 1915 from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia. He met with General Bielaïev, Chief of Staff of the Army, who reviewed with the Ambassador the position of the Russian Armies, and the strong positions they had retreated to. After this optimistic summary, the General turns to the shortage of weapons of all kinds that the Russians suffered from, not only the shell shortage that all the combatants had faced, but a shortage of small arms as well.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 34, publisher: George H. Doran Company
1 2 Next
