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Wooden cigarette box carved by Г. САВИНСКИ (?; G. Savinskiy), a Russian POW. The Grim Reaper strides across a field of skulls on the cover. The base includes an intricate carving of the years of war years, '1914' and, turning it 90 degrees, '1918.'
The conditions British Troops faced in Flanders and Passchendaele.
Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
The Royal Artillery Memorial, London, England and 'Trenches: St. Eloi' by T. E. Hulme who was killed September 28, 1917 while serving with the Royal Marine Artillery. © 2013 by John M. Shea
La Domenica del Corriere (The Sunday Courier) of March 25 to April 1, 1917, an illustrated weekly supplement to Corriere della Sera, published in Milan, Italy. The front and back covers are full-page illustrations by the great Italian illustrator Achille Beltrame. The front cover depicts Russian troops cheering the deputies entering the Duma after what the paper calls, 'the Russian revolt for freedom and the war.' The secondary story was on the fall of Baghdad to British troops.
"There are many instances of men who, on the eve of going into action, had an unshakable idea, a premonition, that they would not come out alive. Morgan Jones tells of one of his fellow-signallers, an intelligent well-read man. 'He asked me to go for a walk with him in the evening after tea. When we had gone a little way he turned to me and said, 'Look here, '95, I know something is going to happen to me to-morrow. I am not going to get through this business alive. I want you to take charge of my letters to-morrow; I'm expecting some money.' . . . My arguments failed to persuade him not to give room to such gloomy thoughts. When H.Q. Company led the way into the line next day one of the first to be killed was '91 Davies.'" ((1), more)
"At 11.45 D Company was forming up under some machine-gun fire. Two platoons of B arrived in time to advance with D at zero, noon. The only covering fire given was a few ineffectual smoke shells, because it was still thought that there were parties of the 98th Brigade in front, and there was no definite German position. Mann had just seen the other two platoons of B away when he was shot through the throat, and died almost immediately. Coster was shot through the head as his Company was entering a scraggy orchard, enclosed by a scraggier hedge, north of Jerk Farm : it is about 550 yards eastwards of Black Watch Corner. At this early stage the two Companies were losing touch. The extent of hedge, orchard and pill-box, and the consequent obstruction to view and control of movement, was underestimated on the map which had been our only source of information." ((2), more)
"In Britain, questions had begun to be raised about the continuing attrition. Although the Germans were being pushed back a hundred yards here and a hundred yards there, the casualty lists were growing. On September 27 [1917] the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Robertson, wrote to Haig: 'I confess I stick to it more because I see nothing better, and because my instinct prompts me to stick to it, than because of any good arguments by which I can support it.' On the following day Haig wrote in his diary, 'The enemy is tottering.' This was his usual argument for continuing." ((3), more)
"Trenches: St EloiOver the flat slope of St EloiA wide wall of sand bags.Night,In the silence desultory menPottering over small fires, cleaning their mess-tins:To and fro, from the lines,Men walk about as on Piccadilly,Making paths in the dark,Through scattered dead horses,Over a dead Belgian's belly.The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets.Behind the line, cannon, hidden, lying back miles.Before the line, chaos:My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on." ((4), more)
"At 0615 elements of the 12th Brigade began advancing towards the Aziziya Ridge once more; despite some initial setbacks, by 0700 they were pressing on to the western end of the Shaikh Farajah Ridge beyond, form which they believed they could control the only bridge over the Aziziya Canal. In fact, this was not the case, and it was necessary to fight their way along the canal and take this bridge, which was secured at some cost. By 0930 the Turks had begun to surrender in significant numbers, and by 1100 the capitulation had become complete. In all, 3,456 prisoners were taken, together with ten guns, three 1-pounder pom-poms and twelve machine guns." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the entry for September 25, 1917 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 fellow soldiers who served with him. Dunn was writing the night before the Battle of Polygon Wood. On September 28, he would write that his battalion had lost one-third of its men in the action, with more than 60 dead. Overall, the British suffered 15,375 casualties in the Polygon Wood battle, an engagement within the Third Battle of Ypres, then two months old.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 393, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(2) Excerpt from the entry for September 26, 1917 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 fellow soldiers who served with him. Dunn's entry covers his Battalion's part in the Battle of Polygon Wood. On September 28, he would write that his battalion had lost one-third of its men in the action, and 'more than 60 were dead. Mann was the greatest loss. He was an outstanding figure during the two years to a day he served with the Battalion.' Overall, the British suffered 15,375 casualties in the Polygon Wood battle, an engagement within the Third Battle of Ypres, begun two months before.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 395–396, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) General Sir Douglas Haig began the Third Battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917 to achieve breakthrough of the German line on the Western Front, to reach the English Channel coast, and end the war. Rain was a factor from the beginning. Artillery bombardments destroyed the drainage of the flat terrain. Water filled shell holes, turning shelter into deathtraps. Haig and his Generals Hubert Gough and Herbert Plumer continued to throw British, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian troops into the swamp and against German machine guns.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 363, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(4) Trenches: St Eloi by T. E. Hulme, killed September 28, 1917 by a German shell. Hulme served with the Royal Marine Artillery at Oost-Duinkerke behind Nieuport on the Belgian channel coast.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 51, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(5) General Stanley Maude, commander of the British forces in Mesopotamia, responded to reports that the Turks then gathering in Aleppo would move down the Euphrates River to recapture Baghdad on the Tigris River. To prevent that, the British set out to take Ramadie, 120 km west of Baghdad and on the Euphrates. Begun on September 28, 1917, the successful operation was completed the following day. The Turks in Aleppo would instead move south against British forces in Palestine.
Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford, page 97, copyright © Roger Ford 2010, publisher: Pegasus Books, publication date: 2010
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