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Postcard image of London under an airship raid. In the distance, a fire burns near Tower Bridge, another to the east, south of the Thames. The Schütte-Lanz was a competitor to the Zeppelin, and used a wooden rather than metal frame. After an original painting, 'Schütte-Lanz' over London by Jo. Ruep.
A crazed Great Britain urges a broken Russia, a nose-picking, dozing Italy, and a sullen France to continued offensives in a German postcard imagining the November 6, 1917 Entente Ally Conference of Rapallo after the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo. The Battle, also known as the Battle of Caporetto, was a disastrous defeat for Italy and the first Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Isonzo Front. The Austrians had significant German support.
Russian Bolshevik soldiers demonstrating in Petrograd.
British soldiers on the Western Front in an official photograph dated March 5, 1917.
Mount Olympus from Summerhill camp Salonica, October, 1917. Summerhill (or Summer Hill) Camp was a British infantry training base about five miles from Salonica.
"London had never been attacked by the light of so small a moon. With the onset of winter the Germans had another means of finding the city at night. A light snowfall had fallen on England. Against a white background, the darkly etched course of the Thames was clearly visible from the air. . . .The press, complying with the ban on 'lurid' air raid stories, gave scant attention to the damage. The destruction was actually the worst since the devastating Zeppelin raid of September 1915. Thirteen fires raged in London, one being visible over fifty miles away to the returning German crews. Despite the property losses, there were only twelve dead and sixty-six wounded. The barrage fire injured nineteen others, two fatally." ((1), more)
"— The 19th [December, 1917]. — C— gave me details about the accident at Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne in which 439 men on leave, on their way from Italy, were burnt to death when their train was derailed. Half of them cannot be identified. It has been decided to inform their families that they died 'gloriously' in battle. Compensation for the families and the railway company. The newspapers have preserved a religious silence about the whole incident." ((2), more)
"The third delegate is Madame Bizenko, a woman with a comprehensive past. Her husband is a minor official; she herself took an early part in the revolutionary movement. Twelve years ago she murdered General Sacharow, the governor of some Russian city, who had been condemned to death by the Socialists for his energy. She appeared before the general with a petition, holding a revolver under her petticoat. When the general began to read she fired four bullets into his body, killing him on the spot. She was sent to Siberia, where she lived for twelve years, at first in solitary confinement, afterward under somewhat easier conditions; she also owes her freedom to the Revolution. This remarkable woman learned French and German in Siberia well enough to read them, though she cannot speak them, not knowing how the words should be pronounced. She is the type of the educated Russian proletariat." ((3), more)
"I began to be careless about whether I was in the line or out of it; nothing seemed to signify except the day's meals, and those were still substantial despite the lean supplies of the people at home. The price of all luxuries in the shops was rising fast, but still one could manage it; why trouble about getting back to the battalion? This was the general spirit, and we did not lament when the course was lengthened and the year ended with us waving flags in unison in the snow, or attempting the heliograph, or rapping out ludicrous messages to the instructors' satisfaction, or listening to muddled addresses on alternating current." ((4), more)
"The recall of Sarrail implied far more than the displacement of one individual. Guillaumat reached Salonika on December 22 [1917], only a few hours after Sarrail left. Quietly but firmly his hand-selected staff officers were weeded out and sent after their fallen idol as speedily as possible. . . . For one reason or another, the French command was fielding a new team." ((5), more)
(1) Thirteen Gotha bombers and one Staka Giant set out to attack London the night of December 18, 1917 with the Staka and seven of the Gothas reaching the city. A British pilot, Captain Gilbert Murlis-Green, hit an engine of one Gotha which ended in the English Channel. Seven of the Gothas were damaged on landing in Belgium, two of them destroyed.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, pp. 176, 177, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
(2) The accident happened on December 12, 1916, just inside France, west of Turin, Italy. The French had been supporting the Italians after their disastrous defeat in the Battle of Caporetto, but the northeastern front was holding and neither French nor British troops needed to be on the Italian front line on the Piave River. The deployment also followed the French army mutinies in which, besides their demand that they no longer be thrown pointlessly into an abattoir, French soldiers also insisted that leave policy be honored. Leave from Italy was particularly knotty because of the transport logistics. In his First World War, Martin Gilbert puts the number of dead in the disaster at 543 soldiers (page 387).
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 302, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(3) Excerpt from the entry for December 20, 1917 by Count Ottokar Czernin in his In the World War, describing Anastasia Bizenko, one of the Russian delegates to the Brest-Litovsk peace conference between Russia and the Central Powers. Adolf Joffe, who had been freed from Siberia by the Revolution, and Lev Kamenev also represented Russia at the conference which Leon Trotsky, brother-in-law to Kamenev, later joined.
In the World War by Count Ottokar Czernin, page 244, copyright © 1920, by Harper & Brothers, publisher: Harper and Brothers, publication date: 1920
(4) Edmund Blunden, English writer, recipient of the Military Cross, second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, fought in the Third Battle of Ypres, one of the most murderous battles of the war. He was sent to a signalling course within sight of the city of Ypres, and was at first unhappy to be separated from his battalion. The heliograph messages using the sun and a mirror — the sun's rays interrupted by moving the mirror or by an intervening shutter mechanism.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, page 233, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
(5) Until December 10, 1917, General Maurice Sarrail commanded an Allied force on the Salonica Front in Greece that included French, British, Serbian, Russian, and Italian troops, as well as a battalion of Montenegrin soldiers. His offensive in May, 1917 had been an abject failure, in part because of failures in communications between units of the joint army. A Republican, with strong political support in Paris, Sarrail was removed by the new Prime Minister and Minister of War Georges Clemenceau. General Adolphe Guillaumat would begin preparing for the 1918 campaign.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 169, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
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