Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
Image text: Australians at Anzac two days before the evacuation took place.
Zeppelin Kommt! Children play a Zeppelin raid on London. Holding his bomb in the gondola is a doll of the airship's inventor, Count Zeppelin. The other children, playing the English, cower, and the British fleet — folded paper boats — remains in port. Prewar postcards celebrated the imposing airships and the excitement they generated with the same expression, 'Zeppelin Kommt!'. Postcard by P.O. Engelhard (P.O.E.). The message on the reverse is dated May 28, 1915.
Image text: P.O.E.? EnglandLondonZeppelin Kommt!Reverse:Message dated May 28, 1915Stamped: Geprüft und zu befördern (Approved and forwarded) 9 Komp. Bay. L.I.N. 5
Detail from the Basque Memorial, Chemin des Dames, Craonnelle, France.
Image text:
Postcard map of the Chemin des Dames between Soissons and Rheims. The view is facing north towards the heights of the 'Ladies Road,' the Aisne River to its south. The Germans held the high ground after the retreat from the Marne in 1914. The French suffered heavy casualties taking the Chemin des Dames in the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917, an offensive that led to widespread mutinies in the French Army. The Third German Drive of 1918, the Third Battle of the Aisne, drove the French, and supporting British troops, from the heights, and again threatened Paris.
Image text: No. 189Das Kampfgebiet an der AisneThe Battleground of the Aisne
"By May 5 [Hamilton] had got his reinforcements from Egypt, and in addition he took six thousand men from Birdwood and put them into the British line at Cape Helles: a force of 25,000 men in all. Through most of May 6, 7, and 8 the fight went on and with the same heroic desperation as before. 'Drums and trumpets will sound the charge,' General d'Amade announced to the French, and out they went in their pale-blue uniforms and their white cork helmets, a painfully clear target against the dun-coloured earth. Each day they hoped to get to Achi Baba. Each night when they had gained perhaps 300 yards in one place and nothing in another a new attack was planned for the following day. . . . A wild unreality intervened between the wishes of the commanders and the conditions of the actual battle on the shore. The battle made its own rules, and it was useless for the general to order the soldiers to make for this or that objective; there were no objectives except the enemy himself. This was a simple exercise in killing, and in the end all orders were reduced to just one or two very simple propositions: either to attack or to hold on." ((1), more)
"Morale was higher [among the Allied troops in Greece]—partly because the hardship of winter was over, but also because the proximity of the Germans suggested a purpose for being in this odd corner of Europe. The destruction of a Zeppelin by naval gunners on May 5 in full view of the people of Salonika also raised the spirits of the troops, especially among the British contingent, for their families at home had already been subject to raids of this type and it was to be another four months before the first Zeppelin was shot down on English soil. Throughout the Salonika base, there was an air of expectancy." ((2), more)
"At 9 a.m. on 5 May, the 18e corps of the 10e armée launched its main assault against Craonne and Hurtebise farm, with two divisions (35e and 36e) abreast. In spite of the fierce resistance of the Garde corps, the Californie plateau was taken, but the French troops engaged on the Vauclerc plateau were attacked from behind by strong German contingents pouring out of the Dragon's and Saxons' caves. Testimonies quoted by Nobécourt are revealing: 'We advanced in the morning, but when we got through, the huns were coming out of holes and shooting us in the back. Many were killed or wounded'. 'The 65e attacked yesterday morning. At first it went very well. But (...) we went past our objectives and found ourselves caught between fires: huns in front and huns behind. We incurred heavy losses and we have no officers left. In the company there were 180 of us; hardly 40 are left today.'" ((3), more)
"On May 5, 1918, the battle-weary units of the 8th Division detrained at Fère-en-Tardenois, and, for the second time during the war, British troops founds themselves in the country between the Aisne and the Marne.The Division had been terribly shattered in both German offensives on the Somme in March, and at Villers Bretonneux in April, and sorely needed rest and respite. But rest behind the line was impossible owing to the shortage of men, and on the British front there were no longer quiet sectors where tired divisions could, while holding the line, regain their energy and assimilate their heavy reinforcements. Such homes of rest were only to be found on the front held by the French armies, and so it came about that at the beginning of May the IXth Corps was formed of the 8th, 21st, 25th, and 50th Divisions and, under the recently effected unity in the Allied High Command, was transferred to the 6th French Army taking over a section about 15 miles in length between Rheims and the Chemin des Dames." ((4), more)
(1) Within days of the Allied invasion of Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, neither the Turks nor the Allies could advance significantly. The opposing commanders pleaded for reinforcements. The Entente Allies were reluctant to divert men from the fighting in France. General Sir Ian Hamilton had overall command of the Allied campaign and got troops where he could find them, from Egypt and from his commanders. General Sir William Birdwood commanded the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, which had landed at Gaba Tepe — Anzac Cove — barely five miles north of the Anglo-French landing site at Cape Helles at the end of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Achi Baba was a hill 709 feet high that dominated the Allied position at Cape Helles six miles to its south.
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead, page 155, copyright © 1956 by Alan Moorehead, publisher: Perennial Classics 2002 (HarperCollins Publications 1956), publication date: 2002 (1956)
(2) From their base in the port of Salonica, Allied forces had expanded their footprint in Greece to the frontier, where they skirmished with Bulgarian and German troops. In spring, 1916, the Allied camp contained French and British troops originally transported from the failed Gallipoli front, the remains of Serbia's army, now recovered from its defeat and forced retreat to the Adriatic coast, and Russian troops that had sailed from Archangel on the White Sea.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 62, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(3) French commander in chief Robert Nivelle continued the offensive he had begun on April 16, 1917, the Second Battle of the Aisne, with the May 5 assault at the eastern end of the Chemin des Dames, northwest of Reims. The farms and villages of the plateau held a warren of caves in which German troops hid, letting the French advance before striking them from behind.
The 1917 Spring Offensives: Arras, Vimy, Chemin des Dames by Yves Buffetaut, page 180, publisher: Histoire et Collections, publication date: 1997
(4) The first two paragraphs of Sidney Rogerson's account of the Third Battle of the Aisne which began three weeks later, on May 27. The first two engagements in which his Division 'had been terribly shattered' were part of Operation Michael, the German Somme offensive, after which the Germans attacked on the Lys River further north in Operation Georgette in April. They returned again to the Somme sector at Villers Bretonneux after three relatively quiet weeks. The Chemin des Dames formed part of the German defensive line after the Retreat from the Marne in 1914. It was taken ultimately taken by the French in the Second Battle of the Aisne and subsequent attacks in 1917, but with losses and squandering of lives that led directly to mutinies in the French Army. The French and British would soon be driven from this high ground gained as such cost.
The Last of the Ebb: the Battle of the Aisne, 1918 by Sidney Rogerson, page 3, copyright © Sidney Rogerson, 1937, publisher: Frontline Books, publication date: 2011
