The war that would be over by Christmas.
The war that all of Europe marched off to joyously.
The war that now has a death toll in the millions, casualties in the tens of millions, has brought
in nations from all over the world, has seen the use of flamethrowers, mustard gas, bombing
of civilians, the advent of the tank; indeed the advent of Total War.
That war is now three years old.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Russian Kerensky Offensive faced serious trouble as the German and Austrians
counterattacked.
The artillery barrage heralding the arrival of Britain’s Western Front offensive was
in high gear, and the German Reichstag proposed to work for peace, though the army and the
Chancellor said that ain’t gonna happen.
The Kaiser, for the first time since before the turn of the century, now met representatives
of all German political parties, except the Independent Socialists (Gilbert).
In sort of a stunning turnabout from his recent thoughts about Belgian independence after
the war, he made a speech arguing for a Second Punic War against Britain during which all
of Europe, under Germany’s leadership, would destroy British world domination.
The political reps were, needless to say, completely shocked; the Kaiser obviously had
no interest at all in last week’s peace resolution.
In the British House of Commons, Ramsay MacDonald, Labor Party leader, did try to get support
for the Reichstag Peace resolution, but was defeated 148-19.
After that he bitterly wrote to US President Woodrow Wilson that American neutrality would
have been better for peace.
And on a related note, at the end of the week came a meeting of Bolshevik sympathizers in
London, who called themselves the London Soviet, and they wanted an immediate end to the war.
The British government, though, arranged for the Daily Express to reveal the location of
the meeting and distributed leaflets saying that it was “pro-German”.
8,000 people, including soldiers in uniform, turned up and broke up the meeting.
In the field, Britain was just about to launch a new major offensive in Flanders, but it
would be tricky.
The positions to be attacked were both geographically and militarily some of the best defended on
the Western Front.
The Germans looked down from the higher ground of Passchendaele and Gheluvelt over a plain
from which three years of constant shelling had removed all vegetation.
In addition to the complete absence of any concealment, the drainage system had been
destroyed so that rain - frequent in August - turned the ground into a swamp.
The Germans “Flanders Position” was nine layers deep, from listening posts to trenches
to machine gun posts and all the way back to the heavy artillery and reserves.
The men had also been trained in the new flexible defense system the Germans had developed and
then used successfully against the British and French three months ago at Arras and the
Aisne.
On th eir main line of defense, that to be attacked by the British 5th Army, were 1,556
field guns and heavy guns on a front of just over 11km.
The British, though, had 2,299 guns, one for every 5 meters, which was ten times the density
they had used at the Battle of the Somme last summer.
On July 26, 700 British and French aircraft took to the sky and cleared it of Germans,
giving the British air superiority to a depth of 8km, which was where the German observation
balloon line began.
You gotta realize that visibility from, say, a captured balloon in clear weather, was up
to 100 kilometers, and since the balloon had a telephone cable attached to its tether,
you could easily and quickly correct your artillery positions.
The preliminary artillery barrage had already begun last week and would total some 4 million
shells - four times the number used at the Somme.
That barrage continued all week as the British made ready to attack.
And her allies made brand new attacks already this week.
The Battle of Marashti (Marasti) began July 22nd.
This was a Romanian and Russian joint attempt to ideally encircle and destroy the German
9th Army and take back Romanian territory lost last fall.
Back in May, plans were made for the Romanian 1st and 2nd armies for this new campaign,
and it came off now against German and Austro-Hungarian defenders.
The Romanian artillery began to pound and destroy enemy positions July 22nd, and did
an excellent job, totally disorganizing the defensive front lines and opening gaps in
the barbed wire.
The next day the Romanian infantry went over the top.
After the 1916 campaign, they had been reorganized and further trained, and they were battle-hardened
troops fighting on their home territory, and it showed.
For the rest of the week they pushed the enemy back a dozen kilometers on a front over 30
km wide and took hundreds of prisoners and dozens of artillery pieces and the morale
of the Romanians was riding high.
But Russian morale was collapsing as the Germans and Austrians were making big advances of
their own.
At the end of last week they had begun their counterattack, and now the Russians, low on
supplies began to flee in panic.
General Alexei Brusilov ordered the retreat but it was turning into a rout.
All through the week the Russian retreat continued.
By the 23rd, it was undisciplined on a front of over 200km.
The next day Stanislau and Halicz fell, and on the 26th Tarnopol fell.
This seemed like the reverse of last summer, when the Russians rolled over the Central
Powers, and might spell disaster for Russia.
(Gilbert) “Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers simply threw down their rifles and
fled from the war zone.
Hundreds of officers were murdered.
Two Allied armored car units, one British and one Belgian, were serving on the Eastern
Front... their officers pleaded with the Russian deserters to return to the front line, but
in vain.”
And here are a couple of notes to end the week.
Polish leader Josef Pilsudski was arrested this week and imprisoned in Magdeburg after
forbidding his soldiers to swear and oath of loyalty to the Central powers.
And Siam declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary the 22nd.
And the week comes to an end, The Central Powers routing the disorganized Russians,
even as Romania is pushing back the Central Powers.
Groups around Europe that want peace being easily suppressed by their governments, and
the British finalizing plans for an offensive that will begin in just a few days.
I mentioned two weeks ago that mustard gas made its debut.
In the six weeks following that macabre milestone, 19,000 British soldiers were incapacitated
by the gas, many of them being blinded.
When the war broke out, so many millions upon millions of people had thought of the honor
and glory the fight would bring, this noble war.
Well, Wilfred Owen was at Craiglockhart War Hospital at this time in Britain, and he wrote
one of the most powerful poems to come out of the war, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori, to die for the fatherland is a sweet thing and becoming”.
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our
backs, And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep, many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod.
All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots,
Of gas shells dropping softly behind.
Gas!
GAS!
Quick, boys- an ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And floun’dring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s, sick of sin;
If you could hear at every jolt the blood Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs;
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old lie- dulce et decorum est ...pro patria mori.
The war is three years old and there is no end in sight.
If you want to learn more about another write of the war, you can click here for our special about Erich
Maria Remarque
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