The Great War
Page 68
Yser River 70
Z
Zagreb 23
Zandvoorde 367
Zeebrugge 68, 312, 319, 323, 351, 363
Zeebrugge Raid (1918) 319–23
Zenne, Stoker Hugo 265
Zhilinsky, General Yakov 84, 87
Zimmermann, Arthur 308–9
Zlatna Moruna café, Belgrade 23
Zonnebeke Spur 363
Zulu War (1879) 52
1. Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie photographed shortly before their assassination in Sarajevo, 28 June 1914.
2. Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb whose pistol shots triggered the start of the Great War. He himself would die in prison of tuberculosis, 28 April 1918.
3. A rear guard of Belgian infantry take aim with their rifles from a railway bridge that engineers are about to destroy in order to slow the German advance in Termonde, 18 September 1914.
4. British, Belgian and French troops fraternising happily in a French village, 15 October 1914.
5. The 16th Lancers on the march, September 1914. Cavalry still had a valuable role to play in warfare, providing valuable reconnaissance and acting as the only truly mobile troops.
6. Soldiers from the 1st Middlesex Regiment under shrapnel fire from German artillery on the Signy-Signets road during the Battle of the Marne, 8 September 1914.
7. The French Commander-in-Chief General Joseph Joffre with President Poincare, King George V, General Ferdinand Foch and Sir Douglas Haig on the terrace of Haig’s headquarters at Beauquesne. Joffre was the key figure from 1914–16.
8. Field Marshal Sir John French, Earl of Ypres, Commander of the BEF, 1914–15. He was soon out of his depth, unable to deal with the complexities of modern warfare or the niceties of dealing with his French allies.
9. General Helmuth Von Moltke (the younger). Fearing the increasing strength of France and Russia he was willing to seize on the July 1914 crisis to provoke war.
10. German 5.9-inch howitzer battery on the Western Front, 14 November 1914. These superb guns gave the Germans a very real advantage in the Battle of the Frontiers, easily out-ranging the British and French field artillery.
11. German soldier looking out from an observation post in 1914. Trench warfare soon took hold and it was fatal to appear above ground.
12. French troops manning a ditch in the Argonne, 1914. Ditches like this soon became full-scale trenches, after which second lines and communications lines were added as trench warfare developed.
13. British troops move off into the attack through a cloud of poison gas on the opening day of the Battle of Loos, 25 September 1915. This photo was taken from the trench they had just left by a soldier of the London Rifle Brigade.
14. British artillery bombarding the German trenches prior to the attack on La Boisselle, 1 July 1916. It looked impressive at the time but the German garrison were safe underground in deep dugouts ready to slaughter the British when they attacked.
15. Australian Battery of 9.2-inch howitzers in action at Fricourt, August 1916. Bigger calibre guns, with longer ranges, firing heavier shells brought devastation to the battlefields.
16. German dead in their front line trench during Battle of Flers-Courcelette, 15 September 1916.
17. Mark I Tank D17 which was ditched at Flers on 15 September 1916. This was the tank that advanced up the High Street of Flers, with the British Army ‘walking behind’ in the exaggerated reports of the British newspapers.
18. French soldiers of 68th Infantry Regiment in their dugout at Artois. The French had to endure a terrible ordeal as they attacked the German lines time and time again in an effort to break through.
19. French soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Regiment resting by the roadside near Houthem on their way to the front, 10 September 1917.
20. 8-inch Mark V howitzer in action at Monchy, near Arras, 31st May 1917. The power of the guns now dominated the battlefield.
21. Men of the 16th Canadian Machine Gun Company holding the line in the Ypres Salient, November 1917. This picture reveals the awful conditions in the morass of the Ypres Salient.
22. A tank of ‘G’ Battalion, Tank Corps, passing captured German field guns at Graincourt on its way to take part in the attack on Bourlon Wood, 23 November 1917. At Cambrai tanks began to show their potential as weapons of war.
23. Two New Zealanders leaving a badly damaged ammunition dugout in the captured German lines at Achiet-le-Petit, 21 August 1918.
24. German infantry preparing to advance in extended order across open country during the assault on Fismes, 28 May 1918.
25. German infantry storming the French village of Embermesnil.
26. Five of the top German aces of Jasta 11 including from left to right: Sebastian Festner, Karl-Emil Schäffer, Manfred von Richthofen, his brother Lothar von Richthofen and Kurt Wolff. The ‘Red Baron’ (Manfred von Richthofen) welded these men into a deadly force.
27. Manfred von Richthofen lands his Fokker DR 1 Triplane after a patrol. He would be killed in such a Triplane on 21 April 1918.
28. American machine gunners of the 77th American Division under training from the British 39th Battalion, Machine Gun Corps near Moulle, 22 May 1918. The Americans were keen but needed the accumulated expertise of their British and French Allies.
29. American troops of the 305th Machine Gun Battalion, the 77th Division on a route march near Watten, 19 May 1918. The sheer numbers of American troops meant that Germany had no hope of winning the war after June 1918.
30. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig (centre front) with his Army Commanders at Cambrai, 11 November 1918. Left to right behind him: General Sir Herbert Plumer (Second Army), General Sir Julian Byng (Third Army), General Sir William Birdwood (Fifth Army) and General Sir Henry Horne (Sixth Army), with various other senior officers. For all the sneers of ‘lions led by donkeys’ these are the men that won the war.
31. Canadian troops marching through the streets of Mons on the morning of 11 November 1918. For the BEF the war ended where it had all begun on 23 August 1914.
1. General Allenby leaving Jerusalem by the Jaffa Gate on his official entry into the city, 11 December 1917. He had made sure that he entered the city on foot to avoid invidious comparisons.
2. Officers of the Surrey Yeomanry examining the wire road laid down across the desert to facilitate marching across the sand.
3. Bulgarian machine gunners in action in the hills near Monastir during the Salonika campaign, 1916.
4. Bulgarian infantry tentatively advancing under cover of an artillery barrage, 1916.
5. British troops taking their daily dose of quinine in July 1916. The British Salonika Force suffered huge numbers of malaria casualties during the campaign.
6. Cavalry charging with drawn swords across a Macedonian plain following the retreat of Bulgarian forces in September 1918.
7. Indian troops in the trenches during the Turkish attack on Shaiba, Mesopotamia, April 1915. India made an enormous contribution of troops to the war effort of the British Empire.
8. An aerial view of the town of Kut el Amara on the banks of the River Tigris to which Major General Sir Charles Townsend retreated after the Battle of Ctesiphon in December 1915. The subsequent siege lasted 147 days before Townshend and the garrison surrendered on 29 April 1916.
9. A platoon of the 1/2 Rajputs passing a heavy artillery battery in action at Samarra, Mesopotamia.
10. A Lance Corporal of the Indian 112th Infantry, 34th Brigade (17th Division), kneeling in a trench during the Battle of Sharqat, Mesopotamia, October 1918. The Turks would seek an armistice within days.
11. A patrol of Austro-Hungarian mountain troops climbing in the Alps. The terrain should have been impossible, but the fighting raged for three long years.
12. An Austro-Hungarian infantry NCO captured by British troops on the Italian Front in 1918: the human face of war.
13. Italian troops taking up supplies through a snow-clad pass. The surreal logistical difficulties are evident.
15. The Canadian ace, Major William Barker of No. 28 Squadron, flying in his Sopwith Camel above the Italian front.
16. Austro-Hungarian soldiers of the 19th Infantry Regiment in trenches on the Italian Front. As on all fronts, trench life was characterised by long periods of boredom followed by sudden death and mayhem.
17. Admiral Reinhard Scheer, Commander-in-Chief of the German High Sea Fleet at the Battle of Jutland. A competent officer who managed to deny the British the great victory they craved.
18. Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper, Commander of the German battlecruisers 1st Scouting Force. The German battlecruisers were much more robust than their British counterparts.
19. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet aboard his flagship HMS Iron Duke. The only man who could have lost the war in an afternoon. The British could not have survived the defeat of the Grand Fleet.
20. Admiral Sir David Beatty commanded the British Battlecruiser Force. He had not done well at Jutland but proved a safe enough pair of hands when he replaced Jellicoe in late 1916.
21. The German hybrid battlecruiser Blucher capsizing during the battle of Dogger Bank, 24 January 1915.
22. The dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet cruising in line-abreast columns in the North Sea. British naval power exemplified.
23. The German Submarine U-35 cruising in the Mediterranean by moonlight, April 1917. The failure of the High Seas Fleet meant that the U-boats were the only chance to defeat Britain at sea.
24. An aerial photograph of British ships at anchor in the Firth of Forth, taken from the R.9 Airship, 1916.
25. View of the landing at V Beach taken from the River Clyde on 25 April 1915. The remnants of the Dublin Fusiliers are sheltering behind the low bank at the back of the beach and wounded Munster Fusiliers are lying onboard the lighter in the foreground.
26. Australians in a trench on Walker’s Ridge at Anzac, Gallipoli, 1915. The inexperienced Australians would go on to be formidable troops when they reached the Western Front.
27. German cavalry on the Eastern Front, 1914. The cavalry had a very important reconnaissance role in the vast open spaces of the Eastern Front in the first few months of the war.
28. The victors of the Battle of Tannenberg. General Paul von Hindenburg with his staff, shortly after the battle in August 1914. To the left of Hindenburg is Major General Erich Ludendorff and to the right Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffman.
29. German troops taking a welcome break during operations on the Eastern Front, winter 1914.
30. Tsar Nicholas II in military uniform in September 1915, around the time he became the titular commander of the Russian Army.
31. Russian sentry in a front line trench, 1915. The troops of all sides had to endure bitingly cold winters on the Eastern Front.
32. Group of Russian prisoners near Lodz, 1915. Enormous numbers of Russians were made POWs but they still had huge reservoirs of manpower.
33. The Russian Commander General Alexei Brusilov studying a map. Brusilov proved himself one of the truly great innovators of the war in his offensive in June 1916.
34. An Austro-Hungarian machine gun position in the front lines in Poland, 1917.
35. Russian troops in panicked retreat in Galicia, July 1917. By 1917 the Russian state was at the end of its tether. Revolution beckoned and the army crumbled.