The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by R. P. of Paris.
By 1915 the Basilica had sustained immense structural damage, along with the loss of its entire roof.
To see the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Brebières before it was destroyed during the Great War, please search for the tag 56ALB66
Abba Eban
"History teaches us that men and
nations behave wisely when they
have exhausted all other alternatives".
This was said during a speech in London UK on 16th. December 1970 by Abba Eban (1915-2002), an Israeli diplomat and writer.
Visé Paris No. 231
The card bears the imprimatur 'Visé Paris' followed by a unique reference number. This means that the image was inspected and deemed by the military authorities in the French capital not to be a security risk. Nevertheless someone has made an ineffectual attempt to censor the Albert name.
'Visé Paris' indicates that the card was published during or soon after the Great War.
Postcard Detail
The card was posted via the British Army Field Post Office on Monday the 31st. January 1916 to:
Miss Dorothy Smith,
Home Farm.
Frickley,
Doncaster,
Yorks.,
England.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"30. 1. 16.
Dear Dorothy,
Have just been for a
short route march.
This is not the place
we are in.
H."
The message has been over-stamped with a red hexagonal censor's stamp bearing the number 2142. The censor has signed the back of the card in pencil.
The British Army Postal Service
During the Great War, the British Army Postal Service despatched over two billion letters and cards. Assuming an average length of 6 inches, if they were laid end to end they would stretch for 189,394 miles (304,800km) - that's over seven and a half times round the Earth's equator.
The Great War lasted for 1,567 days, therefore the Postal Service were kept busy handling an average of over 1¼ million pieces of mail every day of the war's duration.
The Use of Artillery in the Great War
Artillery was very heavily used by both sides during the Great War. The British fired over 170 million artillery rounds of all types, weighing more than 5 million tons - that's an average of around 70 pounds (32 kilos) per shell.
With an average length of two feet, that number of shells if laid end to end would stretch for 64,394 miles (103,632 kilometres). That's over two and a half times round the Earth. If the artillery of the Central Powers of Germany and its allies is factored in, the figure can be doubled to 5 encirclements of the planet.
During the first two weeks of the Third Battle of Ypres, over 4 million rounds were fired at a cost of over £22,000,000 - a huge sum of money, especially over a century ago.
Artillery was the killer and maimer of the war of attrition.
According to Dennis Winter's book 'Death's Men' three quarters of battle casualties were caused by artillery rounds. According to John Keegan ('The Face of Battle') casualties were:
- Bayonets - less than 1%
- Bullets - 30%
- Artillery and Bombs - 70%
Keegan suggests however that the ratio changed during advances, when massed men walking line-abreast with little protection across no-man's land were no match for for rifles and fortified machine gun emplacements.
Many artillery shells fired during the Great War failed to explode. Drake Goodman provides the following information on Flickr:
"During World War I, an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front. As many as one in every three shells fired did not detonate. In the Ypres Salient alone, an estimated 300 million projectiles that the British and the German forces fired at each other were "duds", and most of them have not been recovered."
To this day, large quantities of Great War matériel are discovered on a regular basis. Many shells from the Great War were left buried in the mud, and often come to the surface during ploughing and land development.
For example, on the Somme battlefields in 2009 there were 1,025 interventions, unearthing over 6,000 pieces of ammunition weighing 44 tons.
Artillery shells may or may not still be live with explosive or gas, so the bomb disposal squad, of the Civilian Security of the Somme, dispose of them.
The Somme Times
From 'The Somme Times', Monday, 31 July, 1916:
'There was a young girl of the Somme,
Who sat on a number five bomb,
She thought 'twas a dud 'un,
But it went off sudden -
Her exit she made with aplomb!'
A German Airship Raid
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 31st. January 1916, German airships resumed bombing raids against Great Britain, as nine Imperial German Navy zeppelins led by the chief of the German Naval Airship Division Peter Strasser attempted to attack Liverpool.
Most of their bombing targets were scattered widely around the English Midlands and did not reach the city.
SMS Karlsruhe
Also on that day, German cruiser SMS Karlsruhe was launched at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel, Germany. It played a role in Operation Albion the following year.
