The Postcard
A carte postale that was published by Huret of 15, Rue de St.-Quentin, Paris. The card was printed by Ch. Bernard of 27, Rue des Cloys, Paris.
The card was posted via a British Army Field Post Office on Friday the 25th. February 1916 to:
Mrs. Franklin,
'Carisbrooke',
253a, Gloucester Road,
Bishopston,
Bristol,
England.
The back of the card bears a red hexagonal censor's stamp numbered 1975. The censor has added his pencilled signature to the back of the card.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"23/2/16.
Dear Mater,
To let you know that I
should be in a perfect
state if it were not for
a slight cough.
It was snowing very
hard yesterday.
The trenches are in a
fairly good condition.
Hope you are all
keeping fit.
Love to all,
Your affectionate son,
Eddie."
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.
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 à Paris No. 287
The reference to 'Visé à Paris' is followed by a unique reference number. This means that the image has been inspected by the military authorities in the French capital and deemed not to be a security risk.
'Visé à Paris' signifies that the card was published during or soon after the end of the Great War.
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!'
The Capture of Fort Douaumont by One Man
So what else happened on the day that Jack posted the card to his auntie?
Well, on the 25th. February 1916, during the Battle of Verdun, Fort Douaumont fell to the Germans only three days after the start of the battle.
The occupants had been without communication with the outside world for some time. The observation cupolas were unoccupied, and only a small gunnery team was manning the 155 mm gun turret which was firing at distant targets.
The dry moats which could have been swept by French machine-gun fire from the wall casemates had been left undefended. About 10 German combat engineers from the Brandenburg regiment led by Sergeant Kunze approached the fort unopposed.
Visibility was poor due to bad weather, and French machine gunners in the village of Douaumont thought the Germans were French colonial troops returning from a patrol.
Kunze and his men reached the moat and found the wall casemates unoccupied. Kunze climbed inside one of them. Kunze's men refused to go inside as they feared an ambush.
And so armed with only a rifle, the Sergeant entered alone and wandered around the empty tunnels until he found the artillery team, captured them and locked them up.
Douaumont, the keystone of the system of forts that was to protect Verdun against a German invasion, had been given up without a fight, and without a single shot being fired.
In the words of one French divisional commander, its loss would cost the French army 100,000 lives. Douamont's easy fall was a disaster for the French, and a glaring example of the lack of judgment prevailing in the French General Staff at the time, under General Joffre.
The General Staff had decided in August 1915 to partially disarm all of the Verdun forts, acting under the erroneous assumption that the forts could not resist the effects of modern heavy artillery.
After its capture, Douaumont became an invulnerable shelter and operational base for German forces just behind their front line. The German soldiers at Verdun came to refer to the place as 'Old Uncle Douaumont'.
Kurt Welter
The day also marked the birth of Kurt Welter in Lindenthal, Cologne. He became a German air force officer, commander of the Nachtjagdgeschwader 11 wing of the Luftwaffe during World War Two.
Welter, recipient of the Knight's Cross, survived the war and was employed at a sugar factory. He was killed on the 7th. March 1949 in Leck in Schleswig-Holstein - he was waiting at a level crossing, when heavy tree trunks fell from an improperly loaded passing goods train and crushed his car.
