The Postcard
A carte postale that was published by Phot. Express. The card, which has a divided back, was printed by Baudinière of Nanterre.
The card was posted via a British Army Field Post Office on Friday the 2nd. June 1916 to:
Mrs. Gardner,
81, St. John's Road,
Walthamstow,
London
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Mother,
Just a card to say I am
quite alright and trusting
you are all quite well at
home.
From Tom xxx"
The back of the card bears a field censor's red hexagonal stamp containing the number 2242. The censor has signed the card with a pencil.
The Nieuwerck
The photograph shows the total destruction of the the Nieuwerck (The New Building) which was added to Les Halles. The main edifice comprised a central tower with symmetrical wings on either side.
The building in the photograph, along with the rest of Les Halles, was destroyed during the Great War. Enemy artillery reduced the medieval masterpiece of Les Halles to little more than a pile of rubble.
The ruined tower of St. Martin's Cathedral can be seen in the background.
To see the Nieuwerck before the Great War, please search for the tag 38YLH93.
To see the Nieuwerck when German artillery had only just got started on it, please search for the tag 34YNB95
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. 413
The reference to 'Visé Paris' followed by a unique reference number means that the image has been inspected by the military authorities in the French capital and deemed not to be a security risk.
'Visé 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.
If the 170m rounds were on average two feet long, and if they were laid end to end, they would stretch for 64,394 miles (103,632 kilometres); the line would go round the equator over two and a half times. 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."
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!'
Ypres
Ypres is a Belgian municipality in the province of West Flanders. Though the Dutch Leper is the official name, the city's French name Ypres is most commonly used in English.
During the First World War, Ypres (or 'Wipers' as it was commonly known by the British troops) was the centre of the Battles of Ypres between German and Allied forces.
The famous Cloth Hall was built in the 13th century. At this time cats, then the symbol of the devil and witchcraft, were thrown from the Cloth Hall in the belief that this would get rid of demons. Today, this act is commemorated with a triennial Cat Parade through the town.
-- Ypres in the Great War
Ypres occupied a strategic position because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France from the north (the Schlieffen Plan).
The neutrality of Belgium, established by the First Treaty of London, was guaranteed by Britain; Germany's invasion of Belgium brought the British Empire into the war. The German army surrounded the city on three sides, bombarding it throughout much of the war. To counterattack, British, French, and allied forces made costly advances from the Ypres Salient into the German lines on the surrounding hills.
-- The First Battle of Ypres
In the First Battle of Ypres (19th. October to 22nd. November 1914), the Allies captured the town from the Germans. The Germans had used tear gas at the Battle of Bolimov on the 3rd. January 1915.
-- The Second Battle of Ypres
The Germans' use of poison gas for the first time on the 22nd. April 1915 marked the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres, which continued until the 25th. May 1915.
They captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack used chlorine. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of the town, was also used for the first time near Ypres, in the autumn of 1917.
Vera Brittain was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, writer, feminist and pacifist who made the following observation in her 1933 memoir, 'Testament of Youth':
“I wish those people who talk about going
on with this war whatever it costs could see
the soldiers suffering from mustard gas
poisoning.
Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind eyes,
all sticky and stuck together, always fighting
for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying
that their throats are closing, and they know
they will choke.”
-- The Third Battle of Ypres
Of the battles, the largest, best-known, and most costly in human suffering was the Third Battle of Ypres (31st. July to 6th. November 1917, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele), in which the British, Canadian, ANZAC, and French forces recaptured the Passchendaele Ridge east of the city at a terrible cost of lives.
After months of fighting, this battle resulted in nearly half a million casualties to all sides, and only a few miles of ground won by Allied forces. During the course of the battle Ypres was all but obliterated by artillery fire.
-- Lieutenant-Colonel Beckles Willson
In 1920 Lieutenant-Colonel Beckles Willson wrote:
'There is not a single half-acre in Ypres
that is not sacred.
There is not a single stone which has not
sheltered scores of loyal young hearts,
whose one impulse and desire was to fight
and, if need be, to die for England.
Their blood has drenched its cloisters and
its cellars, but if never a drop had been spilt,
if never a life had been lost in defence of
Ypres, still would Ypres have been hallowed,
if only for the hopes and the courage it has
inspired and the scenes of valour and sacrifice
it has witnessed'.
-- Ypres Today
After the Great War the town was extensively rebuilt using money paid by Germany in reparations, with the main square, including the Cloth Hall and town hall, being rebuilt as close to the original designs as possible (the rest of the rebuilt town is more modern in appearance).
The Cloth Hall today is home to the 'In Flanders Fields Museum', dedicated to Ypres's role in the First World War and named after the 'Poppy' poem by John McCrae.
Ypres these days has the title of 'City of Peace' and maintains a close friendship with another town on which war had a profound impact: Hiroshima. Both towns witnessed warfare at its worst: Ypres was one of the first places where chemical warfare was employed, while Hiroshima suffered the debut of nuclear warfare.
Ypres hosts the international campaign secretariat of Mayors for Peace, an international Mayoral organisation mobilising cities and citizens worldwide to abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020. It didn't happen.
The Battle of Mont Sorrel
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 2nd. June 1916, German artillery shelled the defending Canadian Corps at Mont Sorrel east of Ypres, inflicting heavy casualties that included the wounding of commanding officers Major-General Malcolm Mercer and Brigadier-General Victor Williams.
The Battle of Verdun
Also on that day, German forces overran the top of Fort Vaux in northeastern France, but French defenders continued to resist from the underground garrisons.
Jack Cornwell
Also on the 2nd. June 1916, British sailor Jack Cornwell, 16, died from wounds received while serving on HMS Chester during the Battle of Jutland.
He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions, the third-youngest British serviceman to receive the honor.
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition
Also on that day, news of the sinking of the polar ship Endurance in November 1915 and the attempts by expedition leader Ernest Shackleton to reach civilization and arrange rescue reached the United Kingdom, where it briefly dominated headlines normally reserved for the Great War.