Showing posts with label First Battle of Champagne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Battle of Champagne. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Thursday, December 31, 1914. Ottoman disaster, T. S. Eliot being a snot.

The 1914 Christmas Truce, which was now over, hit the newspapers.

Ottoman forces retreating from Sarikamish bogged down in the woods outside the city. Their numbers had started out at 12,000 and were now 2,500.

Reduced from 12,000 to 2,500 soldiers and a handful of guns, the remaining units fled and freed major routes into Sarikamish for Russians to resupply.

The French retook ground lost the prior day at Champagne.

T. S. Eliot, in a letter to Conrad Aiken from Merton College, Oxford, wrote: "I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls ... Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead."

University towns were apparently much different then.  FWIW, I like university towns.

Last edition:

Monday, December 28, 1914. Ottoman advance slows.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Sunday, December 20, 1914. Champagne.

Trout Lake in Vancouver was opened for skating.

The French Fourth Army launched attacks from Artois and Champagne-Ardenne.

French troops waiting in their trenches before an attack in the Battle of Champagne.

British Indian troops were dealt a setback by the Germans at Givenchy.

The Aurora arrived at Hobart, Tasmania, Australia to take on final stores before journeying to the Antarctic before proceeding to the same to set out a base for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, still proceeding in spite of the outbreak of World War One.

Last edition:

Friday, December 18, 1914. Africa and the Great War.