Showing posts with label Ottoman Army. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ottoman Army. Show all posts

Thursday, May 29, 2025

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.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Wednesday, May 19, 1915. Attack at ANZAC Cove.

The Ottoman army launched a third attack on Anzac Cove.  The assault included 42,000 troops but it was repelled by the entrenched 17,000 ANZACs.  Casualties were massively uneven with Ottoman forces sustaining 13,000 casualties including 3,000 killed, while ANZAC forces had 468 wounded and 160 killed.

Australian medic John Kirkpatrick, who had innovated the use of mules and donkeys to transport the wounded, was killed in the attack.

President of Portugal Manuel de Arriaga announced his decision to resign following the end of the May 14 Revolt.

Last edition:

Tuesday, May 18, 1915. The Amos Barber Effect.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Sunday, May 16, 1915. Armenian casualties.

The Central Powers established bridgeheads over the San.

Ottoman soldiers killed 6,000 Armenians by artillery fire while covering the evacuation of Turkish women and children from Van.

The Royal Naval Air Service intercepted two Zeppelins, badly damaging one.

Last edition:

Saturday, May 15, 1915. Night attack.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Wednesday, May 12, 1915. Mackensen ordered to advance.

General August von Mackensen was ordered to advance to the San River and establish bridgeheads on the east bank.  While that was going on, further to the south Ottoman forces were unable to slow a Russian advance on Van.

French forces at Artois took 3,000 German POWs.

South African forces took Windhoek, German South West Africa.

The U.S. Army formed its 2nd Aero Squadron.

The stuck ship of the Ross Sea party, the Aurora, was drifting northwood with the ice attempted to make a radio broadcast to the stranded members of the party at Cape Evans.

Last edition:

Tuesday, May 11, 1915. Taking the high ground.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Monday, May 3, 1915. In Flanders Fields.

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Army, whom a great aunt of mine served with, wrote In Flanders Fields.


Italy officially left the Triple Alliance.

Russian forces retreated from Gorlice.

Australian, New Zealand and British forces withdrew from Baby 700, a hill at Gallipoli after sustaining 1,000 casualties.


Last edition:

Friday, April 30, 1915. Events on either side of Turkey.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Sunday, April 15, 1915. Gallipoli.

The ill fated Allied landing began at Gallipoli with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landing at what became known as Anzac Cove while British and French troops landed at Cape Helles.

Ottoman resistance was immediate.

Canadian forces failed to retake St. Julien.

Last edition:

Saturday, April 24, 1915. The beginning of the Armenian Genocide.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Wednesday, April 14, 1915. The British secure Basra.

Ottoman infantry surrendered at Basra.  The British would control the port city for the remainder of the war.

Zeppelins of the German Navy bombed England resulting in two casualties.

The Armenian Druzhina seized the lake side city of Van, Turkey.

Ernest Shackleton wrote in his log that the Endurance was at risk of being "crushed like an eggshell" by the piling mass of ice.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 13, 1915. Even matches.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Tuesday, April 13, 1915. Even matches.

Pancho Villa attempted a second assault on Celaya, this one nearly succeeding, with Obregón's forces being saved by the timely arrival of an ammunition train on the following day.

Meanwhile, Huerta was looking at the situation and weighting on jumping back in.


A night attack by Ottoman troops was repelled by the British at the Battle of Shaiba, with Arab irregulars routed the following day, massively depleting the Ottoman forces.


Joe Jeannette beat Sam Langford in a twelve round heavyweight match.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 11, 1915. The Tramp.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Sunday, April 11, 1915. The Tramp.

British troops in Mesopotamia fought off a large attack by the Ottomans against Basra.and then proceeded to branch out to protect their position at Basra and up the Tigris Valley toward Baghdad.

Highly regarded, Charlie Chaplin's The Tramp was released.


Last edition:

Saturday, April 10, 1915. Knights of Saint Columbanus

Monday, March 30, 2015

Tuesday, March 30, 1915. Germans fighting Arabs.

Germans and Bedouins fought for perhaps the first time in World War One when a party of stranded German marines from the SMS Emden was ambushed while being escorted to Jeddah.

German medicts with wounded man in Belgium, March 30, 1915.

Last edition:

Sunday, March 28, 1915. The first lost American.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Thursday, February 25, 1915. The Cottonwood Bluff War.

Lorenzo Creel, Colonel Michie, General Scott, Marshal Nebeker, Old Polk, Jeff Posey, Chief Posey, Tse-ne-gat, A.B. Apperson.

Paiutes and Utes exchanged gunfire with a  posse at Cottonwood Bluff, Utah.  The battle arose when a posse came to arrest Ute Tse-ne-gat who had been accused of murdering a Hispanic shepherd.  Paiutes made the accusation.

The arrest went immediately wrong and both Piautes and Utes resisted.  The war would be negotiated to a peaceful end by Gen. Hugh L. Scott.  Tse-ne-gat was tried in Denver, and found innocent of the charges. Tse-ne-gat died, age 39, of tuberculosis eleven years after the trial. Ute and Paiute chiefs, Polk and Posey, who participated in the war, went to the Ute Reservation in Colorado but found themselves unwelcome there, which is not surprising to those familiar with Ute history.  The returned to a subsistence lifestyle and combined it with cattle rustling.  A second armed outbreak would result in 1923.

The Royal Navy continued bombarding Ottoman seaforts in the Dardanelles.

The Ottomas removed ethnic Armenians from their armed forces.

Last edition:

Wednesday, February 24, 1915. Stuck.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Wednesday, February 3, 1915. Ottoman's held up.

Clara Dolores Lopp sitting in front of a shipment of cigarettes and cigars she arranged to have shipped to soldiers fighting in Europe.  World War One would increase the use of cigarettes enormously which resulted in a marked increase in lung cancer by the 1930s.

The British kept the Ottomans from crossing the Suez Canal.

The Germans started a second siege on Osowiec Fortress.

Co conspirators in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand,  Veljko Čubrilović, Danilo Ilić and Miško Jovanović were executed by hanging.

John Chilembwe was spotted by a police patrol and shot dead near Mulanje, Malawi.

Last edition:

Tuesday, February 2, 1915. Reinforcements.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Monday, February 1, 1915. Suez Canal Besieged.

An Ottoman force numbering 13,000 troops laid siege to the Suez Canal.

William Fox established Fox Film.

Wilhelm Fried Fuchs was born in Tolcsva, Hungary and was a Hungarian Jew.  His family immigrated to the US when he was a boy.  His movie company still exists in an evolved form.

Last edition:

Sunday, January 31, 1915. Gas!