The Beauty and the Sorrow (89 page)

7
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Italian prisoners-of-war and some of the victorious German troops in Udine, October 1917:
“Neither newspapers nor communiqués are reaching them and they exist up here in the clouds of unknowing, fed on nothing but rumours, which are—as usual—confusing, contradictory and full of fantasy. Such as that the Germans have taken Udine. Such as that 200,000 Italians surrendered as prisoners.”

THE BALKANS AND DARDANELLES

1
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Supplies, the wounded, and swimmers at Anzac Cove, 1915:
“Dawkins and the others, however, landed at the wrong place, well over half a mile north of the intended spot. In one sense that was fortunate since the Ottoman defence was unusually weak at that point, the terrain being so rugged that the defenders judged it highly unlikely the Allies would even try to land there.”

2
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V Beach on the southern tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, 1915:
“There are actually only two points at which the Allies have succeeded in creating real bridgeheads: one of them is right down at the southern point of the peninsula and the other is here at Gaba Tepe, on the western side of Gallipoli.”

3
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An Austro-Hungarian supply column in Serbia, October–November 1915:
“The invasion of Serbia by the Central Powers is going completely to plan. Public opinion at home thinks that it is about time too: in 1914 the Austro-Hungarian army had gone on the offensive against their Serbian neighbour on three occasions and three times it had been driven back.”

4
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Captured Serbian troops on their way to surrender their weapons in Montenegro, February 1916:
“The defeated Serbian forces are now retreating to avoid the threat of encirclement and huge numbers of civilians are accompanying them on their uncertain flight south.”

5
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A German aeroplane takes off for combat, watched by members of the local population in Macedonia, 1915:
“What real fighting there is is going on up in Macedonia, nicknamed Muckedonia by the British troops because of the mud and dirt there.”

6
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A British army camp outside Salonica, April 1916:
“Sarrail’s Army of the Orient is still in Salonica, in lofty defiance both of Greek neutrality and of the fact that there seems to be little or no point to the whole business any longer.”

7
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Salonica immediately after the Great Fire, August 1917:
“The years of Western occupation with its accompanying flood of troops from virtually all corners of the world has served only to reinforce the glaring contrasts and the cosmopolitan spirit of the city.”

MIDDLE EAST

1
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Fortifications at Erzurum, 1916:
“Now and then the distant thunder of Russian artillery can be heard. The hollow rumble rolls through the enclosing mountainsides and the explosions sometimes set off avalanches on Mount Ararat.”

2
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View over Kut:
“The British corps has halted its southward retreat at the small town of Kut al-Amara and here they are going to wait to be reinforced or, to be more accurate, to be relieved since they are now surrounded by four Ottoman divisions.”

3
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Heavily laden British riverboats on the Tigris, 1916:
“Both sides keep small flotillas of heavily armed boats on the Tigris, mainly to protect their own supply chain since the river … is a living artery for both armies.”