BORN TODAY: at Ellerslie Station in New South Wales – David Campbell, Australian poet.
Category Archives: Poetry
7th July 1915 (Wednesday)
BORN TODAY: in Birmingham, Alabama – Margaret Abigail Walker, novelist and poet.
http://www.nndb.com/people/832/000114490/
Extreme Weather: A violent storm kills at least 38 people in Cincinatti, Ohio. “An uncertain number of people drowned in overturned boats in the Ohio River.”
http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/swio/pages/content/1915_winds.htm
War!
On the Southern Front: The first battle of the Isonzo, between Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces, draws to a close after two weeks.
“The first battle of the Isonzo cost the Italians 14,947 casualties, including 1,500 men taken prisoner. The Austrians lost 9,948 men, a higher proportion of their army on the Isonzo, but not enough to win the Italians a breakthrough. The search for that breakthrough would result in ten more Italian attacks on the Isonzo, none of which would achieve the decisive breakthrough.” [www.historyofwar.org]
22nd June 1915 (Tuesday)
EXPLORATION: Members of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition celebrate mid-winter with a dinner on board HMS Endurance.
DIED TODAY: at Bukovina (now split between Romania and Ukraine) – Ferenc Istvan Dénes Gyula Békássy, Cambridge graduate, Hungarian bi-lingual poet and Imperial Hussar. Killed in action, aged 22.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_B%C3%A9k%C3%A1ssy
War!
Eastern Front: Austro-Hungarian forces recapture the city of Lemberg (Lwow/ Lviv) from the Russians.
Africa: On the shores of Lake Victoria in German East Africa, the British 25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers and others have launched an amphibious attack on Bukoba (“The Battle of Bukoba”) with the objective to destroy the German wireless station.
31st May 1915 (Monday)
BORN TODAY: in Canberra – Judith Wright, poet, environmentalist and campaigner for aboriginal land rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Wright
War!
In Turkish Mesopotamia (now Iraq, allegedly) – British and Indian troops are pushing back the Turks as the Allied forces advance northward in an amphibious operation on the River Tigris. [Burg & Purcell]
On the Austrian Isonzo river in the Julian alps (now the Soca River in Slovenia), Italian forces are attempting to push back Austrian troops and to advance eastward into the province of Carnolia (northern Slovenia). [Burg & Purcell]
13th May, 1915 (Thursday)
BORN TODAY: in Valle de Zaragoza, in the state of Chihuahua – Francisco Avitia Tapia (“El Charro Avitia”), Mexican singer and actor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Avitia
War!
The (British) Home Front: The British government decides to intern all residents who are citizens of military service age from enemy countries [Burg & Purcell].
War at Sea (the Dardanelles) – in the early hours before daylight, the Turkish destroyer Muavenet-i Milliye slips through British naval defences off Cape Helles and successfully torpedoes HMS Goliath, which sinks in minutes, drowning 570 of her 700 strong crew.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Goliath_%281898%29
Western Front: The english war poet Julian Grenfell is struck and mortally wounded by a shell-splinter to the head while monitoring enemy troop movements, dying nearly two weeks later.
2nd May 1915 (Sunday)
BORN TODAY: In Leigh-On-Sea, Essex – Margaret Rose “Peggy” Mount, OBE, english actress best known for her “battleaxe” portrayals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Mount
War!
The Eastern Front: After a huge artillery bombardment along a 19 mile front, the German 11th Army retakes the city of Gorlice in the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia from the Russians. The city (now in Poland) is largely in ruins [Burg & Purcell].
The Western Front: During the second week of fighting at the second Battle of Ypres the death of 22 year old Canadian Lieutenant Alexis Helmer inspires Doctor and Major John McCrae to set down the first draft of his poem ‘In Flanders Fields’
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
McCrae died of pneumonia in January 1918, “while still commanding No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne”. [Wikipedia]
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields-inspiration.htm
27th April 1915 (Tuesday)
BORN TODAY: in Alexandropol in the Russian Empire (now Gyumri in western Armenia, near the Turkish border) – Hovhannes (Onik) Tadevosi Karapetyan, poet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovhannes_Shiraz
War!
War at Sea: In the Straits of Otranto, between Italy and Albania, where the French are attempting to blockade the Austro-Hungarian navy inside the Adriatic (ie preventing access to the wider Mediterranean), the Austrian submarine U-5 torpedoes and sinks the cruiser Leon Gambetta, sending 547 sailors to their death. [Burg & Purcell].
Africa: At Gibeon Station in German South West Africa (now Namibia) – 41 German and South African soldiers die in battle.
http://www.trenchfighter.com/41815/205801.html
Western Front: GAS!
The 3rd and 4th [gas] attacks took place on 26-27 April 1915 at Steenstrate-Lizerne, near Ieper, in which British, Sikhs and French were the victims. To the left of the Sikhs were French Colonial troops with essentially North Africans and at their right were the British. The Ferozepur Brigade, and the French colonial troops to the left of them, were the worst hit. More gas attacks followed on 27-29 April and 01-02 May 1915 and the victims were again British, Sikhs, Pathans, French and Algerians. [http://www.sikhiwiki.org/].
23rd April, 1915 (Friday)
BORN TODAY: in Augsburg, Bavaria – Fritz Pröll, metal worker, resistance fighter, concentration camp victim. Died 1944, aged 29.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Pr%C3%B6ll
War!
DIED TODAY: Of blood poisoning, on board a French hospital ship at Skyros in the Aegean – Sub-Lieutenant Rupert Brooke, war poet.
If I should die think only this of me;
That there’s a corner of some foreign field
That is forever England.
Dardanelles: A final “intelligence” report circulates at the British invasion HQ on the Greek island of Lemnos: “It is the general opinion that the Turks will offer an energetic resistance to our landing, but when once we are firmly established on the Peninsula it is thought possible that this opposition may crumble away …”
http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/5environment/timelines/100-events-gallipoli-campaign/april-may-1915.html
4th April 1915 (Easter Sunday)
BORN TODAY: In Quarrybank, Staffordshire – Ronald Bird, English cricketer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Bird
War!
The Western Front:
~ Command of the German second army passes from Field Marshal Karl von Bulow to General Fritz von Below.
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/people_below_fritz.html
~ Private George Potter Bagshaw of the Derbyshire Territorials celebrates in his diary: “EASTER SUNDAY I had one of the best breakfasts that I have had in France – eggs and bacon.”
https://derbyshireterritorials.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/on-this-day-4th-april-1915/
The (Welsh) Home Front: Two German officers, prisoners of war, escape from Dyffryn Aled, Llansannan, Denbighshire. When they are re-captured in Merionethshire, a week from now, they will smile for the photographer outside Blaenau Ffestiniog Police Station, before later being sent [back?] to prison for 28 days.
http://education.gtj.org.uk/en/item1/14626
The (English) Home Front: The Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral reads Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” from the pulpit during the Easter Service. Three weeks from today Brooke will be dead, dying ingloriously from septicaemia following a mosquito bite on a hospital ship in the Aegean.
21st March 1915 (Sunday)
BORN TODAY: in the Russian city of Pishpek on the Silk Road (later Frunze in the Leninist Soviet Union, and now Bishbek in Kyrgyzstan) – Alykul Osmonov, Kyrgyz poet, died of pneumonia in 1950, aged 35. [Wikipedia]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alykul_Osmonov
DIED TODAY: Harbinger of the American century, in Philadelphia Pa, Frederick Winslow Taylor – the most influential man of the twentieth century?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor
War!
War from the Air: Three German Zeppelins carry out a bombing raid on Paris and its suburbs, killing one and injuring eight [Brug & Purcell].
onehundredyearsagotoday 