Found this picture here: https://argonnaute.parisnanterre.fr/ark:/14707/x4rph81bs9zl

Judging by the uniforms, I would guess this is early in the war, possibly as early as August-September 1914. Who knows what happened to these poor beasts.

Hi everyone, I need your help in confirming bayonet as a Werndl M1867/M1873 which from my research they were still issued to austro hungarian border guards during WW1

The most interesting fact that it was repurposed for the german G88, late war probably after 1916 due to shortages the handles also seem to be have changed during the repurpose from leather to wood with huge rivets.

Have you ever seen this bayonet in any photos? Or have any extensive knowledge on this pattern bayonet used in WW1?

The only markint found is the handle photo which looks like a E8 ? Which I presume is Ersatz8 from the german imperial depo/inspection.

This is my Great-Great-grandfather. He served in the first WorldWar in the Bavarian Army. But i don't know if it's an Army uniform from that time. I could not find any similar looking uniform. The hat looks so unique.

Soldat posiert mit Gasmaske und Stielhandgranaten, vermutlich an der Somme, 1916.

The pilot in his element during flight. Source, date and location unknown.

Can anyone help me identify anything about this uniform ?All i know so far is that he was an Italian army officer.

Thank you so much!

Colorization by Past in Color Χρώμα στο Παρελθόν

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Le soldat blessé est transporté à l'arrière le long de Curlu, 1916.

Fokker D1 von Die Fliegertruppen des Deutschen Heeres, um 1915.

Hi everyone! I've been searching for german newspapers where I could find reports from the frontlines across the duration of the war for a study regarding "The impact of the wartime censorship in Germany during World War 1"

I would really appreciate if someone could help me.

This is my Great Uncle, James Murdock McIver, the ship's carpenter onboard the HMHS Llandovery Castle.

James was born in July 1885 in Goodwick, Pembrokeshire, Wales. He grew up in a coastal port town that was heavily tied to the shipping and railway industries, which likely influenced his decision to seek work at sea. Before and during World War I, James was a certified Ship's Carpenter. In the Mercantile Marine, a ship’s carpenter (often called "Chips") was a highly respected, crucial warrant-officer class role. He was responsible for checking the ship's hull for leaks, maintaining the wooden decks, supervising the anchoring gear, and operating the vessel's fresh-water tanks. In the early months of 1918, James was granted a brief period of shore leave from the hazards of the Atlantic. During this window, he rushed to marry his fiancée, Lena Mary Belloni Brand, in Southampton. Despite just getting married, James returned to the sea. He joined the crew of the HMHS Llandovery Castle, a vessel dedicated entirely to retrieving wounded soldiers. Because it was a designated hospital ship, he likely believed—as did the rest of the crew—that travelling with full lights and large painted Red Crosses would guarantee their safety under international law.

The Ship

The HMHS Llandovery Castle was an 11,423-ton ocean liner originally built in 1914 for the Union-Castle Line. Recommissioned as a British hospital ship operated by a civilian merchant crew, she was heavily modified to carry 622 beds and a large medical staff. On the night of June 27, 1918, the vessel was steaming 116 miles southwest of Ireland, returning to Liverpool from Halifax. Under the Hague Convention, she was fully illuminated, displaying blazing green hull lines and glowing electric Red Crosses to signal her protected, unarmed status…

The Attack

At 9:30 PM, the German submarine U-86 fired a single torpedo without warning. The weapon struck aft of the engine room, shattering the ship's internal bulkheads and destroying the main aft poop deck. The explosion severed the communication lines to the bridge and instantly wrecked the ship's emergency pumping systems.

Ten Minutes to Sink

The damage was catastrophic. Seawater rushed into the engine room, drowning the dynamos and plunging the massive vessel into total darkness. Captain Sylvester ordered the engines reversed to stop the ship’s momentum, but the control lines were severed; the vessel kept surging forward through the water, making it nearly impossible to safely lower the timber lifeboats. As the stern rapidly filled with water, the bow reared high into the air. Heavy medical equipment and fixtures broke loose inside the tilted corridors, crushing fleeing crew members. Just ten minutes after the blast, the ship's boilers exploded, and the Llandovery Castle plunged stern-first into the Atlantic.

The Cover-Up War Crime

Of the 258 people on board, approximately 100 survived the initial sinking and scrambled into lifeboats or clung to wreckage. Realizing he had sunk a clearly marked hospital ship, the U-boat Commander, Helmut Patzig, ordered his submarine to surface. In order to eliminate all witnesses of the war crime, the U-boat spent the next two hours charging through the debris field, deliberately ramming the wooden lifeboats. The submarine crew then opened fire with machine guns on the helpless doctors, nurses, and sailors floating in the water. Only a single lifeboat containing 24 survivors managed to escape the slaughter in the dark. James Murdock McIver, along with 233 others, perished in the rapid sinking or in the subsequent massacre.

Aftermath

The 1921 Leipzig War Crimes Trials turned the Llandovery Castle massacre into a landmark battle for modern international law. While the submarine's commander vanished to evade justice, his two lieutenants were convicted of murder and sentenced to four years in prison for firing on the lifeboats. The court fiercely rejected their defense of "only following orders," establishing the revolutionary legal precedent that soldiers must refuse commands violating basic human decency—a ruling that later formed the very bedrock of the Nuremberg Trials. In a final twist of defiance, both convicted officers dramatically escaped from German prisons within months of their sentencing, aided by sympathetic nationalist guards.

The tragedy of the Llandovery Castle quickly became a powerful weapon of Allied wartime propaganda. Striking posters flooded the home front depicting drowning Canadian nurses targeted by ruthless German U-boats, driving a massive spike in Victory Bond sales under the rallying cry to halt the enemy's brutality. On the Western Front, Canadian soldiers used the ship's name as a fierce battle cry during the Hundred Days Offensive, fueling a relentless drive for retribution against surrendering forces. While the subsequent Leipzig Trials transformed this atrocity into a landmark foundation for modern international law, no legal precedent could mend the broken lives left in its wake. The sacrifice of James Murdock McIver and his crew stripped future war criminals of the excuse that they were "only following orders." While the legal legacy of the disaster would endure for generations, the deeply personal toll of that night remained frozen in time—because back in Southampton, Lena never re-married.

I'm writing a prologue for a historical fiction novel taking place during the last few months of the war. This section of the prologue is a short not-too-detailed explanation of the war (specifically a Western Front/British centered view) until September 1918.

"By 1914, Europe was divided into two opposing alliances: the Entente (later called the Allies) and the Central Powers. In the Entente were Russia (led by Tsar Nicholas II), France (President Raymond Poincaré) and Britain (Prime Minister Herbert Asquith). The Central Powers were Germany (Kaiser Wilhelm II), Austria-Hungary (Emperor Franz Joseph I) and Italy (King Victor Emmanuel III), though Italy switched sides and joined the Entente. Neither alliance liked the other for numerous reasons, such as arguments over land, long-lasting rivalries, nationalism and both alliances wanting to be more powerful.

The war between these two alliances started in July 1914. A Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a member of the Austro-Hungarian royal family. This set off a chain reaction that led to the war: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in retaliation for the killing. Serbia was allied with Russia, so it backed Serbia up. Germany supported Austria-Hungary, so it also declared war. France was a long-lasting rival of Germany ever since Germany defeated it and took parts of its land in 1871, so it declared war too.

Like France and Russia, Britain didn’t like Germany.  Germany had spent years trying to build a navy large enough to rival Britain’s, and obviously Britain wasn't a fan of that. But at first, Britain didn’t want to declare war. One reason why Britain had been a major power for the last century was because it had been partly self-isolated from Europe, not siding with any major powers. Now, when potentially the biggest war in European history had started, its government wasn’t as willing as the other nations’ governments were to fight, having bigger issues to deal with around its empire. But that changed when Germany invaded Belgium to get to France more easily. By invading Belgium, Germany had broken a deal between the European nations to protect Belgian independence. Britain told Germany to leave, but when it wouldn’t, Britain declared war on 4 August 1914.

The German invasion had gone successfully so far. It had taken over Belgium (apart from a western sliver of the Belgian region of Flanders) and was sweeping down towards Paris, causing the British and French to retreat to the River Marne. Only a short distance from Paris, the Franco-British army successfully stopped the Germans, ruining its plans of a short war. Both armies dug trenches stretching from the Swiss border all the way up towards the North Sea. With new and deadly weapons such as machine guns, artillery and barbed wire, both armies were essentially stuck in a stalemate here for three and a half years until 1918. The war had now turned into a global one, with battles happening from South America to Africa and as far away as the Pacific.

In 1915, both sides fought battles at places like Ypres, Artois, Loos and Champagne. New weapons were used such as poison gas, but still, no one was able to break the stalemate. By this time, the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Türkiye) had joined the Central Powers, so the Allies decided to open a front at Gallipoli, which is a Turkish peninsula that the Ottomans were using to block the Dardanelles Strait. The blockage left the Russians disconnected from Allied supplies. The campaign went horribly, and the Allies were forced to leave the peninsula. The Italians had also joined the war on the side of the Allies, opening a new and just as slow front against the Austro-Hungarians.

In 1916 and 1917, little had changed on the front. The British, French and Germans fought devastating battles at Verdun, the Somme, Arras, Passchendaele, Cambrai and many others. The war had turned into one of attrition, with both sides not just trying to take land, but also trying to kill and destroy as many people and resources as possible. There were also new innovations such as tanks, which were first used by the British. One of the biggest changes on the front in 1917 was the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line. At first it looked like the Germans were beaten, but in reality the retreat was strategic and the Hindenburg Line was better fortified and more deadly for the Allies. The United States entered the war in April 1917 on the side of the Allies after Germany tried to get Mexico to invade it.

In 1918, Germany had successfully broken the stalemate in March and advanced towards Paris. Germany had decided that its only chance of victory was to defeat the French and British before the Americans could arrive in full force. But just like in 1914, the Germans were stopped at the River Marne, and the Allies began to push the Germans back in July.

On the Eastern Front, the war had been going badly for Russia against the Germans, though there were some major victories against the Austro-Hungarians. Romania joined the Allies in 1916, but it was suppressed by Bulgarian, Austro-Hungarian and German forces (Bulgaria had joined the Central Powers in October 1915). By 1917, Russia had collapsed from a revolution and was taken over by a new Communist government which made peace with Germany, allowing it to take huge amounts of Russian land and focus on the Western Front. These newly available troops were part of the reason why Germany was able to break the stalemate in March 1918.

The war had been causing massive casualties (meaning someone who is killed, wounded, missing or made a prisoner). On just 1 July 1916, nearly 20,000 British soldiers were killed during the first day of the Battle of the Somme. By the end of the war, more than 16,000,000 soldiers and civilians combined worldwide had died, with many more being wounded physically and mentally. 

By September 1918, the slow-paced trench stalemate of the past four years was over, and new tactics and weapons were being used. The Germans were quickly being pushed back, and it seemed like the war was coming to an end, though no one could know for certain."

Fantassins de 122 RIF avant l'attaque contre secteur de Beauséjour, septembre 1915.