Looking Back at 1915, Looking Forward to 1916.

1915 (a brief timeline)

Russian POWs in the Masurian Lakes Campaign (Great War Project)

I never finished my overview of events in 1915. Baldly put, the Western Front, despite the first mass use of poison gas, was a gruesome stalemate, but not the hecatomb it would become in 1916. Several campaigns were begun, sputtered, and went out; the Second Battle of Ypres was perhaps the most notable.

The Eastern Front saw more movement, with fighting in the Masurian Lakes of Prussia, and in Galicia and Poland proper. First the Russians suffered disaster, then the Austrians, then the Russians again, and the year ended with the Tsar taking over command of the war from the generals.

In the Mediterranean, 1915 saw the bloody and eventually pointless Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula of Turkey. Italy, lured by promises of increased territory, betrayed its pre-war allies and declared war on Austria-Hungary, sparking the repeated and useless battles of the Isonzo. Allied forces also landed in Macedonia in October, opening up a mini-front that almost immediately fell into senescence as they failed to advance far from their base at Salonika.The British campaign in Mesopotamia, that had begun in late 1914, crawled slowly forward, with the British winning several victories that gave them cause to hope the region could be subdued in the next year.

Artist's representation of a zeppelin raid (Ian Castle's Zeppelins, Gothas and Giants)

The war expanded into new dimensions, as Germany's zeppelins began bombing raids on the United Kingdom. And Germany declared a blockade of the UK as well, seeking to enforce it with attacks by its fleet of u-boats.

Parts of my Great War-game collection that bear on events in 1915:

Western Front (Artois)
In Flanders Fields (Second Ypres)
Loos: The Big Push
Masuria: Winter Battle 1915
Galicia: the Forgotten Cauldron
Gorlice-Tarnow Breakthrough
Jassin 1915 (the East Africa Campaign)
Serbia the Defiant (a second year of fighting sees the Serbian Army driven from their country, if not defeated)
The Italian Front (First Isonzo)
A Fatal Attraction: The Gallipoli Campaign
Osmanli Harbi (the fighting in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Macedonia)
Zeppelin (the air war in Britain)

1916 (a brief timeline)

British troops in Dublin (Irish Republican History & Remembrance)

The following year saw the clouds of war darken even further, if possible, casting more and more of the world into gloom. Ireland, the United States, Mexico, and Arabia felt themselves dragged into the swirling maw of war, whether directly or indirectly as a result of the European conflict. Russia landed hammer blows on Turkey in the Caucasus and Austria-Hungary in Carpathia. Germany overran the Allies' new partner, Romania. Turkey, meanwhile, surrounded and defeated a large part of the British force in Mesopotamia.

And two of the most famous and sanguinary Western Front battles (in the large, world-war sense of "months-long conflicts over broad regions") took place: the battle of Verdun and the battle of the Somme.

I'm hoping to read through some large chunks of my Great War library, ones that deal with these last two battles in particular. And break out a few of the following titles.

The Big Push: The Battle of the Somme (ATO)

The Big Push: The Battle of the Somme
Over the Top! Verdun
Verdun: A Generation Lost
Western Front (Verdun)
The 1916 Brusilov Offensive
Over the Top (Brusilov offensive)
Romania: Transylvanian Gambit
Italian Front (the Strafexpedition)
Osmanli Harbi (the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and Suez)
Suez 1916: The Ottomans Strike
Pershing: The Hunt for Pancho Villa