All language subtitles for BBC.The.Great.War.10of26.What.Are.Our.Allies.Doing.divx.mp3

Midsummer, 1915.

The war was almost a year old.

A visible thing.

A landscape halfway to desolation.

It stretched
from the flats of Flanders,

across the wide plains
of northern France

to the mountains of the Vosges
and the Swiss frontier,

then through Italy
and across Serbia,

along the edge
of the Gallipoli peninsula...

..and miles, by hundreds of miles,
through the Russian steppes
to the Baltic Sea.

A vast circle of flame and hate.

Wherever their armies marched, the
Germans seemed to be triumphant.

Together with the Austrians, they
summoned pitiless energy to strike
down their enemies in the east.

The battle of Gorlice-Tarnow
had begun in early May.

On June 3rd,
the German and Austrian forces
recaptured Przemysl.

On the 22nd, they were in Lemberg -

fourth-largest city of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and scene
of Russia's great victory in 1914.

In two months, the combined
German and Austrian armies
had advanced 150 miles

and inflicted over half a million
casualties on the Russians.

It was a moment of triumph.

GERMAN MILITARY SONG

It produced, said Falkenhayn,
the German chief of staff...

Immediate and highly valuable
consequences, but enough
had not yet been achieved.

Any breaking off of operations
in the east was out of the question.

The question was
how to exploit the victory.

The answer was not hard to see.

For now, the central Russian armies
lay within a huge bulge
around Warsaw.

Falkenhayn planned to encircle them
from south and north.

Russian soldiers fought with
undiminished tenacity, and the bulk
of them escaped the German pincers.

It took the Germans 17 days
to advance 25 miles to Lublin.

But on August the 4th -
the first anniversary of the war -
they entered Warsaw.

Russia's agony now began
as the invaders swept forward.

New hardships
fell upon a population to whom
hardship itself was nothing new...

The self-control with which
these poor people met their trouble
made one's heart bleed.

They had lost everything,
but they never complained.

The plight of the Russian armies
was little better. Their shortage
of equipment was catastrophic.

The Russian chief of staff
told the French ambassador...

In several infantry regiments,
one third of the men had no rifle.

These poor devils had to wait
patiently under a shower of shrapnel

until their comrades fell
and they could pick up their arms.

A Russian commander said...

Our army is drowning
in its own blood.

Falkenhayn seized the moment to
put out peace feelers to the Tsar.

Loyal as ever to his allies,
Nicholas II rejected them.

But his warlike ambitions were
drifting further apart from the
wounds and griefs of his people.

SHOUTING

The French ambassador reported...

Disorders in Moscow
have been particularly serious.

The agitation assumed such a scale
that it had become necessary
to suppress it by force.

On the famous Red Square,
the mob insulted the Royal Family.

They demanded that the Empress
should be incarcerated in a convent

and the Emperor deposed.

The Tsar took no notice.

In September, he assumed command
of the Russian armies, saying...

We shall fulfil our sacred duty
to defend our country to the last.

We will not
dishonour the Russian land.

So the war would go on.

Now the German armies in the north,
under General von Hindenburg,

struck eastwards
as they had been waiting to do,

and a melancholy roll call
of places names
signalled Russia's new disasters -

Novogeorgiyevsk,

Bialystok, Kovno,

blazing Brest-Litovsk.

One by one they fell
to the advancing Germans.

The Kaiser wrote in a letter...

My victorious sword
has crushed the Russians.

Woe to them
that yet draw the sword against me!

The furthest German advance
was 300 miles.

The Russians lost over 3,000 guns.

Their losses in men have
been estimated at over two million.

Even the inexhaustable manpower
of the Russian Empire
could not stand this rate of loss.

Russia faced collapse and one
question echoed in Russian minds...

What are our allies doing?

The Allies were doing their best
and they had received
an important reinforcement.

On May 23rd, when the battle of
Gorlice-Tarnow was three weeks old,

Italy declared war on Austria.

Italy went to war for territory,
to expand her frontiers.

A secret treaty, signed in London,
promised her the Trentino,
the Southern Tyrol

and Istria
with the port of Trieste.

The hope of liberating
the large Italian populations
under Austrian rule in these areas

inspired and excited her.

The Italian Prime Minister
called this policy
"sacro egoismo" - sacred egotism.

So, war reached out to lay its hand
upon fresh landscapes.

Silent mountains
bumbled with new thunders.

The stammer of machine guns
was heard among the glaciers.

Blood poured out
and froze upon the snow.

This style of war was different.

In the high Alps, every movement
caused a prodigious effort.

This was the war of big guns.
The effort had to be made.

By marvels of patience,
ingenuity and sheer hard work,

the Italians
prepared their attacks.

The advantages were all with their
enemies, in prepared positions
along the heights.

An Austrian officer said...

The scenery was really marvellous.
Just imagine
on top of a 6,000 ft mountain -

something which tourists
come from far away to see.

But from the military point of view,
the position was marvellous.

We saw everything that went on.

We saw every step, every tree,
in front of us.

And we thought
if the Italians should attack...

they can't get through.

It was not against
the Alpine barrier to the north
that Italy made her effort in 1915.

Instead, General Cadorna -
the Italian chief of staff -

threw his forces at "The Castle" -
the high plateau
blocking the way to Trieste.

It has been called
an enormous natural fortress,

a howling wilderness of stones
as sharp as knives.

At the foot of the plateau
ran the river Isonzo.

Four battles of the Isonzo
were fought during the year.

Four times Cadorna sent his men
over up the gaunt, bare hillside,

where every shellburst sent out
fragments of stone as well as iron.

The Austrians,
heavily outnumbered, made full use
of their advantages of ground.

Two battles,
fought in June, July and August,
cost the Italians 60,000 men.

And the map showed no change...

Two more battles in October,
November and December produced
small dents in the Austrian line,

but Italy lost another 117,000 men.

Cadorna had stated his doctrine...

The Supreme Command desires
that in all times and in all places

an iron discipline should reign
throughout the army.

The iron discipline - the war -
swiftly seized the Italian soldiers
in a merciless grip.

Their losses of 180,000 men
had hardly advanced
the allied cause at all.

In truth,
the cause was not advancing.

At the far end of the Mediterranean
on the Gallipoli peninsula,

the last British landing, the last
big attempt to break through
the Dardanelles, came to nothing.

The defeat at Suvla Bay in August
spelled the defeat
of the whole enterprise.

As the summer of 1915 wore away,
it became clear that nothing that
the Allies could do on minor fronts

would avail
to check Germany's run of victory.

The Western Front was never still.

Somewhere or other
along its 475 miles - in Champagne,
or Picardy, or Flanders -

there was always some action.
Always danger.

And between battles, if you were
lucky, if you were in a quiet
sector, life might not be too bad.

On a nice summer's day, you could
think there wasn't a war on, really.

Looking through the periscope
out into no-man's-land,

you'd see the sandbags of the German
front line, grass and flowers.

The birds would sing
if the sun was up.

Early in the morning, you'd have the
first planes coming over.

And generally, out of barminess and
ease, breakfast would come up.

You'd settle down to a day of
laziness in the sun if you could.

The lads would sit on the fire step
and talk and sing.

Coming towards the evening,
they'd get sentimental,
talking about their homes.

And then there was old Cornet Joe
over in the German front line

who used to play the British songs.

And he'd play a song
and we'd shout over to him,

"Damn good! Give us another, Joe!"

He'd ask what we wanted. We'd say,
"Give us The Old Bull And Bush!"
He'd play that and we'd sing it.

But during those summer months
of 1915, you could forget
that there was a war on.

You really could.
And it did happen sometimes.

People would forget and get careless
and, before you knew it,

they'd get a bullet through the head
on the latrine, or something...

Snipers. Even in quiet periods when
there was no battle in progress,

the British were losing 300 killed,
wounded and missing, every day.

It was a new sort of British Army
that was coming into existence on
the Western Front - territorials.

The first of Lord Kitchener's new
army divisions began to take over,

their good humour and endless jokes
concealing inner doubts and fears.

I think you are chiefly afraid
of how you will behave

when you meet the worst things
that war can produce.

I became afraid of seeing my first
dead man. I'd never seen a dead man.

I knew that there was
an old stretch of German trench
between our first and second line

where there were a lot
of German and Canadian corpses.

And in order to find myself,
I think,

I decided one day
that I would go and look at this

and see what I felt about it.

Suddenly around a bend in
the trench, I came to a great bay.

It was full of dead Germans.

But they weren't a bit horrible.

They'd been dead for about six weeks

and weather and rats and maggots
and everything had done their stuff,

and they were just shiny skeletons
in their uniforms,

held together by the dried sinews
that were round their bones...

It was
the most extraordinary picture.
I was absolutely fascinated.

A skull grins at you in a silly way.

It laughs at you,

and more or less said, "Fancy
coming here terrified of dead men!
Look! How silly we are."

The meaning of war
unfolded day by day,
each day producing new enigmas.

One thing was clear to anyone who
thought about it - this war was
not going in favour of the Allies.

The advantages won by the
German armies in 1914 enabled them
to call the tune in 1915.

Everywhere, they stood
upon the soil of their enemies.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

They could afford to sit tight.

MILITARY MUSIC PLAYS

They had only to wait
for the compulsions of war
to bring their enemies to them.

Once again, Joffre planned to
hurl his armies at the flanks of
the great bulge of the German line,

attacking from the south, in
Champagne, and from the west, in
Artois. There must be no mistake.

But the British Army
was not yet ready.

There was not enough guns.
There was not enough ammunition.

There were
very few trained soldiers.

Lord Kitchener inspected the eager
volunteers of his new divisions
with pride, but also with doubt.

He and commander in chief Sir John
French knew how unready they were.

Yet four of these divisions
were earmarked for the fight.

Two Scottish divisions
would take part in the attack.
Two others would be in reserve.

They were completely untried.
They'd only had their rifles
for two months.

They'd only just landed in France.
General Haig said...

I question the suitability
of new divisions
for this duty on first landing.

Lord Kitchener told Haig...

He had decided that we must act with
all our energy to help the French,

even though we suffered
very heavy losses indeed.

Goodbye, Piccadilly.
Farewell, Leicester Square.

Even the familiar paintwork
of the buses
was scarred and dulled by war.

# Goodbye, Piccadilly... #

Upstairs and down, the rumours
passed that a new weapon
was to be used in the attack - gas.

Goodbye, Piccadilly.
Farewell, Leicester Square...

The place where Joffre wanted the
British Army to fight was dismal -

Loos - a shattered mining village.

Slag heaps, derelict machinery,
ruined cottages...

The great twin pylons of what the
army called Tower Bridge, looming.

Loos - there was something chilling
even about the name.

The hour drew near.

Much depended on the gas which
would, it was hoped, make up for
the shortage of guns and shells.

Haig wrote... The greatest battle
in the world's history begins today.

Some 800,000 French and British
troops will actually attack.

An anxious night wondering what
the wind would be in the morning.

Wondering what the wind would be...
The prevailing wind
blew towards the Germans.

Would it prevail on the day?

Captain Gold, the meteorological
officer, joined Haig to observe.

I went up to see Sir Douglas Haig,
who came out with a light
and saw the charts.

Uh...this was about 3am on the
morning of September the 25th.

We looked at the charts

and I said the situation
had changed as expected,

but the wind had fallen lighter
than had been expected,
but it was still favourable.

Sir Douglas Haig asked me,
"Well, what do you advise?"

And I naturally demurred,

and...said that...

I...I thought that my job
was restricted to telling him...
what the conditions were expected.

He said,
"Somebody's got to make a decision."

I said, "In view of the conditions,
I think it should be
as soon as possible."

So, he then gave instructions
for the attack to be just after 5am.
Fire!

We opened up with a terrific
bombardment to break through the
wire, then the gas was let loose.

And our infantrymen, all clad in
these Ku Klux Klan helmets with a
little thing to put in their mouth,

went off with fixed bayonets
and they had to charge.
No loitering with those things.

What happened was a lot of them
thought they were suffocating,

and they pulled the helmets off.

Unfortunately, just at that moment,

the wind saw fit to change
and to blow back and the gas
came back on our infantry.

Where this happened,
the attack was checked at once.

But elsewhere, Londoners and
Scottish troops of the new armies
stormed through Loos village,

as far as the Germans' second line.

The chance of victory seemed good
and Haig was hopeful...

The enemy had no troops
in his second line, which my plucky
fellows entered without opposition.

Prisoners state the enemy
was so hard put to it for troops,

that the officers' servants
were pushed forward
to hold their second line.

If there'd been even one division
close up,
we could have walked right through.

But the reserve divisions
of the new army were at least
six hours' march away,

struggling to Loos along congested
roads. We hadn't the faintest idea
where we were going.

We sang the usual soldiers' songs -
Tipperary and all those -
and we were enjoying ourselves.

We had the usual halts for...
supposed to be
ten minutes in every hour.

But actually,
we halted far more than that
because of the chaos on the roads.

Traffic going up and down,
ammunition limbers, ambulances,
the walking wounded...

They said that we were laughing
and talking - eager to get at them
sort of business.

They said, "You'll laugh
the other side of your ruddy faces
when you get up there."

The next morning, these soldiers
stumbled into their first battle.

Tired out, wet through,
unfed, bewildered...

Against an enemy who'd had time
to bring up supports
and throw up new barbed wire.

The new army men
were in dense marching formation.

They didn't know
they were on a battlefield, where
the Germans were, or what to do.

After a while, the exhausted,
stunned regiments broke and fled.

If you can imagine a flock of sheep
lying sleeping in a field,
they were as thick as that.

Some of them were still alive,
and they were begging for water,

and plucking at our legs
as we went by.

One hefty chap grabbed me
round both knees and held me.

"Water, water," he said.
I was just taking out my water
bottle, because I had a little left,

but I was immediately hustled on
by a man behind.

"Get on," he said. "We're going to
get lost in no-man's-land."

Compassion had to give way
to discipline.

I had to break away from this
man and catch up the men in front.

60,000 British troops fell
during the three weeks
that the battle dragged on.

Field Marshall Sir John French
was blamed for keeping the reserve
divisions back for too long.

French was removed from
his command, and his place was
taken by General Sir Douglas Haig.

This battle marked the end of a
phase of Allied hopes, for neither
in Artois beside the British,

nor in Champagne, had the French
army found their expected victory.

Joffre's attack was the largest
single effort of the French army
since the start of the war.

18 divisions were assembled
in Artois, 35 in Champagne -

more than the whole BEF.

The French
were supremely confident.

Joffre told his men... You will
carry all before you. In one bound,

you will break through the enemy's
defences. Give him neither rest
nor pause until victory is gained.

Forward with a good heart,
to free the soil of our fatherland

and in the name of justice
and liberty.

General de Castelnau prophesied...
The guns have done their work
so thoroughly

that the men can go forward with
their rifles at the slope.

Through the drenching autumn rain,
across the muddy wastes
of no-man's-land,

towards the wire,
stormed the French infantry.

RAPID GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

HORN BLASTS

MACHINE GUN FIRE

Again, the wire
and machine guns were the masters.

A French airman observed the fate
of the infantry...

Our first line was still advancing
when enemy machine guns crackled.

Their sinister tak-tak-tak,
like a sewing machine, was ploughing
holes through our battalions.

In Champagne, the deepest advance
was under two miles.

In Artois and Champagne together,

the French lost nearly 200,000 men.

General Joffre drew up
a gloomy balance sheet...

It can thus be seen that 1915

was closing under conditions that
brought small comfort to the Allies.

Our armies everywhere had been
either kicked or beaten,

and they needed to be reorganised
before any new effort was demanded.

On the contrary,
the enemy appeared to have succeeded
in all his undertakings.

The fall of the year drew on
with yet another triumph
for German arms.

As Joffre's guns boomed out in
Champagne, their bombardment was
echoed in another part of Europe.

Germany and Austria
were preparing to fall on the Serbs
with crushing might.

The Serbs begged for Allied help.

But how could they help
this landlocked country
in the Balkan mountains?

Only with the aid
of Serbia's ally - Greece.

The Greek premier, Venizelos,
was agreeable.

He mobilised the army
and appealed for 150,000
British and French troops.

The place selected
for their landings was Salonika.

Salonika -
a seedy, cosmopolitan port
at the head of the Aegean Sea -

was chosen by the Allies for its
good harbour, because it was only
50 miles from the Serbian frontier,

and because of its railway lines
leading upcountry.

The first French division
landed on October 5th,

but on that very day Venizelos was
dismissed by King Constantine who
declared Greece would stay neutral.

She'd not honour
her alliance with the Serbs.

A British division,
rushed from Gallipoli, followed.

As the Allies came ashore,
they looked around with mixed
and curious feelings.

Their position was unenviable.

It was reported... German spies
sit in rows at Salonika,

smoking large cigars
and note down every man,

horse, gun and ton of stores landed.
This is a NICE way to make war.

A naval officer greeted some
disembarking British troops...

Well, your war's over.
In two days, you'll be disarmed
and interned by the Greeks.

It was not quite so bad,
but it was an uneasy situation,

which made effective help
for Serbia well-nigh impossible.

And the Serbs
were in sore need of help.

On October 6th,
the Austro-German offensive began
across the Danube and the Sava.

October 9th, they entered Belgrade,
this time for good.

Two days later,
without any declaration of war,

the Bulgarians struck in
the Serbian armies from the east.

Bulgaria was drawn into the war
by greed for Serbian territory,

and by hatred from the Balkan wars.

The savagery
of those bitter conflicts
was revived as her army advanced.

No quarter was asked and none
given to soldier or peasant

in this bitter conflict
of tribal hate.

The Serbs had no chance.

Towards the frontier with Albania,

the remnants of a proud army
trudged into the barren,
rocky hills.

An English naval officer from
Belgrade watched their retreat...

Here was no ordinary march
of troops. They crawled,
staggering, bent to the ground,

supporting themselves on sticks.
Many were without boots
and their clothes hung in rags.

Some, who were too weak to walk
alone, were helped along by friends.

Many were dying of hunger, fatigue
and the last stages of dysentery.

Here and there was a huddled heap -

the body of some lad too weak to
go further who turned aside to die.

The haunting thing was that their
faces were all exactly alike.

Starvation had reduced them all
to the same mask of pain.

The Serbian retreat
was also the flight of a people.

Through the inhospitable mountains,
the Serbian calvary dragged on.

"Oh, pray that your flight be not
in winter." Seldom had Christ's
words seemed more appropriate.

Oh, people who bow down
to see the miracle of Calvary,

the bitter and the glorious,
bow down,

bow down and pray for us.

Still for them and all of us,
who the world over suffer thus.

Who have scarce time for prayer,
indeed,
who only march and die and bleed.

By the end of 1915,
one-sixth of Serbia's
entire population would be dead.

100,000 men out of 400,000
were all that remained of her army
to reach the sea and safety.

All their allies could do for them

was to take them off and give them
a haven on the isle of Corfu.

The fall of Serbia symbolised
a year in which much hope had died.

The Allies knew the war
would never be won this way.

General Joffre convened an allied
conference at Chantilly...

It was agreed that a result
should be sought through
offensives on three fronts -

Russian, Franco-British and Italian.

These offensives were to be launched
simultaneously,

to prevent the enemy moving his
reserves from one front to another.

This conference
marks a vital date in the history
of the conduct of the war.

So, a bleak year ended
with hope revived.