Destruction Of World War I

To mark the centennial of Armistice Day, the closing day of World War I, I thought I'd post some reminders of the cost of the war.

The first one is of Peronne in in northern France, near the Somme battlefields, which was occupied by the Germans for most of the war.



The rest are of Lovain in Belgium, which was largely destroyed by German burning and looting in August 1914.

















I would be interested to see other cards related to the war.

This is not a post card depicting destruction, but of German soldiers in 1916. I wonder how many of these men survived until the Armistice.


Non-philatelic, but related to the cost of war:
I recently read an article that French demining teams still recover tons of unexploded ordnance from the war each year, some of it chemical munitions.

There is a farm in Belgium sitting above a 50,000 pound unexploded mine that was meant to be detonated below German lines during the Battle of Messines in 1917, but never was.

Robert

I've posted this one before, but I've wondered the same thing about these German officers.

D'you know Greg, I wondered the same thing myself as we were discussing the details of the map behind them. Did they survive? Did they go on to fight in WW2? What happened to them? Poignant thoughts looking at such a relaxed and happy group of men on this day of Remembrance.

My complements to GregAlex, who at least has gotten a round tuit, and posted some of his BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) cards.

I pluck them out of the bargain boxes whenever I see them, and would have quite a pile ... were I to go thru The Great Pile, and organize them a bit.

I even have at least one UXBOS (UneXploded Booklet, Original Staple) of the destruction of a port (Antwerp?).

The BDA cards are forever on my ToDo List - where tasks go to die - perhaps I'll get there before the 120th anniversary?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

How about a picture of The Great Pile, then?

Here are two more French cards I acquired...

I picked up an interesting postcard booklet a couple weeks ago and thought I'd revive this topic. These cards are from Ostende, on the coast of Belgium. I think this damage was the result of the British bombardment in April 1918. As a station for torpedo boats, Ostende was a legitimate target, but the also did great damage to the town.























Ostende harbor station was apparently rebuilt. You can see the signature arch in this current photo.

I was recently reading a bit in Winston Churchill's book, "World in Crisis" and a picture does, indeed, speak a thousand words. However I can't help but wonder why someone would want to send these images on a postcard.

Such postcards were the text messages or Instagram posts of their day—a fast way to communicate an image that the recipient otherwise couldn't access and often to show things that otherwise might be disbelieved. At the time newspapers still published relatively few images.

Thank you clpalermo1964.

Very good explanation, CJPalermo. Although, occasionally postcard memes had their own form of misinformation.

No misinformation...

Just a typical little Texas Trout lake.

A very nice, very fun postcard.