Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (101 page)

Bülow, commanding Second Army.

Some of Joffre’s men, before the deluge.

Belgians doing their modest best.

75s – the legendary French
soixante-quinzes
– in action.

Smith-Dorrien, who chose to fight at Le Cateau.

Wilson – ‘that poisonous tho’ clever ruffian’ – with Foch and Col. Huguet.

Murray, the BEF’s chief of staff, who wrote of Sir John French: ‘I knew better than anyone how his health, temper and temperament rendered him unfit … for the crisis we had to face.’

A spectacle familiar to countless French and British troops in the summer of 1914: Germans advance.

Frenchmen display the offensive spirit so prized by Joffre.

Austro-Hungarian cavalry struggle in Galicia.

British soldiers deploy on their first battlefield

British soldiers await the enemy.

THE EASTERN FRONT

Samsonov.

THE EASTERN FRONT

Russian soldiers are taken prisoner in tens of thousands after Tannenberg.