1 July 1917. Alfred Knox

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Alfred Knox

About 2 p.m. I went back to the headquarters of the 7th Army, where I sat in the General Quartermaster’s room and obtained a general idea of the progress of the operation. At first the Staff were in good spirits, but from 3 p.m. the picture began to change.

The 74th Division was making no progress and complained of heavy gunfire from its left. The Gommander-in-Ghief telephoned that many men of this division were streaming to the rear, and ordered that all available delegates were to be sent to hearten the waverers. No doubt Kerenski had suggested the delegates, his universal panacea. He was to see how ineffective they were to stop a panic as compared with the officers whose prestige he had allowed to be undermined.

The Composite Siberian Division continued to make progress and was reinforced by the 108th Division.

General Skoropadski, the Commander of the XXXIVth Corps, soon began to call for help. “ Two regiments of the 19th Siberian Division had reached the second line of German trench, but the other two regiments could not be brought up owing to the enemy’s barrage. The 23rd Division had three regiments already in line and was suffering much from the German fire. He feared a counter-attack. The 153rd Division had so many men down with the scurvy that only forty rifles per company were left.” At 4 p.m. he telephoned that he had two German divisions against him, as he had taken prisoners from both the 15th German Reserve and from the 24th German Reserve Divisions. As a matter of fact, these two German divisions were not only holding up Skoropadski’s four divisions, but also the two divisions of the Vllth Siberian Corps and one division of the XLIst Corps !

General Skoropadski proposed that his corps should be relieved that night by the Ilnd Guard Corps, and the Army Staff recommended this course on the ground that it was necessary to restore confidence at the outset of the operation.

By 5.30 p.m. the XXXIVth Corps had retired to its original trenches.

The XXIInd Corps on the left shared the same fate. At first all three divisions made good progress, and especially the 1st Finland in the centre. The 5th Finland Division on the right captured two lines of Turkish trench, but retired, owing to a counter-attack, and the other two divisions followed its example.

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Zinaida Gippius

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Andrei Shingarev

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Elizaveta Naryshkina

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Alexander Blok

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The New York Times

Serge Basset, a distinguished French war correspondent attached to the British armies, was killed by rifle fire while watching the fighting about the Lens salient. Although several correspondents have been wounded, Basset is the first journalist to be killed in the field during the present war. He had been awarded the Legion of Honor for literary and dramatic work. He will be buried with military honors.

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30 June

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From one revolution to another

Russia in 1917

+17

in Petrograd

+22

in Moscow