The development of aircraft as an aid to artillery and as a destructive force on its own account, was rapid, and the use of machine guns and hand grenades in trench operations became general.
AUGUST 1, 1915-AUGUST 1, 1916
The tragic sea and land operations at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli marked this year with red in British history. Sir Douglas Haig succeeded Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief of British forces in France. The outstanding operation of the British forces on the western front was the bloody battle of the Somme, beginning July 1st, and continuing until the fall of 1915. The losses on both sides in that titanic struggle staggered two continents. Especially heroic were the attacks of the Canadians in that great battle and especially heavy were the losses in killed and wounded of the Canadian regiments. They ranked in magnitude with the depletion that came to the Australian and New Zealand armies in the fatal Gallipoli campaign.
This year will be glorious forever in the annals of France because of the heroic defense at Verdun. That battle tested to the limit the offensive strength of the German machine and it was found lacking in power to pierce the superhuman defense of the heroic French forces under Petain and Nivelle.
Bulgaria entered the war on October 14, 1915, with a declaration of war against helpless Serbia. Greece, torn by internal dissensions, inclined first to one side, then to the other. The occupation of Saloniki by French and British expeditionary forces finally swung the archipelago to the Allies.
A British Mesopotamian force under General Townshend, poorly equipped and unsupported, was cut off in Kut-el-Amara, and surrendered to the Turks on April 29, 1916.
The Italian forces under General Cadorna made a sensational advance terminating in the capture of Gorizia. Portugal entered the war on the side of the Allies after it had refused to give up to Germany several German ships interned in Portuguese ports.
An object lesson in German submarine possibilities was given America when the Deutschland, a super-submarine cargo vessel, arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 9, 1916. The Deutschland later was converted into a naval submarine and re-visited American shores, sinking a number of merchant vessels. It was one of the German submarine fleet surrendered to the Allies in November, 1918.
Russia proved itself to be a military ineffective. German armies under von Mackensen and von Hindenburg occupied Warsaw, Brest-Litovsk, Lutsk, and Grodno. Grand Duke Nicholas was removed from the command of the Russian armies and Czar Nicholas assumed command.
Germany's pretensions to sea power ended with the battle of Jutland, May 31, 1916, when its High Seas fleet fled after a running fight with British cruisers and destroyers. Never, thereafter, during the war did the German ships venture out of the Bight of Helgoland.