<– Part 22 – December 27, 1914  | Part 23 – January 3, 1915 |  Part 24 – January 10, 1915 –>

HMS Formidable in 1898

The last day of the year saw the HMS Formidable, lead ship of her pre-dreadnought class, was sunk by U-24 in the English channel, with a loss of 547 British sailors.

New Year’s Day, 1915, saw the Allies launch an offensive in Artois and Champagne. Fighting has been back and forth, which each side capturing, then recapturing, the trenches. Elsewhere on the Western Front, the clay soil has left the trenches knee-deep in water, causing severe illness and other medical complications.

The next day saw a renewed Russian offensive in the Carpathians launched.

Russian infantry in the forests around Sarikamish

On the Caucasus front, at Sarikamish, two Ottoman infantry corps have attacked the Russian defenses, losing half of their 12,000 strength. The Russian movements, perceived by the Turks to be a retreat, were in fact an encirclement, so the Ottoman defense has begun. To make it worse for the Turks, one corps has lost 90% of the force in the mountain, both to weather and to repeated frontal assaults against the Russian force. The corps commanders have reported to the Ottoman general Enver Pasha that their corps are too weak to attack; he has ordered assaults to continue anyway.

To east, on the Persian front, Ardahan has come under assault by an Ottoman force, threatening supply (and potential retreat) lines to Sarikamish for the Russians.