December 24th, 1914

- Three days after the first attempt to bombard England from the air, at 1045am a single German Friedrichshafen FF 29 seaplane appears over Dover, flying at fifty miles per hour.  At the limit of its fifty-mile range, it carries only four 2kg bombs, which it drops near Dover Castle.  Instead of striking the landmark, they fall nearby and destroy the vegetable garden of local auctioneer Tommy Terson, who suffers minor injuries.  For the first time enemy bombs have exploded on English soil.

A German Friedrichshafen FF 29 seaplane.

- At 5am this morning, Commodore Tyrwhitt's force, consisting of three seaplane carriers, three light cruisers, and eight destroyers, sails from Harwich, bound for Heligoland Bight.  To maintain the secrecy of the raid, no preliminary warning was given to the warships before they sailed, and some have left behind stewards who had gone ashore to purchase turkeys and geese for Christmas Day.

- For the past six days the German 9th Army has been assaulting the Russian line west of Warsaw between Sochaczew on the Bzura River and Bolimov on the Rawka River, in an effort to break through to Poland's largest city.  Wave after wave of German infantry have crossed the two rivers, often in frigid water up to their chests, to assault Russian lines on the far bank.  Though in a few cases certain section of the Russian trench line were seized, at no time were the Germans able to pierce the enemy front.  9th Army has suffered over 100 000 casualties in failing to break through, and at one point a tributary of the Rawka River stopped flowing, blocked by a dam of German dead.  It now being obvious that Warsaw will not be in German hands for Christmas, Ludendorff calls off the attacks.

- In the Caucasus the occupation of Bardiz today by the Ottoman 29th Division of IX Corps masks growing problems with Enver's offensive.  Moving through heavy snow and in frigid conditions, thousands are already being lost to the elements; 17th Division of IX Corps reports that as much as 40% of its soldiers have fallen behind, some undoubtedly disappearing into the drifts of snow.  X Corps to the north, meanwhile is exhausted, but two of its divisions are pushed northwards towards Ardahan before Enver orders it to redirect itself westwards to cover IX Corps left flank.  29th Division, meanwhile, is given no rest - Enver instructs it to march immediately on Sarikamish, not only to complete the envelopment of the Russian forces facing XI Corps but because the Ottoman units need to seize Russian supplies if they are not to run out of food and starve.

On the Russian side, I Caucasian and II Turkestan Corps are in the line facing XI Corps when Enver begins his offensive, the former to the south of the latter.  The first response of General Bergmann, commander of I Caucasian Corps, had been to order his force to advance westward in an attempt to threaten the rear of the Ottoman IX and X Corps.  General Nikolai Yudenich, Chief of Staff of the Russian Caucasus Army, is better able to understand the threat the Ottoman advance poses to Sarikamish, and orders I Caucasian Corps to instead withdraw today while moving reinforcements to concentrate at the threatened town.

The Battle of Sarikamish, December 24th, 1914.

December 18th, 1914

- Though the French have abandoned their attacks in Flanders, the British have not - they hope that the continued German redeployments to the Eastern Front have sufficiently weakened their lines opposite the BEF to allow for successful, if small-scale, attacks.  The reality is that though the German lines are thinner, they are still able to easily repulse hastily-planned and poorly-executed operations.  Today, a British attack against the German line at Ploegsteert Wood is a bloody failure, with some of the advancing infantry being killed by their own misdirected artillery fire.

- After the attacks by XXI and X Corps yesterday, the main attack of the French 10th Army's Artois offensive is launched today by XXXIII Corps.  However, the same conditions that impeded progress yesterday - heavy rain and insufficient artillery fire - also plague today's advance, and XXXIII Corps, attacking along a broad front, secures only negligible gains.  General Pétain decides that instead of continuing to attack all along his corps' front, he will instead concentrate his strength against just the portion of the line at the village of Carency, in an attempt to overwhelm the German defenders.

- The Russian armies in central Poland halt their retreat today, taking up strong and prepared positions on the lower Bzura and Rawka Rivers south to the Nida River.  Attacks by both the German 9th and Austro-Hungarian 2nd Armies fail to break through this new line, indicating that the Russians intend to stand and fight here.  Mackensen decides to continue 9th Army's offensive in an effort to capture Warsaw before the end of the year, and thus begins a series of attacks across the Bzura and Rawka Rivers.

- For his part, the Russian halt in central Poland is yet more evidence to Conrad that the essential battle is in Galicia where the Russian line in Poland can be turned from the south.  The omens south of the Vistula, however, are not promising.  In addition to yesterday's check at Lisko, today 4th Army finds its advance halted by Russian garrisons on the west bank of the Dunajec River, evidence that the Russian 3rd Army intends to stand along the Dunajec.  Gone is the question of whether the Russians will retreat across the San; instead, it is now a matter of whether the Russians can be forced to continue retreating at all.  To accomplish this the left wing of 4th Army is ordered to hold at the Dunajec, while the right wing swings around to the south against Tarnow - if successful, it will sever the main railway and supply route to the Russian 3rd Army and force its further withdrawal.

- Along the border between German South-West Africa and Portuguese Angola, the reaction of the latter to the massacre of the Portuguese garrison at Cuangar on October 31st by a small German force had been to evacuate four nearby border posts for fear of further German attacks.  The German commander in South-West Africa, meanwhile, still does not know if Germany and Portugal are actually at war or not, so he decides to shoot first and ask questions later.  Today a German force of approximately five hundred soldiers, aided by local Africans, attack the Portuguese fort of Naulila, just north of the border.  The Portuguese defenders also number about five hundred, but Naulila was designed to resist native insurrections, not withstand the bombardment of the six artillery pieces the Germans brought with them.  When a German shell detonates the munitions dump, the Portuguese survivors break and flee, having suffered 182 casualties.

The Germans halt their advance after destroying the fort at Naulila - in the long term, the much greater threat comes from the British and South Africans along the coast and the Orange River.  The German success here, along with the Portuguese withdrawal, does effectively create a buffer zone in southern Angola, which allows the Germans to concentrate their forces elsewhere.