On November 11, 1914, Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire declared jihad against the Entente Powers.  A few days earlier, the Ottomans and the Entente had declared war on one another.  That same day, British forces began fighting to take Basra in what is today Iraq, eventually claiming victory on November 21.  The struggle for who would rule the Middle East had begun.

The fight for German possessions in East Africa was on-going.  The Germans soundly defeated British and Indian forces at Tanga during fighting between November 3rd and 5th.  Von Lettow-Vorbeck would harass and outwit the British with a force of local African and colonial volunteers until the end of the war.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians and Germans fought each other to a standstill in the Battle of Lodz, in which the Russians lost 110,000 men keeping the Germans out of Warsaw and the Germans lost 160,000 men heading off a Russian push into Silesia.  While the Eastern Front would move more than the Western Front, a see-saw stalemate pattern where initial expensive gains were lost in even more expensive retreats had developed.

In Serbia, which is where all of this started in the first place, final preparations were underway for the third Austro-Hungarian invasion since the war began in August.  Starting off on November 16, the Austrians pushed deep into Serbia, taking Belgrade on November 29 and 30.  However, a counterattack by the Serbs pushed the Austrians completely out of Serbia, which put everyone back pretty much where they started by December 16.  It is interesting that by this point in my reading, the 40,000 casualties in this offensive seem light in comparison to just about anything seen on the Russian or French fronts.

I guess my point in discussing these battles is to point out that even though the fighting in France has died down into stalemate, there is still fighting, sometimes on a colossal scale, all across the globe.  While the fighting in Africa or the Middle East almost seems a sideshow to the bloodletting in France and Poland, we are still dealing with their effects today.   These theaters will seem familiar to anyone who has watched the news or served overseas in the past 40 years.

I wonder which of today’s ‘sideshows’ will be a main theater of fighting for my great-grandchildren?