World War I
During World War I, the division fought on the Western Front, seeing action in the Allied Great Retreat which culminated in the First Battle of the Marne and the Race to the Sea. It then spent the next several years in the trenches. In 1916, it fought in the Battle of the Somme. In 1917, it participated in the Battle of Passchendaele. In 1918, it fought against the various Allied offensives and counteroffensives. Allied intelligence rated the division as second class until 1918, but downgraded it to third class that year.
Read more about this topic: 40th Division (German Empire)
Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“‘Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.’”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The war is utter damn nonsense—a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking [sic] malignity on the part of those who don’t do the fighting.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)