The war of the French volunteers
This book does not concern the Battle of Verdun in 1916--widely considered to be the largest battle in world history, rather it positions the action geographically for the reader. Written during wartime this account concerns the personal experiences of a young officer of the French infantry from the earliest days of the Great War through a period of comparative fluidity of movement before the stalemate of trench warfare. The fighting concerns the actions about the Meuse and the Marne in the first year of the war from a French perspective and concludes as the 'armies go to earth' in the early part of 1915. Genevoix takes the reader into the heart of his enthusiastic young group of comrades and soldiers on campaign to provide valuable insights into the opening phases of the great conflict the French infantry knew. Available in soft cover and hard cover with dust jacket.

This is the compelling story of West Belfast's involvement fighting on the Western Front throughout the First World War. This is the story of men from either side of West Belfast's sectarian divide during the Great War. This dramatic book tells the story of the volunteers of the 36th and 16th divisions who fought on the Somme and side-by-side at Messines. Grayson also brings in forgotten West Belfast men from throughout the armed forces, from the retreat at Mons to the defeat of Germany and life post-war. In so doing, he tells a new story which challenges popular perceptions of the war and explains why remembrance remains so controversial in Belfast today.

On April 25th 1915, during the First World War, the famous Anzacs landed ashore at Gallipoli. At the exact same moment, leading figures of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire were being arrested in vast numbers. That dark day marks the simultaneous birth of a national story - and the beginning of a genocide. When We Dead Awaken - the first narrative history of the Armenian Genocide in decades - draws these two landmark historical events together. James Robins explores the accounts of Anzac Prisoners of War who witnessed the genocide, the experiences of soldiers who risked their lives to defend refugees, and Australia and New Zealand's participation in the enormous post-war Armenian relief movement. By exploring the vital political implications of this unexplored history, When We Dead Awaken questions the national folklore of Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey - and the mythology of Anzac Day itself.

Habsburg Sons describes Jewish participation in the Habsburg Army, 1788-1918, concentrating on their role in World War I. Approximately 300,000-350,000 Jews fought in the Austro-Hungarian Armies on all fronts. Of these, 30,000-40,000 died of wounds or illness, approximately 25,000 were officers. At least 17% were taken prisoner in camps all over Russia and Central Asia. Many soldiers were Orthodox Ostjuden, and soldiers came into regular contact with Jewish civilians. Over 130 Feldrabbiner (chaplains) served mainly on Eastern and Italian Fronts. Antisemitism was present but generally not overt. The book uses personal diaries and newspaper articles (most available in English for the first time) to describe their experiences. The comparative experiences of Jews in German, Russian, Italian Armies is also summarized.

Why, despite the appalling conditions in the trenches of the Western Front, was the British army almost untouched by major mutiny during the First World War? Drawing upon an extensive range of sources, including much previously unpublished archival material, G. D. Sheffield seeks to answer this question by examining a crucial but previously neglected factor in the maintenance of the British army's morale in the First World War: the relationship between the regimental officer and the ordinary soldier.

Booth offers a complex portrait of the relation between British Great War culture and modernist writings. She notes that unlike civilians, modernist writers and combatants shared a concern with the divide between language and experience, and draws connections between the sensibility of the modernist writer and the soldier, particularly regarding efforts to describe dying and the dead. Her analysis extends to memorials, posters, and architecture of the Great War, though her emphasis is on literary works by Robert Graves, E.M. Forster, Vera Brittain, and others.

I cannot stop while there are lives to be saved
Edith Cavell
Nurse Edith Cavell was a British Nurse and humanitarian who became famous during the First World War for not only nursing and saving the lives of battle casualties with no regard for the nationality of the combatants, but also for her work in assisting some 200 Allied soldiers to escape incarceration by the victorious German Army in Belgium during the early stages of the conflict. This middle aged nurse was discovered by the Germans, who considered her actions treasonable, abetting the escape of troops who might return to the battle front. Cavell was subsequently tried by court marshal, sentenced to be executed and shot by firing squad in October 1915, aged 50 years. The event was widely reported by the world press and the effect on the public at large was electric providing a propaganda triumph for the Allied cause and an equal disaster for the German cause-although they considered their actions fair and reasonable by the rules of war. Cavell's influence on nursing in Belgium has been an enduring one. This book contains two accounts brought together by Leonaur for interest and good value. The first, The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell by William Thomson Hill, provides an overview of the Cavell story whilst the second, With Edith Cavell in Belgium by Jacqueline Van Til, was written by a young nurse who worked closely with Cavell and who had inside knowledge and personal experience of the dramatic events as they unfolded. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

The definitive history of the British soldiers executed by their own Army during the First World War. Three hundred and fifty-one men were executed by British Army firing squads between September 1914 and November 1920. By far the greatest number, 266 were shot for desertion in the face of the enemy. The executions continue to haunt the history of the war, with talk today of shell shock and posthumous pardons. Using new material released from the Public Records Office and other sources, the authors reveal what really happened and place the story of these executions firmly in the context of the military, social and medical context of the period.

More than 400 photographs detail the American military experience in World War I on the ground, in the air, and at sea, from recruitment to the Armistice. This is the premier visual history of the United States in the Great War to be published during these centennial years. * Features not only the infamous Doughboys and Devil Dogs, but also flying aces, doctors and nurses, seamen, and the German enemy * Color photos of weapons and equipment, uniforms, insignia, medals, and posters * Richly informative text and captions by an expert on World War I and battlefield interpretation.

During the First World War approximately 210,000 Irish men and a much smaller, but significant, number of Irish women served in the British armed forces. All were volunteers and a very high proportion were from Catholic and Nationalist communities. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Irish recruitment between 1914 and 1918 for the island of Ireland as a whole. It makes extensive use of previously neglected internal British army recruiting returns held at The National Archives, Kew, along with other valuable archival and newspaper sources. There has been a tendency to discount the importance of political factors in Irish recruitment, but this book demonstrates that recruitment campaigns organised under the auspices of the Irish National Volunteers and Ulster Volunteer Force were the earliest and some of the most effective campaigns run throughout the war. The British government conspicuously failed to create an effective recruiting organisation or to mobilise civic society in Ireland. While the military mobilisation which occurred between 1914 and 1918 was the largest in Irish history, British officials persistently characterised it as inadequate, threatening to introduce conscription in 1918. This book also reflects on the disparity of sacrifice between North-East Ulster and the rest of Ireland, urban and rural Ireland, and Ireland and Great Britain.

The Great War set in motion all of the subsequent violence of the twentieth century. The war took millions of lives, led to the fall of four empires, established new nations, and negatively affected others. During and after the war, individuals and communities struggled to find expression for their wartime encounters and communal as well as individual mourning. Throughout this time of enormous upheaval, many artists redefined their role in society, among them writers, performers, painters, and composers. Some sought to renew or re-establish their place in the postwar climate, while others longed for an irretrievable past, and still others tried to break with the past entirely. This volume offers a significant interdisciplinary contribution to the study of modern war, exploring the ways that artists contributed to wartime culture - both representing and shaping it - as well as the ways in which wartime culture influenced artistic expressions. Artists' places within and against reconstruction efforts illuminate the struggles of the day. The essays included represent a transnational perspective and seek to examine how artists dealt with the experience of conflict and mourning and their role in (re-)establishing creative practices in the changing climate of the interwar years.

An intimate narrative history of World War I told through the stories of twenty men and women from around the globe--a powerful, illuminating, heart-rending picture of what the war was really like.
In this masterful book, renowned historian Peter Englund describes this epoch-defining event by weaving together accounts of the average man or woman who experienced it. Drawing on the diaries, journals, and letters of twenty individuals from Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela, and the United States, Englund's collection of these varied perspectives describes not a course of events but "a world of feeling." Composed in short chapters that move between the home front and the front lines, "The Beauty and Sorrow" brings to life these twenty particular people and lets them speak for all who were shaped in some way by the War, but whose voices have remained unheard.

During a pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War all sides-Germany, Britain, and America-believed the war could be concluded. Peace at the end of 1916 would have saved millions of lives and changed the course of history utterly. Two years into the most terrible conflict the world had ever known, the warring powers faced a crisis. There were no good military options. Money, men, and supplies were running short on all sides. The German chancellor secretly sought President Woodrow Wilson's mediation to end the war, just as British ministers and France's president also concluded that the time was right. The Road Less Traveled describes how tantalizingly close these far-sighted statesmen came to ending the war, saving millions of lives, and avoiding the total war that dimmed hopes for a better world. Theirs was a secret battle that is only now becoming fully understood, a story of civic courage, awful responsibility, and how some leaders rose to the occasion while others shrank from it or chased other ambitions. "Peace is on the floor waiting to be picked up!" pleaded the German ambassador to the United States. This book explains both the strategies and fumbles of people facing a great crossroads of history. The Road Less Traveled reveals one of the last great mysteries of the Great War: that it simply never should have lasted so long or cost so much.

From the Treaty of Versailles to the 2018 centenary and beyond, the history of the First World War has been continually written and rewritten, studied and contested, producing a rich historiography shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation. Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars in the field. By analyzing perceptions of the war in contexts ranging from Nazi Germany to India's struggle for independence, this is an illuminating collective study of the complex interplay of memory and history.

The Great War is still seen as a mostly European war. The Middle Eastern theater is, at best, considered a sideshow written from the western perspective. This book fills an important gap in the literature by giving an insight through annotated translations from five Ottoman memoirs, previously not available in English, of actors who witnessed the last few years of Turkish presence in the Arab lands. It provides the historical background to many of the crises in the Middle East today, such as the Arab-Israeli confrontation, the conflict-ridden emergence of Syria and Lebanon, the struggle over the holy places of Islam in the Hejaz, and the mutual prejudices of Arabs and Turks about each other.

This is a personal account written by a man reflecting on his time as a young pilot with the Royal Flying Corps in France during the First World War, who eventually became an ace. It is a story of survival against the odds at a time when the conduct of air operations depended so much on individual skills, innovation, courage - and luck. Hugh White flew F.E.2D Scout aircraft with 20 Squadron as a reconnaissance patrol pilot aged just eighteen. By his nineteenth birthday he was a flight commander and the most experienced pilot on the squadron. He then became a flight commander on 29 Squadron flying the S.E.5a which was Britain's best fighter aircraft at the time. During the two years of flying, he experienced and survived a series of escapades including a dramatic mid-air collision with the enemy. Told by Hugh in his own words, he gives a unique insight into war in the air. With the break-up of his squadron and being reduced to a substantive rank - simply because of his young age - Hugh's writing ends in 1919. From this point, the story is continued by his younger son Chris. He describes Hugh's life and RAF career from flying Bristol Fighters in India during the 1920s, undertaking engineer training at Henlow, to commanding 501 Squadron in the mid-1930s and becoming a full-time technical officer until his retirement as an air vice-marshal in 1955. This book includes a foreword by Air Marshal Sir Frederick Sowrey (Hugh's nephew) which puts Hugh White's early wartime service into context. It is a timely reminder, following the centenary of the end of the First World War, of the difficulties that young pilots faced at the time. A must-read for those interested in wartime exploits.

Steeped in conspiracy, scandal and socialism - the disappearance of radical icon Victor Grayson is a puzzle that's never been solved. A firebrand and Labour politician who rose to prominence in the early twentieth century, Grayson was idolised by hundreds of thousands of Britons but despised by the establishment. After a tumultuous life, he walked out of his London apartment in September 1920 and was never seen again. After a century, new documents have come to light. Fragments of an unpublished autobiography, letters to his lovers (both men and women), leading political and literary figures including H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, and testimonies from members of the Labour elite such as Clement Attlee have revealed the real Victor Grayson. New research has uncovered the true events leading up to his disappearance and suggests that he was actually blackmailed by his former Party. In a time when homosexuality was illegal, and socialism an international threat to capitalism, Grayson was a clear target for those wanting to stamp out dissent. This extraordinary biography reinstates to history a man who laid the foundations for a whole generation of militant socialists in Britain.

The Amazon History Book of the Year 2013 is a magisterial chronicle of the calamity that befell Europe in 1914 as the continent shifted from the glamour of the Edwardian era to the tragedy of total war. In 1914, Europe plunged into the 20th century's first terrible act of self-immolation - what was then called The Great War. On the eve of its centenary, Max Hastings seeks to explain both how the conflict came about and what befell millions of men and women during the first months of strife. He finds the evidence overwhelming, that Austria and Germany must accept principal blame for the outbreak. While what followed was a vast tragedy, he argues passionately against the 'poets' view', that the war was not worth winning. It was vital to the freedom of Europe, he says, that the Kaiser's Germany should be defeated. His narrative of the early battles will astonish those whose images of the war are simply of mud, wire, trenches and steel helmets. Hastings describes how the French Army marched into action amid virgin rural landscapes, in uniforms of red and blue, led by mounted officers, with flags flying and bands playing. The bloodiest day of the entire Western war fell on 22 August 1914, when the French lost 27,000 dead. Four days later, at Le Cateau the British fought an extraordinary action against the oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in history. In October, at terrible cost they held the allied line against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres.The author also describes the brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia and Galicia, where by Christmas the Germans, Austrians, Russians and Serbs had inflicted on each other three million casualties. This book offers answers to the huge and fascinating question 'what happened to Europe in 1914?', through Max Hastings's accustomed blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts from a multitude of statesmen and generals, peasants, housewives and private soldiers of seven nations. His narrative pricks myths and offers some striking and controversial judgements. For a host of readers gripped by the author's last international best-seller 'All Hell Let Loose', this will seem a worthy successor.

This book surveys historical and emerging global air and space power issues and provides a multidisciplinary understanding of the application of air and space power in the past and present, as well as exploring potential future challenges that global air forces may face. Bringing together leading and emerging academics, professionals, and military personnel from Australia within the field of air and space power, this edited collection traces the evolution of technological innovations, as well as the ethical and cultural frameworks which have informed the development of air and space power in the 20th and 21st centuries, and contemplates its future. It covers topics such as the insurgent use of drones, the ethics of air strikes, the privatisation of air power, the historical trajectory of air power strategy, and the sociological implications of an 'air force' identity. While many of the chapters use Australian-based case studies for their analysis, they have broader applicability to a global readership, and several chapters examine other nations' experiences, including those of the United States, and the United Kingdom. This accessible, illuminating book is an important addition to contemporary air and space power literature, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of air power, air warfare, military and international history, defense studies, and contemporary strategic studies, as well as military professionals.