The battles of Belleau Wood and Soissons in June and July of 1918 marked a turning point in World War I and in the stature of the US Marine Corps, whose fighting proved so critical in repelling the Germans that the French would later rename Belleau 'Bois de la Brigade de Marine.' In this book J. Michael Miller, a historian of the Marine Corps and veteran chronicler of battle, takes us to the battlefields of Belleau Wood and Soissons, immersing us in the experience of a single brigade of marines at the forefront of the fighting. Through a close-up look at the doughboys' singular impact on Allied victory in 1918, his work illuminates America's bloody sacrifice during World War I. The 4th Marine Brigade at Belleau Wood and Soissons for the first time treats these two battles as one campaign and demonstrates why it is impossible to fully understand one without the other. Miller outlines the company and platoon levels of combat throughout the campaign, establishing a basic tactical understanding of the fighting; he also draws on letters, diaries, memoirs, and interviews to create a vivid and personal reconstruction of the battles. His use of French and German sources, also a first, adds unprecedented insights to this boots-on-the-ground account. The book includes detailed mapping of both battlefields, with a thirty-six-stop guide linking the text with the actual terrain. For each of these stops Miller gives GPS coordinates to provide a virtual tour of the sites he discusses. With its strategic overview and ground-level perspective, Miller' work suggests a new interpretation and offers a new experience of an iconic moment in American military history - and in the story of the Marine Corps.

The Battle of the Somme, which lasted from 1 July to 18 November 1916, is remembered as one of the most horrific and tragic battles of the First World War. On the first day alone nearly 19,000 British troops were killed - the greatest one-day loss in the history of the British Army. By November the death toll from the armies of Britain, France and Germany had risen to over a million. This book tells the stories of fifty-one soldiers from the Commonwealth and Empire armies whose bravery on the battlefield was rewarded by the Victoria Cross, the highest military honour - men like Private Billy McFadzean, who was blown up by two grenades which he smothered in order to save the lives of his comrades, and Private 'Todger' Jones, who single-handedly rounded up 102 German soldiers. Not only do we learn of heroic endeavours of these men at the height of battle, but we also read of their lives before 1914, ranging from the backstreets of Glasgow to a country house in Cheshire, and of what life was like after the war for the thirty-three survivors.

Letters From a Yankee Doughboy is a collection of more than 125 letters written by Private 1st Class Raymond W. Maker, to his sister, Eva, a county nurse living in Framingham, Massachusetts, describing his everyday service in combat during World War 1. These letters, edited by Private Maker's grandson, Major Bruce H. Norton (USMC retired) are accompanied by 365 pocket-diary entries that Raymond religiously kept throughout the year 1918. Private Maker was assigned to Company C, 101st Field Signal Battalion, as a wireman, whose duty was to repair and replace the communications lines that were destroyed by artillery and mortar barrages during the horrific battles that took place between German infantry forces and the 26th "Yankee" Division of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), in France, from October of 1917 until the end of the war. Assigned to the 104th Infantry Regiment, Private Maker saw the very worst of ground warfare. He fought at the Battle of Belleau Wood; was gassed by German artillery forces at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry and was wounded by artillery fire outside of Verdun, just one day before the Armistice was signed. The theme of his letters will vividly evoke memories in the tens of thousands of men and women who have served their country and their friends and loved ones. As a postscript, toward the end of the war, Raymond took the key to the North Gate of Verdun as a battlefield keepsake and mailed it home to his sister, instructing her to "keep that key, as someday it will be of value." On November 11, 2018 - the centenary of Armistice Day - the author returned that key to Thierry Hubscher, the Director of the Memorial de Verdun, to be placed on display in that great Museum, closing a 100-year chapter in Raymond's life.

The incredible, moving story of Wiremu Maopo, the last of his line in an eminent South Island family, who joined the second Maori Contingent and went off to fight in the First World War. Wiremu writes regularly to his friend Virgie, and the story of Wiremu's life is woven around 40 letters that he penned during the War. All of Wiremu's siblings died of illness either in childhood or later in life and when he returns from the war ironically he is the only surviving member of the once large family. Wiremu was unaware during and after the war that his girlfriend Phoebe had given birth to a daughter who would carry on his line. The Last Maopo also follows Phoebe's story and reconnects the Maopo line with the author, Wiremu's great-granddaughter.

This book offers a close-up look at the First World War as it was experienced by ordinary Canadian soldiers. It portrays the war experience of tens of thousands of young Canadians. Reading their accounts offers a no-holds-barred picture of fighting, life in the trenches, the human cost in lives lost, and the physical and emotional aftermath for survivors. This new edition is extensively illustrated with photos and artists' drawings and paintings.

The predictions of the war 'being over by Christmas' turned out to be far from the truth. By January 1915 the British Expeditionary Force found themselves trapped in the murderous stalemate of trench warfare. British troops had suffered badly in the early campaigns and by January 1915 were holding some 30 miles of trench. The year 1915 was to witness some of the bloodiest and bitter battles of the Great War, including the first blooding at Neuve Chapelle, the Second Battle of Ypres and the appalling failure of Loos. By the end of the summer almost 50,000 men of Kitchener's Army had been killed. This book tells the story of the 67 VC winners from this period on the Western Front. Each of their stories are different and 20 medals were awarded posthumously. However, they all have one thing in common - acts of extraordinary bravery under fire.

During the First World War, belligerents infringed on the rights and duties of neutrals, as these had been codified in international agreements. Both the Allies and the Central Powers pressured the neutrals to modify their policies to favour them over their adversaries. During the four-and-a-half years the war lasted, this pressure mounted until the neutrals were left with very little room to manoeuvre. More than fifty years ago, Nils Orvik stated that this disregard for international law, combined with the relative weakness of the European neutrals, spelled the end of traditional political neutrality. Caught in the Middle discusses this thesis based on new research from Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Spain and the USA. The result is the first comparative study in English on First World War neutrality. The contributors cover not only several countries involved, but also multiple aspects of the concept of neutrality: political, economic, cultural and legal. They reassess the notion of neutrality and the role of neutrals during the First World War, making this collection of great value to all scholars of both neutrality, the history of individual neutral countries, and of the war itself.

The Versailles Settlement does not enjoy a good reputation: despite its lofty aim to settle the world's affairs at a stroke, it is widely considered to have set the world on the path to a second major conflict within a generation. Woodrow Wilson's controversial principle of self-determination amplified political complexities in the Balkans, and the war and its settlement bear significant responsibility for boundaries and related conflicts in the Middle East. Furthermore, other objectives of the peacemakers, such as global disarmament and minority protection, are yet to be realised. A century on, the settlement still casts a long shadow. This book, fully revised and updated with new material for the centenary of the Paris Paris Conferences at Versailles in 1919 sets the consequences - for good or ill - of the Peace Treaties into their longer term context and argues that the responsibility for Europe's continuing interwar instability cannot be wholly attributed to the peacemakers of 1919-23.

Vivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler's magisterial history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbours. This first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of the medieval myth of the 'Reich', which was to experience a fateful renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the first German democracy. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people and their own self-perception. With a second volume that takes the story up to reunification in 1990, Germany: The Long Road West will be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand this most complex and contradictory of countries.

The First World War was as much a ordeal for women as it was for men. They were mobilized en masse from the very beginning, at the invitation of Rene Viviani, President of the Council, and actively participated in the war effort for four long years. Those that La Guerre Documentee repeatedly refers to as "substitutes" in its columns made themselves indispensable by the support given to combatants (as nurses and as 'marraines de guerre'), but also by offsetting the deficit of male labour, ensuring the full performance of the country's economic activity. In addition to keeping the home and caring for children, women played a major role during the conflict. By proving that they were capable of supplying men with sectors of activity from which they had hitherto been excluded, they asserted themselves more in society, and legitimately aspired to take a decisive step towards their emancipation. The balance is nuanced, and the famous journalist Severine did not hesitate to conclude bitterly that women were only the "servants of the war". However, it became clear that nothing would ever be the same again.

For thousands of years, men have dragged animals onto the battlefield. The Great War was no exception to the rule. Even if, at the beginning of the twentieth century, modernity was on the move - trucks, airplanes, tanks - it was unable to free itself from the animal world. Animals of all kinds each participated in their own way in the war effort. Some accomplished their mission close to the fighters and shared with them fear, suffering and death. Others comforted and supported them. There are also those who fed them, and parasites who harassed them. The story of the millions of animals sacrificed in the war is indeed revealing of the reality of the conflict: its harshness, its brutality, but also its absurdity, dramatically illustrated by the ten million animals that lost their lives.

July 1918. Preparing to speak to an eager audience, 61-year-old Teddy Roosevelt receives the telegram that all parents of children who serve in war fear most: His son Quentin's plane has been shot down in a dogfight over France. His fate is unknown. Despite rising fear for his youngest son, Teddy takes the stage to speak to his beloved fellow citizens. It is, he says, "my simple duty." But the speech evolves from politics and the war, into an examination of his life, the choices he's made, and the costs of his "Warrior Philosophy." Overflowing with his love of nature, adventure, and justice, Teddy dramatically illustrates the life of one of America's greatest presidents. His many accomplishments ranged from charging up San Juan Hill in Cuba as commander of the Rough Riders, to facing down U.S. corporate monopolies, to launching the Great White Fleet, building the Panama Canal, and the preservation of hundreds of millions of acres of natural American beauty. And finally, to the vigorous life at Sagamore Hill and his immense pride in a beloved and rambunctious family. Teddy reveals how even the greatest of men is still just a man, and how even the most modest man can grow to be great.

The first comprehensive history of the Aboriginal First World War experience on the battlefield and the home front. When the call to arms was heard at the outbreak of the First World War, Canada's First Nations pledged their men and money to the Crown to honour their long-standing tradition of forming military alliances with Europeans during times of war, and as a means of resisting cultural assimilation and attaining equality through shared service and sacrifice. Initially, the Canadian government rejected these offers based on the belief that status Indians were unsuited to modern, civilized warfare. But in 1915, Britain intervened and demanded Canada actively recruit Indian soldiers to meet the incessant need for manpower. Thus began the complicated relationships between the Imperial Colonial and War Offices, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Ministry of Militia that would affect every aspect of the war experience for Canada's Aboriginal soldiers. In his groundbreaking new book, For King and Kanata, Timothy C. Winegard reveals how national and international forces directly influenced the more than 4,000 status Indians who voluntarily served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force between 1914 and 1919 - a per capita percentage equal to that of Euro-Canadians - and how subsequent administrative policies profoundly affected their experiences at home, on the battlefield, and as returning veterans.

The extraordinary revelations in Traitors detail the ugly side of war and power and the many betrayals of our ANZACs. In October 1943 Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin signed a solemn pact that once their enemies were defeated the Allied powers would 'pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to their accusers in order that justice may be done'. Nowhere did they say that justice would be selective. But it would prove to be. Traitors outlines the treachery of the British, American and Australian governments, who turned a blind eye to those who experimented on Australian prisoners of war. Journalist and bestselling author Frank Walker details how Nazis hired by ASIO were encouraged to settle in Australia and how the Catholic Church, CIA and MI6 helped the worst Nazi war criminals escape justice. While our soldiers were asked to risk their lives for King and country, Allied corporations traded with the enemy; Nazi and Japanese scientists were enticed to work for Australia, the US and UK; and Australia's own Hollywood hero Errol Flynn was associating with Nazi spies. After reading this book you can't help but wonder, what else did they hide?

A memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Junger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but--more importantly--as a unique personal struggle. Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Junger kept testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure.

Published shortly after the war's end, Storm of Steel was a worldwide bestseller and can now be rediscovered through Michael Hofmann's brilliant new translation.First time in Penguin ClassicsAcclaimed new translation based on a new authoritative textWidely viewed as the best account ever written of fighting in World War I

Between 1914 and 1918, military, press and amateur photographers produced thousands of pictures. Either classified in military archives specially created with this purpose in 1915, collected in personal albums or circulated in illustrated magazines, photographs were supposed to tell the story of the war. Picturing the Western Front argues that photographic practices also shaped combatants and civilians' war experiences. Doing photography (taking pictures, posing for them, exhibiting, cataloguing and looking at them) allowed combatants and civilians to make sense of what they were living through. Photography mattered because it enabled combatants and civilians to record events, establish or reinforce bonds with one another, represent bodies, place people and events in imaginative geographies and making things visible, while making others, such as suicide, invisible. Photographic practices became, thus, frames of experience. -- .

The offensive on the Somme took place between July and November 1916 and is perhaps the most iconic battle of the Great War. It was there that Kitchener s famous Pals Battalions were first sent into action en masse and it was a battlefield where many of the dreams and aspirations of a nation, hopeful of victory, were agonizingly dashed. Because of its legendary status, the Somme has been the subject of many books, and many more will come out next year. However, nothing has ever been published on the Battle in which the soldiers own photographs have been used to illustrate both the campaign s extraordinary comradeship and its carnage."

This is the story of the small east coast town of Hornsea during and after the Great War. The war touched every aspect of life on the home Front and those who were left behind suffered terribly as the war dragged on. This study meticulously explores the problems, hardships and grief faced by the people of Hornsea and is a microcosm of the experience of the nation generally. Chapters one to five cover the experience of the population at home, many Hornsea families were interviewed by the author over a number of years and their photographs and memories' bring the text to life. Diaries and letters found in archives and in the possession of the people of Hornsea and surrounding areas highlight events that have long been forgotten, guns placed along the cliff top, Zeppelins roaring over Hornsea on their way to bomb Hull and the resulting chaos as anti-aircraft guns and searchlights lit up the night sky over Hornsea. The sky over Hull glowed red and the explosions of bombs and guns could be seen and heard clearly from Hornsea, after the raid the Zeppelins would roar over Hornsea once again with the resulting chaos of noise and lights, releasing any bombs they had not dropped on Hull. Eye witness accounts of these Zeppelin raids are featured in the text. Recruits were being trained in the town throughout the war and in the Hornsea Drill Hall one night a rifle was discharged by accident and blew the arm off one young man, the nurse who had to help hold him down as they amputated what was left of his arm has left a graphic description of her gruesome nights work. Thousands of troops were stationed in Hornsea and its surrounding areas to train, many of them met their future wives there. Others died in training of a number of ailments, one young man who could not take the strain anymore committed suicide, these men are all buried in Hornsea and the author has researched them all, even though they were not from that town. Many such unusual stories fill the first five chapters, from spy scares to people prosecuted for profiteering or ignoring the black-out regulations. The photographs of all these people give an added poignancy to their story. Chapter six delves into the aftermath of the Great War with its legacy of grief and men badly damaged mentally and physically. The maimed could be seen on the streets and many felt bitter about their treatment when they returned home, no "Land fit for Heroes" for them. One young officer commented in a letter to his friend in Hornsea: "I feel I have been a business weed all my life, it's a sad end to a military career. I suppose they won't want us till the next war, then we shall be somebody once again". Prophetic words indeed. In chapter seven all the men on the Hornsea War Memorial are featured with portraits of the Fallen and of their families. Each family history is gone into in great detail and provides an insight of how people lived before the war. Their living relatives gave information and photographs that have been carefully kept in their own family archives and now those that were once mere names on a memorial live again within the pages of this study. In chapter eight the author has sought out all of the Hornsea Great War Memorials in Churches, Chapels and clubs. After the war the Hornsea Council decided not to have a public war memorial but to build something that would be of use to future generations and stand as a memorial to those who never came home. The Hornsea Cottage Hospital was opened in the 1920s and is still in use today with numerous additions to its structure. In 2008 a War Memorial was dedicated to the men of WW1 and WW2, it is a large black granite block with all the men's names engraved in gold leaf. It is situated in the Memorial Gardens, New Road, Hornsea. One hundred years after the Great War ended the names of the Fallen are now on display for all to see. In 1918 and 1919 Hornsea men who had served throughout the war came home only to die in the terrible influenza epidemic that was raging world-wide. One man was on his way home after being a Prisoner of War for three years and died on board ship in 1919, he is buried in Denmark. Another died at sea during the Russian War of Intervention in 1920 and is buried in the same Danish cemetery. Chapter nine deals with all Great War burials in Hornsea that are of men from other counties. In 1919 the body of a seaman was washed ashore in Hornsea, he had been on a war ship that was clearing the North Sea of mines and fell overboard, he is buried in Southgate Cemetery, Hornsea. The histories of the men from other counties is researched meticulously and the author has left no stone unturned to find out their sad and deeply moving stories. As is the case on all war memorials in Britain after the Great War many men were missed off the memorial for a number of reasons. The author has traced many such men who should be on the Hornsea War Memorial but have been omitted and has researched them and their families. They are covered in great detail in chapter ten, some with photographs. Hornsea researchers have in the past traced a number of men with links to Hornsea, some lived there before the war, some were educated there and others were born there or had relatives that lived there. The author has researched all these men and their families, those found with a link to Hornsea but not entitled to be listed on the Hornsea War Memorial feature in chapter eleven. This is the only wide ranging history of Hornsea and the Great War, it does not focus solely on the war dead but is a history of the civilian population as well. The grief felt by the Great War generation of Hornsea has now mellowed to a distant memory of sacrifice and loss, but at the time of the war the loss of sons, brothers and fathers was crushing in its enormity as ordinary folk tried to come to terms with the fact that loved ones once present were present no more. They looked out onto a world greatly changed from the one they knew. Their viewpoint is impossible for most of us now to share as they came together to cope with the emptiness, the nothingness of loss in war. The smaller Hornsea memorials kept in churches freeze in time a record of human suffering and the harsh reality of life and death in wartime. We now see these memorials with a hurried glance as relics of a bygone age, but after the war they would have been highly visible and arresting to all with their clarion call to the faithful to remember. The Hornsea Great War generation has now passed into history and with them went the grief and pain felt by all families, their memorials now stand as a silent witness to momentous events that are little known to the majority of the public today. Each day since the end of the Great War the cycle of renewal and healing has continued, the record left by the people of Hornsea stands as testament to that generosity of the human spirit that can, and must, transcend the obscenity of war.

Through close readings of poems covering the span of Georg Trakl's lyric output, this study traces the evolution of his strangely mild and beautiful vision of the end of days. Like much German-language poetry of the years preceding the First World War, the poems of Georg Trakl (1887-1914) are imbued with a sense of historical crisis, but what sets his work apart is the mildness and restraint of his images of universal disintegration. Trakl typically couched his vision of the end of days in images of migrating birds, abandoned houses, and closing eyelids, making his poetry at once apocalyptic, rustic, and intimate. The argument made in this study is that this vision amounts to a unitary worldview with tightly interwoven affective, ethical, social, historical, and cosmological dimensions. Often termed hermetic and obscure, Trakl's poems become more accessible when viewed in relation to the evolution of his methods and concerns across different phases, and the idiosyncrasies of his strangely beautiful later works make sense as elements of a sophisticated system of expression committed to "truth" as a transcendental order. Through close readings of poems covering the span of his lyric output, this study traces the evolution of Trakl's distinctive style and themes while attending closely to biographical and cultural contexts.

This memoir is perhaps one of the most immediate and vivid recollections of life in a Royal Navy battlecruiser to come out of World War I. John Muir, a surgeon, was the senior medical officer aboard HMS Tiger from her commissioning in October 1914 until his departure in the autumn of 1916 when she was then undergoing repairs at Rosyth to the damage incurred at the battle of Jutland in June that year. Vivid, authoritative, empathetic and beautifully written, this memoir takes the reader right to the center of the action in the first years of the war. But more than a narrative of events, his story is also one about the officers and men who were his comrades in those years; about their qualities, their anxieties and the emotional dimension of their experiences. His insights are those of a man trained to understand the human heart, and they bring vividly to life a generation of men who fought at sea more than one hundred years ago. This is a spellbinding and gripping memoir, brought to a new audience in a handsome collectors' edition for the first time since its publication in 1936.