Written just after the heat of battle and in the language of the time, this extraordinarily moving account expresses in a brutally honest and personal way the ordinary soldier's experience of one of the most horrific series of battles ever fought. Fleurbaix, Bapaume, Beaumetz, Lagnicourt, Bullecourt, The Menin Road, Villers-Bretonneux, Peronne and Mont St. Quentin. Downing describes the mud, the rats, the constant pounding of the guns, the deaths, the futility, but also the humour and heroism of one of the most compelling periods in world history. His writing is spare, beautiful in its clarity and heart-breakingly vivid. Quite simply the finest and most graphic description of these actions ever written. Anyone with an interest in war and the ordinary person's struggle to survive must read this book

From a Hall of Fame pitcher to a U.S. president, learn what an incredible impact World War I made on young men and women When it started, many thought the Great War would be a great adventure. Yet as those who saw it up close learned, it was anything but. In the Fields and the Trenches traces the stories of 18 young idealists swept into the brutal conflict, many of whom would go on to become well-known 20th-century figures in film, science, politics, literature, and business. Writer J. R. R. Tolkien was a signals officer with the British Expeditionary Force and fought at the Battle of the Somme. Scientist Irene Curie helped her mother Marie run 20 French field hospitals. Actor Buster Keaton left Hollywood after being drafted into the army's 40th Infantry Division. And all four of Theodore Roosevelt's sons fought in Europe, though one did not return. With World War I as a backdrop, readers will encounter heroes, cowards, comics, and villains who participated in this life-changing event. Author Kerrie Logan Hollihan uses extensive original material, from letters sent from the frontlines to personal journals, to bring these men and women back to life. And though their stories are a century old, they convey modern, universal themes of love, death, power, greed, courage, hate, fear, family, friendship, and sacrifice.

Epitaphs of the Great War Passchendaele is an edited collection of headstone inscriptions from the graves of those killed during the Third Battle of Ypres - Passchendaele. Limited by the Imperial War Graves Commission to sixty-six characters - far more restrictive than Twitter's 140-character rule - these inscriptions are masterpieces of compact emotion. But, as Sarah Wearne says, their enforced brevity means that many inscriptions rely on the reader being able to pick up on the references and allusions, or recognise the quotations - and many twenty-first-century readers don't. Consequently she has selected one hundred inscriptions from the battlefield cemeteries and by expanding the context - religious, literary or personal - she has been able to give full voice to the bereaved. This collection, the second in a short series, will be published to coincide with the centenary of the opening of the Passchendaele offensive on 31 July 1917. Together with Epitaphs of the Great War The Somme, published on 1 July 2016, these books cover the epitaphs of the ordinary and the famous, the privileged and the poor, the generals and the privates and, after a hundred years, give us an insight into what contemporaries believed they had been fighting for and how they viewed the loss of the men they had loved.

At the end of 1941, six weeks after the mass deportations of Jews from Nazi Germany had begun, Gestapo offices across the Reich received an urgent telex from Adolf Eichmann, decreeing that all war-wounded and decorated Jewish veterans of World War I be exempted from upcoming "evacuations." Why this was so, and how Jewish veterans at least initially were able to avoid the fate of ordinary Jews under the Nazis, is the subject of Comrades Betrayed. Michael Geheran deftly illuminates how the same values that compelled Jewish soldiers to demonstrate bravery in the front lines in World War I made it impossible for them to accept passively, let alone comprehend, persecution under Hitler. After all, they upheld the ideal of the German fighting man, embraced the fatherland, and cherished the bonds that had developed in military service. Through their diaries and private letters, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving family members and records from the police, Gestapo, and military, Michael Geheran presents a major challenge to the prevailing view that Jewish veterans were left isolated, neighborless, and having suffered a social death by 1938. Tracing the path from the trenches of the Great War to the extermination camps of the Third Reich, Geheran exposes a painful dichotomy: while many Jewish former combatants believed that Germany would never betray them, the Holocaust was nonetheless a horrific reality. In chronicling Jewish veterans' appeal to older, traditional notions of comradeship and national belonging, Comrades Betrayed forces reflection on how this group made use of scant opportunities to defy Nazi persecution and, for some, to evade becoming victims of the Final Solution.

In historical writing on World War I, Czech-speaking soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian military are typically studied as Czechs, rarely as soldiers, and never as men. As a result, the question of these soldiers' imperial loyalties has dominated the historical literature to the exclusion of any debate on their identities and experiences. Men under Fire provides a groundbreaking analysis of this oft-overlooked cohort, drawing on a wealth of soldiers' private writings to explore experiences of exhaustion, sex, loyalty, authority, and combat itself. It combines methods from history, gender studies, and military science to reveal the extent to which the Great War challenged these men's senses of masculinity, and to which the resulting dynamics influenced their attitudes and loyalties.

On a map the Azores appear as nine tiny specks in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but their location was to prove strategically vital in two world wars The Atlantic became a crucial battleground twice within the space of 25 years, as the US arsenal of democracy' sent firstly stores, arms and equipment, followed by many thousands of troops to fight in Europe. In both desperate and closely fought struggles at sea, Germany sought to stem the flow and thereby win the war, by cutting this vital lifeline, using a new weapon -the ocean-going submarine. In the First World War the Azores became a mid-Atlantic refuelling location, a base for US and Portuguese naval vessels and -in a hugely innovative contribution to the anti-submarine war -for the patrol seaplanes and flying boats of the US Marine Corps. Portugal was neutral during the Second World War but when Winston Churchill invoked a treaty dating from 1373, permission was given in 1943 for an RAF Coastal Command base to be very rapidly established at Lagens. From there convoys could be protected and U-boats could be harried and sunk, so closing the notorious mid-Atlantic gap. Later, it also became an important staging post for US aircraft, as it had been in the previous conflict. The significance of the Azores has been overlooked in most military histories, but this extensively researched and copiously illustrated book from historian Guy Warner provides a detailed but balanced appraisal. The author has had access to archives and photographic collections in the UK, USA, Portugal and the Azores, consulting with local historians to produce a book that sheds much new light on a hitherto under-appreciated facet of twentieth-century history.

Though she only lived to be twenty-seven, Sarah Aaronsohn led a remarkable life. The Woman Who Fought an Empire tells the improbable odyssey of a spirited young woman--the daughter of Romanian-born Jewish settlers in Palestine--and her journey from unhappy housewife to daring leader of a notorious Middle East spy ring. Author Gregory J. Wallance draws on archival records as well as the memoirs, diaries, and letters of Sarah, her brothers, and fellow spies. Following the outbreak of World War I, Sarah Aaronsohn learned that her brother Aaron had formed Nili, an anti-Turkish spy ring, to aid the British in their war against the Ottomans. Believing that only liberation from the Ottoman Empire could advance Jewish settlement in Palestine, Sarah joined, eventually rising to become the organization's leader. Operating behind enemy lines, she and her spies furnished vital information to British Intelligence in Cairo about Turkish military forces and fortifications until, in the fall of 1917, she was arrested by the Turks. To protect her secrets, Sarah shot herself. The Woman Spy Who Fought an Empire tells the incredible story of a remarkable woman who would become known as the Jewish Joan of Arc and the "hero of Nili."

This book offers a global history of civilian, military and gendarmerie-style policing around the First World War. Whilst many aspects of the Great War have been revisited in light of the centenary, and in spite of the recent growth of modern policing history, the role and fate of police forces in the conflict has been largely forgotten. Yet the war affected all European and extra-European police forces. Despite their diversity, all were confronted with transnational factors and forms of disorder, and suffered generally from mass-conscription. During the conflict, societies and states were faced with a crisis situation of unprecedented magnitude with mass mechanised killing on the battle field, and starvation, occupation, destruction, and in some cases even revolution, on the home front. Based on a wide geographical and chronological scope - from the late nineteenth century to the interwar years - this collection of essays explores the policing of European belligerent countries, alongside their empires, and neutral countries. The book's approach crosses traditional boundaries between neutral and belligerent nations, centres and peripheries, and frontline and rear areas. It focuses on the involvement and wartime transformations of these law-enforcement forces, thus highlighting underlying changes in police organisation, identity and practices across this period.

When war engulfed Europe in 1914, the conflict quickly took on global dimensions. Although fighting erupted in Africa and Asia, the Great War primarily pulled troops from around the world into Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Amid the fighting were large numbers of expeditionary forces-and yet they have remained largely unstudied as a collective phenomenon, along with the term "expeditionary force" itself. This collection examines the expeditionary experience through a wide range of case studies. They cover major themes such as the recruitment, transport, and supply of far-flung troops; the cultural and linguistic dissonance, as well as gender relations, navigated by soldiers in foreign lands; the political challenge of providing a rationale to justify their dislocation and sacrifice; and the role of memory and memorialization. Together, these essays open up new avenues for understanding the experiences of soldiers who fought the First World War far from home.

Other Ranks is a First World War classic, first published in 1931 but quickly lost in the wave of war memoirs and novels. It is the fictionalised account of William Tilsley's war experiences through the eyes of ordinary soldier Dick Bradshaw in the 55th West Lancashire Division. This authentic memoir of life and death on the front line begins with Bradshaw's "C" Company leaving the depot at Etaples and heading for their first engagement at the front on the Somme in the Autumn of 1916. Over the next fourteen months it follows the chores behind the line and unwelcome stints on the front line through to his wounding during the Third battle of Ypres in 1917 and subsequent return to Blighty. As well as criticism of the conduct of the war, there is description of the desolation of the landscape and continual conditions of the trenches as experienced by the Poor Bloody Infantry (PBI); wet, cold, frost bite, trench foot, shelling and general life in trenches with continual risk of collapse. War is not a chivalrous experience and his narrative does not hold back in his thoughts and feelings concerning soldiers behind the lines out of the reach of the guns and those at the top. This new edition follows research by Gaye Magnall and is accompanied by introductions from relatives of the three main characters, O'Neill, Magnall and WVT's great nephew, David Tilsley.

1917 was a year of calamitous events, and one of pivotal importance in the development of the First World War. In 1917: War, Peace, and Revolution, leading historian of World War One, David Stevenson, examines this crucial year in context and illuminates the century that followed. He shows how in this one year the war was transformed, but also what drove the conflict onwards and how it continued to escalate. Two developments in particular-the Russian Revolution and American intervention-had worldwide repercussions. Offering a close examination of the key decisions, Stevenson considers Germany's campaign of 'unrestricted' submarine warfare, America's declaration of war in response, and Britain's frustration of German strategy by adopting the convoy system, as well as why (paradoxically) the military and political stalemate in Europe persisted. Focusing on the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, on the disastrous spring offensive that plunged the French army into mutiny, on the summer attacks that undermined the moderate Provisional Government in Russia and exposed Italy to national humiliation at Caporetto, and on the British decision for the ill-fated Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), 1917 offers a truly international understanding of events. The failed attempts to end the war by negotiation further clarify the underlying forces that kept it going. David Stevenson also analyses the global consequences of the year's developments, showing how countries such as Brazil and China joined the belligerents, Britain offered 'responsible government' to India, and the Allies promised a Jewish national home in Palestine. Blending political and military history, and moving from capital to capital and between the cabinet chamber and the battle front, the book highlights the often tumultuous debates through which leaders entered and escalated the war, and the paradox that continued fighting could be justified as the shortest road towards regaining peace.

Following the devastation resulting from the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915, the survivors of the massacres were dispersed across the Middle East, Europe and North and South America. Not content with watching World War I silently from the sidelines, a large number of Armenian volunteers joined the Legion d'Orient. They were trained in Cyprus and fought courageously in Palestine and Cilicia alongside Allied commander General Allenby, eventually playing a crucial role in defeating German and Ottoman forces in Palestine at the Battle of Arara in September 1918. The Armenian Legionnaires signed up on the understanding that they would be fighting in Syria and Turkey, and, should the Allies be successful, they would be part of an occupying army in their old homelands, laying the foundation for a self-governing Armenian state. Susan Paul Pattie describes the motivations and dreams of the Armenian Legionnaires and their ultimate betrayal as the French and the British shifted priorities, leaving their ancestral Armenian homelands to the emerging Republic of Turkey. Complete with eyewitness accounts, letters and photographs, this book provides an insight into relations between the Great Powers through the lens of a small, vulnerable people caught in a war that was not their own, but which had already destroyed their known world.

Willie Doyle SJ was born in Dalkey on 3 March 1873 to an affluent Catholic family. Willie entered the Society of Jesus in 1891. taking vows, Fr. Doyle embarked on a period of Jesuit formation known as Regency. Fr. Doyle worked in two Jesuit schools Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College. He was ordained in 1908. His prayerful nature took him into Retreat Ministry after ordination. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are a popular way of praying in our time. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, they were almost the exclusive preserve of priests brothers and religious sisters. The Exercises made such a profound impact on Fr. Doyle that he felt they should be available to the largest audience possible. Fr. Doyle also had a great interest in vocations to religious life, and produced two bestselling pamphlets on the priesthood which were published by the Sacred Heart Messenger. In 1915 he volunteered as a Chaplain in the First World War. His time in the war saw him demonstrate great acts of heroism. His death in August 1917 came as a great blow to those who had known him. He died attempting to save injured soldiers from the battlefield at Ypres. His body was initially recovered, but subsequently obliterated by a German shell. Interest in his life was sparked by a book written by Professor Alfred O'Rahilly, which became a bestseller. The book went on to inspire future saints, like Mother Teresa. The desire to have Fr. Doyle declared a saint received much traction in the 1930s, but it lapsed as the Irish Jesuits preferred to give their energies to the cause of Fr. John Sullivan. In recent years the cause has begun to get traction and a lay Association of the Faithful is working to have it promoted.

Originally published in 1964, this is a critically acclaimed classic history of the military engagements of the Somme that raged from July to November 1916. It tells of bloody battles interspersed with trench actions of dreadful intensity. In addition to the key confrontations, Farrar-Hockley provides a detailed background to the Somme planning and why it failed with dreadful casualties. In its entirety, the conflict along the Somme scarred the minds of a whole generation, becoming recorded by historians as the graveyard of the 'flower of British manhood'. With a new introduction by Charles Messenger, and a touching foreword by the author's son, Dair Farrar-Hockley, this new edition of The Somme is a testament to those who gave their lives on this famous battlefield.

It was a war that shaped the modern world, fought on five continents, claiming the lives of ten million people. Two great nations met each other on the field of battle for the first time. But were they so very different? For the first time, and drawing widely on archive material in the form of original letters and diaries, Peter Doyle and Robin Schafer bring together the two sides, 'Fritz' and 'Tommy', to examine cultural and military nuances that have until now been left untouched: their approaches to war, their lives at the front, their greatest fears and their hopes for the future. The soldiers on both sides went to war with high ideals; they experienced horror and misery, but also comradeship/Kameradschaft. And with increasing alienation from the people at home, they drew closer together, 'the Hun' transformed into 'good old Jerry' by the war's end. This unique collaboration is a refreshing yet touching examination of how little truly divided the men on either side of no-man'sland during the First World War.

This book focuses on how Irish remembrance of the First World War impacted the emerging Irish identity in the postcolonial Irish Free State. While all combatants of the "war to end all wars" commemorated the war, Irish memorial efforts were fraught with debate over Irish identity and politics that frequently resulted in violence against commemorators and World War I veterans. The book examines the Flanders poppy, the Victory and Armistice Day parades, the National War Memorial, church memorials, and private remembrances. Highlighting the links between war, memory, empire and decolonization, it ultimately argues that the Great War, its commemorations, and veterans retained political potency between 1914 and 1937 and were a powerful part of early Free State life.

This book provides a concise set of thirteen essays looking at various aspects of the British left, movements of protest and the cumulative impact of the First World War. There are three broad areas this work intends to make a contribution to; the first is to help us further understand the role the Labour Party played in the conflict, and its evolving attitudes towards the war; the second strand concerns the notion of work, and particularly women's work; the third strand deals with the impact of theory and practice of forces located largely outside the United Kingdom. Through these essays this book aims to provide a series of thirteen bite-size analyses of key issues affecting the British left throughout the war, and to further our understanding of it in this critical period of commemoration. -- .

Traditionally the military community held the intelligence profession in low esteem, spying was seen as dirty work and information was all to often ignored if it conflicted with a commander's own view. Handel examines the ways in which this situation has improved and argues that co-operation between the intelligence adviser and the military decision maker is vital.

The landing at Suvla Bay, part of the August Offensive, commenced on the night of 6 August 1915. It was intended to support a breakout from Anzac Beach. Despite early hopes from a largely unopposed landing, Suvla was a mismanaged affair that quickly became a stalemate. The newly formed IX Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford, failed, not for lack of sacrifice of its New Army and Territorial's, but for failure of generalship. Opportunities were thoughtlessly wasted due to lethargy. Suvla not only signalled the end of Stopford and many of his Brigadiers, but also saw the end of the Commander in Chief, Sir Ian Hamilton. It was the beginning of the end of the Gallipoli gamble and in its own right created a catalyst of disaster that would come to represent the failed campaign.This book adds to the Gallipoli story by recounting the Suvla Bay landing through a mix of official accounts intertwined with a rich collection of the participants' letters, diaries, personal accounts, photographs and maps.

Showcasing IWM's extensive collection, this book includes works from the major artists of the time such as John and Paul Nash, Orpen, Spencer and Singer Sargent as well as other artists who are less familiar to us today. With an introductory essay by the late Roger Tolson, former Head of Art at Imperial War Museums, this book offers an insight into the huge range and power of wartime art during the First World War.

Reverend David Railton MC served as a chaplain on the Western Front during World War I. Attached to three divisions between 1916 and 1918, Railton supported the soldiers in their worst moments, he buried the fallen, comforted the wounded, wrote to the families of the missing and killed, and helped the survivors to remember and mark the loss of their comrades so that they were able to carry on. He was with his men at many battles, including High Wood, the Aisne and Passchendaele; he received the Military Cross for rescuing an officer and two men under heavy fire on the Somme. It was Railton's idea to bring home the body of an unidentified fallen comrade from the battlefields to be buried in Westminster Abbey, and on Armistice Day 1920, his flag covered the coffin as the Unknown Warrior was laid to rest with full honours. Although suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he returned to work as a parish priest in Margate, where he took particular interest in supporting ex-servicemen who had returned home to the aftermath of a terrible war and crippling unemployment. While the story of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior has been told before, this is the first book to explore David Railton's life and war, and of 'the padre's flag' he used as an altar cloth and shroud throughout the war. The flag was consecrated a year after the burial of the Unknown Warrior and hangs in Westminster Abbey to this day. This book explains how the idea came out of Railton's traumatic experiences on the Western front, and how he made his idea become reality, drawing on his letters and unpublished papers.

This revised guide to the Canadian battlefields of the First World War in France and Belgium offers a brief, critical history of the war and of Canada's contribution, drawing attention to the best recent books on the subject. It focuses on the Ypres Salient, Passchendaele, Vimy, and the "Hundred Days" battles and considers lesser-known battlefields as well. Battle maps, contemporary maps, photographs, war art, and tourist information enhance the reader experience. In addition to its new look, this second edition features new photographs, maps, and a more-detailed history section. A new "Walking the Battlefields" feature allows visitors to follow the path of Canadian troops as they fought at Ypres, the St. Eloi Craters, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and Bourlon Wood through detailed maps and unit-level text. The tour sections and references have also been updated to reflect recent developments in writing about the Great War in Canada. The Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies (LCMSDS) at Wilfrid Laurier University exists to foster research, education, and discussion of historical and contemporary conflict. This publication was generously funded by John and Pattie Cleghorn.

This book examines the history of Herbert Hoover's Commission for Relief in Belgium, which supplied humanitarian aid to the millions of civilians trapped behind German lines in Belgium and Northern France during World War I. Here, Clotilde Druelle focuses on the little-known work of the CRB in Northern France, crossing continents and excavating neglected archives to tell the story of daily life under Allied blockade in the region. She shows how the survival of 2.3 million French civilians came to depend upon the transnational mobilization of a new sort of diplomatic actor-the non-governmental organization. Lacking formal authority, the leaders of the CRB claimed moral authority, introducing the concepts of a "humanitarian food emergency" and "humanitarian corridors" and ushering in a new age of international relations and American hegemony.