Episodes from the United States first war in the air
The United States of America joined the Allies in the First World War in April of 1917. While the addition of its enormous resource of men and military personnel was undoubtedly pivotal in a war that had become one of attrition against a much war weakened enemy which was struggling alone, it was inevitable that the history of the American units engaged on land, sea or in the air would concern the latter battles of the conflict. For the airmen themselves, including those of the American 17th Aero Squadron whose exploits this book details, that made far less difference than it would to most military personnel. The air war was new, the flying machines were flimsy and primitive and the business of fighting in the skies was being defined by the young men who fought and died above the surface of the earth. All knew that the life of a pilot was perilous and likely to be short. This is an essential book for those interested in the First World War in the skies over the Western Front-and in the early days of what was to become one of the greatest air forces in the world. Many of the activities of the 17th Aero Squadron were focussed on the Dunkirk front and in its support of the British battle and advances during the fighting at Cambrai. The book includes an interesting view of a low bombing and machine gun attack on the Varssenaere Aerodrome. Also included are many combat reports by the squadron's pilots and these make fascinating reading. The appendices include useful statistical information, an honour and casualty role and a list of those officers and men who served in the squadron.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Prior to World War I, Britain was at the center of global relations, utilizing tactics of diplomacy as it broke through the old alliances of European states. Historians have regularly interpreted these efforts as a reaction to the aggressive foreign policy of the German Empire. However, as Between Empire and Continent demonstrates, British foreign policy was in fact driven by a nexus of intra-British, continental and imperial motivations. Recreating the often heated public sphere of London at the turn of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking study carefully tracks the alliances, conflicts, and political maneuvering from which British foreign and security policy were born.

Nominated for the Longman History Today Book of the Year Prize, 1995The first full-scale study of the rituals with which the British people commemorated three-quarters of a million war dead.Explains both the origins of the two minutes silence and the reasons for the success of the poppy appeal.This book examines how the British people came to terms with the massive trauma of the First World War. Although the literary memory of the war has often been discussed, little has been written on the public ceremonies on and around 11 November which dominated the public memory of the war in the inter-war years. This book aims to remedy the deficiency by showing the pre-eminence of Armistice Day, both in reflecting what people felt about the war and in shaping their memories of it. It shows that this memory was complex rather than simple and that it was continually contested. Finally it seeks to examine the impact of the Second World War on the memory of the First and to show how difficult it is to recapture the idealistic assumptions of a world that believed it had experienced 'the war to end all wars'.

The war of 1914-1918 was the first great general conflict to be fought between highly industrial societies able to manufacture and transport immense quantities of goods over land and sea. Yet the armies of the First World War were too vast in scale, their movements too complex, and the infrastructure upon which they depended too specialised to be operated by professional soldiers alone. In Civilian Expertise at War, Christopher Phillips examines the relationship between industrial society and industrial warfare through the lens of Britain's transport experts. He analyses the multiple connections between the army, the government, and the senior executives of some of pre-war Britain's largest industrial enterprises to illustrate the British army's evolving understanding both of industrial warfare's particular character and of the role to be played by non-military experts in the prosecution of such a conflict. This book reveals that Britain's transport experts were a key component of Britain's conduct of the First World War. It demonstrates that a pre-existing professional relationship between the army, government, and private enterprise existed before 1914, and that these bonds were strengthened by the outbreak of war. It charts the range of wartime roles into which Britain's transport experts were thrust in the opening years of the conflict, as both military and political leaders grasped with the challenges before them. It details the application of recognisably civilian technologies and methods to the prosecution of war and documents how - in the conflict's principal theatre, the western front - the freedom of action for Britain's transport experts was constrained by the political and military requirements of coalition warfare. Christopher Phillips is a lecturer in international security in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.

The war of 1914-1918 was the first great general conflict to be fought between highly industrial societies able to manufacture and transport immense quantities of goods over land and sea. Yet the armies of the First World War were too vast in scale, their movements too complex, and the infrastructure upon which they depended too specialised to be operated by professional soldiers alone. In Civilian Expertise at War, Christopher Phillips examines the relationship between industrial society and industrial warfare through the lens of Britain's transport experts. He analyses the multiple connections between the army, the government, and the senior executives of some of pre-war Britain's largest industrial enterprises to illustrate the British army's evolving understanding both of industrial warfare's particular character and of the role to be played by non-military experts in the prosecution of such a conflict. This book reveals that Britain's transport experts were a key component of Britain's conduct of the First World War. It demonstrates that a pre-existing professional relationship between the army, government, and private enterprise existed before 1914, and that these bonds were strengthened by the outbreak of war. It charts the range of wartime roles into which Britain's transport experts were thrust in the opening years of the conflict, as both military and political leaders grasped with the challenges before them. It details the application of recognisably civilian technologies and methods to the prosecution of war and documents how - in the conflict's principal theatre, the western front - the freedom of action for Britain's transport experts was constrained by the political and military requirements of coalition warfare. Christopher Phillips is a lecturer in international security in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.

What did British combatants wear on the western front in the First World War? From the idealized recruitment images to the coarse trousers and ill-fitting tunics, Jane Tynan retraces wartime culture through images and experiences of khaki. Photographs, newspapers, memoirs, war office documents and tailoring ephemera reveal the impact of the war on the tailoring trade. But the story of uniform also involves the wartime knitting projects, the issue of 'Kitchener Blue', Sikhs wearing khaki on the western front, and the punishments given to COs. Military uniforms were designed to make soldiers of civilian men and to rank them according to race and class, but Tynan argues that neat images of men in khaki concealed the reality that clothing an ever-expanding army involved compromise, resistance and improvisation. Uniforms transformed men and war changed British society. This book tells the story of British army clothing during wartime and offers insights into why khaki has endured as the symbol of modern militarism.

Three hundred and fifty-one men were executed by British Army firing-squads between September 1914 and November 1920. By far the greatest number were shot for desertion in the face of the enemy. Controversial even at the time, these executions of soldiers amid the horrors of the Western Front continue to haunt the history of war. This book provides a critical analysis of military law in the British army and other major armies during the First World War, with particular reference to the use of the death penalty. This study establishes a full cultural and legal framework for military discipline and compares British military law with French and German military law. It includes case studies of British troops on the Frontline.

Piero Gobetti was an astonishing figure. A radical liberal and fierce critic of Italian politics in the years after World War I, he was fascinated by the workers' struggles in his native Turin and by Gramsci's vision of a factory-based democracy. Gobetti proposed liberalism as an emancipatory theory grounded in social conflicts. "Revolutionary liberalism," as he called it, guided his opposition to Fascism and, following his untimely death at twenty-five, inspired key figures in the Italian Resistance. Accessible but critical, this volume is the first English-language study of Gobetti's political ideas and offers a balanced assessment of his enduring significance.

A woman in Iraq
This book of a woman's ordeal at the hands of Arabs in post First World War Mesopotamia (now modern day Iraq) is such a riveting account that to describe too much would be to spoil the experience for the reader. The young wife and mother, Zetton Buchanan, had joined her husband, Captain 'Billy' Buchanan of the RAF, on his eastern posting with a degree of expectation and sense of impending adventure. Nothing she could have imagined would have prepared her for the events that followed. This is a touching and inspirational first hand account of a young woman's ability to cope with tragedy and overcome astonishing difficulties. Although the narrative takes place in the 1920s there is much with the pages of Zetton Buchanan's book that resonates with the experiences of many in this still troubled land. A recommended read for those interested in women's issues.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Three invaluable and exciting accounts of the German U-Boats of the Great War
Following the success of the original Leonaur volume concerning the U-Boat War 1914-1918, the Leonaur editors have brought together three more interesting and vital accounts for the sake of good value and because, in view of their comparatively small size, they are unlikely to see individual re-publication in modern times. Here, in volume two, the first account is the journal of a U-Boat Commander at war and its author eloquently describes his patrols and his attacks on merchant shipping. K nig's account of the 'Deutschland' may be a revelation to many. K nig captained an unarmed commercial submarine until his vessel was eventually commissioned into the Imperial German Navy. It plied a highly successful and lucrative submersible merchant trade to the still neutral United States of America under the waters of a hostile Atlantic Ocean patrolled by the Royal Navy. The final piece in this trilogy of U-Boat accounts is an interesting and immediate account which draws the reader inside the close community of the submariners and contains much vital detail, dialogue and inevitable humour. A tour-de-force for submarine enthusiasts, this special Leonaur edition is available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

This book presents a unique insight into an extraordinary period of European history that had far-reaching significance for British cinema and for the way history itself is represented. The work collected in this volume draws from the best knowledge, enthusiasm and critical insight of leading scholars, archivists and historians specialising in British cinema. The editors are experts in the field of British silent cinema; in particular, its complex relationship to the Great War and its afterimage in popular culture. As the Great War continues to fade from living memory, it is a significant task to look back at how the cinema industry responded to that conflict as it unfolded, and how it shaped the war's memory through the 1910s and 1920s.

The single best work of reportage about the battlecruiser, ever, by a war correspondent who was with Beatty's Battlecruiser Squadron at Jutland. Filson Young: the Bob Woodward of battlecruisers.An excerpt: Here, then, was the ideal type for which Lord Fisher in our conversations had so often sighed; and I was secretly disappointed when, on my mentioning Fisher's name, Beatty merely smiled. And I was still more crestfallen when, a few days later, I spoke of Beatty enthusiastically to Lord Fisher, he gave me a blank, sour look and said: "Really? Never met him."I did not know the Navy as well in those days as I know it now, or I would have been less surprised than I was that the obviously ablest men in control of naval affairs were far from seeing eye to eye with one another, and even (what was more remarkable) neglected to make any real study of one another's aims and potentialities. Naval thought, where it existed, was divided into camps, each one regarding victory over the others as essential to victory over the Germans. Thus Lord Charles Beresford, whose best work in his retirement was his untiring public advocacy of naval efficiency, gave one in private a most alarming impression that the Navy was already practically in German control; and one of his mildest views of Lord Fisher was that he was a madman who, on the eve of war, had deliberately scrapped the majority of our cruisers. Winston Churchill was at one time probably one of the men most disliked by the Navy at large; but when one tried to discuss his administration seriously, one was told stories of his bad manners: as, for example, of his going on board a ship, entering the wardroom, ringing the bell and sending for the Commander - a solecism the gravity of which one must have lived in a wardroom to appreciate. And yet, one felt, it was not quite an argument against his efficiency as an administrator. But all the naval officer saw was a man to whose power our sacred naval traditions were committed, and who apparently knew or cared so little for the smallest of them that the greatest might well be in peril at his hands. The anti-Churchill camp was a very strong one. He, on the other hand, seemed to regard Lord Fisher as a dangerous genius to be caught, chained, tamed, and made careful use of; Lord Fisher regarded him (I am speaking of the two years before the war) as a politician to be fought or flattered, made or destroyed, according to his degree of adaptability to the great purpose.

The twelve essays in this book explore in depth for the first time the publishing and reading practices which were formed and changed by the First World War. Ranging from an exploration of British and Australian trench journals and the reading practices of Indian soldiers to the impact of war on the literary figures of the home front in Britain, these essays provide crucial new historical information about the production, circulation and reception of reading matter during a period of international crisis.

Far from the battlefront, hundreds of thousands of workers toiled in Bohemian factories over the course of World War I, and their lives were inescapably shaped by the conflict. In particular, they faced new and dramatic forms of material hardship that strained social ties and placed in sharp relief the most mundane aspects of daily life, such as when, what, and with whom to eat. This study reconstructs the experience of the Bohemian working class during the Great War through explorations of four basic spheres-food, labor, gender, and protest-that comprise a fascinating case study in early twentieth-century social history.

British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism & Ambivalence, 1860-1914 is the first full-length cultural history of Britain's relationship with Germany and the Germans in the key period before the First World War. Representing a recent about-face in scholarly appreciations of Anglo-German relations, Richard Scully reassesses the assumption that the relationship in the lead up to 1914 was increasingly fraught and reveals a more complex picture: that a longstanding sense of kinship felt by Britons for Germany and the Germans persisted right up to the outbreak of war, even surviving times of acute diplomatic tension. This innovative re-examination incorporates the reading of British images of Germany in maps, travel literature, fiction and political cartoons: forms which have never before been appreciated for the light they shed on this fascinating period of history