British Battalions on the Western Front
British Battalions on the Western Front

Author: Ray Westlake

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2000-11-12

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1783379960

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The author's previous three books in this series—British Battalions on the Somme, 1916, British Regiments at Gallipoli andBritish Battalions in France and Belgium, 1914 have achieved all that they set out to do. On the historical side it is now agreed by a large number of grateful historians, researchers, museum curators, librarians etc. that for the first time they are able to establish quickly and conveniently what part each unit played in these important campaigns. It was also intended to provide family historians with a means of tracing the war service of their relatives. This again has been accomplished. British Battalions in France and Belgium, January- June, 1915 sets out with the same objectives in mind, on this occasion providing a unique account of the 291 infantry battalions of the British Army that served in France and Belgium from 1st January to the end of June, 1915. Over 500 volumes of war diaries and unit histories have been consulted, along with personal memoirs and diaries. Detailed records of movements, both in and out of battle areas and on a day-by-day basis, being covered in the same meticulous style as before.

The British Army and the First World War
The British Army and the First World War

Author: Ian Beckett

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-05-25

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 1107005779

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A comprehensive new history of the shaping and performance of the British army during the First World War.

The British Army in World War I (1)
The British Army in World War I (1)

Author: Mike Chappell

Publisher: Osprey Publishing

Published: 2003-09-25

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781841763996

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At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the British Army was unique: it was a small force raised entirely by voluntary recruitment. The first campaigns of the British Expeditionary Force brought admiration from the enemy, but by the end of 1914 it had been virtually eliminated. Kitchener's call for new volunteers drew such a patriotic response that by mid-1916 the BEF had grown to 55 divisions. This book explains and llustrates the uniform, equipment and organization of the British Army up to the end of the battle of the Somme.

Poppies
Poppies

Author: Imperial War Museum

Publisher: Imperial War Museums

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781904897514

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The major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London marked one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by artists Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies progressively filled the Tower's famous moat between 17 July and 11 November 2014. Each poppy represented a British military fatality during the war. The poppies encircled the iconic landmark, creating a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower, which attracted more than 5 million visitors. The scale of the installation was intended to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary and create a powerful visual commemoration. Featuring forewords by Paul Cummins and Tom Piper and stunning photography of the installation, The Poppies: Blood Red Lands and Seas of Red is the only official publication to mark this landmark event. As thousands of the poppies used in the installation tour the country during the remainder of the First World War Centenary, this publication will undoubtedly prove popular with visitors to both the Tower and the new venues alike.

The British Army in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918
The British Army in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918

Author: Paul Knight

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2013-08-09

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0786470496

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When war broke out between the British and Turkish empires in 1914, the 6th (Poona) Division sailed from India to Basra to bolster Britain's allies, deny the port to enemy shipping, and secure Britain's Persian oil supplies. Further expansion followed: the capture of Al-Amara was the British Army's greatest victory of 1915. When an advance on Baghdad was repulsed, the Siege of Kut became the British Army's longest siege and greatest surrender. Attempts to relieve Kut led to unsuccessful battles that were bloody and muddy even by Western Front standards. Under new leadership, revitalized and reinforced, the British avenged their defeat when Baghdad was captured in March 1917. Thereafter, the British Empire committed, in campaigns of limited value to the overall war effort, huge levels of manpower and materiel desperately needed elsewhere. What was created was modern Iraq and the first Arab government in Baghdad in over 400 years. This detailed history places the campaign in context of Allied operations in the Middle East and sheds light on several unsung heroes of the war, including General Charles Townshend whose spectacular 1915 victories led to humiliating defeat and captivity in 1916; General Frederick Stanley Maude whose March 1917 entry into Baghdad preceded General Allenby's entry into Jerusalem by eight months; and Miss Gertrude Bell, a "female Lawrence of Arabia" who played a central role in the creation of the new Iraqi state.

Duty Nobly Done
Duty Nobly Done

Author: Rodney Ashwood

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781911512172

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While the main emphasis of the Great War was on the Western Front of France and Belgium, the British Army also took part in what was a lesser known conflict, but one of equal intensity and drama. This was at Gallipoli, on the shores of Turkey, between April 1915 and January 1916. By December 1914, the war on the Western Front had ground to a halt in a stalemate of trench warfare, and Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a strategy to take Turkey, a German ally, out of the war. This could force Germany to fight on two fronts and could free up the Dardanelles waterway at Gallipoli. While the concept was sound, its execution was not, as it was hastily planned, and inadequately resourced. The 2nd Battalion the South Wales Borderers was present throughout the whole campaign and was the only Welsh battalion to take part in the amphibious assault on 25 April 1915. Other historians give little credence to the success of the battalion on that day and this book sets out to redress the balance. The 4th Battalion landed at Gallipoli a few months later, to take part in the second main offensive, at Suvla Bay, in August 1915. This campaign took part amidst the most appalling conditions, such as the unrelenting heat of a mediterranean summer, a lack of water, poor food, inadequate equipment and without proper sanitation. Sickness and disease were rife, and at the height of the war there were up to 5,000 cases of dysentery a week. Both battalions of this famous Welsh regiment endured the privations of the campaign with great stoicism, courage and dignity and were amongst the last soldiers to leave the peninsula during the final evacuation in January 1916. By a clever weave of official records and personal anecdotes, most of which have never been published before, the reader is taken on a journey of highs and lows, depicting the reality of life on active service. Meticulously researched and written, this is a personal account of the South Wales Borderers during the Gallipoli campaign which adds an important social dimension to the traditional style of books already written on one of the most dramatic campaigns in British military history. Some of the best, toughest and most generous soldiers in the British army come from Wales. This book serves as a tribute to those magnificent soldiers.

British Infantry Battalion Commanders in the First World War
British Infantry Battalion Commanders in the First World War

Author: Peter E. Hodgkinson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1317171918

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Recent studies of the British Army during the First World War have fundamentally overturned historical understandings of its strategy and tactics, yet the chain of command that linked the upper echelons of GHQ to the soldiers in the trenches remains poorly understood. In order to reconnect the lines of communication between the General Staff and the front line, this book examines the British army’s commanders at battalion level, via four key questions: (i) How and where resources were found from the small officer corps of 1914 to cope with the requirement for commanding officers (COs) in the expanding army; (ii) What was the quality of the men who rose to command; (iii) Beyond simple overall quality, exactly what qualities were perceived as making an effective CO; and (iv) To what extent a meritocracy developed in the British army by the Armistice. Based upon a prosopographical analysis of a database over 4,000 officers who commanded infantry battalions during the war, the book tackles one of the central historiographical issues pertaining to the war: the qualities of the senior British officer. In so doing it challenges lingering popular conceptions of callous incompetence, as well more scholarly criticism that has derided the senior British officer, but has done so without a data-driven perspective. Through his thorough statistical analysis Dr Peter Hodgkinson adds a valuable new perspective to the historical debate underway regarding the nature of British officers during the extraordinary expansion of the Army between 1914 and 1918, and the remarkable, yet often forgotten, British victories of The Hundred Days.

Zeppelin Inferno
Zeppelin Inferno

Author: Ian Castle

Publisher: Frontline Books

Published: 2022-05-31

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 1399093932

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At the beginning of 1916, as the world entered the second full year of global conflict, the cities, towns and villages of Britain continued to lay vulnerable to aerial bombardment. Throughout that period German Zeppelin airships and seaplanes had come and gone at will, their most testing opposition provided by the British weather as the country’s embryonic defences struggled to come to terms with this first ever assault from the air. Britain’s civilians were now standing on the frontline — the Home Front — like the soldiers who had marched off to war. But early in 1916 responsibility for Britain’s aerial defence passed from the Admiralty to the War Office and, as German air attacks intensified, new ideas and plans made dramatic improvements to Britain’s aerial defence capability. While this new system could give early warning of approaching raiders, there was a lack of effective weaponry with which to engage them when they arrived. Behind the scenes, however, three individuals, each working independently, were striving for a solution. The results of their work were spectacular; it lifted the mood of the nation and dramatically changed the way this campaign was fought over Britain. The German air campaign against Britain in the First World War was the first sustained strategic aerial bombing campaign in history. Despite this, it has become forgotten against the enormity of the Blitz of the Second World War, although for those caught up in the tragedy of these raids, the impact was every bit as devastating. In Zeppelin Inferno Ian Castle tells the full story of the 1916 raids in unprecedented detail in what is the second book in a trilogy that will reveal the complete story of Britain’s ‘Forgotten Blitz’.

Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919
Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919

Author: G.W.L. Nicholson

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2015-11-01

Total Pages: 709

ISBN-13: 0773597905

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Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson's Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 was first published by the Department of National Defence in 1962 as the official history of the Canadian Army’s involvement in the First World War. Immediately after the war ended Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid made a first attempt to write an official history of the war, but the ill-fated project produced only the first of an anticipated eight volumes. Decades later, G.W.L. Nicholson - already the author of an official history of the Second World War - was commissioned to write a new official history of the First. Illustrated with numerous photographs and full-colour maps, Nicholson’s text offers an authoritative account of the war effort, while also discussing politics on the home front, including debates around conscription in 1917. With a new critical introduction by Mark Osborne Humphries that traces the development of Nicholson’s text and analyzes its legacy, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 is an essential resource for both professional historians and military history enthusiasts.