Steele and his comrades expected war to be a glorious adventure, their personal intersection with events of historic importance. His diary entries convey the excitement that accompanied the passage of the "First 500" recruits across the Atlantic to England and the boredom that followed as the regiment moved from training camps to garrison towns during the first year of the war. Steele's account of the regiment's role in the ill-fated Gallipoli expedition shows how the reality of war transforms individuals, shattering illusions about glory and heroic effort and replacing them with fears of death and wounding far from home. Steele's record of the shift to the western front and the events that led up to the virtual annihilation of his regiment on the fields of Beaumont Hamel on 1 July 1916 is filled with the pathos and irony of war. His diary captures the essence of how the individual deals with war's uncertainties, the terrible possibilities of self destruction on the battle-ground, and the need to control and overcome those fears. The Great War is of special interest to Newfoundland as it was the last significant effort by what was then a small Dominion to assert its place within the larger British Empire. Newfoundland's participation in the war resulted not only in the loss of lives and limbs but to the strains and tensions that led to its demise as an independent country.
Although the United States did not enter the First World War until April 1917, Canada enlisted the moment Great Britain engaged in the conflict in August 1914. The Canadian contribution was great, as more than 600,000 men and women served in the war effort--400,000 of them overseas--out of a population of 8 million. More than 150,000 were wounded and nearly 67,000 gave their lives. The war was a pivotal turning point in the history of the modern world, and its mindless slaughter shattered a generation and destroyed seemingly secure values. The literature that the First World War generated, and continues to generate so many years later, is enormous and addresses a multitude of cultural and social matters in the history of Canada and the war itself. Although many scholars have brilliantly analyzed the literature of the war, little has been done to catalog the writings of ordinary participants: men and women who served in the war and wrote about it but are not included among well-known poets, novelists, and memoirists. Indeed, we don't even know how many titles these people published, nor do we know how many more titles were added later by relatives who considered the recollections or collected letters worthy of publication. Brian Douglas Tennyson's The Canadian Experience of the Great War: A Guide to Memoirs is the first attempt to identify all of the published accounts of First World War experiences by Canadian veterans.
Awash with humor, insight, love, and the heartbreaks of life, An Orchid for a Silver Lining: If the Kitchen Table Could Talk is a full-length memoir beginning with the author’s parents’ emigration from Newfoundland to New York in 1922. Written in a whimsical, observational style and pace, the author details coming of age in Albany, New York, the military service of her father and brothers in WWI and WWII, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s, and parenthood. The orchid is a gift from her first love; the silver lining is a reward of recovery from alcoholism; and the kitchen table is the author’s voice. About the Author Eileen O’Dea Roach is the youngest of nine, lost in the shuffle of siblings, ages spread over twenty-four years. Her story is for those afraid to speak their truth. She earned an AD at Hudson Valley Community College, then a Bachelor of Arts in English from the College of Saint Rose while assistant to the college grant writer during her last year of study. Professionally, she spent years as a legal secretary, legislative assistant for NYS labor union, and is a member of United Steelworkers Staff Union.
World War I (WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War, or the Great War, was a global war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. Over 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war (including the victims of a number of genocides), a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and the tactical stalemate caused by trench warfare, a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the world's economic great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom/British Empire, France and the Russian Empire) versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Although Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary, it did not join the Central Powers, as Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive, against the terms of the alliance. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war: Italy, Japan and the United States joined the Allies, while the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. The trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a diplomatic crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia, and entangled international alliances formed over the previous decades were invoked. Within weeks, the major powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia and subsequently invaded. As Russia mobilised in support of Serbia, Germany invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, leading the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany. After the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that would change little until 1917. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, but was stopped in its invasion of East Prussia by the Germans. In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. Italy joined the Allies in 1915 and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in the same year, while Romania joined the Allies in 1916, followed by United States in 1917. The Russian government collapsed in March 1917, and a subsequent revolution in November brought the Russians to terms with the Central Powers via the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, which constituted a massive German victory. After a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. On 4 November 1918, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to an armistice, and Germany, which had its own trouble with revolutionaries, agreed to an armistice on 11 November 1918, ending the war in victory for the Allies. By the end of the war, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire had ceased to exist. National borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germany's colonies were parceled out among the winners. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four (Britain, France, the United States and Italy) imposed their terms in a series of treaties. The League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This, however, failed with economic depression, renewed European nationalism, weakened member states, and the German feeling of humiliation contributing to the rise of Nazism. These conditions eventually contributed to World War II.
“In June a few years ago I set out to visit some of the World War One battlefields of Europe – the slope and valley and river and plain that the Newfoundland Regiment trained on, and fought over and through and under.” So begins Michael Winter’s extraordinary narrative that follows two parallel journeys, one laid on top of the other like a sketch on opaque paper over the lines of an old map. The first journey is that of the young men who came from Newfoundland’s outports, fields, villages and narrow city streets to join the storied regiment that led many of them to their deaths at Beaumont-Hamel during the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916. The second journey is the author’s, taken a century later as he walks in the footsteps of the dead men to discover what remains of their passage across land and through memory. Part unconventional history, part memoir-travelogue, part philosophical inquiry, Michael Winter uniquely captures the extraordinary lives and landscapes, both in Europe and at home, scarred by a war that is just now disappearing from living memory. In subtle and surprising ways, he also tells the hidden story of the very act of remembering – of how the past bleeds into the present and the present corrals and shapes the past. As he wanders from battlefield to barracks to hospital to hotel, and finally to a bereft stretch of land battered by a blizzard back home, Winter gently but persistently unsettles us – startling us with the unexpected encounters and juxtapositions that arise from his physical act of walking through the places where the soldiers once marched, this time armed with artifacts and knowledge those earlier souls could not have, yet undone by the reality of their bodily presence beneath the earth. In this unusual, poignant and beautiful book, Michael Winter gives us a new way of looking at a powerful piece of history that, he reminds us, continues to haunt our own lives.
The Fighting Newfoundlander is a vivid history of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment - the "Blue Puttees" - and its heroic contributions to the war effort. Gerald Nicholson details the harrowing experiences of the Newfoundland Regiment (the only Canadian unit) at Gallipoli and later at Beaumont Hamel where 710 of the 801 officers and men who took part in the assault were casualties. He also follows them to the Third Battle of Ypres and Cambrai, for which they were granted the title "Royal" - the only army unit to receive such a distinction during World War I.
"Full of the quiet heroism." -The Nation "Stands out sharply from the mass." - The Independent "Strong, vivid, a tinge of humor." -The Churchman In John Gallishaw's 1916 book "Trenching at Gallipoli" we have an adventurous story stranger than fiction; as well as a reliable account by an unusually keen participant of the gigantic failure at Gallipoli. The Dardanelles Gallipoli campaign is seen from the trenches by a man who cares nothing of the why or how, of political or strategical considerations, but who can tell us how the Tommies and the Anzacs and the Macs felt and spoke and did through those tremendous days in that little rocky corner of land, where Britain left over a hundred thousand of her men. Trenching in Galipoli is a purely personal, but valuable, record, with a decided tinge of humor and some occasional flashes of soldier epigram. The author being a Newfoundlander and Harvard student, brings an outside point of view to bear and he has many criticisms to make of the British way of doing things-except when it comes to the actual fighting. When the war broke out in 1914 Gallishaw enlisted at once in the First Newfoundland Regiment. This regiment was sent to England for training and after about ten months went out with the expedition that had for its purpose to break through the lurks at the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople. This expedition did not succeed, but the Newfoundlanders did their part. Of the 1,100 men of their regiment who landed at the Dardanelles only 171 answered to roll-call on the day of the departure of the British armies. This story was written after the author had been wounded and honorably discharged from service. About the Dardanelles Expedition: During World War I, British and colonial forces attacked the peninsula in 1915, seeking to secure a route to relieve their eastern ally, Russia. The Ottomans set up defensive fortifications along the peninsula and the attackers were eventually repulsed. In early 1915, attempting to seize a strategic advantage in World War I by capturing Constantinople, the British authorised an attack on the peninsula. The first Australian troops landed on early morning 25 April 1915 and after eight months of heavy fighting, the troops were withdrawn around the end of the year. The campaign was one of the greatest Ottoman victories during the war and is considered a major Allied failure. In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the nation's history: a final surge in the defence of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. About the author: Alonzo John Gallishaw (1891-1968) was a Canadian WWI soldier, author, and teacher. He studied at Harvard until the First World War broke out in 1914. At that point, aged 23, he returned to Canada and joined the Canadian army in Halifax and was assigned to the Cyclist Corps of the Second Division, Canadian Expeditionary Force. In March, 1915, he asked for and got a discharge, and on April 3 enlisted in the First Newfoundland regiment which was about to cross the Atlantic and join up with the British army. In 1917 the United States joined the war and he enlisted again, this time in the American army. He was sent to France where he took part in several battles. By force of circumstances he became commander of a battalion, joined the United States American Army Intelligence Service and served as a liaison officer with the British forces. Other works by this author include: The Man in the Ranks (1917) The Only Two Ways to Write a Story (1928) Twenty Problems of the Fiction Writer (1929) Advanced Problems of the Fiction Writer (1931)
