The years 1914-1918 cost many lives in the trenches of France and Belgium. Those trenches and the battles that were fought from them are well documented. But back home in towns and cities up and down the United Kingdom death and desperation were also apparent. Those left behind to carry on suffered from harsh winters, lack of food and fuel and flu epidemics. This is the story of the struggles of ordinary people with their everyday lives. It includes the opportunities presented to the criminal fraternity and the contribution that women made to the war effort by filling men's jobs and providing a home for the men to return to. If they were lucky enough to come home from the war.
This regimental history chronicles the Dandy Ninth Battalion Royal Scots from its first forays in the Boer War through the brutal fighting of WWI. After suffering the disastrous Black Week of the Second Boer War, the British Army formed a new Highland battalion, the kilted 9th Royal Scots, which became affectionately known as the Dandy Ninth. It sent volunteers to South Africa and established itself as Edinburgh’s kilted battalion, part of the Territorial Force of part-time soldiers. Mobilized in 1914 as part of the Lothian Brigade, the Dandy Ninth defended Edinburgh from the threat of invasion, and constructed part of the landward defenses around Liberton Tower. They were part-time soldiers and new recruits, drawn from the breadth of society, from lawyers to rugby players and artists, such as the Scottish Colorist F.C.B. Cadell, and William Geissler of the Edinburgh School. In the Great War they mobilized to France and Flanders and served in many of the major actions: in Ypres and on the Somme; at Arras and Cambrai in 1917; and during the 1918 German Spring Offensive at St Quentin. In the Advance to Victory, they were with the 15th (Scottish) Division.
Two years after landing on English soil in 1066, William of Normandy erected a strategic castle at Nottingham, thereby creating an enduring military nexus through to the modern era.On 22 August 1642, in his endeavours to quash Parliamentarian insurrection in the Midlands, King Charles raised his standard over Nottingham Castle, a rallying call to all Royalists to support their monarch. Loyalty to the Crown was, however, divided, and before long Parliamentarian forces garrisoned the castle. Late in the eighteenth century, a town troop of Yeomanry was raised in Nottingham, the foundation of the future South Notts Yeomanry. The yeomanry assisted regular troops by helping restore peace during the so-called Bread Riots of 1795, at a time when many of the towns men had been committed to military duty during the French Revolutionary Wars. Five troops of the towns yeomanry were again called up for service during the civil unrest of the Luddite Riots of 181118. This pattern of service continued over several decades. Evolving into a regiment, the yeomanry were repeatedly deployed against civil dissenters the Nottingham Riot, and the Reform Bill and Chartist Riots.After seeing combat during the Peninsula Wars in 1815, in the latter half of the 1800s, the 59th (2nd Nottinghamshire) Regiment of Foot formed part of a British invasion force into Afghanistan from India, to curb Russian interventionism in this remote and desolate region. The outbreak of war in distant South Africa in 1899 placed enormous strain on Britains military capability. From Nottingham and other county towns, regiments of yeomanry, Hussars and Sherwood Rangers were dispatched to the hostile environment of the African veld. Nottinghams sons then answered a call to arms in their thousands, only to also perish in their thousands on the Godforsaken soils of France and Flanders during the holocaust that was the Great War. Through the Second World War to the present, Nottinghams military units underwent successive phases of metamorphosis from infantry to antiaircraft and searchlight formations, followed by the relatively recent absorption into a regional entity: the Mercian Regiment. Today, Nottinghams castle and surrounds bear the symbols of a rich and diverse military legacy symbols of remembrance, of tribute, and of a tableau of military pride from ancient times.
In Munich in 1920, just after the end of the First World War, German officers who had been prisoners of war in England published a book they had written and smuggled back to Germany. Through vivid text and illustrations they describe in detail their experience of life in captivity in a camp at Skipton in Yorkshire. Their work, now translated into English for the first time, gives us a unique insight into their feelings about the war, their captors and their longing to go home. In their own words they record the conditions, the daily routines, the food, their relationship with the prison authorities, their activities and entertainment, and their thoughts of their homeland. The challenges and privations they faced are part of their story, as is the community they created within the confines of the camp. The whole gamut of their existence is portrayed here, in particular through their drawings and cartoons which are reproduced alongside the translation. German Prisoners of the Great War offers us a direct inside of view a hitherto neglected aspect of the wartime experience a century ago.
Struggle and Suffrage in Nottingham is the story of many women across the generations and their struggle for equality. This was not just a struggle for the vote but also for equality in the workplace and even in their own homes. Women gave a great deal to this country and still do. This book is a celebration of just some of those women whose stories as a whole are too many to tell. We owe our privileges today to those many women who struggled for the freedoms we are allowed to take for granted today. The centenary that is the subject of this book covers two world wars where women took on men’s jobs, with many sacrificing their lives along the way. These women suffered humiliation and force feeding in their quest for the vote and yet continued working towards their dream. This is the first book to concentrate solely on this period in women’s history in our county and shows the struggle women endured at a time when equality was rare among men as well. A woman’s job was seen to be purely looking after the house and raising children. Many men felt threatened by any woman who wanted more. Using many primary sources, including minutes of Nottingham women’s many social groups, this book tells of the women of Nottingham and their work, until now largely hidden behind the prominent men of Nottingham and its county. It tells of their welfare work, their war work, their political efforts and the hardships endured in their own homes. Included are the stories of Helen Watts, suffragette; Lady Laura Ridding, wife of the Bishop of Southwell; Lady Maud Rolleston, who followed her husband to the Boer War; as well as ordinary women undertaking war work, some of whom were Canary Girls in the munitions factories who lost their lives in an explosion in 1918. Nottingham is a city known for its rebellious acts, this centenary in women’s history was no different. This book is merely a place to start when looking at this period in our local history. It cannot cover but a small amount of the work carried out in our city by innumerable women over the centuries.
As modern football grapples with the implications of a global crisis, this book looks at first in the game’s history: The First World War. The game’s structure and fabric faced existential challenges as fundamental questions were asked about its place and value in English society. This study explores how conflict reshaped the People’s Game on the English Home Front. The wartime seasons saw football's entire commercial model challenged and questioned. In 1915, the FA banned the payment of players, reopening a decades-old dispute between the game's early amateur values and its modern links to the world of capital and lucrative entertainment. Wartime football forced supporters to consider whether the game should continue, and if so, in what form? Using an array of previously unused sources and images, this book explores how players, administrators and fans grappled with these questions as daily life was continually reshaped by the demands of total war. From grassroots to elite football, players to spectators, gambling to charity work, this study examines the social, economic and cultural impact of what became Football's Great War.
Nurse Memoirs from the Great War in Britain, France, and Germany examines an understudied corpus of memoirs in English, French, and German stemming from the unprecedented involvement of women in the war effort. Jerry Palmer considers the memoirs in relationship to public opinion, collective memory and other women’s writing about the war. Through close-readings of the memoirs and their contexts, the book identifies themes present in the texts and considers the nurse memoir as rhetoric—examining to what extent the texts are promoting or countering arguments in the public sphere about their involvement or more widely about women’s position in society. Palmer explores the multiple contexts related to the nurse memoirs, including public response to volunteer wartime nursing, the organisation of the military health services of the three nations and their conduct in the war, and changes in the post-war organization of public health services and the professionalization of nursing.
