Download or read book Birmingham Pals written by Terry Carter and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1914, our finest young men flocked to the colors in Northern towns and cities to answer Lord Kitcheners Call to Arms in a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm and patriotism. The Call appealed to their sense of adventure and offered an escape from the humdrum life of office, factory and mill.The new recruits volunteered with brothers, cousins, friends and work mates. The newly formed units became the focus of local civic pride and soon became known as the Pals. The City of Birmingham formed three such battalions with over 3,000 local volunteers. This book tells their story.Birmingham Pals is a story that covers the full range of human experience in war—the highest courage and bravery, the misery and tedium of trench life, the exhilaration, terror and slaughter involved in going over the top. Above all, it is a story of interest to people of all backgrounds and ages, as a tale of comradeship, which, for many survivors, was to last a life time.

Download or read book Current History written by and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 1274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Kensington Battalion written by G. I. S. Inglis and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised by the Mayor of Kensington, the 22nd Royal Fusiliers (the Kensington Battalion) were a strange mixture of social classes (bankers and stevedores, writers and laborers) with a strong sprinkling of irreverent colonials thrown in. Such a disparate group needed a strong leader and, luckily, in Randle Barratt Barker, they found one, first as their trainer and then as the Commanding Officer.As this superb book reveals The Kensington Battalion had a unique spirit and given their ordeals they needed this. They suffered severely in the battles of 1917 and, starved of reinforcements, were disbanded in 1918. Yet thanks to a strong Old Comrades Association, a special magazine Mufti, welfare work and reunions the Battalions close spirit lived on.The author has successfully drawn on a wealth of first hand material (diaries, letters and official documents) as well as interviews from the 1980s to produce a fitting and atmospheric record of service and sacrifice.

Download or read book Rats Alley written by Peter Chasseaud and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 791 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes it possible to comprehend, via the trench naming, the daily life in the trenches, the vast range of weaponry and the lethal nature of the titanic battles. Names such as Lovers Lane, Doleful Post, Cyanide Trench and Gangrene Alley are as revealing as any history. While based upon the British trenches, there is a comparison with French and German practice. While a poignant concordance of suffering and an intriguing study of language itself, this book is also a vital research tool for military and family historians.

Download or read book Hull Pals written by David Bilton and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In response to Kitchener's famous call for a million volunteers, local communities raised entire battalions for the service on the Western Front. Hull folk are reticent people and the Hull Pals were no exception. This book tells their inspiring story of sacrifice and gallantry under appaling conditions. Hull Pals contains a great number of hitherto unpublished eye-witnessed accounts and photographs.As featured on BBC Radio Humberside and in The Yorkshire Post.

Download or read book VCs Arras Messines 1917 written by Gerald Gliddon and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of the First World War, the opposing armies on the Western Front were at a stalemate, with an unbroken line of fortified trenches stretching from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. The Allied objective after the bloody Battle of the Somme drew to a close in November 1916 was to decisively break through the German ‘Hindenburg Line’ and engage the numerically inferior German forces in a war of movement. The Arras offensive was conceived to achieve this breakthrough and was planned for early 1917 after considerable pressure from the French High Command. Commonwealth Forces advanced on a broad front between Vimy in the northwest and Bullecourt in the southeast, with the French Army attacking 80km further south in the Aisne area. Initial successes, albeit costly, were followed by a reversion to the previous stalemate and lead to a change of focus, with an assault on the Messines Ridge, near Ypres, beginning in June 1917.By the end of July, on the eve of the Third Battle of Ypres, a total of fifty Victoria Crosses had been awarded, including many troops from the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Forces. This includes Captain Robert Greive, who single-handedly silenced two enemy machine-gun nests at Messines, and L/Cpl James Welch, who captured four prisoners with an empty revolver. The courage, determination and sacrifice of their generation should never be forgotten.

Download or read book Massacre on the Marne written by Fraser Skirrow and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Massacre on the Marne is a graphic reconstruction of the experiences of a small closely knit group of fighting men - the 2/5th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment - in the Great War. These men were not elite regular troops or Kitcheners' Men - they were Territorials. In many ways they were typical of the men who fought on the Western Front. Using the words of the men themselves, taken from their letters, diaries and memoirs as well as quotations from the reports and dispatches of the time, Fraser Skirrow records how they learnt the painful lessons of trench warfare and became a highly efficient fighting unit. He also records how their hard-won efficiency was not enough to save them, for the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 was their last - in a few terrible hours they were virtually wiped out. This meticulously researched history allows the reader to follow the careers of these men through every phase of the war, from recruitment to the final tragedy, and it makes compelling reading.

Download or read book Before Endeavours Fade written by Rose E Coombes and published by After the Battle. This book was released on 1976-08-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Belgian coast, across the fields of Flanders, over the valley of the Somme and down the line to the Argonne: all the major battlefields of the First World War — Ypres, Arras, Cambrai, Amiens, St?Quentin, Mons, Le Cateau, Reims, Verdun and St?Mihiel — are criss-crossed in this book over more than thirty different routes, each clearly shown on a Michelin map. Every significant feature is described in detail. Since her death in 1991,?After the Battle’s Editor, Karel Margry, has traveled every route, checking and revising the text where necessary, as?well as re-photographing every memorial. Many new ones are included, yet we have striven to keep true to the flavor of Rose’s original concept . . . before?endeavors fade. Indispensable for anyone contemplating a tour of the battlefields in Belgium and France, this book combines the years of knowledge, travel and research of its author, Rose?Coombs, who worked at the Imperial War Museum in London for nearly forty years.

Download or read book The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War written by Herbert Charles O'Neill and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Norfolk Regiment on the Western Front 1914 1918 written by Steve Smith and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Smith tells the story of the five Battalions of the Norfolk Regiment who served on the Western Front using previously unseen photographs, diaries, accounts, and letters. He has also had full access to the Norfolk Regiment Museum archives. It is the men who served in the Norfolks who will tell this story. This book will interest readers nationally & locally as it not only studies the Regiment’s participation in well-known battles such as Ypres and the Somme, but also takes a fresh look at the lesser-known battles fought, battles such as Elouges in 1914 and Kaiserschlacht in 1918. Steve has considered the German perspective too, looking at the men who faced them at places such as Falfemont Farm in 1916. Using new evidence from the Regiment’s participation in the Christmas Truce, he separates the truth from myth surrounding the stories of football played at this time, a controversy that still rages. Steve has walked the ground over which they fought and fresh maps complement this research so the book serves as a history book for those at home and a guidebook for those who wish to get out and explore, down to trench level, the ground covered in its pages.

Download or read book An Accrington Pal written by Steve Corbett and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2016-08-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: September 1914, and the whole of Europe was at war following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his beloved wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914. In France and Belgium, the British Expeditionary Force were struggling to hold back the German hoards as their casualties began to mount. Back in Britain the call went out for volunteers to join the ‘Pals’ battalions which were springing up in the northern towns of England, and one of the first to volunteer was young Jack Smallshaw of Accrington. On 15th September 1914, Jack became an ‘Accrington Pal,’ a member of a battalion of men who are remembered more than any other of the Pals battalions because of the appalling tragedy which befell them on the killing fields of the Somme. On that fateful day on 1st July 1916, the battalion attacked the fortified village of Serre and were virtually wiped out on the slopes in front of the village. Jack was one of the very few who survived. He continued to serve on the front throughout the remainder of 1916 and into 1917, where he took part in the battle at Oppy wood in May of that year. Shortly afterwards he was struck down by a second bout of trench fever and spent the rest of the year recovering in England. By February 1918 he was back in France serving on the front line, but Jack was never the same man. He was in the thick of the action again in March when the Germans launched their spring offensive against the allied lines. He weathered that too, and stuck it out to the bitter end. This then, is the story of a quite remarkable survivor of the ‘war to end all wars’, whose diaries have lain unpublished, in the possession of his family, since 1919.

Download or read book A History of the South Staffordshire Regiment 1705 1923 written by James P. Jones and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Victoria Crosses on the Western Front 31st July 1917 6th November 1917 Second Edition written by Paul Oldfield and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past, while visiting the First World War battlefields, the author often wondered where the various Victoria Cross actions took place. He resolved to find out. In 1988, in the midst of his army career, research for this book commenced and over the years numerous sources have been consulted. Victoria Crosses on the Western Front 1917 to Third Ypres is designed for the battlefield visitor as much as the armchair reader. A thorough account of each VC action is set within the wider strategic and tactical context. Detailed sketch maps show the area today, together with the battle-lines and movements of the combatants. It will allow visitors to stand upon the spot, or very close to, where each VC was won. Photographs of the battle sites richly illustrate the accounts. There is also a comprehensive biography for each recipient, covering every aspect of their lives warts and all parents and siblings, education, civilian employment, military career, wife and children, death and burial/commemoration. A host of other information, much of it published for the first time, reveals some fascinating characters, with numerous links to many famous people and events.

Download or read book The Great War written by Herbert Wrigley Wilson and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Real and the Romantic written by Frances Spalding and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 21st century has seen a surge of interest in English art of the interwar years. Women artists, such as Winifred Knights, Frances Hodgkins and Evelyn Dunbar, have come to the fore, while familiar names Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious and Stanley Spencer have reached new audiences. High-profile exhibitions have attracted recordbreaking visitor numbers and challenged received opinion. In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding, one of Britains leading art historians and critics, takes a fresh and timely look at this rich period in English art. The devastation of the First World War left the art world decentred and directionless. This book is about its recovery. Spalding explores how exciting new ideas co-existed with a desire for continuity and a renewed interest in the past. We see the challenge to English artists represented by Cézanne and Picasso, and the role played by museums and galleries in this period. Women artists, writers and curators contributed to the emergence of a new avant-garde. The English landscape was revisited in modern terms. The 1930s marked a high point in the history of modernism in Britain, but the mood darkened with the prospect of a return to war. The former advance towards abstraction and internationalism was replaced by a renewed concern with history, place, memory and a sense of belonging. Native traditions were revived in modern terms but in ways that also let in the past. Surrealism further disturbed the ascetic purity of high modernism and fed into the British love of the strange. Throughout these years, the pursuit of the real was set against, and sometimes merged with, an inclination towards the romantic, as English artists sought to respond to their subjects and their times.

Download or read book The Royal Naval Division written by Douglas Jerrold and published by London, Hutchinson. This book was released on 1923 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Die hards in the Great War 1916 1919 written by Everard Wyrall and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: