Download or read book The Advance from Mons 1914 written by Walter Bloem and published by Helion & Company Limited. This book was released on 2004 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is an outstanding personal memoir penned by a German infantry officer recalling his experiences during the initial days and weeks of the war in the West, July-September 1914. Walter Bloem was a Captain in the German 12th Grenadier Regiment (Royal Prussian Grenadier Regiment Prinz Carl von Preußen, 2nd Brandenburg, Nr 12 - to give his unit its full title). His narrative gives a superb insight into the outbreak of war and his regiment's mobilisation, followed by the advance through Belgium and France, including the author's participation at the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Marne and the Aisne. His account of what it was like to face Britain's 'Old Contemptibles' at Mons is particularly valuable. Before the war, the author was a novelist, and The Advance from Mons clearly shows this - it is written with a great eye for detail, careful yet vivid descriptions abound and importantly, from a historical perspective, the book was penned whilst Herr Bloem convalesced from a wound he received at the battle of the Aisne. Such was the quality of his writing, that J.E. Edmonds, the British official historian of the Great War commented: "Some of the scenes ... are so truly and vividly depicted that I gave translations of them in the Official History, feeling that they could not be bettered."
Download or read book The Advance from Mons 1914 written by Walter Bloem and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an outstanding personal memoir penned by a German infantry officer recalling his experiences during the initial days and weeks of the war in the West, July-September 1914. Walter Bloem was a Captain in the German 12th Grenadier Regiment. His narrative gives a superb insight into the outbreak of war and his regiment's mobilisation, followed by the advance through Belgium and France, including the author's participation at the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Marne and the Aisne. His account of what it was like to face Britain's 'Old Contemptibles' at Mons is particularly valuable, and was used in the British Official History.
Download or read book The Advance from Mons 1914 written by Walter Bloem and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mons 1914 written by David Lomas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the First World War broke out in August 1914 the Imperial German Army mistakenly assumed that the BEF – 'that contemptible little army' – would be easily defeated. They were stopped in their tracks by the numerically inferior British force, whose excellent marksmanship cost the closed packed German ranks dear. Eventually forced to fall back by overwhelming German numbers, the British carried out a masterful fighting retreat across Belgium and northern France. At Mons, nine and a half British battalions held four German divisions at bay for an entire day. This book examines not just the battle of Mons itself but also the ensuing British retreat including the actions at Le Cateau and Villers-Cotterêts.
Download or read book Mons written by John Terraine and published by Wordsworth Editions. This book was released on 2000-01-17 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twice in the 20th century, a British Expeditionary Force has taken the field in Northern France to fight beside the French Army. Twice, the Expeditionary Force has survived threat of complete destruction. But the differences between the Retreat to Dunkirk in 1940 and the first encounter with the enemy at Mons in 1914 are significant.
Download or read book 1914 Fight the Good Fight written by Allan Mallinson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening’, wrote Churchill. ‘The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed...in fact the War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of fate.’ On of Britain's foremost military historians and defence experts tackles the origins - and the opening first few weeks of fighting - of what would become known as 'the war to end all wars'. Intensely researched and convincingly argued, Allan Mallinson explores and explains the grand strategic shift that occurred in the century before the war, the British Army’s regeneration after its drubbings in its fight against the Boer in South Africa, its almost calamitous experience of the first twenty days’ fighting in Flanders to the point at which the British Expeditionary Force - the 'Old Contemptibles' - took up the spade in the middle of September 1914: for it was then that the war changed from one of rapid and brutal movement into the more familiar vision of trench warfare on Western Front. In this vivid, compelling new history, Malliinson brings his experience as a professional soldier to bear on the circumstances, events, actions and individuals and speculates – tantalizingly – on what might have been...
Download or read book The Retreat from Mons written by George Stuart Gordon and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Marne 15 July 6 August 1918 written by Stephen C. McGeorge and Mason W. Watson and published by . This book was released on with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Angel of Mons written by Jerred Metz and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1915, Harold Begbie wrote, " ... One of the most widely known events [of The Great War is] the appearance of St. George and angel-warriors fighting in defence of the British (at) Mons." After the battle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and W.B. Yeats determine the story is true, with enough evidence to satisfy Churchill. Soldiers from another time emerged from the very soil to support the British and were seen by British and Germans, alike. Among those who testified to their presence was the brother of Lady Doyle, Malcolm Leckie, in spirit, who had died from the wound he received there. The gathered testimony confirmed, even to the sceptic, Holmes, that England had the angels on her side.
Download or read book Breaking the Fortress Line 1914 written by Clayton Donnell and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breaking the Fortress Line 1914 offers a fascinating new perspective on the German offensive against France and Belgium in 1914. In graphic detail it describes the intense fighting that took place around the forts and fortified cities that stood in the path of the German invasion. The ordeal began with the German assault on the mighty fortress of Lige. They took twelve days to batter their way through the 'Gateway to Belgium', losing thousands of men in repeated frontal assaults, and they had to bring up the heaviest siege artillery ever used to destroy the defences.This is the epic struggle that Clayton Donnell depicts in this compelling account of a neglected aspect of the battles that followed the outbreak of the Great War. Not only does he reconstruct the German attack on the strongpoints they encountered along the entire invasion line, but he traces the history and design of these fixed defences and analyses the massive military building programmes undertaken by the French, the Germans and the Belgians between 1871 and 1914. Thousands of huge forts, infantry strongpoints, bunkers, casemates and shelters were dug out along the French and German borders. The German Moselstellung and Steinbruch-stellung were born. These massive concrete fortress systems with steel gun turrets and diesel motors to generate electricity were a completely new concept of fortress design.As war approached, France and Germany devised plans to overcome each other's powerful armies and these border defences. The French plan avoided contact with the German fortress system. But the Kaiser's army faced twelve forts at Lige, nine more at Namur, and then the strongpoints of the first and second Sr de Rivires lines. Clayton Donnell provides a gripping narrative of the violent confrontation that followed.
Download or read book Infantry in Battle written by Infantry School (U.S.) and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1934 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Laughter in the Trenches written by Jakub Kazecki and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives explores the appearances and functions of humour and laughter in selected novels and short stories, based on autobiographical experiences, written by authors during the war and in the Weimar Era (1919–1933). This study focuses on popular and lesser-known works of German literature that played an important role in the socio-political life of the Weimar Republic: Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger (1920), Advance from Mons 1914 by Walter Bloem (1916), The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig (1927), and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929). The author shows that these works often share surprisingly similar narrative strategies in describing humorous experiences and soldier laughter to justify direct violence and oppressive power structures, regardless of the works’ ideological assignment and their popular and critical reception. This book also examines the parodic imitations of All Quiet on the Western Front, the German text All Quiet on the Trojan Front by Emil Marius Requark (1930) and the American film So Quiet on the Canine Front by Zion Myers and Jules White (1931) as significant polemical contributions that use humoristic strategies to stress or undermine elements of the original text.
Download or read book Germany s Western Front 1914 written by Mark Humphries and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multi-volume series in six parts is the first English-language translation of Der Weltkrieg, the German official history of the First World War. Originally produced between 1925 and 1944 using classified archival records that were destroyed in the aftermath of the Second World War, Der Weltkrieg is the inside story of Germany’s experience on the Western front. Recorded in the words of its official historians, this account is vital to the study of the war and official memory in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Although exciting new sources have been uncovered in former Soviet archives, this work remains the basis of future scholarship. It is essential reading for any scholar, graduate student, or enthusiast of the Great War. This volume, the second to be published, covers the outbreak of war in July–August 1914, the German invasion of Belgium, the Battles of the Frontiers, and the pursuit to the Marne in early September 1914. The first month of war was a critical period for the German army and, as the official history makes clear, the German war plan was a gamble that seemed to present the only solution to the riddle of the two-front war. But as the Moltke-Schlieffen Plan was gradually jettisoned through a combination of intentional command decisions and confused communications, Germany’s hopes for a quick and victorious campaign evaporated.
Download or read book The Englishman s Daughter written by Ben Macintyre and published by Delta. This book was released on 2003-02-04 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first terrifying days of World War I, four British soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines on the western front. They were forced to hide in the tiny French village of Villeret, whose inhabitants made the courageous decision to shelter the fugitives until they could pass as Picard peasants. The Englishman’s Daughter is the never-before-told story of these extraordinary men, their protectors, and of the haunting love affair between Private Robert Digby and Claire Dessenne, the most beautiful woman in Villeret. Their passion would result in the birth of a child known as “The Englishman’s Daughter,” and in an act of unspeakable betrayal, a tragic legacy that would haunt the village for generations to come. Through the testimonies of the villagers and the last letters of the soldiers, acclaimed journalist Ben Macintyre has pieced together a harrowing account of how life was lived behind enemy lines during the Great War, and offers a compelling solution to a gripping mystery that reverberates to this day.
Download or read book The March on Paris and the Battle of the Marne 1914 written by Alexander von Kluck and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Boer War to World War written by Spencer Jones and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British Expeditionary Force at the start of World War I was tiny by the standards of the other belligerent powers. Yet, when deployed to France in 1914, it prevailed against the German army because of its professionalism and tactical skill, strengths developed through hard lessons learned a dozen years earlier. In October 1899, the British went to war against the South African Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State, expecting little resistance. A string of early defeats in the Boer War shook the military’s confidence. Historian Spencer Jones focuses on this bitter combat experience in From Boer War to World War, showing how it crucially shaped the British Army’s tactical development in the years that followed. Before the British Army faced the Boer republics, an aura of complacency had settled over the military. The Victorian era had been marked by years of easy defeats of crudely armed foes. The Boer War, however, brought the British face to face with what would become modern warfare. The sweeping, open terrain and advent of smokeless powder meant soldiers were picked off before they knew where shots had been fired from. The infantry’s standard close-order formations spelled disaster against the well-armed, entrenched Boers. Although the British Army ultimately adapted its strategy and overcame the Boers in 1902, the duration and cost of the war led to public outcry and introspection within the military. Jones draws on previously underutilized sources as he explores the key tactical lessons derived from the war, such as maximizing firepower and using natural cover, and he shows how these new ideas were incorporated in training and used to effect a thorough overhaul of the British Army. The first book to address specific connections between the Boer War and the opening months of World War I, Jones’s fresh interpretation adds to the historiography of both wars by emphasizing the continuity between them.
Download or read book The Mons Myth written by Terence Zuber and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional histories of the Battles of Mons and Le Cateau describe how, although the British were massively outnumbered, precise and rapid rifle fire mowed down rows of German troops: the staggering casualties inflicted made both British victories, and set the stage for the Battle of the Marne. But neither encounter has ever been described in English from the German point of view. Using German tactics manuals and regimental histories, Terence Zuber re-examines the battles at Mons and Le Cateau, subjecting British tactics to a critique that goes beyond admiration for rapid rifle fire and presenting new and startling perspectives, showing how the Germans employed a high degree of tactical sophistication in conducting combined-arms operations. The odds were, in fact, even, and German casualties never reached the levels described in the standard histories. ' The Mons Myth' is the first history of these battles to take this approach in ninety years, and completely changes our understanding of what actually happened.
