Download or read book The Great War Diaries of Brigadier General Alexander Johnston 1914 1917 written by Edwin Astill and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2007-11-13 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Alexander Johnston went over to France in August 1914 as the signals officer for 7 Infantry Brigade. He went on to serve in that capacity with 3rd Division before becoming, in turn, Brigade Major, Commanding Officer 10th Battalion Cheshire Regiment and finally Officer Commanding 126 Infantry Brigade. Throughout he proved himself to be a brave, resourceful and determined soldier. He was always close to the front line, yet his signals and staff duties gave him insights into the conduct of the war at higher levels. Therein lies the value of this diary. Many of the major engagements of the war are covered. He took part in Mons, Le Cateau and the subsequent retreat and advance to the Aisne. The diary provides valuable insights into the battle of La Bassee and the trench warfare of 1915. As a Brigade Major he was kept busy in 1916 with both holding the line (in the face of intensive enemy mining operations) and the Somme battle. By 1917 his work in command of 10th Cheshire Regiment showed positive results in the battalions performance at Messines and gained him promotion to Brigadier General. Within days of taking command he was up at the front line where he was badly wounded. But for the wound Johnston may well have gained even higher command and wider acclaim for his services. The diary is an important addition to the literature of the Great War. "

Download or read book Great War Diaries of Brigadier Alexander Johnston written by Edwin Astill and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Aisne 1914 written by Jerry Murland and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1914 Battle of the Aisne, officially from 12 15 September, came about as a result of the German retirement from the Battle of the Marne, which took place further south as the huge conscript armies of France and Germany jostled for position almost within sight of Paris. By the time the British arrived on the Aisne the battle line stretched some 150 miles from Noyon in the west to Verdun in the east and it was only along a tiny fifteen mile sector in the middle that the The British Expeditionary Force was engaged. However, it fought bitter engagements, which took place in difficult conditions and casualties were heavy. The Aisne fighting was the final attempt by the allies to follow through from the success of the Marne. It also marked the successful establishment by the Germans of a sound defensive line on this part of the front.As seen in 'Scale Military Modelling Monthly'.

Download or read book The Underground War written by Nigel Cave and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first part of a planned four-volume series focusing on a hitherto largely neglected aspect of the Great War on the Western Front - the war underground. The subject has fascinated visitors to the battlefields from the very beginning of battlefield pilgrimages in the years immediately after the Armistice, and locations such as Hill 60 and the Grange Subway at Vimy have always been popular stops on such tours. Three other volumes will follow, covering the Somme, Ypres and French Flanders. Each book in the series has a short description of the formation and development of Tunnelling Companies in the BEF and a glossary of technical terms. This volume looks mainly at the central Artois, the environs of the whole line of the Vimy Ridge to the River Scarpe and Arras. It does not aim to be a complete treatment of the intensive mining operations along this front. It concentrates on mining, in the area of Vimy Ridge, in Arras itself and at the use of ancient underground quarries, taking Roeux as a good example. There are extensive descriptions of mining on and around Vimy Ridge, including photography and explanations of systems that have been accessed recently but are closed to the public, such as the Goodman Subway. The narrative draws on French and German archival material and personal descriptions. The text is illustrated with numerous diagrams and maps, in particular from the British and German records, and there is an exhaustive guide to the Grange Subway. Other sites open to the public, in particular the Wellington Cave, are also explained and put into context. "BBC History - Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail"."

Download or read book Ypres 1914 Messines written by Nigel Cave and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These three Battleground Europe books on Ypres 1914 mark the centenary of the final major battle of the 1914 campaign on the Western Front. Although fought over a relatively small area and short time span, the fighting was even more than usually chaotic and the stakes were extremely high. Authors Nigel Cave and Jack Sheldon combine their respective expertise to tell the story of the men British, French, Indian and German - who fought over the unremarkable undulating ground that was to become firmly placed in British national conscience ever afterwards.At the end of October 1914 an increasingly desperate Falkenhayn, aware that his offensive in Flanders had stalled, decided to make one final effort to break through the Allied lines south of Ypres. Pulling together a large strike force, the so-called Army Group Fabeck, he launched a violent offensive designed to capture the Messines Ridge and to use this dominating terrain as a springboard for a further advance. Inadequately resourced, assembled in a rush, this thrust was soon in trouble. Confused fighting in the wooded areas to the south of the Menin Road slowed the advance and initial attempts to gain a foothold on the ridge failed. A supreme effort by the men of the 26th Infantry Division ultimately brought about the capture of the town of Messines and similar heroics by the Bavarian 6th Reserve Division led to the fall of Wytschaete, but it was all in vain. Yet again a valiant Allied defence had buckled, but not broken.

Download or read book British Infantry Battalion Commanders in the First World War written by Peter E. Hodgkinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book British Battle Planning in 1916 and the Battle of Fromelles written by Roger Lee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the substantial output of revisionist scholarship over the last decade reappraising the performance of the British Army on the Western Front during the First World War, there still remains a stubborn perception that its commanders were incompetent, inflexible and unimaginative. Whilst much ink has been spilled vilifying or defending individual commanders, or looking for overarching trends and ’learning curves’, this is the first work to examine systematically the vertical nature of command - that is the transmission of plans from the high-command down through the rank structure to the front line. Through such an investigation, a much more rounded measure of the effectiveness of British commanders can be gained; one moves the argument beyond the overly simplistic ’casualties to ground gained’ equation that is usually offered. The Battle of Fromelles (19-20 July 1916) was selected as the case study as it was relatively small in scale, in the right period, and retains sufficient primary sources available to sustain the analysis. It also witnessed the first time Australian forces were used in offensive operations on the Western Front, and thus looms large in wider Commonwealth perceptions of ’Bumbling British Generals’. The book follows the progress of the battle plan from its inception in the strategic designs of the supreme commander down through the various intermediate level commands at operational and tactical headquarters until it became the orders that sent the infantry forward into the attack. In so doing it provides a unique insight into the strengths and weaknesses of British command structure, allowing a much more scholarly judgement of its overall effectiveness.

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 Journeys End Battalion written by Michael Lucas and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R.C. Sherriff, author of Journeys End, the most famous play of the Great War, saw all his front line service with the 9th Battalion East Surrey Regiment. This intense experience profoundly affected his writing and, through his play, it continues to have a powerful influence on our understanding of the conflict. Yet the story of his battalion has never been told in full until now. In The Journeys End Battalion, Michael Lucas gives a vivid account of its history. Using official and unofficial sources, diaries, letters, and British and German wartime records, he describes the individuals who served in it and the operations they took part in. He identifies the inspiration for Journeys End and considers how Sherriff delved into his experiences and those of his fellow soldiers in order to create his drama. So not only does the book shed new light on the wartime career of R.C. Sherriff, but it is a valuable record of the operation of a British battalion on the Western Front during the Great War.

Download or read book The Men Who Planned the War written by Paul Harris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Allied victory celebrations there were few who chose to raise a glass to the staff. The high cost of casualties endured by the British army tarnished the reputation of the military planners, which has yet to recover. This book examines the work and development of the staff of the British army during the First World War and its critical role in the military leadership team. Their effectiveness was germane to the outcome of events in the front line but not enough consideration has been paid to this level of command and control, which has largely been overshadowed by the debate over generalship. This has painted an incomplete picture of the command function. Characterised as arrogant, remote and out of touch with the realities of the front line, the staff have been held responsible for the mismanagement of the war effort and profligate loss of lives in futile offensives. This book takes a different view. By using their letters and diaries it reveals fresh insights into their experience of the war. It shows that the staff made frequent visits to the front line and were no strangers to combat or hostile fire. Their work is also compared with their counterparts in the French and German armies, highlighting differences in practice and approach. In so doing, this study throws new light upon the characteristics, careers and working lives of these officers, investigating the ways in which they both embraced and resisted change. This offers evidence both for those who wish to exonerate the British command system on the basis of the learning process but also for those critical of its performance, thus advancing understanding of British military history in the First World War.

Download or read book Conquer We Must written by Robin Prior and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-13 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new account of Britain’s military strategy between 1914–1945, including the two world wars and everything between The First and Second World Wars were separated by a mere two decades, making the period 1914–1945 an unprecedentedly intense and violent era of history. But how did Britain develop its complex military strategy during these wars, and how were decisions made by those at the top? Robin Prior examines the influence politicians had on military operations, in the first history to assess both world wars together. Drawing uniquely on both military and political archives and previously unexamined sources Prior explores the fraught relationships between civilian and military leaders: from Lloyd George’s remarkably interventionist stance on military tactics during the First World War to Churchill’s near-constant arguments with American leaders during the Second. Conquer We Must tells the complex story of this military decision-making, revealing how politicians attempted to control strategy—but had little influence on how the army, navy, and air force actually fought.

Download or read book Fire and Movement written by Peter Hart and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic opening weeks of the Great War passed into legend long before the conflict ended. The British Expeditionary Force fought a mesmerizing campaign, outnumbered and outflanked but courageous and skillful, holding the line against impossible odds, sacrificing themselves to stop the last great German offensive of 1914. A remarkable story of high hopes and crushing disappointment, the campaign contains moments of sheer horror and nerve-shattering excitement; pathos and comic relief; occasional cowardice and much selfless courage--all culminating in the climax of the First Battle of Ypres. And yet, as Peter Hart shows in this gripping and revisionary look at the war's first year, for too long the British part in the 1914 campaigns has been veiled in layers of self-congratulatory myth: a tale of poor unprepared Britain, reliant on the peerless class of her regular soldiers to bolster the rabble of the unreliable French Army and defeat the teeming hordes of German troops. But the reality of those early months is in fact far more complex--and ultimately, Hart argues, far more powerful than the standard triumphalist narrative. Fire and Movement places the British role in 1914 into a proper historical context, incorporating the personal experiences of the men who were present on the front lines. The British regulars were indeed skillful soldiers, but as Hart reveals, they also lacked practice in many of the required disciplines of modern warfare, and the inexperience of officers led to severe mistakes. Hart also provides a more accurate portrait of the German Army they faced--not the caricature of hordes of automatons, but the reality of a well-trained and superlatively equipped force that outfought the BEF in the early battles--and allows readers to come to a full appreciation of the role of the French Army, without whom the Marne never would have been won. Ultimately Fire and Movement shows the story of the 1914 campaigns to be an epic tale, and one which needs no embellishment. Through the voices and recollections of the soldiers who were there, Hart strips away the myth to offer a clear-eyed account of the remarkable early days of the Great War.

Download or read book Challenge of Battle written by Adrian Gilbert and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-02-20 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winston Churchill described the opening campaign of World War I as 'a drama never surpassed'. The titanic clash of Europe's armies in 1914 is one the great stories of 20th-century history, and one in which the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) played a notable part. Previous assessments of the BEF have held to an unshakeable belief in its exceptional performance during the battles of 1914. But closer examination of the historical record reveals a force possessing some key strengths yet undermined by other, significant failings. Within an authoritative and well-paced campaign narrative, Challenge of Battle re-evaluates the Army's leadership, organization and tactics. It describes the problems faced by commanders, grappling with the brutal realities of 20th-century warfare, and explains how the British infantry's famed marksmanship has to be set against the inexperience and tactical shortcomings of the BEF as a whole. However, it also demonstrates the progress made by the British during 1914, concluding with the successful defence of Ypres against superior enemy forces. The author examines the fateful decisions made by senior officers and how they affected the men under their command. Making full use of diaries, letters and other contemporary accounts, he builds a compelling picture of what it was like to fight in the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres. In this timely new book, Adrian Gilbert clears away the layers of sentiment that have obscured a true historical understanding of the 1914 campaign to provide a full, unvarnished picture of the BEF at war.

Download or read book JOHNNY ENZED written by Glyn Harper and published by Exisle Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-27 with total page 977 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Zealand soldiers who left these shores to fight in the First World War represented one of the greatest collective endeavours in the nation’s history. Over 100,000 men and women would embark for overseas service and almost 60,000 of them became casualties. For a small nation like New Zealand this was a tragedy on an unimagined scale. Using their personal testimony, this book reveals what these men experienced – the truth of their lives in battle, at rest, at their best and their worst. Through a comprehensive and sympathetic scrutiny of New Zealand soldiers’ correspondence, diaries and memoirs, a compelling picture of the New Zealand soldier’s war from general to private is revealed. This is not a campaign history of dry facts and detail. Rather, it examines minutely the everyday experience of trench life in all its shapes and forms. Diverse topics such as barbed wire, the use of the bayonet, gas attacks, rats, horses, food, communal singing, infectious diseases and much more feature in this riveting account of the New Zealand soldier in the First World War. It is the story of ordinary men thrust into the most extraordinary circumstances imaginable. Written in an accessible style aimed at the interested general reader, the book is the product of a substantial amount of research. The text is complemented by a range of maps, illustrations, graphs and diagrams.

Download or read book The Times Literary Supplement Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Subject Catalog written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Library of Congress Catalog written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cumulative list of works represented by Library of Congress printed cards.