Download or read book Walking into Hell 1st July 1916 written by E.G.D. Living and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-07-28 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1st July 1916 was the blackest day in the history of the British Army when 60,000 unsuspecting men of the British 4th Army advanced into the teeth of a hurricane of German fire. This well-illustrated anthology examines the events of that terrible day from two very different perspectives. The vivid eyewitness account of the battle from the soldier's point of view is provided by Edward Liveing of the London Regiment. After joining the London Regiment in 1914, Liveing was deployed to both Palestine and to France, where he was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. This book describes his war on the front line up until his injury on the Somme.??Also on the field that day and engaged in filming the battle for posterity was cameraman Lieut. Geoffrey Malins, who produced the famous documentary film of the battle. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Malins, aged 28, traveled to the Western Front where he acted as a freelance war correspondent, filming newsreels in Belgium and France. 1915 brought a fateful change of direction for Malins when he was recruited by the British Kinematograph Manufacturers Association to make a film of the preparations and the execution of a battle on the Western Front. This proved to be a dangerous business and by the end of the first year Malins, now with the rank of Lieutenant, had found himself deafened, gassed and twice wounded in the line of duty. Malins continued his work as a wartime cameraman before he was discharged from the army in 1918, having suffered bad health for sometime previously.??These two contrasting accounts provide a remarkable insight into the chaotic events as they unfolded on the battlefield and provide the reader with two very different views of the battle as well as the visual records as produced by Malins, and the other photographers and artists at work on the Somme that day.

Download or read book Victoria Crosses on the Western Front Somme 1916 written by Paul Oldfield and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 546 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 – Somme 1916 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 Church of England and the Home Front 1914 1918 written by Robert Beaken and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2015 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges the tired orthodoxy that the Church of England had a bad First World War.

Download or read book Veterans written by Richard van Emden and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2006-03-19 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the veterans own words and photographs, the book brings to life a mixture of their excitement of embarkation for France, their unbound optimism and courage, the agony of the trenches, and numbing fear of going over the top. The fight for survival, the long ordeal of those who were wounded and the ever present grief caused by appalling loss and waste of life make for compelling reading.The veterans give us first hand accounts of stark honesty, as they describe in many cases more freely than ever before about experiences which have lived with them for over 80 years.

Download or read book Young Citizen Old Soldier From boyhood in Antrim to Hell on the Somme written by David Truesdale and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2012-08-19 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For almost 43 years three school notebooks lay in obscurity in the County Armagh home of sixty two-year old James McRoberts. The closely filled pages recorded just over two years in his life in uniform as he played his part in what was then known as the Great War. During the Home Rule crisis of 1914, one of several in Ireland's history, James McRoberts, like many other men, joined the Young Citizen Volunteers, an organization that eventually became the 14th Royal Irish Rifles, a battalion of the 36th (Ulster) Division. These notebooks, written at the time and with footnotes added some forty years later, record his Army service between 8 January 1915 and 3 April 1917. They tell, with remarkable immediacy, of his time at Randalstown, County Antrim and the move to Seaford in East Sussex. From here, after further training, James moved with his Battalion to the trenches of the Western Front. Written with a degree of humor and some detail his story covers the mundane routine of camp life, recreation behind the lines, the horrors of enemy shelling, the deaths of good friends and the momentous events of 1 July 1916 on the Somme, when his unit was in the thick of the action. On 1 November 1917, while acting as a scout for a night patrol at Messines Ridge, James was seriously wounded and evacuated to hospital - for him the War was over. Nevertheless, he continued to record what was happening around him both with humour and in detail. Classed as 80% disabled, he was eventually discharged and returned home to enjoy a postwar career as a surveyor in County Armagh. This is a remarkable memoir that is, by turns, lively, candid, humorous, poignant, and above all a window into the world of an Ulsterman who found himself both witness and participant to a series of remarkable events. His descriptions of army life, both daily routine and the inferno on the Somme in July 1916, add greatly to our knowledge of this most climactic period of history. David Truesdale opted for early retirement in 1998 and since then has written for films and television and produced two battlefield guides on behalf of the Royal Irish Fusiliers Museum - "The First Eagle: the 87th Foot at the Battle of Barrosa" and "Regulars by God! The 89th Foot at the Battle of Lundy's Lane". He is the author of "Brotherhood of the Cauldron: Irishmen in the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem", "Angels and Heroes, the story of a machine gunner with the Royal Irish Fusiliers August 1914 to April 1915" (with Amanda Moreno), "Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross" (with Richard Doherty), "Leading The Way To Arnhem, a history of the 21st Independent Parachute Company" (with Peter Gijbels), "Arnhem Their Final Battle, the 11th Parachute Battalion 1943/44" (with Gerrit Pijpers). With David Orr he has written "The Rifles are There: 1st & 2nd Battalions The Royal Ulster Rifles in the Second World War" and "A New Battlefield; The Royal Ulster Rifles in Korea". They are currently in collaboration on a history of the Ulster Volunteer Force and 36th Ulster Division, 1913-1919. For relaxation he paints in watercolours following the Kelly school of innovation, photographs wildlife, listens to good music, drinks red wine and finds that Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751) and his Oboe Concerto in D Minor, Op.9, No2, has been an inspiration during difficult times in any manuscript.

Download or read book Eye Deep in Hell written by John Ellis and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1989-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed reconstruction of life and death in the trenches of World War I, describing the construction and physical and spiritual environment of the trenches and the soldiers' daily routine.

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 265 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 Somme written by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of battles as the irreducible building blocks of war demands a single verdict of each campaign—victory, defeat, stalemate. But this kind of accounting leaves no room to record the nuances and twists of actual conflict. In Somme: Into the Breach, the noted military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore shows that by turning our focus to stories of the front line—to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph—we can counter, and even change, familiar narratives. Planned as a decisive strike but fought as a bloody battle of attrition, the Battle of the Somme claimed over a million dead or wounded in months of fighting that have long epitomized the tragedy and folly of World War I. Yet by focusing on the first-hand experiences and personal stories of both Allied and enemy soldiers, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore defies the customary framing of incompetent generals and senseless slaughter. In its place, eyewitness accounts relive scenes of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, as soldiers ordered “over the top” ventured into No Man’s Land and enemy trenches, where they met a hail of machine-gun fire, thickets of barbed wire, and exploding shells. Rescuing from history the many forgotten heroes whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.

Download or read book Walking the Somme written by Paul Reed and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of the classic WWI battlefield guide is updated with current information and a new walking tour through Mametz Wood. Paul Reed’s Walking the Somme is an essential traveling companion for anyone visiting the site of the 1916 Battle of the Somme. It distills a lifetime of research into the battle and the landscape over which it was fought. Combining expert insight, historical context and practical information, Reed guides visitors on walks through Gommecourt, Serre, Beaumont-Hamel and Thiepval to Montauban, High Wood, Delville Wood and Flers. The fifteen original walking tours have been fully revised and updated. There is also a new walking tour tracing the operations around Mametz Wood. Walking the Somme brings the visitor not only to the places where the armies clashed but to the landscape of monuments, cemeteries and villages that make the Somme battlefield so moving to explore.

Download or read book The Leeds Pals written by Stephen Wood and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Leeds volunteers who went to War in 1914.

Download or read book After the Final Whistle written by Stephen Cooper and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Britain’s Empire went to war in August 1914, rugby players were the first to volunteer. They led from the front and paid a disproportionate price. In 1919, a grateful Mother Country hosted a rugby tournament: sevens teams at eight venues, playing 17 matches to declare a first ‘world champion’. There had never been an international team tournament like it. For the first time teams from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Britain and France were assembled in one place. Rugby held the first ever ‘World Cup’. It was a moment of triumph, a celebration of military victory, of Commonwealth and Allied unity, and of rugby values, moral and physical. In 2015 the tournament returns to England as the world remembers the Centenary of the Great War. Values of teamwork, respect, discipline were forged and tested in war – and enjoyment of rugby helped men through it. With a foreword by Jason Leonard, this is the story of rugby’s journey through the First World War to its first World Cup, and how those values endure today. 'After The Final Whistle' is shortlisted for the 2016 Cross Sports Book of the Year award.

Download or read book Dathan Charles written by Dione Coumbe and published by Authors On Line Ltd. This book was released on 2002 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A product of an unconventional childhood and unorthodox family, Dathan Charles is ambitious to create a business empire. A concealed mixture of ruthlessness and loyalty, she attracts the unwanted attention of Colonel Heydrich of the SS in Berlin in 1934 and later that year of Gregory Capeto, a notorious gangster from the years of Prohibition. In New York she builds her business against a background of interference from the Justice Department, the Treasury, organised crime and her partners. Returning to Germany, to fulfil a promise to a close friend, she falls foul of the now, General Heydrich. Wanted for murder Dathan escapes realising, without knowing why her uncle, a diplomat has sold her out. He is just one more of the many lethal adversaries who cross her path, whilst bearing gifts. Dathan's life and business interests only survive because of her Byzantine mind plotting a course through the intricacies of a multi-layered existence. As the years pass all the threads of her complex affairs are relentlessly drawn together and she apparently makes full disclosure. All is not what it seems; it is only part of her vengeance against those who would ruin her, her business and family in America and England.

Download or read book Tyneside Scottish written by John Sheen and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1998-01-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although called the Tyneside Scottish, very few of the men who made up this Brigade were of Scottish descent. Many came from local villages or were from the Northumberland pits. They saw action at the Battle of the Somme and after it were allowed to put tartan behind their cap badges because of their bravery.

Download or read book Heroic Option written by Desmond Bowen and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a curious paradox that, while for many centuries there has been deep antagonism between the British and the Irish, the latter have fought the former's wars with exemplary courage and tenacity. This has never been better demonstrated than when, as a result of the Irish regiments' superb service in the South African War (Boer War) at the end of the 19th Century, Queen Victoria ordered the formation of the Irish Guards in 1900 as a mark of the Nation's gratitude. Even after the trauma of Partition, Irishmen continued to serve in Irish regiments in large numbers and the tradition continued today. Indeed during the Second World War a very significant number of the most influential generals were of Irish extraction.

Download or read book A Coward if I Return A Hero if I Fall written by Neil Richardson and published by The O'Brien Press Ltd. This book was released on 2020-05-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IRELAND'S FORGOTTEN LEGACY In 1914-1918, two hundred thousand Irishmen from all religions and backgrounds went to war. At least thirty-five thousand never came home. Those that did were scarred for the rest of their lives. Many of these survivors found themselves abandoned and ostracised by their countrymen, their voices seldom heard. The book includes: - The first Victoria Cross - Leading the way at Gallipoli and the Somme - North and South fighting side by side at Messines Ridge - Ireland's flying aces - Brothers-in-arms – heart-rending stories of family sacrifice - The lucky escapes of some; the tragic end of others - The homecoming – why there was no hero's welcome Includes over 300 photographs and items of memorabelia from the lives of these brave men and their families. An important book that opened up the conversation in Ireland about our role in World War I. Updated, and with a new introduction.

Download or read book The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme written by Gavin Stamp and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-08-06 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edwin Lutyens' Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval in Northern France, visited annually by tens of thousands of tourists, is arguably the finest structure erected by any British architect in the twentieth century. It is the principal, tangible expression of the defining event in Britain's experience and memory of the Great War, the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, and it bears the names of 73,000 soldiers whose bodies were never found at the end of that bloody and futile campaign. This brilliant study by an acclaimed architectural historian tells the origin of the memorial in the context of commemorating the war dead; it considers the giant classical brick arch in architectural terms, and also explores its wider historical significance and its resonances today. So much of the meaning of the twentieth century is concentrated here; the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing casts a shadow into the future, a shadow which extends beyond the dead of the Holocaust, to the Gulag, to the 'disappeared' of South America and of Tianenmen. Reissued in a beautiful and striking new edition for the centenary of the Somme.

Download or read book The Missing of the Somme written by Geoff Dyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Missing of the Somme is part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance—and completely, unabashedly, unlike any other book about the First World War. Through visits to battlefields and memorials, Geoff Dyer examines the way that photographs and film, poetry and prose determined—sometimes in advance of the events described—the way we would think about and remember the war. With his characteristic originality and insight, Dyer untangles and reconstructs the network of myth and memory that illuminates our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.