Author: Roger Lee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317172116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
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.
Author: Roger Lee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1921941677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
The Battle of Fromelles remains the single bloodiest day in terms of soldiers killed, wounded or missing, in Australia's military history. Remains of soldiers were recently discovered in mass graves in northern France and the final soldier will be laid to rest when a new cemetery officially opens on 19th July, 2010 - the 94th anniversary of the battle.
Author: Roger Lee (Military historian)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315570075
Category : Fromelles, Battle of, Fromelles, France, 1916
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 576
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Book Description
Author: Bernard Wilkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317184920
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Aerial Propaganda and the Wartime Occupation of France, 1914-1918 explores the combined role played by the French and British Governments and Armies in creating and distributing millions of aerial newspapers and leaflets aimed at the French population trapped behind German lines. Drawing on extensive research and French, German and British primary sources, the book highlights a previously unknown aspect of psychological warfare that challenges the established interpretation that the occupied populations lived in a state of total isolation and that the Allied governments had no desire to provide them with morale support. Instead a very different picture emerges from this study, which demonstrates that aerial propaganda not only played a fundamental role in raising morale in the occupied territories but also fuelled resistance and clandestine publications. This book demonstrates that the existing historiographical portrayal of the occupied civilian as an uninformed victim must be replaced by a more nuanced interpretation.
Author: Peter FitzSimons
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0143783300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 817
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Book Description
In the Trenches of Hell On July 19, 1916, 7000 Australian soldiers - in the first major action of the AIF on the Western Front - attacked entrenched German positions at Fromelles in northern France. By the next day, there were over 5500 casualties, including nearly 2000 dead - a bloodbath that the Australian War Memorial describes as 'the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history. Just days later, three Australian Divisions attacked German positions at nearby Pozières, and over the next six weeks they suffered another 23,000 casualties. Of that bitter battle, the great Australian war correspondent Charles Bean would write, "The field of Pozières is more consecrated by Australian fighting and more hallowed by Australian blood than any field which has ever existed . . ." Yet the sad truth is that, nearly a century on from those battles, Australians know only a fraction of what occurred. This book brings the battles back to life and puts the reader in the moment, illustrating both the heroism displayed and the insanity of the British plan. With his extraordinary vigour and commitment to research, Peter FitzSimons shows why this is a story about which all Australians can be proud. And angry.
Author: Peter Stanley
Publisher: National Library of Australia
ISBN: 0642279055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
The Great War of 1914-1918 affected all Australians and decisively changed the new nation. They were 'The Crying Years' according to writer Zora Cross, who lost her brother in 1917. This visual history of Australia's Great War offers a different perspective on a period of time familiar to many. It helps to connect the war overseas - the well-chronicled battles at Gallipoli, Fromelles, Passchendaele and Villers-Bretonneux - with the equally bitter war at home, for and against conscription, over 'loyalty' and 'disloyalty'. Men faced life-changing choices: volunteer to fight or stay at home; join the revolutionary unionists or break the strikes. Women bore the burdens of waiting and worrying, of working for charities, or of voting to send men to their deaths. Even children were drawn into the animosities, as their communities fractured under the stress. Prize-winning historian Professor Peter Stanley of UNSW Canberra uses documents, photographs, artefacts and images from the collections of the National Library of Australia to evoke the drama and tragedy, suffering and sacrifice, pain and pity of Australia's Great War.
Author: Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674970039
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 680
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Book Description
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.
Author: William Mahon
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1473870526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
At the Battle of Waterloo Sir William Ponsonby, a man who the Duke of Wellington stated had rendered very brilliant and important services and was an ornament to his profession, was killed by French lancers after leading the Union Brigade (the three Dragoon Regiments of the Royals, Iniskillings and Scots Greys) in a charge that wrecked a French advance that threatened Wellington with defeat. Sir William was a career soldier who had led his regiment in the decisive charge at the Battle of Salamanca and served with great distinction during the Peninsular War. Yet historians have blamed him because the charge at Waterloo got out of hand. In this book John Morewood uses family sources, including Sir Williams letters, as well as French and German accounts, to restore his reputation and, by shedding new light on the battle, establishes what really happen to him on that fatal afternoon. It is also a biography of a man whose bravery and professionalism distinguished him as one of the outstanding cavalry commanders of the age.
Author: Alexia Moncrieff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108478158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
Expertise, Authority and Control charts the development of Australian military medicine in the First World War in the first major study of the Australian Army Medical Corp in over seventy years. It examines the provision of medical care to Australian soldiers during the Dardanelles campaign and explores the imperial and medical-military hierarchies that were blended and challenged during the campaign. By the end of 1918, the AAMC was a radically different organisation. Using army orders, unit war diaries and memoranda written to disseminate information within the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) and between British and Australian soldiers, it maps the provision of medical care through casualty clearance and evacuation, rehabilitation, and the prevention and treatment of venereal disease. In doing so, she reassesses Australian military medicine and maps the transition to an infrastructure for the AIF in the field, especially in response to conflicts with traditional imperial, military and medical hierarchies.
