Kitchener's Army

Kitchener's Army PDF Author: Peter Simkins
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473815797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book Here

Book Description
Numbering over five million men, Britain's army in the First World War was the biggest in the country's history. Remarkably, nearly half those men who served in it were volunteers. 2,466,719 men enlisted between August 1914 and December 1915, many in response to the appeals of the Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener. How did Britain succeed in creating a mass army, almost from scratch, in the middle of a major war ? What compelled so many men to volunteer ' and what happened to them once they had taken the King's shilling ? Peter Simkins describes how Kitchener's New Armies were raised and reviews the main political, economic and social effects of the recruiting campaign. He examines the experiences and impressions of the officers and men who made up the New Armies. As well as analysing their motives for enlisting, he explores how they were fed, housed, equipped and trained before they set off for active service abroad. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, ranging from government papers to the diaries and letters of individual soldiers, he questions long-held assumptions about the 'rush to the colours' and the nature of patriotism in 1914. The book will be of interest not only to those studying social, political and economic history, but also to general readers who wish to know more about the story of Britain's citizen soldiers in the Great War.

Kitchener's Army

Kitchener's Army PDF Author: Peter Simkins
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473815797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book Here

Book Description
Numbering over five million men, Britain's army in the First World War was the biggest in the country's history. Remarkably, nearly half those men who served in it were volunteers. 2,466,719 men enlisted between August 1914 and December 1915, many in response to the appeals of the Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener. How did Britain succeed in creating a mass army, almost from scratch, in the middle of a major war ? What compelled so many men to volunteer ' and what happened to them once they had taken the King's shilling ? Peter Simkins describes how Kitchener's New Armies were raised and reviews the main political, economic and social effects of the recruiting campaign. He examines the experiences and impressions of the officers and men who made up the New Armies. As well as analysing their motives for enlisting, he explores how they were fed, housed, equipped and trained before they set off for active service abroad. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, ranging from government papers to the diaries and letters of individual soldiers, he questions long-held assumptions about the 'rush to the colours' and the nature of patriotism in 1914. The book will be of interest not only to those studying social, political and economic history, but also to general readers who wish to know more about the story of Britain's citizen soldiers in the Great War.

Citizen Soldiers

Citizen Soldiers PDF Author: Helen B. McCartney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139448093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
The popular image of the British soldier in the First World War is of a passive victim, caught up in events beyond his control, and isolated from civilian society. This book offers a different vision of the soldier's experience of war. Using letters and official sources relating to Liverpool units, Helen McCartney shows how ordinary men were able to retain their civilian outlook and use it to influence their experience in the trenches. These citizen soldiers came to rely on local, civilian loyalties and strong links with home to bolster their morale, whilst their civilian backgrounds helped them challenge those in command if they felt they were being treated unfairly. The book examines the soldier not only in his military context but in terms of his social and cultural life. It will appeal to anyone wishing to understand how the British soldier thought and behaved during the First World War.

To Win the Battle

To Win the Battle PDF Author: Robert C. Stevenson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110702868X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1915 the 1st Australian Division led the way ashore at Gallipoli. In 1916 it achieved the first Australian victory on the Western Front at Pozières. It was still serving with distinction in the battles that led to the defeat of the German army in 1918. To Win the Battle explains how the division rose from obscurity to forge a reputation as one of the great fighting formations of the British Empire during the First World War, forming a central part of the Anzac legend. Drawing on primary sources as well as recent scholarship, this fresh approach suggests that the early reputation of Australia's premier division was probably higher than its performance warranted. Robert Stevenson shows that the division's later success was founded on the capacity of its commanders to administer, train and adapt to the changing conditions on the battlefield, rather than on the innate qualities of its soldiers.

Morale

Morale PDF Author: Daniel Ussishkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469080
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Arguably no nation is as closely associated with the term morale as Great Britain. Yet this concept that seems so innate to the British people was carefully cultivated within many spheres of modern national life. In this first critical history of morale, Daniel Ussishkin asks how is it that modern Britons have come to regard morale as a category of conduct, vital for the success of collective effort in war and peace, and a mark of good, modern, and human managerial practice, appropriate for a democratic age. He narrates the intellectual, cultural, and institutional history of morale in modern imperial Britain: its emergence as a new concept during the long nineteenth century, its changing meanings and significations, and the social and political goals those who discussed, observed, or managed morale sought to achieve. Formalized as a new military disciplinary problem during the long nineteenth century, morale came to permeate nearly every civilian sphere of life during the era of the two world wars as a new way of managing human conduct. This book traces how it gradually emerged from a problem that was regarded as residual at best to one that was seen as the epitome of proper managerial practice, its institutional manifestations and promotion by myriad organizations and the social-democratic state, and its emergence as a potent political concept from Britain's social-democratic moment until the ascendancy of the New Right. Daniel Ussishkin's Morale tells the history of concept central to the management of war, business, and civic society not just in Britain but in modern culture writ large.

Redcoats to Tommies

Redcoats to Tommies PDF Author: Kevin Linch
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783276029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of the lifecycle of soldiers, including enlistment, experiences of military life, the soldier's place in society and in politics, and military identity, memory and representation.

Leadership in the Trenches

Leadership in the Trenches PDF Author: G. Sheffield
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230596983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why, despite the appalling conditions in the trenches of the Western Front, was the British army almost untouched by major mutiny during the First World War? Drawing upon an extensive range of sources, including much previously unpublished archival material, G. D. Sheffield seeks to answer this question by examining a crucial but previously neglected factor in the maintenance of the British army's morale in the First World War: the relationship between the regimental officer and the ordinary soldier.

Kitchener's Army

Kitchener's Army PDF Author: Peter Simkins
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719026386
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description


A Nation in Arms

A Nation in Arms PDF Author: Ian Frederick William Beckett
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719017377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description


Searching for Pop

Searching for Pop PDF Author: Michael R. Brookbank
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1789014832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
At the age of 43, Thomas Brookbank volunteered to join the army in September 1914 just weeks after the start of the war and when the wounded from the first encounters with the German army at Mons and Le Cateau were arriving back in England. There was nothing special about Tom Brookbank. He was a painter and a decorator by trade, but he was swept along in the surge of patriotism that drove hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women to respond to the Kitchener's call for the raising of a great volunteer army - an enterprise that most military men of the time, friend and foe alike, regarded as a ludicrous waste of time and money. This much was known by family legend, together with knowledge that he had gone to Italy in November 1917 with the 41st Division in response to the near collapse of the Italian army at Caporetto that he ended the war in Belgium with this Division. Tom Brookbank need not have volunteered at all. He was too old to be fighting a soldier and was well over the age group that Kitchener was calling for, but there was also a need for men in the support services behind the lines - the men of the Army Services Corps - and this is where Tom Brookbank and fellow men like him ended up. Early research showed that he did not start the war with the 41st Division, so, what happened to him, what did he do and where did he go? 'Searching for Pop' is the story of a grandson's search for the answers to what he did and where he went between the time he volunteered and his discharge at the end of the war. It illustrates what might be achieved from a very limited amount of initial knowledge by perseverance and the use of the records available in National Archives.

Building the Army’s Backbone

Building the Army’s Backbone PDF Author: Andrew L. Brown
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774866993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
In September 1939, Canada’s tiny army began its remarkable expansion into a wartime force of almost half a million soldiers. No army can function without a backbone of skilled non-commissioned officers (NCOs) – corporals, sergeants, and warrant officers – and the army needed to create one out of raw civilian material. Building the Army’s Backbone tells the story of how senior leadership created a corps of NCOs that helped the burgeoning force train, fight, and win. This innovative book uncovers the army’s two-track NCO-production system: locally organized training programs were run by units and formations, while centralized training and talent-distribution programs were overseen by the army. Meanwhile, to bring coherence to the two-track approach, the army circulated its best-trained NCOs between operational forces, the reinforcement pool, and the training system. The result was a corps of NCOs that collectively possessed the necessary skills in leadership, tactics, and instruction to help the army succeed in battle.