Boy Soldiers of the Great War

Boy Soldiers of the Great War PDF Author: Richard van Emden
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399011642
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
After the outbreak of the Great War, boys as young as twelve were caught up in a national wave of patriotism and, in huge numbers, volunteered to serve their country. The press, recruiting offices and the Government all contributed to the enlistment of hundreds of thousands of under-age soldiers in both Britain and the Empire. On joining up, these lads falsified their ages, often aided by parents who believed their sons’ obvious youth would make overseas service unlikely. These boys frequently enlisted together, training for a year or more in the same battalions before they were sent abroad. Others joined up but were soon sent to units already fighting overseas and short of men: these lads might undergo as little as eight weeks’ training. Boys served in the bloodiest battles of the war, fighting at Ypres, the Somme and on Gallipoli. Many broke down under the strain and were returned home once parents supplied birth certificates proving their youth. Other lads fought on bravely and were even awarded medals for gallantry: Jack Pouchot won the Distinguished Conduct Medal aged just fifteen. Others became highly efficient officers, such as Acting Captain Philip Lister and Second Lieutenant Reginald Battersby, both of whom were commissioned at fifteen and fought in France. In this, the final update of his ground-breaking book, Richard van Emden reveals new hitherto unknown stories and adds many more unseen images. He also proves that far more boys enlisted in the British Army under-age than originally estimated, providing compelling evidence that as many as 400,000 served.

Boy Soldiers of the Great War

Boy Soldiers of the Great War PDF Author: Richard van Emden
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399011642
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

Get Book Here

Book Description
After the outbreak of the Great War, boys as young as twelve were caught up in a national wave of patriotism and, in huge numbers, volunteered to serve their country. The press, recruiting offices and the Government all contributed to the enlistment of hundreds of thousands of under-age soldiers in both Britain and the Empire. On joining up, these lads falsified their ages, often aided by parents who believed their sons’ obvious youth would make overseas service unlikely. These boys frequently enlisted together, training for a year or more in the same battalions before they were sent abroad. Others joined up but were soon sent to units already fighting overseas and short of men: these lads might undergo as little as eight weeks’ training. Boys served in the bloodiest battles of the war, fighting at Ypres, the Somme and on Gallipoli. Many broke down under the strain and were returned home once parents supplied birth certificates proving their youth. Other lads fought on bravely and were even awarded medals for gallantry: Jack Pouchot won the Distinguished Conduct Medal aged just fifteen. Others became highly efficient officers, such as Acting Captain Philip Lister and Second Lieutenant Reginald Battersby, both of whom were commissioned at fifteen and fought in France. In this, the final update of his ground-breaking book, Richard van Emden reveals new hitherto unknown stories and adds many more unseen images. He also proves that far more boys enlisted in the British Army under-age than originally estimated, providing compelling evidence that as many as 400,000 served.

First World War Army Service Records

First World War Army Service Records PDF Author: William Spencer
Publisher: National Archives UK
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
The National Archives' celebrated First World War holdings include personal files of officers and other ranks, campaign medals, gallantry and meritorious service awards, courts martial and casualty lists. Its remarkable collection has records of Dominion forces and the Indian Army, the WAAC, the Royal Flying Corps and RAF, as well as auxiliary and nursing services. Over 10,000 individual unit war diaries cover all operational theatres of the British Army, while original trench maps illustrates areas from the Western Front to Salonica, Gallipoli to Mesopotamia, Palestine to Italy.

Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War

Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War PDF Author: Vanda Wilcox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316692469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Italian performance in the First World War has been generally disparaged or ignored compared to that of the armies on the Western Front, and troop morale in particular has been seen as a major weakness of the Italian army. In this first book-length study of Italian morale in any language, Vanda Wilcox reassesses Italian policy and performance from the perspective both of the army as an institution and of the ordinary soldiers who found themselves fighting a brutally hard war. Wilcox analyses and contextualises Italy's notoriously hard military discipline along with leadership, training methods and logistics before considering the reactions of the troops and tracing the interactions between institutions and individuals. Restoring historical agency to soldiers often considered passive and indifferent, Wilcox illustrates how and why Italians complied, endured or resisted the army's demands through balancing their civilian and military identities.

Indian Soldiers in World War I

Indian Soldiers in World War I PDF Author: Andrew T. Jarboe
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496227174
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Third place in the 2022 SAHR Templer Best First Book Prize More than one million Indian soldiers were deployed during World War I, serving in the Indian Army as part of Britain's imperial war effort. These men fought in France and Belgium, Egypt and East Africa, and Gallipoli, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. In Indian Soldiers in World War I Andrew T. Jarboe follows these Indian soldiers--or sepoys--across the battlefields, examining the contested representations British and Indian audiences drew from the soldiers' wartime experiences and the impacts these representations had on the British Empire's racial politics. Presenting overlooked or forgotten connections, Jarboe argues that Indian soldiers' presence on battlefields across three continents contributed decisively to the British Empire's final victory in the war. While the war and Indian soldiers' involvement led to a hardening of the British Empire's prewar racist ideologies and governing policies, the battlefield contributions of Indian soldiers fueled Indian national aspirations and calls for racial equality. When Indian soldiers participated in the brutal suppression of anti-government demonstrations in India at war's end, they set the stage for the eventual end of British rule in South Asia.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica PDF Author: Hugh Chisholm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Languages : en
Pages : 1090

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Book Description
This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

The Unknown Soldier

The Unknown Soldier PDF Author: Neil Hanson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446421902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Of all the million British dead of the First World War, only one - the Unknown Soldier - was ever returned to his native land. An anonymous symbol of all those lost without trace in the carnage of the battlefields, he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey amid an outpouring of grief that brought the whole nation to a standstill, far outweighing even the emotion expressed over the death of Princess Diana over eighty years later. Inspired by this example, almost every combatant nation buried its own Unknown Soldier and the graves became the focus of a pilgrimage that still continues today. Drawing on largely unpublished letters and diaries, Neil Hanson has resurrected the lives and experiences of three unknown soldiers - a Briton, a German and an American. Every word is based on the testimony of those who fought, those who died and those who mourned. Few books have ever shown the terrible reality of warfare in such compelling, unforgettable detail, or told such a moving story of human life and loss. Amid all their sufferings, the common humanity of the men and their loved ones shines through. Each soldier lives on in the memory of his family to this day. They stand at the head of a ghost army three million strong, all of whom have no known grave. Their story is the story of the Unknown Soldier.

A Soldier of the Great War

A Soldier of the Great War PDF Author: Mark Helprin
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Book Description
A young aesthete from a privileged Roman family, Alexandro Giuliani, found his charmed existence shattered by the coming of WWI. Highly recommended.

Death's Men

Death's Men PDF Author: Denis Winter
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241969212
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Death's Men is the classic bestselling story of the First World War as told by the soldiers themselves - reissued for the 2014 Centenary. Millions of British men were involved in the Great War of 1914-1918. But, both during and after the war, the individual voices of the soldiers were lost in the collective picture. Men drew arrows on maps and talked of battles and campaigns, but what it felt like to be in the front line or in a base hospital they did not know. Civilians did not ask and soldiers did not write. Death's Men portrays the humble men who were called on to face the appalling fears and discomforts of the fighting zone. It shows the reality of the First World War through the voices of the men who fought. 'A raw, haunting read that puts you directly into the shoes of the men who rushed to volunteer at the start of the war' Guardian 'An engrossing view of what it was like to live in the trenches, go on leave, get wounded, et cetera, and features voice after voice from the ranks' Telegraph Denis Winter was born in 1940 and read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Death's Men was first published in 1978, to critical and popular acclaim. This was followed by his book The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War.

The Unknowns

The Unknowns PDF Author: Patrick K. O'Donnell
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 080214926X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
The award-winning combat historian and author of Washington’s Immortals honors the Unknown Soldier with this “gripping story” of America’s part in WWI (Washington Times). The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is sacred ground at Arlington National Cemetery. Originally constructed in 1921 to hold one of the thousands of unidentified American soldiers lost in World War I, it now receives millions of visitors each year. “With exhaustive research and fluid prose,” historian Patrick O’Donnell illuminates the saga behind the creation of the Tomb itself, and the stories of the soldiers who took part in its consecration (Wall Street Journal). When the first Unknown Soldier was laid to rest in Arlington, General John Pershing selected eight of America’s most decorated veterans to serve as Body Bearers. These men appropriately spanned America’s service branches and specialties. Their ranks include a cowboy who relived the charge of the light brigade, an American Indian who heroically breached mountains of German barbed wire, a salty New Englander who dueled a U-boat for hours in a fierce gunfight, a tough New Yorker who sacrificed his body to save his ship, and an indomitable gunner who, though blinded by gas, nonetheless overcame five machine-gun nests. In telling the stories of these brave men, O’Donnell shines a light on the service of all veterans, including the hero they brought home. Their stories present an intimate narrative of America’s involvement in the Great War, transporting readers into the midst of dramatic battles that ultimately decided the conflict.

German Soldiers in the Great War

German Soldiers in the Great War PDF Author: Bernd Ulrich
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1844687643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The first English translation of writings that capture the lives and thoughts of German soldiers fighting in the trenches and on the battlefields of WWI. German Soldiers in the Great War is a vivid selection of firsthand accounts and other wartime documents that shed new light on the experiences of German frontline soldiers during the First World War. It reveals in authentic detail the perceptions and emotions of ordinary soldiers that have been covered up by the smokescreen of official military propaganda about “heroism” and “patriotic sacrifice.” In this essential collection of wartime correspondence, editors Benjamin Ziemann and Bernd Ulrich have gathered more than two hundred mostly archival documents, including letters, military dispatches and orders, extracts from diaries, newspaper articles and booklets, medical reports and photographs. This fascinating primary source material provides the first comprehensive insight into the German frontline experiences of the Great War, available in English for the first time in a translation by Christine Brocks.