Archaeologists about to excavate site of a WWI tunnel war (photos)
Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail". When military historian Jeremy Banning stepped on to a patch of scrubland in France, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. The privately owned land in the rural village of La Boisselle had been untouched since fighting ended in 1918. In his hand was a selection of photos of some of the British tunnellers killed in bloody subterranean battles there, and who lay entombed under his feet.
(bbc.co.uk)
Pill Boxes on the Western Front: A guide to the design, construction and use of concrete Pill Boxes, 1914-1918
This is the new paperback edition of a book published back in 1995. Author Peter Oldham had a career as a concrete technologist, and he took an interest in the development of Pill Boxes, or MEBUs as the Germans referred to them (Mannschafts-Eisen-Beton-Unterstand = reinforced concrete shelter for troops to stand under). Although we think of the static Trench Warfare of the years of WW1, it was originally seen as a war of movement (one which didn't happen). It was the German army that first took best advantage of using concrete shelters for their troops, to protect them against artillery and machine gun fire. As the war progressed, so did the technology of the designs.
(militarymodelling.com)
WW1 3D maps used by Field Marshall Earl Haig unveiled at war museum
Historic 3D maps used to plan some of the bloodiest battles on the WWI Western Front gone on display for the first time. Experts at the Defence Geographic Centre at Feltham, London, have spent 10 years putting the maps together after they were found. They were used by Field Marshall the Earl Haig and feature their original markings showing the German trenches. The 120 maps - made from layers of card and kept at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst - cover the battlefields of the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele. Although 1,000 sets were made, the museum thinks this is one of the last sets in existence.
(bbc.co.uk)
WW1 diaries of one of Britain's first black soldiers unearthed in a dusty Scottish attic
WWI diaries of one of Britain's first black soldiers have been unearthed in a Scottish attic. Private Arthur William David Roberts, who served with the King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB), described coming face-to-face with death in the trenches. He survived the Battle of Passchendaele and once escaped unscathed when a German shell killed a dozen men around him. But despite being among just a handful of British-born black soldiers at a time when racism was rife, Roberts was popular with his comrades. Now historians are trying to track down surviving family of Private Roberts as they put his memoirs on show to the public for the first time.
(scotsman.com)
The last First World War veteran Claude Choules passes away at 110
Claude Choules, Australia's oldest man and the world's last surviving male WWI veteran, has passed away in Perth aged 110. The former naval explosives expert, who was also the last living person to have fought in both world wars, served in Britain's Royal Navy in WWI and witnessed the surrender of the German Imperial Navy in 1918 while serving aboard HMS Revenge. Choules wrote an autobiography - "The Last of the Last" - which was released in 2009 and made him the world's oldest first-time published author at the age of 108.
(perthnow.com.au)
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild
What separates Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars book from other WW1 books is that it is less an account of how and why the war started, and more a study of a group of high-profile individuals and their personal campaigns for and against the conflict. Such was the variety and strength of opinions on the Great War that divisions often emerged within families, resulting in bitter, lifelong disagreements that never resolved themselves.
(culturemob.com)
CIA recipe for invisible ink among newly released WWI-era documents
So you want to open sealed envelopes without getting caught? Here's the secret, according to one of the six oldest classified documents in possession of the CIA: "Mix 5 drams copper acetol arsenate. 3 ounces acetone and add 1 pint amyl alcohol (fusil-oil). Heat in water bath — steam rising will dissolve the sealing material of its mucilage, wax or oil (Do not inhale fumes)." Nearly a century after it was written, the formula was released by the CIA as part of a cache of six WWI-era documents. The documents - from 1917 and 1918 - predate the agency itself by decades.
(washingtonpost.com)
George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I (book review)
Queen Victoria's plan to marry as many of her descendants as possible into the ruling families of Europe resulted in her progeny sitting on the thrones of 10 nations. With this network of rulers related to the woman who was called the "Grandmama of Europe," surely then peace would prevail. But, little more than a dozen years after Victoria's 1901 funeral, cousin was pitted against cousin in global combat. In "George, Nicholas and Wilhelm" biographer Miranda Carter focuses on the nexus among the heads of state in three of the major Great War combatants, Britain, Russia and Germany.
(latimes.com)
Australian WWI ace Frank Slee had Hermann Goering in his gunsights
Frank Slee's extraordinary story will forever be marked with a simple two-word addendum - what if? What if the young Australian had managed to out-fly Hermann Goering, then a young pilot with the Luftstreitkrafte, over Belgium in June 1917? What if those bullets Slee fired - he saw the tracer bullets hit Goering's plane as the pair dived around each other, straining their machines to breaking point - had ripped open the German ace's fuselage, or crippled his steering?
(theaustralian.com.au)
WW1 footage, Australia's earliest attempt at a war documentary, available online
Rare footage of Australian soldiers at the 1916 Battle of Pozieres, filmed for what is thought to have been Australia's earliest attempt at a war documentary, has been made available online. The 10-minute footage has been published in collaboration with the Australian War Memorial. In the video, Australian troops are shown building trenches and preparing for battle in Pozieres. The footage also shows British howitzers shelling German positions and Australian field guns joining the bombardment.
(abc.net.au)
Everyday stories and memorabilia from the First World War preserved in massive European archive
With the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War approaching, a European project is digitally documenting personal memorabilia before it is lost forever to time and indifference.
Oxford University military historian Everett Sharp explains: "The main aim of the project is to look at the awfulness of war and its effects on families. What strikes me is that in 1915 both British and German soldiers were writing home from the front saying 'I hope this war is over soon.'"
(dw-world.de)
Historic Gallipoli lifeboat, which may have ferried John Simpson Kirkpatrick, to be put on display in Melbourne
The boat thought to have ferried Gallipoli hero Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick ashore to Anzac Cove is likely to come to Melbourne to be put on permanent display at the Shrine in time for the centenary of the landing. It is the only existing lifeboat used to row the first wave of Anzacs ashore to land on Turkey on April 25, 1915. The boat will be the centrepiece of a $35 million plan to open up a massive 2000sq m of unused space beneath the Shrine as a display gallery.
(heraldsun.com.au)
WWI submarine U-106 found in the North Sea, north of the Dutch island of Terschelling
A German WWI submarine has been discovered in the North Sea, north of the Dutch island of Terschelling, where it sank in 1917. The discovery of the U-106 was kept secret for two years because the German government needed time to find and inform the next-of-kin of the 41 crew who sank with the boat. U-106, commanded by Hans Hufnagel and thought to have hit a British mine, will become an official war grave.
(thelocal.de)
Football used during the Battle of Loos in 1915 conserved and on show
At the start of the Battle of Loos in 1915, Allied troops planned to kick footballs into the German trenches as they attacked across no-man's-land. However, officers did not like the plan and deflated all but one of the balls. It is believed that ball was the one which - after being rediscovered - has been conserved in Northampton and is now on display in the London Irish Regimental Museum in Camberwell.
(dailymail.co.uk)
Rare Sopwith Dolphin being restored at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford
Restoration teams at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford have been working ceaselessly on the Sopwith Dolphin single seat fighter plane for months, rescuing it from the scrapheap. <
"I believe there were 2,072 originally built but we are down to the last one now. This Dolphin has been built using the original parts of two old planes which makes it probably the only Dolphin left in the world constructed out of the original components," explained conservation manager Tim Wallis.
(shropshirestar.com)
Diary and uniform of Battle of Somme nurse Lucy Kate Card to be auctioned off
The diary of a WW1 nurse will go on sale along with her pristine Red Cross uniform, 5 medals, photographs and touching letters written by soldiers she treated. Lucy Kate "Kitty" Card cared for injured soldiers from the bloody Battle of the Somme, working in military hospitals and keeping a diary in which she wrote movingly about the horrors of the Great War.
(dailymail.co.uk)
The First World War (August 1914 to November 1918) is also known as the Great War, The War to End All Wars, World War I and WW1.
Many of the bloodiest battles in military history occurred during the First World War. In trench warfare hundreds of soldiers died for each yard of land captured. Artillery with fragmentation shells caused the most casualties and made massed infantry attacks futile.