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The First World War is widely conceived as a pointless conflict that destroyed a generation. Petty squabbles between emperors pushed na&ïve young men into a nightmare of mud and blood that killed millions and left scarred and embittered survivors. However, the ongoing reinterpretation of the First World War reveals that matters were rather more nuanced and complex. Hardship and death were all too common, but there were positive experiences, too. Vast numbers of people, for example, travelled to new parts of the world and encountered new cultures, inspiring a sense of wonder and respect. Military tactics were improved, and great military commanders of the inter-war and Second World War periods came to prominence during the First World War. The conflict also had a formative influence on politicians, writers, artists, union leaders, businessmen and some ethnic minorities, who used their participation to press for equal rights and full citizenship. This book's 16 chapters, written by a range of leading New Zealand and international historians, explains how.
On 9 May 1915 the British First Army under Haig and the French Tenth Army launched a joint offensive against the Germans on the Western Front. The British attempt to capture Aubers Ridge ended up a disaster. The full story h as never been told before.
The New Zealand soldiers who left these shores to fight in the First World War represented one of the greatest collective endeavours in the nation’s history. Over 100,000 men and women would embark for overseas service and almost 60,000 of them became casualties. For a small nation like New Zealand this was a tragedy on an unimagined scale. Using their personal testimony, this book reveals what these men experienced – the truth of their lives in battle, at rest, at their best and their worst. Through a comprehensive and sympathetic scrutiny of New Zealand soldiers’ correspondence, diaries and memoirs, a compelling picture of the New Zealand soldier’s war from general to private is re...
Following on from the highly acclaimed Facing Armageddon and Passchendaele in Perspective, At the Eleventh Hour recognises that a world was ending in November 1918, and by international collaboration on the 80th Anniversary we learn through this book, what it was like to experience the transition from war to peace. Distinguished historians brilliantly convey a sense of immediacy as the Armistice is recreated and analysed. The reader will not just acquire new areas of information, he will have some of the existing knowledge which he thought was soundly held, strikingly challenged in the pages of this superbly illustrated book.
"Goulty tells the story from the perspective of the ordinary sailor or officer who was there."—The Northern Mariner Although many books have been written about naval actions during the Second World War – histories and memoirs in particular – few books have attempted to encompass the extraordinary variety of the experience of the war at sea. That is why James Goulty’s vivid survey is of such value. Sailors in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy experienced a war fought on a massive scale, on every ocean of the world, in a diverse range of vessels, from battleships, aircraft carriers and submarines to merchant ships and fishing boats. Their recollections are as varied as the ships the...
With The Forgotten Front, George H. Cassar intends to demonstrate Italy's vital contribution to the Allied effort in the First World War. His account of the war in Italy covers the strategic considerations as well as the actual fighting.
A fully-rounded anthology of women's writing from World War One containing the known and unknown biographers and fiction writers of the period.. Explores the impact of the war on ideology, gender, genre and society and is a perfect complimentary text to Trudi Tate's Women Men and the Great War.. Aims to re-read the First World War as a female experience by drawing on the public and private sources of a wide range of different women.. Uses diaries, letters, articles and essays many of which have not been published.. Invaluable source document for scholars in many disciplines.
The Second World War challenged many of the concepts that had provided stability and unity in the world. As totalitarian regimes in Europe and Asia attempted to impose their world view on their neighbours, a struggle for what Winston Churchill described as `Christian civilisation took place on many fronts. On the home front, on land, on sea and in the air, as well as in the horrific concentration camps of Europe and prisoner of war camps in the Far East, people of a Christian faith found their beliefs challenged. However, for many this challenge provided an affirmation of that faith, as it provided a rock amidst the ever shifting sands of circumstance. This book contains the accounts of twen...
The Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) was created shortly after the outbreak of war. The idea of the unit's founder, Philip J. Baker, was that it would provide young Friends (Quakers) with the opportunity to serve their country without sacrificing their pacifist principles. The first volunteers went to Belgium on 31 October 1914, under the auspices of the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John of Jerusalem. The FAU made a sustained contribution to the military medical services of the Allied nations, establishing military hospitals, running ambulance convoys, and staffing hospital ships and ambulance trains, treating and transporting wounded men. Determined ...
Memory, Narrative and the Great War examines the varied and complex war writings of Patrick MacGill within a contemporary framework. David Taylor tracks how MacGill shifted from heroic wartime narratives in his autobiographical writings to the pessimistic, guiltridden characters in his postwar novel, Fear!, and play, Suspense. Using these texts to show how MacGill remembered and reremembered his wartime experiences, Taylor analyzes MacGill's writings with implications for a broader interpretation of Great War literature, highlighting wartime memory and narrative as an ever-changing kaleidoscope in which pieces of memory take on different—but equally valid—shapes with the passing of time.