The First World War

[V41LEY]

My Great Uncle, on my mother's side, died of his wounds in 1917 near Ypres. My mother took her mother (my Grandma) to visit her brother's grave before she died. I need to do the same as a mark of respect. He served with the Worcesters. My son carries one of his names, Lambert, as a tribute to his sacrifice. We will remember them.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIIOGka3LKI

[tertius]

Eric Mc said:

I would highly recommend the following two books -

"Tommy" by Richard Holmes

"Mud Blood and Poppycock" by Gordon Corrigan

I have not read "Tommy" but certainly endorse the recommendation for "M,B & P" which thoroughly debunks many myths about the First War, several of which have been expressed in this thread already. One that particularly struck me was mortality rates - it seems to be commonly held that "soldiers" were sent to die by officers who stayed safe far behind the lines. However, the figures show that the more senior you were the more likely you were to be killed - other ranks fatalities from1914-18 were 12%; for officers it was 17%

[Negative Creep]

tertius said:

Eric Mc said:

I would highly recommend the following two books -

"Tommy" by Richard Holmes

"Mud Blood and Poppycock" by Gordon Corrigan

I have not read "Tommy" but certainly endorse the recommendation for "M,B & P" which thoroughly debunks many myths about the First War, several of which have been expressed in this thread already. One that particularly struck me was mortality rates - it seems to be commonly held that "soldiers" were sent to die by officers who stayed safe far behind the lines. However, the figures show that the more senior you were the more likely you were to be killed - other ranks fatalities from1914-18 were 12%; for officers it was 17%

Would the Officer stats be skewed by so many young Leftenants leading from the front and consequently the first ones into enemy fire?

[Fat Fairy]

Re senior Officer casualties, I have seen figures of 18.5% for Generals of all levels!

(Edited for mong spelling!)

[shoestring7]

It's good to see a level headed view of the British army's performance in WW1 here. I'll applaud any politician who has the balls to stand up in 2018 and state the it was the British and Commonwealth forces who beat the Germans a century ago, while the French had lost the will to fight and the Americans insisted on learning for themselves the lessons of 1916.

Last year I took my 14 year old son to the Somme region. I didn't think he wanted to listen to me bang on for a couple of days so I hired a guide, who turned out to be a young German woman, a local museum curator. She was simply brilliant, and mixed general background with verse and prose written by those on both sides. To cap it all, she was able to track the movements of my great uncle John James Hammond, who was a sergeant in the Middx regiment serving in the 56th London division, and who went missing one night in October 1916. We saw his name on the Thiepval Memorial and stood on the spot where he'd last been seen. It left a deep impression on both of us.

SS7
PS Anyone who wants the guide's contact details PM me.

[einsign]

My great Grandad on the left. 1916 in France:

[Eric Mc]

They look cool. Did your grandad survive the war?

[IanMorewood]

Family military history is something that is largely unknown until I had a brief look last year.
Joseph - dads paternal step grandad was in the Royal Navy, he joined as a boy before the war, progressed through the ranks and spent almost the whole of the war on a mine clearing sloop HMS Azalea. HMS Azalea hit a mine in 1917 which almost sank her which would have resulted in Joe transferring ships in Malta. After this he served on mine clearing trawlers which he stayed with until he was discharged in 1920.
Walter - dads maternal grandad was in the Royal Garrison Artillery attached to a 8inch howitzer battery. They went to France in 1915 and spent a long part of the war tossing heavy metal at the Germans. Walters war ends in 1917 with a long period of hospitalization for trench foot and then a medical discharge.
Mums side is a lot less clear, some of the family appear on war records others don't. One of the brothers is shot and wounded another appears to have had a colourful service life having been awol at one point and disciplined on another occasion.
More work is needed to clear up all the histories.

[Prolex-UK]

My grandad was in the Essex regt and fought at the Somme he got shrapnel in his arse taking some to the first aid tents. Was a marksman and used to say he did it for the extra money.

[Ayahuasca]

dcb said:

BTW, lots of B&B in Ypres & around are already fully booked throughout
2014, so if you want to be there for the centenary, you've missed your chance
already.

Nothing new. In the early 1920s it was apparently very hard to find accomodation in Ypres, due to the then recent advent of package tours. As it says in 'They called it Passchendaele' by Lyn Macdonald, the 'tourists' back then were nearly all women. Their husbands, fathers and sons were already there.

[Derek Smith]

Negative Creep said:

Would the Officer stats be skewed by so many young Leftenants leading from the front and consequently the first ones into enemy fire?

It's no support to an argument against cannon fodder coming from the working class to suggest that posh people were officers and the workers the dregs. Percentages are all very well but you need to know the number the 100 represents first.

In the first two years of the war the casualties were high and then came the Somme, the death of the Kitchener Armies. In the book Covenant with Death, there was the suggestion that more soldiers died in the Battle than any previous UK war. It was also acknowledged in French books as the death of the French army. This resulted in 'field promotions' being a necessity.

The Kitchener Armies were made up of officer material: the educated lower and middle middle classes being in the majority in some locations. These were wasted in the mud of the Somme. The effect of this loss of ability post war was tremendous.

The stats, courtesy of the Wikki site, were 420,000 B&C and half that number of French. The UK casualties on the first day were 60,000, which was comfortably, if that is the word, the most that the UK army had ever suffered in one day.

There were armies that lost the majority of their number in single battles.

The book, by Harris, Covenant with Death, is well worth reading. It should be essential as it catalogues the waste of life, and all for no reason. There is no doubt that the UK lost the war as such. Whilst it did not break the country financially as WWII did, the effect was worse, for the whole country due to the inept post war governments

There were 1,000,000 dead as a result of the war. And more than that seriously injured. Then post war the influenza outbreak which killed in the UK about 250,000. Survival rate was exceptionally poor, suggestions including aspirin poisoning, it being a particularly virulent form of the virus but most being that the health of the nation, as a whole, had dropped due to the war. It never rains.

Regardless of 'class war', the poor was the group that suffered most, as in all wars of course. They are the ones conscripted. There are more of them and, as they were not educated as such, they were of limited use in back office jobs.

There are many interpretations of WWI. None suggest that it was beneficial to either side. None suggest that it wasn't a scandalous waste of life, none reckon that there was any benefit from it, and none suggest it was unavoidable. Let's hope it isn't reinterpreted for the sake of 'national pride.'

[dcb]

Ayahuasca said:

In the early 1920s it was apparently very hard to find accomodation in Ypres, due to the then recent advent of package tours.

Presumably, the fact that the Germans had flattened it to ruins a few years
earlier has nothing to do with it ?

The Cloth Hall wasn't finished until 1967, for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloth_Hall,_Ypres

Try finding any building in Ypres earlier than 1920 isn't easy.

[Ayahuasca]

dcb said:

Ayahuasca said:

In the early 1920s it was apparently very hard to find accomodation in Ypres, due to the then recent advent of package tours.

Presumably, the fact that the Germans had flattened it to ruins a few years
earlier has nothing to do with it ?

The Cloth Hall wasn't finished until 1967, for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloth_Hall,_Ypres

Try finding any building in Ypres earlier than 1920 isn't easy.

True enough but the locals, the YMCA and the Church Army which had made temporary wartime buidlings as canteens for the troops had turned them into cheap accomodation for the visiting post-war relatives. A quarter of the British (and commonwealth) war dead was killed within a few miles of Ypres so it became a focal point for families.

[Eric Mc]

And don't forget that there was not full conscription throughout all of the UK.

[einsign]

Eric Mc said:

They look cool. Did your grandad survive the war?

Yes, he survived both the 1st and 2nd World Wars. Came back to England with his French wife and worked at Vauxhall. Died in the 50s from a brain clot!

[XCP]

My wifes great uncle was killed near Ypres in 1917. He was a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery, and served in a 6 inch howitzer battery. He came from a small village in Wilts at a time when few people from the village had even been outside the county.
He is buried at the new Vlamertinghe cemetery just west of Poperinghe, which was a dressing station at the time and I visited his grave. He is also one of a dozen men from the village whose name is carved on the war memorial which forms part of the church where we were married.
We have his medals and his death plaque.

[Eric Mc]

einsign said:

Eric Mc said:

They look cool. Did your grandad survive the war?

Yes, he survived both the 1st and 2nd World Wars. Came back to England with his French wife and worked at Vauxhall. Died in the 50s from a brain clot!

Hope his wife didn't claim any UK benefits

[DMN]

Negative Creep said:

Octoposse said:

Ayahuasca said:

If you look at the link above to the Western Front stuff there are some excellent in depth technical articles including one on WWI barbed wire. The feeling was that walking over the wire would be safer than running through It and tripping. The wire wasn't cut as intended because the artillery was short of HE shells and used mainly shrapnel ones instead which were not as effective. The British Commanders were not stupid, but did make some tragic miscalculations.

Many factors came together - there weren't sensitive enough fuzes until late in the war, so even HE wouldn't reliably cut wire.

The British Army had expanded from a superbly trained and led 200,000 regulars (many spread in penny packets across the Empire) to 4 million. There was the feeling that the Kitchener armies couldn't be trained to the same peak as the pre-war Regulars (fire-and-movement, combined arms, use of ground - all learned in the Boer War), so new, simpler to implement, tactics were needed. (I'd argue that conclusion was wrong - the British Army of 1918, from the automatic weapon / grenade / sniper organisation of the infantry platoon through to air / armour / infantry cooperation that would have been impressive by the standards of 1940 showed what could be done). There weren't the Generals or the Staff Officers to fight that kind of war - they also had to be trained.

Plus lessons had been learnt by the closing stages of the war - creeping barrages, smaller more flexible units, tank and close air support etc

Two very good posts, I'd recommend anyone wanting more information has a look at "The Somme - from defeat to victory" on youtube. It shows where it went wrong with the New Army, and how quickly the mistakes where learnt and put right.

[Derek Smith]

XCP said:

My wifes great uncle was killed near Ypres in 1917. He was a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery, and served in a 6 inch howitzer battery. He came from a small village in Wilts at a time when few people from the village had even been outside the county.
He is buried at the new Vlamertinghe cemetery just west of Poperinghe, which was a dressing station at the time and I visited his grave. He is also one of a dozen men from the village whose name is carved on the war memorial which forms part of the church where we were married.
We have his medals and his death plaque.

Although it sounds a bit morbid, it can be useful to look at the village war dead memorials. See the list and then work out what the proportion was to the population at the time.

A British folk song from the post WWI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUoXAVJkvCo

Tim Hart.

[GruntyDC5]

I don't know of any family involvement in the war for one reason or another. However at the end of my first year in secondry school we had the opportunity to go and visit the battlefields for 2 weeks. Even though I was only 12 at the time it's an experience that will stick with me forever helped by the fact that we had a great teacher who has studied the first world war at length.

It also made me study history right up to advanced higher level even though it had no real usefulness to anything I would do for work.

During our time there we did not see one other school group, I don't know if this is something that other schools do regularly or not, I know my old school still runs the trip every year.

I honestly believe that all kids should visit just to see how easy life is for us today and how utterly desperate the situation was for those who served.

It's a very sobering place but there are some brilliant museums scattered around and the cemeteries are almost beyond comprehension.

Of all the things we saw and did in that 2 weeks the Menin Gate in Ypres is the one thing that sticks in my mind the most.

Edited by GruntyDC5 on Monday 14th October 11:38