PRIVATE JOHN KILOH MAY 9 1917

WHEN THE GUNS FELL SILENT

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

THE BATTLE OF AUBERS RIDGE

THE BATTLE OF AUBERS RIDGE 

FLANDERS FIELDS

BUGLES ARE CALLING FROM PRAIRIE TO SHORE

FLANDERS

THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME

BATTLE OF THE SOMME  R.I.P.

Two soldiers on opposing sides whose pictures show they were really just the same

Lost photographs from the Somme together for the first time as son of German trooper meets grandson of english Tommy and they find the two lads had much in common.They were sworn enemies – two soldiers entrenced on opposite sides of the Western Front. William ­Smallcombe, 24, and Walter Kleinfeldt, just 17, were at times only two miles apart. Each carried a small camera - permitted by the German army but banned by the British - to document the horrors of the First World War . And the pictures, which have emerged for the first time, show eerie ­similarities on both sides of the trenches. Initially, the two young men took shots of smiling comrades. Then in 1916 the Battle of the Somme , the bloodiest in British history, took place. William buried his best friend and photographed his makeshift grave, while Walter took pictures of the dead. As Walter’s son Volkmar Kleinfeldt explains: “The images became more stark, more sombre. He must have been deeply affected by what he experienced. After all, he was only a boy.” This week a TV documentary sees Volkmar meet William’s grandson Michael Smallcombe as they compare the images of war taken almost 100 years ago.Read More HERE

With it being the 100th anniversary of the First World War I will be posting articles relating to this dreadful period of history.

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

BATTLE OF NEUVE CHAPELLE

Battle of Neuve Chapelle

ANGELS OF MONS

48TH HIGHLANDERS OF CANADA VIMY

48TH HIGHLANDERS CANADA

FOR KING AND COUNTRY

Sapper's photographs of Flanders are found by grandson

Hubert Berry Ottaway, born in 1879, joined the Royal Engineers in 1900. When sent to war, he took his box Brownie camera to Flanders - returning with film which would be discovered by his grandson 95 years later. In the second half of 1918 and early 1919, he photographed destroyed homes, churches and public buildings. See amazing photos HERE

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

Black Watch soldier secrets revealed after century wait

The personal accounts of a soldier from the Black Watch have been revealed after almost a hundred years. Lt Col J Stewart of the 9th Battalion stipulated that his personal memoirs only be opened in 2014. When archivists at the Museum of the Black Watch in Perth opened the records on Wednesday, they discovered bundles of letters and diaries from WW1. Lt Col Stewart took over from Arthur Wauchope as commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion in 1916. He was also in command during the battle of Samarra in modern-day Iraq in 1917, where the Baghdad Bell - on display in the Black Watch museum - was captured. 'Personal story' Archivists are not exactly sure whether Lt Col Stewart's first name was John or James. However, they have now begun the long task of reading the contents of his letters and documents to see what they contain.Read more HERE

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

She fought on the Somme disguised as a Tommy

In Paris, in the high summer of 1915, Dorothy Lawrence – a young Englishwoman with more by way of courage and ambition than wealth or  connections – turned herself into a Tommy.
She flattened her hourglass curves with a home-made  corset stuffed with cotton-wool, hacked off her long, brown hair and darkened her complexion with Condy’s Fluid, a disinfectant made from potassium permanganate. She even razored the pale skin of her cheeks in the hope of giving herself a shaving rash.
In a borrowed military uniform she disguised the last vestiges of her female shape and found two British soldiers to teach her to walk like a man. She completed her transformation by forging her own bona fides and travel permits for  war-ravaged France and caught a train to Amiens.
And then Dorothy Lawrence, a cub reporter who hungered to be a war correspondent, cycled to Albert, the village known  as the front of the Front, and joined the ranks of 179 Tunnelling Company, 51st Division, Royal Engineers, as they dug beneath no-man’s-land and across to German lines.
They kept her presence a secret. ‘You don’t know what danger you are in,’ Sapper Tommy Dunn warned her, meaning from the battle-hardened, woman-starved men of her own side, not the enemy mortars.
What he could not have known was the terrible secret which had driven Dorothy to take such risks. Ten years later she would reveal she had been raped as a child by the ‘highly respected’ church guardian who had raised her after she was orphaned.
For almost two weeks in August 1915, Dorothy toiled in the sniper-infested trenches of the Somme – which a year later were to erupt in the bloody hell immortalised by the Sebastian Faulks novel Birdsong – until, weakened by contaminated water and exhaustion, she revealed herself to be a female civilian to her ‘superiors’.
She knew she had the scoop of her life, a story which would set Fleet Street alight.
Even when the British military locked her in a convent to keep her quiet in the final days before the Battle of Loos the following month, she was confident it would make her name Read more  HERE 

Shame on those that treated this brave lady so badly, her crime was to want to fight for her Country.

Great War British soldier's letter reveals account of attack

BURTONION Arthur Garner was just 22-years-old when he received the order to ‘fix bayonets’ before an attack on a German trench in the First World. Little did he know it at the time, but Arthur, a Private in the 1/6 North Staffordshire Regiment, was about to become one of almost 4,000 casualties in the attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt on the afternoon of October 13, 1915. Arthur’s story came to light after his 65-year-old grandson, historian Terry Garner, came forward with a letter his grandfather wrote to his parents in Tutbury Road as he recovered from his wounds. The letter, which was published in the Burton Daily Mail two weeks after the attack, revealed the vivid details of the assault which claimed the lives of 63 Burton men. Arthur, it emerged, was one of the lucky ones. After advancing through a maelstrom of shrapnel and small arms fire, Arthur and a gallant band of other men captured their first objective – the German trench known as Big Willy. But here, his luck ran out. In the letter, Arthur revealed how he became one of a mounting list of casualties. He said: “It was about 2 o’clock in the afternoon when we had made a charge and captured a German trench. “We were going to another and I was throwing bombs when a German shot me twice in the leg. “He did not live long afterwards; my mate put him out. I got hit through the right leg. “I think one was an explosive bullet, as it made a tiny hole.” Arthur ended the letter by asking his parents to send woodbines, writing paper, envelopes and stamps. He said: “I expect you wonder what I have done with the writing pad and envelopes you sent. “They are on the battlefield. All I thought of was to get the dressing station with my leg.” Speaking almost a century after his grandfather’s exploits, Terry, a former Molson Coors brewery worker, of Leander Rise, Stapenhill, told the Mail Arthur rarely spoke about his wartime experiences before his death in the 1960s. He is also unsure what happened to Arthur following his rehabilitation as the records were destroyed in the Second World War. Read more HERE

CANADIAN HIGHLANDERS

Vimy Ridge  

THE GREAT WAR

BATTLE OF LOOS

   Battle Of Loos

Rare World War One poster collection to go online

One of the largest collections of original posters from World War I has been stored away in a Greenock museum and only occasionally put on display. Now, thanks to a lottery grant, they are all to be digitised and made available online.WITH their beaming smiles and jaunty step, you might almost be mistaken for thinking that these cartoon characters are appealing for young boys to join them on a Famous Five type adventure.Even the rosy-cheeked chaps request of “Line Up Boys - Enlist Today” manages to mask the true horror of the advert - looking for young recruits to boost the First World War effort - which became one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.The collection of about 300 posters, from Britain and other allied countries, were compiled by the McLean Museum in Greenock during the conflict and immediately afterwards.A lottery grant of £51,300 will now allow the Inverclyde Council-run museum to scan the full collection and make it available over the internet. Read More HERE