World War One Centenary Visit last month

Early in October, I was lucky enough to be included in the second batch of teachers and students to take part in the WW1 Centenary Project, which is aiming to provide the opportuntiy for two students from every Secondary school in the country to visit the battlefields of the First World War. I've been meaning to update but haven't got round to it yet, but I thought i'd share a few of the pictures to give you a flavour of what it was like. This is us at Vimy Ridge - see me somewhere on the right... Vimy Ridge is on the site of an important German stronghold in the war which dominated the surrounding area, and which was successfully captured in a textbook assault by the Canadians, working together as an army rather than invidivually for the first time. The site has enormous importance for the Canadians, and today is the site of their memorial to the missing. From Vimy, you can also get an excellent view of the 1915 Loos battlefield, which is still dominated by the twin 'crassiers' (slag heaps). My great-grandad started his war here, joining his unit the Royal Fusiliers shortly after their blooding in the battle. Here we are at the Theipval memorial to the missing, which contains 70,000 names of British and Commonwealth soldiers who fell in this area but have no known grave. I was drawn to this shaft of light that seemed to be shining on these names... I paid a visit to a local man of mine - Herbert Nobbs of March, who is commemorated on my local war memorial. I stood opposite his name today during the ceremony. Near Sheffield memorial park - part of the 'Iron Harvest' that is still being recovered from fields almost 100 years later. Sheffield memorial park - the ditch near the fence is the former front line trench, from which the Pals battalions (who are commemorated here) advanced from on the 1st day of the Somme, and met with such terrible losses in their attempts to capture Serre. View towards their objective - Serre, and the former site of No Man's Land. Touching memorial to the 'Acrington Pals' Shell crater behind Sheffield memorial park Railway Hollow cemetery, behind Sheffield memorial park. A beautiful little site - so called because of the narrow gauge railway that ran up to the former British front lines. I find the inscriptions on many of the graves especially moving. Ulster Tower, Somme - site of the German stronghold 'the Schwaben redoubt', and one of the few successes on the 1st July 1916. Look closely in the field to the right of the tower, and you can see a thin chalky line in the field - this is the remains of the German front line.

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Tyne Cot cemetery, in the early morning mist.  I've visited several times but i've never seen it look so striking.

Dennis Judd's 'The Boer War'

I've just finished reading this - I highly recommend it to Year 12 students who are about to study the Boer War.

 

Unlike Pakenham's book, which deals with the war in a lengthy, though entertainingly written narrative, Judd's work is organised instead into chapters which focus on different aspects of the war as a whole.  In many ways this makes it a more accessible book than Pakenham's, although the latter probably remains the definitive work on the subject if you can battle your way through the whole thing!  The advantage of Judd's work is that those who are more pressed for time can read a chapter in isolation without feeling like they are missing out on the wider picture - for example, there is a chapter on the 'Pro-Boers', which I found particularly interesting.  Considering Lloyd George's steely conduct as PM during the latter stages of the Great War and beyond, it seems surprising to hear of him putting himself out on a limb to criticise the Boer War, and making himself unpopular to the extent that he was forced to flee one rally dressed as a policeman!

 

I shall certainly be adding this book to the reading list in the future. Unfortunately we do not have a copy in the library, but I ordered mine using the Cambridgeshire library inter-library loan service where several copies seem to be available.

 

I will be copying some sections of this book as reading for you in the future, but if you can get a copy i'd highly recommend it.

Pre-reading on the Boer War

I hope that everyone has had a restful half term!

Current Year 12s - we will be covering the Boer War up until Christmas. The schedule is very tight and it is a big topic. There will be no time to go back and go over topics again. Therefore, you MUST read up on these topics before we cover them. I will give you a copy of this sheet in class, but it is your responsibility to read up on the topics before the deadlines and to have completed notes on them.

Please also note - i have a lovely stack of reading for you on the first topic (causes of the Boer War). I won't see you for a week, so please come and collect it. I'll try and remind you in registration.

Also, I am currently reading Dennis Judd's book 'The Boer War' and can highly recommend it. It's accessible and very readable, and groups topics together (e.g. military defeats, Liberal reforms), so might be a bit less formidable than the Pakenham book. You can order the book from the library.

Topic to research	Date to be completed by	What specific books/articles you have read (full reference please – the course textbook doesn’t count)
Causes of the Boer War	11th November
Fighting the Boer war – the three stages of the war – initial defeat for British (‘Black Week’), followed by seeming success (e.g. capture of Pretoria/Bloemfontein), followed by the Guerilla War. Also, attitudes to the ‘scorched earth’ policy – particularly the work of Emily Hobhouse	18h November
How the war was reported, the 1900 ‘Khaki election’, ‘National Efficiency’	25th November
Liberal reforms after the war	2nd December
Reforms to the army after the Boer War (e.g. Haldane reforms)	9th December
The significance of the Boer War – particularly in terms of lessons learned before WW1	16th December

'The Reason Why' - Cecil Woodham Smith

I've just finished reading this book - i've found it one of the most gripping history books i've read for a long time.



Although there are more recent works on the 'Charge of the Light Brigade' (this was published in 1953), i doubt any of them can compare to 'The Reason Why' in terms of sheer readability.  I love a good narrative History book - some of my favourites include Beevor's 'Stalingrad', Holland's 'Persian Fire' and Middlebrook's 'The First Day on the Somme'.  All of these books i've found just as gripping as any novel, and Woodham-Smith more than compares to them.

'The Reason Why' describes the background to the Charge, in particular focussing on the role of Lucan and Cardigan as the two principal instigators in the disaster.  Both are painted as essentially hot-headed aristocrats, out of their depth in their commands and widely disliked by their troops, although Lucan is at least described as being intelligent (Cardigan is derided as being essentially vain and stupid).

Of particular interest is a lengthy section on the purchase of commissions, which leads to both Cardigan and Lucan buying command of their various units over the heads of other officers who had actual experience of fighting and actual aptitude, in some cases leading to these officers leaving the British army in despair.

Cardigan's essential unsuitability for command was shown after he became the commanding officer of 15th  The King's Hussars.  Cardigan became so infamous for his bullying of this unit that he was eventually dismissed.  Here the story might have ended, except by 1836 Cardigan was back in charge of the 11th Hussars, despite his earlier dismissal.  The reasons behind this are explained at length in the book, but essentially it reveals the ridiculously out-of-date system of command in the British Army that led to such disaster in the Crimea 20 years later.

Also explored in the book is the tempestous relationship between Lucan and Cardigan - despite being brother-in-laws, they detested each other long before the fateful decision was made to put Lucan in overall charge of the Cavalry division sent to the Crimea, including the Light Brigade under the Charge of Cardigan.  This would've been an explosive situation anyway,  a situation made far worse by Raglan's inept leadership - he gave Cardigan the impression that he had an independent command and did not have to listen to Lucan, and failed to arbitrate in the dispute between the two.

Woodham-Smith's description of the fateful decision to land at the Crimea is particularly vivid.  It never fails to amaze me how insane it seems that a whole armada of ships, British and French, left Bulgaria intending to invade the Crimea, without having any firm idea of where they were going to actually land!  When one compares this to the level of planning that went into the D-Day invasions less than 100 years later it seems amazing that this could have ever happened.

The landing at the aptly-named 'Kalamita Bay' was as unplanned and chaotic as one might expect.  One morbid piece of detail is that the army that left the beach head, heading towards its first confrontation with the Russians, was soon followed by hordes of vultures, despite them not being native to the Crimea.  It seems that the temptation of thousands of soldiers dropping from the ranks and dying of exhaustion and cholera was enough to attract them away from their natural habitat in North Africa, hundreds of miles away.

The actual events of the Charge are as vivid as one might expect.  Woodham-Smith doesn't blame any one party, but instead points the finger at the madness of allowing a British army to be led by soldiers who had no experience of warfare and no formal training,  leading to Raglan's infamously vague order that sent the Light Brigade to their destruction and into the pages of history.

I highly recommend reading this book - I found it fascinating.

Year 12 blogs

Some excellent work from our Year 12s so far. Here are a selection of the blogs started - please have a read and comment on each others! (and on mine too of course!)

http://thethinredlinehistory.blogspot.co.uk/ (Morgan)

http://colleenloveshistory.blogspot.co.uk/ (Colleen)

http://historysloth.blogspot.co.uk/ (Sam T)

thetrumpcardigan.tumblr.com (Kyle)

http://samgray97.blogspot.co.uk/ (Sam G)

http://jesstortoise.blogspot.co.uk/ (Jessica)

Back to Flanders and the Somme..

I'm feeling hugely excited this weekend, as on Friday I am lucky enough to be taking part in the pilot project of the government initiative to take two KS3 students from every school in the country to the battlefields of the First World War.  It was a difficult choice deciding who to take - I decided to run a competition in which students had to argue why they would like to go, and how they thought the First World War should be remembered. In the end, I selected two Year 8 girls who impressed me with the effort they had put into a display convincing me to take them, which included sources from the various important figures of the war including Lloyd George!  I was also impressed that one of them brought along her family album which included a fascinating collection of photographs and postcards connected to her relative who had served throughout the war.

The itenary of the trip looks amazing; it is a four day trip, taking in the key British sector of Ypres and Poperhinge, and the sites connected with the battle of Passchendaele such as Tyne Cot.  We will also be visiting Essex Farm dressing station/cemetery, famous for its association with John McCrae who wrote his famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' there.

After that, we head on to Vimy Ridge - site of one of the decisive Canadian victories of the war - before taking in the monumental Thiepval memorial, which looks over the battlefields of the Somme inscribed with its sombre roll call of the names of thousands who have no known grave.

I hope the two students find the First World War as interesting as I do.  I often reflect that one of the turning points for me when I decided History was the subject I wanted to focus on, was visiting Ypres as a Year 9 student back in the late 90s.  The power of the place overwhelmed me;  I felt that the ghosts of the past were so close that you could almost touch them.  The unexploded shells at the side of the road, waiting for bomb disposal experts to collect, and still being unearthed 80 years after the guns fell silent; the ponds that dot the landscape, caused by distant artillery barrages and mine explosions; even the steel rods that hold up the humble farmer's barbed wire - survivors from the Great War.

Perhaps the places that had the most powerful impression on me of all was Langemarck German cemetery.  I know that I am not the first to comment on the eerie atmosphere of the place; particularly the 'comrades' stood at the end of the cemetery, which one observes upon entering, standing watch with bowed heads over the mass grave of thousands of German soldiers, interred without ceremony into essentially a huge flower bed.


I wonder how much longer such places will hold a sway over the popular imagination. I had an interesting discussion with some of my Year 9s this week.  We have just started studying World War One, and I find it completely fascinating, but quite a few students seem to be completely obsessed with World War Two, and repeatedly ask when we are going to start studying it.  This confuses me;  I wonder it is because World War Two on the whole is more familiar to them, occupying as it does a more visible place in computer games, films, and the primary school curriculum.  Also, I suppose in many respects it is a 'sexier' subject, with its abundance of film, fast moving tanks, aircraft, music etc.

However, as I tried to explain to them, the Second War can only really be understood as an extension of the First, and in my view occupies a place in the British psyche that remains haunting to this day.

Have you been to the battlefields of the First World War? Did you have a similar experience to my own? What impressions were you left with?

Some links to help you research the Crimean War for independent study

Dear students,

I hope that you are enjoying getting to grips with 'The Experience of Warfare in Britain'.

Remember that you are required to regularly undertake independent study over and above the homework and reading that I set you in class. This is to help extend your subject knowledge and make the topic more accessible for you.

You'll be glad to know that Sawtry Library has purchased many of the books on the reading list for your consumption. The books with an asterisk to the left are available in the library. I've asked that they be made reference only so they should always be available to read in your study periods.

READING LIST FOR ‘THE EXPERIENCE OF WARFARE IN BRITAIN’ UNIT 2

 

*Badsey, Stephen — Crimean War (War Correspondents), Bramley Books 1997

Beckett, Ian — Home Front 1914-18 (National Archives, 2006)

Byrne, Mike — Britain 1895-1918 (Hodder and Stoughton 2005)

*Kelly, Christine (ed) — Mrs Duberly’s War (Oxford University Press, 2007)

*Lynch, Michael — An Introduction to 19th century British History 1800-1914 (Hodder Murray,

1999)

Macdonald, Lyn — 1914-18 Voices and Images of the Great War (Penguin Books, 1991)

Morgan, K O — The Boer War and the Media in the Journal 20th Century British History Vol

13 No 1 March 2002 (published by Oxford Journals)

Marwick, Arthur — The Deluge (Macmillan, 1965)

Marwick, Arthur — The Home Front (Thames and Hudson, 1976)

*Packenham, Thomas — The Boer War (Abacus, 1991)

*Ponting, C — The Crimean War Chatto and Windus, 2004)

Rappaport, H — No Place for Ladies: the Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War

(Aurum Press, 2007)

*Rees R and Stewart G – AS Edexcel GCE History: the Experience of Warfare in Britain, 1854-

1929 (Heinemann, 2008)

*Robinson, Jane — Mary Seacole (Constable and Robinson, 2005)

Sibbald, Raymond — War correspondents: the Boer War (Jonathan Ball,1993)

*Small, Hugh — Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel (Constable, 1998)

Van Reenan, R — Emily Hobhouse: Boer War Letters (Human and Rousseau)

W*ilson, K M — The International Impact of the Boer War (Acumen, 2001)

Winter, J M — The Great War and the British People (Macmillan,1985)

Winter, J M — The Experience of World War I (Oxford University Press, 1989)

 

Internet links to help you find out more about the Crimean War:

A site containing most of Roger Fenton's Crimean War photographs
http://www.allworldwars.com/Crimean-War-Photographs-by-Roger-Fenton-1855.html

Full online archive of 'Punch' magazine - a periodical containing many of the famous cartoons we will be looking at for the Crimea, Boer War and WW1.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=punch

Mary Seacole's autobiography 'Wonderful adventures of Mary Seacole in many lands' , which describes her experiences in the Crimea, is widely available as a free ebook online, good if you have  a tablet or Kindle. Here is one such link:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/seacole/adventures/adventures.html

Also, with your library card you can gain access to a range of online resources, including the British newspaper archives. It is fascinating to look at contemporary newspaper coverage - for instance, you can read first hand William Russell's reports back from the Crimea. You can log in from home here:
http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/leisure/libraries/online-db.htm

The Crimean War Research Society links - includes links to a Channel Four documentary on the Crimean War which you could watch as part of your independent study.
http://cwrs.russianwar.co.uk/cwrsentry.html

You are spoiled for choice when it comes to reading for this topic. If you are not sure what or how to research please ask me and i will show you how.  Also, if you are using an online blog, please let me know when you have updated it, and comment on my own blog so that i can see you are reading it!