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qkirkpatrick

Elkton resident writes book on Delaware's role in WWI - Cecil Daily: Misc Features - 0 views

www.cecildaily.com/...e1-5c53-be80-bf09b3478d4e.html

delaware wwi history culture

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  • Kennard Wiggins Jr. has been retired from the Delaware Air National Guard for 11 years, but he still goes to work every day – by searching through online archives and state libraries and writing books about Delaware’s military history.
  • In addition, the state’s population grew roughly 10 percent between 1910 and 1920, mostly in the north, according to Wiggins. Wilmington, booming with industry from manufacturers and shipbuilders, had 110,000 people living there – nearly 15 percent more than today’s population.
qkirkpatrick

Cookstown woman who found WWI medal as a child trying to trace owner - Mid Ulster Mail - 0 views

www.midulstermail.co.uk/...rying-to-trace-owner-1-7023942

wwi medal history culture

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  • A Cookstown woman who found a WWI medal as she walked to school as a child, is now trying to reunite it with its rightful owner. Gillian Henry was about seven-years-old when she found the award on a pathway alongside the old court house as she made her way to Cookstown Primary School.
  • Now a mum-of-three, Occupational Therapist Gillian said she had forgotten all about it until her son Shane started on a school project about WWII and found the medal at his Granny’s - Gillian’s mother’s house.
  • Explaining how she came across the now almost 100-year-old decoration, Gillian said: “It was on the ground, down near enough at the bottom of the avenue. That was year’s ago and I took it home and never looked about it.”
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  • Describing what it looks like, she went on: “It seems to be from WWI. It’s not rare - it’s more of a common medal for anybody that served. The sentimental value is more important than anything.
  • “It says SMN, which means Seaman and RNR for Royal Naval Reserves, so it’s obviously somebody who was in the Navy. It could have been a case that somebody that was a collector had one and dropped it or it could be that there is family around this area.”
qkirkpatrick

The Royal British Legion Recreates Stunning Photos Of WWI Soldiers Taken A Century Ago - 0 views

www.fastcocreate.com/...i-soldiers-taken-a-century-ago

wwi soldiers history politics

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Royal British Legion has run many emotive and memorable campaigns to support its annual Poppy Appeal, which marks Remembrance Day. This year it has produced a series of haunting photographs of modern service people, that are also meticulous reconstructions of photographs taken a century ago.
  • In an accompanying film, Reeves explains he found in the studio archives a series of photographs of First World War servicemen, who had come to have their portraits taken before they went to the front. He set about recreating the same shots, in the same studio, using the same backdrops with modern servicemen and women
  • The Royal British Legion was founded by veterans of the First World War and the Poppy Appeal is just one of its many activities to support and help veterans, servicemen and women and their families
qkirkpatrick

The Tragic Futility of World War I - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...375103

world war i politics culture history

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • If you find human behavior discouraging today, consider what happened a century ago. A Martian might have gazed down upon Europe in 1914 and seen a peaceful, prosperous continent with a shared culture. Pretty much everyone had enough to eat. The English listened to Wagner, Germans savored Shakespeare, Russian aristocrats mimicked the French, Mozart and Italian opera were loved by all. Then, Europe imploded.
  • And for this, more than 16 million men went to their slaughter, many of them in cruel and creative ways. In trenches that stretched an unbroken 475 miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border, the Germans constructed walls using corpses, so that French troops who captured a trench hung canteens from protruding ankles.
  • It was a sad, pointless war, for which we’re still paying a price. A hard-hearted peace treaty and a ravaged economy produced a “lost generation” of young Germans and led directly to the rise of Hitler and an even uglier worldwide conflagration
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  • So, has our species evolved? The counterevidence is distressingly abundant. The Nazis’ ovens in World War II. Stalin’s gulags. The genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. The return to seventh-century standards of thought and behavior incited by the Iranian revolution of 1979 and practiced by jihadists across the Middle East.
qkirkpatrick

Lessons to be learned from how Britain handled a refugee crisis in 1914 | Letters | Wor... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ndled-a-refugee-crisis-in-1914

refugees crisis britain politics history culture

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Why did Robert Winder in his survey of refugees fleeing to Britain not include the closer parallel to today’s problem: that of Belgians coming in 1914
  • Estimates of 100,000 Belgians, mostly in family groups, and overwhelmingly coming in the three months of September to November 1914 were welcomed throughout Britain as victims of a war their government did not seek, and ours did little to avoid.
  • These families were welcomed in towns and villages by a spontaneously formed scattering of committees which raised cash, found empty houses, organised brass bands to greet them at railway stations.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Leek housed more than 50 refugees in three different properties by Christmas 1914 and silk-mill workers led a fund-raising scheme which made over £2,500 by May 1916.
  • One very obvious observation is that in 1914 the government was slow and clumsy in its response to the flood of humanity. Churchill flatly rejected any idea of receiving them, and the Local Government Board had no part in distributing the families. This was done by volunteers
qkirkpatrick

British first world war soldier laid to rest almost 100 years after death | World news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...t-almost-100-years-after-death

soldier war history politics

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A decorated British soldier killed in the first world war has finally been laid to rest with full military honours almost 100 years after he died.
  • Sgt David Harkness Blakey, of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, was killed aged 26 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. His remains were found in November 2013 – 97 years after he died – during roadworks near the Connaught cemetery in Thiepval, northern France.
  • Identifying fallen first world war soldiers is difficult as tags were commonly made from paper or compressed fibres, which rapidly decomposed. But a home-made metal identity tag believed to have been created by his wife with “18634 Sgt David Harkness Blakey MM of the R Innis Fus” etched on it helped to confirm his identity, along with the discovery of an “R Innis Fus” cap badge.
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  • On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the battalion formed part of the 109 Brigade of the 36th Ulster Division and assembled at the edge of Thiepval Wood. Blakey was among scores who died that day. And in subsequent letters to his wife, it emerged he had last been seen seriously wounded in No Man’s Land
qkirkpatrick

Harlem Hellfighters: The all-black regiment of WW1 - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-27130132

history culture US wwi race

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The 369th Regiment, the longest-serving and most decorated US unit in World War One, earned the nickname the "Harlem Hellfighters" for courageous acts on the battlefield.
  • When these men returned home in 1919, they were hailed as heroes by some but also faced violence and renewed racism, according to Max Brooks in his new graphic novel about the legendary all-black military unit.
  • This work of historical fiction tells the unit's little-known tale, from discrimination in training to brutality and victory in the trenches of France.
qkirkpatrick

Call for new Coventry WW1 Sikh memorial - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...coventry-warwickshire-27979867

sikh history wwi culture India

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A Coventry man believes the sacrifice of Sikhs fighting for Britain in World War One have not been sufficiently honoured.
  • Maghar Singh was sent to the frontline aged just 15, after signing up to fight in the British Indian Army.
  • Jagdeesh's father Mohinderpal Singh was one of a number of Sikhs in Coventry who established a memorial dedicated to those who died in both world wars.
qkirkpatrick

The 'lost' poetry of World War One - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...entertainment-arts-28705819

poetry war history culture wwi

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • he centenary of World War One means the work of the British war poets has been much quoted of late. But the reputation of writers critical of the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, grew mainly after 1918
  • "But at the same time the poets needed to express opinions to resonate with the public. If some of the poems now appear jingoistic, that probably echoes how many people saw the world a century ago.
  • A century ago it was still common for magazines and newspapers to publish poems inspired by great public occasions.
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  • "I was keen to take the collection beyond the obvious. So I looked quite hard at poetry printed in British newspapers in the first weeks of war.
  • "That has become a deep-rooted part of British culture and it's partly down to the impact the poets of the trenches had after the war - Sassoon and Owen and Graves and the rest. There were no seaborne equivalents."
  • "We know that Hardy privately had many doubts about the war: he admitted that he couldn't write patriotic poetry very well because he always saw the other side too much. But he felt unable to express his doubts in public.
  • "But we should resist the temptation to think we always know better than everyone in 1914. "It's easy to mock them in retrospect. We have the enormous advantage of knowing the horror that lay in wait in the four years ahead."
qkirkpatrick

10 inventions that owe their success to World War One - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...magazine-26935867

history culture wwi

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • 1. Sanitary towels..
  • A material called Cellucotton had already been invented before war broke out, by what was then a small US firm - Kimberly-Clark. The company's head of research, Ernst Mahler, and its vice-president, James, C Kimberly, had toured pulp and paper plants in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia in 1914 and spotted a material five times more absorbent than cotton and - when mass-produced - half as expensive.
  • qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15
     
    Article describes 10 things that were invented during and because of WWI
qkirkpatrick

Irish President Michael D Higgins honours WWI soldiers - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...uk-northern-ireland-28584476

irish wwi soldiers history culture

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  • The Irish president has paid tribute to Irish soldiers who fought in World War One.
  • "But we honour them all now, even if at a distance, and we do not ask, nor would it be appropriate to interrogate, their reasons for enlisting.
  • Historians have estimated that more than 200,000 Irish-born soldiers served in the British Army and Navy from 1914 to 1918.
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  • The names of 49,400 Irish casualties of WW1 are listed on the Republic of Ireland's National War Memorial at Islandbridge, Dublin.
  • "It represents a lasting tribute to their sacrifice and it is my hope, in the years to come, that memorials such as these continue to inspire successive generations to remember," he said.
  • "It is fitting that they now have access to a site where they can come together in quiet contemplation to pay tribute to the memory of those who gave so much for our freedom."
qkirkpatrick

BBC World Service - The War That Changed the World, St. Petersburg: Revolution - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p028g3n4

history Russian revolution culture wwi

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Romanovs ruled Russia for centuries until World War One brought revolution and an abrupt end to their imperial reign. In this special debate fro
  • The Russian novelist and well-known public commentator Tatyana Tolstaya delivers a specially commissioned essay which evokes the way revolution and war changes individual lives through the story of her own great-grandmother.
qkirkpatrick

WW1: The indestructible warship - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-africa-29895341

history culture wwi

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  • One hundred years ago, she was the fearsome German warship that ruled the waters of Lake Tanganyika; today the MV Liemba serves as the world's oldest passenger ferry.
  • As part of a series looking at stories beyond the trenches of Europe, BBC Swahili's Zuhura Yunus travels to Tanzania and takes a journey aboard the "indestructible warship".
qkirkpatrick

How WWI was waged at sea deck - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...20040313-103729-8239r

wwi navy politics history battle of Jutland

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  • In “Dreadnought,” the reader is reminded that the author is a biographer at heart: His portraits of the young Winston Churchill; of the intense, eccentric Adm. Sir John “Jacky” Fisher; and of Germany’s ambitious Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz make for a riveting narrative.
  • The two great fleets had vastly different origins. The German fleet was the creation of an unstable monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who chose to compete for naval supremacy with the Royal Navy.
  • At sea as on land, World War I confounded the planners on both sides. The Germans anticipated a sea blockade, but thought that an enemy blockade close to their own coast would be vulnerable to sorties by their own warships.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Instead, Britain instituted a remote blockade, declaring most of the North Sea a war zone and enforcing the blockade from a distance. Much of the war was passed in attempts by each side to lure the other into a naval ambush.
  • The climax of World War I at sea was the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916. There, in the North Sea off Denmark, a sortie by German battle cruisers led to the greatest naval battle of the last century, involving at one time or another more than 200 vessels, including 44 battleships.
  • The British lost more ships and men than their enemies in the resulting melee, in part because of the rugged construction of the German ships.
qkirkpatrick

Rediscovered trenches bring WWI to life in England - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...s-bring-wwi-to-life-in-england

wwi britain history culture

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  • Two lines of trenches face off across No Man’s Land. A soldier marches, rifle in hand, along a ditch. These are instantly familiar images of World War I - but this is Britain, a century on and an English Channel away from the battlefields of the Western Front.
  • This overgrown and oddly corrugated patch of heathland on England’s south coast was once a practice battlefield, complete with trenches, weapons and barbed wire. Thousands of troops trained here to take on the German army. After the 1918 victory - which cost 1 million Britons their lives - the site was forgotten, until it was recently rediscovered by a local official with an interest in military history.
  • Now the trenches are being used to reveal how the Great War transformed Britain - physically as well as socially.
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  • The trenches, near the town of Gosport, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of London, were rediscovered a few months ago by Robert Harper, head of conservation at the local council. A military history buff, he noticed some crenellated lines on a 1950s aerial photograph of the area, and was startled to recognize the pattern of “the classic British trench system.”
  • the aim at the mock battlefield is “to repopulate the landscape,” to tell the stories of some of the troops who trained there. Soldiers from Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S. all passed through this area, close to the major naval base of Portsmouth, on their way to the front.
  • qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15
     
    A line of trenches is discovered in Britain and is now proposed to be the site of a new battlefield.
qkirkpatrick

WWI veteran finally gets his gravestone - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...an-finally-gets-his-gravestone

wwi veteran history

shared by qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • In Rogers City’s Memorial Park cemetery, there’s a new gravestone marking the spot where a World War I veteran was buried nearly 86 years ago.
  • James Elmer Brenay served as a private in the U.S. Army during World War I, and died at 33 in 1928.
  • “Every year we’ve been putting up a flag in this little flag holder, and that was the only thing in this whole lot there,” he said. “I got to thinking a few years ago, ‘why are we putting a flag there?’ There had to be a veteran there.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “I’m happy that a World War I veteran is able to have his grave marked after all these years,” he said
  • Peltz served in the Korean War, and takes a lot of pleasure in getting Brenay the recognition he deserves. There are more than 450 veterans buried in the cemetery, including others who served in World War I.
qkirkpatrick

Africa's role in WWI a forgotten chapter - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...20040728-095143-3877r

africa wwi history culture

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  • Thousands of miles from the battlefields of Europe, the armies of Britain and France clashed with imperial German forces in Africa’s deserts, cities and bush during World War I.
  • The 1914-18 war brought an end to German colonial rule in Africa, saw up to 2 million Africans sacrifice their lives for Europe and brought much social upheaval as cities grew to supply the war effort, hardening racial divisions.
  • “The First World War had a considerable impact on African colonies because European powers requisitioned their labor and their resources,” said historian Bill Nasson of the University of Cape Town.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In World War I, France more than any other European power used African troops, including Senegalese riflemen who fought in the victorious battle to take the German colony of Togo. France also sen
  • Most Africans who participated in that war, however, were recruited or conscripted into labor units, as military service was considered risky — stoking fears that blacks “may get ideas beyond their station,” said World War I historian Albert Grundlingh of the University of Stellenbosch.
  • But it took close to 70 years for South Africa to pay homage to 700 black laborers who died when their ship, the Mendi, sank in the British Channel in 1917 on its way to France to help in the war effort.
  • Amid the battles, African cities were taking shape in the first big wave of black urbanization, driven by the demand for labor.
  • “It was the biggest migration of the early 20th century,” said Mr. Grundlingh, adding that the mass exodus to the cities planted the seeds of segregation, and eventually, black consciousness.
  • The end of German colonization in Africa saw France take over Togo, while a French-British coalition ruled Cameroon. Belgium got Rwanda and Burundi, leaving Tanzania to the British, and Southwest Africa went to South Africa.
qkirkpatrick

100 years after WWI, poppy lives on as symbol - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...r-wwi-poppy-lives-on-as-symbol

wwi culture history

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  • William Sellick pinched the tiny scarlet petals with deft ease, turning them into paper poppies and pressing them into a wreath. The flowers are a potent symbol of remembrance and patriotism that sprang up in the aftermath of World War I to honor the war dead and raise funds for survivors.
  • Each handmade flower evokes the image of poppies springing up from destruction and decay in Belgium’s Flanders Fields, home to many of the Great War’s bloodiest battlefields. The haunting scene was immortalized in a war poem by Canadian army doctor John McCrae: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses row on row.”
  • For Sellick, who suffered combat stress after an army tour to Northern Ireland in the 1970s, making poppies is a way to move on from a life shadowed by depression and alcoholism. He doesn’t like to recall his army days, but every November he makes an effort to help plant crosses decorated with poppies outside London’s Westminster Abbey.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Although the poppy is most commonly worn today in Britain and Commonwealth countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it was a woman from the U.S. state of Georgia who was responsible for turning it into a symbol of the Great War. Moina Michael, a teacher, was so moved by McCrae’s poem that she vowed always to wear a poppy as a way to “keep the faith with all who died.”
  • To this day, the factory in west London’s Richmond makes the bulk of the 45 million poppies, wreaths and crosses sold across Britain
  • There are also those in Britain who avoid the tradition, saying the poppy has become too politicized and nationalistic, or even a symbol that glorifies war. Margaret MacMillan, a historian at Oxford University, said she once reluctantly pinned a poppy when appearing on television because producers insisted she do so.
  • qkirkpatrick on 26 Oct 15
     
    Poppy flower continues to be symbol of WWI throughout Britain and Canada. 
qkirkpatrick

Plans to mark WWI's Battle of Jutland - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...uk-scotland-34509834

wwi navy history politics

shared by qkirkpatrick on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Scotland is to be the focus of one of the main acts of World War One remembrance in 2016.
  • The biggest naval forces in the world clashed off the coast of Denmark in 1916 in the Battle of Jutland but it was a battle in which Scotland played a key role.
  • qkirkpatrick on 25 Oct 15
     
    Scotland plans to mark the Battle of Jutland in 2016, which was one of the biggest and most important naval battles during WWI.
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