American artist and illustrator Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge published I Was There in 1919. The book contains over 30 illustrations, sketches, and paintings made by Baldridge during his time on the Western Front. Baldridge studied at the University of Chicago before searching out adventure as a ranch hand in Texas and joining the National Guard. With the outbreak of the […]
WWI
INTERVIEW: Neil Faulkner on Lawrence of Arabia’s War and the making of the Middle East, 1914-1918
Presenting the subject of his new book, Lawrence of Arabia’s War, MHM Editor Neil Faulkner spoke to the Islam Channel about the division of the Middle East by Britain, and to a lesser extent France, in the years during and after the First World War. Lawrence of Arabia’s War: the Arabs, the British, and the remaking of the Middle East in WWI (Yale University […]
‘In Flanders Fields’: a history of the poppy
The iron scent of blood stains the Remembrance Poppy. In the black-magic fields of Flanders and the Somme, corn-poppy petals are nourished by the memory of ‘the missing’. It is as if the souls of those who died there between 1914 and 1918 have been transformed into a million blood-red flowers, whose enduring image reaches […]
WAR COMPOSERS: George Butterworth
George Butterworth was part of a group of young English composers who were making names for themselves during the Edwardian era. English classical music had languished since the 18th century, but by the 1880s there was a new movement that would produce such creative geniuses as Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Holst. AN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE Many saw Butterworth as one of English music’s great hopes. He […]
Bullet fired by T E Lawrence found in the Arabian Desert
This Model 1911 Colt Automatic bullet, found by archaeologists at the Hallat Ammar Ambush site in 2012, was almost certainly fired by T E Lawrence himself. The bullet, along with other archaeological evidence unearthed during ten years of fieldwork, indicates how reliable his account of the Arab Revolt in Seven Pillars of Wisdom is.
GALLIPOLI: V Beach Madness
To mark Anzac Day 2015, MHM reposts Peter Hart’s action-packed article taking us into the inferno of the Gallipoli landings.
BEHIND THE IMAGE: Charge of the Royal Naval Division, 1915
This photograph shows infantry from the British Royal Naval Division climbing out of the trenches as if for a charge at the Battle of Gallipoli during 1915. Every man grasps their rifle with bayonet fitted, ready for the kind of close-quarters encounter with the enemy that it was expected – wrongly – would decide the war. The hills in the background are […]
World War I: Hill 60
Hill 60 was a low rise south-east of Ypres made from the soil removed in digging a cutting for the Ypres to Comines railway. It had excellent views over both Ypres and Zillibeke, and was captured by the Germans during the first Battle of Ypres in November 1914. On 17 April 1915, in one of the first tunnelling operations by the British Army, six […]
Shell Shock
The term ‘shell shock’ was first used by military doctors in early 1915 to describe the physical ailments of a nervous breakdown. Initially, it was thought the cause was concussion of the brain by shock waves from a shell landing nearby. Before long, it came to sum up a broad range of symptoms, ranging from stuttering incoherently to being struck completely dumb (mutism); from being temporarily blinded to the […]
THE GREAT WAR DEBATE 2014
On 27 October 2014, four military history experts will meet at the Royal United Services Institute to debate the question: Was Britain right to fight in 1914? Was it a necessary sacrifice or just futile slaughter? A war for peace and security, or a war for empire and profit? MHM editor Neil Faulkner will team up with historian […]