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Letters from Aboriginal men who served Australia during the First World War are extremely rare.

But as the history of Aboriginal military service during the Great War is given greater attention, their firsthand accounts illustrate better than anything the sacrifice and the emotional cost of war.

The letters and postcards, some held privately, tell a moving, if laconic, story tinged with longing, gallows humour, bravado and sadness.

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Duration: 39 minutes 21 seconds

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As much as homesickness, the correspondence records the inglorious and mundane aspects of a soldier's life on the Western Front.

The letters and postcards are also characterised by stoicism and understatement.

For decades, historian and blogger Philippa Scarlett has been researching Aboriginal men who served during the Great War.

She says it's not surprising that few records exist, given the negligible education provided to Aboriginal people during the so-called Protection Era.

"Probably they didn't have the tools to write," she says.

In May 1917 a military order revoked the nominal ban on Aboriginal men serving in the Australian Imperial Force, although in fact many had already enlisted.

One of the Aboriginal men who joined up after the military order was Samuel Browning, a fisherman from Fingal (then known as The Caves or Caves Point) on the North Coast of New South Wales.

One of Browning's mates enlisted with him but was rejected on the grounds that he had no European heritage. Browning left Australia in late 1917 aboard the troop ship Euripides, and disembarked at Devonport in the south of England on Boxing Day.

In Browning 's letters to his mother Mary, his heartbroken bride-to-be, and 10-year-old sister, there is no mention of the horrors of the Western Front nor of his gassing in the trenches near Rouen in northern France in August 1918, just a few months before the guns fell silent.

In an undated letter from Bath, where he was convalescing, Sam wrote urgently to Fingal, anxious that his younger brother stay away.

"Dear Mother, tell George to stop where he is instead of enlisting - one is enough from home, so don't forget."

Elsewhere, Browning longed for the beach.

"I am longing for a good feed of oysters and pippies. I'd give ten bob for a feed," he wrote to his mother from the ANZAC training camp at Codford in February 1918.

But Lance Corporal Charles Blackman of the 9th Battalion was much less restrained in his letters to a friend, the manager of a pastoral station at Biggenden north-west of Brisbane.

"Charley" was one of three brothers who served in the AIF during WWI; one, Alfred Blackman, was killed in action during the Battle of Passchendaele in late 1917.

Blackman's letters - which may have been dictated- are preserved in the archives of the Australian War Memorial, and are often signed "the lonely soldier". They are also available online.

Of the few letters and postcards which survive from Aboriginal diggers, Blackman's are the most graphic.

"I expect you know it. The last time up the line, I killed five Germans," he wrote.

In another letter, "the lonely soldier" complains about the bleak weather.

"France is beautiful but it rains too much," he wrote.

"One thing is, the clouds here never need to thunder - the guns do all the thundering - and the flashes they make, it's just like lightning."

Francis Walter Bertie Firth served in the Middle East and lost a brother in Egypt, but his letters from "somewhere in France" are consumed by anxiety about missing letters apparently sent by his mother Kate from Pilliga in northern New South Wales but never received.

Bertie wrote to his mother on Easter Sunday in 1917: "Just a few lines to let you know that I am still in the land of the living," he wrote.

"It is about time the winter was over, I would not like to be here for another, the coldest place on earth."

Characteristically, and presumably without irony, Bertie signs his letters that he hopes everyone at home is well as it leaves him, "in the pink of condition".

Another letter suggests that he may he have been jilted.

"I got a letter from Peggy the other day. She is engaged to someone else. Good luck to her."

Perhaps the most extraordinary letter from an Aboriginal serviceman was published in a Sydney newspaper in 1918.

After enlisting in 1916 and being captured by the enemy at Reincourt the following year, Douglas Grant was detained at a prisoner of war camp at Wunsdorf, south of Berlin, and at Wittenberg in Prussia.

Grant writes from Wittenberg that he is doing well, in spite of everything.

"I am well and comfortable as circumstances will permit. I am working every day, which helps to pass the time away. I am weary for home, and hope to be back soon. Do not worry."

In suspiciously formal language, Doug wrote to his father: "I get letters, and they do cheer me up. You really cannot understand what happiness the receipt of letters does afford me."

The letter would never have been sent if it had not passed the German censors, who monitored all correspondence from prisoners of war.

An enclosed photograph was also published in the Sydney Mail, in which Grant appears to be in good health.

Although today he is perhaps the best known Indigenous soldier of the Great War, Grant was atypical in almost every sense.

Born in North Queensland's Bellenden Ker Ranges, Grant is supposed to have been taken from a massacre in which his mother was killed.

Although he was unmistakably Aboriginal, Grant was brought up completely isolated from his heritage, even acquiring a thick Scottish accent.

Grant's wartime experiences were extraordinary - at one point he was responsible for the distribution of Red Cross parcels to Indian military personnel also detained at Wunsdorf, and was studied by curious anthropologists who were given access to prisoners of war.

As firsthand accounts, the letters are an important part of the unfolding story of Aboriginal war service - a story that's emerging 100 years after the fact.

But Philippa Scarlett says more could be done to honour Aboriginal diggers.

"Digging out more stories is one way of doing it. There are so many different avenues. We've made an extremely good start. Let's keep on doing it."

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Letters home from Aboriginal diggers reveal humour, sadness

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Letters from Aboriginal men who served Australia during the First World War are extremely rare. But as the history of Aboriginal military service during the Great War is given greater attention, their firsthand accounts illustrate better than anything the sacrifice and the emotional cost of war.

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Germany lost the war partly because Austria Hungarians couldn't fight and they had to rely on Germany. Germany faced a two-front war from Verdun and the Western front and they couldn't rely on their allies.

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Germany lost the war partly because Austria Hungarians couldn't fight and they had to rely on Germany. Germany faced a two-front war from Verdun and the Western front and they couldn't rely on their allies.

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exaggerates and manipulates what is already there, and when people are desperate they either want something to believe in or they know that its untruthfull

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exaggerates and manipulates what is already there, and when people are desperate they either want something to believe in or they know that its untruthfull

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Post cards, posters, speeches, songs, films, etc.

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Post cards, posters, speeches, songs, films, etc.

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Ms. Higginson's most favouriteist WWI song

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Ms. Higginson's most favouriteist WWI song

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My child has known all the lyrics since she was 2. Poor thing.

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pilots life expectancy was 11 days compared to the 6 weeks of ppl in trenches

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pilots life expectancy was 11 days compared to the 6 weeks of ppl in trenches

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throw bricks at other pilots

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- Indigenous women remained on the homefront lines looking after their homes and communities, raising their children, and tending to their family farms while the men were away at war
- In October 1914, the women organized their first Patriotic League (SNWPL) formed on reserve in Ontario
- They contributed to the war effort by providing comforts to the soldiers such as knitted socks, sweaters, mufflers, and bandages
- Young females were contributed by producing handmade items to send to soldiers

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-       The battle of Tannenberg was fought between Russia and Germany between August 26th and 30th in 1914, The battle resulted in a complete destruction of Russia’s second army and the devastating loss of their Russian commander Alexander Samsonov due to the despair of losing the battle.

-       The cause for this battle was due to how the Russian armies in East Prussia separated into two which led to the Germans to have an open window to attack one of them as now the Russians had less soldiers to fight against Germany’s army

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What battles on the Eastern front were like

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What battles on the Eastern front were like

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The fighting on the Eastern front was unpleasant and brutal and some of the most dreadful fighting occurred on the Eastern front. The major difference between fighting on the Eastern or Western front was that the Eastern front was much larger and that the was more fluid. Fighting on the Eastern front was characterized by mobility and offensives whereas on the Western front as much smaller and had less movement fighting was characterized by defensive trench warfare.

Fighting on the Eastern front was so brutal due to how the civilian population of the territory in conflict suffered tremendously from the war

- There were horrific policies put in place by the Germans regarding occupations and there was a great lack of food and other necessities that had become very scarce and limited

There was around 30 million casualties on the Eastern front which 9 of those 30 million were children

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Combined with the Lusitania, the Zimmermann Telegram was used to bring the USA into the war in 1917.

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Español

In January 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt, offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause. This message helped draw the United States into the war and thus changed the course of history. Read more...

Primary Sources
Links go to DocsTeach, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.
Teaching Activities

The Zimmermann Telegram on DocsTeach asks students to analyze the telegram to determine if the United States should have entered World War I based on the telegram's information and implications.

In this Decoding a Message exercise, students decode a fictitious message using a simple substitution code.

Additional Background Information

Between 1914 and the spring of 1917, the European nations engaged in a conflict that became known as World War I. While armies moved across the face of Europe, the United States remained neutral. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson was reelected President for a second term, largely because of the slogan "He kept us out of war."

Events in early 1917 would change that hope. In frustration over the effective British naval blockade, Germany broke its pledge to limit submarine warfare on February 1, 1917. In response to the breaking of the Sussex pledge, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Germany. Several weeks later, on February 24, the British presented the Zimmermann telegram to the U.S. Government in an effort to capitalize on growing anti-German sentiment in the United States. The American press published news of the telegram on March 1. On April 6, 1917, the United States Congress formally declared war on Germany and its allies.

The Zimmermann Telegram had such an impact on American opinion that, according to David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, "No other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences." It is his opinion that "never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message.
This text was adapted from the article "The Zimmerman Telegram" by Mary Alexander and Marilyn Childress.
Citation: Alexander, Mary and Marilyn Childress. "The Zimmerman Telegram." Social Education 45, 4 (April 1981): 266
Materials created by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain.

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Español In January 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt, offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause. This message helped draw the United States into the war and thus changed the course of history.

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Britain was under the Defense of the Realms Act which restricted citizen's freedoms (this was similar to the War Measures Act implemented in Canada).

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Britain was under the Defense of the Realms Act which restricted citizen's freedoms (this was similar to the War Measures Act implemented in Canada).

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in the battle of Amiens the enemy had to retreat which lead to the triple entente victory

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in the battle of Amiens the enemy had to retreat which lead to the triple entente victory

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Battle of Jutland was a Naval Battle. There was no decisive victor but Britain suffered more losses.

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Battle of Jutland was a Naval Battle. There was no decisive victor but Britain suffered more losses.

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They wanted to reach the shore (have control of the sea) in order to control ports.

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They wanted to reach the shore (have control of the sea) in order to control ports.

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Germany had around 250 individual food restrictions, including how much they could buy, which products had to be rationed ...
- cordie

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On May 7, 1915, the German submarine U-20 torpedoed and sank the Lusitania, a swift-moving British cruise liner traveling from New York to Liverpool, England. Of the 1,959 men, women, and children on board, 1,195 perished, including 123 Americans.

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The devastating trench warfare and battles accelerated the development of weapon technologies as they were put into the battle to break the stalemate between fronts. World War 1 was revolutionary towards the advancement of weapons at the time as modern weapons increased the chances of winning the battles.

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It was seen most effective as a weapon used against the enemies domestic population. It controlled (or attempted to control) public opinions, it increased the war efforts, and it even strengthened political plans and strategies.

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The purpose of it was to make people think a certain way for the benefit of a greater (biased) cause

for eg. to participate in the war effort from the home front, or to go to war and serve your country

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This was the first time propaganda was done on a global scale
During the war the sources and themes of propaganda greatly changed

It became an attempt to fuel war enthusiasm which did not have the original intentions of becoming deceitful

Bernd Hüppauf, a historian describes the propaganda as the “absolute opposite of truth” - this statement can be debated

The idea at the start of propaganda was centered around nationalism

“Come fight for your country with your neighbours!” “home by christmas!”

Uncle sam’s “we want you”

Lots of empty promises

some were lies, others had the intentions of being true, but then the war became unpredictable for some aspects

Was advertised as a fun and heroic experience

German wartime propaganda at the homefront

Attempts to influence public opinion: censorship, press conferences, propaganda posters, publications, and events.

There was also many popular attempts to describe and explain the parameters of germany's wartime identity

Includes letters to the editor, war poems + images, teachers and pastors speeches, even war-themed merch

Motivation for this came from ideological conviction as well as commercial interests attempting to follow its own agenda

This was to “Sell the war to the german nation”

Gave “symbolic parameters of the national wartime identity as propaganda” (Ther.)

Even before the war, the Kaiser’s had literal and ideological national ideals and convictions

big sections of German society accepted obedience with a great amount of loyalty and discipline which played as a great help when ww1 propaganda began and when mobilization became necessary

Popular forms of propaganda:

Journalists, artists, nationalist interpretations, articles, poetry, posters, speeches stereotypes, postcards, riddles, children's books, comercial musicals, and even in the cinema

The postcards often contained a combo of patriotic, educative, or funny images, as well as a memorable slogan

This was very accessible and evoked strong emotions - it also reached a wide audience variety

the biases reached everyone and the people would generally form opinions based off of the information given (even if it was not conscious) - that is why it was easier for leaders to lie in these "Campaigns"

this made the people more wanting to contribute in the war effort weather on the home front or in the war front

Its inclusion in mass media ended up reaching everyone in society

A widespread of images and ideas portrayed a biased and particular interpretation of the conflict

Patriariarichal and nationalist ideas is what drove the support and this was fed by the propaganda

Countries often advertised untrue stories about their enemies

How did propaganda change throughout the war:

Film became a great part of it

The people became demanding of actual footage of the war front which was very unrealistic for the cinematographers

Millions of people saw these films on the monthly

even if it was staged - gave them a sense of being a part of it, and because it was sad they wanted to help

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Because of the french revolution, europe's political leaders recognized a significant political force  which is: public opinion expressed through agitation and action

This could no longer be ignored or controlled by censorship

To promote an agenda, politicians and others decided to actively influence public discourse - initially mainly through press

Napoleon was the first statesman to use both censorship and propaganda to support his warfare and to keep his control

His military components then started to use successful propaganda campaigns to elevate political ideology and warfare techniques

Propaganda became a political weapon

The people who used it associated it with negative intentions to undermine authority and also as a manipulation tactic

One way this was done was by using propaganda to claim their enemies were spreading lies through their propaganda but that their own efforts were intended to help and educate

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-Britain’s naval blockade of Germany severely restricted the number of goods that reached German civilians.                                  -The German U-boat campaign worsened the food shortage in Britain because cargo ships were being shot down causing a food shortage. 

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-Britain’s naval blockade of Germany severely restricted the number of goods that reached German civilians.                                  -The German U-boat campaign worsened the food shortage in Britain because cargo ships were being shot down causing a food shortage. 

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“information , especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause of point of view.”

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Here is a video about the importance of film to propaganda and information about it 

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Here is a video about the importance of film to propaganda and information about it 

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Reaching the Masses - Propaganda Film During World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special

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Click here for the link to the lyrics

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Click here for the link to the lyrics

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10 Inventions that owe their success to WWI

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10 Inventions that owe their success to WWI

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There is nothing inappropriate in the picture, FYI :)

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10 inventions that owe their success to World War One

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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.

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The ability of a rifle was that it can instantly turn a civilian into a soldier. For example, in august 1914, Britain recruited a huge number of volunteers and just about 8 weeks later. The volunteers were sent on the battlefield. Grenade was simply a hand-thrown explosive item that was essential to the infantry troops. The first kinds of grenades were nails and metal bits stuffed with gunpower. The use of grenade in the battles were to damage enemies underground or behind covers and to force enemies out into the open, providing targets for rifles and machine guns.

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	The Head of the Prussian Commission for the Provisioning of the People noted, “women’s wallets were filled with food ration cards of every kind, but the rations were often so minimal that it wasn’t even worth picking them up”.

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	The Head of the Prussian Commission for the Provisioning of the People noted, “women’s wallets were filled with food ration cards of every kind, but the rations were often so minimal that it wasn’t even worth picking them up”.

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The use of artillery in WW1 was mainly used to break the stalemate during the trench warfare. WW1 raised artillery to a new level of importance on the battlefield. The presence of artillery made the trenches unsafe for the troops anymore, as the explosive shell were fired at a constant rate at concentrated area such as the trenches. The use of artillery also brough mortar back to the battlefield by the Germans because the use of mortar was able to make the artillery shoot higher than 45 degrees; making the accuracy of the artillery much higher. Artillery on the battlefield also influenced tactics and strategies during the battles. Artilleries were separated into two categories, the lightweight and the heavy artilleries. Light weight artilleries were easily transported by infantry troops, however, these types suffered from the high recoil of each shot as the lightweight artilleries had to be put back into its position. The heavy artilleries increased its importance in the trench warfare as they were in fixed position. Artillery annihilated the enemy before they encountered the allied troops and damaging the reinforcement before they reached in position.

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Britain entered 1918 with two crucial advantages which contributed to their victory: Their citizens were optimistic from the United States joining the war soon and they had more resources available. They weren’t starving they just had a food shortage. 

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Britain entered 1918 with two crucial advantages which contributed to their victory: Their citizens were optimistic from the United States joining the war soon and they had more resources available. They weren’t starving they just had a food shortage. 

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Indigenous peoples and polices and the Homefront 

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Indigenous peoples and polices and the Homefront 

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- On the home front, most indigenous communities participated in the national war effort in diverse ways,
- Many Indigenous communities and individuals made generous monetary donations to various war funds.
- Arthur Meighen, minister of the interior as well as head of Indian Affairs, launched the "Greater Production Effort", a program intended to increase agricultural production.
- Providing incentives for Canadians to settle on the land, take up farming, and produce food to feed the soldiers as well as the Canadian population at home.
- Encourage more Indigenous and non - Indigenous peoples to farm more extensively.
- Unfortunately, Indigenous donations became a source of propaganda in order to encourage non-Indigenous peoples to donate to the cause.
- Not all Indigenous people were supportive of the war or the wartime policies
- Facing labor shortages, employers were quick to hire Indigenous peoples, so men that were either too old or too young to enlist in war, they were able to find employment
- Indigenous men and women were employed by the Anglo-British Columbia Packing Company, a fish cannery, accounting for 32% of its total workforce
- In 1917, the number of Indigenous workers rose to 550 which was so rewarding and relieving for them during this time.

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By 1918, Germany was much worse off, people were starving and dying at the Homefront and were no longer tolerating the war. 

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By 1918, Germany was much worse off, people were starving and dying at the Homefront and were no longer tolerating the war. 

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-President Woodrow Wilson thought all the country’s female citizens deserved the right to vote
-Military Voters Act
-Wartime Election

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Kingdom of Armenia

The Armenian people have made their home in the Caucasus region of Eurasia for some 3,000 years. For some of that time, the kingdom of Armenia was an independent entity: At the beginning of the 4th century A.D., for instance, it became the first nation in the world to make Christianity its official religion.

But for the most part, control of the region shifted from one empire to another. During the 15th century, Armenia was absorbed into the mighty Ottoman Empire.

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman rulers, like most of their subjects, were Muslim. They permitted religious minorities to maintain some autonomy, but they also subjected Armenians, whom they viewed as "infidels," to unequal and unjust treatment. Christians paid higher taxes than Muslims, for example, and had very few political or legal rights.

In spite of these obstacles, the Armenian community thrived under Ottoman rule. They tended to be better educated and wealthier than their Turkish neighbors, who in turn grew to resent their success.

This resentment was compounded by suspicions that the Christian Armenians would be more loyal to Christian governments (that of the Russians, for example, who shared an unstable border with Turkey) than they were to the Ottoman caliphate.

These suspicions grew more acute as the Ottoman Empire began to crumble: At the end of the 19th century, the despotic Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II-obsessed with loyalty above all, and infuriated by the nascent Armenian campaign to win basic civil rights-declared that he would solve the "Armenian question" once and for all.

"I will soon settle those Armenians," he told a reporter in 1890. "I will give them a box on the ear which will make them...relinquish their revolutionary ambitions."

First Armenian Massacre

Between 1894 and 1896, this "box on the ear" took the form of a state-sanctioned pogrom.

In response to large-scale protests by Armenians, Turkish military officials, soldiers and ordinary men sacked Armenian villages and cities and massacred their citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered.

Young Turks

In 1908, a new government came to power in Turkey. A group of reformers who called themselves the "Young Turks" overthrew Sultan Abdul Hamid and established a more modern constitutional government.

At first, the Armenians were hopeful that they would have an equal place in this new state, but they soon learned that what the nationalistic Young Turks wanted most of all was to "Turkify" the empire. According to this way of thinking, non-Turks-and especially Christian non-Turks-were a grave threat to the new state.

World War I Begins

In 1914, the Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (At the same time, Ottoman religious authorities declared a holy war against all Christians except their allies.)

Military leaders began to argue that the Armenians were traitors: If they thought they could win independence if the Allies were victorious, this argument went, the Armenians would be eager to fight for the enemy.

Indeed, as the war intensified, Armenians organized volunteer battalions to help the Russian army fight against the Turks in the Caucasus region. These events, and general Turkish suspicion of the Armenian people, led the Turkish government to push for the "removal" of the Armenians from the war zones along the Eastern Front.

Armenian Genocide Begins

On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began: That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals.

After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water.

Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. People who stopped to rest were shot.

At the same time, the Young Turks created a "Special Organization," which in turn organized "killing squads" or "butcher battalions" to carry out, as one officer put it, "the liquidation of the Christian elements."

These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses.

Records show that during this "Turkification" campaign, government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam and gave them to Turkish families. In some places, they raped women and forced them to join Turkish "harems" or serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.

Did you know? American news outlets have also been reluctant to use the word "genocide" to describe Turkey's crimes. The phrase "Armenian genocide" did not appear in The New York Times until 2004.

Aftermath and Legacy

After the Ottomans surrendered in 1918, the leaders of the Young Turks fled to Germany, which promised not to prosecute them for the genocide. (However, a group of Armenian nationalists devised a plan, known as Operation Nemesis, to track down and assassinate the leaders of the genocide.)

Ever since then, the Turkish government has denied that a genocide took place. The Armenians were an enemy force, they argue, and their slaughter was a necessary war measure.

Turkey is an important ally of the United States and other Western nations, and so their governments had been slow to condemn the long-ago killings. In March 2010, a U.S. Congressional panel voted to recognize the genocide. On October 29, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that recognized the Armenian genocide. And on April 24, 2021, President Biden issued a statement, saying, "The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today."

Sources

The Armenian Genocide (1915-1916): Overview. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Armenian Genocide (1915-1923). Armenian National Institute.
Armenian Genocide. Yale University: Genocide Studies Program.

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Armenian Genocide: Facts & Timeline - HISTORY

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The Armenian genocide was the systematic killing and deportation of millions of Armenians by Ottoman Empire Turks from 1915-1920, during and after World War I.

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“12 Things You Didn't Know about Women in the First World War.” Imperial War Museums, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-women-in-the-first-world-war.

Canada a Country by Consent: World War I: Women Get the Vote 1916-1919, http://www.canadahistoryproject.ca/1914/1914-08-women-vote.html#:~:text=Women%20got%20the%20federal%20vote,as%20of%20January%201%2C%201919.

Canada a Country by Consent: World War I: Women Get the Vote 1916-1919, http://www.canadahistoryproject.ca/1914/1914-08-women-vote.html#:~:text=Women%20got%20the%20federal%20vote,as%20of%20January%201%2C%201919.

Inscription on the Liberty Memorial Tower in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri. “Women in WWI.” National WWI Museum and Memorial, 3 Jan. 2020, https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/women.

Millette, Dominique. “Canadian Women and War.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/women-and-war.

“Overlooked No More: Maria Bochkareva, Who Led Women into Battle in WWI.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Apr. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/obituaries/overlooked-maria-bochkareva.html.

Swick, Gerald. “Ten Notable Women of World War I.” HistoryNet, HistoryNet, 14 Apr. 2016, https://www.historynet.com/ten-notable-women-of-world-war-i.htm.

“Women in World War I (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/articles/women-in-world-war-i.htm.

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Reconstructive surgery carried out between 1916 and 1918. Wellcome Images, CC BY-NC-SA

The metrics from World War I are horrific. In all, there were 37m military and civilian casualties - 16m dead and 21m wounded. Never before had a conflict brought such devastation in terms of death and injury. In response, during the four years of the war, military surgeons developed new techniques on the battlefield and in supporting hospitals which, in the war's final two years, resulted in more survivors of injuries that would have proved mortal in the first two.

On the Western Front, 1.6m British soldiers were successfully treated and returned to the trenches. By the end of the war, 735,487 British troops had been discharged following major injuries. The majority of the injuries were caused by shell blasts and shrapnel.

Many of the injured (16%) had injuries affecting the face, over a third of which were categorised as "severe". Historically, this was an area where very little had been attempted, and survivors with major facial injuries were left with major deformities that made it difficult to see, breathe easily, or eat and drink - as well as looking horrific.

A young ENT (ear, nose and throat) surgeon from New Zealand, Harold Gillies, working on the Western Front saw attempts to repair the ravages of facial injuries and realised that there was a need for specialised work. The timing was right, because the military medical leadership was recognising the benefit of establishing specialist centres for dealing with specific injuries and wounds, such as neurosurgical and orthopaedic injuries or victims of gassing.

Gillies was given the go ahead, and by January 1916 was setting up Britain's first plastic surgery unit at the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot. Gillies toured base hospitals in France to seek suitable patients to be sent to his unit. He returned expecting about 200 patients - but the opening of the unit coincided with the opening of the Somme offensive in 1916, and more than 2,000 patients with facial injuries were sent to Aldershot. Treatment was also needed for sailors and airmen suffering from facial burns.

Read more: Why the Battle of the Somme marks a turning point of World War I

A strange new art

Gillies described the development of plastic surgery as a " strange new art". Many techniques were developed by trial and error, although some mirrored work that had been done centuries previously in India. One of the main techniques Gillies developed was tube pedicle skin-grafting.

A flap of skin was separated but not detached from a healthy part of the soldier's body, stitched into a tube, and then sutured to the injured area. A period of time was needed to allow a new blood supply to form at the site of implantation. It was then detached, the tube opened and the flat skin stitched over the area that needed cover.

One of the first patients to be treated was Walter Yeo, gunnery warrant officer on HMS Warspite. Yeo sustained facial injuries during the Battle of Jutland in 1916, including the loss of his upper and lower eyelids. The tube pedicle produced a "mask" of skin grafted across his face and eyes, producing new eyelids. The results, although far from perfect, meant that he had a face once again. Gillies went on to repeat the same sort of procedure on thousands of others.

There was need for larger facilities for surgical and postoperative treatment and also rehabilitation of the patients, together with the different specialities involved in their care. Gillies played a large part in the design of a specialist unit at Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup, southeast London. It opened with 320 beds - and by the end of the war, there were more 600 beds and 11,752 operations had been carried out. But reconstructive surgery continued long after hostilities ceased and, by the time the unit finally closed in 1929, some 8,000 military personnel had been treated between 1920 and 1925.

The details of the injuries, the operations to correct them and the final outcome were all recorded in detail, both by early clinical photography and also by detailed drawings and paintings created by Henry Tonks, who although trained as a doctor, had given up medicine for painting. Tonks became a war artist on the Western Front but then joined Gillies to help not only in the recording of the new plastic procedures, but also with their planning.

The only real advances

The complex facial and head surgery necessitated new ways of delivering anaesthetics. Anaesthesia generally had advanced as a speciality during the war years - both in the way it was administered, and also how doctors were trained (previously, anaesthetics had often been given by a junior member of the surgical team).

The survival from operations requiring anaesthesia was improving, although techniques were still based on chloroform and ether. The Queen Mary's anaesthetic team developed a method of passing a rubber tube from the nose to the trachea (windpipe), as well as working on the endotracheal tube (mouth to trachea) whch was made from commercial rubber tubing. Many of their techniques remain in use today. As an Austrian doctor wrote in 1935:

Nobody won the last war but the medical services. The increase in knowledge was the sole determinable gain for mankind in a devastating catastrophe.

The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Norman G Kirby, Major General (Retired), Director of Army Surgery 1978-82.

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World War I: the birth of plastic surgery and modern anaesthesia

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The metrics from World War I are horrific. In all, there were 37m military and civilian casualties - 16m dead and 21m wounded. Never before had a conflict brought such devastation in terms of death and injury.

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Also known as the Great War, the First World War was a global conflict primarily fought between two groups: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria and Italy) and the Triple Entente (Great Britain, France and Russia). It began on 28 July 1914, following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand a month earlier, and ended on 11 November 1918 with the signing of a ceasefire, or 'armistice'.It's one of the most well-documented conflicts in history, but how much do you know about World War One? Discover 10 surprising facts below...

Many people assume that the war resulted directly from the alliance structure that bound all the European great powers together before 1914. Germany was allied to Austria-Hungary and Italy; Russia was allied to France, and both countries had an entente (a diplomatic agreement) with Britain.

The alliances certainly contributed to the prewar build-up of tension between the great powers but, perhaps surprisingly, none of these alliances actually produced a declaration of war.

In July 1914 Germany gave Austria-Hungary a sweeping guarantee of support known as the 'Blank Cheque', which went far beyond the terms of their formal alliance. The French came in because Germany launched a pre-emptive strike against them; Britain declared war not because of the entente agreements but because the Germans invaded Belgium, and Italy first kept out of the war and then came in against its own allies!

The minimum height requirement for the British Army was 5ft 3ins, but many shorter men were caught up in the recruiting enthusiasm of August 1914 and were keen to enlist.

Rather reluctantly the War Office established a number of 'bantam battalions', attached to more conventional regiments. Many bantams were coal miners, and their short height and technical expertise proved a great asset in the tunnelling work that went on underneath the western front.

However, bantams were not particularly effective in battle, and by the end of 1916 the general fitness and condition of men volunteering as bantams was no longer up to the standard required. It wasn't easy to maintain recruitment: increasingly the bantam battalions had to accept men of 'normal' height. And there's not much point in a bantam battalion that is largely made up of taller men, so after conscription was introduced in 1916 the bantam battalions idea was quietly dropped.

The Football League suspended its programme after the 1914-15 season (although the FA continued to allow clubs to organise regional competitions), and amateur tournaments were difficult to run with so many men in the army, so women stepped into the breach.

Munitions workers - 'munitionettes', as they were known - formed football teams and played against rival factories. Munitionette football attracted a wide following, and many matches were played at the grounds of professional clubs. When peace came, however, the female players had to hang up their boots and go back to the domestic lives they had been leading before the war. But the sport continued to enjoy success until women were banned from playing in Football League grounds in 1921.

Like many neutral countries, Portugal was angry at German U-boat attacks on its merchant shipping. The Portuguese were also worried that the German military campaign in Africa might move into their colonies in Mozambique and Angola.

In March 1916, Germany declared war on Portugal. As well as patrolling the oceans and strengthening their border controls in Africa, the Portuguese also sent a military force to the western front. The Portuguese won the respect of their more battle-hardened allies, and put up a particularly stubborn fight against the great German offensive of spring, 1918.

Launching a successful attack against a heavily fortified enemy trench was one of the most difficult problems facing military commanders on both sides: barbed wire and machine guns gave a considerable advantage to the defender. Even if an attacker did break through, the attacking force usually ran out of steam just as the defenders brought up reinforcements.

The man who solved the conundrum was the Russian general Alexei Brusilov, who in 1916 launched a massive offensive against the Austrians in co-ordination with the British and French attack on the Somme. Brusilov realised that offensives on the western front were too heavily concentrated on trying to 'punch a hole' through the enemy line at a particular point, so the enemy knew exactly where to send his reinforcements.

By attacking over a much larger area, Brusilov was able to hide the direction of his main attack from the Austrians, so they never knew which points to reinforce and which to abandon. Of course, Brusilov's approach needed the sort of huge numbers of men that were the Russian army's speciality, and after its initial success the attack petered out because the supply system for food and ammunition couldn't cope.

On 22 May 1915 a troop train carrying men of the Royal Scots Guards and the Leith Territorial battalion south to embark for the Gallipoli campaign crashed into a stationary local train sitting outside a signal box near Gretna Green. Moments later the Glasgow express crashed into the wreckage of the two trains, and the whole scene was engulfed by fire.

Some 226 people were killed, 214 of them soldiers, and 246 were seriously injured. It remains to this day the biggest loss of life in a railway accident in Britain.

The crash happened through the carelessness of the two signalmen, who were found guilty of criminal negligence and sent to prison. They had shunted the local train onto the main line instead of a siding and had been too busy chatting about the war to change the signals to warn the approaching troop train.

Wartime demand for rolling stock was so high that trains were using old wooden-framed carriages, which caught fire with terrifying speed. The crash was another unwanted by-product of the First World War.

Britain's only formal alliance before 1914 was with Japan, and it was designed to relieve the Royal Navy of some of the burden of defending Britain's Asian colonies, and to enable Britain and Japan to help one another safeguard their respective interests in China and Korea.

When war broke out, the Japanese attacked German possessions in the Pacific and China, but in 1917 Britain requested Japanese assistance with escort duties in the Mediterranean. The region was vital for supplying Allied armies in Italy and Greece, and for maintaining communications with Africa, but the Allied navies faced threats from German and Austrian submarines.

The Japanese, operating from Malta, provided escorts for Allied merchant and troop convoys, and a search-and-rescue service for the crews of torpedoed vessels. Japan's important role in the war strengthened its claim to be accepted by the Americans and Europeans as a fully fledged great power.

Who actually filled all those sandbags we see in photographs of the trenches? Who loaded the guns, ammunitions and food onto lorries or trains? Who cleared up after a train was derailed or a headquarters building shelled?

The answer was the Chinese Labour Corps. They were volunteers from the Chinese countryside who were sent to Europe to fulfil a vital, but almost completely overlooked role in making an Allied victory possible. They were paid a pittance, and were generally regarded by both the British and French as expendable 'coolies'.

They mostly served behind the lines, which limited their casualties from enemy action, although they suffered very badly from the 'Spanish' flu epidemic of 1918.

Although we mark the Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, as the end of the First World War, it actually lasted two further weeks in Africa.

The German commander, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, had become a national hero in Germany through his ruthless guerrilla campaign against Britain's imperial forces in East Africa, forcing Africans to act as his porters and devastating the economy of the local villages as he did so. Vorbeck had been forced into Portuguese Mozambique by November 1918, but he still had some 3,000 troops under his command and he was still launching raids into Southern Rhodesia when news reached him of the armistice in Europe.

Unlike the German army in Europe, Vorbeck could regard his own force as undefeated, and he decided to end the African war at a time of his own choosing. He formally surrendered to the British in Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia) on 25 November, two weeks after the Armistice in Europe.

The words that appear on the gravestones of unidentified soldiers of the First World War, "A soldier of the Great War known unto God", were written by the celebrated writer and Nobel Prizewinner, Rudyard Kipling.

Commissioning leading figures like Kipling was a way of showing that Britain honoured its war dead. The words on the Cenotaph in Whitehall, built by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, even calls them "The Glorious Dead". The words were chosen by Kipling, but there was a cruel irony in this commission.
Seán Lang is the author of First World War for Dummies (2014)This article was first published in August 2014
Kipling's own son John had been taken into the army despite his appallingly weak eyesight, and was killed by a German shell in 1915 at the battle of Loos. His body was never found, so he too became, in his father's words, "a soldier of the Great War known unto God".

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10 facts you (probably) didn't know about the First World War

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It's one of the most well-documented conflicts in history, but how much do you know about World War One (also known as the First World War and the Great War)? Here, Seán Lang reveals 10 lesser-known facts about the global conflict fought between 1914 and 1918...

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Air superiority played a decisive part in battles being won. It was important more so for reconnaissance, not bombing. In reality, aerial raids were often ineffective; bombs were inaccurate and they missed military targets most of the time. Only a few hundred tons of bombs were dropped by each of the powers. Britain dropped 660 tons and Germany 300. Bombing was limited in part by Anti Aircraft guns. They were fairly cheap, mobile, accurate, and effective. Most bombing raids, whether by Britain or Germany, would consist of heavy bombers and supporting fighter planes. Germany would use Zeppelins in their air raids but they proved to be more detrimental than helpful since they were easily destroyed. They did however, work to decrease morale! Lastly, (on the topic of morale) planes were used to spread propaganda by all belligerents. Britain used propaganda the most extensively, distributing more than 26 million leaflets. Planes would drop packages of propaganda leaflets. These leaflets were effective, an estimated 1/7 British leaflets were not turned in by German troops, despite it being a severe crime not to. All in all, aviation in WW1 saw major use in reconnaissance but played a lesser direct role in the killing. However, the intelligence gathered from reconnaissance enabled more effective killing.

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Most of us are fairly well versed on many of the facts of Word War I with great battles such as the Somme and Battle of Passchendaele but there are some that are so quirky that they have failed entirely to make the schoolbooks. In honour of the Great War's centenary, here are the top ten little known facts about World War I that might just come as a surprise to you.

At the beginning of the war, tanks were grouped according to their 'gender'. The male tanks had cannons attached while the females carried machine guns. The prototype tank was named Little Willie.

2. Women's skin turned yellow

3. Explosions in France were heard in London

A team of miners worked in secret to dig tunnels under the trenches during the war in order to plant and detonate mines there. The detonations destroyed much of the German front line and were so great, the prime minister then heard the sound in London, 140 miles away.

4. 'Liberty sausage', 'liberty cabbage' and 'liberty dogs' were born

In America, suspicion of the Germans was so high that even German shepherd dogs were killed. The names of frankfurters, hamburgers, sauerkraut and dachshunds were all changed to American names, German stopped being taught in schools and German-language books were banned. Before the war, it had been the second most widely spoken language in the US.

5. WWI saw pioneering advances in modern medicine

Inspired by the sight of soldiers' faces ravaged by shrapnel, many of which remained covered by masks, Harold Gillies established the field of plastic surgery, pioneering the first attempts of facial reconstruction. As well as this, blood transfusions became routine to save soldiers, with the first blood bank established on the front line in 1917.

6. Dr. Doolittle was created

The Dr. Doolittle stories were born of Hugh Lofting's aversion to writing his children about the true horrors of the war and trench life. Instead, more creative letters were sent.

7. Franz Ferdinand's licence plate was the cause of a strange coincidence

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on June 28th 1914, an event which led to the beginning of the war. Strangely, the Archduke's number plate read: A 111 118, a series that can be read as, Armistice 11 November '18.

8. Both Native Americans and African Americans served during the war

Despite the fact that they weren't granted citizenship in America until 1924, nearly 13,000 Native Americans fought during the war.

Over 200,000 African Americans also served, but only 11% in combat and this in segregated divisions.

9. The youngest authenticated combatant to serve was only 12

Many young men faked their age in order to sign up early. The youngest to do so was Sidney Lewis, who was only 12 years old at the time.

10. Woodrow Wilson ran his campaign for a second presidential term with an anti-war slogan

"He kept us out of war" was the slogan Woodrow Wilson adopted when he ran for his second term in office. However, he immediately reneged on this concept when he was sworn in, declaring war on Germany only around a month later.

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Most of us are fairly well versed on many of the facts of Word War I with great battles such as the Somme and Battle of Passchendaele but there are some that are so quirky that they have failed entirely to make the schoolbooks.

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The first image of tanks was the interest of officers in merging tractors and caterpillars to breach the designated objective. Britain established an operation that was first called the “Land Committee” to study the military prospect of vehicles. The point of the “Land Committee” was to seek ways to break through the no man’s land while the land troops cannot. As the infantry were pressured by barbed wire and machine gunners. The prototypes of tanks were completed in mid-1916 and were used during the Battle of Somme in September 1916. The tanks had a huge effect on the German troops as it was able to hull through the barbed wires and trenches. However, the tanks suffered severely from slow speed, mechanical failure, and their inability to cross the soft ground. Tanks can be easily knocked out by the artillery as they moved as slow as a walking soldier. However,  it provided important firepower that the infantries needed. The tank was not a war-winning weapon, but tanks contributed highly to the arsenals.

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What was life like in a World War One trench?

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What was it like to live and work in a World War One trench? Find out in this year 5/6 primary history guide from BBC Bitesize.

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World War One was a time of fast change. Creative minds and great engineers worked together to develop new technology.

Some of these inventions became essential to life in the 20th Century.

Personal cameras, telephones and radios are used by people even today.

Sadly a lot of the new technology was focused only towards making more powerful, deadlier weapons to fight the war.

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World War One was a time of fast change. Creative minds and great engineers worked together to develop new technology. Some of these inventions became essential to life in the 20th Century. Personal cameras, telephones and radios are used by people even today.

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The Battle of Jutland was significant both for being the largest naval battle of the First World War and for the severe number of lives lost. It saw the British Navy losing more men and ships but remained a powerful tool while it left the German Navy too diminished to put to sea again while the war lasted.

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What did people eat during World War One?

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What did people eat and what was the high street like during World War One? Find out in this Bitesize Primary History guide.

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Many worked in mining, shipbuilding and textiles. Others were farmers, shepherds or fishermen.

Richer men with a better education might have worked as doctors or in banking.

Men from the upper class were often rich as they inherited money from their family and owned land. Some became government ministers.

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What did men do on the home front in World War One?

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Many worked in mining, shipbuilding and textiles. Others were farmers, shepherds or fishermen. Richer men with a better education might have worked as doctors or in banking. Men from the upper class were often rich as they inherited money from their family and owned land. Some became government ministers.

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The convoy system, a group of ships sailing together for protection.

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What were air raids like in World War One?

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What were air raids like in World War One and who did they affect? Find out in this year 5/6 primary history guide from BBC Bitesize.

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Germany retaliated by using its submarines to destroy neutral ships that were supplying the Allies. They were Germany's only weapon of advantage as Britain effectively blocked German ports to supplies. The goal was to starve Britain before the British blockade defeated Germany.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Not all animals were welcomed by soldiers. Rats fed on rotting food in the trenches and could have up to 900 babies every year.

Soldiers hated rats as they were smelly and spread diseases. They tried to get ride of them using clubs, bayonets and even guns.

Despite all this, rats were sometimes helpful. Many soldiers reported how rats sensed an oncoming attack and ran away, which warned them of enemy moves.

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Not all animals were welcomed by soldiers. Rats fed on rotting food in the trenches and could have up to 900 babies every year. Soldiers hated rats as they were smelly and spread diseases. They tried to get ride of them using clubs, bayonets and even guns.

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Injured and sick soldiers needed to be treated quickly so they could go back to fighting as soon as possible.

Casualty stations were set up near battlefields, some by the Red Cross.

Women on the front line

Female volunteers worked as nurses and drove ambulances.

Most worked 14-hour days and sometimes even longer when there were lots of injured soldiers.

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What was medicine like during World War One?

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Injured and sick soldiers needed to be treated quickly so they could go back to fighting as soon as possible. Casualty stations were set up near battlefields, some by the Red Cross. Female volunteers worked as nurses and drove ambulances. Most worked 14-hour days and sometimes even longer when there were lots of injured soldiers.

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- The day before the first world war, Canada had no intentions of recruiting Indigenous peoples.
- Indigenous people were extremely eager to volunteer for service and in the early months of the conflict, some were turned away, while others were permitted to enlist.
- In 1915, they were needing more troops which was also leading to new polices allowing more indigenous recruitments
- Indigenous men known as Indian agents held events for recruiting on reserves to encourage more first nations to join as members.
- Recruitment of indigenous communities really effected homes as there was such a large number of men, farming, and hunting missing that women couldn't replace.
- Many Indigenous communities suffered financial hardships throughout and following the war.

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How was propaganda used in World War One?

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How was propaganda used to change people’s views during World War One? Find out in this year 5/6 Bitesize Primary History guide.

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The "Scrap of Paper"

The British Commonwealth in Arms

Enlist in the British or Canadian Army

This is Your Flag

Shall we Help to Crush Tyranny?

Heroes of St. Julien and Festubert

Sustaining Empire

Bushmen and Sawmill Hands Wanted

Remember the 'Lusitania'

Canadiens-Francais, Enrolez Vous! (French Canadians, Enlist!)

150ième Carabiniers (150th Battalion)

The Happy Man

Help the Boys

Fight for Her

Military Service Act, 1916

Soldiers of the Soil

Take Up the Sword of Justice

Voluntary Aid Detachment

Les Héros de St-Julien et de Festubert

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Propaganda - Recruitment Posters | Canada and the First World War

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The "Scrap of Paper" The British Commonwealth in Arms Enlist in the British or Canadian Army This is Your Flag Shall we Help to Crush Tyranny? Heroes of St. Julien and Festubert Sustaining Empire Bushmen and Sawmill Hands Wanted Remember the 'Lusitania' Canadiens-Francais, Enrolez Vous! (French Canadians, Enlist!)

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Women in WWI: Did the First World War transform women's lives?

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Interviewer: "What was a nice little girl?"

Mairi Chisholm: "Oh a nice little girl was a very feminine little girl. You see it was a man's world totally and completely. Women were not supposed to have much in their brains, and of course we were not brought up to careers at all. The one and only career was a good marriage."

At the start of the 20th century Britain was one of the greatest powers on earth. Yet despite its wealth as a nation, many British people's lives were marked with poverty and inequality. Women had few opportunities and few rights. The First World War is often represented as having a wholly positive impact on women's lives: women stepped into men's jobs for the first time ever, thousands of women served abroad along the front lines, women's football even became a hugely popular sport, and the war is thought to have strengthened their case for the right to vote. But the reality is more complicated. Not all of the opportunities for women were positive, lots of the changes were reversed as soon as the war was over, and cultural attitudes towards women were not that easily changed. So did the First World War really transform women's lives at all?

Ellen Parton: "Before the war, women's employment was highly stratified by class, working-class women were broadly accustomed to working long as the hours of dirty sometimes heavy work in areas such as domestic service and unequal pay was the norm. There was little to no legal protection for women against domestic violence and very little protection for young working-class girls from sexual abuse or being forced into prostitution. Across the board women were expected to get married and look after the home."

Britain entered the war in August 1914 and over the next four years some 4.9 million men had signed up or been conscripted to join the army. Millions of women were already working prior to the outbreak of the First World war but now women took on more active roles, more highly paid roles and more dangerous roles.

Ellen Parton: "They were encouraged to ensure that the men in their families signed up, women were encouraged in the press and through colourful impactful poster campaigns. With the men drawn away to the armed forces, opportunities opened up for women. 117,000 women were employed in transport compared to just 18,000 women previously.

The First World War also saw women enter heavy industry for the first time. In response to the shell shortage of 1915, huge factories were set up. Women were known as canaries in the factories as they had to handle the TNT used as the explosive agent in munitions which caused their skin to turn yellow."

Caroline Rennles: "Of course, we all had bright yellow faces you see because we had no gas masks in those times. The conductors used to say in the trams, you'll die in two years, cock. We used to say well we don't mind dying for our country. As I say, we were so young we didn't realise, but they used to call us canaries, we were bright yellow and all this front hair was all ginger you see."

In total around 900,000 women worked in the munitions industry, and it was particularly hazardous work. There were several large factory explosions during the war including at Chilwell in July 1918 where 134 workers were killed and more than 250 were injured. Due to the dangerous nature of this work it was considered to be relatively well paid compared to other jobs open to women and yet across the board women still earned as little as half the wages of men.

Caroline Rennles: "It come right down to nothing almost about a pound I think, as far as I can remember. It was very, very low I know."

Interviewer: "Your wages?"

Caroline Rennles: "Yes, very low."

For working women with children, childcare could be a problem. The pressing need for women to work in munitions did prompt the government to provide some funds towards day nurseries and by 1917 there were more than a hundred day nurseries across the country. However, there was no provision for women working in any other form of employment and most had to rely on friends and family for childcare.

Ellen Parton: "This was still the overriding attitude, that these changes were necessary temporary measures to support the war effort and should not lead to legal or cultural change."

Pressure from women for their own uniformed service began as early as August 1914 but it was not until the middle of the war that the government began planning for the women's auxiliary services. More men were needed for fighting which meant training women to replace them in non-combatant roles. In December 1916 the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps known as the WAAC was established, the Women's Royal Naval Service was formed in November 1917 and the Women's Royal Air Force was set up on the 1st of April 1918. In total over a hundred thousand women joined Britain's armed forces during the First World War.

Mairi Chisholm: "No I had nothing in my mind except that I got the chance to go to London and I had the chance to do a worthwhile job. It was the lure of adventure of course, you see, and I think it was just, here as an opportunity."

Florence Parrott: "When I got in that Blitz that made my mind up for me. I got hit, I got hit in this arm and they took us to St Bartholomew's Hospital, and I said to the girl laying next to me I said, when I get out of here, I said, I'm going to join up. Because I said if I'm going to get knocked about, I'll go where I expect it. And I did."

One of the major ways that women served during the war was nursing. This was also a key role that brought women abroad near the front lines.

Ellen Parton: "Nursing in the First World War was exhausting, harrowing dangerous work. Although it had long been an occupation associated with women, nursing as a profession by its very necessity mushroomed during the First World War. Trained nurses were licensed professionals, they'd spent years training and they were paid whereas voluntary nurses better known as Voluntary Aid Detachments or VADs comprise mainly young middle- and upper-class women in its ranks. By 1918 there were over 90,000 Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses in the red cross."

Mairi Chisholm: "I used to take that ambulance out and drive the length behind the trenches sometimes to get some, some people out. You had to drive in the pitch dark. No lights whatsoever from the trenches and if you can imagine yourself, heavy roads with deep mud, troops coming up, guns coming up and then the most appalling slither as the ambulance slid off the pave into the mud."

Interviewer: "Were you shocked by the kinds of injuries you saw?"

Daisy Spickett: "One would have been shocked if one could afford to be. I mean, that was what was our salvation, we were thrown head first into the work but we had to do something about it. I remember one occasion I shall never forget; a patient came in with his head bandaged up and only his eyes showing and as I took bandage after bandage after bandage, I thought to myself there's going to be no face left here at all, and then I realised that he was gazing intently at me, and I thought, he's waiting to see my reaction. Then of course it was absolutely different, I chatted to him and teased him a little and tried to make him smile."

Ellen Parton: "By 1918 more than 17,000 nurses had served close to the trenches working in field hospitals all along the Western Front."

On the home front, working together in large numbers opened up new leisure opportunities for women. Sport was encouraged among female workers as it was thought to be good for their health and moral well-being and many munitions factories developed their own ladies football teams.

Ellen Parton: "Women's football was established before the First World War but it really took off during this period. Ultimately this was to ensure the mental and health and physical well-being, which in turn kept the factories productive. However, they were really successful with the Dick Kerr Ladies in Preston for example drawing large crowds at matches. Fronted by Captain Lily Parr; she was openly gay, over six foot tall and she scored over a thousand goals during her time on the team. Sadly, all this came to an end at the end of the war. In 1921, the FA ruled that women should be banned from playing in football league games. Reasons given were spurious suggestions that the game was too physical and may hamper a woman's ability to have a child for example, whereas the real reason was probably quite simply that it was becoming too popular and a potential challenge to men's games. It was a decision which was only overturned in 1969 when the ban was eventually lifted."

The ban on women's football at the end of the war was not the only instance in which opportunities that had opened in wartime or once again closed. On the 11th of November 1918, the Armistice was signed. Tens of thousands of men were demobilised and returned to Britain, to the lives and jobs they had held before the war. Men seeking jobs after 1918 were almost always prioritised over women and women were forced back into low-paid roles or domestic service. For many women, their experiences during the war had been temporary and short-lived but there were some inevitable long-term consequences.

Over seven hundred thousand British men had died during the First World War. That's nine percent of all British men under the age of 45 and more women than ever were now single.

Ellen Parton: "It's certainly true that some of these women chose to remain unmarried. Professions such as teaching, or medicine were opening up to women, but only if they remained unmarried."

In 1918 women over 30 were given the vote. Some have argued that the modern emancipation of women would not have been possible without the contribution of women who served and worked during the First World War.

Ruby Ord: "We were in this hotel and a raid started; we'd got two officers there suffering from shell shock and the men with them were in a panic and Staccard went over to the piano and she played for two hours while the raid last and we all sang, and these men didn't know it was a raid on the, the shell shock officers. And afterwards they were so overwhelmed, the men were, and they said well if anybody ever says a bad word about the WAACs, they have to answer to us for it after this. Because of course people were very ready to criticise us, we were the women who followed them in France of course. But there were several incidents like that where the girls showed outstanding courage and they really had it. So, I don't know, I really learned to admire women, I admired them tremendously."

But the steps that had been made during this time were soon masked by other matters. Britain was steeped in unemployment and poverty and soon began to prepare for another war.

Ellen Parton: "The war had not shifted attitudes fundamentally enough to mean that women's contribution to the world of work wasn't anything more than for the duration, to be wound up as soon as the war was over."

What is certain is that the war had changed the world and Britain in immeasurable ways. Not all changes brought about by the war stayed in place, but it is possible that it laid the groundwork for greater change to come. When war was declared again in 1939, this time women were readily factored into the war effort.

Thanks for watching this episode, don't forget to like and subscribe for more videos from IWM.

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12 Things You Didn't Know About Women In The First World War

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The First World War brought many changes in the lives of British women. It is often represented as having had a wholly positive impact, opening up new opportunities in the world of work and strengthening their case for the right to vote. The reality is more complex.

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The Kerensky offensive also known as the June offensive was an unsuccessful military operation that was planned by Alexandr Kerensky and was launched as an attempt by Russia to achieve a crushing military victory and end the war. The operation not only demonstrated the degree to which the Russian army had disintegrated but also the extent of the Provisional Government’s failure to interpret and respond adequately to popular revolutionary sentiment. The offensive was the last final attempt to win the war for Russia and was ill-timed as after the February revolution there were calls for peace along with their army being overly exhausted from the war effort. The aftermath led the Russian government greatly weakened by the military catastrophe and that this offensive had proved that the Russian army no longer had morale along with no Russian general could rely on the soldiers under their command to do what they are ordered to do

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June Offensive, also called July Offensive (New Style), Summer Offensive, Kerensky Offensive, or Galician Offensive, (June [July, New Style], 1917), unsuccessful military operation of World War I, planned by the Russian minister of war Aleksandr Kerensky. The operation not only demonstrated the degree to which the Russian army had disintegrated but also the extent of the Provisional Government's failure to interpret and respond adequately to popular revolutionary sentiment. Temporarily, it also had the effect of strengthening moderate and conservative elements in the country.

Kerensky's timing was particularly inauspicious. After the February (March) Revolution, popular demands for peace had grown more intense, particularly within the army. Soldiers' committees debated military issues and frequently vetoed officers' orders. Discipline degenerated, and many soldiers made their private peace with the Germans and went home. The first coalition Provisional Government (formed in May 1917) continued to honour the alliances made by the deposed imperial government and hesitated to make a separate peace; it did agree, however, to wage only a defensive war.

Nevertheless, Kerensky planned an offensive. He speculated that a victory would rally the Russian people behind the Provisional Government and also force the belligerents to make peace. On July 1 (June 18, Old Style), 1917, the Russian army, commanded by General Aleksey A. Brusilov, attacked the Austro-German forces along a broad front in Galicia and pushed toward Lvov.

Although the Russian effort was initially successful, the soldiers soon refused to leave their trenches and fight. By July 3-4, the offensive had collapsed. On July 6 the Austrians and Germans launched a counteroffensive. They met little resistance and advanced through Galicia and into Ukraine, halting at the Zbruch River.

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The military disaster was immediately overshadowed by the July Days uprising and by the government's fear of a Bolshevik coup d'état. But the June Offensive had serious political consequences. As a result of the army's failure, Kerensky appointed as commander in chief Gen. Lavr G. Kornilov-who strongly demanded that army discipline be restored-and thereby laid the groundwork for the development of a conservative, military political force and for Kornilov's alleged attempted coup d'etat, known as "Kornilov's Rebellion."

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

special coverage / archives

date

July 1, 1917 - c. July 4, 1917

location

participants

context

key people

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June Offensive | Russian military operation [1917]

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June Offensive, (June [July, New Style], 1917), unsuccessful military operation of World War I, planned by the Russian minister of war Aleksandr Kerensky. The operation not only demonstrated the degree to which the Russian army had disintegrated but also the extent of the Provisional Government's

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Battle of Gallipoli: February 19, 1915 - January 9, 1916

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Battle of Gallipoli: February 19, 1915 - January 9, 1916

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-       The battle of Gallipoli was an unsuccessful and failed attempt by the allied powers to control the sea route from Europe to Russia. The military disaster resulted in 250,000 casualties

-       The Gallipoli campaign was a strategy intended to allow allied ships to pass through Dardanelles to capture Constantinople in hopes of knocking turkey out of the way

-       The British and French agreed to attack Turkey. Their objective was to wrest control of the Dardanelles and re-establish sea communications with Russia through the Black Sea and end the Ottoman Empire's role in the war

-       The allied powers launched a navel expedition to seize Dardanelles Straits, which was a very narrow passage that connected Aegean Sea to the sea of Marmara in northwest Turkey

-       However, the plan was unsuccessful as the warships were unable to pass through the Dardanelles Straits meaning there attempt to eliminate Turkey was no longer possible. Gallipoli was Turkey’s greatest victory in the war and their victory kept vital lines of communication between Russia and its Western allies closed

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The Gallipoli Campaign of 1915-16, also known as the Battle of Gallipoli or the Dardanelles Campaign, was an unsuccessful attempt by the Allied Powers of World War I to control the sea route from Europe to Russia. The campaign began with a failed naval attack by British and French ships on the Dardanelles Straits in February-March 1915 and continued with a major land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25, involving British and French troops and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Lack of sufficient intelligence and knowledge of the terrain, along with fierce Turkish resistance, hampered the success of the invasion. By mid-October, Allied forces had suffered heavy casualties and had made little headway from their initial landing sites.

Launch of the Gallipoli Campaign

With World War I stalled on the Western Front by 1915, the Allied Powers were debating going on the offensive in another region of the conflict, rather than continuing with attacks in Belgium and France.

Early that year, Russia's Grand Duke Nicholas appealed to Britain for aid in confronting a Turkish invasion in the Caucasus. (Turkey, as part of the Ottoman Empire, had entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, by November 1914.)

In response, the Allies decided to launch a naval expedition to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul) and seize the Dardanelles Straits, a narrow passage connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara in northwestern Turkey. If successful, the capture of the straits would allow the Allies to link up with the Russians in the Black Sea, where they could work together to knock Turkey out of the war.

Did you know? In May 1915, Britain's First Sea Lord Admiral John Fisher resigned dramatically over the mishandling of the Gallipoli invasion by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. His political capital damaged by the debacle, the future prime minister later resigned his own position and accepted a commission to command an infantry battalion in France.

Spearheaded by the first lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill (over the strong opposition of the First Sea Lord Admiral John Fisher, head of the British Navy), the naval attack on the Dardanelles began with a long-range bombardment by British and French battleships on February 19, 1915. Turkish forces abandoned their outer forts but met the approaching Allied minesweepers with heavy fire, stalling the advance.

Under tremendous pressure to renew the attack, Admiral Sackville Carden, the British naval commander in the region, suffered a nervous collapse and was replaced by Vice-Admiral Sir John de Robeck. On March 18, 18 Allied battleships entered the straits; Turkish fire, including undetected mines, sank three of the ships and severely damaged three others.

Gallipoli Land Invasion Begins

In the wake of the failed naval attack, preparations began for large-scale troop landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. British War Secretary Lord Kitchener appointed General Ian Hamilton as commander of British forces for the operation; under his command, troops from Australia, New Zealand and the French colonies assembled with British forces on the Greek island of Lemnos.

Meanwhile, the Turks boosted their defenses under the command of German general Liman von Sanders, who began positioning Ottoman troops along the shore where he expected the landings would take place.

On April 25, 1915, the Allies launched their invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Despite suffering heavy casualties, they managed to establish two beachheads: at Helles on the peninsula's southern tip, and at Gaba Tepe on the Aegean coast. (The latter site was later dubbed Anzac Cove, in honor of the Australian and New Zealand troops who fought so valiantly against determined Turkish defenders to establish the beachhead there.)

After the initial landing, the Allies were able to make little progress from their initial landing sites, even as the Turks gathered more and more troops on the peninsula from both the Palestine and Caucasus fronts.

In an attempt to break the stalemate, the Allies made another major troop landing on August 6 at Suvla Bay, combined with a northwards advance from Anzac Cove towards the heights at Sari Bair and a diversionary action at Helles. The surprise landings at Suvla Bay proceeded against little opposition, but Allied indecision and delay stalled their progress in all three locations, allowing Ottoman reinforcements to arrive and shore up their defenses.

The Decision to Evacuate Gallipoli

With Allied casualties in the Gallipoli Campaign mounting, Hamilton (with Churchill's support) petitioned Kitchener for 95,000 reinforcements; the war secretary offered barely a quarter of that number. In mid-October, Hamilton argued that a proposed evacuation of the peninsula would cost up to 50 percent casualties; British authorities subsequently recalled him and installed Sir Charles Monro in his place.

By early November, Kitchener had visited the region himself and agreed with Monro's recommendation that the remaining 105,000 Allied troops should be evacuated. The British government authorized the evacuation from Gallipoli to begin from Suvla Bay on December 7; the last troops left Helles on January 9, 1916.

In all, some 480,000 Allied forces took part in the Gallipoli Campaign, at a cost of more than 250,000 casualties, including some 46,000 dead. On the Turkish side, the campaign also cost an estimated 250,000 casualties, with 65,000 killed.

'Gallipoli'

The Gallipoli Campaign- and its horrific cost to human lives-was immortalized in the 1981 movie Gallipoli. Directed by Academy Award-winning Australian director Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee, the film recounts the lives of two young men from the Australian outback who join ANZAC forces fighting in the Gallipoli Campaign.

The film received lavish critical praise and won numerous international awards, despite critics who questioned some of the finer points of Gallipoli's historical accuracy.

Sources

What You Need To Know About The Gallipoli Campaign. Imperial War Museums.
The Gallipoli campaign. New Zealand History.
Gallipoli campaign. National Army Museum (UK).

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Gallipoli: Campaign, Battle & Movie - HISTORY

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In the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I, British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops failed to take the Gallipoli Peninsula from German-Turkish forces.

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The Brusilov Offensive: (June 4th, 1916 – September 20th, 1916)

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The Brusilov Offensive: (June 4th, 1916 – September 20th, 1916)

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The Brusilov Offensive took place from June 4th to September 20th, 1916. It was the largest and deadliest Russian assault against the armies of the central powers on the Eastern front. The Brusilov Offence was led by a Russian man named General Aleksey Brusilov who created a plan in which to force Germany to halt its attack on Verdun and transfer its army and forces to the East to attack Austria-Hungary. Techniques that were used in the Brusilov offensive included using smaller, specialized units to attack weak points in the Austro-Hungarian trench lines to be able to create open space for the rest of their army to advance into. The operation did reach its goal of forcing Germany to halt its attack on Verdun which led Austria-Hungary to have to rely on the support of Germany’s army for any military success

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Brusilov Offensive, Brusilov Offensive, (4 June–10 August 1916), the largest Russian assault during World War I and one of the deadliest in history. At last the Russians had a capable commander, General Aleksey Brusilov, and in this offensive he inflicted a defeat on Austro-Hungarian forces from w…

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Armenian Genocide
Asian Americans
African Americans

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At the beginning of the war, planes were primitive; They had no dedicated weapons, low range, low max altitude, and low speed. Due to these limitations, planes were used only for reconnaissance. Even so, enemy intelligence was invaluable and played a key part in turning the tide of battles. However, it was with the German "interrupter" invention that changed aviation forever. With this revolutionary product, planes could now fire in sync with their propellers RPM, thus allowing pilots to shoot at ground, air, and sea targets without hitting themselves. Pilots could also fight one another now; These were called dog fights. Not long after, the first bombers were invented. Bombers - as it says in their name - allowed militaries to cause mass destruction from above. Bombers played a role in destroying enemy infantry, armor, ships, targets, cities, morale, and contributed to the massive death toll of the first world war. It must be noted, however, that while being a pilot may seem like a great alternative to fighting in the trenches, a pilot's life expectancy was only 11 days. Anti Aircraft guns, machine guns, enemy pilots, and infantry, in general, made flying hazardous. Compound those dangers with the general clumsiness and vulnerability of planes in that time and flying was a death sentence for many pilots. Despite this, many pilots survived for the entirety of the war, these pilots earned fame and glory and were called "aces" for their countless victories and kills.

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The advancement in chemical weapon technology of Germany shocked the allied line as the force of Germany released 150tons of lethal chlorine at Ypres, Belgium on April 22, 1915. Poison gases used in the war included chlorine, mustard gas, bromine, and phosgene gases. The German army were the ones that used gas assaults the most often. Britain and France also used poison gases to fight back in the chemical warfare. Military strategist supported the use of chemical weapons as they destroyed the enemy’s morale in which saved lives in the offensive line. The presence of chemical weapons developed psychological damage to the soldiers such as “gas fright” as they were vulnerable to gas assaults.

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Cathleen Nesbitt: "It was a horrible feeling. I remember that before I went to America, it seemed to me that every young man I knew was on the casualty lists. It was appalling. Every day one looked in the paper and there was someone one knew. It was a feeling not so much of a daily depression, but you… A kind of a feeling of; ‘What on earth is the future going to be like?’ Everybody’s going to be dead, one felt. All one’s contemporaries seemed to be. The first year of the war, the casualty lists were so fantastic. It seemed all so useless and pointless…"

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Cathleen Nesbitt: "It was a horrible feeling. I remember that before I went to America, it seemed to me that every young man I knew was on the casualty lists. It was appalling. Every day one looked in the paper and there was someone one knew. It was a feeling not so much of a daily depression, but you… A kind of a feeling of; ‘What on earth is the future going to be like?’ Everybody’s going to be dead, one felt. All one’s contemporaries seemed to be. The first year of the war, the casualty lists were so fantastic. It seemed all so useless and pointless…"

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	Journalist Philip Murray: “He well remembered the effects of the high casualty numbers at the fighting fronts. Those who had sons or husbands in the Army, they were terribly worried. I remember sometimes when I would call in at homes – and I was a boy – a woman would gasp, frightened, thinking I might have been the telegraph boy with some bad news. So they were very, very worried and sad and upset.”

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	Journalist Philip Murray: “He well remembered the effects of the high casualty numbers at the fighting fronts. Those who had sons or husbands in the Army, they were terribly worried. I remember sometimes when I would call in at homes – and I was a boy – a woman would gasp, frightened, thinking I might have been the telegraph boy with some bad news. So they were very, very worried and sad and upset.”

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London was constantly bombed with aerial raids from 1914-1918. The beginning of these raids was the first time people at home saw the full impacts of the war and less people began enlisting throughout the progress of the war.

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In the early months of the war, a number of high-ranking German naval and military personnel were in favour of launching an aerial campaign against Britain. One of the leading advocates, Konteradmiral Paul Behncke (1866-1937), believed that bombing London, its docks, and the Admiralty building in Whitehall would cause panic in the civilian population, which "may possibly render it doubtful that the war can be continued." Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859-1941) however, showed a marked reluctance to sanction air raids, particularly on London.

The first bomb to fall on British soil, dropped by a seaplane, landed in Dover on 24 December 1914. The Kaiser, however, only gave his conditional approval for Zeppelin raids ( Germany actually used both Zeppelin and Schütte-Lanz airships) to commence on 10 January 1915. London remained excluded as a target until May, with the first raid on the capital taking place on 31 May 1915.

Over the course of 1915 and 1916, German raids reached Britain on fifty-nine occasions (forty-two by airship, seventeen by aeroplane). During this period, airships attacked London eight times, in addition to a raid made by a single aeroplane. On the night of 8/9 September 1915 a Zeppelin attack on the capital caused material damage estimated at £530,000, the most of any single air raid.

Until the summer of 1916 Britain's defences struggled to offer an effective response. Then, following the introduction of new explosive and incendiary ammunition, the advantage swung in favour of the British pilots: they now had an effective means of igniting the Zeppelin's hydrogen.

The Switch to Bomber Aircraft ↑

In the early hours of 3 September 1916 the first airship shot down over British soil (a Schütte-Lanz, SL.11) crashed in flames in Hertfordshire while attempting to attack London. Within a month the new bullets were responsible for destroying two more intent on bombing the capital, while anti-aircraft guns forced down another. Although the Naval Airship Division retained its faith in airships, only nine raids reached Britain in the last two years of the war. The army, however, abandoned airships and turned to bomber aircraft, which now presented the main threat to London.

The first daylight raid on the capital by Gotha bombers took place on 13 June 1917. It caused 162 deaths and 426 injuries, the most by any single air raid on Britain. Mounting Gotha losses through the summer, however, forced a switch to night bombing in September 1917. Between June 1917 and May 1918 Gotha bombers - joined by the massive R-type Staaken "Giants" ( Riesenflugzeug) - attacked London on seventeen occasions and also bombed many south-eastern coastal towns. The last aeroplane raid of the war - aimed at London - occurred on the night of 19/20 May 1918. Zeppelins made one final, futile attack against Britain on the night of 5/6 August.

Germany's aerial campaign against Britain caused 4,743 casualties (1,394 killed and 3,349 injured) of which 2,603 occurred in London (667 killed and 1,936 injured). Estimates of material damage stand at about £2.9 million with around £2.2 million of that inflicted on London. Still, the raids failed to break the morale of the people. In fact, rather than demand the government sue for peace, as Germany had hoped, the raids led civilians to clamour for reprisal raids against German towns and cities. The raids did, however, fulfill some of their aims. War production reduced dramatically before, during, and after these attacks and Home Defence requirements kept large numbers of men, anti-aircraft guns, and searchlights in Britain, along with sixteen valuable squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps ( Royal Air Force from April 1918). Britain also gained from the experience. The integrated defence system in place by 1918 formed the basis for that employed successfully when German aircraft returned to British skies in 1940.

Ian Castle, Independent Scholar

Section Editor: Emmanuelle Cronier

Notes

Robinson, Douglas H.: The Zeppelin In Combat. A History of the German Naval Airship Division 1912-1918, Atglen 1994, p. 78.

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Germany's aerial bombing campaign against Great Britain in the First World War, with London as its primary target, was the first sustained strategic bombing campaign in history. These raids, using airships, bomber aircraft, and seaplanes, ran from December 1914 to August 1918 and resulted in almost 5,000 casualties.

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This is just something I encountered during my research. It's not very relevant but I found it interesting. Its on a legend about 'angels' appearing during one of the first battles in the war.

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THE LUDENDORFF OFFENSIVE AND THE BATTLE OF AMIENS 1918

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THE LUDENDORFF OFFENSIVE AND THE BATTLE OF AMIENS 1918

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The Ludendorff Offensive was launched on March 21 to July 18, 1918, during the final phase of the war, when the Germans realized it was their last chance at winning the war. It was a tactical success but strategic failure, there were advances with no decisive goal other than to punch a hole in the Allied line. In the end, the stalemate was broken in the Allies favor.
The Battle of Amiens in August 8-11 in 1918 was the opening attack of the Hundred Days Campaign, which was a 4-month period of continued Allied success launched by the Allies in response to the Ludendorff Offensive. There was a pattern of coordinated hammer blows that increasingly exhausted the German forces and forced them to retreat, leading to an Allied ‘victory’. As you can see in this map, the German front lines retreated from the purple line to the red line during this period.

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I believe this video explains what happened in the Battle of Jutland very well, if you ignore the part on the promotions of a video game. I also don't agree with the conclusion, but well . . . It is pretty long, so I won't show it in class, it would be useful to watch it in your own time if you're interested in this battle.
The Battle of Jutland happened on May 31 – June 1st in 1916 off the coast of Denmark. It was WWI’s first and only major naval battle. However, after the intense battle, there was no decisive victor, the British suffered much more casualties than the Germans, but they still maintained control over the North Sea and continued the blockade and the Germans were confined to their own ports. This would prove crucial to the defeat of Germany due to the lack of supplies towards the end of the war.

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The Battle of Jutland: Clash of Dreadnoughts

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Following the German failure to capture Paris, the race to the sea started. Initially the trenches were dug for protection during the Battle of the Marne, but it soon turned to both sides trying to gain flank on each other through digging trenches and racing north, towards the Belgium shore. Both sides reached the North Sea by mid October, where the First Battle of Ypres happened, a massive conflict with many casualties but no significant gains. This set the stage for the rest of the war and led to the stalemate on the western front, this line basically didn’t change much for the next three years.

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The First Battle of the Marne was during September 6 to 12 of 1914, around 30 miles northeast of Paris. By this point the Germans were exhausted from the ambitious timeline of the Schlieffen Plan, so their offensive was halted and they were forced to retreat. This was the first significant victory of the Allies after the previous victories of the Germany army overtaking Belgium and Luxemburg.

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The lethal combination of mass armies and modern weaponry had a deadly effect on the warring alliances.  Old tactics, such as trench warfare,  were not as effective compared to the reliance on industrial advancement. Both the Central Power and Allied Powers accelerated technological advancement and the development of lethal weapons. Finding new ways of increasing casualties, spreading the terror of war resulted in one of the highest death rates in history. Today, I will be talking about land weapons innovated in WW1: poison gas, armoured vehicles, artillery which includes rifles, and grenades.

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All of the great belligerent states of World War I were naval powers and engaged in operations around the globe. While the course of the war did not unfold as predicted by naval officials, it did produce a grave threat to the Allies through Germany’s use of the submarine in a commerce war. It also contributed to the defeat of the Central Powers and especially Germany through Britain’s economic blockade. This article seeks to illustrate the magnitude of global operations and highlight the importance of naval power to the fortunes of both sides involved in the Great War.

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German battleship building and Weltpolitik opened the door to the Anglo-German naval race. Driven by a desire to make the German Empire a viable world power and an integral industrial nation, the Navy Bills of 1898 and 1900 laid out the course for a massive naval expansion under anti-British auspices. The completed navy was to have a real fighting chance in a defensive war against the Royal Navy in the North Sea, with a projected German-British force ratio in capital ships of 2:3.

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Naval technology in World War I was dominated by the dreadnought battleship. Battleships were built along the dreadnought model, with several large turrets of equally sized big guns. In general terms, British ships had larger guns and were equipped and manned for quicker fire than their German counterparts.

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Sometimes called the first genocide of the twentieth century, the Armenian genocide refers to the physical annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 through autumn 1916. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.
The Armenian Genocide
The origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots in the mass murder of Armenians in 1915-16. Lawyer Raphael Lemkin, the coiner of the word and later its champion at the United Nations, repeatedly stated that early exposure to newspaper stories about Ottoman crimes against Armenians was key to his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups (a core element in the UN Genocide Convention of 1948).

Ottoman authorities, supported by auxiliary troops and at times by civilians, perpetrated most of the persecution and mass killing. The Ottoman government, controlled by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP; also called the Young Turks), aimed to solidify Muslim Turkish dominance in the regions of central and eastern Anatolia by eliminating the sizeable Armenian presence there.

Mass atrocities and genocide are often perpetrated within the context of war. The destruction of the Armenians was closely linked to the events of World War I. Fearing that invading enemy troops would induce Armenians to join them, in spring 1915 the Ottoman government began the deportation of the Armenian population from its northeastern border regions. In the months that followed, the Ottomans expanded deportations from almost all provinces regardless of distance from combat zones.

The victims of the Armenian genocide include people killed in local massacres that began in spring 1915; others who died during deportations, under conditions of starvation, dehydration, exposure, and disease; and Armenians who died in or en route to the desert regions of the southern Empire [today: northern and eastern Syria, northern Saudi Arabia, and Iraq]. In addition, tens of thousands of Armenian children were forcibly removed from their families and converted to Islam.

US Ambassador to Constantinople Henry Morgenthau Sr. was deeply troubled by the atrocities committed against the Armenians and was among those who sought to rouse the world's conscience in response. The plight of the Armenians triggered an unprecedented public philanthropic response in the United States, involving President Woodrow Wilson, Hollywood celebrities, and many thousands of Americans at the grassroots level who volunteered both domestically and abroad and raised over $110 million (over $1 billion adjusted for inflation) to assist Armenian refugees and orphans.

The Armenian genocide cast a long shadow into the Holocaust era. Ambassador Morgenthau's son, Henry Morgenthau Jr., was secretary of the treasury in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In part due to his memories of the Armenian genocide, Morgenthau Jr. was a key advocate for the establishment of the War Refugee Board which rescued as many as 200,000 Jews from Nazi Europe. Perhaps most hauntingly, a novel about Armenian self-defense (Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh) was secretly passed from hand-to-hand among Jews imprisoned in ghettos during the Holocaust, who saw in it an inspirational analogy to their plight and a call to resistance.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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The Armenian Genocide (1915-16): Overview

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Sometimes called the first genocide of the 20th century, the Armenian genocide refers to the physical annihilation of Armenian Christians living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 through autum...

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Even though the first airplane was only invented in 1903, they already saw use at the beginning of the first world war, just 11 years after. At the beginning of the war, their impact and usage was minimal. However, as the war raged on, plane use played an instrumental part on both sides. Notable aircrafts used in WWI include: The Sopwith Camel (British one seater fighter plane), the Fokker Eindecker (Single Seat German fighter plane), the Handley Page 0/400 (British long range bomber), and Gotha G V (long range German bomber). As well as planes, Zeppelins also saw some use by the Germans.

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-Maria Bochkareva founded and led the first women-only Russian military unit called the Women’s Battalion of Death.
-Kerensky Offensive.

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Hello Girls operating communication systems

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-General John J Pershing initiated the Signal Crops Female Telephone Operators Unit in order to better communication on the Western front between the Allied forces that spoke mainly French and English
-Women were placed under strict military protocol and swore the Army oath, received physical training and medical inoculations, and wore regulation uniforms and identity discs to identify their remains should they die
-Veteran status

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-Yeomen were a separate branch of the military and were
-Non-commissioned officers
-Replacing men who were deployed to Europe
-Their pay was the same as men
-Clerical duties, driving trucks, operating mechanics, and operating radios

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-Although not many of them fought, they played crucial roles in being nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, and translators.
-Mary Borden established a mobile hospital unit on the Western Front and served as a nurse

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-Most prominent
-Home life was tough due to total war (rationing)
-“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”
-Maintaining the traditional female roles of domestic labour combined with the war-related volunteer work made it a very intense experience
-By 1917, there were more than 100-day nurseries across Canada
-Working in factories making bombs and missiles, taking jobs in shops and offices, farming, and selling supplies
-Women’s Patrols
-Bus stations and other modes of transportation were another common place where women worked