Author: René Besnard Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: 9781497438255 Category : Languages : en Pages : 376
Book Description
At the start of the Great War, believing like many others, that it would only last a few months, René Besnard responded to the call up to the French army. For most of the war he was stationed around north eastern France. He spent the first part of the war as a stretcher bearer then later as a driver. In September 1917 he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery. By the end of 1914 when it became clear that the war was going to go on for a while, René decided to keep a daily personal diary for his own memories afterwards. The diary includes 21 unique photographs. This diary is published in both in English and the original French titled VÉCU ET SURVÉCU.It has been said that war is 90% being bored stiff, 9% frozen stiff and 1% scared stiff, which is certainly reflected in this diary! But as René himself says, "if at times I wept, I also laughed a lot."
Author: G. J. Meyer Publisher: Bantam ISBN: 0553382403 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 818
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Drawing on exhaustive research, this intimate account details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world “Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World Undone] is a book of true greatness that prompts moments of sheer joy and pleasure. . . . It will earn generations of admirers.”—The Washington Times On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War: four long years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe. Praise for A World Undone “Meyer’s sketches of the British Cabinet, the Russian Empire, the aging Austro-Hungarian Empire . . . are lifelike and plausible. His account of the tragic folly of Gallipoli is masterful. . . . [A World Undone] has an instructive value that can scarcely be measured”—Los Angeles Times “An original and very readable account of one of the most significant and often misunderstood events of the last century.”—Steve Gillon, resident historian, The History Channel
Author: C.R.M.F. Cruttwell Publisher: Chicago Review Press ISBN: 0897336607 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 688
Book Description
This vivid, detailed history of World War I presents the general reader with an accurate and readable account of the campaigns and battles, along with brilliant portraits of the leaders and generals of all countries involved. Scrupulously fair, praising and blaming friend and enemy as circumstances demand, this has become established as the classic account of the first world-wide war.
Author: Richard Holmes Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1846075823 Category : World War, 1914-1918 Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
Richard Holmes brings the Western Front to life in this detailed and authoritative text, in a way that goes deep beneath scholarly debate, ripping off the veneer of cliche which now covers the war as it really was."
Author: Ian F. W. Beckett Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317866142 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 812
Book Description
The course of events of the Great War has been told many times, spurred by an endless desire to understand 'the war to end all wars'. However, this book moves beyond military narrative to offer a much fuller analysis of of the conflict's strategic, political, economic, social and cultural impact. Starting with the context and origins of the war, including assasination, misunderstanding and differing national war aims, it then covers the treacherous course of the conflict and its social consequences for both soldiers and civilians, for science and technology, for national politics and for pan-European revolution. The war left a long-term legacy for victors and vanquished alike. It created new frontiers, changed the balance of power and influenced the arts, national memory and political thought. The reach of this acount is global, showing how a conflict among European powers came to involve their colonial empires, and embraced Japan, China, the Ottoman Empire, Latin America and the United States.
Author: Leo van Bergen Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317175697 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 539
Book Description
Despite the numerous vicious conflicts that scarred the twentieth century, the horrors of the Western Front continue to exercise a particularly strong hold on the modern imagination. The unprecedented scale and mechanization of the war changed forever the way suffering and dying were perceived and challenged notions of what the nations could reasonably expect of their military. Examining experiences of the Western Front, this book looks at the life of a soldier from the moment he marched into battle until he was buried. In five chapters - Battle, Body, Mind, Aid, Death - it describes and analyzes the physical and mental hardship of the men who fought on a front that stretched from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. Beginning with a broad description of the war it then analyzes the medical aid the Tommies, Bonhommes and Frontschweine received - or all too often did not receive - revealing how this aid was often given for military and political rather than humanitarian reasons (getting the men back to the front or munitions factory and trying to spare the state as many war-pensions as possible). It concludes with a chapter on the many ways death presented itself on or around the battlefield, and sets out in detail the problems that arise when more people are killed than can possibly be buried properly. In contrast to most books in the field this study does not focus on one single issue - such as venereal disease, plastic surgery, shell-shock or the military medical service - but takes a broad view on wounds and illnesses across both sides of the conflict. Drawing on British, French, German, Belgian and Dutch sources it shows the consequences of modern warfare on the human individuals caught up in it, and the way it influences our thinking on 'humanitarian' activities.
Author: Frank Richards Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions ISBN: 1774643448 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
The author had enlisted in 1901 in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and was a reservist when the First World War broke out. He rejoined his old, 2nd Battalion and landed in France with them on 11 August 1914. He went right through the war with the battalion, never missing a battle, winning the D.C.M. and M.M. Here is a typical soldier of the pre-1914 regular army, and this book is a delight, written in his own unpolished manner. Fighting, scrounging, gambling, drinking, dodging fatigues, stolidly enduring bombardment and the hardships of trench warfare, always getting his job done. This is one of the finest of all published memoirs of the Great War, truly a classic of its kind. A tribute to the army that died on the Western Front.
Author: Jerry L. Roberts Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 1462008186 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 161
Book Description
Every teacher knows that a day in the classroom is always full of surprises, successes, failures, and inspirational moments. In the poignant memoir School House Diary, longtime educator shares anecdotesboth tragic and humorousthat detail his nearly thirty years as a social studies teacher, coach, and student advocate in Cincinnati, Ohio. Jerry Roberts began his career as a high school history teacher not as a green twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate, but as a four-year Army veteran and father of two young children. As he details the antics, humorous incidents, and human tragedy that often unfolded on a daily basis in his classroom, Roberts offers an eye-opening glimpse into the life of a teachera life that often includes switching roles from history teacher to surrogate parent to armchair psychologist. From the helicopter Mom who had difficulty letting her daughter grow up to the pregnant twelve-year-old student to the driven high school student who learned that leadership requires building trust in others, Roberts shines a fascinating light into the challenging world of an educator. School House Diary is a compelling collection of essays that prove that teachers truly make a difference every day in the lives of their students.
Author: Kenneth M. Baker Publisher: Lulu.com ISBN: 0473451883 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 476
Book Description
Most have heard of the French Resistance during World War Two. Few are aware of the Belgian Resistance movements during the First World War and the enormous role they played in the defeat of the enemy. This book tells the story of those underground organisations in Belgium during the Great War and in particular the ÔPrisoner Help NetworkÕ. A very large proportion of the network were women. Other resistance organisations were lÕAssistance Discr te (The Discreet Assistance) and La Dame Blanche (The White Lady). The author's in-depth research using as a base, the recollections of New Zealand soldier Bert Hansen in particular and other Allied soldiers, allowed the details to be revealed for the first time. Learn who were those brave resistance people, what they did, how they did it and where they lived. They hid and cared for escaped allied soldiers in the face of a brutal occupation and saw the soldiers across the frontier into Holland to fight again. They were the true Obscure Heroes of Liberty.
Author: Adam Hochschild Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0547549210 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 501
Book Description
In this riveting and suspenseful New York Times best-selling book, Adam Hochschild brings WWI to life as never before... World War I was supposed to be the “war to end all wars.” Over four long years, nations around the globe were sucked into the tempest, and millions of men died on the battlefields. To this day, the war stands as one of history’s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. To End All Wars focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war’s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Many of these dissenters were thrown in jail for their opposition to the war, from a future Nobel Prize winner to an editor behind bars who distributed a clandestine newspaper on toilet paper. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain’s most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other. Hochschild forces us to confront the big questions: Why did so many nations get so swept up in the violence? Why couldn’t cooler heads prevail? And can we ever avoid repeating history?
Author: René Besnard
Author: G. J. Meyer
Author: C.R.M.F. Cruttwell
Author: Richard Holmes
Author: Ian F. W. Beckett
Author: Leo van Bergen
Author: Frank Richards
Author: Jerry L. Roberts
Author: Kenneth M. Baker
Author: Adam Hochschild