Military History Monthly

July 2016 Issue 70 4.
50
www.military-history.org
LENINGRAD
Shostakovichs war
Battle of the Alma

Nazi
Nazi architecture
Napoleon
Napoleon of the
East: Nader Shah
The battle that won the war?
NORMAN
CONQUEST
Battle of Civitate, 1053
DEBATING
THE SOMME
Futile slaughter?
MHM
MILITARY
LENINGRAD
July 2016 Issue 70 4.50

kkk
Shostakovichs war
Battle
a le off the
th Alma
lma
Nazi architecture
i ec u
Napoleon
ole of East:
a :
Nader
er Shahh
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD:

Martin Brown
Archaeological Advisor, Defence
Estates, Ministry of Defence
Mark Corby
Military historian, lecturer, and
broadcaster
Paul Cornish
Curator, Imperial War Museum
Gary Gibbs
Assistant Curator, The Guards Museum
Angus Hay
Former Army Officer, military
historian, and lecturer
Nick Hewitt
Historian, National Museum of the
Royal Navy, Portsmouth
Nigel Jones
Historian, biographer, and journalist
Alastair Massie
Head of Archives, Photos, Film, and
Sound, National Army Museum
Gabriel Moshenska
Research Fellow, Institute
of Archaeology, UCL
Colin Pomeroy
Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force
(Ret.), and historian
Michael Prestwich
Emeritus Professor of History,
University of Durham
Nick Saunders
Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol
Guy Taylor
Military archivist, and archaeologist
Julian Thompson
Major-General, Visiting Professor at
London University
his issue we focus on the two great British battles

of 1916 Jutland and the Somme.
The latter has been iconic for a century as the
epitome of futile trench-war slaughter. Taylor Downings
article on shell shock carries us straight into the dark
heart of the battle.
But should this be the dominant perspective on the
Somme? A new generation of revisionist historians think
not. In the first of a two-part examination of the historical
debate, we summarise the compelling argument that the
Somme was a necessary battle.
Jutland, though, was more important. That, at least,
is the view of naval historian Nick Hewitt, curator of
a major new exhibition devoted to the battle at the
National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. We
invited Nick to present his case for both battle and
exhibition. David Porter provides the essential technical
background on this great clash of dreadnoughts.
Then William Welsh transports us to 11th-century
Italy to report on a battle that should be as famous
as Hastings. For in 1053, at Civitate, a Norman army
under Robert Guiscard won a crushing victory over an
alliance led by the Pope to make the Normans masters
of the region.
Finally, Patrick Mercer continues our Regiments
series with an article focused on the role of the 95th
Derbyshires at the Alma in 1854.
Dominic Tweddle
JUTLAND 1916
The battle
t that
h won the war?
NORMAN
R
CONQUEST
ON
DEBATING
T G
THE SOMME
OM
Battle
a tl of Civitate,
v t te 1053
10
Futile
i slaughter?
a
ON THE COVER: Clash of the fleets:

Admiral Sir David Beattys flagship,
HMS Lion, turns towards the German fleet
during the Battle of Jutland.
Credit: Look and Learn
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Director-General, National Museum

of the Royal Navy
ADD US NOW
and have your say
Greg Bayne
President, American Civil War Table
of the UK
CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTHS EXPERTS

TAYLOR DOWNING
is a regular
contributor
to Military
History Monthly,
an historian,
a best-selling
author, and an award-winning
television producer.
PATRICK MERCER
served in the
Sherwood Foresters, then was
defence reporter
for Today on BBC
Radio 4 before
being elected as an MP. He now
writes history books and novels.
DAVID PORTER
worked at the
Ministry of
Defence for
30 years and
is the author
of nine Second
World War books, as well as numerous magazine articles.
NICK HEWITT
is Head of Heritage Development
at the National
Museum of the
Royal Navy. He
has previously
worked as resident historian on HMS
Belfast for Imperial War Museums.
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MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY
July 2016 | ISSUE 70
ON THE COVER
Battle of Jutland
To commemorate the centenary of the Battle of
Jutland, naval historian and curator Nick Hewitt
reflects on the battle and its legacy, while David
Porter assesses the capabilities of the warships
that fought there. These articles form part
of our extended special feature 1916 On Land
and At Sea, which also considers the history
and historiography of the Battle of the Somme.
24
Welcome
Letters
Notes from the Frontline
12
Tim Rayborn on the wartime

experiences of Dmitri Shostakovich.
War Culture
18
The Norman conquest

of southern Italy
Great Debate
44 The
Part 1: the revisionist paradigm
MHM Editor Neil Faulkner analyses
the modern revisionist challenge to
the war-poets view of the Somme.
14
MHM examines the buildings the

Nazis left behind.
12
Civitate, 1053
William E Welsh explores another Norman victory,
won 13 years before the conquerors took England.
10
MHM looks at C R W Nevinsons 1916

print Returning to the Trenches.
War Composers
Background
Technology
Legacy
Timeline
FEATURES
UPFRONT
Behind the Image
INCLUDES:
50
Breakdown
Shell shock on the Somme
Taylor Downing reports on the British
Armys shell-shock crisis in the summer
of 1916.
54 REGIMENT
The Derbyshires
Patrick Mercer uncovers the role
of the 95th Regiment of Foot at
the Battle of the Alma, 1854.
4
July 2016
EDITORIAL
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SUBSCRIPTIONS
68
MHM VISITS
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MHM REVIEWS
Book of the Month | 62
Hazel Blair reviews 36 Hours: Jutland 1916,

the battle that won the war at the NMRN.
Indias War by Srinath Raghavan.
Books | 64
Breakdown by Taylor
owning; U Battery
y Brinley Morgan;
nd The Last Raid
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L E T T ER OF T HE MON T H
AIR POWER AND THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN
Jeremy Blacks review of air power in the 20th century correctly points
out that predictions of its effectiveness were frequently exaggerated.
A particularly extreme example of such exaggeration occurred
in 1937, when the RAF advised the Committee of Imperial Defence
that the Luft waffe could inflict 1.8 million casualties in the course
of a two-month offensive against London.
This forecast relied on four assumptions. German bombers would
incur no losses, they would never be unserviceable, the weather over England would never be unsuitable
for bombing operations, and there would be 50 casualties per tonne of bombs dropped (reflecting the
experience of World War I, when no significant air-raid precautions had been implemented).
The RAF must have been aware that these assumptions were unrealistic. In the Blitz in the autumn of
1940, the actual casualties were about 3% of the level predicted.
However, the RAFs exaggerated prediction influenced its budget (which almost quadrupled in the two
years between 1937/1938 and 1939/1940) and thus helped to win the Battle of Britain.
Image: WIPL
John McCrae wrote

In Flanders Fields
#OnThisDay in 1915.
Find out more over
at the MHM website:
ow.ly/4nmuSe #WW1
David Kirkpatrick Odiham, Hampshire

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4 May 2016
The Yorkists defeated
the Lancastrians at the
Battle of Tewkesbury
#OnThisDay in 1471
#WotR #battleeld
ow.ly/i/j1ZTS
5 May 2016
Video: @chrisbambery
discusses T E Lawrence,
the Arab Revolt, & #WW1
in the Middle East w/
MHM Ed. Dr Neil Faulkner
ow.ly/4ns7pV
6 May 2016
Saying goodbye to
one of our staff with a
@GameOfThrones themed
ofce party! Good luck,
Tiff! #GameofThrones
CANADIANS IN CAEN
I am surprised that you do not
mention that it is Canadian
soldiers whom Churchill and
Dempsey are meeting in your
Behind the Image photo last
time (MHM 68).
The Canadians had been
cooped up in southern England
for years some since 1939. They
played a major part in the 1944
invasion, and I am not sure this
is always recognised.
The men are wearing Canada
insignia on the tops of their
sleeves and all the vehicles are
Canadian: you can tell by the
slope of the windscreens.
I hasten to say that I was not
there but in school!
H James Claygate, Surrey
CURIOUS COSTUME
I am trying to determine the
uniform being worn by my greatgreat-grandfather in this picture.
He had a son born in Australia
in 1852, so it was probably taken

around or earlier than this period.
Thanks in anticipation for
any advice.
Dennis Smith
Umina Beach, Australia
ENLIVENING THE PAST

One of the things I most like
about MHM is the mixture of
interesting, informed text with
lively and revealing pictures.
Two recent articles really represent
this for me.
Professor Jeremy Blacks

excellent eight-page spread The
Great War Changes Gear (MHM
64) provided a really interesting
take, not on the story of the great
battles of 1916, but on the whole
shape of the war and how the process of fighting it was transformed
in that year. And it was superbly
illustrated by a range of powerful,
thought-provoking images.
The ten-page article by Peter
Chasseaud on Mapping the
Second World War (MHM 66)
was equally interesting to read,
and it was fascinating to see so
many pages devoted to the different types of maps he described.
You might need a magnifying
glass to study some of the maps,
but thats inevitably the case with
producing such large objects on
the page of a magazine.
Please keep up this winning
combination of words and images.
James Reid
Crawley, West Sussex
Please note: letters may be edited for length; views expressed here are those of our readers,
and do not necessarily reflect those of the magazine.
Our round-up of this months military history news
BATTLE BUS WESTERN FRONT TOUR

the First World War. The red buses
were painted khaki, and had their
windows boarded over.
These modified vehicles were used
to transport troops, and also served
as ambulances and mobile pigeon-
Images: National Army Museum of New Zealand
Images: Transport for London
London Transport Museums 102-yearold Battle Bus B2737 will journey to

France to commemorate the centenary
of the Battle of the Somme this June.
Over 1,000 London buses were
requisitioned for war service during
The New Forest

during WWI
Newly uncovered photos and the
diary of an injured New Zealand
soldier have provided fresh insight
into the role of the New Forest
during the First World War.
Between 1914 and 1918, the
forest housed hospitals, factories,
military camps, and training areas.
Rifleman Octavius George Garlick,
8
of the 1st Battalion New Zealand

Rifle Brigade, began his time
there when he was transferred to
the hospital at Brockenhurst on
12 June 1917, having been wounded
while in action at Messines.
Garlicks photos show the
relaxed pace of life that he and
other wounded New Zealand
troops enjoyed while recovering
from their injuries. This included
regular visits organised by a
local woman called Mrs Sladen
loft s, which enabled messages

to be sent from the front-line back
to headquarters.
Most vehicles went to France and
Belgium, though some travelled as far
as Greece, and London buses served in
many famousbattles,including Ypres,
Loos, and the Somme.
B2737 is one of only two
operational 1914 B-typebusesin the
world. Along with a team of historical
experts and curators, the vehicle
will embark on three-day tour along
the former front-line of the Somme
between 27 and 29 June.
The BattleBuswill journey from
Gommecourt in the north to Maricourt
in the south, the point where the
British Expeditionary Force linked up
with the French Army. The tour will
end at Thiepval for an evening vigil on
30 June, and the bus will be on display
at Albert-Picardie Airport and Albert
Railway Station on 1 July.
to woodland near Sway, tea parties

at her house, and time spent
reclining in hammocks.
Garlicks diary, held by New
Zealands National Army Museum,
came to light during research
for the New Forest National
Park Authoritys New Forest
Remembers WWI project.
WWI Project Officer Gareth
Owen said, Rifleman Garlicks
photos and diary are one of the
few accounts directly linking the
The tour will pay tribute to

the London transport workers
who served during the Great
War, while raising awareness of
the role played in the conflict by
Londons buses.
B2737 was restored as part
of London Transport Museums
First World War centenary
commemorations in 2014.
New Forest to the theatre of war in

Europe, and we are very thankful
to the museum for allowing us to
add this information to our online
interactive archive.
Readers can explore Garlicks
photos and memories, as well
as other wartime stories from
the New Forest, at www.new
forestheritage.org
July 2016
Image: Paul Jameson
The Battle of Hatfield Investigation Society

(BOHIS), in conjunction with archaeological
company Mercian CIC, have announced
compelling new evidence that could help prove
an early medieval battle took place at or near
to Cuckney in north Nottinghamshire.
Using ground-penetrating radar (GPR),
researchers have been able to pinpoint the
final resting place of up to 800 bodies
possibly warriors killed in the Battle of
Hatfield, fought in the early 7th century.
The battle is thought to have been a turf war
over disputed territory, pre-arranged between
Edwin Englands first Christian king of
Northumbria and the combined forces of
King Cadwallon of Gwynedd and King Penda
of Mercia. The exact date of the battle is
uncertain, but it has been described variously
as having taken place in 632, 633, or 634.
The clash was a decisive victory for the
Gwynedd-Mercian alliance, which defeated
the Northumbrians and killed their king. The
researchers hope their non-invasive fieldwork
could relocate the site of Edwins death from
near Doncaster to Cuckney.
The group has spent three years trying to
resolve the mystery of skeletons discovered in
mass burial pits by subsidence contractors at
St Marys Church, Cuckney, between 1950 and
1951. Using GPR, they located four pits outside
the church in November 2015. They have also
Captain Cooks
HMS Endeavour found?
identified five other sites of potential interest

and pits dotted around the grounds, most
thought to be re-interment sites.
BOHIS Chairman, Paul Jameson said:
These [skeletons] may date from 632, [with]
some still in situ after they were buried in
mass graves following the battle.
They were said to be the remains of young
men with perfect sets of teeth and with their
feet facing east, although, frustratingly, no
scientific analysis took place.
BOHIS now want to carbon-date a sample
of the bones and perform strontium analysis
of teeth to date the bodies and discover
their origin.
Invasive work will require permission from
the Diocese of Southwell and the Welbeck
Estates Company Ltd, plus applications for
further funding. The group was recently
awarded 15,600 from the Heritage Lottery
Fund to explore and share the history of
Cuckney, Norton, and Holbeck, part of
which financed the non-invasive Battle of
Hatfield investigation.
Image: Scott McIvor
REMOTE SURVEY OF HMS HAMPSHIRE

A remotely operated vehicle will survey the wreck
of HMS Hampshire, sunk on 5 June 1916. The
Devonshire-class armoured cruiser, which played a
minor role in the Battle of Jutland, was transporting
Lord Kitchener to Russia for a meeting with Tsar
Nicholas II when it struck a German mine off
Marwick Head in Orkney.
The ship sank in just 20 minutes, resulting in
Lord Kitcheners untimely death, and the loss of
736 others. Only 12 people survived.
Although there have been two previous remote
surveys of the ship, this will be the first extensive
mapping of the wreck site since HMS Hampshire
sank. It is a collaborative project between ORCA
Marine, the University of the Highlands and Islands
Archaeology Institute, and Seatronics.
The wreck is upside-down in some 60m of water,
surrounded by a large debris field. Researchers
want to document the impact of salvage activities
and environmental factors on the ships remains.
Sandra Henry, a marine archaeologist from the
Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, said,
It is really significant
in the run-up to the
centenary of the HMS
Hampshire to carry out a condition survey and map
the extent of the wreck site.
This survey is being undertaken as a mark of
respect and remembrance for those who lost their
lives aboard, and all those who lost their lives at
sea during the First World War.
This project will use the latest 2D- and 3Dscanning technology. It has received funding
and sponsorship from Interface, Orkney Islands
Council, and Northlink Ferries.
GOT A STORY?
Military History Monthly, Thames Works,

Church Street, London, W4 2PD
Let us know!
020 8819 5580
editorial@military-history.org
Marine archaeologists from the Rhode Island

Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) may have
located the wreck of HMS Endeavour, the ship
on which Captain James Cook sailed to Australia
and New Zealand between 1768 and 1771.
The ship served in the Navy until it was sold to
a private owner in 1775, when she was renamed
the Lord Sandwich. Later, she carried British
and Hessian troops to North America during
the American Revolution.
RIMAP thinks it is likely that the Lord Sandwich
lies submerged in Newport Harbor in Rhode
Island, where she was scuttled in the days leading
up to the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778.
MHM FRONTLINE
NEWS IN BRIEF
Medieval battle possibly located
Path of the Remembered

The stories and sacrifices of men and
women involved in Battle of the Somme will be
remembered on individually designed memory
squares to be laid in Manchester on 1 July as
part of the national Somme commemorations.
The squares will be created by the public,
uploaded to an online gallery, and printed on
tiles to form a Path of the Remembered.
To take part, go to www.1418now.org.uk/
somme100, where you can see examples and
upload your own design.
Military museum
controversy
Historians and government officials in Poland have
clashed over the flavour of a new Second World
War museum in Warsaw, due to open in 2017.
The museum wants to tell the story of
World War II from an international perspective,
but Polands government wants the history of
the Second World War to be told from a Polish
point of view.
Polish culture minister Piotr Glinski said he
planned to merge the museum with a Museum
of Westerplatte, dedicated to the German attack
on a Polish garrison there in 1939, but such an
institution does not currently exist.
Some 200 historians and academics have written
an open letter to Glinski opposing his plans.
Roman fort found in London

Archaeologists from Museum of London
Archaeology have discovered a previously
unknown Roman fort, built in AD 63 after
Boudicas attack on London in AD 60/61.
Until now, the Romans response to the
native queens uprising has been little understood.
The fort, which may have housed some 500 men,
was in use for around a decade. Researchers
believe it was erected quickly, as an emergency
defence to secure London.
To find out more, visit www.mola.org.uk/
blog/roman-fort-built-response-boudicasrevolt-discovered
10
July 2016
This small monochrome print carries a powerful

punch, conveying force, speed, and urgency to
make an impact disproportionate to its size.
A determined group of French soldiers
marches to the Front, the tight tangle of
their angular forms cohering into a single
mass, while the artists repeated use of
overlapping, diagonal lines conveys a startling
sense of movement even the clouds in the
sky seem to be moving inexorably in the same
direction. As we look closer, we see that grim
human faces are treated with the same technique as the guns and equipment all are
cogs in the war machine.
The artist, Christopher Richard Wynne
Nevinson (1889-1946), studied in London
and then in Paris. There, shortly before the
outbreak of the First World War, he encountered members of the Italian Futurist movement
and became the leading British proponent
of their style. As their name suggests, the
Futurists were in thrall to what they saw as the
virtues of the modern age seeing beauty in
machines, speed, and mass production.
Nevinson served in France during the
war, first with the Red Cross and then with
the Royal Army Medical Corps, and his experiences provided the perfect subject matter
for the style he had adopted. As he told one
interviewer in 1915, Our Futurist technique
is the only possible medium to express the
crudeness, violence, and brutality of the
emotions seen and felt on the present battlefields of Europe.
In images such as this, seen through the
powerful lens of Nevinsons machine aesthetic,
the soldiers themselves had become mechanised, their bodies mere extensions of increasingly sophisticated weaponry. At the Somme
and other battles that made up this war of
attrition, they were a nameless, dehumanised
mass falling under the guns in their thousands.
The print is on show with other works by
leading British artists of the time in an exhibition entitled Visions of the Front 1916-1918
at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester,
until 20 November.
Text: Maria Earle
Image: part of the Manchester Art Gallery collection, copyright Bridgeman Images
MARCHING
TO WAR
MHM BEHIND THE IMAGE
RETURNING TO
THE TRENCHES, 1916,
DRYPOINT ON PAPER, BY
CHRISTOPHER RICHARD
WYNNE NEVINSON
11
Tim Rayborn considers music and the experience of war
interest in supporting state

ideology, something that caused
problems for him later in life.
He embarked on a career in
music, initially gaining support from
the authorities, but he fell out of
favour with the government in
1936, after the staging of his opera
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk . Stalin
had attended the performance
and found it distasteful.
The work was denounced, and
Shostakovich was forced to keep
his head down, composing less
controversial music. He managed
to survive the Great Purge, which
began in the same year, but
many of his friends were killed
or imprisoned in show trials
designed to destroy all that was
Dmitri Shostakovich
Image: GL Archive / Alamy
mitri Shostakovich ranks as

one of the most important
Russian composers of the
20th century. He lived his
whole life under Soviet rule, and
had a complex relationship with its
strict censorship and approach to
the arts. Shostakovich was a gifted
pianist and composer, though
he was more interested in the
contemporary styles of his fellow
Russians, such as Igor Stravinsky
and Sergei Prokofiev, than in the
music of the 19th century.
The son of an engineer, he
showed early talent for music and
entered the Petrograd Conservatory in 1919, which was operating
even in the aftermath of the
revolution. He showed little
This is music about

terror, slavery, and
oppression of the spirit.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
BIOGRAPHY
Image: WIPL
Born: 25 September 1906, St Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad, Russia

Died: 9 August 1975, Moscow
12
LEFT Mother Russia summons her children to the defence of the homeland
during the Second World War.
July 2016
QUOTES
ABOUT
SHOSTAKOVICH
left of the revolutionary mass

movement of 1917.
THE LENINGRAD
SYMPHONY
No composer
had ever attempted
to describe a future
victory, in music,
with such power
and conviction.
Russian composer
Nicholas Slonimsky
Image: WIPL
He regained favour with his

Symphony No.5, and took a teaching
post at the Leningrad Conservatoire
in 1937. It was in that city that he
would write his celebrated Symphony No.7, hailed as a monument
to the Russian spirit in resisting
the German invasion.
In September 1941, German
forces severed rail connections
to Leningrad; the longest siege
of the Second World War then
began. Shostakovich had already
begun work on a new symphony
in July (some accounts say earlier),
but he was now determined to
create a work that would rouse the
people to resistance. He had completed three of four movements
by the end of September, when
he and his family were evacuated
to Moscow, and then to Samara,
where he was able to finish the
work in December.
Dubbed the Leningrad Symphony,
it lasted well over an hour, and
was filled with themes honouring
Russian heroism. Shostakovich
dedicated it to the city, and Pravda

immediately hailed it as a work
celebrating Soviet values. Performances and broadcasts were
arranged to boost morale, and it
received ovations and rapturous
applause; even Stalin approved.
IN CONTEXT: SHOSTAKOVICH
Controversial composition
There is still controversy about the intended meaning behind

Shostakovichs Symphony No.7. He had begun work on it before
the siege, but this could have been in response to the German
military advance. The official Soviet position was that the
symphony was written in support of the state and to proclaim
the loyalty and valour of the Russian people.
Other evidence suggests that the first movement implied
criticism of Soviet repression, as well as of other kinds of
tyranny, but that it was repurposed once the siege began. The
composers friend Lev Lebedinsky noted during the glasnost
period under Gorbachev that Shostakovich had indeed begun
work on the symphony before the German invasion. He said,
The famous theme in the first movement Shostakovich had first as the
Stalin theme Right after the war started, the composer called it the
anti-Hitler theme. Later, Shostakovich referred to that German theme
as the theme of evil, which was absolutely true, since the theme was
just as much anti-Hitler as it was anti-Stalin, even though the world
music community fixed on only the first of the two definitions.
Clearly, Shostakovich could not discuss such sentiments in
public, but one initial impetus for the work may have been a
quiet reaction to the purges of 1936.
MHM WAR COMPOSERS
RIGHT Red Army infantry storm

forwards across a German trench
during the Siege of Leningrad.
RESISTANCE
Symphony No.7 became a national
symbol of resistance to the German
invasion, and the Soviets were
eager to export it to the Allies. In
a scenario from a spy movie, the
score was copied onto film, flown to
Tehran, transported by car to Cairo,
and then flown westwards, where it
was performed in both Britain and
America in 1942.
The arrival of such a monumental
work was well timed for President
Roosevelt, whose administration
was eager to portray the Soviets
as American allies in the struggle
against the Nazis, while ignoring
Stalins own dictatorship.
The surviving musicians of
the Leningrad Radio Orchestra,
with the help of military musicians
to make up the gaps, performed
the symphony in Leningrad itself
on 9 August 1942. It was broadcast on loudspeakers to the
besieging German forces as an
act of defiance.
The effect on the people, starving and dying, was tremendous.
It received an ovation and roused
Leningrads remaining citizens
to continue their resistance. The
conductor, Karl Eliasberg, later
remarked that, in that moment,
He said openly
that the 7th (and
the 5th as well)
was not only about
Fascism but about
our country and
generally about
all tyranny and
totalitarianism.
Daughter-inlaw of the Soviet
Foreign Minister
Today it is so
simple to die. You
just begin to lose
interest, then you lie
on the bed and you
never again get up.
Anonymous
diarist in besieged
Leningrad
we triumphed over the soulless
Nazi war machine.
The siege was not lifted until 1944,
after a significant pushback against it
in 1943. By its end, as many as a million Leningraders had died. But the
performance was long remembered
as a turning-point in the struggle.
13
structures that spoke of past glories and future triumphs. They

bought popularity by investing in the improvement of the
urban landscape and the provision of leisure facilities. And, by
commandeering community spaces, they buttressed their allencompassing control over both public and private life.
Many of these buildings survive today. While some have
attracted unsavoury attention from neo-Nazi apologists, others
have been defiantly repurposed for the post-war world.
In a new book published by Pen and Sword, former Director
of the National Media Museum Colin Philpott investigates the
history and painful legacy of the Third Reichs architectural
remains. This month, MHM explores a selection of buildings
the Nazis left behind.
Image: Wewelsburg Kreismuseum
The immutable power of the Third Reichs propaganda machine in

all spheres of life is well known: striking posters won the hearts and
minds of the populace, biology textbooks commended eugenics
to schoolchildren, and films like Leni Riefenstahls The Triumph of
the Will lionised the Nazi leadership.
But one rarely discussed aspect of Hitlers dictatorship is the
way in which the Nazis succeeded in cementing their values in
the material fabric of Germany itself. They fully understood the
relationship between the built environment and human emotion,
and capitalised on this to further their warped political goals.
Appropriating buildings of social and historical significance,
they portrayed themselves as just heirs of Germany. Blending
modernism and classicism, they erected vast, overbearing
LEFT SS blueprint for planned (but

never realised) building work around
the castle.
WEWELSBURG CASTLE, WESTPHALIA
The Nazis lent historical legitimacy to their activities by setting themselves up in buildings like Wewelsburg
Castle, built between 1603 and 1609. Triangular in structure, the Renaissance fortress comprises three
round towers connected by three high walls. Heinrich Himmler turned the castle into an SS training centre in
1934, but it was used primarily as a centre for pseudo-historical research into Germanys ancient and medieval
past, designed to reinforce Nazi claims of Aryan superiority. The castle now houses the Wewelsburg 1933-1945
Memorial Museum, a local history museum, and a youth hostel.
14
July 2016
NEW REICH CHANCELLERY, BERLIN
Hitlers architect Albert Speer

completed the New Reich Chancellery in
1938. An example of Stripped Classicism,
the building is simply styled, despite
incorporating four fluted columns invoking
the authority of Imperial Rome. These,
combined with the buildings otherwise
stark and angular lines, rendered the
Chancellors official residence a vast and
intimidating seat of power.
Image: Bishkekrocks/CC-BY-SA 3.0
HEILIGENBERG THINGSTTTE
State-approved theatrical performances promoted

Nazism in modern amphitheatres (Thingsttten)
across Germany. Designed in an attempt to suggest the
endorsement of the ancients, the Thingsttte provided
a platform on which Germans could celebrate their
common heritage.
Image: Erwin Purucker
Image: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1988-092-32/ Obigt, W./CC-BY-SA 3.0
MHM WAR CULTURE
ABOVE Plan of the amphitheatre.
15
PRORA-RGEN HOLIDAY
COMPLEX, RGEN ISLAND
This Kraft durch Freude (Strength

Through Joy), or KdF, leisure complex
extended 5km along the Baltic
coastline. The KdF was set up to
demonstrate the benefits of National
Socialism through the provision of
sporting and leisure activities for all.
Designed as a holiday destination,
Prora-Rgen was never completed.
FUTURE FANTASIES
GO FURTHER
The stronger the Nazis grip on Germany, the grander their

architectural ambitions became. Thankfully, not all of these
were realised, but maps and models survive detailing designs for
increasingly vainglorious and imposing structures.
LEFT Model of the Berlin
Volkshalle (Peoples
Hall), designed by Albert
Speer. Note the rather
sinister optical illusion.
Relics of the Reich:

the buildings the Nazis
left behind
Colin Philpott
Pen and Sword, 19.99
ISBN 978-1473844247
Kreismuseum Wewelsburg is open
10am-5pm Tuesday to Friday, and
until 6pm on weekends and for
public holidays.
Entry to the Memorial Museum,
including its Ideology and Terror of
the SS exhibition, is free. Entry to
the Historical Museum of the Prince
Bishopric of Paderborn is 3.
Address: Kreismuseum Wewelsburg,
Burgwall 19, 33142 Bren-Wewelsburg
Web: www.wewelsburg.de
RIGHT The Pabst Plan was the Nazis plan to demolish

and rebuild Warsaw as a smaller, racially pure city.
16
July 2016
1053
Civitate
THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF SOUTHERN ITALY

The story of 1066 and the Battle of Hastings is well known. But 13 years before, on the other side of
Europe, the Normans had won another great battle no less decisive. William E Welsh tells the tale.
18
protection. The creation of these militias

fuelled the fire in the belly of Lombard rebels
seeking to throw off the Byzantine yoke and
establish self-rule. Melo was the most prominent of these firebrands.
Realising what was at stake, the Greeks
mustered sufficient military resources to crush
a Norman-Lombard rebel army at Cannae in
October 1018.
During the next three decades, Norman
mercenaries poured into southern Italy, where
they found employment, ironically, with both
the Lombard princes and the Catapan (governor) of the Catepanate of Italy. Lombard princes
and Apulian rebels hired Norman bands to support their insurrections in Apulia; at the same
time, the Catapan hired Normans to garrison
Byzantine strongholds on the Apulian border.
The Normans were Europes premier feudal
conquerors. King of Western Francia Charles III
had signed a treaty in the early 10th century
allowing Vikings to settle in Neustria if they
furnished protection against further waves
of Norsemen. The region along the English
Channel north-west of Paris eventually became
known as Normandy, a derivation from the
Old French word for northmen.
Like their Norse ancestors, the Normans had
good and bad traits. On the one hand, they were
confident, ambitious, and quick-witted. On the
other, they were selfish, cunning, and greedy.
They embraced the feudal system characteristic of north-western Europe by which a
vassal paid homage to his lord. They excelled
at mounted warfare, and they built castles in
conquered territory to secure their conquests.
POWER VACUUM
A NEW POPE AND

THREE NORMAN LORDS
The Normans entered a power vacuum. The

Byzantine grip on southern Italy was loosening
as a result of more urgent military matters elsewhere. Few Byzantine military units remained in
the Catepanate at the turn of the 11th century.
Thus, it fell to the Lombard population of
southern Italy to raise militias for their own
A new Pope assumed control of the Holy See in

1049. His intervention in the politics of southern
Italy had a profound influence on the course of
events in the region.
Appointed Pope by Holy Roman Emperor
Conrad II, Bishop Bruno of Toul came from
an aristocratic German family. He had military
OPPOSITE An illuminated manuscript depiction

of a seaborne invasion in c.1100. Throughout
the 11th century, Norman soldiers were on the
move across much of Europe, participating in a
wave of conquests that took them to England,
southern Italy, Sicily, and the Holy Land.
experience, having led an army during one

of Conrad IIs military campaigns in Italy. He
came to the Papacy at a time when the lower
classes of the Lombard principalities were
weary of the Normans unrestrained plundering
of the countryside.
By the close of the 1040s, the Normans had
extablished a secure foothold in southern Italy.
They were striving by means of the territories
bestowed on them in return for service, and
marriage into the Lombard aristocracy to
become legitimate feudal lords in the region.
Norman power was centred in three areas,
each controlled by a gifted mercenary captain.
One was Richard Drengot. He had arrived
in the region in 1046 with 40 mounted men.
Richard was a nephew of Count Rainulf of
Aversa, who had emerged as the first great captain of the Norman immigration. Prince Sergius
of Naples had bestowed the Aversa fief on
Rainulf in 1030 for services rendered. Appointed
regent for Rainults infant son on the counts
death in 1048, Richard took over the fief on the
infants mysterious death the following year.
Another leading Norman was Drogo de
Hauteville, the second son of minor Norman
baron Tancred de Hauteville. Three of
Tancreds sons by his first wife William, Drogo,
and Humphrey had arrived in southern Italy
in 1035 seeking their fortunes.
The Normans were

Europes premier
feudal conquerors.
July 2016
Image: WIPL
he Normans began arriving in

southern Italy in 1017 to serve
as mercenaries, both to protect
coastal towns against Arab pirates,
and also to help local Lombard
princes in their continuing attempts to overthrow their Byzantine overlords.
Norman chroniclers put a positive spin on
their arrival, claiming they had turned up as
pilgrims the previous year at the shrine at
Monte Gargano. As the story goes, during
their stay the pilgrims learned of the Lombard
princes need for experienced soldiers.
A far more likely course of events is that
Pope Benedict VIII invited the Normans to the
region to help him counter Byzantine power.
The disparate accounts converge on one key
point: the first mercenaries to arrive met with
Melo of Bari, a Lombard rebel who had led
a failed rebellion in 1009 in Apulia. Living in
exile in Salerno, Melo still hoped the Lombards
would supplant the Greeks as rulers of Apulia
and Calabria the Byzantine province known
as the Catepanate of Italy.
Sandwiched between the vast Holy Roman
Empire to the north and the far-flung
Byzantine Empire to the east was a jumble of
small Italo-Lombard states. The principalities
of Salerno, Capua, and Benevento were all
ruled by relatively weak Lombard princes.
A further complication was that the seaport
republics of Amalfi, Gaeta, and Naples, once
principalities that recognised the Byzantine
Emperor as suzerain, had, by the early 11th
century, achieved independence (though
they retained strong commercial ties with
the Byzantine Empire).
CIVITATE
ABOVE A fanciful, highly romanticised depiction

of Robert Guiscard, the great Norman warlord
who conquered southern Italy. There are no
contemporary portraits.
With no place
to retreat and no
desire to surrender,
the Swabians
fought to the death.
After his eldest brother William died in
1046, Drogo succeeded him as commander
of a Norman band based at the Apennine
stronghold of Melfi on the Apulian border.
Emperor Henry III bestowed on Drogo the
title of Duke and Master of all Italy and Count
of all the Normans of Apulia and Calabria in
1047. These areas were still controlled by the
Greeks, so Drogo or his heirs would have to
conquer them first.
The third Norman commander was Robert
de Hauteville. He was the eldest of Tancred
de Hautevilles seven sons by his second wife.
Robert arrived in the region in 1035. He eventually became known as Robert Guiscard, his
surname being a derivation of the Old French
word viscart, meaning cunning or resourceful.
In 1049, Drogo appointed Robert to command a Norman band based in Calabria, a much
poorer region than Apulia. Robert subsequently
established his base at San Marco Argentano.
A PAPAL OFFENSIVE
Following his selection by a great council held at
Worms in 1048, Pope Leo IX was consecrated
in Rome in January 1049. Later that year, he
20
undertook a tour of southern Italy to assess

the political situation first-hand.
The red-haired Alsatian, who looked as
much soldier as future saint, heard nothing but
bad things about the Normans from the local
peoples of southern Italy. The new Pope was
deeply disturbed by the Normans fondness for
using strong-arm tactics against innocent people.
As routine practice, the Normans stole food
and plough teams. They also destroyed vines
and olive trees as a way of punishing those who
resisted them. Leo travelled to Germany in the
winter of 1050 to discuss with Emperor Henry III
the possibility of war to exorcise the pest.
On his return, in early 1051, Leo visited the
Principality of Benevento, which had traditionally been a papal fief, to meet Drogo. The
Norman leader promised the Pope he would
exercise greater control over his troops.
Drogo had little time to act on his promise,
however, because he was assassinated by a
Lombard on 10 August 1051. The Melfi-based
Normans would eventually appoint Humphrey
de Hauteville to lead them.
Leo, meantime, decided that he had no choice
but to take up arms against the Normans in an
effort to protect the people of Benevento. The
Pope appealed to Henry III, but the Emperor
declined to send troops. Leo then appealed to
the princes and barons of southern Italy. He also
received an offer of support from Argyrus, the
Lombard Catapan of the Catepanate.
In the winter of 1052, Leo returned once
more to Germany to request troops from
Henry III. This time, Henry obliged, and an

army began marching south. But one of the
Emperors key advisers a rival of the Popes,
the Bavarian Bishop Gebhard of Eichstatt
persuaded him to recall the army before it
had crossed the Alps.
Leo then appealed to his chancellor,
Frederick of Lorraine, to ask his brother,
Duke Gerard of Lorraine, to furnish troops.
Frederick succeeded, and Gerard ordered
700 Swabian infantry to march to Rome.
The Pope also received troops from Apulia,
Gaeta, Campania, and half a dozen other
pro-papal regions in Italy.
Although some sources place the total
strength of the papal army as high as 6,000
men, it may have been only 4,000. Nonetheless,
it represented a wide anti-Norman alliance of
various southern Italian states. The coming
battle would pit the Normans against the rest.
THE CIVITATE CAMPAIGN

The papal army assembled at Benevento the first
week of June 1053. From there, it marched into
northern Apulia via the Biferno Valley. Argyrus
had proposed that it rendezvous with the smaller
Byzantine army at Siponto near Monte Gargano.
To the Normans, it seemed that all of southern Italy was against them. In the face of such
a massive threat, they temporarily put aside
their internal differences and united to meet
the common threat.
Humphrey de Hauteville saw the need to
move quickly to prevent a union of papal and
July 2016
[FAR LEFT] Norman armies, like other Western feudal armies of the period, were based on armoured
cavalry equipped with javelins, lances, and swords, axes, or maces. They were supported by
armoured spearmen and by archers.
[LEFT] Except for the small round shield, this could be a Norman knight. The long chainmail tunic
or hauberk seems to have been a universal form of armour in 11th-century Europe.
[BELOW LEFT] Byzantine soldiers like these may have fought in some numbers at Civitate.
[BELOW] Some 11th-century armies included contingents of poorer men with little or no armour.
The Anglo-Saxon militia at Hastings is an obvious example. This 11th-century illuminated
manuscript image appears to show something similar but we know nothing of the identity,
character, or status of the soldiers depicted here.
Images: WIPL
THE ARMIES: With the notable exception of the Bayeux Tapestry, contemporary depictions of
11th-century warriors are relatively few. These images may give an impression of the appearance
of the armies that fought at Civitate.
21
CIVITATE
Greek armies. He sent word to Richard of Aversa
and Robert Guiscard to join him at the Norman
stronghold of Troia. Approximately 3,000
Normans and 500 Lombard militia gathered
at the town, and Humphrey led them north
in search of Leo IXs army.
The Normans took up a blocking position
south of the Fortore River to await the arrival
of the enemy host. The papal army crossed the
river on 17 June and bivouacked on the south
bank under the walls of Civitate.
The Normans had misgivings about fighting
soldiers in the service of the Pope, and they
therefore sent envoys to ask Leo to enter into
peace negotiations with them. Not only was the
proposal rejected, but the Swabians surrounded
the envoys and shouted insults at them.
Word soon spread through the Norman
ranks that the Germans had mocked them.
This enraged them, and they vowed revenge.
Because his army had no supplies and was in
hostile country, Humphrey decided to attack
the following day.
DEPLOYING FOR BATTLE

On the morning of 18 June, Duke Humphrey
and his subordinates reconnoitred the papal
deployment from a 50m-high hill that was the
only high ground on the plain where the battle
would be fought. While the reconnaissance was
in progress, the Norman horsemen readied
their mounts and took up their weapons.
Each of the armys three divisions or battles
was nearly equal in size at approximately
1,000 cavalry. All of the Normans were superb
warriors, as they were constantly in the saddle
conducting small-scale operations against brigands or carrying out mercenary assignments
for their Lombard or Greek employers.
Humphrey intended to fight in the centre.
He instructed Count Richard to deploy his
men on the right, and he told his half-brother,
Robert, to deploy his men on the left, a short
distance behind the main line. Humphrey
told Robert that his division was to serve as the
reserve. The 500 foot soldiers with the army
were ordered to guard the Norman camp.
Leo IX watched the deployment of his
army from the safety of the walls of Civitate.
The papal army was divided into two wings.
Rudolf, the captain of the Swabians, led the
right wing, which included his troops, as
well as other papal troops. Commanding
the left wing, which was composed entirely
of papal troops, were several Abruzzian counts:
Trasmund III and Atto of Chieti, and Oderisius
II of Sangro. Their experience was limited, and
this was demonstrated by their inability to
Images: WIPL
LEFT The Bayeux Tapestry shows squires or

servants carrying the panoplies of their Norman
feudal lords [TOP], while this Norwegian embroidery
[BOTTOM] shows a knight armoured, mounted,
and ready for battle.
22
July 2016
ABOVE A charge of Norman heavy horse as depicted

on the Bayeux Tapestry.
deploy their companies into a cohesive line

of battle.
THE NORMAN ATTACK
Images: WIPL
Richards mounted knights were the first to

advance. The Italians stood all crowded together
on the other side because they neglected to draw
up a battle line in the proper manner, wrote
Norman chronicler William of Apulia.
The Norman cavalry easily penetrated the enemys left wing. The majority of the Italic-Lombard
troops fled immediately. The Norman cavalry
swirled around the few pockets that stood their
ground. Those brave men were slaughtered.
Richards horsemen then chased the fleeing
remnants of the papal left wing off the battlefield. This took Richards division out of the
fight. Whether it would return quickly, or at all,
before the battle was over was uncertain.
Next, Humphreys cavalry charged the
Swabians, but these veteran soldiers stood their
ground. The Swabians fought with round shields
and long swords. Some of them cast aside their
shields to wield their swords with both hands.
The Swabians repulsed several charges by
Humphreys division. Each time the Normans
regrouped and charged again; some threw javelins, while others charged with couched lance.
BELOW The famous depiction of the Anglo-Saxon
shield-wall at Hastings gives a contemporary
impression of what the Swabian shield-wall at
Civitate may have looked like.
Once they had lost their lance, the Normans

resorted to their swords. The fighting took on a
gruesome character as the casualties mounted.
You could see human bodies split down
the middle and horse and man laying dead
together, wrote William of Apulia.
After the third or fourth charge, Robert
Guiscard led his troops into battle to reinforce
his half-brother Humphrey. Roberts men easily
shattered the less-experienced papal troops of
the right wing, leaving the Swabians to fight
alone against the combined weight of two
Norman divisions.
Roberts cavalry then wheeled and attacked
the Swabians exposed right flank. In response,
the Swabians formed a tightly packed square.
They continued to beat back the Normans
desperate mounted attacks.
VICTORY
Fortunately for the Hauteville brothers,
Richard returned to the main battle with
the bulk of his horsemen. His cavalry attacked
the Swabians from behind. The two other
divisions renewed their assaults in concert
with Richards fresh attack.
Assailed from all sides, the Swabians could
not withstand the numbers arrayed against them.
When gaps opened in their ranks, the Normans
rode among the Swabians, hacking and stabbing.
With no place to retreat and no desire to surrender, the Swabians fought to the death.
Pope Leo IX watched the disaster unfold
beneath his eyes from his perch inside
Civitate. The Normans lost 500 cavalry and
the papal army 1,500 men. After the battle,
the townspeople turned the Pope over to the

victorious Normans.
The Normans transferred the captive pontiff
to Benevento, where he was kept under close
guard for the next nine months. After he
agreed to recognise their hereditary claims and
accepted them as papal vassals, Leo was freed on
12 March 1054. Although he had been treated
well in captivity, he died on 19 April.
The Norman lords continued slowly
reducing the Catepanate of Italy well into the
1060s. When Humphrey died in 1057, Robert
succeeded him as Duke of Apulia and Calabria.
Pope Nicholas II confirmed Roberts hereditary
title and claim to these territories at the
Council of Melfi two years later.
Robert, together with his younger brother
Roger, spent the last part of his career in the
subjugation of both Sicily and the Catepanate
of Italy. Roger II, Roger Is son, consolidated
their territorial gains in the former into the
Kingdom of Sicily in 1130.
The Normans had come to southern Italy
seeking pay, booty, and land. Many were younger
sons without an inheritance for whom the
profession of arms was the only way to secure
wealth and rank. Such was their prowess, and
such eventually their numbers, that they became
more powerful than their former employers.
And when the minor states of southern Italy
combined to overthrow them, it was the
Normans who triumphed at Civitate, establishing their supremacy in the region, and creating
a launch pad for the conquest of Sicily.
William E Welsh is a military historian
and magazine editor.
1916
on land
and at sea
JUTLAND AND
THE SOMME
INTRODUCTION
ABOVE Admiral John Jellicoe, com

mander of
the Grand Fleet at the Battle of
Jutland.
ander
ABOVE Field Marshal Douglas Haig, comm
me.
Som
the
of
e
Battl
at the
Main image: WIPL
Image: Library of Con

gres
he Somme will never appear on anyones

list of decisive battles. A cohort of revisionist historians now argue that it was the
battle that broke the back of the German
Army, professionalised the British Army,
and prepared the ground for eventual victory in a
long war of attrition; it was, they say, a necessary
battle. We summarise the argument on pp.44-48 in
the first of two Great Debate articles (the second
will follow next month).
But even if we accept the argument, the immediate outcome was too dismal, the end too distant, for
the Somme to rank as decisive. Indeed, the dreary
stalemate on the Western Front would make any
such description seem positively perverse.
This is part of the reason that Nick Hewitt argues
for Jutland as the more important of Britains two
great battles in the summer of 1916. This despite
the fact that it lasted only a day and a night, and that
total casualties were around 10,000 whereas the
Somme ground on for four and a half months, and
cost a million in killed and wounded.
Not that Jutland was any more tactically decisive
than the Somme. Trafalgar the model naval battle
of annihilation saw more than half the enemy
fleet destroyed. Admirals dreamed of replicating
Trafalgar, as generals dreamed of replicating
Cannae. Jutland, by this yardstick, was a damp squib:
both fleets survived more or less intact, and, as it
happens, the damage to the British fleet was greater
than that to the German.
Yet strategically it was decisive. Churchill
that master of the contemporary aphorism had
quipped that Jellicoe, commander of Britains
Grand Fleet, was the only man who could lose the
war in an afternoon. How so?
Jutland was the only full-on attempt by the
German High Seas Fleet to win maritime supremacy
in the North Sea. Had it succeeded, the Channel
supply-line to the British Expeditionary Force on
the Western Front (and, for that matter, to every
other British army fighting overseas) would have
been imperilled. So, too, would the supply-line
to the Home Front. Not only would the British
naval blockade of Germany have been broken,
but, far more serious since Britain was much more
dependent on maritime supply than Germany the
British would have faced starvation.
There can be little doubt that if Jellicoe had lost at
Jutland, Britain would have been forced to negotiate
peace with Germany. The historical implications
are dizzying. The whole course of events in the 20th
century would surely have been changed.
Battles take their significance not from their
duration, intensity, and impact on the imagination,
but from the strategic consequences of their outcomes. Jutland more than the Somme set Britain
on the road to victory in the First World War.
Completing our special, alongside our articles
on the historiography of the Somme and the significance of Jutland, Taylor Downing introduces his new
book on the British Armys crisis of shell shock in
1916, and David Porter analyses the technology of
naval warfare in the early 20th century.
25
JUTLAND
THE BATTLE &

THE LEGACY
Naval historian and curator Nick Hewitt
reflects on the significance of the great clash
of dreadnoughts in the First World War.
he Battle of Jutland was fought

between the Royal Navys Grand
Fleet and the Imperial German
Navys High Seas Fleet, from 31 May
to 1 June 1916, in the North Sea
near Denmarks Jutland Peninsula.
Over 36 hours, one brutal day and night
in 1916, around 100,000 British and German
sailors in 250 warships fought for control
of the North Sea. By the end, 25 ships had
been sunk and more than 8,500 men had
lost their lives.
Jutland was arguably the greatest naval
battle in history. Certainly it was the largest
ever engagement between surface fleets,
and the high point for dreadnought battleships, the huge armoured warships by which,
since 1906, nations had measured their
strength and importance. Dreadnoughts
were the nuclear weapons of their day, and
the British and German fleets that fought

at Jutland were the biggest in the world.
One brutal day

and night in 1916,
100,000 British and
German sailors
in 250 warships
fought for control
of the North Sea.
RIVAL PLANS
Britain had long-standing plans, in the event
of war, to blockade Germany economically,
cutting off vital imports from the Americas
like cotton, grain, non-ferrous metals (for
example, copper and zinc), and nitrates,
essential for fertilisers and explosives.
New technology, notably mines, submarines, and torpedo-boats, meant that the
British could no longer patrol immediately
outside enemy ports without exposing
their valuable battleships to great risk.
Instead, the British Admiralty planned
a distant blockade, keeping the Grand
Fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.
This gave Germany access to the North Sea,
but Britain could still capture or sink her
JUTLAND: BATTLE
LEFT HMS Dreadnought, the ship that pressed the

reset button on Britains arms race with Germany.
merchant ships, and the German

High Seas Fleet was effectively under
house arrest.
Although German naval officers dreamed
of Der Tag (The Day), when the High Seas
Fleet would sortie from its bases at Kiel
and Wilhelmshaven to defeat the British
in a single, dramatic confrontation, in
reality the German fleet was simply too

small to do this.
When Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered the
construction of a battle fleet in 1899, the
British, inspired by the First Sea Lord,
Admiral Sir John Jackie Fisher, responded
by launching the innovative battleship HMS
Dreadnought, which was faster and had better
armour and more heavy guns than anything
else afloat. At the same time, Fisher developed a new type of ship, the battlecruiser,
with heavy guns but light armour to allow
exceptional speed.
Both the British and German
battle fleets were immediately
rendered out of date. The
British rightly believed that,
from a standing start, they
could build new ships faster
than Germany, which was
trying to maintain the largest
army in Europe as well.
In the subsequent arms race
to build dreadnoughts as the
new battleships became known
Britain remained ahead, even
though Germanys defence
budget increased by a staggering
(and unsustainable) 142%. Thus,
when Britain declared war on
4 August 1914, the British Grand
Fleet had 28 dreadnoughts
and nine battlecruisers. The
German High Seas Fleet had
only 16 dreadnoughts and
five battlecruisers.
ABOVE Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander-inchief of the Royal Navys Grand Fleet at Jutland.
LEFT Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty, commander
of Jellicoes Battlecruiser Fleet at Jutland.
Images: The National Museum of the Royal Navy, unless otherwise stated
DER TAG
The Germans could not
risk Der Tag until they had
achieved some sort of parity
in numbers, and the first two
years of war in the North Sea
were characterised by little
more than inconsequential
skirmishing, with the Germans
seeking to lure out and isolate
a smaller portion of the Grand
Fleet and destroy it.
But in January 1916
Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer took
command of the High Seas Fleet. Scheer
persuaded the Kaiser to let him use the
fleet more aggressively, and he devised a
27
LEFT Destruction of HMS Queen Mary.

A 27,000-ton ship and nearly 1,300 men
were immolated inside this apocalyptic
smoke cloud.
German naval
officers dreamed of
Der Tag (The Day).
plan to provoke the British into making
a mistake.
Vice-Admiral Franz von Hippers German
battlecruisers were to attack British convoys
of merchant ships to neutral Norway. Scheer
expected Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty to
engage Hipper with his Battlecruiser Fleet
from Rosyth, to be joined later by Jellicoe
from Scapa Flow. German submarines would
ambush the emerging fleets, and Hipper
would engage Beatty and lure him towards
the main High Seas Fleet. Destroying Beattys
force first would give the Germans equality in
numbers when they fought Jellicoe.
28
The plan failed. Thanks to better intelligence and greatly superior numbers, the
Royal Navy won the day, despite losing more
ships and far more men. This victory, costly
and at times clumsily fought though it
may have been, meant that the blockade
of Germany was maintained.
As it tightened, it brought severe hardship
to the German civilian population, forced
Germany into a disastrous submarine campaign that helped bring the USA into the war
on the Entente side, and eventually triggered
the German naval mutiny and revolution
of October-November 1918. These conse-
quences of Jutland determined the outcome

of the First World War.
Despite its importance, however, Jutland
was almost immediately overshadowed by
subsequent land battles, notably the Somme,
which began a month later. After the war it
became marginalised and misunderstood,
BELOW Surrender: the German veteran SMS
Derfflinger slowly sinks. The High Seas Fleet never
seriously challenged for control of the sea again,
and was forced to sail to internment in Scapa
Flow in 1918. Most of the ships were scuttled
by their own crews the following year.
July 2016
JUTLAND: BATTLE
surpassed in the British popular imagination by the sacrifice on the Somme and
at Passchendaele, and over the years was
gradually forgotten.
There is little doubt that this was caused
in part by the comparative absence of
material culture: the enormous underwater
battlefield remained largely invisible for
decades. Jutland yielded few relics, and no
vast, sweeping cemeteries. Over time, participants died and ships were scrapped. Only
now, in the centenary year, has a concerted
effort been made to evaluate Jutlands
surviving material culture, and to use it to
better tell the story of this great confrontation,
which decided the fate of empires.
ABOVE Blockade: feeding the starving people of Riga,

1919. Jutland represented the only serious attempt
to break the British blockade of Germany and her
occupied territories. Instead, the Germans turned to
a disastrous counter-blockade using submarines
which ultimately helped bring the USA into the war.
THE SEABED
Perhaps the greatest source of evidence
lies on the seabed, where the remains of
the ships lost on 31 May 1916 lie to this day,
slowly disintegrating but still recognisable.
Marine archaeologists, notably Dr Innes
McCartney, have been at the forefront of
recent investigations of the Jutland wrecks,
interpreting the bones of these great ships
to help improve our understanding of the
technology, and the battle itself.
The wrecks of Jutland form an underwater battlefield that is arguably more
complete than those of the Western Front.
But just like a land battlefield, this fragile
landscape is under constant threat. The
Despite its
importance,
Jutland was
overshadowed
by subsequent
land battles.
sea itself will, of course, eventually reclaim

even the largest shipwrecks, but there
is no doubt that human action has accelerated the process.
Although the Jutland wrecks are graves
for many of those who died in the battle,
they lie in fairly shallow, international
waters, and some have been salvaged for
valuable non-ferrous metals.
This work reached a peak in the 1950s,
before legislation was passed to try to
protect them. SMS Ltzow, lying in only
144 feet of water, has suffered greatly from
this kind of interference, her stern having
been blown open by a salvage firm in the
1960s. SMS Pommern and HMS Indefatigable
have also been methodically plundered and
are now almost unrecognisable.
In 1986 the British Government passed the
Protection of Military Remains Act, to ensure
that ships sunk in military service remain
undisturbed, and in 2006 the 14 British
Jutland wrecks were designated as protected
places. However, if a wreck is in international
waters, it is protected from interference only
by UK nationals, companies, or dive vessels.
UNDERWATER SENSING
New technology, including multi-beam Sound
Navigation and Ranging (sonar) sensors,
Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and digital
photography, have dramatically improved
our ability to study maritime archaeology
29
BELOW Portsmouths Royal Naval War Memorial

to the Missing. Around half of the British dead from
Jutland are commemorated on this memorial.
through marine survey, the method used

to explore the seabed. Marine survey
is primarily focused on assessing and
reproducing the surface topography of
the seabed and any objects lying on or
in it mapping the site, in effect, in
exactly the same way that land-based
archaeologists might map a Roman villa
or Iron Age hillfort.
Multi-beam sonar sensors release
sound waves from underneath the
survey ships hull. The amount of time
it takes for the sound waves to bounce
off the seabed or object and return to
the receiver is used to establish water
depths. The depths are then allocated
a colour range, which creates a top-side
view of the seabed.
In 2015, the Royal Navy survey ship
HMS Echo, in partnership with the
National Museum of the Royal Navy,
spent a week scouring the floor of the
North Sea with her multi-beam sonar
equipment, gathering material for a
new television documentary and the
National Museum of the Royal Navys
centenary exhibition.
What emerged were colourful
three-dimensional images that
graphically illustrate Jutlands continuing physical legacy. The survey
positively identified ten vessels lost
in the battle, and provided dramatic
ABOVE Memorial and mass grave for the dead

from the British battleship HMS Barham.
Inside the battered

hull of every ship
when it slipped
beneath the
waves in 1916
were dead and
maimed sailors.
30
July 2016
JUTLAND: BATTLE
visual confirmation of the importance of

marine survey in enhancing our understanding of the battle.
Among the ships surveyed were the
Grand Fleets two lost armoured cruisers,
HMS Defence and HMS Black Prince, both
of which were described in contemporary
accounts as having being blown to pieces
in near-apocalyptic magazine explosions.
However, both ships proved to be almost
intact, with Defence upright and immediately
recognisable by the distinctive profile of her
secondary armament.
WAR GRAVES
Inside the battered hull of every ship
when it slipped beneath the waves in 1916
were dead and maimed sailors. Mindful of
this, when the survey was complete, Echos
40-strong ships company held a service of

remembrance before casting a wreath into
the sea in memory of the dead.
Of the 6,094 British and 2,551 German
sailors who died at Jutland, nearly all went
down with their ships or were buried at sea,
and only a handful were recovered and given
marked graves. The British were mostly buried
in the Naval Cemetery at Lyness in Orkney, or
in scattered graves around the Scandinavian
coast; German dead mostly lie in the Naval
Cemetery at Wilhelmshaven.
Thus Jutland lacks the huge, sombre
cemeteries that characterise other First
World War battles, although the Imperial
(later Commonwealth) War Graves
BELOW The Royal Navy survey ship HMS Echo,
which scanned the Jutland wrecks in 2015.
Sonar images: Royal Navy/HMS Echo
LEFT Multi-beam sonar image of the wreck of HMS Defence upright, largely intact, and recognisable
thanks to the distinctive profile of her secondary armament along each beam.
BELOW LEFT HMS Black Prince, also largely intact, though inverted.
31
ABOVE Medals and Next of Kin Memorial Plaques

commemorating the Maton brothers, who were
both killed in the First World War. Eustace (right)
was killed aboard the destroyer HMS Tipperary
at Jutland. His brother Leonard was killed serving
with the Devonshire Regiment in 1917.
The battle became

a subject of poetry
and novels, as well
as feature films.
32
Commission recorded the names of sailors

with no known grave on vast Memorials
to the Missing in the principal Royal Navy
manning ports of Chatham, Portsmouth,
and Plymouth. (Over half of the Jutland
dead appear on the Portsmouth memorial,
on Southsea Common.)
Over a thousand sailors on both sides
returned home with injuries, often lifechanging. A few of them can be seen in
a remarkable piece of film held by the
Imperial War Museums, which depicts traumatically wounded Jutland survivors, some
of them amputees, playing football while
convalescing at Brooksby Hall, the Beatty
family home in Leicestershire, which was
used as a naval hospital.
Many more would have been psychologically damaged, in an era when conditions
like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder were
poorly understood. In addition, 177
British sailors became prisoners-of-war
in a naval camp at Brandenburg-an-denHavel, near Berlin.
MEMORIALS
Many informal war memorials refer directly
to Jutland the register maintained by
Imperial War Museums lists 139, like the
column in South Queensferry erected In
memory of the men and boys who fell in the
Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916. In Canada,
several mountain peaks were named after
people and ships that fought at Jutland.
The German Navy saw Jutland as the start
of a tradition. When Germany re-armed in
the 1930s, the pocket battleship Admiral
Scheer, cruiser Admiral Hipper, and a number
of smaller warships and auxiliaries were
named after Jutland heroes.
Immediately after the war, the anniversary
was celebrated in both countries. The battle
became the subject of poetry and novels, as
well as feature films in both Britain (The
Battle of Jutland, 1921, sadly now lost) and
Germany (Die versunkene Flotte, 1926).
In this centenary year, a reappraisal
of Jutland is long overdue. In a unique
collaboration between the National
July 2016
JUTLAND: BATTLE
Museum of the Royal Navy and Imperial
War Museums, a ground-breaking exhibition
in Portsmouth will bring together more than
300 artefacts from public and private collections, innovative audio-visual presentations,
and the latest research to restore Jutland to
its rightful place in history as the battle that
won the war.
Artefacts like the extraordinary builders
models of the dreadnought battleship HMS
Canada and the German battlecruiser SMS
Ltzow can help us understand what was
unique about the scale of war at sea in the
First World War, now that the great warships
of the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet
are no more.
Humble Next of Kin Memorial Plaques
bitterly known by some relatives as Dead
Mans Pennies tell us how vulnerable the

ships crews were to a sudden, catastrophic
failure which had no parallel on land. The
magazine explosion that destroyed HMS
Queen Mary took the lives of 1,267 men in
a matter of seconds.
Many other artefacts are deeply personal:
notes urgently scribbled at
the time, private reflections,
sketches, and letters recounting
the battle, written to be shared
with intimate friends and family
members only, if they were to
be shared at all. Whether written by the future King George
VI, who served at Jutland
aboard the battleship HMS
Collingwood, or the humblest
BOTTOM Builders model of the dreadnought

HMS Canada. The Royal Navy deployed 28 of
these mighty ships at Jutland, along with nine of
the faster but more thinly armoured battlecruisers.
BELOW Bell of the German dreadnought Grosser
Kurfrst. The German High Seas Fleet could
field only 16 dreadnoughts, five battlecruisers,
and six obsolete pre-dreadnoughts.
Both sides struck aggressively

jingoistic commemorative
victory medallions.
33
RIGHT Shell splinter which

wounded H Newman of
HMS Southampton.
Image: Ministry of Defence, Crown Copyright
ike a land battle, Jutland left

ermanent imprint on the visible
scape over which it was fought.
of ordinary seamen, they all help to build a

picture of the Jutland experience.
MATERIAL CULTURE
Other artefacts were themselves
participants, and highlight key moments
in the action. Some of them serve as
grim reminders of the human cost, like
the lifebelt, binoculars, and pocket watch
found on the body of Commander Loftus
William Jones VC, captain of the sunken
destroyer HMS Shark, when he washed
ashore on a lonely Swedish beach, weeks
after the battle.
34
Others recall moments of high drama:

the signal flags used to summon the tiny,
fragile seaplane carrier HMS Engadine
alongside the wallowing, burning hulk
of the cruiser HMS Warrior a ship more
than five times her size allowing more
than 700 lives to be saved.
Artefacts help us understand the complex
aftermath of the battle, and the British
failure to win the propaganda battle that
followed almost as soon as the guns had fallen
silent. Both sides struck aggressively jingoistic commemorative victory medallions,
and in Britain a range of commemorative
ABOVE The Battle of Jutland from the Air (detail)

by Norman Howard (1899-1955).
ephemera and public works of art appeared

to mark the sacrifice of Boy Seaman Jack
Cornwell, at 16 one of the youngest ever
recipients of the Victoria Cross.
Cornwell survived the battle but died from
his wounds in hospital soon afterwards, and in
doing so was quite deliberately transformed
from just one of many children who died in
the battle to a national icon.
The long-term impact of the battle can be
tracked through objects like German propaJuly 2016
ganda posters emphasising the deadly but

ultimately self-defeating effects of that countrys second unrestricted U-boat campaign,
which began in early 1917. On the other
side of the North Sea, the British blockade
continued unabated, its grim toll illustrated
by clothing made from woven paper, and
inedible lumps of Kriegsbrot, emergency
bread made from sawdust, turnip leaves,
and other substitutes for scarce flour.
The Battle of Jutland was simultaneously
a triumph and a tragedy on an epic scale, yet
today is largely forgotten in the popular consciousness. For most of us, the First World
War was a land war fought in France and
Flanders. Our shorthand for the conflict
The battle of
Jutland was
simultaneously
a triumph and
a tragedy on
an epic scale.
JUTLAND 1916: 36 HOURS

30 May
5.17pm Admiral Sir John Jellicoe
and Vice Admiral David Beatty
receive a signal telling them the
German High Seas Fleet will put
to sea the following morning.
10.30pm Royal Navy Grand
Fleet puts to sea.
31 May
2am German High Seas Fleet
puts to sea.
2.28pm first shots: HMS
Galatea and HMS Phaeton open
fire on the German torpedo boats.
4pm SMS Ltzow hits HMS Lion
with a shell.
4.02pm HMS Indefatigable
shelled by SMS Von der Tann.
She soon sinks, leaving only
two survivors from a
1,019-strong crew.
4.25pm HMS Queen Mary is hit
and she explodes, leaving nine
survivors from a 1,275-strong
crew.
4.40pm British destroyers
ordered to fall back and draw the
Germans towards the Grand Fleet.
4.46pm Knig-class battleships
surge forward and open fire on
the British.
6.34pm HMS Invincible is hit. She
breaks in two, killing Rear Admiral
Hood and all but six of her crew.
6.35pm the High Seas Fleet

makes an about-turn.
6.55pm Scheer turns again,
and inadvertently heads towards
the British.
7.13pm Scheer orders what
became known as the death ride.
All the German battle-cruisers
except SMS Moltke are severely
damaged as British battleships
fire on them simultaneously.
7.15pm Scheer orders German
torpedo boats to attack and lays
a smokescreen.
8.18pm the Germans hit HMS
Princess Royal and HMS Lion.
The British score hits against
SMS Seydlitz and SMS Derfflinger.
11.35pm chaos: HMS Tipperary
hit by SMS Westfalen and later
sinks. HMS Spitfire collides with
SMS Nassau, which opens fire,
severely damaging Spitfire.
1 June
12.20am SMS Thringen opens
fire on HMS Black Prince, blowing
her up. Some 900 men are lost.
1am SMS Ltzow scuttled.
2.10am SMS Pommern is
torpedoed by HMS Obedient. She
sinks with all hands.
5.20am the Germans escape.
3pm Admiral Scheers
flagship anchors at
Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
involves mud, poetry, rats, and brutality of

the trenches, the ghostly imprints of which
still zig-zag across Europes countryside.
Unlike a land battle, Jutland left no
permanent imprint on the visible landscape
over which it was fought. Nevertheless, the
250 ships and 100,000 men who fought it
have left an extraordinary wealth of material
culture, which, when studied together, can
dramatically improve our understanding
of the experience.
Surely, in this centenary year, it is wholly
appropriate that the material culture of
Jutland be used to place the battle back at
the heart of Europes First World War narrative. Though brief compared to the Somme
or Third Ypres, and less obviously decisive
than the Hundred Days of 1918 that finally
broke the German Army, its long-term
impact was extraordinarily important.
It was, quite simply, the battle when the
Royal Navy won the war.
Nick Hewitt is Head of Heritage Development

at the National Museum of the Royal Navy,
responsible for a range of interpretive projects,
including the Jutland centenary exhibition. From
1995-2010 he worked in a variety of roles for
Imperial War Museums, including five years as
resident historian aboard HMS Belfast.
EXHIBITION
36 Hours: Jutland 1916, the Battle
that Won the War
On 19 May 2016, the National Museum
of the Royal Navy, in collaboration
with Imperial War Museums, will open
a major exhibition in Portsmouth to
commemorate the centenary of the
Battle of Jutland.
It will be the most comprehensive
exhibition ever staged on the subject,
and will highlight the essential role of the
Royal Navy in winning the First World War
through previously unseen artefacts and
immersive audio-visual experiences.
The exhibition will provide a once-ina-generation opportunity to view the
NMRN and IWM Jutland collections,
alongside objects from 21 private lenders
and five public organisations.
36 Hours coincides with the NMRNs
other major contributions to the
Jutland centenary, the opening of the
battles only surviving ship, the light
cruiser HMS Caroline, in Belfast, and the
reinterpretation of the only aircraft to take
part in the battle, F J Rutlands Short 184
at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton.
35
36
July 2016
JUTLAND
THE TECHNOLOGY
David Porter assesses the capabilities of the warships
that fought at Jutland.
s the 20th century began, the

progress of naval technology
showed no signs of slowing after
almost 50 years of frenetic change.
That period had seen the transition from wooden-hulled ships of the line
with weak auxiliary steam engines armed
with smoothbore cannon to ocean-going
armoured battleships mounting rifled guns
capable of accurate fire out to 9,000 metres
(almost 10,000 yards).
Progress, however, had been distinctly
patchy naval gunnery still relied on
techniques of aiming and fire-control
that were little different from those
of the Napoleonic Wars. As early as
the 1880s, it was becoming impossible
to exploit the theoretical range of
the latest guns because of these
primitive techniques.
The few naval actions of the 1890s
demonstrated the extent of the problem.
The US Navys gunnery during the SpanishAmerican War of 1898 was abysmal. In the
Battle of Manila Bay, it achieved a hit rate of
only 2.5% at ranges of 4,500-1,800 metres,
while at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba this
dropped to 1.5%.
A year later, the Royal Navy still carried
out target practice at ranges of no more
than 1,460 metres, achieving an average
hit rate of 30%.
LEFT The Krupp works at Essen in the Rhineland,

where the guns for Germanys new dreadnought
battleships were manufactured. The naval arms
race culminated in Jutland the greatest clash of
naval firepower in history.
BELOW Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930),

the Imperial German Navy Secretary whose aim
was to build a fleet powerful enough to make the
Royal Navy unwilling to risk battle.
THE ANGLO-GERMAN NAVAL ARMS

RACE, 1900-1914
Throughout the Victorian period, Britain
had shown determination to maintain the
naval supremacy on which the security of its
empire depended. This had been emphasised by the Naval Defence Act of 1889,
which legally enforced the long-held policy
that the Royal Navy should be equal in
strength to the combined fleets of the
next two greatest naval powers (the socalled Two-power Standard).
37
LEFT Admiral of the Fleet John Jacky Fisher

(1841-1920), Britains First Sea Lord before the
First World War, and the man behind the launch
of HMS Dreadnought and an intensified naval arms
race with Germany.
I had a peculiar
passion for the
navy. It sprang
to no small
extent from my
English blood.
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Before 1900, the French and Russian
fleets were regarded as the main threats to
British naval hegemony, but these forces
were then overtaken by the rapidly growing
Imperial German Navy.
The expansion of German naval power
was a primary policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II,
who recalled that:
I had a peculiar passion for the navy. It sprang
to no small extent from my English blood.
When I was a little boy I admired the proud
British ships. There awoke in me the will to
build ships of my own like these and when
I was grown up to possess as fine a navy as
the English.
Tirpitz called his strategy Risikogedanke

risk theory If a German navy could
threaten, even at heavy cost to itself, such
losses to the Royal Navy that its ability to
confront one of its other naval rivals
France, Russia, the United States was thereby
compromised, it would shrink from the challenge.
In doing so, it would concede to Germany a
freedom of action of its own in international
politics and thereby open the way for Berlin to
move from great power (Grossmacht) to world
power (Weltmacht) status.
38
July 2016
Image: WIPL
Rear-Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who

had been secretary of the Reichsmarineamt
(Imperial Naval Office) since 1897, shared
the Kaisers naval ambitions. He had devised a
superficially attractive strategy, described as
follows by John Keegan in his book The Price
of Admiralty:
Image: WIPL
JUTLAND: TECHNOLOGY
Tirpitzs First Naval Law of 1898

carefully avoided antagonising British
sensitivities, with provision for the completion of only seven new battleships by 1904.
However, the Second Boer War swung
German public opinion in support of
far greater naval expansion.
In January 1900, British cruisers stopped
and searched three German merchant
vessels off the African coast on suspicion
of carrying military supplies to the Boers.
This provoked widespread anger in
Germany, which gave Tirpitz the opportunity to accelerate dramatically his naval
construction programme.
The Second Naval Law of 1900 doubled
the size of the fleet from 19 to 38 battleships two flagships, four battle squadrons
of eight battleships each, and four reserve
battleships were to be constructed in the
period from 1901 to 1917.
This legislation left no doubt that the new
German Navy was to be a powerful battle
fleet designed to challenge British maritime
supremacy. This obvious threat transformed
British opinion, triggering a major AngloGerman naval arms race and pushing
Britain towards alliances with France and
Russia. Further naval expansion under the
Naval Laws of 1906, 1908, and 1912 further
increased international tensions and provoked
similar British responses.
DREADNOUGHTS AND
SUPER-DREADNOUGHTS
Naval technology made dramatic advances
as a result of the pressures of the arms race.
The all big-gun HMS Dreadnought was
completed in 1906, with a main armament
of ten 305mm (12-inch) guns. Ships of this

class dreadnoughts were to be the basis
of major First World War navies. By 1914,
although Britain had still had a clear advantage in numbers of capital ships, the days of
the Two-power Standard were over.
It was soon recognised that the new vessels needed improved fire-control systems
in order to exploit the full potential of their
armament. Various systems were trialled,
but arguably the most successful was the
British director system linked to the Dreyer
Table, a mechanical analogue computer.
This allowed the fire of a battleships main
armament to be centrally controlled, with
far greater accuracy than the old practice of
each turret operating independently.
Dreadnoughts speed, firepower, and
protection had rendered all previous battleships obsolete, but she herself was obsolescent by 1914, overtaken by the British
super-dreadnoughts, armed with 343mm
(13.5-inch) and 380mm (15-inch) guns.
In theory, this gave them a significant
margin of superiority over their German
contemporaries, which had main armaments of 280mm and 305mm (11-inch
and 12-inch) guns, but other factors
equalised the equation, notably:
ABOVE The naval arms race as depicted in a

contemporary magazine diagram, showing the
basic design of a dreadnought and the cost!
BELOW German sailors prepare a mine for use.
r(FSNBOBSNPVSQJFSDJOHTIFMMTXFSF
more effective than their British equivalents, which often failed to penetrate
heavy armour. The issue particularly
concerned shells striking at oblique
angles, which was generally the case at
long range. Germany had adopted TNT
as a shell filling in 1902, while the British
still used the picric acid-based Lyddite.
39
ABOVE A torpedo one of 199 used during the

battle is launched from a German ship during
the Battle of Jutland.
German contemporaries carried powerful

150mm (5.9 inch) secondary batteries.
MINES
The shock of impact against armour often
prematurely detonated Lyddite-filled
shells, but TNT was more resistant and
allowed delayed-action fuses to operate
efficiently, detonating shells after they
had penetrated the targets armour.
r5IFNBJOQSPQFMMBOUDIBSHFTPGFWFO
the largest German naval guns were
contained in brass cartridge cases,
whereas those for large-calibre British
guns were issued in silk bags, making
them far more prone to igniting if turrets
were penetrated by enemy fire. (British
cordite propellant charges were also
more unstable than their German RP
C/12 equivalents, tending to explode
rather than burn.)
r(FSNBODBQJUBMTIJQTHFOFSBMMZIBE
better armour protection than their
British counterparts this was especially
true of battlecruisers.
HMS Dreadnought had carried a secondary armament of 76mm (12-pdr) guns as
a defence against torpedo boats, but the
increasing threat from longer-ranged torpedoes launched by larger destroyers forced
British super-dreadnoughts to adopt more
powerful secondary armaments of 102mm
(4-inch) or 152mm (6-inch) guns. All their
40
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905

had shown that mines could pose a serious
threat to pre-dreadnought battleships.
Three battleships, the Russian Petropavlovsk
The new German

Navy was to be a
powerful battle
fleet designed
to challenge
British maritime
supremacy.
and the Japanese Hatsuse and Yashima, had
been sunk by mines. However, before 1914,
there was no evidence of their effectiveness
against the much larger and better protected super-dreadnoughts.
Within months of the outbreak of war,
the uncertainty was dramatically resolved.
On 27 October 1914, the Grand Fleets
Second Battle Squadron, comprising the

super-dreadnoughts Centurion (flagship),
Ajax, Audacious, King George V, Orion, Monarch,
and Thunderer, left Loch Swilly for a gunnery
exercise. Within hours, Audacious struck a
mine laid off Tory Island by the German
auxiliary minelayer Berlin.
Several compartments flooded immediately,
with water spreading more slowly to the
central engine room and adjoining spaces.
Despite frantic efforts by damage-control
parties, the flooding spread and Audacious
sank little more than 12 hours later.
The loss of a virtually new battleship
(Audacious had only been completed
in October 1913) deeply shocked the
Admiralty. A Board of Inquiry found that
the main reason for the loss was lack of
strength in the longitudinal bulkheads,
which should have prevented flooding
spreading. This resulted in the bulkheads
buckling, making it impossible to close some
of the watertight doors and valves a serious
design fault in such a modern battleship.
The fear that the High Seas Fleet might
lay mines to cover a withdrawal made the
Grand Fleet very cautious in following up
retreating enemy forces. (Ironically, the only
minelayer at Jutland was HMS Abdiel, which
was detached from the Grand Fleet to mine
possible German escape routes. One of her
mines damaged the battleship Ostfriesland.)
TORPEDOES
The modern torpedo had been invented
in 1866, but it was not used on a large scale
July 2016
JUTLAND: TECHNOLOGY
Fear of torpedo attack affected both sides
at Jutland. Although no submarines were
present, both German and British vessels
repeatedly reported sighting imaginary
periscopes. A total of 199 torpedoes were
launched by both sides battleships, cruisers,
and destroyers, but no more than nine hit
(six British torpedoes and three German.)
Only two battleships were hit by torpedoes
during the battle HMS Marlborough was
damaged by a torpedo from the light
cruiser Wiesbaden, while the destroyer
HMS Onslaught sank the pre-dreadnought
battleship Pommern.
NAVAL AVIATION
The Royal Navy had recognised the
potential of naval aviation well before the
war. In May 1912, three aircraft took part
in the fleet review at Weymouth in the
presence of King George V. These aircraft
put on a convincing display, including successfully spotting submerged submarines
at periscope depth and dropping a 140kg
(300lb) dummy bomb.
On 9 May, the second day of the review,
Commander Charles Samson flew the S.27
Centralised
British command
structures had
stifled initiative.
off a ramp on the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Hibernia, while the ship was
steaming at 15 knots, the first successful
take-off from a warship under way.
These successes led to the formation
of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) on
1 July 1914. At the outbreak of the First
World War, the RNAS had 93 aircraft, six
airships, two balloons, and 727 personnel.
Reconnaissance was a priority for both
sides, and the Germans had an early advantage
thanks to their rapid pre-war development
BELOW A reconnaissance Zeppelin flies over the
German High Seas Fleet.
Images: WIPL
until the Russo-Japanese War, during which

a total of almost 300 were launched by
both sides. Dozens of warships were hit
and damaged, but only one battleship,
two armoured cruisers, and two destroyers were sunk. Knyaz Suvorov, Admiral
Rozhestvenskys flagship, had the distinction
of being the first modern battleship to be
sunk by torpedo on the high seas.
Until the end of the 19th century, torpedo
boats and destroyers were the primary launch
platforms for torpedoes, but from about 1905
submarines posed an increasing torpedo threat
to major surface vessels.
The first evidence of this came on
22 September 1914 when a single U-boat
(U-9) commanded by Otto Weddigen torpedoed and sank three obsolescent Cressy class
armoured cruisers in the North Sea with the
loss of over 1,400 men.
Weddigen went on to command U-29,
but was killed with his entire crew on
18 March 1915 after an abortive attack on
HMS Neptune in the Pentland Firth. U-29
was rammed and sunk by HMS Dreadnought,
which thus became the only battleship ever
to sink a submarine.
Zeppelin L7 was
shot down by AA
fire from the light
cruisers Galatea
and Phaeton on
4 May 1916.
ABOVE US destroyers laying a smokescreen
during WWI. The Germans also used smoke to
conceal themselves from the British at Jutland.
of airships. Naval Zeppelins were extensively

used for reconnaissance over the North Sea
and the Baltic. Such patrols had priority
over any other airship activity, and during
the war almost 1,000 missions were flown
over the North Sea alone.
The German Navy had 15 Zeppelins in
commission by the end of 1915, and was
able to have two or more patrolling continuously at any one time. However, they were
highly vulnerable to bad weather L10,
for example, was lost on 3 September 1915
after being struck by lightning near Cuxhaven,
killing 19 crew members.
As Entente air defences improved,
Zeppelins became increasingly vulnerable
L7 was shot down by AA fire from the
light cruisers Galatea and Phaeton on
4 May 1916 but the threat that they
posed was a constant source of concern for
the Admiralty, and spurred the development
of the first British aircraft carriers.
By May 1916, the seaplane carriers
Campania and Engadine were attached
to the Grand Fleet. Campania missed the
Battle of Jutland, as she failed to receive
the signal to sail when the Grand Fleet
left Scapa Flow on 30 May 1916. She
finally sailed over two hours late, but
was ordered to return to Scapa Flow as
she lacked an escort and U-boats had
been reported in the area.
The smaller Engadine sailed with Beattys
Battlecruiser Fleet, and one of her Short
184 seaplanes was launched, spotting the
42
German cruisers and destroyers of the

II Scouting Group leading the battlecruisers of Vice-Admiral Franz von Hipper.
This was the first time that a heavier-than-air
aircraft had carried out a reconnaissance
of an enemy fleet in action.
Engadine had to stop and hoist out her
seaplanes, restricting flying operations to
calm seas, whereas Campania had a flying-off
deck from which her ten seaplanes could
take off on wheeled trollies, allowing flights
to be made in rougher weather.
COMMUNICATIONS AND
INTELLIGENCE
Radio sets were installed in three Royal
Navy vessels as early as 1899, only two
years after radios invention. Many more
were fitted over the next few years, and
the 1902 naval manoeuvres included experimental interception and jamming of radio
traffic. By 1914, the Royal Navy had 435
radio-equipped ships in service, and over
30 shore-based radio stations with directionfinding equipment.
Paradoxically, this awareness of radios
potential led to acute problems for the
Grand Fleet at Jutland. In their anxiety
to maintain radio security, the British
primarily used ship-to-ship flag and
lamp signals, whereas the Germans
used radio successfully.
Signal flags little different from those
used by Nelsons ships of the line were easily
misread amid the smoke and confusion of
a fleet action. Attempts to use signal lamps
for night communications advertised the
senders location to an enemy, inviting a
reply by gunfire or torpedo. Recognition
signals sent by lamp could also easily be

intercepted by the enemy and copied in
future engagements.
British ships not only failed to report
engagements with the enemy, but also, in
the case of cruisers and destroyers, failed
actively to seek out the enemy. Centralised
command structures had stifled initiative
and strengthened a reluctance to act without orders. Commanders failed to engage
the enemy because they believed that other,
more senior officers must also be aware of
the enemy nearby, and would have given
orders to act if this was expected.
The brilliant work of Room 40, the
Admiraltys intelligence-gathering and
-assessment group, was based on German
naval code-books captured in 1914. By
the time Jutland was fought, Room 40 was
reading the High Seas Fleets signal traffic
almost as quickly as the Germans.
But the work was largely wasted by the
Admiraltys failure to pass on all relevant
information to Admiral Jellicoe. Possibly
the most serious example was the omission
of Admiral Scheers urgent request for air
reconnaissance of the Horns Reef from a
summary of Room 40s intercepts sent to
Jellicoe on the evening of 31 May. Its inclusion
would have given clear evidence of Scheers
escape route, allowing the interception and
almost certain destruction of much of the
battered High Seas Fleet. Great events sometimes turn on the smallest things.
David Porter worked at the Ministry of Defence

for 30 years, and is the author of nine books
on the Second World War, as well as numerous
magazine articles.
July 2016
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the great deBATe
PART 1: THE REVISIONIST PARADIGM

With the grim anniversary upon us, Neil Faulkner, in the first of two articles, analyses the modern
revisionist challenge to the war-poets view of the Somme.
SOMME: DEBATE
MAIN IMAGE The 1st Lancashire Fusiliers
fix bayonets in preparation for an attack on
Beaumont-Hamel in July 1916. Were they a
necessary sacrifice?
LEFT Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967).
three very mangled corpses lying in it: a man,

short, plump, with turned-up moustache, lying face
downward and half sideways with one arm flung
up as if defending his head, and a bullet through his
forehead. A doll-like figure. Another hunched and
mangled, twisted and scorched with many days dark
growth on his face, teeth clenched and grinning lips.
he Somme was Britains bloodiest

battle. Not only did the British Army
suffer its greatest single-day loss on
1 July 1916 (almost 60,000), but its
total loss of almost half a million
casualties over the whole four and a half
months of the battle is unsurpassed.
This, moreover, was Britains first experience
of losses on this scale. The mere 60,000 casualties suffered in three weeks of fighting at the
Battle of Loos the previous autumn, for instance,
had been considered truly shocking.
Not only that, but the Somme was the New
Armys first big battle. The old Regular Army
had been largely wasted in the battles of 1914,
the Territorials in those of 1915, so the men who
fought on the Somme were mainly the hundreds
of thousands who had volunteered in the patriotic fervour of autumn 1914.
So it was a massacre of innocents, of enthusiastic but uninitiated citizen-volunteers. The
catastrophic casualties on the Somme delivered
a shattering blow to both British manhood and
public confidence in the countrys traditional
political elite.
The battle quickly acquired a wider significance as an exemplar of trench warfare. Together
with Third Ypres/Passchendaele in the autumn
of 1917, it became a symbol of slaughter and
stalemate and therefore of the waste and futility
of war and has remained so for a century.
The reaction started in the trenches, among
the men who fought the battle. Men like warpoets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves.
Image: WIPL
SASSOON
It was the Somme that turned Siegfried Sassoon

into an anti-war poet. Moving down a long communication trench with his battalion during the
battle, Sassoon passed
Images of the dead on the Somme lodged in

his mind and destroyed his support for the war.
Death, which the year before had been noble,
became horrible. The prospect of victory was
now more terrible than defeat.
Writing in his diary after the battle, Sassoon
quoted Mr Britling, the main character in a
new novel by H G Wells:
It is a war without point, a war that has lost
its soul; it has become mere incoherent fighting
and destruction, a demonstration in vast and
tragic forms of the stupidity and ineffectiveness
of our species.
Sassoon dreamed of turning his own soldiers
against the corpse-commanders in red and
gold, the junkers in Parliament, and the
yellow-pressmen who bayed for war.
GRAVES
After the Somme, a gulf separated the soldiers
who had served at the Front from civilians back
home, fed on lies. England looked strange to
us returned soldiers, wrote Robert Graves,
another war-poet who fought on the Somme.
We could not understand the war-madness that
ran wild everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military
outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language;
and it was newspaper language.
Graves now found himself disgusted by
the military:
The training principles had recently been revised.
Infantry Training, 1914 laid it down politely that
the soldiers ultimate aim was to put out of action or
render ineffective the armed forces of the enemy. The
War Office no longer considered this statement direct
enough for a war of attrition. Troops learned instead
that they must HATE the Germans, and KILL as
many of them as possible. In bayonet-practice, the
men had to make horrible grimaces and utter bloodcurdling yells as they charged. The instructors faces
were set in a permanent ghastly grin. Hurt him,
now! In at the belly! Tear his guts out! they would
scream as the men charged the dummies.
45
ABOVE Robert Graves (1895-1985).

ABOVE RIGHT Basil Liddell Hart (1895-1970).
The majority of soldiers carried on, of

course; but the illusions had gone, and the
mood in the trenches was of sombre resignation. You can see it in the faces in a thousand
photos, or read of it in a hundred memoirs.
SINISTER REPUTATION
Ten years after the war, the reputation of the
Somme became yet more sinister. A series
of influential histories and memoirs were
published at this time, including Edmund
Blundens Undertones of War (1928), Robert
Graves Good-bye to All That (1929), and Basil
Liddell Harts The Real War 1914-1918 (1930).
1. THE LIONS LED BY DONKEYS

STEREOTYPE OF THE BRITISH ARMY
IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR IS FALSE
These words arose in a conversation between
German Generals Ludendorff and Hoffman,
and were later quoted in General Falkenhayns
Memoirs. The phrase was picked up by Alan Clark,
among others, who entitled his 1961 book about
the British offensives of 1915 The Donkeys.
This is the story of the destruction of an
army, he explained in the introduction,
the old professional army of the United
Kingdom again and again they [the British
soldiers] were called upon to attempt the
impossible, and in the end they were all killed.
It was as simple as that.
The argument was that ignorant and incompetent senior officers, many of them cavalrymen trained in colonial small-wars, sent tens
of thousands of men to their deaths on the
Western Front by mounting hopeless attacks.
This stereotype of bumbling generals has
been comprehensively attacked. An important
recent example is the work of Gary Sheffield
and John Bourne on General Haig, the British
46
A consensus emerged strengthened by

the bleakness of the interwar years that
the First World War had been a colossal and
pointless waste of human life. The Somme
became an archetype of modern industrialised
war in which men were destroyed by the malevolence of politicians, generals, and capitalists.
This apocalyptic vision has endured. It
remains central to popular presentations of
the war in books, magazines, TV documentaries, and museum displays and therefore
to popular perceptions. Obvious modern
expressions of the popular view are Joan
Littlewoods Oh, What a Lovely War! and the
BBCs Blackadder Goes Forth.
But the dominance of this perception
of the war in general and of the Somme in
Commander-in-Chief on the Western Front

from December 1915 to the end of the war.
Haig, as the senior commander at both the
Somme and Third Ypres, has come to epitomise the First World War donkey. In contrast,
explain Sheffield and Bourne, while we are
not blind to Haigs faults and the mistakes he
undoubtedly made, we recognise the donkey
image for the unfair and ludicrously inaccurate
caricature that it is.
Specifically, in opposition to his critics,
Sheffield and Bourne argue that Haig was
promoted on merit rather than through
patronage; that he was devout but no religious
fanatic; that he was highly educated and
intelligent; that many of his mistakes must be
attributed to the daunting, indeed unprecedented, nature of the task confronting him,
to the novelty of the challenges he faced, and
to the perennial fog of war; that he had a
firm grasp on the realities of the military situation, displaying flexibility and imagination
in dealing with them; and that he turned the
British Army into a highly trained and efficient
instrument of war capable of emerging victorious from the great battles of 1918.
particular has been a source of growing

frustration to many military historians. The
anti-war position has never been uncontroversial, but the scholarly attacks on it have
grown steadily stronger, to the point where
it seems fair to say that there is now a consensus among British military historians that is
essentially at odds with what might be called
the war-poets view.
The mud and blood are still there, but
now accompanied by explanatory texts
which speak of strategic necessity in a war
to defeat German militarism and restore
the balance of power.
Let us consider this revisionist challenge
in detail. I think it can be broken down into
four main arguments.
ABOVE Alan Clarks controversial classic

The Donkeys (1961).
July 2016
SOMME: DEBATE
2. THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME WAS BOTH STRATEGICALLY ESSENTIAL

AND ALSO AN EFFECTIVE CONTRIBUTION TO BREAKING THE POWER OF
THE IMPERIAL GERMAN ARMY AND PAVING THE WAY TO VICTORY IN 1918
Gary Sheffield summarises this argument in a new history of the battle.
This [alternative view] sees the Somme as a necessary, even an inevitable battle that hurt the Germans more than
the British and pushed them towards making strategic decisions that would eventually lose them the war. During
the course of the battle, an inexperienced British Army underwent a steep learning curve in how to fight a modern
war, at a time when conflict was undergoing revolutionary changes. The year 1916 can only be fairly judged if one sees
it in the context of the whole war, for the attrition inflicted on the Germans on the Somme and in subsequent battles made
possible the victory of 1918. In this view, the Somme was the muddy grave of the Imperial German Army.
Paddy Griffith, in a seminal study on British Army tactics on the Western Front, has
expounded the learning curve theory in impressive detail. The five-month Somme
battle, argues Griffith,
taught the BEF [the British Expeditionary Force] many lessons and transformed it from a largely
inexperienced mass army into a largely experienced one Despite the deep attrition that
was unquestionably gnawing its destructive path through units which had been in the line since
1914-15, the Somme battle actually left the majority of healthy survivors in surprisingly good shape.
Here and elsewhere, a clear argument emerges that battles like the Somme were
unavoidable when waging and attempting to win a war of attrition. By relieving
pressure on Britains allies, by training up Britains new citizen-army into a professional force, and by inflicting severe damage on the German Army, the Somme
contributed substantially to eventual Allied victory.
ABOVE Paddy Griffiths

landmark study of the
development of British Army
battle tactics on the Western
Front (1994).
LEFT Gary Sheffields
revisionist reappraisal of
the Somme (2003).
3. IF THE SOMME WAS ESSENTIAL TO VICTORY, VICTORY

IN TURN WAS NECESSARY BECAUSE GERMANY WAS AN
AGGRESSIVE STATE THAT THREATENED WORLD PEACE AND
THE BALANCE OF POWER
This, of course, is a very old argument indeed: it was that of the Entente leaders
at the time of the war. It now enjoys a new lease of life as an indispensable element
in the revisionist paradigm.
The Somme, after all, can be a necessary battle only if it forms part of a necessary
war. So Gary Sheffield presents the argument in his defence of the Somme:
Wars do not occur by accident, and the conflict that began in August 1914 was no exception
to this rule. The behaviour of Germany and Austria-Hungary was the most important factor
in bringing about war Germany was the most powerful state on the European continent,
and after sacking Bismarck, Wilhelm sought Weltpolitik, world power, commensurate with this
status. His bellicose and clumsy foreign policy had, by July 1914, painted Germany into a corner.
Further on, he reminds us that some historians have detected something more
sinister: a deliberate plan for a war of conquest.
Image: WIPL
There is a strong body of evidence that Germany seized on this excuse [the assassination at
Sarajevo] to achieve its grand strategic aims, even at the risk of bringing about a general
war. Some historians have gone further, arguing that from at least December 1912 onwards
the German leadership had been actively planning to go to war in the summer of 1914.
Seeking to break out of self-created diplomatic encirclement, and achieve hegemony in Europe,
the German leadership risked war in 1914 and embraced it when it occurred. In doing so,
Germany took Europe on the first step towards the Somme.
RIGHT The German Kaiser: ruthless warmonger? A contemporary cartoon by Louis Raemaekers.
47
4. IMPERIAL GERMANY WAS NOT ONLY THE

PRINCIPAL THREAT TO WORLD PEACE AND THE
BALANCE OF POWER; SHE WAS ALSO, ESPECIALLY
IN CONTRAST TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE,
A PARTICULARLY AGGRESSIVE, MILITARISTIC,
AND RUTHLESS IMPERIAL POWER
Again, Gary Sheffield is a leading exponent of this view, arguing
as follows:
France wished to expel enemy troops from its soil, recover Alsace-Lorraine
and clip Germanys wings. Britain was concerned about the balance of
power, and wanted to prise Belgium from Germanys grasp. Both states
were near-democracies and neither relished the idea of the victory of
autocratic Germany. Berlin, by contrast, planned to reduce France to
a second-class power, to turn Belgium into a protectorate, and to create
Mitteleuropa, a German-dominated economic zone in the centre of
Europe. By the end of the war, Germany was busy carving an empire out
of the ruins of defeated Russia. These expansionist plans had a good
deal of continuity with those of the Third Reich. They lacked the racist
and consciously genocidal elements central to Nazi methods, although
Imperial Germanys policies in occupied territories were harsh enough.
SUMMARY
The revisionist paradigm offers a coherent and
compelling alternative to the war-poets view.
It argues that high casualties were
inevitable in a long war of attrition between
modern industrialised states; that the
wearing down of German resistance could
be achieved only by waging battles like the
ABOVE The German Empire: a militaristic rogue state? A contemporary cartoon, again
by Louis Raemaekers. The woman being consumed is the nurse Edith Cavell.
Somme, and that the British Army became

increasingly proficient at fighting such
battles; and that the Kaisers Germany
was an autocratic, aggressive, predatory
state, that it was responsible for the
outbreak of the war, that its aim was Europewide imperial domination, and, therefore,
that the First World War had be fought
Image: WIPL
There is the clear implication, then, that the policies of neardemocratic France and Britain were measured and reasonable,
while those of autocratic Germany were not; and perhaps the
further implication that this difference arose because the former
were near-democracies, and Germany an autocracy.
This attempt to discern clear differences effectively moral
differences between the great powers has been taken much
further by Niall Ferguson. He has elevated the British Empire
into an historical model suitable for emulation specifically by
the contemporary American Empire.
In Empire: how Britain made the modern world, the book of a
highly successful TV series, the barbarism of German imperialism (among others) is compared unfavourably with the relative
humanity and beneficence of British imperial rule, at least as it
existed in the early part of the 20th century.
Thus, for instance, whereas General von Trotha waged a war
of extermination against the Hereros of South-West Africa, the
British were promoting commerce, providing clean government
and the rule of law, and preparing their colonies for an eventual
transition to parliamentary democracy.
to preserve the independence of other

European states and to restore the European
balance of power.
Yet, however coherent and compelling,
I am convinced that the revisionist paradigm
is false. I will set out the argument next time.
Then, hopefully, readers will want to join the
discussion. Our letters page will be open.
NEXT MONTH:
The great deBate

Part 2: the anti-war perspective
48
July 2016
Breakdown:
SHELL SHOCK ON THE SOMME

The physical slaughter, especially through the first day, is well known. What of the
psychological casualties on the Somme? Taylor Downing, author of a major new study, reports
on the British Armys shell-shock crisis in the summer of 1916.
ABOVE British and French soldiers on the Somme.

How many would end up shell-shocked?
SHELLSHOCK
THIS PAGE Three shell-shocked soldiers of the First World War.

Note the man bottom left in the general view inside a dressing
station, who has the telltale thousand-yard stare.
rivate Archibald McAllister Burgoyne of

the South African Brigade was involved
in the terrible fighting at Delville Wood,
known as Devils Wood, on the Somme
in the second half of July 1916.
Shells crashed into the wood, ricocheting
off tree trunks in an unearthly shriek, bringing down branches, leaves, and pieces of
red-hot shrapnel on men desperate to find
shelter. As the Germans put up a ferocious
defence, the South Africans had to fight
yard by yard to move forward.
The scream and hiss and whine of the shells
was frightful. The reverberating explosions in
the wood were deafening, Burgoyne wrote in
his diary a few days later.
Burgoynes sergeant was buried in a mound
of earth thrown up by a shell. The men rushed
forward and dragged him out from under the
debris. No sooner had he recovered than he
was buried again by another explosion.
When they dug him out for the second time,
the sergeant was unwounded but was quite
mad jabbering and mumbling like a maniac.
Burgoyne reflected, I used to wonder about
men getting shell shock. I dont now. Men
were going down everywhere.
DEVILS WOOD
Later in the battle, Burgoyne and two of his
mates were sheltering in a shell-hole when a
soldier from another battalion crawled towards
them on his hands and knees.
He did not appear to be suffering from physical wounds, but, as Burgoyne wrote, He was all
in. His eyes were bulging, his mouth open.
Burgoyne asked if he had been hit, but he
did not seem to understand and stared right
past them. Barely able to speak, the poor man
called out, I want to get out, I want to get out.
Burgoyne directed him to the nearest dressing station, but the man replied, I dont want
the dressing station, I want to get out.
Shaken, Burgoyne and his mates pointed to
a house at the edge of the wood, and the man
crawled off towards it. Burgoyne wrote, His

nerves were absolutely gone. He was better
out of it. He came near putting the wind up
us three and we were glad when he left.
Burgoyne and his mates had encountered
a classic case of a man suffering badly from
shell shock. The long stare, the bulging eyes,
the swallowing and difficulty in speaking were
all characteristic.
The effect the man had on Burgoyne and
his colleagues was also typical. They could not
understand what had happened to him; they did
not know what to do. But more than anything,
his presence upset them. They had no idea what
he would do next. He was unpredictable. He
He was all in. His

eyes were bulging,
his mouth open.
Private Burgoyne, South African
Brigade, Delville Wood, July 1916
might do something that would suddenly bring
down a mass of shells on himself, and them.
They were glad when he left.
SPOOKED BY THE SHELL SHOCKED

Shell shock had been around since the beginning of trench warfare in late 1914. It was largely
brought on by the anxiety and stress generated
from being stuck in a trench under heavy
bombardment. Soldiers under military discipline
were unable to follow the instinctive human
response of moving away from the danger. They
had to cower down and put up with it.
Men suffered from a variety of conditions,
including shakes, paralysis, temporary blindness or deafness, vomiting, and amnesia.
Horrible though this was, in the early part
of the war the numbers suffering were

relatively low. There were only 1,200 cases
recorded in the last six months of 1915 in
an army of about half a million.
But in July 1916, with the start of the Battle
of the Somme, everything changed. What had
been a trickle of nervous casualties became a
flood. The numbers of men reporting with shell
shock rocketed. The Army authorities feared
that the situation was getting out of control.
What most concerned Army commanders
on the Somme was that shell shock was contagious in the sense that a jumpy man made
all those around him jumpy. They worried that
if one man in a closely knit section became
nervy, others would too. This was exactly what
Burgoyne and his pals had experienced. They
had been spooked by the presence of the
traumatised soldier.
The commanders also feared that the treatment of shell shock would lead to malingering.
If men saw one of their mates being sent off for
a respite, they would try it on too, to get away
from the horror of the trenches. Indeed, many
medical officers reported that men would turn
up at a dressing station without any physical
wounds and when asked what was the matter
would proudly declare, Shell shock, sir.
EPIDEMIC
With the incidence of shell shock rocketing,
the military authorities decided they had to take
a stand. Military executions of men charged
with cowardice but who were almost certainly
suffering from trauma continued.
Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer HunterWeston made it clear when he confirmed the
execution of a deserter that a mans nervous
condition could not be used as an excuse. He
wrote on the papers: Cowards of this sort are a
serious danger to the Army. The death penalty is
instituted to make such men fear running away
more than they fear the enemy.
Many officers and no doubt some of the
men, too felt that if a man let down his mates
51
tion/Wellcome Images
Image: RAMC Muniment Collec
ABOVE A medical photograph of a soldierpatient suffering from chronic movements

due to shell shock.
RIGHT Undergoing electric-shock treatment;
other victims were simply shot as cowards.
and refused to fulfil his duty then he deserved

to be punished.
The fear that shell shock would undermine
the morale and the fighting ability of the Army
as a whole spread among the top brass. When
a recommendation for clemency for a shellshocked soldier who had left his post in early
July reached Sir Douglas Haig, the commanderin-chief, he overruled the request and ordered
his execution. He wrote, How can we ever win if
this plea [that he was shell shocked] is allowed?
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
On occasion, it was not just individuals but
whole battalions who were punished. The
11th Borders, known as the Lonsdales after
the local earl who had founded the unit,
was a pals battalion raised in Cumbria in
autumn 1914. It went over the top on 1 July
and suffered one of the highest casualty rates
on that dreadful day. Nearly all the battalions
officers and 490 men were lost.
Just over a week later, the survivors were
ordered over the top again. But the men were in
a dreadful state, having spent the week burying
the dead under constant German bombardment. Many had reported in with shell shock.
The battalion medical officer, Lieutenant
George Kirkwood, issued a certificate to the
effect that the men were too traumatised to
attack again. The full force of the high command
came down on him. An enquiry was held and
General Rycroft accused Kirkwood of showing
undue sympathy with the men. He went on: It
is not for an MO to inform a CO that his men are
not in a fit state to carry out a military operation.
When news of the failure of the Lonsdales to
go over the top reached General Hubert Gough,
he exploded. The facts disclose a deplorable
state of discipline and an entire absence of courage and of any soldierly qualities, he wrote.
52
Kirkwood was removed as MO and ordered

home in disgrace. The survivors were called
on parade and humiliated in front of their
peers. General Rycroft announced they had
failed in their duty and brought disgrace
not only on themselves but also on the battalion
to which they belong.
His nerves were

absolutely gone.
He was better out
of it. He came
near putting the
wind up us three
and we were glad
when he left.
Private Burgoyne, South African
Brigade, Delville Wood, July 1916
Gough said the men had shown an utter
want of manly spirit and courage which at least is
expected of every soldier and every Britisher.
It was a dreadful humiliation for men who
had been through one of the worst massacres
in British Army history. But the message
was sent out loud and clear: MOs must not
display sympathy to shell-shock sufferers, and
commanding officers were not to stand for
excessive levels of shell shock.
THE TOLL
Of course, morale did not collapse in the British
Army in the summer of 1916. The Army kept
up the struggle of attrition for four-and-a-half
bloody months. By mid-November, when the
Battle of the Somme ground to a halt in the
mud, rain, and snow of winter, the British Army
had lost 420,000 men dead and wounded. Of
these, about 60,000 were lost to shell shock.
The Royal Army Medical Corps decided to
tighten up its system of classification, and in
November banned medical officers from using
the term shell shock. Men were to be classed
as NYDN (Not Yet Diagnosed Nervous), and
it was left to specialist doctors to diagnose their
condition. Treatment was to be near the Front
it was realised that men recovered more quickly
if they were kept in a military area and not
evacuated to civilian hospitals back home.
The principles laid down on the Somme
have shaped medical thinking since. Today,
the military medical authorities still struggle
to cope with cases of Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD). But a fundamental
principle in the approach to traumatised
soldiers is that treatment should be provided
as quickly and as near to the combat zone as
possible. At least some of
the lessons from the crisis
on the Somme were put
to good use.
Taylor Downing is a TV
documentary maker, film
critic, military historian, and
regular contributor to Military
History Monthly. His new
book, Breakdown: the
crisis of shell shock on the
Somme, 1916, has just been
published by Little, Brown,
price 25.
July 2016
REGIMENT. REGIMENT. REGIMENT. REGIMENT.
The Derbyshires
at the Alma
20 September 1854
Patrick Mercer recalls a signal performance by the 95th

Regiment of Foot in the first major engagement of the Crimean War.
t was the sort of conversation that

only green-as-grass subalterns could
have. As the young officers of 95th
(The Derbyshire) Regiment came
together around the campfire that
passed for an officers mess the night before
the battle, they started to muse about what
the next day would bring.
They had been in the Crimea for almost
a week after months of frustration, having
sailed from Portsmouth, paused at Scutari in
Turkey, and then steamed across the Black
Sea to Varna, where the whole expedition
was very nearly called off.
Then, with the promise of war with the
Russians now a reality, they had sailed past
the great port of Sebastopol before landing
about 30 miles to the north. So far, they had
not fired a shot.
In fact, only the commanding officer and
adjutant had ever seen any active service
before. For the rest of them, over 700 young,
fit soldiers and officers, they had watched the
cavalry skirmish with some Russian outposts,
but other than that it might as well have
been a field exercise.
They had stopped a little way north of
the Alma as darkness fell on 19 September.
A frisson had run through the army. Lord
Raglans 28,000 troops, in concert with
St Arnauds 36,000, would come toe-to-toe
with the Russian field army the next day.
So, with the Russian campfires plainly visible
across the river on the hills just to the south,
the young officers started to speculate on what
sort of wounds would be the most desirable.
The general opinion seemed to be that a
gentleman artistically scarred by war would
be more eligible among young ladies. Most
vocal was Lieutenant Boothby, who claimed
that the loss of a left arm could be an advantage in society.
So the talk ebbed and flowed until
Captain Heyland, commanding No.6
54
Company, arrived and packed them off to

their blankets, declaring, this is all stuff,
but if I had to forsake some part of myself,
Id prefer it to be a leg! With a grim predictability, the next day Heyland was to lose an
arm and Boothby a leg.
THE BATTLEFIELD
The Russians had elected not to oppose
the landings, but rather to hold the line of
the River Alma, which, along with several
other rivers and streams, runs like the rungs
on a ladder from inland westward to the
coast of the Crimea.
Bearskin caps
could be seen still
emerging from the
riverbed some 600
paces behind.
As the Allies landed north of Sebastopol
and then turned south, hugging the sea and
staying under the protection of the fleets
guns, so they bumped headlong into their
enemys pre-prepared position.
Based on two entrenched batteries,
the Russians had thoroughly recced the
ground to the extent that from the stronger
position, the Great Redoubt, ranges had
been marked for the gunners with wooden
posts topped with oil-drenched straw every
hundred paces.
Yet, with 26,000 men and 86 guns, the
Russians had neglected their left flank,
next to the sea; they feared the Allies naval
artillery and held three battalions too far

back as a flank guard.
For the Allies, this was a good thing. With
very little consultation, no reconnaissance,
and, in the case of the British, no proper
orders being given, the two armies flung
themselves into a daylight attack against an
enemy who dominated the high ground
south of the river, who had dug in their guns
and some of their infantry, and who had prepared the Alma, the only bridge that crossed
it, and the slopes above very carefully.
Swiftly, though, Prince Napoleons Division
exploited the unprotected ground, and after
a classical hook to their left, began to turn
the enemys flank. But there the French
stalled: the leading Zouaves had brought
some guns up to the high ground with them,
but despite this enfilading fire, they would
go no further.
THE BRITISH ATTACK

So it was that the British, up until now waiting
under a distant fire from 32-pdr howitzers,
started their attack. The line of scarlet coats
would have been instantly recognisable to
many of the older commanders who had
fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo.
One such, Brigadier-General Pennefather,
leading the brigade in the 2nd Division to
which the 95th belonged, had commanded
the 22nd Foot at Meeanee in 1843, where 500
of his men had defeated 35,000 Beloochis.
He swore like the trooper he was. As the
first roundshot dropped among his men he
yelled, ah, blood an ounds, lads, I like
that!, slapping his thigh with pleasure.
Yet the diarists remarked that as the
order with ball-cartridge load! rang
out, a silence came over the inexperienced
ranks. As ramrods pushed home and percussion
caps were fitted to the rifles breeches,
it was as if the men knew that the numberless little black squares and oblongs on the
July 2016
Shako
The old shako had been replaced in 1844 by a smaller version known as the Albert shako (after
the Crown Prince), with peak front and back. In 1855, as uniform was modified to make it more
comfortable, practical, and hard-wearing, the Albert was replaced by the undress forage cap.
Accoutrements
Equipment was improved in 1850 and henceforward comprised a white crossbelt with
regimental-pattern plate, a grey bedroll, and, in the case of the rank and file, ammunition
pouch, bayonet in scabbard, haversack, water bottle, secondary ammunition pouch, small
pouch (attached to crossbelt) containing percussion caps, and a large black canvas pack
carried on shoulder-straps.
Uniform
By the time of the Crimean campaign, the British Army had not taken part in a major
conflict since Waterloo. It was pickled in tradition and unfit for purpose. This was
symbolised by gaudy, impractical uniforms cluttered with braid and lace which fell to
bits on active service. Later in the war, men wore simple red tunics or coatees.
Small arms
ABOVE Artists impression of an officer of

the 95th (Derbyshire) Regiment of Foot
during the Crimean War.
Image: Tim Sanders
Our officer carries a pistol and wears a sword. His men would have been
equipped with the Pattern 1851 Mini, a single-shot, muzzle-loading
percussion musket with rifled barrel sighted up to 800 yards. The effective
ranges of infantry were therefore at least double those of Napoleonic soldiers,
making the battlefield a far more lethal place.
55
LEFT Plan of the Battle of the Alma,

20 September 1854.
ABOVE British Guards (in distinctive bearskins)

assault the Alma heights on 20 September 1854.
Major Hume
rallied the tattered
remnants of
the 95th on the
flank of the
Grenadier Guards.
The British riflemen outranged even

the Russian artillery, giving a very distinct
advantage to the Allies.
In the brush and vines to the north of
the Alma, though, range did not matter.
Colonel Webber-Smith had thrown out the
95ths Light Company to act as a skirmish
line in front of the rest of the regiments
advancing lines.
One of the Lights lieutenants was the
Scottish laird Alexander MacDonald, who,
as he went forward sword in hand, encouraging
his men, suddenly found himself bowled
flat on his back, feeling as if he were
numb with death and with no further need
to draw breath again.
But the shock of being hit changed to
relief as he was dragged to his feet by his
men and found an enemy bullet deeply
Images: WIPL
green turf of the hillsides [the columns of

the Russian army] would give them a very
stiff fight indeed.
It seems odd to a modern mind that, while
most of the infantry had been issued with a
new, muzzle-loading rifle that fired a lethal
Mini bullet, there was little understanding
of how powerful it was. True, most of the
regiments had only received the weapon on
the way out to the Crimea, and had had little
opportunity to practise with it; yet the Russians
soon discovered how dangerous they were. A
soldier from the Sousdal Regiment noted how
the English thimbles [bullets] flew amongst
us, bringing down not just one man but two
or even three for each one fired.
57
embedded in the boss of the whistle chain

on the thick leather sword belt that crossed
his chest. As he passed, the Colonel leaned
down from his saddle and told MacDonald,
Id sooner have that belt than a medal!
THE ADVANCE OF THE 95TH

But the regiment started to lose cohesion
as the 7th Fusiliers became entangled with
its ranks just as the enemy fire began to
get the range. Shell and shrapnel searched
the dead ground to the north of the river,
felling men wholesale.
One of the first to be struck was Private
Frank Luff of No.2 Company. He and his
brother, Peter, had been recruited in 1851
in Hayling Island. Peter was to be killed
at Inkermann.
These shells did much damage, although
one fell right in the middle of the Grenadier
Company and exploded with great force yet
wounded and killed no one.
Then, as the 95th dragged themselves
from the river and mounted its southern
bank, the Russians changed from shellto canister-fire. Swathes of lead now
chopped at the ranks, wounding the
Colonel, killing Kingsley the Adjutant,
and dropping the Ensigns and ColourSergeants who escorted the regimental
standards. The great, yellow silk banner
and its Union Jack twin were obvious
targets on which the gunners and sharpshooters had been told to concentrate.
Lieutenant Anthony Morgan was with
the Grenadier Company and would never
have expected to be told to carry the colours,
yet, as casualties continued and the flags
became more and more pierced by shot,
he was ordered forward.
So he sheathed his sword, took up the
colour, and was just forging on when he felt
a tug at the gold bullion of the Grenadiers
wing that he wore on his shoulder. A bullet
had passed through it, and he could see a
Russian sharpshooter reloading to his front.
He had no doubt that the next round would
find its mark.
STORM OF FIRE
Morgan had nothing with which to defend
himself, so he passed the colour to a private
soldier, took the mans rifle, aimed carefully,
and bowled the Muscovite over like the
rascal he was.
It is an interesting comment on Victorian
mores that one of the first things that Major
Hume (who, though himself struck by a
splinter, commanded the regiment once
Webber-Smith was wounded) did after
the battle was to call Morgan to him and
upbraid him for this act.
Morgan told Hume that he saw the sharpshooter reloading and that the fellows next
58
shot would have cooked one of us. He nearly

did for me!
But this was not good enough for Hume.
He told Morgan, It is not the duty of an
officer: you should have told one of the men
to shoot him!, and cautioned him about
such behaviour in the future!
Against this storm of fire and shot,
the Light Division, to which the 95th had
attached itself, stormed up the slopes,
pausing only to fire and reload. About
2,000 British all order, all dressing long
since gone scrambled and clawed their
way over the sandbags and gabions of the
Great Redoubt.
True, Allied guns were now firing into
the redoubt from the left flank, but the
Russians should have held the work. Instead,
as the 23rd Fusiliers, the 19th, the 33rd, and
the 95th swarmed in, the defenders panicked
and an anonymous officer ordered the very
guns that ought to have been slaughtering
the redcoats at point-blank range to limber
up and get to the rear.
Most did, but one fell to the 23rd Fusiliers,
and a second, having fired its last round at
the 95th, brutally gouging Captain Heylands
arm, was taken by the same officer. He sabred
the gunner and scratched 95 on the barrel
with his bloody sword, before collapsing
exhausted and weak from his wound.
RETREAT
Then the same contagion seized the British.
The spent infantry looked down the slope
behind them and saw nothing except their
own casualties: there were no supports, no
Guards Brigade, which should have been
close behind them.
Instead, bearskin caps could be seen still
emerging from the riverbed some 600 paces
behind. One of their battalions, the Scots
Fusilier Guards, were some way up the slope,
but a battalion of the 31st Vladimir had fallen
on the Guardsmens colour party and bayonets were at work. Meanwhile, the two other
Vladimir Battalions were counter-attacking
hard. Shot was thumping into the redoubt
from the exposed rear. So the British fell back,
slowly, sullenly at first, then ever faster.
Remember that the 95th had never been
in action before. Undoubtedly, there were
many acts of great bravery in the teeth of
the enemy, but what happened next was
probably the proudest moment in the
history of the regiment.
While the other units that had stormed
the redoubt now regrouped and tended to
their wounds, Major Hume rallied the tattered remnants of the 95th on the flank of
3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards.
The Grenadiers were now some way
from the river. They had dressed their ranks,
allowed the Scots Fusilier Guards to collect
Step in step with

the Guards, on went
the 95th, until their
colours floated
on the ramparts
of the Great
Redoubt again.
themselves, and the Coldstream to complete
the line, and were ready to advance. These
were fresh troops, sharp and eager to be at
the enemy.
Yet Hume could not allow his young regiment, tired and knocked about as it was, to
fail. In modern parlance, the 95th had done
their bit, yet cool, undaunted leadership and
a determination to be in at the death saw the
regiment face the storm of fire once more.
SECOND ADVANCE
Several regiments, quite rightly, count
the Alma as one of their greatest honours,
yet only one advanced up those fatal
slopes twice.
It was a shockingly violent baptism for
the 95th. Twenty-nine officers and 738 noncommissioned officers and men had gone
into action. One third of the officers became
casualties, including the commanding officer
wounded, the adjutant killed, the brothers
Lieutenant and Captain Eddington killed,
and every subaltern and sergeant who stood
below the colours struck down.
Similarly, the soldiers had behaved,
according to Lieutenant Carmichael of the
Grenadier Company, quite magnificently.
Over a quarter became casualties, while
three Distinguished Conduct Medals were
later awarded, as well as a number of orders of
the Lgion dhonneur by Britains French allies.
Private Keenan carried the Queens colour
for a while when all the officers were struck,
but perhaps the final word in this litany of
gallantry should go to Lieutenant Boothby
and Captain Heyland. Both served on the
former without a leg, the latter without an
arm. I wonder if they ever thought back to
that callow conversation before the battle
and smiled wryly?
Patrick Mercer is a former soldier, journalist, and

MP. He is interested in any action of the British
Army or Royal Navy, but has made a special study
of the Italian Campaign.
July 2016
I 07/16
TA
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TORY MON
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TH
LY
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JULY Each month, the Debrief brings you the very best in film and book
reviews, along with suggested historical events and must-see museums. Whether
you plan to be at home or out in the field, our team of expert reviewers deliver
the best recommendations to keep military-history enthusiasts entertained.
MILI
com me
MHM REVIEWS
Breakdown
by Taylor
RECOMMENDED
Downing;
Indias War
U Battery
by Srinath
by Brinley
Raghavan
Morgan;
and The
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Will Fowler. Taylor Downing
reviews Millions Like Us.
BOOKS
WAR ON FILM
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HIGHLIGHT
Chalke Valley
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Hazel Blair reviews 36 Hours:

Jutland 1916, the battle that won
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CAPTION COMPETITION
BRIEFING ROOM
O T
EDITED BY DR KEITH ROBINSON
ar is the anvil on which

nations are often forged.
This is certainly true for the
nations of modern South Asia. The
Second World War saw a realignment
of world power and the beginning of
the end for the great colonial empires.
The jewel of the crown in the British
Empire was of course India (meaning
todays India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and
Bangladesh). Srinath Raghavans
Indias War looks at how the Rajs
participation in the Second World War
ensured that independence inevitably
followed, despite British efforts to
prevent that, and despite the scars
inflicted on the Subcontinent by
partition and the limits that imposed
on the new Indian Republic.
His book is a military history
only in part, as it deals with the
economic and social changes the
war unleashed, as well as with the
politics and diplomacy of the war
years. But crucial to Raghavans
narrative is the change in the Indian
Army, the sword of the Raj. Raghavan
notes how it changed from being the
cornerstone of British rule to becoming, by 1945, the focus of deep
concern as to its loyalty.
TA
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TORY MON
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MILI
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Srinath Raghavan
Allen Lane, 30 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1846145414
LY
INDIAS WAR: THE

MAKING OF MODERN
SOUTH ASIA 1939-1945
com me
In 1939, the Indian Army stood at

just under 200,000 men. During the
course of the war, it raised 2.5 million
men, the largest volunteer army in
history. Of these men, 900,000 were
killed or wounded fighting in battles
ranging from Sicily and Italy to Hong
Kong and Indonesia.
IMPERIAL POLICE
Between the Great Rebellion (or
Mutiny) of 1857 and the outbreak
of the Second World War, the Indian
Army was not allowed to possess
field artillery, being restricted to
mobile mountain-guns. That would
change during the course of the war.
In 1939, it was an unmechanised
army lacking heavy weapons, and
staffed by British officers unprepared
for what was to come: not surprising
given that the Indian Army was
charged with internal security,
the defence of Indias borders, the
control of the North West Frontier,
and imperial duties.
The latter reflected the fact that the
British administration in Delhi effectively ran large chunks of the Empire
east of Suez. The Indian Army had
been the force that conquered and
By 1945, the Indian Army

had changed from the
cornerstone of British rule
to the focus of deep concern.
62
controlled many of those territories,

even operating in East Africa.
During the First World War, the
Indian Army had expanded quickly.
It had played an important role in
blocking the German advance in
1914 in France and Belgium, and later
fought in the Middle East, particularly
in Iraq and Iran. But after the war it
was allowed to return to its role as
a colonial policeman.
Recruitment was restricted to what
the British believed were the martial
races of northern India: the Muslim
and Sikh peasants of the Punjab
above all, but also the Pathans of
the North West Frontier, the Dogras,
Jats, Marathas, and Garwhalis, and,

of course, the Gurkhas of Nepal.
The Indian Armys 1937 Caste
Handbook described these groups
as thick headed and manly yeoman
cultivators eminently adapted to the
profession of arms. In contrast, the
inhabitants of southern India were
regarded as unfit for military service.
The martial races were believed to
be loyal to the King-Emperor. Muslims
were over-represented in proportion
to their share of Indias population,
and Hindu recruitment was restricted
to the upper castes. As the needs of
war grew, this system broke down.
Sikh recruitment also fell away, as the
July 2016
MHM REVIEWS
LEFT An Indian armoured division on operations in Iraq, 1941.

ABOVE Clearing a village in Eritrea, 1941.
shadow of partition fell on Punjab

and they became more concerned
with defending their own villages.
As well as transforming the Army,
the war transformed India as a
whole. The country became a greater
industrial power as it provided
weapons and supplies for the armed
forces mobilised in its defence,
including a modern air force and
navy. This strengthened support
for independence.
BRITAINS WAR
On 3 September 1939, the Viceroy
of India, Lord Linlithgow, broadcast
on the radio that, because Britain
was now at war with Germany, so
therefore was India. No Indian was
consulted; above all, no effort was
made to involve Congress, the main
force championing independence,
despite the fact that its key leaders,
Gandhi and Nehru, were opponents
of Fascism.
The Chamberlain and Churchill
governments were both determined
to prevent independence. They aimed
to sideline Congress, using both
repression and sectarianism, the
latter by deliberately building up the
rival Muslim League.
Yet the events of the war highlighted Britains inability to police
India. Its reduced status on the world
stage, and the mass involvement
of Indians in all aspects of Britains
war, brought that home.
Initially, in 1939, the Indian Armys
role was seen as that of securing
Egypt, Aden, Kenya, Iraq, and
Singapore. It was also charged with
defending the North West Frontier
from Russian or German attack, a key
concern until Stalin became Britains

ally in June 1941.
However, Italys entry into the war
in June 1940 necessitated the raising
of larger forces for deployment to
Egypt to protect the Suez Canal. Then
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hong Kong, and Malaya in December
1941, meant that Indian troops became
central to the defence of British imperial possessions in East Asia.
These troops lacked modern and
heavy weapons, were badly led
by their British officers, and were
untrained in jungle warfare. The British
collapse in Malaya, the surrender of
Singapore the biggest British military
defeat since Yorktown and then the
effective British rout in Burma were
deadly blows to imperial power.
The ability of the Japanese and a
small number of Indian Nationalists
to recruit not just privates but officers
and NCOs to the Indian National Army
demonstrated that the Indian Army
was no longer simply the sword of
the Raj. The INAs military capacity
was limited, but its corrosive effect on
Indian morale and loyalty was a major
political concern for the British.
The tide was turned in 1944
when largely Indian forces, alongside
British, Chinese, and American units,
repulsed the Japanese invasion of
Assam and then, in 1945, advanced
to recapture Burma.
WARS END
What Raghavan demonstrates is
that, by the wars end, the Indian
Army had become a modern, welltrained force, deploying British and
American weaponry, plus hardware
manufactured in India, and that it was
officered by Indians who were often

pro-independence in outlook, many
of them men who had entered the
service with an eye to it becoming
the basis of a national army after
the war. (Though it is worth saying
that the author is warm in his praise
of General Bill Slim, surely Britains
most effective wartime commander.)
Indias War catalogues key moments
when British rule in India was undermined: its repression of the Quit India
campaign, launched by Congress in
1942; the disastrous Bengal Famine
in 1943; and the collapse of post-war
attempts to prosecute INA officers.
Mutinies in the Navy and Air Force
meant Whitehall and Delhi both knew
the days of the Raj were over.
Raghavan shows how the atrocities
that accompanied partition were
heavily concentrated in areas where
wartime recruitment was highest,
particularly in the Punjab and Bengal.
Mobile Sikh units numbering tens of
thousands were formed in the Punjab.
He also shows how independence
and partition ended any hopes that
the new Indian Republic would exercise great influence over the former
Empire of the Raj. Delhis sights were
narrowed to its rivalry with Pakistan.
What I think he misses is one
military reason why Britain decided
on partition: it suspected India
would refuse to become part of the
Commonwealth, would align itself
with Russia, and would deny the
British and the Americans military
bases. Pakistan was to be the Wests
outpost in the Subcontinent.
At the beginning of this book,
Raghavan describes how, when
he arrived at the Officers Training
Academy for todays Indian Army to

serve as an infantry officer before
joining academia, he was puzzled
when the cadets were assigned to
companies titled Kohima, Meiktila,
Cassino, Sangro, and Alamein. Like
most Indians, he was unaware of the
Indian Armys vital role in the Second
World War; nor did he realise that this
was the force that had prevented the
Japanese invading India.
Yet that experience was crucial to
the development of both the Indian
and Pakistani Armies post-partition.
In 1947, as they fought over Kashmir,
it was the Indian Armys ability to
airlift in troops which secured victory,
an ability honed in the great 1944
victories over Japan at Kohima and
Imphal, in north-east India.
A former British officer in the
Gurkhas once remarked to me
how he feels instantly at home in
the mess of any Indian or Pakistani
regiment. There, the Indian Armys
victories in the Second World War
are still cherished, despite their
being otherwise ignored postindependence and partition.
This is a fascinating account of
Indias war, and a valuable addition to
any bookshelf. At its close, Raghavan
quotes a British staff officer who was
working with an Indian artillery colonel on the approaches to Rangoon in
July 1945. Having pored over a map
together, working out gun positions
and targets, the Indian turned to the
Englishman and said, OK, George.
Thanks, Ive got it. Well take over all
tasks at 18:00. What about a beer?
In 1939 such an exchange would
have been simply unthinkable.
CHRIS BAMBERY
63
O S
THE BEST NEW MILITARY HISTORY TITLES THIS MONTH
BREAKDOWN:
THE CRISIS OF SHELL SHOCK
ON THE SOMME, 1916
Taylor Downing
Little, Brown, 25 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1408706619
ow do you deal with someone

suffering from mental illness if
you do not believe that such a
condition exists? If you feel that it
is possible to snap out of it, use
mind over matter, and exercise the
stiff upper lip?
This was the problem that confronted the British Army during the
Great War, and became a particularly
acute problem following the Battle of
the Somme in 1916, an intense and
futile battle that saw huge losses.
The solutions ranged from shooting
at dawn to specialist rehabilitation
in a mental hospital.
As with so many things at the
time, the classification of shell
shock differed according to class.
The rank and file suffered from shell
shock, seen as a form of hysteria.
This was further subdivided. Shell
Shock W (for wounded) reflected
the early idea of the condition
being caused by some internal
injury due to proximity to an
exploding shell.
Alternatively, there was Shell
Shock S (for sick). If a soldier
was sick, he was suffering from a

complaint such as dysentery or flu,
nothing that could not be cured by
a spell away from the front-line.
Officers, however, suffered
from neurasthenia, caused by a
prolonged process of breakdown,
and brought on as a result of their
extra responsibilities.
So why was shell shock so
prevalent? An artillery duel
between the two sides, lasting
for days at a time, meant that soldiers were constantly on edge. Any
man at the Front had to accept that
at any moment he, or the person
next to him, might be blown to
pieces or terribly mutilated. If a
man was killed by a shell, then
his body parts were likely to be
scattered over a wide area.
The danger continued for days
and days; then the battalion would
be moved back for ten days or so;
and then the whole thing would
start again. Being in a trench
prevented any possibility of flight
or fight one simply had to cower
and endure. The lack of options
Cases of shell shock occurred

from the beginning of the war,
but the incidence escalated
dramatically after the opening
of the Battle of the Somme.
64
created a sense of powerlessness.

Medical officers noted that two occurrences were particularly likely to
bring on shell shock being buried
alive, or the use of gas.
There were cases of shell shock
from the beginning of the war, but
the incidence escalated dramatically after the opening of the Battle
of the Somme. The plan was for
artillery to pound the enemy lines
constantly for five days, and then
the soldiers were to emerge from
the trenches and walk slowly
across no-mans land and take
the German trenches.
The German defences survived
largely intact, however, and when
the soldiers emerged from their
own trenches, they were massacred
by the German machine-guns. The
effect of witnessing this, of taking
part in what proved to be such a
shambles, was too much for many.
The preferred treatment was a
spell in a hospital away from the
front-lines, for a few days or, at
most, a few weeks, to restore the

soldier to fitness, so that he could
be shipped back to the trenches.
This was not always possible:
sometimes the symptoms did not
respond to treatment, and then
the soldier might be sent back to
Britain to a mental hospital. In any
case, commanding officers were
very alarmed at the increasing
incidence of shell shock, especially
as the physical casualty rate was
so high.
This is a thoughtful, intelligent book
about all aspects of the condition
known as shell shock. We hear from
witnesses and sufferers themselves,
and of the attitudes towards shell
shock of the Army top brass and
the medical officers treating the
men. Downing also looks at cases of
mental trauma in more recent wars,
and how attitudes have changed
since the Great War.
Thoroughly researched, highly
readable, and highly recommended.
FRANCESCA TROWSE
July 2016
MHM REVIEWS
U BATTERY: LEGENDARY BATTERY OF

THE ROYAL ARTILLERY
Brinley Morgan
Brinley Morgan, 8 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0993277108
etween its formation in 1870 and its disbandment in 1962 (it was placed in suspended animation
in 1956), U Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) had an impressive record. Yet this record
is overshadowed by what author Brinley Morgan describes as four myths: the loss of its guns at
Sannas Post in 1900 during the Boer War; the loss of Queen Victorias coffin to the Royal Navy in
1902; its exile in 1906 and 1926; and finally the loss of its RHA status in 1922. In this book, the author
sets out to put the record straight.
The story of U Battery begins with their humiliation during the Boer War, before moving on to what
was, arguably, the Batterys finest hour its service on the Western Front in 1918.
Then, after the interwar period, the book covers the units service in the Middle East and Italy during
World War II. This is followed by the tragedy it experienced in Palestine in 1948, and ends with its final
years of existence during the Cold War.
During its history, the battery was armed with 17 different types of ordnance, ranging from a 9-pdr
muzzle-loader to three different types of self-propelled gun.
This is a thorough account. The research is comprehensive, with the author drawing heavily on official regimental accounts and histories. The narrative,
however, could be livelier at times.
There is no denying the authors enthusiasm and passion for his subject, and the book is at its finest when he uses his own words to analyse the units
performance during the World Wars, and to reminisce about his own service with the Battery during the final few years of its existence.
The account of the batterys service in Iraq, Persia, Palestine, and Syria (1941-1943) is particularly interesting, as these are theatres not regularly covered elsewhere.
And how did the unit lose Queen Victorias coffin? Youll have to read the book to find out!
DAVID FLINTHAM
THE LAST RAID

Will Fowler
The History Press, 20 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0750966375
he Granville Raid was the final act of an uncomfortable episode in British history during the Second
World War. When Germany occupied the Channel Islands in 1940, Hitler ordered the Crown dependencies to be heavily fortified, nurturing his dream that the only piece of the British Isles to fall under
Nazi occupation should forever remain a dominion of the Third Reich.
The islanders suffered five years of hunger and deprivation. Royal Navy blockades made it increasingly
difficult for supplies to get through from German-occupied France and, of course, feeding the German
garrison was given first priority.
The islands were isolated after the liberation of France, and there was no longer any requirement either
to raid them to capture prisoners or to keep the German garrison on the defensive.
Then, only weeks before the end of the war in Europe, the German garrison launched its own daring
commando raid on the French port of Granville. It was a boldly conceived plan, aimed at taking supplies
back to the Channel Island garrisons, liberating German PoWs, and to inflict as much damage as possible
on the enemy. This was one of the last significant offensive operations undertaken by German forces in
the war and, for the most part, it worked.
Soldier and historian Will Fowler provides a detailed and authoritative account of this operation, which
involved four large M-class minesweepers, three armed barges carrying 88mm cannons, three fast motor
launches, two small R-type minesweepers, and a seagoing tug.
The Granville Raid is the focal point of the bigger picture of wartime life in the Channel Islands a microcosm of what life in Britain might have been like
had Hitlers invasion plan met with success.
Churchill was outraged at the humiliation of having German troops occupying British territory. He devised plans for operations to liberate the islands,
schemes that would almost certainly have resulted in great loss of military and civilian lives, merely to claim victory in what was, after all, a minor sideshow
of the greater European conflict.
As for the islanders, they were only too willing to inform on one another, and resistance was all but non-existent. In fairness, this is not difficult to understand,
with roughly one German soldier for every three civilians, and almost nowhere to hide from the enemy. Yet there were also heroes and martyrs among the
Channel Islanders, and Fowler tells their stories as well.
JULES STEWART
65
MHM S ROUND-UP OF THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY TITLES
ILLUSTRATED BOOK
1916 remembered
Julian Thompson
Andr Deutsch, 40 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0233004686
This is rather more than a book, being a cornucopia
of primary sources and commentary produced in
conjunction with the IWM. There are some 200
photographs and 17 full-colour battle maps of these
two immense struggles on the Western Front. Added
to these are several facsimiles of documents and
memorabilia, and a CD containing over an hours worth
of veterans recollections. Something of a treasure trove.
ABOVE Men of the 26th (Highland) Infantry Brigade
returning from Longueval.
Breaking Point of the

French Army: the Nivelle
Offensive of 1917
David Murphy
Pen and Sword Books,
19.99 (hbk)
66
War Crimes in JapanOccupied Indonesia: a case

of murder by medicine
J Kevin Baird and
Sangkot Marzuki
Casemate, 25.99 (hbk)
The Great Siege of Malta:

the epic battle between the
Ottoman Empire and the
Knights of St John
Bruce Ware Allen
Oxbow Books, 24.99 (hbk)
No More Soldiering:
conscientious objectors
of the First World War
Stephen Wade
Amberley, 16.99 (pbk)
Kut 1916: the forgotten

British disaster in Iraq
Patrick Crowley
History Press, 18.99 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1445648941
2016 sees the centenary

of the Military Service Act,
which introduced conscription
to Britain. This brought a
sustained confrontation
between the military
establishment and the various
groups of pacifists and
conscientious objectors. Those
who refused to fight found
themselves before tribunals,
and were often condemned
to prison or internment.
An updated paperback edition

of this engrossing and
well-researched account of the
defeat at Kut during the British
intervention in Mesopotamia
(modern Iraq) during WWI.
What started as a limited
mission to secure the oilfields
around Basra became a
growing campaign that saw
British forces gradually advance
further into Iraq. Badly
equipped, these forces suffered
a humiliating defeat at Kut.
ISBN 978-1781592922
ISBN 978-1612346441
ISBN 978-1611687651
This is the story of General

Nivelles plan to launch an
offensive to end the Great War
in 1917. Unfortunately, it was a
bloody and humiliating failure
for France. It adversely affected
the will of politicians and the
determination of the French
people to continue fighting. The
reasons for the failure of the
offensive, and its implications,
are examined in this book.
In 40 months of Japanese
occupation of the Dutch East
Indies, millions of Indonesians
were worked to death or killed
as expendable slave labour. In
addition, some 900 Indonesians
were known victims of a brutal
medical experiment. They were
human guinea pigs for a vaccine
that had not been vetted: all
900 victims suffered protracted
and agonising deaths.
In 1565, Malta stood as the

last bastion against a Muslim
invasion of Sicily, southern
Italy, and beyond. The siege
was the high-water mark for
the Ottoman Empire in the
war between the Christian
West and the Muslim East for
control of the Mediterranean,
and the definitive battle in
a struggle which, in some
sense, continues today.
ISBN 978-0750966061
July 2016
S
SOMME
A PROMOTION OF COLLECTIBLES AND EVENTS FOR THE SOMME CENTENARY
NATIONAL MEMORIAL ARBORETUM COMMEMORATES

BATTLE OF THE SOMME
Photo: National Memorial Arboretum
In partnership with The Royal British Legion, the National Memorial Arboretum (a living
and growing tribute to those who serve and continue to serve our Nation) will commemorate the centenary of the Battle of the Somme with a variety of events and activities.
Events at the Arboretum in Staffordshire will include a candlelit vigil and remembrance service on 30 June to mark the start of the battle, plus weekly Battle of the
Somme guided walks around the 150-acre site, which is home to hundreds of military
memorials and around 30,000 trees.
A section of an authentic replica WWI trench will be constructed at the Arboretum
and there will also be a mass-participation art project, representing the 19,240 soldiers
who died on the first day of the battle. The commemorations will close with a service on 18 November.
For details on events and activities, log on to www.thenma.org.uk/somme100
DATES: 30 June-18 November 2016
WHERE: National Memorial Arboretum, Croxall Road,
Alrewas, DE13 7AR
PRICE: Free entry

WEB: www.thenma.org.uk/somme100
EMAIL: info@thenma.org.uk
PHONE: 01283 245 100
THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME COMMEMORATIVE STAMP ISSUE

As part of a continuing commemoration of the 100th anniversary of World War
I, Isle of Man Post Office looks to the Battle of the Somme for this stamp issue.
The decision to begin fighting on the Somme, taken for political reasons,
saw fresh battle lines open in the battle of attrition that defined the Western
Front. The furnace of war also forged massive and rapid change in military
tactics, as depicted in the stamps from this issue.
This set is highly collectable for anyone with an interest in World War I
and all military history, as well as essential for those who already have earlier
commemorative issues.
As with previous issues commemorating WWI, this issue is in support of the
Royal British Legion. It is available as a set or in sheet format, in mint condition or cancelled to order (CTO), on a first day cover, and in a presentation
pack.
ON SALE: Available now
WHERE TO BUY: www.iompost.com/stamps-coins/collection/

battle-of-the-somme
or www.iomstamps.com
PRICE: From 6.89 to 41.34

EMAIL: stamps@iompost.com
PHONE: +44 (0) 1624 698 430
BATTLE OF THE SOMME CENTENARY

The centenary anniversary of the Battle of the Somme is an important date for Beamish
to commemorate as so many soldiers and families from the local area were affected by
the battle. An opportunity to reflect on the devastation of the First World War, this event
will commemorate the contribution and sacrifice our local soldiers made to the conflict.
Event highlights include performances by the Borneo Band and the Durham and
Northumberland Wing ATC (Saturday and Sunday). The Manchester Regiment First
World War re-enactment group will also be on show. Attendees can meet the Gordon
Highlanders (Friday and Sunday), see the incredible 16th Lancers Calvary Unit
(Saturday and Sunday), sample the cooking from the 29th Field Kitchen, and visit
the Upper Bank Board Room to see a display of First World War trench art, part of a
joint project with Newcastle University
DATES: 1-3 July 2016
WHERE: Beamish Museum, Beamish, County Durham, DH9 0RG
PRICE: Included in the admission charge to Beamish. Adult,
18.50, child, 10.50; senior/student, 13.50. Tickets available

online at www.beamish.org.uk or at the museum on the day of
visit. All tickets valid for unlimited free visits for 12 months.
WEB: www.beamish.org.uk
EMAIL: museum@beamish.org.uk
PHONE: 0191 370 4000
O
TAYLOR DOWNING REVIEWS A CLASSIC WAR MOVIE
WOMEN AT WAR
FILM | CLASSIC
MILLIONS LIKE US
Strawberry Media
8.99
ne and a half million

British women were
called up during the
Second World War to work in
munitions factories. Many of them
had never been near a factory
before, but Britains women were
more efficiently organised than
those in any other nation (with the
possible exception of the United
States, where Rosie the Riveter
became a popular heroine).
In Britain, female factory-workers
worked long hours with little respite,
68
often far from home, and with the

constant worry of surviving on
wartime rations. It does not sound
like subject matter for a great movie,
but Millions Like Us (1943) is one
of the best Second World War films
to have been produced about the
Home Front. Combining simple
comedy with a stirring central story
that it is impossible not to be moved
by, it beautifully captures many
of the huge social changes that
went on in Britain during the
Second World War.
The Ministry of Information (MoI)

decided to direct a series of films
at young working-class women,
knowing that this demographic
constituted nearly two-thirds of
regular cinema-goers in the war
years. Night Shift (Paul Rotha, 1942)
was a documentary that showed
women workers on a night shift in
an armaments factory. The banter,
laughter, and canteen sing-songs
were intended to show that factory
work could be fun and offered great
opportunities for friendship, while
making a really important contribution to the war effort.
The MoI encouraged Frank Launder
and Sidney Gilliat, two prominent
screenwriters, to tour the country
visiting factories, farms, and docks
to research a feature film about the
mobilisation on the Home Front.
The pair decided to concentrate
on one aspect of this subject:
conscripted female workers living
in a government hostel and working
in a factory producing heavy
bombers. With full MoI support,
Launder and Gilliat took their idea
to Gainsborough Pictures, who
specialised in costume melodramas,
and in this unlikely context they
wrote and jointly directed a film
of great grit and realism.
Underlining the whole film is the
concept that everyone has to make
sacrifices in war. The script evokes
endless frustrations and official
restrictions. There are hectoring
government notices everywhere.
At one point, the official pamphlet
If the Invader Comes drops on a
doormat. On a poster at a station
ticket office, where a couple buy
rail tickets for their honeymoon, is
the question Is your journey really
necessary? There are constant complaints about food: Whats in these
sausages is a mystery and I hope
they dont solve it in my lifetime.
Launder and Gilliat introduce two
upper-class toffs, characters who
LAUNDER AND GILLIAT

Frank Launder and Sidney
Gilliat are one of the great
screenwriting duos of the
last century. One of their
earliest scripts was the comic
thriller The Lady Vanishes
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1938).
Then followed a run of
hits including Night Train
to Munich (1940) and The
Young Mr Pitt (1942) for
Gainsborough Pictures.
Millions Like Us was the only
film they ever co-directed.
They thought that having
two directors confused the
cast and crew, and after
this they operated as sole
directors. At the end of
the war, they set up their
own production company,
Independent Producers,
under the umbrella of the
Rank Organisation.
They were particularly
good at writing parts for
women, doing this in several
box-office hits, including
for Joy Shelton in Waterloo
Road (1944), Deborah Kerr
in I See a Dark Stranger (1946),
Margaret Rutherford in
The Happiest Days of Your Life
(1950), and for the many
St Trinians films through
the 1950s and 60s. As the
British film industry changed
in the 60s and 70s, both
men worked as executives
for British Lion.
Between them, they wrote
more than 100 screenplays,
with Launder specialising in
light comedy with a common
touch, and Gilliat in rather
darker humour, with an interest in Celtic subjects.
Sidney Gilliat died in 1994,
aged 86, and Frank Launder
in 1997, aged 93.
July 2016
MHM REVIEWS
goes shopping, cooks, and does the
whole familys ironing, as well as
working full time in a drapery shop.
A series of narrative devices
push the story forward through the
early stages of the war, Dunkirk,
the Battle of Britain, and the
Blitz. By now, the family has been
transformed by war. Dad is in the
Home Guard and is out most nights
on patrol. Tom is in the Army and
sends back letters from Egypt.
Phyllis joins the Auxiliary Territorial
Service (ATS) and brings soldiers
home to canoodle on the sofa.
When Celia announces she is
being called up, the situation
comes to a head. Cant you say
you have to look after me?, says
Dad. Oh you dont count, replies
Celia, Im a mobile woman. Ever
suffering, Dad now has to face coming
home late to an empty house with
no woman to care for him and no
dinner on the table.
In one charming sequence,
Celia imagines the glamorous
HE PEOPLES WAR
roles that have now opened up
for her: in the WAAF, giving help
he opening credits roll over documentary shots of workers streaming to dashing pilots; in the WRENs,
assisting naval officers; and in the
ut of a wartime factory, highlightATS, surrounded by soldiers. She
ng that this will be a film about
sees handsome boyfriends lining
he Peoples War. The first section
ntroduces us to the Crowson family. up to propose to her.
But when she attends the Labour
is late summer 1939, before the
Exchange she is told, to her horror,
war, when eggs used to come out
that she will have to work in a
f shells, as the film reminds the
factory. Mr Bevin [the Minister of
iewer, referring to the ubiquitous
Labour] needs another 1,000,000
gg powder imported from America.
women and I dont think we should
he family are together and head
disappoint him, the official tells her.
ff on their annual visit to the south
oast and the Balmoral Guest House. You can help your country just as
much in an overall as you can in a
Widowed father Jim (Moore
Marriott), or Dad, seems constantly uniform these days.
Celia is sent to a government
ut-upon and irritable. His son Tom
hostel for women, where she meets
s married to Elsie, and they have
three other women whose stories
wo young children. Of Jims two
are at the centre of the rest of the
aughters, the eldest, Phyllis ( Joy
film. Celias roommate is Gwen
helton), is a flirt who is constantly
unning off with different boyfriends. (played with great grit by Megs
Jenkins). She is the daughter of a
elia (Patricia Roc, in her finest
Welsh coal-miner but has been to
creen role) is a hard-working
university. She befriends Celia,
aughter who looks after her father,
Images: Strawberry Media
ad proved hugely popular in earlier

lms they had worked on. Charters
nd Caldicott (wonderfully played
y Basil Radford and Naunton
Wayne) feature in the movie only
o represent the fact that even
he upper classes have to make
acrifices in war.
They first appear on a train,
oasting that at least first-class
ravel brings some privileges.
ut, at that moment, the door flies
pen and their carriage is swamped
with screaming, excited evacuees
who are being sent off to the
ountryside and have nowhere
lse to go on the packed train.
On another occasion, they tell the
tory of a wealthy man whose valet
was drafted. Having had someone
lse dress him for 30 years, this
man had to follow his attendant
cross the country. Charters and
aldicott pass through a narrative
hat drives home the compromises
hat have to be made in war.
69
THE MOBILE WOMAN

In December 1941, the government introduced the National Service
Act. All unmarried women and childless widows without dependents,
between the ages of 20 and 30, were liable for call-up to work in the
services or in war factories. They were classed as mobile women,
who could be moved from their homes and sent to military establishments or war factories anywhere in the country. Large hostels were
built to house factory-workers.
The number of women who were sent to jobs in industries that
were traditionally male was enormous. The numbers in engineering, for instance, rose from less than 100,000 in 1939 to more than
600,000 in 1943. The proportion of women workers tripled from
10% (mostly in traditional womens industries like textiles) to 34%
across the board.
There were problems in that women were never paid the same
rate as men for the same job, and there were reports of resentment
by male workers and some cases of sexual harassment.
But many women enjoyed the freedoms that war offered. Many
were able to get away from homes where their futures were often
mapped out for them, finding new opportunities in different parts
of the country. In Millions Like Us, Celia proudly tells her father,
Im mobile. Many women also enjoyed the new wealth they earned
and the comradeship they discovered.
At the end of the war, however, most women left industry and
returned to a more domestic life. With hundreds of thousands of
men returning and wanting their jobs back, and with a general desire
to return to normality, there followed a huge post-war baby boom
with 300,000 more babies born per year than in the war years.
who is soon homesick. Together,

they imagine the hostel will
resemble a Victorian workhouse
and are surprised to find a warm
welcome in a smart and very
modern establishment.
The other two leading women
in the story are the upper-class
and over-dressed Jennifer (Anne
Crawford), from the Home Counties,
who clearly thinks that factory work
is way below her, and her roommate
Annie (Terry Randall), a working-class
lass from Lancashire.
The clash of classes is humorously depicted on the first night,
when, to Jennifers horror, Annie
gets into bed without changing
out of her underwear, saying,
Well, Ill just have to put it back
on again tomorrow.
And Annie is amazed at the
creams, hairbands, and elaborate
nightwear that Jennifer puts on
before getting into bed. The factory
brings together women from all
classes and all regions.
FACTORY WORK
The scenes in the huge factory
to which the women are sent
were filmed at the giant aircraft
70
manufacturing plant at Castle

Bromwich near Birmingham. They
are shot very realistically and
occasionally one can spot a real
worker turning in fascination to
look at the camera.
The four women work on
large lathes, reporting to a very
down-to-earth Yorkshire foreman,
Charlie Forbes (Eric Portman).
All the women, except for the
hoity-toity Jennifer (who is
constantly upbraided by the
foreman for poor work), take to
factory life, and Celia grows in
confidence over time. When a group
of RAF men from the local bomber
station visit the factory, SergeantGunner Fred Blake (an extremely
young Gordon Jackson) is clearly
smitten with Celia.
There is a dance at the womens
hostel that evening. Local Army and
RAF folk are bussed in to provide
men, and the event is a great
success. It was at dances like this
that many men and women met
during wartime, and Celia and Fred
meet again and romance develops.
They are clearly portrayed as a very
ordinary couple. Theres nothing
special about me, says Fred. Oh I
dont know, responds Celia, whose

constant answer to any suggestion
is a very unassertive I dont mind.
Despite a temporary glitch along
the way, their romance blossoms.
Fred takes Celia to a country pub
that he thinks will be quiet but
is packed with soldiers from a
nearby camp. He proposes to
Celia just as an American barges
between them with a tray of beers.
I dont mind is Celias answer, this
time very affirmatively.
The wedding reception is
beautifully done, with Celias family
and work colleagues and Freds
RAF mates gathering for a heavily
rationed event. The music includes
There Was I Waiting at the Church.
For their honeymoon, the
young couple visit the same
Balmoral Guest House that the
Crowsons used to holiday in every
summer before the war. But the
seaside town is unrecognisable.
The beaches are mined and
several soldiers are billeted
at the guesthouse.
When they return, they manage
to rent a room in a house near
Freds airfield and Celias factory.
It is a miserable place, but Fred
reassures Celia, When this is all
over, well get our own house.
BEREAVEMENT
The inevitable happens. Celia is
called from the production line
to the managers office, where
an RAF chaplain is waiting for
her. Fred has been shot down
over Germany.
In keeping with so many British
films of the time, there is no
on-screen emotion. The door shuts on
Celia. Later, we see her framed in the
window of the flat where they had
spent their all-too-short time as a
married couple. Within her young
life she has experienced love, marriage, and now bereavement.
In a parallel and rather unlikely
storyline, the stand-offish Jennifer
has started an affair with the
Yorkshire foreman Charlie Forbes.
He tells her that he will not marry her.

The worlds made up of two sorts of
people your sort and my sort. Oh
were all together now theres a war.
But whats going to happen when its
over? Is it all going to slide back? He
tells her they will have to wait until
after the war to get married the
rational view of marriage during the
upheavals of war.
In the final scenes, Celia and
Gwen are back in the factory. They
go to the canteen, where a musichall star is entertaining the workers.
She sings There Was I Waiting at the
Church and all the workers begin
to join in. It is the song from the
wedding reception.
Celia is still distraught, but with
Gwens support she slowly bucks up
and joins in the singing. A squadron
of heavy bombers pass overhead.
The war must continue, and Celia
is back again among the millions
of war workers.
Despite its realism and its
emotional power, Millions Like Us
did not do particularly well at the
box office. In 1943, Gainsboroughs
costumed period dramas did far
better. It is a reminder that in war
audiences often want escape from
rather than be reminded of reality.
But, today, the film stands up
tremendously well. The cast is
excellent. Gordon Jackson and
Patricia Roc are particularly believable and moving as the ordinary
couple at the heart of the film.
The writing combines comic wit
with tragic pathos.
There is a very clear propaganda
message extolling the camaraderie
of female war workers. But this is
never in-your-face. Millions Like
Us combines documentary realism
with a fictional narrative in a way
that seems unforced. And the
group of women and men at the
centre of the story are themselves
a cross-section of British society,
living through a war that will bring
pain and suffering, all of which is
worthwhile when set against the
greater good for which they strive.
MILLIONS LIKE US (1943)

Gainsborough Pictures. Producer: Edward Black. Written
and directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. Starring:
Patricia Roc, Megs Jenkins, Anne Crawford, Eric Portman,
and Gordon Jackson. A Strawberry Media DVD.
July 2016
B
BOOKS
A PROMOTION OF MILITARY HISTORY TITLES AVAILABLE TO BUY.
THE BATTLE OF
JUTLAND
KITCHENERS
MOB
John Brooks
Peter Doyle and

Chris Foster
In this major new account of the

Battle of Jutland, the key naval
battle of the First World War,
John Brooks reveals the key
technologies employed, from
ammunition to battle orders.
He offers important new interpretations of the battle, drawing on contemporary
sources, along with official records, letters, and memoirs.
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
PRICE: 34.99
WHERE TO BUY: All good bookshops, online retailers, or directly from
Cambridge University Press
THE OXFORD
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY
OF WORLD WAR II
Richard Overy
Kitcheners Mob graphically portrays the

intriguing story of the
raising of Kitcheners
Army, from the earliest
days of recruitment, through to the creation of the
uniquely British phenomenon of Pals battalions across
the country.
PUBLISHER: The History Press
PRICE: 25
WHERE TO BUY: Good book stores and online
at www.thehistorypress.co.uk
THE BATTLE OF THE

SOMME
Matthias Strohn (ed.)
Do we really need another illustrated history of WWII? Yes, we

do, especially this volume, which
combines a breadth and depth
not seen in much military history
writing. [I] cannot do justice to the excellent scholarship and
narrative abilities of the 12 contributors. Did this reviewer mention the illustrations? Astounding. CHOICE
Featuring articles by leading

military historians and an
introduction by renowned
World War I scholar Sir Hew
Strachan, this new study
looks beyond the horrendous
conditions and staggering
casualty rate to examine the strategic and tactical
impact of the campaign for German, French, British, and
Dominion forces on the Somme.
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press

PRICE: 30
WHERE TO BUY: Available through all good bookshops and online, or
order direct: call 01536 452 640 or email trade.orders.uk@oup.com
PUBLISHER: Osprey Publishing

PRICE: 25
WHERE TO BUY: www.ospreypublishing.com
SU
02
REVIEWING THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EXHIBITIONS

WITH HAZEL BLAIR
01
10
ENTRY
03
VISIT
36 HOURS: JUTLAND 1916,

THE BATTLE THAT WON THE WAR
National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic
Dockyard, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth, PO1 3LJ
023 9283 9766
www.jutland.org.uk
Open 10am-5pm daily
he impact of the Battle of

Jutland on the outcome of
the First World War has been
widely underestimated, according to a new exhibition launched
for the battles centenary. Traditionally
considered damaging but indecisive,
it was fought over just two days and
resulted in the loss of 6,094 British
seamen and 2,551 Germans.
Newly opened, 36 Hours seeks
to reinterpret the significance of this
great naval clash, arguing not only that
the British were ultimately victorious
(despite suffering heavy casualties), but
also that Jutland should be recognised
as the battle that won the war, due
to its role in maintaining the British
blockade of Germany.
While not all readers will agree, it
is undeniable that Jutland has slipped
out of public consciousness: never
before has the battle been the subject
of a major UK exhibition.
72
One of the biggest challenges

with any aspect of naval history,
but especially Jutland, is trying to
get some idea of the scale of the
technology and the whole scale
of the entire event, said curator Nick
Hewitt as we toured the exhibition.
(To put things in perspective, the 250
vessels present at the battle outweigh
the current numerical strength of
Europes navies combined.)
36 HOURS
Housed in a wooden boathouse
directly opposite HMS Warrior in
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, this
monster exhibition has been given
ample room to convey the magnitude
of the battle and its legacy.
Hosted by the National Museum
of the Royal Navy, in conjunction
with Imperial War Museums, 36 Hours
is a spectacular collection of over
300 objects relating to the Battle of
Jutland. Hewitt believes the battle

has been misunderstood, mis-sold,
and misrepresented, but this
exhibition has been designed
to present the ins and outs of its
thesis engagingly, sensitively, and
with remarkable clarity.
The action is detailed at intervals
of a few hours to a few minutes,
and a blow-by-blow timeline runs
continuously along a series of
text panels that chart the battle
as it unfolded.
Visitors are immersed in the
heart of the conflict by the exhibits
panoramic audiovisual installation,
which plays a series of two-minute
clips themed around key points of
the conflict. The series begins with
a film reconstruction of a British
aircraft reconnaissance mission. The
tension is palpable as the crew catch
sight of enemy vessels, and is further
amplified by the deafening surround-
sound racket of the aircrafts engine

as it soars above the sea.
One of the most extraordinary
objects in the exhibition is a small
silver biscuit box that had been in
Nelsons cabin at Trafalgar. At Jutland,
the box was kept on board HMS
Lion by Admiral Beatty, and today it
serves as a reminder of the context
of expectant triumph in which the
Royal Navy fought this awkward but
strategically successful sea battle.
Soldiers and seamen kept a variety
of lucky charms and amulets with
them during the First World War, but
the exhibition houses one particularly
interesting example: a Maori piupiu
(flax skirt) from HMS New Zealand.
The piupiu was one of a number of
items given to Captain Lionel Halsey
during a trip to the ships namesake
country in 1913.
Legend has it that Halsey wore the
skirt in action, believing it would keep
July 2016
04
06
MHM VISITS
P OR T SMOU T H,
UNI T ED K INGDOM
Image: courtesy of the NMRN
PICTURED ON BOTH PAGES:

1. Outside the exhibition,
which is situated in a boathouse
opposite HMS Warrior in
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
2. Display board detailing the
human cost of the engagement.
3. Battlecruiser Fleet photograph
album belonging to Admiral Sir
David Beatty, 1916.
4. Ship wheel from HMS Lion.
07
5. Silver biscuit box belonging to

Admiral Sir John Rushworth Jellicoe,
previously owned by Viscount Lord
Nelson. Loaned by the Jellicoe family.
05
6. A lifebelt from HMS Lion.

7. A piupiu (Maori skirt) that was
on board HMS New Zealand during
the Battle of Jutland.
8. Death plaque of Commander
William Loftus Jones who died at
the Battle of Jutland, 1916.
HMS New Zealand safe. (Indeed,

she had been unharmed at Heligoland
Bight in 1914 and Dogger Bank in 1915).
At Jutland, the skirt was kept in the
ships bridge, and HMS New Zealand
suffered only minor damage, despite
being in the midst of the action.
BATTLE-SCARRED
Nevertheless, the battle was a truly
destructive engagement, and both
sides suffered heavy damage: on
display is a piece of shell-punctured
armour-plate from the gun room of
HMS Barham. Featured elsewhere
are three guns that saw action at
the battle, including one from a
German destroyer.
Also exhibited are a number
of archival documents, portraits,
photographs, ensigns, medals, and
military uniforms, including several
items donated by the Jellicoe, Beatty,
and Scheer families, many of which
have hitherto never been displayed.

One glass case even includes
a ship-builders model of HMS
Canada, damaged in the Blitz but
restored with its Second World War
fractures preserved.
The night phase of the Battle of
Jutland is often overlooked, but 36
Hours makes space to detail the chaos
that ensued after dark. Overnight,
the British lost five destroyers, as
the fleets came to blows in a string
of chaotic encounters. HMS Spitfire
was sunk around 11.30pm: Within
a few minutes the cruiser was a
glowing wreck and sank after a mighty
explosion, a horrible but imposing
sight, recalled Naval Cadet Heinz
Bonatz of SMS Nassau.
Shocking losses like these
contributed to the negative portrayal
of the battle after the war. The Navy
was split over who was most to
blame, and this led to a mud-slinging
match between Beatty and Jellicoe

further entrenching frustrations ov
the way battle played out. But th
myth of defeat is finally being calle
into question: Its not a clean victo
its not a brilliant victory, its not
victory of annihilation. Its a messy,
clumsily fought battle, but it was still
a victory, says Hewitt.
DEBATE
The end of the exhibition focuses on
themes of remembrance and recovery.
Not only does the display open up
debate about the impact of Jutland on
the outcome of the First World War,
but it also invites visitors to consider
the complex moral challenges posed
by sites that are both historically
important and designated war graves.
The Jutland waters are shallow,
but it is now against the law to remove
items from the wrecks (although
some objects were salvaged before
this legislation was passed, and the

underwater battlefield has also been
plundered illegally). On display are
objects from HMS Hampshire, which
fought at Jutland but was sunk a week
later. These were originally looted
from the wreck, after which the police
entrusted them to the Scapa Flow
Visitor Centre and Museum in Orkney.
Displaying these items alongside
artefacts brought up from the Tudor
warship Mary Rose, the exhibition
finishes by asking visitors to consider
the propriety of archaeological
recovery from shipwrecks and war
graves, encouraging reflection on this
century-old naval battle from a 21stcentury standpoint.
08
73
M
MUSEUM
THE HOUSEHOLD
CAVALRY MUSEUM
FLEET AIR ARM MUSEUM

Get up close to some of the most powerful and interesting naval aircraft
to have taken to the skies at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, the largest naval
aviation collection in Europe.
Be the first to look around the Sopwith Baby aircraft with replica Le
Prieur rockets, which marks the first time air-to-air missiles were launched
from an aircraft. 100 years on from the Battle of Jutland, the greatest naval
battle ever fought, learn the story of pioneering pilot Fredrick Rutland of
Jutland and explore the unique remains of torpedo bomber Short Type
184, the only aircraft to fly in action at the battle.
See the much-loved Royal Navy Sea King ZA298, one of the navys
longest serving helicopters, on show from summer 2016.
Go on board the first supersonic airliner, British Concorde 002, and
immerse yourself in the HMS Ark Royal Aircraft Carrier Experience.
The Fleet Air Arm Museum is a day out guaranteed to thrill all the family!
ADDRESS: Fleet Air Arm Museum, RNAS
Yeovilton, Ilchester, Somerset, BA22 8HT
TEL: 01935 840 565
WEB: www.fleetairarm.com
OPENING TIMES: Monday-Sunday, 10am5.30pm.
This living museum celebrates

the history and accomplishments of the Household Cavalry,
and unlike other military attractions it offers a unique behindthe-scenes look at the work that
goes into the ceremonial and
armoured reconnaissance role
of HM The Queens Mounted
Bodyguard.
Via a glazed screen, visitors
can watch troopers attending
to their horses in the stables
(which date from 1750). They
can learn more about the personal stories of the people who make up
the Household Cavalry, through displays, rare objects, and a handheld
touch-screen guide. This free guide gives vivid insights, related by former
and serving officers and troopers, of what it is like to serve today, either on
duty at Horse Guards as part of ceremonial occasions, or in recent combat
situations.
Stunning displays commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Battle
of Waterloo are a must-see, and a dressing-up area provides a great photo
opportunity for all ages.
ADDRESS: Horse Guards, Whitehall, London,
SW1A 2AX
TEL: 020 7930 3070
EMAIL: museum@householdcavalry.co.uk
WEB: www.householdcavalrymuseum.co.uk
OPENING TIMES: April-October, 10am-6pm.
November-March, 10am-5pm.
MMORIAL DU SOUVENIR
This educational museum is dedicated to the Battle of Dunkirk and
Operation Dynamo the 9 days that allowed the evacuation by sea of
330,000 combatants from the beaches of Dunkirk and East Mole.
The Museum comprises 700m2 of exhibition space, with 350m of
photos and maps of military operations. It includes a fine collection of
weapons and uniforms from the periods 1914-1918 and 1939-1940, with
film archives in English.
Please allow one to two hours for your visit. Free entry for 1939-1945
veterans. Adults: 5; children under 12 accompanied by their parents: free;
groups (10 or more people): 4 per person; school groups: 3.50 per person.
DORSET COUNTY MUSEUM

Discover 200 million years of Dorsets past in this friendly award-winning
museum in central Dorchester. Exhibitions in 2016 include:
The Charge of the Dorset Yeomanry at Agagia, 26th February 1916 a
display to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the famous charge of the
Queens Own Dorset Yeomanry against a mixed Turkish and Senussi force in
the Egyptian Western Desert.
The exhibition provides a rare chance to see military artist Lady Elizabeth
Butlers Royal Academy-exhibited painting of the charge.
There is a complementary display of military ephemera at The Keep
Military Museum, Dorchester (discounted joint ticket available).
The charge, the last regimental charge in battle by the British army, routed
the enemy and was a key element in preventing the Turks and their German
allies from capturing the Suez canal, a vital link with India.
Speed to the West: a Nostalgic Journey (until 7 January 2017) a stunning exhibition of 20th-century railway posters and railway memorabilia.
ADDRESS: High West Street, Dorchester,
Dorset, DT1 1XA
TEL: 01305 756 825
EMAIL: marketing@dorsetcountymuseum.org
WEB: www.dorsetcountymuseum.org
OPENING TIMES: Museum, Tearoom, and

Gift Shop: Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm
(April-October), plus Sundays (24 July-11
September 2016). Closes 4pm, NovemberMarch.
ADDRESS: Muse Dunkerque 1940 /

Operation Dynamo, Courtines du Bastion
32, Rue des Chantiers de France, 59140
Dunkerque, France
TEL: + 33 (0)328 667 921
EMAIL: contact@dynamo-dunkerque.com
WEB: www.dynamo-dunkerque.com
OPENING TIMES: 1 April-30 September,
10am-5pm.
WITH HUNDREDS OF MILITARY MUSEUMS

IN THE UK ALONE, HOW DO YOU KNOW
WHICH ONE WILL BEST SUIT YOUR
INTERESTS? HERE IS A PROMOTION
OF SOME OF THE BEST MUSEUMS AND
EXHIBITIONS TO VISIT THIS YEAR.
RAF MUSEUM
Get your name on a Red
Arrows plane and support the
RAF Museum.
2018 marks the centenary
of the Royal Air Force. The
award-winning RAF Museum
will celebrate and commemorate this anniversary through
a major transformation of our
visitor experience, sharing the
RAF story on site and online.
Accordingly, the Museum is
offering a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to have your name, or the name of a loved one, on a Red
Arrows Hawk Jet for a donation of just 30. The Hawk will be flown across
the globe during the Red Arrows 2017 aerial display season.
All of your donation to Names on a Plane will directly support the RAF
Museums RAF Centenary Programme, details of which can be found on
the Museums main website www.rafmuseum.org or by signing up to the
Museums Centenary E-newsletter, the link for which can be found at the
bottom of each webpage.
Put your name on a plane now at www.namesonaplane.org
ADDRESS: Royal Air Force Museum London,
Grahame Park Way, London, NW9 5LL
TEL: 020 8205 2266
EMAIL: london@rafmuseum.org
WEB: www.rafmuseum.org
OPENING TIMES: 10am-6pm, last admission
5.30pm.
RAF AIR DEFENCE RADAR MUSEUM

In the summer of 1940, unknown to almost everyone, radar was playing a vital
role in the success of the RAFs Battle of Britain pilots against the Luftwaffe.
Established in 1941, the once Top Secret base at Neatishead has
remained pivotal in Air Defence from WWII, right through to the Cold
War, and it remains an RAF station to this day.
The Museum charts the amazing history of radar from its inception
right through to the Cold War. Experience the Operations Rooms, touch
the equipment, and feel the fear.
ADDRESS: RAF Air Defence Radar Museum,
RRH Neatishead, nr Horning,
Norfolk, NR12 8YB
TEL: 01692 631 485
EMAIL: curator@radarmuseum.co.uk
WEB: www.radarmuseum.co.uk
OPENING TIMES: Tuesdays and Thursdays,
the second Saturday of the month, bank
holiday Mondays, and Easter Saturday to
end November, 10am-5pm.
MUSEUM OF ARMY FLYING
AIRBORNE MUSEUM HARTENSTEIN

The Airborne Museum, housed in a monumental 19th-century villa (the headquarters of the British Airborne Division in September 1944), displays 1,700m2
of history and experience.
The underground Airborne Experience allows you to follow in the footsteps
of British parachutists as they make their way to Arnhem in September 1944.
Temporary exhibition: The Airborne Museum Hartenstein is currently
presenting the new temporary exhibition, Going Home. Jozef and Emilia.
Follow the impressive travels of the 93-year-old Polish veteran of the Battle
of Arnhem and his beloved. This first-hand story is about the enormous stream
of Polish war refugees, the countrys subjugation, and the search of two lovers
for each other and for a home.
The exhibition will be on display from 3 June to 31 December 2016 at the
Airborne Museum.
ADDRESS: Utrechtseweg 232, 6862 AZ
Oosterbeek, The Netherlands
TEL: +31 (0)263 337 710
EMAIL: info@airbornemuseum.nl
WEB: www.airbornemuseum.nl
OPENING TIMES: 1 November-31 March:
Monday-Saturday, 11am-5pm; Sundays and
public holidays, 12 noon-5pm. 1 April-31

October: Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm;
Sundays and public holidays, 12 noon-5pm.
On 24 and 31 December, the museum
closes at 4pm. The museum is closed on
Christmas Day and New Years Day.
The Museum of Army Flying tells the 100-year story of the British Army in
the air and boasts a unique collection of military aviation history one of
both national and international importance.
Open daily and home to over 35 historic fixed-wing and rotary-wing
aircraft, detailed dioramas, artefacts, trophies, and models, the Museum
serves as a profound and inspiring tribute to the Army and their machines.
There are a range of interesting and engaging activities for children to
enjoy including Museum trails, puzzles, games, and simulators.
Situated right alongside the Army Air Corps busy working airfield
at Middle Wallop, visitors can often enjoy watching the Army Air Corps
training in their impressive Apache and Lynx helicopters.
The Apache Caf is also open daily and serves a wide variety of snacks
and meals with a prime view over the airfield.
ADDRESS: Museum of Army Flying, Middle

Wallop, Stockbridge, Hampshire, SO20 8DY
TEL: 01264 784 421
EMAIL: info@flying-museum.org.uk
WEB: www.armyflying.com
OPENING TIMES: 10am-4.30pm, every day
(open until 5.30pm throughout July and
August).
ISTI S
THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EVENTS, LECTURES, AND EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITION
10
ENTRY
7
ENTRY
THE CHARGE OF THE QUEENS OWN DORSET YEOMANRY AT AGAGIA

Until 9 July 2016
Image: Dorset County Council
Dorset County Museum, High West

Street, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1XA
www.dorsetcountymuseum.org/dorset_yeomanry
01305 262 735
orset County Museum and The Keep Military Museum, Dorchester, in conjunction with the Dorset
Yeomanry, have assembled a small exhibition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the famous
charge of the Queens Own Dorset Yeomanry against a mixed Turkish and Senussi force in the
Egyptian Western Desert on 26 February 1916. The charge (the last regimental charge in battle
by the British Army) routed the enemy and was a key element in preventing the Turks and their German allies
from capturing the Suez Canal, a vital link with India. The highlight of the exhibition is a painting recording
the gallantry of the QODY, commissioned from military artist Lady Elizabeth Butler in 1917. A complementary
display of military ephemera will be staged at The Keep Military Museum at the same time. Dorset County Museum
and The Keep Military Museum are offering a discounted joint ticket to see both displays.
EVENT
RNAS YEOVILTON AIR DAY 2016

2 July 2016
27
ENTRY
21
ADVANCE
Image: Paul Johnson
RNAS Yeovilton, Taranto Way, Ilchester, BA22 8HT

www.royalnavy.mod.uk
0330 100 3656
76
RNAS Yeovilton will host over five hours of flying and static displays
featuring historic naval aircraft. Taking Naval Aviation: past, present,
and future as its theme, the event will mark 75 years since the
Swordfish participated in the pursuit and sinking of the Bismark
during the Second World War; it will host the last public appearance of the Lynx maritime helicopters, set to be retired
from service in 2017; and it will provide insight into the future of the Fleet Air Arm. Thrill-seekers can take a flight in a
helicopter or experience the skies in a flight simulator, and there will be a number of stalls and exhibitions to explore.
21 June-25 September 2016

Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont
Street, Oxford, OX1 2PH
www.ashmolean.org
01865 278 000
Storms, War, and Shipwrecks

tells the story of Sicily through
discoveries made by underwater archaeologists. Situated in
the heart of the Mediterranean,
Sicily was an island on and
around which ancient civilisations routinely met and fought.
Among other objects, the
exhibition will display several
Roman and Carthaginian
warship rams, originally
mounted on the fronts of ships
in order to batter enemy vessels. Together with helmets
and other finds, these objects
have proved the location of
the Battle of the Egadi Islands,
fought between Rome and
Carthage in 241 BC. The display
also includes a digital reconstruction of this battle, which
secured Romes control over
the Mediterranean.
July 2016
Image: Museo archeologico regionale di Camarina
EXHIBITION
STORMS, WAR,
AND SHIPWRECKS:
TREASURES FROM
THE SICILIAN SEAS
SOMME 100 AT KEW

6 July 2016
Image: RBG Kew
Jodrell Lecture Theatre and

Atrium, Kew Road, Kew,
Richmond, TW9 3DS
www.kew.org
020 8332 5655
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,

will mark the centenary of the
Battle of the Somme with a
talk considering the flora of the

Somme battlefield, in the context
of a wider discussion about the
relationship between plants and
conflict landscapes. Taking inspiration from The Flora of the Somme
Battlefield, a little-known article
published in 1917 by Kews then
Assistant Director (later Director),
Arthur Hill, Dr James Wearn and
Andrew Budden will take a journey
through the Somme battlefield and
EVENT
DATES TO
REMEMBER
ENTRY
28 JUNE-11 SEPT 2016
Blood-soaked Fields:
Waterloo and the
Somme compared
The Royal Green Jackets (Rifles)
Museum, Peninsula Barracks,
Romsey Road, Winchester,
Hampshire, SO23 8TS
www.rgjmuseum.co.uk
01962 828 549
4
explore the anthropology of

plants, people, conflict landscapes,
and remembrance.
FESTIVAL
This temporary exhibition will

reflect on two battles fought
100 years apart. Comparing
and contrasting Waterloo with
the first day of the Somme,
the installation considers the
dynamics of the battles, the
alliances formed, and the experiences of individual soldiers.
VARIOUS
34.50
MHM VISITS
FREE
TALK
ENTRY
ENTRY
7 JULY 2016
9-10 July 2016
Image: IWM
IWM Duxford, Duxford, Cambridge, CB22 4QR

www.iwm.org.uk
020 7416 5000
The Flying Legends Air Show will see a variety of pistonengine aircraft flying over the historic airfield at IWM
Duxford. World-famous for its unique flying displays
and formations, the air show promises an exciting and
entertaining day out for the whole family. On the ground,
guests can listen to the 1940s sound of The Manhattan
Dolls, get a vintage makeover, and have photographs
taken in a replica Spitfire. Admission to IWM Duxford
is included in the ticket price, so attendees can explore
all of the exhibitions and historic buildings that the site
has to offer. Advance booking only.
27 June-3 July 2016
Comprising over a hundred events, the Chalke Valley

History Festival presents a week of talks, discussions,
debates, workshops, and living history demonstrations in
the Wiltshire countryside. Military history events include
a talk about the Battle of the Somme by celebrated TV
historian Dan Snow; Field-Marshal Lord Bramalls discussion of his military career from D-Day to VE Day; battle
re-enactments; and an air display. Attendees can also
visit a scale model of a First World War trench, built
by a team of experts with help from local volunteers.
Parking is free and camping pitches are available (these
must be booked in advance).
THE FORTH AT WAR

20 May-28 August 2016
Scottish Fisheries Museum, Anstruther, Fife, KY10 3AB
www.scotfishmuseum.org
01333 310 628
Image: courtesy of the artist Jim Stormonth
Ondaatje Wing Theatre,

National Portrait Gallery,
St Martins Place, London,
WC2H 0HE
www.npg.org.uk
020 7306 0055
3
Manor Farm, Ebbesbourne Wake, Wiltshire, SP5 5JH

www.cvhf.org.uk
01722 781133
This new exhibition explores the history of the Royal Navy and the
strategic importance of the Firth of Forth during the First World War.
Home mainly to small fishing boats before the outbreak of war, the
Forth hosted everything from patrol boats to battleships between
1914 and 1918. Paintings of warships, auxiliary vessels, and
merchant ships by artist Jim Stormonth are on display alongside
material from the museums collections.
To mark the centenary of the

Battle of the Somme, historian
and archaeologist Andrew
Robertshaw outlines one of the
bloodiest conflicts in military
history. He will investigate what
life was like for a soldier on the
Western Front, while considering the actions of generals
and politicians too.
10 & 24 JULY 2016
EXHIBITION
A Bloody Necessity:
the Somme, 1916
Image: Andrew Chorley
FLYING LEGENDS AIR SHOW
CHALKE VALLEY HISTORY FESTIVAL
8
MUSEUM
ENTRY
Towton Battlefield
Walk
Rockingham Arms, Main Street,
Towton, Tadcaster, LS24 9PB
www.towton.org.uk
chairman@towton.org.uk
3
The Towton Battlefield Society

runs bi-monthly walks around
the site of one of the greatest
showdowns of the Wars of
the Roses. Walks are on
Sundays at 10.30am. Note:
the Rockingham Arms car
park is for pub-users only.
77
IN THE NEXT ISSUE

ON SALE 14 JULY
THE BRITISH AND THE GERMANS ON THE SOMME
ALSO NEXT ISSUE:
Peter Doyle reports on the experience of Kitcheners

New Army of wartime volunteers at the Battle of the Somme,
while Rob Schaefer views events from the far side of
no mans land.

How the Scots won the Civil War: Alexander Leslie,

the Covenanters, and the Battle of Marston Moor
The Brusilov Offensive, 1916
Regiment: the 10th Bombay Native Infantry in the 1857 Mutiny
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Published in the 100th
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images of Tommies on the
Western Front. Printed
alongside these photographs
are stories from soldiers who
This month, two lucky readers have the chance

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served on the front-line during
the First World War.
Written and compiled by bestselling author and investigative
journalist Ross Coulthart, each
book contains around 40 photographs taken by French couple
Louis and Antionette Thullier. In
2011, Coulthart led the team that
discovered some
4,000 abandoned
photographs taken
by the couple, in a farmhouse
in Vignacourt, France.
The collection covers many
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ACROSS
6 Short curved swords (9)
7 Spanish port attacked by Drake
in 1587 (5)
10 French commander killed in 1675
at the Battle of Salzbach (7)
11 Mine attached magnetically to a
ships hull (6)
12 Large fleet of ships (6)
13 US air base of the Vietnam War (3,5)
14 Treaty of ___, signed after the
Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-1667 (5)
16 Standard carried by a Roman
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21 NCO rank below a sergeant (8)
23 ___ book, means of obtaining
certain foodstuffs during World
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80
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? On which date in 1916
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JUNE ISSUE | MHM 69

ACROSS: 7 Reno, 8 Alexander, 10 Towton, 11 Rhodesia,
12 signals, 13 Bradley, 15/25 Son of the Morning Star,
19 African, 22 Bighorn, 24 Saracens, 26 Gorget,
27 Champlain, 28 Iraq.
DOWN: 1 Geronimo, 2 Boston, 3 Gauntlet, 4 Bear,
5 La Tour, 6 Cruise, 9 Dresden, 14 Red, 16 Okinawa,
17 OHiggins, 18 Nerve gas, 20 France, 21 Aleppo, 23 Harris.
25 ___ Bridge, battle fought in

South Carolina in February 1865 (6)
26 Nickname for a WWII airmans
life jacket (3,4)
27 Bloody ___, battle fought in July 1742
during the War of Jenkins Ear (5)
28 San ___, Spanish city sacked by British
and Portuguese troops in 1813 (9)
DOWN
1 Site of army hospital where Florence
Nightingale worked in the Crimean War (7)
2 Ottoman city occupied by Greece from
1919 to 1922 (6)
3 Carrier-based fighter built by Dassault,
which entered service in 1962 (8)
4 French city besieged by the English
in 1428-1429 (7)
5 Birds often used for carrying

messages in wartime (7)
8 Senior naval rank (7)
9 Battle of the Crimean War (4)
15 Long narrow-bladed swords (7)
17 US decoration introduced in
1942 (3,5)
18 Venezuelan statesman who led
a revolt against Spanish rule (7)
19 Surname of the actor who
portrayed Wellington in the 1970
film Waterloo (7)
20 Ottawa chief who rebelled against
the British in 1763 (7)
22 New ___, battle fought in Wexford
in March 1643 (4)
24 North Italian city annexed by the
Habsburg Empire in 1814 (6)
WINNER:
See! It does wash whiter than white.
David Gradwick
RUNNERS-UP
It was always the same: while Ted and Joe put their thinking
caps on, Dave just stood there and took the pith.
Calum Macleod
Look chaps, if we dont get this restaurant bill sorted out
then we are going to miss the rest of the war.
John Blakey
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81
g ro
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briefing
ALL YOU NEED TO

KNOW ABOUT
NADER
SHAH
fact
file
Nader Shah
Look at that Bling - who

was he?
Hailed by historians as a second Alexander and the Napoleon of the East,

Nader Shah was Shah (monarch) of Persia from 1736 to 1747. He was a
gifted military commander and used his prowess to build a huge empire
that included Iran, Afghanistan, the North Caucasus, northern India, and
much of central Asia. But, despite his military successes, Nader became
increasingly cruel in his old age, and was assassinated by his own officers.
Yikes! Was he destined

for greatness?
Not exactly. By the early 18th century, the Safavid dynasty had ruled Persia
for over 200 years. But their empire began to disintegrate under Sultan
Hussayn, due to internal rebellions, and Russian and Ottoman invasions.
Nader was not a member of the ruling Safavid elite. The ambitious son
of a peasant herdsman, his early years were turbulent: his father died when
he was 13, after which Nader and his mother were captured and forced into
slavery. Nader escaped and lived for a while as a robber, before developing
his skills as a soldier under a local tribal leader.
When Sultan Hussayn was forced to abdicate, rival factions emerged
fighting for control of imperial territories. Nader proved his courage and
leadership skills to Tahmasp II, Sultan Hussayns son, when he led an
uprising against one of Tahmasps rivals. He was soon appointed commander
of Tahmasps forces, and won a number of significant victories.
But how did the soldier

Become Shah?
Although Nader recaptured swathes of lost Safavid territory for the Shah,
Tahmasp grew increasingly jealous of his commanders military vigour.
Keen to best his underling, Tahmasp launched his own offensive against
the Ottomans at Yerevan in 1731. The siege of the city was a resounding
failure, and the Persians lost many of Naders recent gains in the resulting
peace treaty. Tahmasps reputation was severely damaged, and he was
deposed in favour of his baby son Abbas in 1732, for whom Nader was
regent. Nader proclaimed himself Shah in 1736.
What was his most

impressive victory?
There are almost too many to choose from. Zealous in his campaigns, Nader
pursued and conquered lands from local rebel groups, Ottomans, Russians,
and Mughals, among others, accumulating land, troops, and riches as he went.
82
Born:
probably 1698
Nationality:
Persian
Occupation(s): leader of Shah Tahmasp IIs army
(1726-1736); Shah of Persia (1736-1747)
Key qualities: military strategy, courage,
ruthlessness
Greatest achievement: victory over Ottoman
forces at the Battle of Yeghevrd in 1735
Died: 1747
He led a particularly strong force against the Mughal Empire at the Battle
of Karnal in February 1739, where he defeated a 300,000-strong army despite
being outnumbered six to one.
But perhaps his most tactically brilliant manoeuvre was his use of a hidden
contingent of troops to outflank the Ottomans at the Battle of Yeghevard in
June 1735, during the Ottoman-Persian War (1730-1735). Commandeering
enemy artillery, Naders forces launched a devastating attack on the Ottomans
and won a decisive victory.
So why hadn't I heard of him?
Despite his military genius, strategic brilliance, and daring conquests, Nader
Shah has been overshadowed in Western literature by near-contemporaries
such as Napoleon.
Historian Michael Axworthy has suggested that Victorian scholars neglected
Nader as they sought to claim Western superiority and justify Western colonialism
in the backward and barbaric East. So Nader has been largely overlooked in
the European historical tradition, and even today there are only a handful of
studies in English dedicated to his life and military career.
July 2016

Military History Monthly - July 2016

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July 2016 Issue 70 4.

Battle of the Alma

The battle that won the war?

Battle of Civitate, 1053

July 2016 Issue 70 4.50

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD:

his issue we focus on the two great British battles

ON THE COVER: Clash of the fleets:

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July 2016 | ISSUE 70

Notes from the Frontline

Tim Rayborn on the wartime

The Norman conquest

MHM examines the buildings the

MHM looks at C R W Nevinsons 1916

Behind the Image

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Hazel Blair reviews 36 Hours: Jutland 1916,

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ENLIVENING THE PAST

Professor Jeremy Blacks

MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

Our round-up of this months military history news

BATTLE BUS WESTERN FRONT TOUR

Images: National Army Museum of New Zealand

Images: Transport for London

London Transport Museums 102-yearold Battle Bus B2737 will journey to

The New Forest

MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

of the 1st Battalion New Zealand

loft s, which enabled messages

to woodland near Sway, tea parties

The tour will pay tribute to

New Forest to the theatre of war in

Image: Paul Jameson

The Battle of Hatfield Investigation Society

identified five other sites of potential interest

Image: Scott McIvor

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Military History Monthly, Thames Works,

020 8819 5580

Marine archaeologists from the Rhode Island

Medieval battle possibly located

Path of the Remembered

Roman fort found in London

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