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Before the First World War, Essex was a very different county from that which we know today. The economy was largely based on agriculture, and its people rarely travelled beyond its borders, or even out of their towns or villages. The war opened up a whole new world for the people of Essex. Men from the county enlisted in Kitchener's Army and travelled abroad, and many troops came into the camps and barracks which sprang up around the countryside. Some of these men came from all points of the British Empire and had enlisted to fight for the mother country. Essex was a key area during the war. Situated on the east coast, it was thought that the enemy could potentially use it as a site for invasion, so many defences were set up all round the county. Essex was subjected to great danger and harsh times by the enemy in the form of air raids from Zeppelins, and later, from the more potent aeroplane attacks. This well-illustrated and informative book sets out the experiences of the county and its inhabitants against what was happening in the broader theatre of war. It offers a valuable insight into life for Essex folk in the First World War and will appeal to anyone interested in the county's history.
It is easy to believe that the only part that Britain’s railways played in the First World War was to carry the soldiers to the ships that would take them to France. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Without the help from the railways it is unlikely that the war would have been over as quickly as it was. In Britain’s Railways in the First World War Michael Foley examines how the railway system and its workers proved to be a vital part of the war effort, one contemporary writer even commenting that he thought they were as significant as the navy. The book describes how the enlistment of railway troops for the Royal Engineers to meet the increasing transport demands of the military was to bleed the civilian system dry as skilled railwaymen were sent to work at the front. In addition, the military commandeered thousands of Britain’s railway vehicles, sending them to each of the theatres of war, and turned the already stressed railway workshops away from maintaining what remained of the country’s railways and rolling stock so they could produce armaments for the forces instead. The book also reveals how the British were so far behind their enemies and allies in the use of railway support to the front lines that they had to plead for help from Canada.
The words of Unknown Warriors resonate as powerfully today as when first written. The book offers a very personal glimpse into the hidden world of the military field hospital where patients struggled with pain and trauma, and nurses fought to save lives and preserve emotional integrity.The book’s author was one of a select number of fully trained military nurses who worked in hospital trains and casualty clearing stations during the First World War, coming as close to the front as a woman could. Kate Luard was already a war veteran when she arrived in France in 1914, aged 42, having served in the Second Boer War. At the height of the Battle of Passchendaele, she was in charge of a casualty clearing station with a staff of forty nurses and nearly 100 nursing orderlies.She was awarded the RRC and Bar (a rare distinction) and was Mentioned in Despatches for gallant and distinguished service in the field. Through her letters home she conveyed a vivid and honest portrait of war. It is also a portrait of close family affection and trust in a world of conflict. In publishing some of these letters in Unknown Warriors her intention was to bear witness to the suffering of the ordinary soldier.
Widows of the Great War is the first major account of the experience of women who had to cope with the death of their husbands during the conflict and then rebuild their lives. It explores each stage of their bereavement, from the shock of receiving the news that their husband had been killed, through grief and mourning to the practical issues of compensation and a widow's pension. The way in which the state and society treated the widows during this process is a vital theme running through the book as it reveals in vivid detail how the bureaucracy of war helped and hindered them as they sought to come to terms with their loss. Andrea Hetherington also describes often overlooked aspects of bereavement, and she features many telling first-hand accounts from the widows themselves which show how they saw their situation and how they reacted to it. Her study gives us a fascinating insight into the way in which the armed services and the government regarded war widows during the early years of the twentieth century.
The story of First World War deserters who were shot at dawn, then pardoned nearly a century later has often been told, but these 306 soldiers represent a tiny proportion of deserters. More than 80,000 cases of desertion and absence were tried at courts martial on the home front but these soldiers have been ignored. Andrea Hetherington, in this thought-provoking and meticulously researched account, sets the record straight by describing the deserters who disappeared from camps and barracks within Great Britain at an alarming rate. She reveals how they employed a range of survival strategies, some ridding themselves of all connection with the military while others hid in plain sight. Their reasons for desertion varied. Some were already living a life of crime whilst others were conscientious objectors who refused to respond to their call-up papers. Boredom, protest, troubles at home or physical and mental disabilities all played their part in men deciding to go on the run. Andrea Hetherington’s timely book gives us a vivid insight into a hitherto overlooked aspect of the First World War.
In 1914 Billericay was a peaceful compact village of about 2000 inhabitants. There was the High Street, Back Street, which today is called Chapel Street, and Back Lane which is now Western Road. Within half a mile of the High Street there were groups of cottages; Sun Street had some, which are still there today. There were others in Laindon Road at the beginning before you come to the Roman Catholic Church, and Stock Road, along with Norsey Road and Western Road. All of this policed by a couple of local Constables.In London Road there was Hodges Farm and others along Laindon Road where it verges on to Little Burstead, Norsey Road, Stock Road and Jacksons Lane. The roads back then were no more than dirt roads. They weren't flat and smooth and made of tar, but luckily horses were still king of the road.In 1914, between the bottom end of the High Street and the top end at Sun Street, there were only a total of 54 premises including private houses shops, pubs, a bank, Post Office, the Police station, two Blacksmiths, the undertakers, a school and a Church. The war began in August of that year and like the pace of life in the village, it started slowly for the people of Billericay. To start with it was something which they only read about in the newspapers. During the war soldiers started to be billeted in the town. There was an Army camp in Mountnessing Road opposite Station Road for the ordinary soldier, but the officers were billeted in people's houses. Initially there was excitement and enthusiasm about the war but when some of the local men who had gone off to fight in it were getting killed, suddenly it became very real and personal as local families started losing loved onesSeptember 1916 saw a Zeppelin crash in a field at nearby Great Burstead. The burnt and disfigured remains of the German airmen left nobody in doubt just of how real and painful the war was.'February 1918 even saw German soldiers come to the town as Prisoners of war interned in the local Billericay Work House. They were the enemy, but not monsters, just ordinary men like those from Billericay who had gone off to fight in a war that they most probably didn't want to be fighting in. When it was all over some would return to their families to get on with their lives and for the ones who didn't make it back, there would be the commemoration of their names on a war memorial for generations to remember forever more.
Almost 400 men from the Chelmsford were lost in the Great War. This book explores how the experience of war impacted on the Town, from the initial enthusiasm for sorting out the German Kaiser in time for Christmas 1914, to the gradual realization of the enormity of human sacrifice the families of Chelmsford were committed to as the war stretched out over the next four years. A record of the growing disillusion of the people, their tragedies and hardships and a determination to see it through. The Great War affected everyone. At home there were wounded soldiers in military hospitals, refugees from Belgium and later on German prisoners of war. There were food and fuel shortages and disruption to schooling. The role of women changed dramatically and they undertook a variety of work undreamed of in peacetime. Meanwhile, men serving in the armed forces were scattered far and wide. Extracts from contemporary letters reveal their heroism and give insights into what it was like under battle conditions.
The First World War, with its mud and the slaughter of the trenches, is often taken as the ultimate example of the futility of war. Generals, safe in their headquarters behind the lines, sent millions of men to their deaths to gain a few hundred yards of ground. Writers, notably Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, provided unforgettable images of the idiocy and tragedy of the war. Yet this vision of the war is at best a partial one, the war only achieving its status as the worst of wars in the last thirty years. At the time, the war aroused emotions of pride and patriotism. Not everyone involved remembered the war only for its miseries. The generals were often highly professional and indeed won the war in 1918. In this original and challenging book, Dan Todman shows views of the war have changed over the last ninety years and how a distorted image of it emerged and became dominant.