18 year old French Resistance fighter Simone Segouin captured 25 Nazis during the fall of Chartres

In 1944, when [Simone Segouin] was only 18 years old, she joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans – a combat group made up of militant communists and French nationalists. Her father served in the Great War and he was a great inspiration for her to join the resistance. She was known by her nom de guerre Nicole Minet…

Source: 18 year old French Resistance fighter Simone Segouin captured 25 Nazis during the fall of Chartres

Volunteer Nurses in the Great War: 1914 | Mrs Daffodil Digresses

The fashionable women of England are very anxious to help. At least they say they are, and never would we doubt a lady’s word. But their good intentions are thwarted on every side. Lord Kitch…

Source: Volunteer Nurses in the Great War: 1914 | Mrs Daffodil Digresses

War Toys for Christmas: 1914-1917 | Mrs Daffodil Digresses

WAR TOYS FOR THE KIDS

Toy Makers Take Cue from War Now Raging, and Miniature Armies and Ordnance is in Style

Santa Claus will fill the stockings of Emporia boys and girls this year with guns, cannon, soldiers and warlike toys such as they never before have seen. It will be a military Christmas and the Emporia youngsters will fight the battles of the Argonne and Ypres like the real soldiers across the Atlantic, only the soldiers will be tin and the guns small and harmless.

The Emporia stores have their toys on display this week and in their big stock are many war implements. Miniature Krupp guns will slaughter tin soldiers in front of the fireplace Christmas Day, and the boys will imitate the Belgians and Germans with an assortment of…

Source: War Toys for Christmas: 1914-1917 | Mrs Daffodil Digresses

Austro-Hungarian Red Book: Count Berchtold to the Austro-Hungarian Mission, 25 July 1914 – Part IV | The July Crisis: 100 Years On, 1914-2014

Originally posted on The July Crisis: 100 Years On, 1914-2014.

Leopold Count Berchtold

On 25 July 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Leopold Count Berchtold (pictured), circulated a memoir to all Austro-Hungarian diplomatic missions. The memoir formed the basis of Austria-Hungary’s view of Serbia, and the Dual Monarchy’s rational during the July Crisis. From the Austro-Hungarian perspective, it lists the different forms of Serbian aggression endured since the beginning of the century, culminating in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo. The following is part IV of the memoir.

Circular Note to the Austro-Hungarian Mission. Vienna, 25 July 1914.

A few months previously, research with regard to treasonable propaganda had been instituted on Luka Aljinovicz’s account. In the course of these investigations three witnesses had testified against Aljinovicz, who, they said had in 1913 received 100 dinar from the Narodna odbrana for purposes of propaganda, but more especially for an attempt upon the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and a secret student society had given him the same sum.

This shows how the criminal agitation of the Narodna odbrana was recently concentrated upon the person of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

All these facts lead to the conclusion that the Narodjia odbrana, and the elements hostile to Austria-Hungary grouped around it, had recently considered the…

via Austro-Hungarian Red Book: Count Berchtold to the Austro-Hungarian Mission, 25 July 1914 – Part IV | The July Crisis: 100 Years On, 1914-2014.

The Daily Retro: World War I

The Müscleheaded Blog

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Austro-Hungarian Red Book: Count Berchtold to the Austro-Hungarian Missions, 25 July 1914 – Part I

The July Crisis: 100 Years On, 1914-2014

On 25 July 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Leopold Count Berchtold (pictured), circulated a memoir to all Austro-Hungarian diplomatic missions, with slight variation to the introductory paragraph depending on the mission. The memoir formed the basis of Austria-Hungary’s view of Serbia, and the Dual Monarchy’s rational during the July Crisis. From the Austro-Hungarian perspective, it lists the different forms of Serbian aggression endured since the beginning of the century. The following is part I of the memoir.

Leopold Count Berchtold

Circular Note to the Austro-Hungarian Mission. Vienna, 25 July 1914.

You will find enclosed the dossier, announced in the Circular Note to the Powers, which contains details on the propaganda for Greater Servia, and its connection with the crime of Sarajevo. This dossier is for your information and for communication to the government to which you are accredited.

Memoir.

The movement, which has its origin in Servia…

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The Italian Naval Convention 10 May 1915

War and Security

Italy, although a member of the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany, had remained neutral in 1914. It had not been consulted beforehand and the treaty did not require it to participate in an attack on Serbia. Austria-Hungary was Italy’s traditional enemy and incorporating the 800,000 Italian speakers around Trieste and in the Trentino region of the Hapsburg empire into Italy was the main objective of Italian nationalists.

Italy had joined the Triple Alliance in 1882 for defensive reasons: it was too weak to fight Austria-Hungary on its own and it considered the German army to be the best in Europe. However, Italy and Austria-Hungary both strengthened their navies and the fortifications on their mutual frontier whilst supposedly allied.

Once war between the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary and the Entente of France, Russia and the United Kingdom had begun, neutrality was the obvious and most popular course for…

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The French at Gallipoli 1915

Have I overdone it with the Gallipoli posts yet?! It’s very difficult not to as there are so many interesting posts out there today.

Great War Photos

Today on the centenary of the landings at Gallipoli much focus will be on the Australian and New Zealand troops who landed there in April 1915. One of the forgotten combatants of the campaign French soldiers who served alongside their British and Commonwealth comrades.

Some 80,000 French soldiers fought at Gallipoli as part of the Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient with almost 27,000 casualties. Many of the French troops were from Colonial units drawn from the far corners of the French Empire. This image comes from a French source and depicts a French Zouave in the trenches at Gallipoli in 1915 from the 17e division d’infanterie coloniale who took part in the fighting at Krithia.

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Gas! Gas! Gas! Second Ypres Centenary

Great War Photos

Today is the Centenary of the start of the Second Battle of Ypres and a hundred years since the first use of poison gas on the battlefields of the Great War. Poison gas was a weapon outlawed under the Hague Convention but by 1915 the Germans viewed the conflict as a ‘Total War’ and that every weapon was justifiable for victory; there was also belief that the Allies had gas weapons too and it was just a matter of time before they were implemented.

After much preparations and a trial use of the gas, the poison cloud was released at 5pm on 22nd April 1915. More than 170 tons of chlorine gas was released over a 6.5km front, on positions held by French Colonial and Territorial troops.More than 6,000 of them quickly became casualties, having no protection against the gas. Most died within ten minutes as the chlorine gas irritatedtheir…

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Salvaged artefacts from war-torn steamer return to Barry – BBC News

Originally posted on BBC News

The paddle steamer PS Barry saw action during both World War One and World War Two and now, over a century since she left the port after which she was named, some of her artefacts have finally come home.

Originally designed in 1907 for a sleepy life carrying tourists along the Bristol Channel, she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy in 1914 and went on to save thousands of lives not once, but twice.

Surviving both the Gallipoli landings and Dunkirk, she was sunk in a bombing raid off Sunderland on 5 July 1941, and lay undiscovered until 2010.

Now a group of enthusiasts have purchased her salvaged helm, wheel and brass windows, and hope to display them in time for the centenary of PS Barry’s finest hour.

Keith Greenway of the Merchant Navy Association in Barry said: “She started the Great War quite quietly, housing German prisoners and carrying supplies…

See original: Salvaged artefacts from war-torn steamer return to Barry – BBC News.

Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial

Great War Photos

Today is the centenary of the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle, the first major British assault of the Great War. It was not the first attack on the German lines as the trench war had begun in late 1914 and in December there had been several localised attacks. But these had been small scale affairs compared to Neuve-Chapelle which saw more than 40,000 British and Indian troops make a major assault on the village. The Indian Army had taken part in First Ypres and much of the fighting in late 1914 but with the Indian Corps now accounting for a sizeable part of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders this was one of their major battles of the Great War on the Western Front.

Indian Troops 1915

The Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial was designed by Sir Hubert Baker and unveiled in October 1927. It commemorates more than 4,700 Indian troops…

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The First VC Awarded to a Submariner

War and Security

The first submariner to be awarded the Victoria Cross was Lieutenant Norman Holbrook, captain of HMS B11. He received Britain’s highest award for gallantry after his boat sank the elderly Ottoman pre-dreadnought battleship Messudieh (alternatively Mesudiye) on 13 December 1914.

The British Admiralty, keen to move as many ships as possible to the Grand Fleet, had proposed that the blockade of the Dardanelles be left to the French. However, the threat from the German battlecruiser Goeben, now flying the Ottoman flag, meant that the French insisted that the British battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable should remain.

Consequently, the blockading force consisted of Indefatigable, the light cruiser HMS Dublin and the French pre-dreadnought battleshipsGaulois, Vérité, St Louis and Charlemagne, the armoured cruiser Amiral Charner and seaplane carrier Foudre. Each navy also contributed six destroyers and three submarines.[1]

The British submarines were B9, B10 and

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The First Zeppelin Raid on the United Kingdom 19 January 1915

War and Security

On 3 September 1914 the Admiralty was put in charge of the defence of the United Kingdom against air attack. Its strategy was to use its limited number of aircraft in attacks on airship bases rather than on defensive patrols.[1]

A seaplane carrier raid was launched against the airship base near Cuxhaven on 25 December 1914. An attack on the Emden base was planned, but was postponed on 14 January 1915 because the weather was unsuitable for seaplanes.[2]

Night attacks were expected in 1914, so some restrictions on lighting were introduced in London, Birmingham and coastal towns. These did not entail a full blackout because of the potential effect on road safety and business. Major thoroughfares and bridges had their lighting broken up and parks were given lights in order to stop enemy airmen using them to find their targets. Lights on public transport were reduced to the…

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Submarines in 1914

War and Security

Previous entries in this blog have dealt with the several sinkings of British cruisers by German U-boats: HMS Pathfinder by U21 on 5 September 1914, HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue by U9 on 22 September and HMS Hawke on 15 October 1914, also by U9.

British submarines also scored successes in the early stages of the war, with E9 sinking the German cruiser SMS Helaon 13 September and B11 the Ottoman pre-dreadnought battleship Mesudiyeon 13 December 1914. The first loss of a submarine to a warship had come as early as 9 August, when HMS Birmingham rammed and sunk U15.

The main impact of submarines in the rest of the war and in the Second World War was against merchant shipping, although they continued to sink warships. In the early stages of the First World War, however, they were used mainly against warships.

The rules…

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The Battle of the Falkland Islands 8 December 1914

War and Security

Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee’s East Asia Squadron of the armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst (flag) and Gneisenau and the light cruisers SMS Dresden, Leipzig and Nürnberg arrived at the Falkland Islands on the morning of 8 December. Their intention was to destroy the local facilities and wireless station

These were the ships that had won the Battle of Coronel on 1 November. The previous entry in this series described the intervening events, including the despatch of the battlecruisers, HMS Invincible (flag of Vice Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee) and Inflexible to the South Atlantic.

The Falkland Islanders had expected to be attacked by Spee since they learnt of Coronel on 25 November. They had formed a local defence force in case of invasion, whilst Captain Heathcoat Grant had deliberately beached the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Canopus on mud to protect the harbour. A signal station had been established on…

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