All articles in Military
7th June, 2017 in Military
The legacy of Messines
‘Gentleman, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography.’ So said General Plumer the day before 600 tons of explosives were detonated under the German position on Messines Ridge. The explosion was heard by Lloyd George in Downing Street, and as f…
5th June, 2017 in Local & Family History, Military
Woodchester Wayside Cross: Britain’s first war memorial
Built between July 1916 and May 1917 the Wayside Cross at Woodchester was probably the first war memorial in the country. The idea of a memorial was first conceived by Father Hugh Pope, who was Prior of Woodchester, in 1915 following the deaths of two parishioners: Lt Maurice Dea…
24th May, 2017 in Military
The Battle of Goose Green
Goose Green was the first and the longest battle of the Falklands War. It represented a fourteen-hour struggle waged by the Second Battalion the Parachute Regiment (2 Para), pitted against various sub-units of the Argentine army and air force over nearly featureless, wind-swept a…
18th May, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, Military, Society & Culture
Escaping from Hungary’s Iron Curtain
In 1956 Hungary was separated from the West by what was a believed-to-be impenetrable structure. Churchill called it the ‘Iron Curtain’. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ‘Iron Curtain’ has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capit…
18th May, 2017 in Military
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission: A centenary of commemoration
Before the First World War it was the fate of the ‘ordinary’ soldier to be forgotten. Even when the war started, there was no system or organisation in place to mark or care for the graves of servicemen and women. One remarkable man changed that, and by creating the Commonwealth…
17th May, 2017 in Military
The Siege of Mafeking: A timeline of events
‘It is understood that you have armed Bastards, Fingos and Baralongs against us – in this you have committed an enormous act of wickedness … reconsider the matter, even if it cost you the loss of Mafeking … disarm your blacks and thereby act the part of a white man in a white man…
17th May, 2017 in History, Military
Fact vs fiction: The Battle of Lincoln explored
The Battle of Lincoln took place on 20 May 1217, pitting an army of baronial rebels and French invaders against forces loyal to the 9-year-old King Henry III and led by his regent, William Marshal. Historians Dr Sean McGlynn and Dr Catherine Hanley have written about the battle i…
16th May, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, Military
Spying in Berlin during the Cold War
Some younger readers may pigeon-hole the Cold War that ended over a quarter of a century ago with those other events of the twentieth century like the First and Second World Wars. Yet, for those of us who were children during the latter, with memories of German bombers overhead,…
10th May, 2017 in Military
Four key events in Britain’s nuclear weapons history
The United Kingdom is one of five countries who have nuclear weapon capabilities and have signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. A further three countries have declared their nuclear weapons capability (India, Pakistan and North Korea) and Israel is believ…
8th May, 2017 in Aviation, Military
UFOs and the Cold War
For centuries, strange lights, objects and celestial wonders in the sky have warned of impending doom. This sense of unease at the sighting of extraordinary objects flying above rang especially true during the Cold War. In the early 20th Century mystery lights over Great Britain…
13th April, 2017 in History, Military
The Battle of Culloden 1746
Culloden Battlefield is located five miles east of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. The Battle of Culloden, the culmination of the Jacobite Rising of 1745, was fought on 16 April 1746 and is the last full-scale pitch battle fought on the British Isles. Even if the eighteenth…
11th April, 2017 in Local & Family History, Military
Exercise Tiger: D-Day training at Slapton Sands
Exercise Tiger was the code name for one in a series of large-scale rehearsals for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, which took place in April 1944 on Slapton Sands in Devon. Slapton’s unspoiled beach of gravel, fronting a shallow freshwater ley and backed by grassy lands seemed pe…