Military History Monthly - November 2015

www.military-history.org

November 2015 Issue 62 £4.50

++Triumph of the WillTriumph of the Will

PUNCH PERFECTPartridge’s best war art

RISE OF THEROMAN NAVYThe First Punic War


UNITED IN WAR, DIVIDED BACK HOMEThe Irish at Messines, 1917

UNITED IN WAR, DIVIDED BACK HOMEThe Irish at Messines, 1917

the

MHM

Military power sometimes works simply by virtue of itsexistence. It has its effect without being used. This isespecially true of naval power.

If maritime supremacy goes unchallenged, there are nobig battles to report. Because of this, naval power is ofteninvisible, or at least little noticed.

The Roman Empire provides a clear example. Everyoneknows about the legions – the kit, the training, thediscipline, the professionalism, their role in creating anddefending the Empire. But what about the fleet?

In our special this issue, Marc DeSantis, author of anew book on the subject, argues that the founding ofthe Roman Navy, in the context of the mid 3rd centuryFirst Punic War, was a decisive event in Rome’s ascentto imperial greatness.

The war lasted a quarter of a century. The combinedlosses are estimated at 300,000 men and 1,200 ships.It was one of the greatest wars in Roman history, andthe only one fought as much at sea as on land. And itlaunched Rome on its career of overseas conquest – acareer underwritten by the maritime supremacy wrestedfrom the Carthaginians between 264 and 241 BC.

Also this issue, we have Chris Bambery’s account ofPrestonpans, the forgotten Jacobite victory of September1745, Tom Farrell on Ireland’s divided loyalties duringthe First World War, and Sarah De Nardi’s analysis of theItalian Resistance in 1943-1945.

CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH’S EXPERTS

SUBSCRIBE NOW

TOM FARRELLis a freelance jour-nalist interestedin military historyand the evolutionof conflicts. He hasbeen published

in the Irish Times, Irish Independent,Guardian and Jane’s Intelligence Review.

MARC DeSANTISis an historianand attorney whowrites extensivelyon military histori-cal subjects.His book about

naval warfare in the Punic Wars, RomeSeizes the Trident, is published this year.

CHRIS BAMBERYis a TV producerand presenter,an author, anda journalist. Hisbooks includeA People’s History

of Scotland and The Second World War:A Marxist History.

DR SARAH DE NARDI is a landscape archaeologist, oral historian, and anthropolo-gist. She is

currently a Research Associate at the University of Durham.

MILITARY www.military-history.org

November 2015 Issue 62 £4.50

ROUTINREDCOAT

++m f t illTriumph of the Will


RISE OF THEO NAV

Fi t P W


the Jacobites won at Prestonpans, 1745

UNITED IN WAR,I i t i 1 7

UNITED IN WAR,DIVIDED BACK HOMEThe Irish at Messines, 1917

the

ON THE COVER: Prince Charles Edward Stuart, known as the ‘Young Pretender’. The background is part of The Dawn March through the Riggonhead Defi le by Andrew Hillhouse.

Image: The Battle of Prestonpans (1745) Heritage Trust.

Now you can have your opinionson everything MHM heard online as well as in print. Follow us on Twitter @MilHistMonthly, or take a look at our Facebook page for daily news, books, and article updates at www.facebook.com/MilitaryHistoryMonthly.

Think you have spotted an error? Disagree with a viewpoint? Enjoying the mag? Visit www.military-history.org to post your comments on a wide range of different articles. Alternatively, send an email to [email protected]

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

ADD US NOW and have your say

Fill in the form on p.78 and SAVE UP TO 20%

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 Offi cer, military historian, and lecturer

Nick Hewitt Historian, National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth

Nigel Jones Historian, biographer, and journalist

Alastair MassieHead 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

Dominic Tweddle Director-General, National Museum of the Royal Navy

Greg BaynePresident, American Civil War Table of the UK

MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLYwww.military-history.org 3

FEATURES

18

42

50

Welcome 3

Letters 7

Notes from the Frontline 8

Behind the Image 10MHM looks at a photograph ofthe masses of artillery shells thatwere produced during WWI.

Conflict Scientists 12Patrick Boniface assesses thework of German chemist ChristianFriedrich Schönbein.

War Culture 14Mark Bryant examines the warcartoons of Punch cartoonistSir Bernard Partridge.

INCLUDES:BackgroundTimelineThe fleetThe battle

Battle maps

14 Resistenza ItalianaThe Italian Resistanceof 1943-1945Sarah De Nardi uncovers the hiddenhistory of the mass anti-Fascist resistancemovement that defeated the Nazioccupation after the fall of Mussolini.

UPFRONT

The Irish at MessinesHow soldiers from North andSouth fought together in WWITom Farrell explores the issues thatsplit a nation in an already dividedworld between 1914 and 1918.

November 2015 | ISSUE 62

MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY4 November 2015

26

The First Punic War at SeaThis month MHM focuses on Rome’s naval battles with the Carthaginians, and explains how the Roman navy emerged as the supreme force in the Mediterranean during the 3rd century BC.

ON THE COVERPrestonpans The forgotten Jacobite victory of 1745Chris Bambery describes how an army of Highland Scots outmanoeuvred the Redcoats at the marshes of the Firth of Forth.

MHM CONTENTS

THE DEBRIEF

IN THE FIELD | MHM VISITSMuseum | 68Stephen Miles travels to Poland tovisit the Museum of the Second WorldWar in Westerplatte.

Listings | 72The best military history events.

Competition | 80Win a copy of The Cooler King.

Briefing Room | 82All you need to know aboutthe Bristol Bloodhound Mark II.

INTELLIGENCE | MHM OFF DUTY


www.military-history.orgTel: 020 8819 5580

EDITORIALEditor: Neil [email protected]

Acting Assistant Editor: Polly Heff er

Books Editor: Keith [email protected]

Editor-at-large: Andrew [email protected]

Sub Editor: Simon Coppock

Art Editor: Mark [email protected]

Designer: Lauren [email protected]

Managing Editor: Maria [email protected]

Managing Director: Rob Selkirk

COMMERCIAL

Advertising Sales Manager: Mike TraylenT: 020 8819 5360 E: [email protected]

Advertising Sales: Tiff any HeasmanT: 020 8819 5362 E: tiff [email protected]

Advertising Sales: Grace BigginsT: 020 8819 5361E: [email protected]

Marketing Manager: Emma Watts-PlumpkinT: 020 8819 5575 E: [email protected]

Acting Business Manager: Bree ForrerT: 020 8819 5576 E: [email protected]

Commercial Director: Libby Selkirk

SUBSCRIPTIONS

UK: £45.95 (12 issues) RoW: £55.95 (12 issues)Back issues: £5.50 each / £6.50 non-UK (inc p&p)Binders: (hold 12 copies) £15 / £20Slip Cases: (hold 12 copies) £15 / £20

Military History Monthly SubscriptionsThames Works, Church Street, London, W4 2PDTel: 020 8819 5580 Fax: 020 8819 [email protected]/subscribe

NEWS DISTRIBUTIONUK & Rest of World: COMAG, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, UB7 7QE Tel: 01895 444 055

Printed in England by William GibbonsMilitary History Monthly (ISSN 2048-4100) is published monthly by Current Publishing Ltd, Thames Works, Church Street, London, W4 2PD

© Current Publishing Ltd 2015 All rights reserved. Text and pictures are copyright restricted and must not be reproduced without permission of the publishers. The publishers, editors and authors accept no responsibility in respect of any goods, promotions or services which may be advertised or referred to in this magazine. Every eff ort has been made to secure permission for copyright material. In the event of any material being used inadvertently or where it has been impossible to contact the copyright owner, acknowledge-ment will be made in a future issue. All liability for loss, disappointment, negligence or damage caused by reliance on the information contained within this publication is hereby excluded. The opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher.

SUBSCRIBE | MHM OFFERSTurn to p.78 for subscriptions and special off ers.

6858

BACK AT BASE | MHM REVIEWSWar on Film | 58Taylor Downing reviews the Nazi propaganda fi lm Triumph of the Will.

Book of the Month | 62Jan Woolf reviews The Show Must Go On: Popular Song in Britain during the First

World War by John Mullen.

Books | 64David Flintham reviews Attrition: Fighting the First World War by William Philpott and The Eyes of the Desert Rats by David Syrett, while rancesca Trowse examines

Agincourt by Anne Curry.

SICILIAN REVELATIONThank you for your excellent new ‘Briefing Room’ back page (MHM 58). I was captivated by the low-down on the Roman Imperial Carroballista – the giant catapult or crossbow mounted on a cart. I had no idea that artillery was invented by the Greeks, let alone that it first appears at the Sicilian city of Syracuse in 399 BC. We have just returned from a blissfully (undramatic!) summer holiday there.

Thanks for the good read, Penny Deanna

Harrow

FRENCH PERSPECTIVEI read your recent features on Agincourt (MHM 61) and found them incredibly enjoyable, well thought out, and very insightful about the lessons that could be learned about English society of the ‘middling sort’.

There was, I feel, only one deficiency in that more attention could and, indeed, should have been paid to French society and the major agents that opposed Henry.

Two other marvellous articles on the French military (‘The Defence of Camerone’ and ‘Behind the Image’) appeared in the issue, so it was frus-trating to have the French reduced to cardboard antagonists. An opportunity was missed to examine Azincourt from a perspective that would be novel to many of your readers.

Alex MeeLondon

Your thoughts on issues raised in Military History Monthly

DAD’S ARMY WITH GRITMany congratulations on a fi ne article by Mike Relph (MHM 61), detailing the WWII defence of southern England.

Articles like this will help younger readers get behind the stereotypifi cation of life on the Second World War Home Front. The reality lived by Captain Mainwaring’s Home Guard platoon would have been a lot grimmer and grittier than the humorous TV series made out.

The terrifi c use of contemporary and original photographs showing the same village scenes really brought home exactly what was beingdefended, how, and why. Virtually every walk we take into a local town’s high street or village green is a walk through an intense period of this country’s very recent history.

Such a great pity then that, for obvious security reasons, only too few pictures of the WWII local defences were taken, or have survived.Jack Leatherhead

London

L E T T ER OF THE MONTH

TWITTER@MilHistMonthly

FACEBOOKwww.facebook.com/MilitaryHistoryMonthly

22 Sept 2015The Battle of

Bannockburn has been

voted Britain’s most

decisive battle in a new

BBC poll. Do you agree?

24 Sept 2015The Siege of Przemysl

began #OnThisDay in

1914. Read our special

feature on the Eastern

Front, published in issue

49 of MHM.

25 Sept 2015Harald Hardrada

died #OnThisDay in 1066

at #StamfordBridge. Is he

one of your top 5 Vikings?

020 8819 5580

@MilHistMonthly MilitaryHistoryMonthly

[email protected]

WHAT DO YOU THINK?Let us know! Military History Monthly, Thames

Works, Church Street, London, W4 2PD

@MilHistMonthly1 Sept 2015Open to the public today:

The Sinews of War: Arms and Armour from the Age of Agincourt exhibition

@WallaceMuseum

@MilHistMonthly3 Sept 2015 #OnThisDay in 1939,

Britain and France

declared war on Germany.

The Battle of the Atlantic

began hours later, with

the sinking of SS Athenia

@MilHistMonthly22 Sept 2015Yorkists & Lancastrians

fought #OnThisDay in

1459 at Blore Heath. Do

you know your WoTR?

www.military-history.org/articles/5-myths-about-the-wars-of-the-roses.htm


Please note: letters may be edited for length; views expressed here are those of our readers, and do not necessarily refl ect those of the magazine.

The famous Holocaustexhibition at the ImperialWar Museum in London is tobe completely updated andrenewed alongside the develop-ment of the WWII galleries,thanks to a £5m gift from thePears Foundation. Research anddevelopment is already underway, and the new exhibitionshould be open in 2021.

Between 1933 and 1945, Jewswere targeted, segregated, andexterminated. The Holocaustsaw the Nazis murder millions

of Jewish and non-Jewish people.Since opening in 2000, theHolocaust exhibition has seenmore than 1m people visitevery year to explore the photo-graphs, documents, newspapers,artefacts, posters, and filmsshown in its galleries.

At the heart of the new exhibi-tion will be personal stories andsurvivor testimonies, which willbe surrounded by an array ofobjects, artefacts, and materialto help visitors consider thecauses and consequences of

the Holocaust.The exhibition is

a vital resource forstudents, 21,000 ofwhom visit everyyear to take part inlearning sessions atthe museum. TheIWM will also bid tobe the site of the newHolocaust Memorialand Learning Centre,

led by the UK HolocaustMemorial Foundation.

Diane Lees, Director-Generalof Imperial War Museums, said,

‘We wish to play our part to

ensure that Britain has apermanent fitting memorialand meaningful educationalresources for generationsto come.’

Our round-up of this month’s military history news

CROMWELL’S CAPTIVES REVEALEDand Castle of the city, these buildingshaving been taken out of the hands ofthe Church of England in 1645.

The skeletons were uncoveredduring construction work in Durhamcity centre in 2013. They were notburied in a traditional Christianarrangement but carelessly throwninto mass graves. Quick burials likethis are often associated with plaquepits. However, historically, plague pits in Durham were buried outside thecity centre and contained a mixtureof men and women of all ages. Theywere also covered quickly to preventfurther spread of the disease.

These bones, discovered onPalace Green close to the Castle

and Cathedral, were all from men,most aged between 13 and 25 years old. Some bones showed signs of scratching and gnawing from small animals – suggesting they were left without a covering of soil for a time.

This pointed to a darker period in Durham’s past - the soldiers from the Battle of Dunbar who were imprisoned here. Further analysis confi rmed this - isotopic analyses suggest many of the individuals were of Scottish origin. There were no indications of healed trauma or

wounds such as might have been received in battle, which implies the soldiers were relatively new recruits rather than seasoned campaigners.

It seems that the centuries-old mystery of what happened to the bodies of the Scottish Covenanting army can now be laid to rest.


Skeletons discovered in two 17th-century mass graves in Durham are the remains of Scottish prisoners captured aft er the Battle of Dunbar, according to new analysis.

The Battle of Dunbar in 1650 – between the English Parliamentarian army under Oliver Cromwell and the Scottish Covenanting army supporting Charles II – was one of the shortest and bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Aft er having been defeated, thousands of Scottish soldiers were taken prisoner and marched over 100 miles to Durham. Many died from malnutrition, disease, and cold during the long trek from Scotland and during imprisonment in the Cathedral

New funding for IWM Holocaust displays

The Black Book, a ‘wanted list’ of prominent British residents who were to be arrested on the successful invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany, has been translated into English

and digitised for the first time.

The list, compiled by SS-Oberführer Walter Schellenberg (shown right), documents 2,820 of the Reich’s most wanted people, described as ‘enemies of the state, traitors and undesirables, marked for punish-ment or death’. It includes notable names including politicians, authors, journalists, actors, scientists, musicians, heads of industry, and religious leaders. Noël Coward, Virginia Woolf, and H G Wells are all on the list, as well as Conrad Fulke Thomond O’Brien-ffrench, the British Secret Intelligence Officer who was the inspiration for the character of James Bond.

Researchers from Forces War Records have created an extensive database that the public can access. The entire digital Black Book can be seen and searched for free on www.forces-war-records.co.uk

Aircraft wreckage and personal items belongingto the aircrew of a WWII RAF bomber have been uncovered in Germany, helping to piece together the account of its last journey.

The work concerns the RAF 10 Squadron Halifax LV881, which was taking part in the Nuremberg Raid on the night of 30-31 March 1944 when it was shot down by a night fi ghter on the approach to Nuremberg. During the attack, a fuel tank burst open and caught fi re. Three airmen managed to escape the burning aircraft , but were captured as prisoners of war. The other four crewmen were killed during the crash. The pilot, Walter Regan, stayed at the aircraft controls until the end, in order to give his comrades the best chance of survival.

The Allied aircraft exploded onto a hilltop near the village of Steinheim in the Hesse region, and this site has been under

investigation by the regional archaeologicalauthority, hessenARCHÄOLOGIE, alongside staff and students from the University of Winchester and Saxion University, Deventer, from the Neatherlands. The site is now largely covered by trees, and though this has helped to preserve the original resting place of the wreckage, it has complicated the work of locating the remains.

Systematic metal-detector survey was used to identify scatters of material across the hilltop in the hope of understanding more about the aircraft ’s fi nal moments. Excavation then focused on the site where the fuselage is believed to have landed. Some of the artefacts found include a penknife, Perspex from windows, remains of instrument dials, cabling and switches, a lens of the bomb sight, and an RAF cap badge. Taken together, this information has shone new light on events surrounding the crash.

A memorial service for relatives of the aircrew was held at the site in September.

MHMFRONTLINENEWS IN BRIEFBand of BrothersA mural depict-ing the exploits during the Battle of Britain of Polish airmen who were subsequently stationedin Northern Ireland was unveiled on the International Wall in Belfast on the 75th anniversary of the battle in September.

This unique painting was made to capture the public’s attention and remind them of the exploits of Polish 303 Squadron, which moved to Northern Ireland later in the war, and to help tell the story of the Polish community’s contribution throughout the war.

The launch of Band of Brothers also saw young people from the Shankill and from Polish communi-ties across the city come together to take part in a series of workshops led by artist Ross Wilson.

Age of EmpiresA new exhibition, Artist and Empire, is to open to the public at Tate Britainon the 25 November,running until 10 April 2016. The exhibitionaddresses the sometimes provocative term ‘Empire’ by examining how artists have looked at war, conquest, and slavery over the years. It will show work from people who helped create, promote, or confront the British Empire.

The exhibition includes around 200 paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and artefacts from staged paintings, international conquests, trea-ties, and ‘last stands’ around the globe, among them The Last Stand of the 44th Foot at Gundermuck by William Barnes Wollen (shown above). The exhibition will describe how artists through the ages mapped the world and its resources.

Poppy apparel Also to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the Royal British Legion has designed special jewemade from authentic parts of the Spitfi res that fought in the battle.

A set of cuffl inks, made in the shape of poppies, have been craft ed from bits of Spitfi re P7350 as a means of celebrating the pilots who fl ew these aircraft in 1940. Poppy pins, lapel pins, and necklaces are also available in theprovenance metal, with all profits going to theRoyal British Legion.

You can buy them from www.poppyshop.org.ukGOT A STORY?Let us know! [email protected]

Military History Monthly, Thames Works, Church Street, London, W4 2PD

020 8819 5580


FINAL FLIGHT OF HALIFAX LV881

The Black Book

Image: Essex Regiment Museum, Chelmsford

MHMBEHINDTHEIMAGEON THE WESTERN FRONT,1918No precise details survive of where or when thispicture was taken, though we know it dates fromthe final year of the First World War. The photog-rapher, Tom Aitken, was originally from Glasgow,where he worked in newspapers. He was assignedas a war photographer in December 1917, bearingwitness only to the conflict’s final bloody months.

By then, ‘total-war’ mass production hadreached a crescendo of industrialised killing.The demand was always for more artillery,more shells, more firepower.

The original caption reads, ‘Some shellcases on the roadside in the front area, thecontents of which have been despatched overinto the German lines’ – matter-of-fact, officialwar-speak that belies the meaning of this vastheap of metal cylinders.

A lone soldier stands knee deep, but eventhese thousands of cases represent only a tinyfraction of the millions of tons of ammunitionmanufactured and used during the war.

The volume of artillery-fire deployed againsthuman flesh is shocking. A river of metal cylindersflows far into the haze of the distance, contrastingwith the elegant avenue of trees behind. Theshiny geometric shapes of the shell cases recallthe contorted geometric landscape compositionsof the painter David Bomberg, their shatteredarrangement serving as a metaphor for theindustrialised destruction wrought by the war.

The shells, we can assume, are in transit:they have been collected to be refilled. Theymay have killed already. They are being madeready to kill again.

Between 1914 and 1918, an estimated 1.45billion shells were fired by the opposing armies,the majority along a relatively small area of theWestern Front. Before each major attack therewould be days of heavy shelling: in just oneweek in advance of the Battle of the Sommein July 1916, 1,700,000 shells were fired.

It is not surprising, then, that artillery causedmore casualties than any other weapon – andthe fatalities continue to increase. As the land-scape was churned up by the heavy bombard-ment, many shells (perhaps one in four) failedto explode in the soft mud and were buried. Assuch, since the end of the war, in France, some360 people have been killed and 500 woundedas a result of unexploded ordnance, known bylocal farmers as ‘the Iron Harvest’. .

THE IRON HARVEST

Text

: Mar

ia E

arle

Imag

e: R

epro

duce

d by

per

mis

sion

of t

he N

atio

nal L

ibra

ry o

f Sco

tland

.

11MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY

Christian Friedrich Schönbeinwas always seen as a brightboy in the neighbourhood. Bornin the town of Metzingen in the

German Duchy of Württemberg, heexcelled at schoolwork and showeda particular aptitude for chemistry.At the tender age of 13, the youngman became an apprentice to a lead-ing local chemical and pharmaceuticalcompany in the neighbouring townof Böblingen.

His work ethic saw him askingquestions and amassing a soundscientific knowledge of the pro-cesses involved in manufacturingchemicals and drugs. Schönbein’sexperience at the firm of Metzgerand Kaiser led him to seek permis-sion to take an examination to testhis abilities. His superiors at firstquestioned the need, but Schönbeininsisted that he take the exam, setby Dr Kielmeyer of Stuttgart, whichhe duly passed.

He served briefly in the armyas a conscript, before taking up aposition at the Augsburg chemi-cal firm of Dr J G Dingler. He soon

The year 1845 proved to be explosive. He had

been forbidden by his wife Emilie to conduct his experiments in the family kitchen. He didnot, however, always

do as he was toldmoved again to study at Tübingen and Erlangen Universities. Aft er 1826, he travelled to Scotland and London, where he developed lifelong friendships with many of the leading scientifi c minds of the era, including Michael Faraday and Thomas Graham.

Schönbein’s intimate knowledge of how various chemicals react

Patrick Boniface considers the influence of science on warfare


“

CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH

SCHÖNBEIN

RIGHT The aftermath of an explosion in a guncotton factory in England.

BIOGRAPHYBorn: 8 October 1799 in Metzingen, Germany Married: Emilie Benz in July 1835Died: 29 August 1868; buried in Basel Known for: inventing the fuel cell and guncotton

MHMCONFLICTSCIENTISTSOxigen [Oxygen], as you well know, is my hero as well as my foe, and being not only strong but inexhaust-ible in strategies and full of tricks, I was obliged to call up all my forces to lay hold of him, and make the subtle Being my prisoner.“

The phosphorous smell which is developed when electricity (to speak the profane language) is passing from the points of a conductor into air, or when lightning happens to fall upon some ter-restrial object, or when water is electrolysed, has been engaging my attention the last couple of years, and induced me to make many attempts at clearing up that mysterious phenomenon. Though baffled for a long time, at last I think I have succeeded so far as to have got the clue which will lead to the discovery of the true causes of thesmell in question.”

Although faradvanced in the careerof life, I neverthelessfeel still rather youthlyand have not yet lostto a perceptible degreemy ancient love for sci-ence and philosophicalresearch.”

QUOTES FROM

SCHÖNBEIN

IN CONTEXT: SCHÖNBEIN

Creating corditeWithout the work of German chemist Christian FriedrichSchönbein in the early 1800s, it is unlikely that many oftoday’s military technologies would exist. Put simply, Schönbeincreated a more powerful propellant than simple gunpowder. Hisnew invention was more explosive, more powerful, and createda whole new direction for firearms and explosives. He set acourse of development which continues to this day when hefirst developed a new process that ultimately gave the worldguncotton, also later known as cordite.


with each other led him through anumber of studies, and eventuallyto a position at the University ofBasel in 1828. Seven years later,he was promoted to full professor,a role in which he remained for therest of his life.

In July 1835, and back in Germany,he married Emilie Benz, with whomhe had four daughters. During thisperiod, he discovered the basicproperties of the fuel cell, wherebyelectricity could be generated usinghydrogen and oxygen.

Schönbein is also noted for hisdiscovery of ozone in 1840, foundby its unique odour when he wasconducting experiments with elec-trolysis of water. Schönbein called it‘ozone’ from the Greek word ozein,meaning ‘to smell’.

The year 1845 proved to be ex-plosive in more ways than one. He

had been forbidden by his wife toconduct experiments in the familykitchen. He did not, however, alwaysdo as he was told. One afternoon,while Emilie was away, he acciden-tally spilled two chemicals – twobottles of nitric acid and a bottlecontaining sulphuric acid – on thekitchen table. The two chemicalsmixed, and, perhaps fearing hiswife’s temper, Schönbein tried tosoak up the mess with one of hercotton aprons.

As he put the apron over the stoveto dry, it spontaneously combusted ina bright flame, and almost instanta-neously was gone. What Schönbeinhad done was to mix the celluloseof the apron with the nitro groupsfrom the nitric acid, add oxygen, andapply heat, thus suddenly oxidisingthe whole garment. As is so oftenthe way, he had made an importantinvention – entirely by accident.

For centuries, gunpowdermanufacturers had been trying

ABOVE Dipping cotton in nitrating troughs in a guncotton factory, c.1900.

to find ways of making powder burn more quickly and efficiently. With a simple mistake in a family kitchen in Germany, Schönbein had achieved this. Furthermore, gun-powder gave off thick black smoke when burned, whereas his invention was smokeless – and would thus prove ideal for use as a propellant in artillery shells. Soon it had been christened ‘guncotton’.

Although the possible uses for guncotton seemed extremely broad, manufacturing the product was also highly dangerous. A single stray spark could ignite whole batches, and many factories were burnt to the ground by accidental explosions. Guncotton’s intrinsic disadvantage was that its burning speed was far too high to be use-fully exploited for military use – at first. It would take another 39 years before inventor Paul Vieille managed to control guncotton, when he made it into a progressive smokeless gunpowder called Poudre B.

Christian Friedrich Schönbein’s original discovery would then, in 1891, be transformed by the use of a gelatinised compound devised by James Dewar and Frederick Augustus Abel. In this form, the guncotton could be extruded from manufacturing plants, formed into long thin cords, and dried. In this form, guncotton became known as ‘cordite’, a vitally important compo-nent in naval gunnery and artillery right up to the modern day.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the death of Sir Bernard Partridge (1861-1945), one of the best known Punch cartoonists, who worked for the magazine for more than 50 years and drew powerful images throughout the Boer War and both World Wars.

Born in London on 11 October 1861, he was the youngest son and sixth child of Professor Richard Partridge FRS, President of the Royal College of Surgeons (and Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy), and Fanny Turner. His uncle was John Partridge, Portrait Painter Extraordinary to Queen Victoria.

Educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire (with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), he worked at fi rst in the offi ces of the architect Henry Hansom, the son of the inventor of the Hansom cab, and then with a fi rm of ecclesiastical designers, before attending Heatherley’s art school and the West London School of Art.

Then, aft er working as a decorator of church interiors, he became a professional actor, under the pseudonym ‘Bernard Gould’. One of his early appearances was in the original production of George Bernard Shaw’s fi rst successful West End play, Arms and the Man (1894), which was set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War.

Aft er contributing to a number of publications throughout the 1880s, Partridge started drawing for Punch in February 1891. By 1892 he had joined the magazine’s staff , and in 1899, the year he also seems to have ceased professional acting, he became Second Cartoonist, drawing a number of whole-page political cartoons during the Boer War.

His most famous First World War cartoons included The Triumph of Kultur (Punch, 26 August 1914) – published shortly aft er the invasion of Belgium, and showing a German soldier standing over a dead mother and her daughter in the ruins of their house – and Unconquerable (Punch, 21 October 1914), featuring a victorious Kaiser and a defi ant Albert I, King of the Belgians. He also drew a striking colour cover for the Punch Almanack for 1916 (1915).

A number of his wartime drawings were reproduced as postcards, and he also designed postcards for London’s Blue Cross Quarantine Kennels, for soldiers bringing their pet dogs home from the Front.

In addition, he drew posters for the all-party Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, notably Take Up the Sword of Justice (No.105, 1915), in which the fi gure of Justice fl oats above a seascape littered with bodies from the sinking Lusitania. He was knighted in 1925.

Partridge continued to draw cartoons for Punch during the Spanish Civil War and, despite being nearly 80 years old when it started, was still able to produce powerful work during the Second World War.

He died in London on 9 August 1945, the same day an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. He was succeeded as Punch’s main artist by E H Shepard, illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh.

In 1951, by a strange quirk of fate, another cartoonist, John Gilroy – who had copied Partridge’s cartoons as a child and became best known for his Guinness advertisements – moved into his old house.


1. JOHN BULL’S WAR AIMPunch, 18 October 1939

2. A SELF-PORTRAIT

3. ‘HAIL KITCHENER! VICTOR AND PEACEMAKER!’Punch, 9 July 1902

4. THE LAST WICKET‘He has kept us in the field a deuce of a time, but we’ll get him now we’ve closed in for catches.’Punch, 15 May 1901

5. COVER OF THE PUNCH ALMANACKFOR 1916 (1915)

1

MHMWARCULTURE


2 3

4 5

Mark Bryant is the author of World War I in Cartoons andWorld War II in Cartoons, both of which have recently appearedin paperback.

GO FURTHER


6. THE WOODEN DOVE‘It came to me in a nightmare, Hermann – my secret weapon against the Allies for next year’s campaign.’Punch, 27 December 1939

7. FROM NIGHT TO DAYPunch, 9 July 1941

8. ‘AND HOW ARE WE FEELING TO-DAY?’Punch, 21 February 1945

6

7

8

WATERLOO 1815Th e British Monarchy and the Defeat of Napoleon

A one-day Conference at Windsor Castle

Saturday 14 November 2015,10:00 am - 6:30 pm

A major international conference marking the 200th anniversary of the battle, with debate among the leading scholars of the period on the battle’s origins, conduct, and consequences.

Speakers include: Roger Knight on the military background, Tim Clayton on the fi ghting at Quatre Bras, Brendan Simms on whether it was the German troops that carried the day, Tim Blanning on how Waterloo was commemorated, Saul David on Wellington at Waterloo, and Adam Zamoyski on the consequences for post-Napoleonic Europe.

Th e conference concludes with a private tour given by curators of Royal Collection Trust’s exhibition, Waterloo at Windsor:1815-2015, in the State Apartments of Windsor Castle, including documents, silver, furniture and works of art — and Napoleon’s magnifi cent scarlet battlefi eld cloak.

Tickets for the conference, which include the private tour of the exhibition, are £55 (or £49.50 concession).To book online Google ‘Royal Collection Waterloo Conference’ or call 020 7766 7340.

‘Waterloo 1815’ is a collaboration between Royal Collection Trust, History Today, and the Humanities Research Institute, University of Buckingham.

www.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.ukContact us for our 2016 brochure

Telephone: 01633 258207 email:

THE FORGOTTEN JACOBITE VICTORYPrestonpans1745


PRESTONPANS

ABOVE The Dawn March through the Riggonhead Defile, 21 September 1745 by Andrew Hillhouse. The Jacobite army is seen on the move in the foreground. Note the Hanoverian army in the background, holding a strong defensive position protected by marshland plus the buildings and walls of two farms. The Jacobites were able to outflank the Hanoverian position when told of a path through the marsh that brought them onto the enemy’s eastern flank on the morning of the battle.

Overshadowed by Culloden the following year – the battle that finally terminated the century-old Jacobite cause – Prestonpans is little known. Chris Bambery researches the story.


Imag

e: T

he B

attle

of P

rest

onpa

ns (1

745)

Her

itage

Tru

st

In September 1745, an army of British regulars mustered near the village of Prestonpans on the shores of the Firth of Forth, ready to battle an enemy whom they regarded as savages.

The Redcoats saw the Highland Scots, from the mountainous north of Britain, as little better than the indigenous natives whom some had encountered while campaigning in North America.

The commander of the Redcoats was Sir John Cope. He was supremely confident of victory. Although the two sides were equal in number, Cope had more cavalry and artillery, and his infantry was trained to deliver well-aimed volleys. Facing west, moreover – towards Edinburgh, from which his opponents had marched – there were the walls and dykes of two grand houses providing protection for his men.

Cope’s opponents were the Jacobite army raised in rebellion some weeks before by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the ‘Young Pretender’; he was the son of James Edward Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender’, who was in turn the son of King James II, ousted in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. Charles’s shock troops were Scottish Highland clansman,

most of whom spoke Gaelic, and were regarded as barbarians by most Lowland Scots and the English.

What was to happen at Prestonpans on 21 September 1745, however, was a signal humiliation for the British Army.

THE JACOBITE ARMYOn 19 August, Charles had raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan in Lochaber in the Western Highlands. Some 1,500 Highlanders had mustered in his support, mainly from Clans Cameron, MacDonald, and MacDonnell.

The latter had already fought a skirmish with Government forces near Spean Bridge to the east (where today a monument stands to the Commandos of the Second World War who trained there). A hundred men of the

PRESTONPANS

20 November 2015MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY

The Redcoats regarded the Highland Scots, from the mountainous north of Britain, as savages.

OPPOSITE PAGE The Battle of Prestonpans, 21 September 1745, showing the route of the Jacobite night march, the realignment of the armies, and the deployment of units prior to the Jacobite charge.

BELOW LEFT Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), the Jacobite ‘Young Pretender’, aka ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’. His father, James Edward Stuart (1688-1766), the ‘Old Pretender’, was still alive at the time of the Forty-Five, so it was in his name that the rebellion was raised. BELOW The Old Pretender is proclaimed King James III at Edinburgh Cross after the Jacobites capture the city in September 1745.

www.military-history.org 21MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY

Imag

es: I

an B

ull

Imag

e: W

IPL

The Jacobite army reached its greatest strength, some 9,000 men, at the beginning of 1746.

Figures suggest less than 50% of the Jacobite army in 1745 came from the Highlands, whereas 17-24% came from Moray, Aberdeen, and Banff, and between 17% and 20% came from Perthshire.

The areas where Jacobite support was strongest coincide with those parts of Scotland where Episcopalianism retained a powerful hold over the local population, and most of those areas were to be found north of the Tay in the north-eastern Lowlands – a strong recruiting-ground for Charles in 1745.

Episcopalianism had been associated with the Stuarts since the 17th century. The hierarchical structure of the church, with bishops directly appointed by the monarch, dovetailed neatly with Stuart theories of absolute monarchy and ‘the divine right of kings’.

Both James and Charles had been raised in the Catholic faith, and this fact undoubtedly attracted a number of Scottish Catholics to their cause in 1745 – notably the Glengarry and Clanranald MacDonalds.

A number of clan chiefs whose support Charles had hoped for failed to stir, however, most notably Lord Seaforth, head of the Mackenzies, Macleod of Macleod, and Sir Archibald Macdonald of Sleat. The latter raised two indepen-dent companies for the London Government, though these numbered just 200 men. Macleod of Macleod raised 450 (when he requested Government funds afterwards, he claimed it had been 1,400).

A majority of the population opposed Prince Charles, largely for religious reasons. The pro-Government side was demilitarised in the main, but it began to train and arm forces against the Jacobites as the rising got under way. The Government also benefitted from a chain of forts in the Highlands, control of major strongholds like Edinburgh, Dumbarton, and Stirling castles, and the presence of the Royal Navy off the coast, which made a French landing highly problematic (though many blockade-runners got through).

A HIGHLAND ARMY?

Images:W

IPL

Royal Scots sent to reinforce the garrison at Fort William had been ambushed en route and forced to surrender.

The commander of Government forces in Scotland, Cope had advanced north into the Highlands, but had chosen not to fight Charles’s army as it headed towards Perth, marched on to Inverness, and then passed down the coast to Aberdeen, where it took ship to Dunbar on the Firth of Forth, arriving there on 17 September. The Jacobites had taken Edinburgh virtually unopposed, though the Castle had refused to surrender.

The Jacobite army, supplied with 1,000 muskets found in the city’s magazines, mustered at Duddingston, then a village outside Edinburgh. The total number of men was 2,500, with just 50 cavalry and one artillery piece, too old to be of much use but kept to bolster morale. They also had an able commander in Lord George Murray. Sir John Cope had roughly the same number of men, but, with more cavalry and six artillery pieces, was confident of victory.

THE JACOBITE FLANK MARCHAs the Jacobite army marched eastwards, Cope ordered his men into a line running north to south, from the Firth of Forth to the edge of high ground, with cavalry and artillery on each flank and infantry in the centre.

The Jacobites positioned themselves on the high ground to the south, but discovered that a bog lay between them and the enemy. A council of war failed to come up with an attack plan, and Charles and his men lay down to sleep in the open. During the night, a local man serving as an officer in the Jacobite army, Anderson of Whitburgh, came to Murray to tell him of a path through the bog.

At 3am, the Jacobite army filed along the narrow path. It brought them to a position east of Cope’s army, with firm ground between the two forces.

On the morning of 21 September, the Jacobite army lined up facing the enemy flank. The Redcoats were forced to redeploy to meet the threat. Cope ordered his artillery to open

Cope ordered hisartillery to openfire, but the effectwas to triggeran immediatefull-scale charge bythe Jacobite army.

BELOW & ABOVE A Highland army on the march in the 1740s. The scene had been witnessed in Flanders, and this series of engravings is captioned in French and German, but it presumably provides a fair impression of the appearance of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army.

fire, but the effect was to trigger an immediate full-scale charge by the Jacobite army. The pace of this caught the Hanoverian troops by surprise, and gave them little time to reload their muskets after the first discharge.

THE JACOBITE ATTACKThe centre of the Jacobite line was slowed by soft ground, but the contingents on either flank surged forwards. They attacked Cope’s dragoons, who fled – first to Edinburgh, where the governor of the Castle refused to admit them, threatening to open fire on them for their cowardice.

Back on the battlefield, the Hanoverian infantry found themselves pinned by the advance of the Jacobite centre and under heavy attack on both the left and right flanks. Resistance began to crumble. Most of the Government losses occurred as the troops tried to flee the battlefield, and found them-selves trapped between the walls of Preston and Bankton Houses.

Just 170 of the infantry escaped, with 400 killed and the rest taken prisoner. A mere 30 Jacobites were killed and 70 were wounded. The Jacobites captured Cope’s artillery, supplies, and treasure chest.

Cope and the Earls of Loudon and Home fled first to Coldstream and, on the following day, to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Cope was ridiculed as the commander who brought the news of his own defeat.

A Jacobite song made fun of his flight:

Hey! Johnnie Cope are ye waukin’ yet?Or are your drums a-beating yet?If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.

King George II was left with no sizeable force in Scotland, and in Edinburgh Prince Charleswas left celebrating a stunning victory. .

Chris Bambery is a TV producer and presenter, a journalist, and an author. His books include

A People’s History of Scotland and The Second World War: a Marxist history.

PRESTONPANS

Lord George Murray was born the sixth son of the Duke of Atholl in 1694. As a young man, he joined the Jacobite army during the 1715 uprising. His elder brother, William, Marquis of Tullibardine, commanded the Atholl Brigade, with his younger brother serving as battalion commander. Lord George missed the major military encounter of the rising, the Battle of Sheriffmuir, because he was in Fife attempting to raise more men for the Stuart cause.

After the collapse of the rising, William and George fled first to South Uist in the Hebrides, then on to Bordeaux in France.

In 1719 Lord George accompanied a small Spanish force that landed in Lochalsh in the Western Highlands, along with his brother and other Jacobite exiles. Joined by several hundred Highlanders, the Jacobite force set off towards Inverness, but were intercepted by Government troops at Glen Shiel.

Despite holding the high ground, the Jacobites were exposed to artillery fire, the Hanoverian troops attacked resolutely, and at 9pm the Spanish surrendered and the Highlanders fled into the fog coming down over the mountains.

Lord George Murray, who had commanded the Jacobite right wing, had been wounded in the battle but succeeded in escaping, eventually reaching Rotterdam. It is widely believed that, while in exile,he served in the army of the House of Savoy, rulersof Piedmont and Sardinia.

The Government in London determined tostrengthen their hold on the Highlands by creatinga stronger chain of forts connected by military roads(built by General George Wade), but at the same timeattempted to detach some of the prominent Jacobitenobles through a policy of clemency. Thus, whenthe Duke of Atholl died, Lord George Murray waspardoned and allowed to return, having taken theoath of allegiance to George II in 1739.

A SCEPTICAL ‘FORTY-FIVER’When Prince Charles Stuart landed in 1745, LordGeorge Murray was sceptical about the chancesof Jacobite success, despite the fact his brother,the Marquis of Tullibardine, was with the Prince.Indeed, Murray accompanied his other brother,now the Earl of Atholl (William had forfeited hisinheritance because of his loyalty to the Stuarts),to visit the Government commander in Scotland,

General John Cope, who appointed Murray Deputy Sheriff of Perthshire.

Yet, when Prince Charles arrived at Blair Castle, ancestral home of the Murray family, Lord George joined the Jacobite army, saying his conscience allowed him to do no other. His brother, the Duke of Atholl, stayed loyal to King George, however.

Lord George Murray was made Lieutenant-General of the Jacobite army, along with the Duke of Perth, and his brother, Tullibardine. But Murray was the real commander, taking charge of the army at Prestonpans.

After that victory, he opposed any advance into England, arguing the French would not be able to land an army in support, and that few English Jacobites would join the venture; but he was overruled by the Prince, who won a majority of the Jacobite council.

Murray did succeed in defeating Charles’s proposal for an advance down the east coast to Newcastle, where General Wade had based a Hanoverian army. Instead, the Jacobites used the western route, leaving Wade in their wake.

INVADING ENGLANDThe Jacobites took Carlisle after a two-day siege, and then marched south through Preston and Manchester before reaching Derby.

There Lord George Murray argued for a retreat, pointing to the fact that Wade was to the north, Cumberland was in the Midlands, and that militia had been raised to defend London. The Jacobites could not defeat three armies, and they were too weak to hold London even if they took it. Few English Jacobites had joined the rising, and the French had no plans to land in the south-east.

Charles argued passionately, but did not prevail, and the army turned north. At Clifton in Cumberland, Murray defeated elements of the Duke of Cumberland’s forcewhich had caught up with them (this was the last battleon English soil), and the retreat continued to Glasgow.

At Falkirk on 17 January 1746, Lord George Murrayattacked and defeated a Government force of 6,000led by Lieutenant-General Henry Hawley.

Hawley had ordered his dragoons to attack, but they were met with heavy musket-fire, and those riders who reached the enemy line found that the Jacobites ignored them and struck at their horses instead.

The dragoons retreated, and the Jacobites charged, routing Hawley’s centre and left flank. The Hanoverians then retreated south to Linlithgow, leaving over 300 dead on the battlefield.

LOST CAUSEDespite their victory, the Jacobites continued to retreat north, Charles marching from Perth to Inverness directly, while Murray marched up the east coast via Dundee and Aberdeen. But with Cumberland in pursuit, the Jacobite army had no choice but to turn and face him.

After an abortive night march in the failed hope of launching a surprise attack, the tired and hungry Jacobite army lined up on Culloden Moor east of Inverness. Murray opposed this choice of ground, preferring high ground to the south, pointing out that the flat ground benefitted Cumberland’s artillery and cavalry. He was overruled, but proved right.

The result is well known. The Jacobite attack was delayed, failed to break through, and then retreated under attack from Cumberland’s cavalry, who were ordered to take no prisoners.

Murray eventually succeeded, in December 1746, in escaping, making his way to Rome. There he was received by Charles’s father, James the Old Pretender, and awarded a pension. But when he visited Paris the following year, Charles refused to see him.

Lord George Murray settled in Holland, dying aged 66 in 1760. He was buried in the church at Medemblik, where his grave can still be found, marked with a stone laid by the 7th Duke of Atholl.

A JACOBITE GENERAL

TOP LEFT Lord George Murray (1694-1760). BELOW The Battle of Culloden, 16 April 1746. David Morier’s famous painting captures the

‘asymmetrical’ character of the clash between Highland clansmen and Hanoverian regulars.


the firstPunic wa r at sea

Image:AK

G/Peter

Conn

olly

BELOW When the Romans first built a fleet, they attempted to turn naval battles into land battles. The corvus – shown here in Peter Connolly’s dramatic reconstruction – was a combined grappling hook and boarding bridge. It allowed Rome’s first-class infantry to get to grips with their Carthaginian opponents before the Roman vessels could be out-manoeuvred and rammed.

MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY 27

W centuries BC, the legions conquered Italy.Between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC,they conquered first the western, then

the eastern Mediterranean. For the next half millennium,under the Caesars, they controlled an empire that stretched from Scotland to Syria, from the Caucasus to the Sahara. The Roman Imperial Army was, quite simply, the finest fighting machine of antiquity.

But Europe is almost completely surrounded by water, has an exceptionally long coastline, and is bisected by numerous navigable rivers. No other continent is so watery. Socrates thought the Greeks were like ‘frogs around a pond’. The same could be said for most Europeans. That is why naval power has often been decisive in the continent’s geopolitics.

The Romans later spoke of the Mediterranean as ‘our sea’ (mare nostrum). But in 264 BC it was not ‘their’ sea. The maritime superpower of the age was Carthage, the great Phoenician merchant city on the North African coast. And because of this, when Rome embarked on its first overseas adventure – the invasion of Sicily – it found itself bogged down in an unwinnable war.

It was a war of the elephant and the whale. Rome (the elephant) quickly established dominance on land, its citizen legions far superior to the polyglot armies of mercenaries raised by Carthage. But Carthage (the whale) could use its naval supremacy to raid the coast, intimidate Rome’s allies, and keep supplied the garrisons holding its main fortified bases in western Sicily.

Rome was forced to build a navy. They used a captured Carthaginian ship as a design model. Lacking seafaring skills, they fitted their ships with a combined grappling hook and boarding bridge of their own invention, and set out to turn naval battles into a matter of the hand-to-hand fighting at which they excelled.

Later, with experience, they abandoned artifice, having become as adept at naval manoeuvre as their enemies. And, finally, they crushed the Carthaginian maritime supremacy for good, and made themselves masters of the Mediterranean.

In our special this issue, Marc DeSantis charts Rome’s rise to naval power through the long, hard, brutal war against Carthage for control of Sicily in the mid 3rd century BC.

Introduction

hen we think of the Romans, we thinkof the legions. Between the 5th and 3rd

FALL OF TARENTUMBetween 282 and 272 BC, Rome was at war with Tarentum. This key Greek city was the focus of resistance to Roman domination of Magna Graecia, ‘Great Greece’, the Greek settlements in southern Italy and Sicily. The war sucked in the general-adventurer King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army won two battles, but lost the third and last (the Battle of Beneventum) in 275 BC. The fall of Tarentum

three years ter finally nded Greek esistance o Roman ule. The omans ontinued o fear a evolt of heir subject-eoples in

taly, however.

250: SIEGE OF LILYBAEUMLilybaeum, the great Carthaginian fortress city on the west coast of Sicily,

symbolised the intractable nature of the First Punic War. Rome was dominant on land,

but could not capture major coastal fortresses. Even when successful at sea, she could not establish an effective naval blockade. The Carthaginians could continue the war even when defeated on both land and sea, so long as they could maintain a sufficient flow of supplies into Lilybaeum.

260: BATTLE OF MYLAE

Though dominant on land, the Romans realisethey will need a fleet of their own if they are to win the war. For the first time ever, the Romans build a large fleet, with 120 war-galleys constructed in just 60 days. Most of the galleys are quinqueremes, copied from the captured Carthaginian ship that ran aground in 264. Because their ships are sluggish and their oarsmen inexperienced, the Romans design the corvus boarding bridge, placing one on each Roman quinquereme. At the Battle of Mylae, the Romans win a crushing victory.

264-261: ROMAN VICTORY ON LANDA Roman army crosses from Italy to Sicily and takespossession of Messana, beginning a war with theCarthaginians for possession of the west of the island.The Romans capture a Carthaginian war-galley, of thetype known as a ‘quinquereme’, when it founders onthe coast in 264. In 263, 40,000 Roman soldiers are

sent to Sicily, where they capture many towns.The same year, King Hiero of Syracuse

becomes an ally of Rome, providingher legions with crucial supplies. TheCarthaginians set about recruitinglarge numbers of mercenaries fromacross the Mediterranean. The Punicstronghold of Agrigentum is taken by

the Romans in 261.

257ROMAN FLEET

DEFEATS CARTHAGINIAN

NAVAL FORCE OFF TYNDARIS

256ROMAN VICTORY

AT BATTLE OFECNOMUS

272BC

264MAMERTINES

REQUEST HELP FROMBOTH ROME AND

CARTHAGE

255ROMAN

INVASION OF AFRICA

TIMELINE

255AND 253

ROMAN FLEETS DESTROYED IN STORMS WITH MASSIVE LOSS

OF LIFE

149-146: THIRD PUNIC WARCarthage recoveredsomewhat fromthe disaster ofthe Second PunicWar: the indemnitywas paid off, andthe city’s tradeprospered again.Rome founda pretext to launch a new war when Carthage attempted to defend her territory against encroachments by Rome’s Numidian ally. Carthage made desperate attempts to securepeace, but Rome demanded the abandonment of the city, and the Carthaginians were forced to fight for their very existence. The war took the form of a gruelling four-year siege, culminating in the destruction of the city.

237: CARTHAGINIAN EMPIREFOUNDED IN SPAIN

The Barcaamily became theadership of a factionf hawks arguing forwar of revanche

gainst Rome.Hamilar Barca, the

eteran Carthaginianommander in

western Sicily,ounded a

new empiren Spain,ntendingt to providethe resourcesto rebuild thepower and wealthof Carthage. His son,Hannibal, became

the leader of the Carthaginianarmy in Spain in 221 BC, following the death ofboth his father and his brother-in-law.

240-237: MERCENARY WAR

After the First Punic War, Carthage faced a massive revolt of its own mercenaries. While the city was preoccupied with the defence of the homeland, the mercenaries also revolted on Sardinia, and the Romans sensed an opportunity. They quashed the mercenaries and seized Sardinia for themselves. They justified their action by claiming that the Carthaginian naval expedition then fitting out to retake Sardinia was going to be used to attack Italy. The normally pro-Roman historian Polybius does not hesitate to call the Roman move ‘an act of sheer injustice’. The seizure of Sardinia contributed to the outbreak of a second war.

218-202:SECONDPUNIC WAR

The secondwar wasfought almostentirely onland. Hannibalinvaded Italy,

but wasunable

to destroy the alliance of Romans,Latins, and Italian allies on whichRoman power in the peninsularested. Scipio (later known as

‘Africanus’) first destroyed theCarthaginian empire in Spain, and

was then allowed to mount an invasionof Africa. This triggered Hannibal’s recall.He was then defeated at the Battle ofZama. The Romans imposed a victor’speace that destroyed Carthaginian powerand reduced the city to third-class status

146BC

241BATTLE OF

THE AEGATES ISLANDS

TIMELINE

249BATTLE OF DREPANA

247-243HAMILCAR BARCA WAGES GUERRILLA WAR IN WESTERN

SICILY

Imag

e: A

KG

The Roman Navy


The fleet

The First Punic War (264-241 BC) began over a single city in Sicily. In the 280s BC, the Mamertines, a group of Campanian mercenaries, tempted by the wealth and luxury of

the city of Messana (modern Messina) that they had been hired to defend, seized control of it for themselves. Hiero, tyrant of the nearby Sicilian Greek city of Syracuse, moved against them, seeking to reclaim Messana.

The Mamertines made appeals for aid to both Rome and Carthage. As repugnant as they found the mercenaries, the Romans decided to send help.

The Carthaginians were dominant in western Sicily. The Romans feared that if the

Carthaginians answered the Mamertines’ call and took Messana – just across the Strait of Messina from the city of Rhegium at the toe of Italy – they might eventually come to control the whole of the island. They might then use it as a springboard for a future invasion of the Italian peninsula.

The Greek cities of the Italian south had only recently come under Roman control, and the city of Tarentum had been the focal point of Italo-Greek resistance to Rome. Further, King Pyrrhus of Epirus, proclaiming himself championof Greek freedom, had invaded Italy and fought a major war against the Romans in 280-275 BC.

The danger of disaffected states in Italy mak-ing common cause with an outside power, such

Sea power brought Rome victory in the First Punic War and set it on the course to empire. Marc DeSantis describes the building of the first Roman fleet.

ABOVE The Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus shown here depicts Middle Republican legionaries. Roman supremacy in land warfare enabled them to make rapid gains when war with Carthage erupted in 264 BC over the control of Sicily. But with no fleet and no naval experience, the Romans were unable to reduce the Carthaginian coastal fortresses. To win the war, the Romans were forced to become a naval power.

as Carthage, was very real. Rome decided to go to war to foreclose any such possibility.

THE ROMAN INVASION OF SICILYThe Roman crossing to Sicily in 264 BC was accomplished in the face of Carthaginian naval opposition, during which a


Carthaginian quinquereme (war-galley)ran aground and was captured.

The Romans took possession of Messana,but Carthaginian and Syracusan armies stoodoutside the city. The Romans defeated bothenemies, and enlarged their offensive in Sicilyin succeeding years.

In 263 BC, a massive army of 40,000 was sentto Sicily to drive out the Carthaginians com-pletely. By 261 BC, the city of Agrigentum onthe south coast had fallen to the Romans, andHiero of Syracuse shrewdly switched sides. Heagreed to provide the Romans with supplies.

Even with his aid, the Sicilian campaignturned out to be far more arduous than Romehad envisaged. The Romans took the inlandcities, but found it difficult to maintain theloyalties of cities on the coast. Once the legionshad marched away, a Carthaginian fleet wouldsoon appear, cruise menacingly offshore, andintimidate the coastal cities back into theCarthaginian orbit.

Rome had no counter to the navalpower of its enemy. Stalemate was the result.Carthaginian ships were even mounting raidsagainst the shores of Italy, causing Rome

The fleet

no small embarrassment before her allies.Ultimate success depended on the neutralisa-tion of the Carthaginian fleet.

The Romans decided to build a fleet oftheir own. This was a momentous decision,with great implications for Rome’s imperialfuture. The Greek historian Polybius wouldlater write that ‘It was this factor amongothers that persuaded me to describe thewar at greater length than I would otherwisehave done. I was anxious that my readersshould not remain ignorant of an importantinitiative of this kind: that is, how and whenand for what reasons the Romans first venturedupon the sea.’

THE FLEET TAKES SHAPEFor the most part Rome had been contentto rely on her socii navales, or naval allies,among the Italian Greeks to provideher with naval forces in wartime. Thesenaval allies had made the crossing to Sicilyin 264 BC possible.

The Carthaginiansconstructed theirships in ‘kit’ form,with all piecesmade accordingto precisespecifications.

BELOW In 1969 the wreck of a Carthaginianquinquereme was found just off the coast ofMarsala (ancient Lilybaeum). Excavated from theseabed and conserved in a local museum, it is thesingle most important archaeological evidence wehave for the form of an ancient warship of the FirstPunic War. As well as reconstructions of the Marsalaquinquereme, shown here are illustrations of thecrucial evidence: a Carthaginian coin of c.225 BC,a Carthaginian bas-relief sculpture depicting a wargalley, and the actual wreck.

LEFT Naval warship design changed dramatically between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC, but relatively little in later antiquity. This bas-relief sculpture is a Roman depiction from Praeneste that dates to the late 1st century BC; it nonetheless gives a fair impression of a quinquereme of the mid 3rd century.

Imag

e: A

KG

Imag

es: A

KG/P

eter

Con

nolly


The new force now contemplated was one of unprecedented size in comparison with the small allied squadrons previously deployed. Polybius says that the Romans used the Carthaginian quinquereme captured in 264 BC as the model for their own, and, says Polybius, ‘built their whole fleet according to its specifications’.

The quinquereme war-galley would be the workhorse of the Roman fleets for the duration of the war. In 260 BC, according to Polybius, a fleet of 120 ships was built in just 60 days. Of this total, 100 were quinqueremes, meaning ‘five-oars’, while the remaining 20 were smaller triremes (‘three-oars’). Five, in the case of the quin-quereme, referred not to the number of banks of oars, which remained three, as in the trireme, but to the number of men assigned to each group of three oars when viewed in cross-section.

This has been proven to be a workable design, as demonstrated by the modern

Athenian replica trireme Olympias, built in the 1980s. A quinquereme was a substantially larger craft, and worked in the same way, though it needed many more men at the oars. Two of the oars, when viewed in cross-section, would have two men apiece pulling them, while the third and lowest oar would have just one.

Such a prodigious output of 120 ships in a mere two months is fully plausible. A wrecked Carthaginian warship dating to the later years of the First Punic War was found in 1969 just off the Sicilian city of Marsala (ancient Lilybaeum).

Though the ship was much decayed, the recovered timbers showed carpenter’s marks that indicate where the pieces were sup-posed to go. The Carthaginians, it appears, constructed their ships in ‘kit’ form, with all pieces made according to precise specifica-tions. This made for very rapid assembly, since the various parts could be shaped and

stockpiled to await fitting into a ship as it was being put together.

As the Romans copied their own design from a Carthaginian original, it seems reasonable to assume that they, too, would have adopted the ‘kit’ approach, maximising the speed with which they could build and launch a fleet.

THE ANCIENT BATTLESHIPNo ancient treatise on how galleys were built survives, so we are forced to rely on conjecture and pictorial and archaeological evidence to reconstruct a war-galley of this period.

On a trireme, there were three banks, or levels, of oars, one above another, with one rower pulling on one oar at a time, and a total of 170 oarsmen. The beefier Carthaginian/Roman quinquereme required 300 oarsmen.

Simply crewing the new fleet was trouble-some, and the demands on Rome’s manpower

ABOVE & BELOW The corvus – Rome’s secret weapon at sea. The corvus combined grappling hook (like a raven’s claw – corvus is Latin for ‘raven’) and boarding bridge. It was mounted at the bow end, and could be used without tactical finesse: no manoeuvring was necessary, just a headlong charge at the enemy line. The near end was firmly gripped by an upright pole to prevent the enemy pulling it away; the far end crashed down under its own

momentum to bury itself in the planking of the enemy deck and hold fast. The Romans would then storm across to capture the enemy vessel.

Imag

es: A

KG/P

eter

Con

nolly


were extraordinary. She trained her own youths on benches to get them used to moving their oars in unison with other rowers, and also relied heavily on allied communities from the Greek cities of southern Italy to provide additional oarsmen.

In such a crash programme, though the Romans managed to create a fleet that was able to move itself about well enough, their rowers’ skills in naval manoeuvre left much to be desired. The Carthaginians, on the other hand – a trading people with a strong maritime tradition – were talented practitioners of the demanding art of rowing a ship, ramming an opponent, and slipping away before another enemy vessel could strike.

War-galleys were not particularly fast. Sustained speeds of five or six knots were feasible, with sprints at up to ten knots for very short periods. Galleys also utilised masts (a mainmast and a smaller boatmast set ahead of the mainmast), but these were used only for cruising, to spare the crew’s strength. The masts were removed when battle was imminent, and sometimes even left onshore.

NAVAL TACTICSGalleys did not need much speed to be effective. The great mass and momentum of the galley was what powered the heavy bronze ram at its prow through the timbers of an enemy vessel. Once accomplished, the oarsmen aboard the attacking ship would back-water – that is, row backwards – to extract it from the holed, flood-ing, and perhaps sinking enemy vessel.

Some of these rams were tremendous. Many have been recovered from the depths, including the 2.26m-long, 476kg-weight ram found in the waters off Athlit, Israel, in 1980. The Athlit ram was once mounted on a quadrereme, or ‘four-oar’, and rams on the bigger quinqueremes may have been even more substantial.

Apart from ramming, the most widely used naval tactic was boarding. This involved getting close to an opposing galley and sending marines over to seize possession of it. This was a crude but effective form of naval warfare, typically adopted by people lacking the necessary rowing skills to outmanoeuvre an enemy fleet. The Romans, fully aware of their skills deficit, were eager to close with the Carthaginians and board.

CARTHAGE: NAVAL SUPERPOWERThe challenge that Rome faced at sea was enormous. Carthage was a formidable foe, with a naval heritage that extended back several centuries.

Carthage – or Qart Hadasht, meaning ‘New City’ – had been founded in the 9th century BC by semitic migrants and colonisers from Tyre (in Lebanon). These early settlers had inherited the naval aptitudes of their Phoenician ancestors. (The Romans called

the Carthaginians Poeni, and our own adjective ‘Punic’ is derived from this.)

When Tyre came under Babylonian domi-nation, Carthage took over her position as overlord of the numerous Phoenician colonies and trading-posts in the central and western Mediterranean. She had grown very wealthy by dominating the cargo-carrying trade, and had developed extensive holdings in North Africa and Sicily. The wealth flowing into the city allowed the Carthaginians to fund the creation of a large fleet and, when needed, large mercenary armies.

FIRST BLOOD AT SEAThough the Romans had prepared themselves as well as they might, their first foray at sea did not go well. The two consuls for the year 260 BC were Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio and Gaius Duilius. Scipio was tricked into sailing his squadron of 17 ships into the harbour of Lipara on Lipari Island, and was trapped

within it by a Carthaginian flotilla. The green Roman crews escaped ashore, but their ships were taken as prizes, and Scipio was captured.

The rest of the Roman fleet, which was still fitting out at Rome, sailed south. Polybius says that a few days later this fleet, presumably of 103 ships (the original construction of 120 minus the 17 lost at Lipara) met a Carthaginian force of 50 ships under the command of an admiral named Hannibal near ‘the Cape of Italy’, possibly Cape Vaticano, close to the toe of the peninsula.

The Romans were cruising in formation, while the Carthaginians, probably still sailing in line of column, with one ship ahead of the one behind it, blundered into the Romans with no inkling of their approach.

The Romans had the better of the encounter. The Carthaginians lost most of their ships, Polybius says, which must be taken to mean 26 or more, and there seem to have been no Roman losses. Hannibal fled with what

The fleet

remained of his fleet. The first battle of the Roman navy with its Carthaginian enemy had been a clear-cut victory.

While Scipio was losing his squadron at Lipara and the rest of the fleet was fighting the Carthaginians near the cape, consul Gaius Duilius was directing Rome’s legions in Sicily. On learning of Scipio’s capture, he hastened to join the Roman fleet, which had probably put in at Messana.

While waiting for the consul to arrive, the Roman sailors, disappointed with the handling of their ships during the battle at the cape, which they considered clumsy, sought a means to even the odds against the faster and more manoeuverable Carthaginian ships. Their solution was the corvus.

THE CORVUS Few weapons of the ancient world were more significant than the corvus, yet few remain more wrapped in mystery. Polybius’ descrip-tion of the machine is extremely brief, and precisely how the device functioned in battle has no definitive answer.

The basic components of the corvus were few. Mounted at the bow of a Roman warship was a 24ft-high pole of approximately 10in in diameter. At the top of the pole was a pulley. A rope was run through the pulley, and then tied to a ring atop a downward-pointing iron spike at the far end of a 36ft-long wooden bridge.

The spike, the length of which is unknown, was probably the source of the boarding bridge’s nickname. Corvus is Latin slang for ‘raven’, and the name was perhaps bestowed because the spike reminded the Romans of a raven’s beak.

The gangplank was 4ft wide, and had a knee-high railing on either side of it. The gangplank also had an oblong slot cut within it, and through this hole emerged the wooden pole. When the Romans pulled on the rope, the bridge could be lifted, lowered, and rotated in an arc around the bow of the galley.

How this rotational movement was achieved is not known, but it is probable that Roman marines helped lift and turn the plank, while others pulled the far end upward with the rope.

When they let go of the rope, the corvus plunged. The iron spike would pierce the deck of a Punic warship and stop it from getting away. The hole in the gangplank, attached as it was to the ship via the pole, prevented the bridge from being pulled off the Roman galley as the ships bobbed and jostled.

The corvus let the Romans hold a Carthaginian warship in place while their legionaries rushed across to fight the enemy hand-to-hand. The boarding bridge evened the odds in a sea fight by letting the Romans bring their excellent heavy infantry to bear against the handier Punic ships – thus, as Polybius explains, turning a naval engagement into somethingthat more resembled a battle on land. .

The attacking ship would back-water to extract it from the holed, flooding, and perhaps sinking enemy vessel.

HOW THE LEGIONS BECAME MASTERS OF THE SEAMarc DeSantis describes the long, hard, but ultimately victorious campaign that turned the Romans from an Italian land-based power into a Mediterranean-wide naval power.

The RomanVictory

The Battles

Image:Alam

y

The Battles


Consul Gaius Duilius joined the Roman fleet and took up com-mand in late 260 BC. The work to place the boarding bridges on the decks of the quinqueremes was

already under way. When they were installed, Duilius took the ships out to confront the Carthaginian fleet, which was operating off the Sicilian coast around Mylae (modern Milazzo).

The Punic fleet of 130 ships was under the command of Hannibal, the same admiral who had escaped the earlier battle at the Cape of Italy. The Romans, with their 103 ships, were badly outnumbered, and Polybius writes of the Carthaginian captains that once contact was made ‘they all sailed straight for the enemy, like predators after easy prey’.

Their overconfidence proved their undoing. The leading flotilla of 30 Carthaginian quin-queremes engaged the Romans without making any attempt to array itself in proper battle formation. They thereby sacrificed the support of their fellows, who could have provided pro-tection for their flanks and the extra numbers to hit the Romans harder. The Carthaginians were contemptuous of Roman ability, and saw no need to treat Rome’s navy with respect.

THE BATTLE OF MYLAE, 260 BCOnce engaged, the corvus made all the difference. The Romans dropped the boarding bridges down on the unsuspecting Punic war-ships, which were held tight. After the bridges had been laid, Roman marines sped over the gangplank two-abreast, their shields held to the front and sides, and battled the Carthaginians on the decks of their immobilised ships.

The first 30 Punic galleys that had unwisely rushed the Romans were captured. One of these was the gigantic septireme (or ‘seven-oar’) flagship galley of Hannibal, who fled from the disastrous encounter in a small boat.

Soon afterwards, the remainder of the Punic fleet caught up, but these ships could do little to alter the outcome. The fighting ships would by this stage have been in a disordered mess, with galleys pointing this way and that, and the chaos must have hampered the Carthaginians.

When they attempted to ram the Roman galleys in their sterns, steering clear of the prow-mounted boarding bridges, they made themselves vulnerable to other Roman ships, which attacked their own exposed flanks and sterns in turn.

The Carthaginians lost 50 galleys at Mylae. Polybius does not report any losses for the

Romans. Though outnumbered, theRomans had won a great victory over theCarthaginian navy, despite its incomparablylonger naval heritage.

Duilius was allowed to hold the first-evernaval triumph for a Roman commander. In hisown honour, he erected the columna rostrataon the speaker’s platform in the RomanForum. Its inscription described, amongother things, his famous exploit against theCarthaginian fleet. The column was adornedwith several of the bronze rams pried loosefrom captured Punic warships.

Lest there be any doubt as to the magnitudeof his victory, Duilius built a temple to Janus tocommemorate the occasion; or so the laterRoman historian Tacitus records in his Annals.

Hannibal, on the other hand, decided it wouldbe best not to return home. Carthage had a dra-conian policy of crucifying failed commanders.

The Sicilian Greek historian DiodorusSiculus preserves a story in which, after thebattle, Hannibal sent a friend to ask the

Carthaginian senate what he should do ifhe encountered a Roman fleet, asking thesenators if he should do battle with 200 shipsagainst a Roman force of 120. The senatorsresponded strongly in the affirmative. ‘Verywell,’ Hannibal’s friend said in reply, ‘that isjust why Hannibal did fight, and we have beenbeaten. But since you commanded it, he isrelieved of the blame.’

THE ROMAN INVASION OF AFRICAThough the Romans had won a greatvictory at Mylae, the war for Sicily seemedset to grind on for an eternity. Such was theCarthaginians’ staying power that, ensconcedin their nearly invulnerable western fortressports at Lilybaeum, Panormus, and Drepana,they were able to carry on the war despiteRome’s numerical advantage and the bluntingof their naval supremacy. The ensuing years ofthe First Punic War saw a return to the see-sawmatch of the early Roman foray into Sicily,with the Romans winning some great victories,but then suffering extraordinary setbacks.

LEFT An imaginative reconstruction of the Battle of Mylae in 260 BC. Note the (badly represented) corvus, which Polybius, the Greek historian of the war, tells us was the decisive weapon. It took the Carthaginians – who were used to manoeuvring, ramming, and then back-watering – completely by surprise.

The Carthaginian captains ‘all sailed straight for the enemy, like predators after easy prey’.

The siege warfare of the period after Mylae suited the Carthaginians well, because they were adept at defending fortified cities. Though the Romans would win again at sea in battles off Sulci in 258 BC and Tyndaris in 257 BC – with the help of the corvus – their fleets could not eject the Carthaginians from their coastal bases.

The Romans therefore decided to take the war to Africa in 256 BC. A massive invasion was planned, for which 330 galleys were made ready. Polybius writes that each Roman quinquereme, in addition to its 300 oarsmen, also embarked 120 marines. Along with a handful of sailors and officers, each Roman ship probably had upwards of 420 men aboard. So the Roman fleet had about 140,000 men on its ships: an astonishing number.

For their part, the Carthaginians knew that the Romans were coming, and readied a tre-mendous fleet of their own. It numbered 350 ships, and Polybius says that the Punic ships embarked 150,000 men all told.

Both Rome and Carthage were prepared for a climactic battle. This they got.

THE BATTLE OF ECNOMUS, 256 BCThe Roman fleet was coasting along with the Sicilian shore to starboard to pick up Roman soldiers at Ecnomus (Poggio Di Sant’Angelo) when a Carthaginian fleet appeared and anchored nearby at Heraclea Minoa. The Romans embarked their best legionaries, in preparation for battle.

The Roman fleet was divided into four divisions. Two of these formed an ‘arrowhead’ front, with the consuls Lucius Manlius Vulso commanding the First Squadron on the right, and Marcus Attilius Regulus the Second Squadron on the left. The Third Squadron formed the base of the arrowhead, sailing in line-abreast, towing the horse-transport ships, while the Fourth Squadron brought up the rear.

The Carthaginians, when they saw the Romans coming, arrayed their fleet in a long, thin line. Three-quarters of the Carthaginian fleet was in line-abreast, each ship sailing along-side its neighbour, extending far out to sea. The remainder, on the left, also in line-abreast, was advanced slightly and at an angle to the Sicilian shore. Hanno was in command of the right wing, while Hamilcar, from his position in the centre of the line, led the left wing.

The Romans dashed straight for the centre of the thin Punic line, which they saw was only one ship deep, and thus weak. As the Romans closed, Hamilcar’s centre ships hastily retreated.

They were not in flight, however: Hamilcar’s plan was to lure the Roman ships out of formation so that they could be attacked and rammed without them being able to use their prow-mounted boarding bridges.

As the First and Second Squadrons under the consuls pursued Hamilcar, Hanno’s


Our Campaign Map (BELOW) shows the landmark eventsof the First Punic War (264-241 BC).

Battle Plan A (OPPOSITE PAGE – TOP) shows the three main phases in the Battle of Ecnomus, possibly the largest naval battle of all time, involving almost 700 warships and 300,000 men. Phase 1 shows the very different opposing formations in the approach to battle.

Phase 2 shows the attack of the Roman First and Second Squadrons on the centre of the Carthaginian line, and the corresponding attack of the Carthaginian wings on the Roman Third Squadron (with the transports) and Fourth Squadron (labelled Triarii), which turned the battle into three separate engagements. Phase 3 shows the victorious Roman First and Second Squadrons returning from defeating the Carthaginian

centre to rescue their Third and Fourth Squadrons.

Battle Plan B (OPPOSITE PAGE – BOTTOM) shows the Battle of Drepana, during which the Carthaginians slipped out of the northern side of their harbour to pin the approaching Roman fleet against the coast, where it was defeated in large part due to its inability to manoeuvre.

CAMPAIGN MAP, BATTLE PLAN A AND BATTLE PLAN B

The MAPS

2

3

4

1


The Battles

PHASE 1 PHASE 2 PHASE 3

Imag

es: I

an B

ull

right-wing galleys struck at the gap thatopened between them and the two trailingsquadrons to strike at Fourth Squadron.The ships on the left of the Punic battle-line then turned to starboard to attack theThird Squadron and the horse transports.Hamilcar at this moment raised a singleflag, and his ‘fleeing’ ships turned aboutand struck at the pursuing Romans of theconsular squadrons.

The horse transports were quickly cut loose,but the Third Squadron found itself bunchedup along the Sicilian coast and in danger ofbeing forced to beach. Luckily for them, thecorvus boarding bridges kept the Carthaginianships from approaching too close.

Meanwhile, Hamilcar’s ships were over-come by the First and Second Squadrons,and he fled with his surviving galleys. Theconsuls then turned and went to the aid ofthe other squadrons.

Hanno’s ships, which were harrying theFourth Squadron, departed when Regulus’ships arrived. Regulus, along with Vulso, thenrescued the Third Squadron and captured the50 Carthaginian galleys that had cornered it.

SQUANDERED VICTORYThe Battle of Ecnomus was a tremendousRoman victory, by any measure. A total of64 Punic ships were captured. Additionally,the Romans sank 30 enemy galleys for a lossof only 24 of their own. The corvus had shownits worth once more, by keeping the Punicships at bay when the Third Squadron wastrapped against the coast. The way to Africawas now wide open.

Unfortunately for the Romans, the follow-up campaign in Africa was badly bungledby the consul Marcus Attilus Regulus. TheCarthaginians requested peace, but Regulus’sterms were so harsh that they decided tocontinue fighting. They hired a Spartanmercenary general called Xanthippus, andplaced him in command of the home armyduring the national crisis.

Xanthippus retrained the demoralisedCarthaginian army, and restored its confi-dence. The following year, 255 BC, hecrushed the Roman legions in a battleoutside Tunis, not far from Carthage,captured the overconfident Regulus, andput an end to the invasion of Africa.

The Roman defeat in Africa pointed upthe limitations of sea power in that or anyother age. Final victory had to be won onland. Regulus had squandered the chancefor a negotiated peace agreement and thenlost. The clear-cut Roman victory at Ecnomus –perhaps the largest naval battle, in terms ofthe numbers of men involved, ever fought –was anything but conclusive. Carthage wasstill defiant, and willing to continue the warwith renewed vigour.

THE GREAT STORMSIn the summer of 255 BC, a rescue fleetof 350 Roman ships went to Africa to retrievethe Roman survivors who had taken refugein the North African city of Aspis. TheRomans were met by a Punic fleet of 200ships off Cape Hermaeum (Cape Bon).The Romans shattered the Carthaginianfleet, capturing 114 galleys in the courseof the battle.

Whatever satisfaction the Romans might havefelt after Hermaeum vanished on the returnvoyage to Italy. As the fleet, numbering now 364ships and carrying the legionaries picked up atAspis, was close to Camarina on Sicily’s southernshore, it was hit by a ferocious storm.

The result was a catastrophe, with theRomans losing all but 80 of their ships. Thistranslates into the loss of an estimated 85,000oarsmen and perhaps 120,000 men in total:a greater loss than any suffered in any battlein Roman history.

The Romans were determined to retainthe initiative at sea, however, and built a new

fleet of 220 ships in just three months. In254 BC this fleet made for Messana, whereit picked up 80 additional ships, and helpedto seize Panormus.

The next year, 253 BC, the Romansmade another expedition to Africa, whichaccomplished little. The fleet went backto Panormus, and then made for Rome,but along the way was hit by a storm thatdestroyed more than 150 ships. The loss oflife was again calamitous, with perhaps60,000 men drowning.

The Romans at last had had their fill of thesea, and decided to build no more ships. Theirnaval efforts had resulted in no appreciablegains and hecatombs of dead. Instead, theywould concentrate all their military energieson winning the ground-war in Sicily.

But success eluded the Romans even onland. The years 252 and 251 BC passed withlittle gain. The Carthaginians were adept athanging on by their fingernails in the twofortress-seaports that they still possessed.The Siege of Lilybaeum (modern Marsala)continued, bitter and protracted.

38

In 250 BC, the Romans managed to advance their siegeworks to within the city walls, but the Carthaginians, under their resourceful commander Himilco, stymied further efforts to take the city. When a strong wind arose that knocked down the Roman siege-towers, Himilco ordered an attack on the enemy siege-lines, and his men set fire to the bone-dry wooden equipment there. Rome’s patiently built siege-works went up in the resulting conflagration, and thousands of men were killed, including many oarsmen who had left their ships to help in the assault.

DISASTER AT DREPANA, 249 BCAppius Claudius Pulcher, an arrogant scion of the noble clan of the Claudii, became consul in 249 BC. He was determined to make his mark. ‘The distinction of his clan and the reputation of his family had so spoiled him’, Diodorus said of him, ‘that he was supercilious and looked down on everyone.’ He was a martinet, and flogged transgressors against military discipline ruthlessly. Diodorus did not hesitate to call him ‘mentally unstable’.

Pulcher had a plan, and convinced his officers to follow it. The consul had brought with him a fresh draft of replacement rowers for the fleet, about 10,000 men, and, he reasoned, a surprise attack on the nearby port of Drepana (Trapani), Carthage’s only other Sicilian fortress, could succeed.

The Carthaginians knew that the Roman fleet’s crews had taken heavy casualties in the Lilybaeum fiasco, but they did not know that Pulcher had come with reinforcements. As far as the Carthaginians were concerned, Pulcher argued, the Roman fleet was out of commission.

Pulcher’s officers liked what they heard and agreed to the daring plan. The best legionaries from what remained of the army, fired up by the prospect of booty to be had at Drepana, were put aboard ship to serve as marines. The consul led his fleet of about 123 ships out at night, with the northward voyage timed so that it would arrive at Drepana by morning.

The ships appeared off the city at dawn, but the operation immediately went wrong. The vanguard Roman galleys sailed into Drepana’s harbour along its southern approach, but the Carthaginians spotted them coming. Their admiral, Adherbal, reacted at once.

His men hurried aboard their ships and raced westward out of the harbour along its northern edge, steering clear of the dawdling Romans, who were bunching up inside it.

Pulcher was not at the front of his fleet, but at its rear, possibly because he had been more worried about rounding up straggling Roman ships that had fallen behind in the dark than what the Carthaginians might do once his fleet showed up. This was a terrible misjudgement.

By the time Pulcher himself reached Drepana, the entire Carthaginian fleet had

November 2015MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY

Both Rome and Carthage were prepared for a climactic battle. This they got.

pulled clear of the harbour and was formedin a line at sea, while the Roman galleys hadcollected inside it.

Pulcher frantically pulled out his ships andput them into a ragged battle-line, but theinitiative had been completely lost, and theCarthaginians held the tactically superior posi-tion. The Romans had the shore right at theirbacks, while the Carthaginians had only opensea behind them. In the ensuing battle, whenthe Carthaginians were hard-pressed, theyretreated out to sea, while the Romans couldnot manoeuvre at all, either to get away or togo to the aid of a friendly ship under attack.

‘LET THEM DRINK!’The fight off Drepana was a fearsome debaclefor Rome. Pulcher escaped with around30 galleys, but 93 ships and their crews werecaptured, a loss of about 39,000 oarsmen andmarines. Polybius writes that in Rome Pulcher‘was attacked on all sides for his conduct of thebattle’, was put on trial, and hit with a hefty fine.

What had happened? A (doubtful) storyabout the battle holds that Pulcher had beenhanging back at the rear of his fleet waitingfor the auspices to be taken. For Romanarmies and fleets, auspices were had by watch-ing sacred chickens eat some food placedbefore them. If the chickens ate hungrily, theauspices, and thus the prospects for battle,were good; if the chickens would not eat,then the auspices were bad.

At Drepana, the chickens refused to peck,and a frustrated and impious Pulcher hadseized the chickens and tossed them over-board. ‘If they will not eat,’ he is said to haveroared, ‘let them drink!’

To pious Romans, the calamity at Drepanawould have been a punishment from the godsfor this sacrilege.

There might be another explanation besidesPulcher’s dunking of the sacred chickens. Whatabout the corvus? Why had this battle-winningdevice failed to win the battle as it had at Mylaeand Ecnomus? The corvus is not mentioned


Imag

e: A

KG/P

eter

Con

nolly

The Battles

Carthage had a draconian policy of crucifying failed commanders.

ABOVE As the war progressed, the Romans became increasingly skilled at sea – less reliant on crude corvus tactics, more on manoeuvre and the ram. This cutaway shows the five-man sections that gave the quinquereme its name (‘five-oars’) – that is, two men on each of the upper and middle oars, and one man on the shorter, lower one.

again by Polybius after its use at Ecnomus in 256. In fact, it is never again mentioned by any ancient historian.

The supposition of many modern historians is that the boarding bridge had made the Roman galleys top-heavy, and that this was a factorin the terrible losses that the Romans sufferedin storms in 255 and 253 BC. It is assumedthat the corvus was removed and never putback because it constituted a danger to thestability of a Roman quinquereme greater thanany benefit it might bring in battle.

Without the corvus, the Romans werenot the equals of the Carthaginians at sea,especially when the Carthaginians couldmanoeuvre freely.

HAMILCAR BARCAThe Romans again gave up trying to wincontrol of the sea, and concentrated onfighting on land. Yet the 240s BC in Sicilywere not easy for the Romans. In 247 BC,a bold and resourceful Carthaginian general,Hamilcar Barca, arrived on the island. Heconducted a hard-hitting campaign of raidsand ambushes from his bases at Hiercteand then Eryx.

At their wits’ end after several years of costly stalemate, in 242 BC the Romans decided to make another major effort at sea to end the war.

The state treasury was empty, and ships cost money to build. The solution was to rely on subscription by private citizens to fund theconstruction. One or maybe several Romanstogether would contribute the money to builda single quinquereme, with only the promiseof a share of any booty recovered as compen-sation. In this way, a fleet of 200 quinqueremeswas produced. When it was fitted out, it sailedto Sicily under the command of consul GaiusLutatius Catulus.

The Carthaginians were caught flat-footedby Rome’s renewed naval challenge, and tookmany months to respond with a fleet of theirown. It seems that the Punic navy had beenallowed to decay while the war in Sicily wasconfined to land operations, and Catulus usedthe extra time to drill his men relentlessly.

The Carthaginians were faced with an acuteproblem. Hamilcar Barca’s men at Eryx werein need of resupply, but to reach them theirrelief fleet under Hanno would have to getpast Catulus’s fast ships, offload their suppliesfor the Eryx garrison, and then take on boardHamilcar’s soldiers to be able to fight a propersea battle with the Romans. This was a tall order,and the Romans caught the Carthaginian shipsbefore they could get into Eryx.

THE BATTLE OF THE AEGATESISLANDS, 10 MARCH 241 BCOff the Aegates Islands, the Romans, nowtrained to a pitch of perfection, trounced thePunic fleet, sinking 50 galleys and capturing70. With the failure of the resupply missionand total Roman control of the sea, Carthage’sfew remaining positions in Sicily were boundto collapse, and she sued for peace.

40

Sea power had at last brought Rome victory after 23 expensive, exhausting, bloody years. It is thought that Rome lost some 700 warships during the war, many more to storms than to Carthaginian action. Rome’s bid for mastery of the sea had won it a new province in Sicily, but the peace agreement that concluded the war left so much bitterness that it, along with Rome’s high-handed seizure of Sardinia in 239 BC, laid the groundwork for the Second Punic War (218-201 BC).

That second war with Carthage might have turned out very differently had Rome not wrested control of the seas from Carthage in the first. Though sea power could not win Rome the war, it did prevent it from losing it, and allowed her greater flexibility when moving her armies around.

Carthage never seriously challenged Rome again for naval dominance, not even when Hannibal Barca, Hamilcar’s son, had humbled several Roman armies in quick succession, and was devastating Italy almost at will.

When Rome emerged triumphant at the end of that conflict, her powerful and well-trained navy was at the forefront of her campaigns against the Hellenistic monarchies of the eastern Mediterranean, which she defeated in turn. Rome’s navy was thus just as important to the building of the Roman Empire as her legions..

Marc G DeSantis is an historian and attorney. His book about naval warfare in the Punic Wars, Rome Seizes the Trident, will be published in late 2015.


Rome’s navy was just as important to the building of the Roman Empire as her legions.

ABOVE The Roman Navy: mistress of the Mediterranean, which the Romans came to know as mare nostrum (‘our sea’). This is one of a number of bas-relief depictions of Roman quinqueremes, the dreadnoughts of their age, a combination of muscle-powered ram and heavily armed marines.

Imag

e: A

KG

HOW SOLDIERS FROM NORTH ANDSOUTH FOUGHT TOGETHER IN WWIIt was a divided country in a divided world. Ireland’s contribution to the Great War was bitterly contested by Irish men and women. With his focus on the Battles of Messines, Tom Farrell explores the issues that split a nation between 1914 and 1918.

The Irish at Messines


It would be a fine memorial to the men who have died so splendidly, if we could, over their graves, build a bridge between north and south.

The sentiments in the letter sent to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in December 1916 were genuine, and its author would pay for them with his life.

In the early hours of 7 June 1917, as troops moved into their assembly positions near Messines Ridge, Conan Doyle’s friend MajorWillie Redmond was commanding A Companyof the 6th Royal Irish Regiment, 47th Brigade.

Men from both sides of Ireland’s sectariandivide waited for the massive undergrounddetonations that would begin the attack.The 16th Irish and 36th Ulster Divisions of theIX Corps were essential to Field-Marshal Haig’splans to capture Messines Ridge, as the preludeto a new Ypres offensive.

Since the attack had been conceived inearly 1916, 24 tunnels had been tortuouslydug under enemy lines by special miningcompanies that were attached to the RoyalEngineers. By the following June, one hadbeen discovered, while four came outsidethe eventual sphere of operation; the restwere set to blow a series of gigantic holesin the German front-line.

PLANSOnce the ammonal in the shafts had beendetonated, the planned attack was to be

Men from both sides of Ireland’s sectarian divide waited for the massive underground detonations that would begin the attack.

carried out along a broad from St Yves to Mount Sorel by three corps.

The ANZAC Corps were to assault in a north-east direction and capture the southern shoulder of the ridge, including Messines. In the centre, IX Corps, including the Irishmen, would advance east astride the Spanbroekmolen saddle and the heights of Kemmel and Wytschaete villages. The X Corps would assault south-east to capture the northern part of the ridge, between St Eloi-Oosttaverne and Mount Sorel. The XIV Corps was to be held in reserve at GHQ.

Before the battle, 2,266 guns, including 756 heavy and medium weapons, had been

ABOVE Men of the Royal Irish Rifles photographedon the Somme on 1 July 1916. They were troubledmen in more ways than one: many of theircountrymen considered them traitors.


assembled. Approximately 144,000 tonnes of ammunition was located in dumps behind the line, with 1,000 rounds positioned in each gun-pit.

The Germans had captured the high ground in October 1914, preventing the British Army from seeing beyond the German front, except for observation carried out from the air. Messines was a strategically vital objective in the Ypres sector of the Western Front.

Both Irish divisions had incurred terrible casualties on the Somme the previous year. They had left the sector by September, moving north to the relative calm of the Flanders line. They relieved Canadian troops who had held

the line facing German-occupied Wytschaete. The Irish were now part of the Second Army, under the command of General Sir Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, known to his men as ‘Daddy Plum’.

The 36th Ulster Division was led by Major-General Oliver Stewart Nugent, and the 16th Irish by Major-General William Bernard Hickie, both graduates of Sandhurst, and both veterans of the Boer War. Hickie had served with distinction at Bothaville in November 1900. Nugent had been taken prisoner after the Battle of Talana Hill the previous year. The former was later elected a senator in the Irish Free State’s upper house

Imag

e: Alamy

of parliament, chalking up a record numberof votes in the 1925 session.

PREPARATIONSFor the men they led, the winter of 1916/1917had been brutal in western Flanders. Therewere not enough billets, so many men hadbeen forced to sleep in tents.

The calamities of the Somme had taughtthe generals the necessity of massive infra-structural work ahead of an attack. New roadswere built behind the front, and light-gaugerailways laid in order to ferry supplies to thefighting and the wounded out of it. Both Irishdivisions underwent intense training. Groundand air reconnaissance missions behindGerman lines gathered intelligence.

Ahead of the attack, the men of the 16thIrish Division enjoyed their longest phases outof active combat since arriving in France. Whennot engaged in training exercises, they playedgames of rugby and soccer.

Given the rising tensions at home, it wasreported that there seemed to be relativelylittle sectarian tension among the men –although many Ulstermen were taken abackby the Catholicism of their French allies.Many of these men, some from Belfast’s ship-yards, others from Queen’s University OfficersTraining Corps, had begun the war diggingpractice trenches in the countryside southof Lough Neagh.

In the south, labour disputes immediatelybefore the war had thrown thousands ofmen out of work. Even though Ireland wasexempted from conscription, introduced bythe wartime Coalition in March 1916, povertyhad compelled many men to join up in thefirst two years of the war.

Known as ‘National Volunteers’, they hadheeded the call of the moderate leadershipof the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) – the‘Nationalists’ – who peddled the line thatHome Rule would be granted after the warin return for loyal service.

It was at the end of 1915 that the 16thDivision had reached Flanders. Tom Kettle,the Nationalist MP for East Tyrone, recorded:‘There are two sinister fences of barbed wireon the barbs of which blood-stained strips ofuniform and fragments more sinister havebeen known to hang… a figure in khaki standsas he peers through the night towards theGerman lines. His watch is over. The trenchhas not fallen. As for him, he has carried hispack for Ireland and Europe and now pack-carrying is over. He has held the line.’

THE MINES EXPLODEAt 3.10am, nearly one million pounds ofexplosive detonated in the most devastatingnon-nuclear explosion in any war to date. Fourmines exploded in front of the men of the 36thDivision and four in front of the men of the 16th.

MESSINES

44

The men had been briefed on what was coming, but the actual explosions were far more ferocious than expected. Later it would be estimated that 10,000 German soldiers had perished in the blast. On the eve of the attack, General Plumer had remarked, ‘We may not change history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change geography.’

All of the men had lain down to receive the shockwave. As they glanced up, they could see rippling multi-coloured columns of smoke pushing up into the night. Then debris began raining down, claiming casualties. Lieutenant T Witherow of the 8th Royal Irish Rifles recorded: ‘When the debris fell, the L/CPL, one of my best section commanders, was killed by a stone.’

Officers and NCOs began shaking the prostrate soldiers to their feet, but in the dust and fumes many men were disorientated and lost direction. ‘In fact, if we had not the German SOS lights to show us their positions,’ recalled Witherow, ‘it might have been as easy to go right or left as ahead.’

Units and sub-units skirted around the vast smoking craters. For both the 16th and 36th Divisions, the leading battalions had two companies up and two behind. At a designated ‘Red’ line, the leading companies would pause. Those in the rear were then to leapfrog and take the lead in the advance to the ‘Blue’ Line, with ‘mop-up’ operations the responsibility of a supporting battalion.

The follow-up battalions, having passed through the Blue line, would then cross two other lines, ‘Green’ and ‘Black’, before halting at the latter for the final mop up.

THE INFANTRY ADVANCEBoth divisions encountered heavy fire as they went forward. The men of the 16th (47th Brigade) then found themselves involved in hand-to-hand fighting between Petit Bois and Wytschaete village. But the men of the Leinster Regiment reached the edge of the Wytschaete at zero plus three hours and 40 minutes, even without their supporting tanks, which had broken down.

The 49th Brigade followed up, encountering resistance at L’Hospice, Sonen Farm, and along the Red Line. After A Company of the 7th Inniskilling Fusiliers overcame resistance along the Red Line, they took many German prisoners; in the empty dugouts they found breakfast and bottles of beer.

Plumer planned the second phase of the Messines attack for 15.00 hours. By then, the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles had taken L’Hospice, with the loss of one officer


‘We may not change history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change geography.’

General Plumer

ABOVE On 7 June 1917, 19 mines were successfully detonated along the Messines Ridge. An estimated 10,000 German soldiers were killed in history’s most devastating non-nuclear explosion.

RIGHT The Battle of Messines, 7-14 June 1917, showing the mine blasts, the British attack, and the major gains made during the week-long battle.

Map

: Ian

Bul

l

and 17 soldiers killed, along with 130men wounded.

The two brigades were relieved on the nightof 8-9 June, and four days later the 16th Divisionmarched off to the Merris area for training.

Meanwhile, the 107th and 109th Brigadesof the 36th Division got to the Red Line, butencountered serious resistance from twoGerman machine-guns, until relieved by the9th and 14th Rifles.

Then, after crossing the Blue and BlackLines, they encountered further fire on theMessines-Wytschaete road. When the 9thInniskillings were halted by a machine-gun, onesergeant managed to attract the attention of atank by banging on its hull with a grenade.

Around 200 yards short of the road,the men were fired on from two concretepillboxes, one on either flank. Both weredestroyed by platoon bombing attacks,supported by Lewis guns.

By nightfall on 7 June, the 108th Brigadehad relieved the 107th and 109th Brigadesby moving its two mop-up battalions forward,and by the following day the last elementsof the 36th Division had retreated to theslopes of Mount Kemmel.

The Messines Ridge attack, which beganthe Third Battle of Ypres, was a spectacularmilitary success. But the brutal campaign

MESSINES

46

that followed, culminating in the capture of Passchendaele village in November, would be hampered by torrential rain and strategic hubris. Both divisions would suffer thousands of casualties.

Messines itself had cost the 16th Division 748 dead, the 36th 700. Among them was Major Willie Redmond MP. He had been

hit in the wrist within minutes of going over the top, but had continued forward until hit in the leg. Men from the 36th Ulster Division then bore his stretcher to a field hospital, where he died some hours later. Redmond was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour by the French.

A DIVIDED ISLANDAs MP for East Clare, the 56 year old Willie Redmond must have seemed unlikely mate-rial for the Western Front. A veteran national-ist since the days of Charles Stewart Parnell, he was said to be more volatile, spontaneous, and passionate than his older brother John, now leading the IPP. He had condemned the Boer War in the Commons in 1899, and was associated with the emerging generation of more forthright nationalists like Arthur Griffiths and Maude Gonne.

More radical than his brother on many issues, including female suffrage, Willie Redmond had travelled widely in the 1900s, and admired the dominion status of Australia and Canada. But on the outbreak of the Great War, he was among thousands of southern Irishmen who joined the newly formed 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions at the behest of his brother.


One sergeant managed to attract the attention of a tank by banging on its hull with a grenade.

LEFT & BELOW Two British recruitment posters aimed at Irish Catholics, one inviting them to fight in defence of their Belgian co-religionists, the other calling for revenge for Irish lives lost in the sinking of the Lusitania.

ABOVE John Redmond (1856-1918), the moderate nationalist politician who advocated Irish support for Britain during the First World War in return for Home Rule afterwards.

John Redmond argued that, with thousandsof Ulster Unionists flocking to the recruiting sta-tions in the north, abstention would weaken thecause of the Third Home Rule Bill, introducedin 1912 but postponed until after the war.

The IPP split over the war: most supportedRedmond, but the dissenting factions coalescedaround a more radical nationalist current,whose leaders would soon attempt a majorarmed uprising in Dublin.

There is little reason to doubt that, had aGeneral Election been called in 1915, the IPP,whose support was crucial to the governingLiberals at Westminster, would have secured amajor victory. But the long-term perspective isanother matter. Willie Redmond’s letter to ConanDoyle seems, in that light, naïve, even delusional.

THE ULSTER VOLUNTEER FORCEUnionist Orange and Nationalist Green hadbeen on the brink of a bloody showdownin 1914. Not for the first or last time, UlsterProtestants were prepared to resort to armsto resist the bogey of absorption by the ‘Papist’hordes to the south. Incipient Home Rulealarmed and outraged Unionists.

Like their descendents over half a centurylater, confronted by a resurgent Republicanism,the Unionists, led by James Craig and EdwardCarson, sought to stymie the efforts of HerbertAsquith’s government to negotiate someform of power-sharing deal.

Craig, who stage-managed the UlsterCovenant Day of 28 September 1912, wasenthusiastic about the looming partition ofthe island. The Dublin-born Carson was moreresigned, and notably uneasy about the forma-tion of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) inJanuary 1913, tasked with armed resistanceto Home Rule.

The formation of the UVF was reciprocatedwhen a meeting in Dublin on 25 November1913 resulted in the Irish Volunteers formingtheir own paramilitary wing. The mutiny of20 March 1914 – when a majority of Britishofficers stationed in the Curragh, CountyKildare, Ireland’s largest military camp,signalled their collective refusal to implementthe Government’s Home Rule policy – revealedto Ireland’s Nationalists that they would needmilitary muscle to back their political demands.

The following month, the UVF covertlylanded 24,000 rifles in Larne, County Antrim,under cover of darkness. Once again, the movewas reciprocated: in July, the Irish Volunteerslanded weapons at Howth, north of Dublin.

In short, without the intervention of GavriloPrincip in faraway Sarajevo, Ireland mighthave descended into civil war in late 1914.

1916: THE DEFINING YEARRedmond’s letter to Conan Doyle seems allthe more poignant given how events earlierthat same year would soon catalyse into oppo-sitional Great War narratives, both of whichhave echoed down the decades since.

A painting by James Beadle, donated by theUVF to Belfast City Hall, depicts the slaughterof the Somme on 1 July. It still appears onOrange murals and sashes. A year beforeMessines, whole towns and streets in the


BELOW A consignment of German guns is smuggledinto Ireland.BOTTOM The famous proclamation of an IrishRepublic, made during the Easter Rising in 1916.

BELOW James Connolly’s Citizen Army parades outside Liberty Hall in Dublin, the headquarters of the Transport and General Workers Union and the Irish Labour Party. The banner above proclaims a very different allegiance from that of Irishmen fighting on the Western Front.

Imag

e: W

IPL

Imag

e: W

IPL

province had been thrown into mourning by the events of that day.

The vast artillery barrage that began on 24 June had failed to soften the German positions when the men of the 36th Division scrambled past sandbags and coils of barbed wire near Thiepval, at the heart of the 30-mile front.

Unlike most of the British troops that day, the Ulstermen stormed forward to take five lines of German trenches and establish a foothold in the still-intact German citadel of Schwaben Redoubt. But in the process they

were exposed to machine-gun fire on both flanks. Later, forced to withdraw, they suffered heavily from shellfire in no-man’s land. By the end of the day they had suffered 5,200 casualties, including over 2,000 dead.

The 16th Division also suffered on the Somme, particularly at Guillemont and Ginchy. On 27 April, two brigades lost 463 men when chlorine gas drifted across no-man’s land at Hulloch. Many of the deaths were attributed to poorly designed gas helmets. One witness described finding corpses ‘in all kinds of tragic attitudes, some of them holding hands like children in the dark’.

But such tragedies found very different inter-pretations, north and south. For the Unionists, descendents of 17th-century Scots Calvinist settlers, the trenches could be seen as a latter-day Exodus or Calvary, testing and validating the mettle of the elect. For many Nationalists, the Great War embodied British imperialism at its most duplicitous and cruel, snuffing out the lives of 30,000 Irishmen on a promise of Home Rule that seemed increasingly derisory as the Unionists armed for rebellion to prevent it.

THE EASTER RISINGCrucially, not all Nationalists had endorsed the Redmondite line. A dissenting rump of Irish Volunteers joined forces with other

MESSINES


Without the intervention of Gavrilo Princip in faraway Sarajevo, Ireland might have descended into civil war in late 1914.

ABOVE Dublin during the Easter Rising, showing the major military clashes. It was a hopelessly one-sided struggle. The Irish people remained passive, the armed vanguard isolated. Outnumbered two to one at the beginning of the Rising, by the end, a week later, the odds had increased to five to one as the British rushed in reinforcements.

BELOW The General Post Office in Dublin after the Rising. It was largely destroyed during the fighting, but was completely rebuilt afterwards.

Imag

e: W

IPL

factions who sought to establish a 32-countyRepublic by an armed uprising supportedby German arms.

The Easter Rising began on 24 April 1916.Having issued a proclamation outside thecavernous General Post Office in Dublin, theIrish Brotherhood seized key points aroundthe city and elsewhere across the country.The Rising lasted six days, during whichthe hoped-for island-wide revolt failed tomaterialise. British forces shelled the centreof Dublin, and by the time the Rising’s leaderssurrendered, 446 people, soldiers and civilians,were dead, and over 2,000 wounded.

Unsurprisingly, Unionist troops on theWestern Front were unreservedly contemptu-ous of the Rising. But among the NationalVolunteers, reactions were distinctly mixed.Some enraged troops burned an effigy ofSir Roger Casement, who had unsuccessfullytried to land German arms in Ireland. Butothers were appalled on hearing reports ofmartial law and shelling.

Many soldiers reacted much like civiliansback home: initial apathy or animus towards theRising changed to outrage when its leaders werecourt-martialled and executed. Sergeant JohnLucy of the 16th Division probably expresseda common sentiment when he wrote: ‘I expe-rienced a cold fury, because I would rather seethe whole of the British Empire damned soonerthan hear of an Irishman being killed in his owncountry by any intruding stranger.’

www.military-history.org 49

THE SINN FÉIN LANDSLIDEThis shift in attitudes, combined with attempts to introduce conscription in Ireland in early 1918, tied to the implementation of Home Rule, drastically eroded support for the IPP. Within nine months of Messines Ridge, John Redmond, who had received hundreds of messages of condolence on his brother’s death, including one from Edward Carson, was dead. He reportedly told a Jesuit priest who adminis-tered the last rites, ‘I’m a broken-hearted man.’

It was perhaps a mercy that he did not survive long enough to see his party virtually obliter-ated in the 1918 General Election, when the Republican movement’s political wing, known as Sinn Féin, took 73 of 105 seats. Among them was Willie Redmond’s East Clare seat, taken by one of the Rising’s senior figures, spared execution and later amnestied: Éamon de Valera.

When another war erupted in Europe in 1939, de Valera – by then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) – would refuse Winston Churchill’s offer of Irish reunification in exchange for Éire’s entry into the war.

Although this decision was underscored by myriad considerations, de Valera undoubtedly had Redmond’s fate in mind. His predecessor had been destroyed by the Great War. And yet he had seemed like a prime minister in waiting in the summer of 1914. .

Tom Farrell is a freelance writer and journalist whose work has featured in numerous newspapers

and magazines in Britain and Ireland.

MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY

At Messines Peace Park, a round tower rises 110 feet above the bucolic farmland. It is almost impossible to reconcile today’s expanse of green fi elds and grazing cattle with the wasteland of mud and fl ooded craters that existed nearly a century ago.

The Park was opened on 11 November 1998 in a ceremony attended by Ireland’s President Mary MacAleese, Queen Elizabeth II, and King Albert II of Belgium.

When the 16th and 36th Divisions fought alongside each other on the embattled Messines Ridges in June 1917, it represented, not even the end of an era, but an aberration. The defi ning events of the previous year, for north and south, ultimately led to partition and separate parliaments in Dublin and Stormont. More violence followed: a remorseless War of Independence (1919-1921) and then Civil War (1922-1923) in the south; and, of course, more recently, the long-running ‘Troubles’ (1969-1998) in the north.

Tom Kettle MP had already fallen at Ginchy by the time of Messines. But his refl ections on his and his compatriots’ experi-ences are inscribed on one of the nine stone slabs surrounding the tower: ‘So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, and tired men sigh, with mud for couch and fl oor, know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, died not for Flag, nor King, nor Emperors, but for a dream born in a herdsman’s shed, and the secret scripture of the poor.’

ROUND TOWER MEMORIAL

ABOVE A Sinn Féin election poster from 1918. The radical nationalist party won a landslide. The British were defeated in the subsequent Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). The executed rebels of 1916 were thus the posthumous victors.

Photo:

PAPh

oto

HOW THE ITALIAN RESISTANCE DEFEATED THE NAZISSarah De Nardi uncovers the hidden history of the mass anti-Fascist movement that defeated the German occupation of Italy after the fall of Mussolini.

Resistenza Italiana



The Italian Resistance of 1943-1945 was an iconic episode. Its legacy has had a profound impact on political and intellectual discussion

in the post-war period. It is still a topic of heated debate today.

The Resistance originated amid the tumult of the Second World War, and the collapse of Italy’s Fascist regime. Various forms of military and civil resistance emerged between September 1943 and April 1945.

ARMISTICE DAYItaly joined in the war on the German side on 10 June 1940 – the southern end of the Berlin–Rome Axis. After a disastrous war effort in which their German allies often ignored or exploited the Italians, the King and the (outlawed) opposition parties decided they

had had enough. More importantly, the non-Fascist majority of the population wanted an end to the war.

Prime Minister Benito Mussolini was dismissed from office by King Emmanuel III on 25 July 1943. The result was chaos.

British and American forces had landed in Sicily on 9/10 July (Operation Husky). A radio announcement by the King on 8 September 1943 – one heard in every Italian home with a wireless – proclaimed the following:

The Italian government, having recognised the impossibility of continuing the unequal struggle against the overwhelming power of the opponent, and in order to prevent more and more serious disasters to the nation, has pleaded for an armistice with General Eisenhower, supreme commander of allied

Anglo-American forces. The request was granted.Consequently, any act of hostility against the Anglo-American forces must cease by the Italian forces everywhere. However, they will react to attacks from any other source.

This meant the Germans. And the Germans were, predictably, livid about the ultimate betrayal.

WHO WERE THE PARTISANS?With the south of the peninsula in Allied hands, the collapse of the Fascist regime left a political vacuum in northern and central Italy. This was filled by a Nazi occupation, which began as early as 9 September, the day after Armistice Day.

On 12 September, specialist SS forces launched Operation Eiche, and sprung Mussolini from captivity. Hitler installed him as head of the Italian Social Republic (RSI, or Salò Republic) in the occupied north, on the shores of Lake Garda.

The different groups that constituted the Resistance – and particularly the armed guerrilla bands known as the Partisans – were henceforward engaged against the occupation of northern and central Italy by German Nazi forces and their Italian Fascist allies of the Salò Republic.

The Resistance was significant in both military and political terms. Estimates of the numbers involved vary, but journalist and ex-Partisan Giorgio Bocca reckoned that as many as 300,000 Italians were involved in direct action against the Nazi-Fascist regime by April 1945. Many more supported the Partisans with food, provisions, intelligence, shelter, and other assistance.

THE RESISTANCE GROWSThe rank and file of the Resistance grew substantially through to 1945. From an original base of around 9,000 in late 1943, historian Paul Ginsborg estimates numbers rising to 20,000-30,000 in the spring of 1944, and perhaps 100,000 later that year, before explosive growth in the last few months of the war. This rapid rise in the number of Resisters was due to more and more ex-Fascists and Wehrmacht deserters joining Partisan bands.

SOE Special Forces expert Lawrence Lewis claims that up to 70,000 of the armed Partisans were killed, and 40,000 wounded. Bocca estimates 35,000 fatalities. The Italian historian and former Partisan Claudio Pavone

LEFT Hitler and Mussolini parade in Berlin in 1937.

FAR LEFT A detachment of Italian guerrillas enter Cesena on 20 October 1944. From September 1943 onwards, the Partisans were engaged against the occupation of northern and central Italy by German Nazi forces and their Italian Fascist allies.

ITALIAN RESISTANCE

52

offers precise figures of 44,720 dead and9,980 killed in reprisals.

THE CIVILIAN ROLEOverall, all experts agree the Resistancerecruited significantly, and that these fightersalso relied on extensive support networks.One estimate is that each Partisan in thefield (or mountain) needed 10-15 civiliansupporters to sustain their efforts with food,shelter, supplies, and information.

These large support networks also increasedrisks, however: shifting ideological allegiancesand the coercion of individuals to feed thePartisans meant that betrayals and reprisalswere frequent. Given the large numbersinvolved, and the wider context of whatwas, in fact, an Italian civil war, it is unsurpris-ing that the Resistance tradition has playeda key role in subsequent national memoryand debate.

What is also clear – in the judgement of theAllies at the time and many historians since –is that the Resistance played a central role indefeating the Nazis. Like the French Maquis,the Resistenza Italiana was a major fighting forceshaping the outcome of the Second World War.

THE RESISTANCE: A GAME-CHANGING ITALIAN PHENOMENONThroughout Europe, the Second WorldWar was fought with savagery. Italy was noexception. The people of central and north-ern Italy found themselves surrounded bywarring foreign armies as the Allies foughttheir way northwards, and the Nazi-Fascistforces sometimes applied a scorched-earthpolicy as they retreated.

At the same time, while German troops(with enlisted Italians) and Salò-Fascistforces battled with the Partisans, Italiansoften found themselves fighting each other,some from conviction, others because theywere coerced.

Civilians faced demands for supplies andsupport from all sides in the conflict, andmany non-combatants were subject to randomviolence – be it Allied bombing or massacreby retreating Nazis, such as those at Civitellaand Sant’Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany.

As a result, in the aftermath of thesepunishing episodes, the Resistance – andparticularly the Partisans – became increas-ingly symbolic for post-war Italy, and the‘Resistance tradition’ came to dominatethe decades following the war.


LEFT Partisans posted on a spur of rock. Many Resisters based themselves in the higher, less accessible mountains. BELOW LEFT A gathering of Partisans among the mountains of Piedmont in 1943. These mobile bands would need support from many civilians to provide food, shelter, supplies, and information.

Phot

o: T

opfo

toPh

oto:

Ala

my

MYRIAD POLITICAL VIEWS AND IDEALSThe Resistance was fractured. It seldom meant the same thing to different participants, let alone to Italians as a whole. It was formed from a shifting mixture of men and women from different Italian regions, of various political allegiance, with Allied officers from overseas adding to the cocktail.

The Resisters soon formed into small, mobile units, and often based themselves in the higher, less accessible mountains. Class and political divisions differentiated the brigades: Communist Garibaldi formations constituted the majority in most regions, but liberal and Catholic units also existed, and most brigades established their own territories.

PARTISAN ACTIVITIESThe Partisans employed guerrilla tactics. These included sabotage of power lines and power stations, and the destruction of bridges and roadways used by the Germans to transfer livestock and other war necessities to Germany.

The Partisans excelled at ambushes. They would take the enemy by surprise, capture soldiers or foodstuffs, and then retreat back into their hidden mountain bases.

Some Partisans were based in localcommunities, where they liaised with civiliansand passed on looted German supplies.Community-based Partisans did not usu-ally take part in active fighting, but rathersought to further the cause of the Resistanceby disrupting normal life and spreadingpropaganda – pro-Allied material in the caseof the moderate and Catholic Partisans, orpro-Communist material in the case of thehardnosed Garibaldi brigades. Sometimes,after carrying out their propaganda work,these ‘diplomatic’ Partisans, too, retreatedto inaccessible higher ground.

A DIRTY WARFratricidal conflict was frequent and, onoccasion, bloody. On 7 February 1945,Garibaldini Partisans massacred a groupof Catholic Osoppo Partisans (the ‘PorzusBloodshed’). But it was the continuouscat-and-mouse game between Fascists andPartisans that was truly lethal.

Mario, a witness who was part of theCommunist 18th Garibaldi Brigade inForlì (central Italy), recalls:

The thought that it was enough to wear auniform to turn your neighbour into yourtormentor is still hard to accept. We [thePartisans] were dying of hunger, typhus,and fear. They [the Fascists] were laughingand enjoying themselves. I still remember theface of a little guy, half my size, who was hittingme while I was tied to a chair. If only I could

move I would have beaten him to death. Their laughter was for us the worst torture, like when they lined us up in front of the wall and told us it was our final hour, and then a shooter fired blanks, only to terrorise us. Our hearts jumped out of our chests.

WHERE DID THE PARTISANS OPERATE?The intensity of Resistance activity varied greatly by region. The movement was espe-cially strong in the north, the old industrial region where the unions and the left parties had traditionally been strong, and where the Nazi-Fascist occupation was now entrenched. The Resistance was, to a large degree, a ‘wind from the north’ that left much of the south of the country untouched.

Books, articles, and films routinely locate the Resistance in upland areas, and the otherwise precise and detailed Resistance literature often notes the ‘retreat to the hills’. The mountain-dwelling Partisans have become noble, almost Romantic figures – hiding in pristine upland forests before attacking the foreign invaders occupying the cities and the plains.

In these generalised accounts, Partisans are represented as being militarily, politically, and geographically separate from the occupied,perhaps compromised, lowland areas, andfrom the lowland Italians enlisted in the SalòRepublic’s forces. These idealised Partisansoffer a vision of a purer Resistance – untaintedby the necessities of compromise, consensus,co-existence, and even collaboration that wereeveryday realities for Italians living under theNazi-Fascist boot in urban and lowland areas.

HEROES IN THE MOUNTAINSThe image of the mountain Partisan is notwithout controversy. Individuals who resisted inthe cities, the plains, or without taking up armsoften point out that their stories are told lessfrequently than those of the mountain brigades.

Oral historian Luisa Passerini has questionedthe simplistic narrative of the noble mountainguerrilla. The Resistance was, she argues,diverse, fractured, and often deeply rooted inthe heavily populated – and heavily occupied– cities and plains.

Indeed, former Partisans sometimesinvoked the mountains as spaces of purer,untarnished Resistance – especially by contrastwith the fraught, complex political negotiationsafter the war between 1945 and 1947 to con-struct a new Italian republic.

Sometimes the mountain-hero imagerywas mobilised when former Partisans felttheir position in the post-war world was beingmarginalised. In the ‘rebellion’ of Santa Libera,Piedmont, in August 1946, for example, formerPartisans returned to the hills, refusing to comedown for a week until a delegation of politiciansclimbed uphill to listen to their grievances.


This ‘secession’ by former Partisans was intended to reclaim the moral high ground and regain some political visibility – best achieved by evoking the endurance and sacri-fice implied by guerrilla warfare in the moun-tains. Little wonder that neo-Fascists claimed that former Partisans raised themselves onto a pedestal of ‘mud and blood’.

PARTISAN EXPERIENCESDanger was ever-present in Resistance activity. Taking part in, or supporting in any way, the the activities of the rebels might be punished by summary execution.

Rosetta Banchieri recalls:

We soon learn how to dodge German and Blackshirt [Fascist] reconnaissance patrols, and thus learn to fight against fear, tiredness, the cold, the fog. For a long time I have lingered on the memory of the relief when we reached the peak [where the Partisan brigade’s HQ was located]; we often lost our way, missed the right path, and lost our sense of direction because of the fog… like in a nightmare, we could often hear voices but not figure out where they came from. I still remember the joyous welcome, the bread and butter and jam awaiting us when we reached our destination, and then the well-deserved rest under warm sheepskin rugs, and early in the morning down we went back into the plains.

Rosetta, a young girl at the time, displayed great bravery in enlisting as a messenger


Phot

o: ISTR

EVI

ABOVE Partisan hanged in the town of Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza. The number of armed Partisans killed has been estimated at up to 70,000.

and courier for the local Partisan brigade.Like many girls, she would look inconspicuousduring her missions, as the patrols wouldseldom suspect a cheery, rosy-cheeked younglass of concealing secret messages in the hemof her dress and ammunition, even explosives,in her bike’s basket, underneath eggs and jarsof marmalade.

A DIFFICULT EXISTENCEMost Resistance veterans, including severalI have interviewed personally, speak withgreat pathos of the places where they wereactive and the experiences shaping theirlives as combatants, helpers, or intelligencepersonnel during those momentous years.Veterans speak with emotional intensity ofthe events they remember most fondly.

They recall not only favourite places butalso locales in nature so inhospitable thatthey were forced to reshape and reinventthem to make them suitable for temporaryhuman occupation. In return, they gainedsecrecy, quiet, and safety: and it was this thatmade them so ‘special’.

As in most guerrilla warfare, an experienceof forced nomadism, impermanence,precariousness, and instability emergesfrom all Resistance accounts. CommunistPartisan Giorgio Vicchi wrote about thegreat strains of

a long and strenuous march… after 13 hoursen route, a blizzard catches us out… we carryon regardless in an exhausting march lastingall night… The shattering march had somereally difficult moments. The woods, and thesnow, in places one and a half metres tall,have hindered recognition of the right path…Already prostrated by the long march in appallingweather, the men of the Garibaldi brigade are atthe end of their tether. The error on the part of

our guide, who, owing to bad visibility, ledus on a course that lasted three hours whenit should have taken one, and along difficult,perilous tracks… provoked strong resentmentand anger in the Garibaldi brigades, leadingto an outburst of harsh criticism againstthe Comandante.

It was not just the fighters and their directhelpers who found the Resistance experienceexhausting and perilous. The Italian popula-tion, in the north especially, was, as a rule,sympathetic to the cause of the anti-Fascists(but not always) and helped in whateverways they could.

HUMBLE HELPERSHowever, those harbouring ‘rebels’ and Alliedofficers faced dire consequences if they weredetected. Many Allied officers, and British


and Commonwealth prisoners-of-war whoescaped the former Italian enemy’s camps andjoined Partisan bands, recall with great grati-tude the bravery and compassion of humbleItalian families who took them in, protectedthem, and fed them whenever they needed it.

Members of the British Intelligence servicesalso remember civilians fondly, and acknowledgethe great risks they ran in order to help out.Richard Tolson, an Englishman attached to anSOE mission in the mountains of north-east Italy,who lived and fought with the Partisans, recalls:

Sudden interruption – Enemy Cossack Troopsare reported to be in San Francesco which is kmsaway, and held by Garibaldini. We have packedup radio and all kit and are ready, if necessary,to flit. The old woman in whose house I havea room is nearly in tears and thinks it will beburned to the ground. But we will leave no traceof our lodgement. I don’t particularly like the ideaof running tonight, it’s started to rain again,and the radio makes it no joke. Oh for arms andammo. It may not be as bad as we think.

Life was hard everywhere behind enemylines, but especially so for those who did notfeel as if fighting and the soldier’s life werefor them. A former Partisan I interviewed,Aldo De Bin, remembered how:

At night we marched for kilometres on end.During the day we could rest a little. Mostly inforesters’ huts or shepherds’ shelters, if the owners

LEFT Italian Partisans in the Belluno province with SOE men Captain Paul Brietsche (front) and Richard Tolson (top right, with the hat). BELOW Italian Partisans armed with rifles force a man to crawl out from behind a steel gate, as they conduct a search for Fascists throughout Rome after the city had fallen to Allied troops on 17 June 1944.

Phot

o: P

rivat

e ar

chiv

e of

Ric

hard

Tol

son

Phot

o: A

P Ph

oto

ITALIAN RESISTANCE

were on our side and willing to run the risk andshelter us… Even so, we were still anxious, onedge… There was so much loneliness, especiallyat night. You thought of your previous life, howlovely and peaceful and calm and happy it was,you know, being at home.

A RESISTANCE TO REMEMBERThe duress is hard to imagine. Yet somany chose to fight, or to risk their livesto support those who were fighting. Theirmemories and their experience are impor-tant in assessing Italy’s contribution to


the European victory. The efforts of the Resistance unified Italians and, to an extent, glossed over political and social differences in the face of a common menace. Not only that: they paved the way for the re-establishment of Italian democracy and the creation of the modern Italian republic.

But there was a dark side. Italy experienced not only armed occupation by the Nazis, but also a fratricidal civil war, in which Fascists fought Communists, Socialists, Liberals, and Catholics, and, very occasionally, the latter fought each other.

These conflicts still inform – and some-times misinform – political debate in Italy today. Recovering the truth about Italy’s struggle between 1943 and 1945 is one component in building understanding of modern Europe. Knowing the social breadth and depth of the Resistenza Italiana – the number of the participants and the intensity and significance of their experience – is an essential part of any comprehensive study of the Second World War. .


LEFT Italian women Partisans on the Castelluccie front keep their weapons ready as they wait their turn to go on patrol with members of the US 5th Army in November 1944. BELOW Partisans, wearing the star badge of the Communist Garibaldi brigades, celebrate the liberation of Florence in August 1944.

Ancestor Network - your source for Irish research

www.ancestornetwork.ie

Ancestor Network is a collective of Ireland's most experience genealogical

experts. From personal and probate genealogy to group training, we provide the expertise to identify your Irish ancestors.

Tel: +353 87 050 5296e-mail: [email protected]

www.ancestornetwork.ie

Flyleaf Press, the publishing arm of Ancestor Network, is Ireland's major publisher of Irish family history titles, including guides and reference works. Available in both hard-copy and e-book format.

E-mail: [email protected]/FlyleafPress

www.flyleaf.ie

IE

NOVEMBER Each month, the Debrief brings you the very best in film andbook 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 reviewersdeliver the best recommendations to keep military-history enthusiasts entertained.

11/15

MHM VISITS

MHM REVIEWS

r e c o m m e n d sMHMMILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

Attrition: Fighting the First World War by William Philpott, Agincourt by Anne Curry, and The Eyes of the DesertRats by David Syrett. Taylor Downing considers the fi lm of the Nuremberg rally of 1934, Triumph of the Will.

Westerplatte: Museum of theSecond World War, Poland, withStephen Miles, where the first

shots of World War II were fired.

MHM OFF DUTYTest your problem-solving skills and win great prizes! This month there are three copies of a new book to be won.

WIN copies of The

Cooler KingBRIEFING ROOMCAPTION COMPETITION

WAR ON FILM

LISTINGSCHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE

MUSEUM

BOOKS

HIGHLIGHT The Year of

Anniversaries symposium in

Lincoln

RECOMMENDED The Show

Must Go On! by John Mullen

Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph desWillens (Triumph of the Will)is not just a record of the Nazi

Party’s annual rally in Nurembergin September 1934, but a film thatoozes with the ethos of Nazism. TheFascist spirit in which the individualis lost in the mass, united in strictobedience to the leader and theworship of the Führer, is present inalmost every frame of the film. It isthe ultimate instrument of Nazipropaganda. So not only is it one

of the most controversial films evermade, but also one of the most evil.

One year before, Adolf Hitler, thenew, young Chancellor of Germany,personally asked Leni Riefenstahlto make a film of the 1933 partyrally in Nuremberg called Sieg desGlaubens (Victory of the Faith).Riefenstahl later claimed that thiswas a mere newsreel, with no merit,that she had thrown together over afew days. She could say this, becausethe film had been lost.

Then a copy turned up in the EastGerman film archive in the 1980s,and it is now possible to see thatit was in fact a powerful piece ofpropaganda and a fascinatingprelude to her later work.

The film was a huge success.It has been estimated that 20 millionGermans saw it. Hitler was delightedwith her work.

Joseph Goebbels, the Ministerof Propaganda, was put out thatHitler had asked Riefenstahl ratherthan one of his male cronies in thePropaganda Ministry to make thefilm. This marked the beginning ofa falling out between the two ofthem that lasted for much of therest of the Nazi era.

By the time of the next partyrally in 1934, two major events hadtransformed the situation. In the

‘Night of the Long Knives’ in June1934, Hitler had Ernst Röhm andthe top leadership of the SABrownshirts murdered.

Röhm had been one of Hitler’sclosest supporters since theearliest days of the Nazi Party.The Brownshirts had helped theparty to victory in the 1932 elections.But Hitler feared him as a rival,and wanted him out of the way.The problem was that Röhm hadbeen a leading figure of the party,appearing alongside Hitler through-out the 1933 rally. Hence, Victory ofthe Faith was now an embarrassment.It was therefore withdrawn, andcopies were destroyed.

A NEW FILMThe 1934 rally had to demonstratethe loyalty of the entire Nazi Partystructure to Hitler as sole leader.So Hitler requested (or ordered)Riefenstahl to start making prepara-tions for a new rally film that would betwice the length of the previous oneand would be made on an epic scale.

Then, at the beginning of August,one month before the rally, Field-Marshal Hindenburg, the elderlyPresident of the German Republic,

November 2015

O

FILM | CLASSIC

TRIUMPH OF THE WILLSimply Media£7.99

TAYLOR DOWNING REVIEWS A CLASSIC WAR MOVIE

58 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY

died. As the nation went into mourning for the great war-hero and elder statesman, Hitler redefi ned his role as that of Leader, Chancellor, President, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces all in one. From now on he was to be known as Führer – ‘Leader’ – and the September rally had to express and extol his new position at the head of party and nation.

Riefenstahl was given everything she wanted to prepare for making the new fi lm, so important had it become. She eventually assembled a team of 170, including 16 camera-men, nine aerial photographers, a sound crew of 13, a team of produc-tion managers, drivers, construction staff , security, and so on. She even had a photographer employed solely to take production stills of her at work. Bridges and towers were built to locate cameras, and tracks were laid so cameras could move in time with marching troops.

Such a team would have been excessive even for a grand feature fi lm, but was quite unheard of in the production of a documentary.

Goebbels occasionally made life diffi cult for her, but could not stand in the way of Hitler’s direct wishes, and the Ministry ended up giving her considerable fi nancial support. Filming took place over the six days of the rally in Nuremberg and in the vast arena constructed by Albert Speer just outside the city, known as the Luitpoldarena. Aft erwards, Riefenstahl staged a few scenes to add details to the fi lm. In total, her cameramen shot 80 hours of material.

She then began to edit the footage into a two-hour cinema fi lm. This she supervised herself, in a suite of modern cutting rooms in Berlin. It took six months.

In December, Hitler viewed a rough-cut of the fi lm, and expressed himself delighted. Herbert Windt wrote a score for the fi lm, freely calling on themes from Wagner

she was only pursuing art. In fact, she had produced one of the most intensely political fi lms ever made.

A NAZI PAGEANTTriumph of the Will begins with a prologue shot in the clouds above Nuremberg. A Junkers Ju-52 descends over the city.

Hitler had used this aircraft exten-sively during his election campaign in 1932 to fl y him from one rally to another. When his plane lands in Nuremberg, he steps out like a god descending from the heavens. Vast crowds line the route to his hotel. The image of the outstretched right arms of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of cheering people giving the Hitler salute dominates the fi lm.

The fi lm is then broken up into a set of chapters, each of which marks a diff erent phase of the rally itself.

nd Beethoven, along with several azi marching songs.On 28 March 1935 the fi lm had its

remiere, with great fanfare, at the fa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin. Aft er

he screening was over, amid the esounding cheers of the audience,

Hitler presented Riefenstahl with a vish bouquet of lilacs. He had the

lm he wanted; Riefenstahl had the ame and recognition she sought.

Millions fl ocked to see the fi lm n every city and town in Germany. was shown in schools, church alls, and barrack rooms across the ountry. At the Venice Film Festival, won several gold medals and,

more surprisingly, the Grand Prix t the Paris Film Festival. Riefenstahl always denied that she as political in any of her fi lm-making, sisting that she was never even a

member of the Nazi Party. She said


MHM REVIEWS

Leni Riefenstahl was 32 when she directed Triumph of the Will. She hadgrown up in an upper-middle-class family in Berlin, and her ambitious mother had encouraged her to take up a career as a dancer.

In 1924, she changed direction, persuading Dr Arnold Fanck, a film director, to cast her as the lead in his new movie. Fanck was the most prominent director of the then very popular genre of mountain adventure films, and Riefenstahl, still in her 20s, starred in six of these, including The Holy Mountain (1925), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), and The White Frenzy (1931).

Riefenstahl became obsessed by the mountains, and entranced by film-making. Ever ambitious, she directed her own first mountain film, The Blue Light, in 1932. Hitler saw this film, and was hugely impressed by it. In that same year she attended her first Hitler rally, and was overwhelmed by the impact it had on her. She asked to meet Hitler, and they soon became friends. A year later he asked her to make the film of the 1933 party rally in Nuremberg that became Victory of the Faith (1933) – the film that was later withdrawn.

After this, Riefenstahl became Hitler’s favourite film-maker. She was promoted above all the male directors who had been working in the industry for years and had become key players in Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda.

Hitler knew what he was doing in picking her out, and in Triumph of the Will (1934) and later in her official film of the Berlin Olympic Games, Olympia (1938), she served Hitler well. It is a measure of her prodigious talent that she ended up as one of the very few women to play an important role in the otherwise exclusively male world of the Nazi leadership.

THE YOUNG RIEFENSTAHL

November 201560 MILITARYHISTORYMONTHLY

At dawn, tens of thousands of party faithful emerge from hundreds of tents. The militarisation of the newly awoken Germany is another of the themes of the fi lm. Young men, like soldiers, wash, dress, and eat food served from giant army cauldrons.

Following this is a sequence representing the medieval history of Germany, as men and women in traditional costume gather to pay obeisance to Hitler. Then, in one of the fi rst of the huge rallies, there is a montage of short statements from many of the Nazi leaders. Most of them praise the Führer. ‘Under your leadership, Germany will achieve its goals,’ we are told.

The next chapter foregrounds the workers of the new Germany. Again, with military precision and armed with hammers and spades rather than rifl es, the Labour Corps march past Hitler. Workers from all corners of Germany call out. Hitler speaks for the fi rst time in the fi lm, declaring that the workers ‘are the future of Germany’.

This is followed by a night rally lit by torches and magnesium fl ares. The purged SA, now led

by ultra-loyalist Viktor Lutze, swear their allegiance to Hitler. There is no doubt any longer who is the sole leader of the party.

In the rally arena, tens of thousands of uniformed Hitler Youth assemble, with drums beating and trumpets playing. Baldur von Schirach, the Reich Youth Leader, pledges their loyalty. Hitler ad-dresses them as the ‘hope for the new Germany’. In a typical outburst of rhetoric, he proclaims, ‘Before us Germany lies; in us Germany burns; and behind us Germany follows.’ He departs through the cheering masses.

Next up, it is the turn of the Army. By this point, every soldier had sworn a personal oath of loyalty to their new Führer, and the rally gave the military a chance to display their fi delity. Cavalry, armoured cars, and horse-drawn artillery pass Hitler and the party leadership. They were as much the face of the new Germany as were the party youth.

BLOOD AND SOIL MYSTICISMIt was estimated that about 700,000 people attended the 1934 rally. Nuremberg had become the site

One of the key questions often asked about Leni Riefenstahlis was she Hitler’s lover? Rumours of an affair were common at the time, and were given as the reason for her dramatic promotion by Hitler over so many skilled male directors in Germany.

Riefenstahl had acquired a considerable reputation as the leading player in many of the popular mountain films of the late 1920s, as well as further plaudits as the director of her own feature film The Blue Light. It did no harm to the new chancellor for him to be associated with a glamorous young film-star, and it certainly seems as though some of Hitler’s entourage actively encouraged the relationship, hoping that taking a lover would in some way humanise him.

Riefenstahl was invited to many party events, and it seems that after one of these in 1932 she did try to seduce Hitler when he visited her sumptuous flat in Berlin. An affair with Hitler would clearly have done her career no harm.

If, however, she had tried to start a relationship, it seems very unlikely that she succeeded. Hitler thrived in the all-male atmo-sphere of the barrack room, the beer cellar, and the Nazi Party. He never felt totally at ease among women, and at the time was still in mourning after the mysterious suicide of his niece Geli Raubal. He liked to surround himself with pretty women like Eva Braun, whom he finally married hours before his death in the bunker in Berlin in April 1945. But there is no evidence that he ever had a sexual relationship with Leni Riefenstahl, although he did admire her greatly for her film-making skills, and at one point called her the

‘perfect German woman’ – a label she found embarrassing to live up to at the time, and impossible to live down afterwards.

WAS LENI RIEFENSTAHL HITLER’S MISTRESS?

of the annual Nazi rally not only because its architecture and history epitomised ‘the German spirit’, but because it was geographically central and relatively easy to get to from all parts of the country. Also, under the local Gauleiter, Julius Streicher, all the resources of the city were turned over to the rally.

In one of the central sequences in the fi lm, about 200,000 of the party faithful are gathered in massed ranks in the arena grounds, adorned with gigantic swastika fl ags. Hitler, fl anked by Himmler of the SS and Lutze of the SA, parade through the centre of them.

Riefenstahl puts every visual trick into this extraordinary sequence. Cameras are up high, looking down on the vast spectacle; others are down low, capturing Hitler in close-up. One camera is placed on a tiny lift that goes up one of the fl ag poles.

As in an ancient ritual, Hitler blesses each of the banners of the local Nazi parties, using the bullet-torn fl ag from the failed 1923 putsch. As the SS march past, Hitler is told, ‘My Führer, we await your orders in the future.’

This is one of the most memorable and haunting sequences in the fi lm. Riefenstahl did not create the event. It was set up by the party managers. But the imaginative positioning of her cameras and the rhythm of her editing, oft en accompanied by powerful marching songs recorded by Herbert Windt, get inside the very essence of Nazism. It is visually stunning, enormously impressive, and terrifying at the same time. Something that is essentially a pile of semi-mystic nonsense takes on a heroic, awesome quality.

The next sequence is set in the city of Nuremberg. People line the streets in their thousands. At every window, men and women are looking

Bridges and towers were built to locate cameras, and tracks were laid so cameras could move in time with marching troops.

LEFT Riefenstahl, with Hitler.


MHM REVIEWS

out. Everywhere people strain to get a glimpse of this new god driving through their city in a motorcade.

Cameraman Walter Frentz travels in Hitler’s Mercedes, capturing giant close-ups of his right arm and hand outstretched. Women holding babies rush out of the crowds to off er bou-quets. In deadly seriousness, Hitler accepts a tribute from a wooden gallery set up in the main square. The Army, the police, the workers, the SA, and the SS all march past in perfect order. It is as though the whole of Germany has assembled to proclaim their obedience to the new leader.

THE LEADER SPEAKSThe fi nal ten minutes of the fi lm record Hitler’s speech at the conclusion of the rally. It is a fascinating record of Hitler’s speech-making style. He starts off very slowly and low key, but slowly builds into a frenzy, exciting the audience into feverish support, hanging on his every word.

He talks of the struggle of the NaziParty and of National Socialism toget established. He tells the hugecrowd that the party will remain

‘unchanging in its doctrine, as hard assteel in its organisation, supple andadaptable in its tactics’. Amid wildcheers, he struts and postures, an-nouncing that the state and the Reichwill last for a thousand years: ‘Wecan be happy in the knowledge thatthe future will belong to us totally.’

To rapturous applause, RudolphHess, Hitler’s deputy, leaps ontothe platform and announces, ‘Theparty is Hitler. Hitler is Germany.And Germany is Hitler.’

After this climax, the film ends withclose-ups of swastikas overlaid withthe party faithful marching, cut toHerbert Windt’s bombastic versionof the Horst Wessel song.

NAZISM ON FILMRiefenstahl’s Triumph of the Willis made with immense craft andskill. The camera-angles used, thepacing of the music and editing aremasterly. It has an almost poeticand heroic quality that is quite unlikeany documentary about Nazism thathad ever been made before.

Created by: Leni Riefenstahl. Music: Herbert Windt.The film is available in several DVD versions.

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1935)


But it gives credibility to an evil regime. It celebrates Hitler as the leader of a newly revived nation. It expresses and evokes the militarisa-tion of the German people sought by the new regime. It applauds the unity of the nation behind the cult of the Führer. The party is unifi ed. The nation is one. The leader rules.

No one knew in 1934 that this would end in the horrors of Auschwitz and Belsen, in the death of millions on the battlefi eld, and in the destruction of so much of Europe. But in helping to promote Hitler and the Nazi leadership, in making them acceptable to millions of Germans, Riefenstahl’s propaganda played a crucial role in making the death camps and the mass killings from 1939 to 1945 possible.

Riefenstahl presented the Nazi regime exactly as it wanted to be seen. There was never another major Nazi Party rally fi lm. There was no need for one. Triumph of the Will is Nazism on fi lm.

In 1945, Leni Riefenstahl was arrested by French and American Intelligence on charges relating to her pro-Nazi activities. But no

prosecution was ever brought, and she was released in 1948. Aft er this, she spent most of the rest of her life trying to distance herself from the Nazi Party and from her close friendship with Hitler.

She invented a story of her fi lm-making career under the Nazis that diff ers markedly from the surviving offi cial records. She always denied that she was in any way political, insisting she was merely an artist, one with no awareness of the politics of the subjects she worked on.

It is impossible to accept this: Triumph of the Will is such a supreme expression of the Nazi spirit.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, she tried to restart her career, but without much success, though in the 1970s she acquired some notoriety for her photos of the African Nuban tribespeople, which, once again, like her Olympia fi lm,

caught her passion for the body beautiful.

In her later years, she frequently issued writs against anyone she thought was trying to tarnish her reputation, while continuing to collect sums of money from anyone who used extracts of her fi lms. It has only been possible aft er her death in 2003 to produce accurate assess-ments of her achievements.

Leni Riefenstahl was an immensely creative fi lm-maker who used cameras and editing in a unique way. But she came to her peak under one of the most criminal regimes in history, and her achievement can never be separated from the politics of the time in which she lived. Triumph of the Will is a great fi lm technically; it is also a supremely powerful piece of political propaganda. .

Taylor Downing’s book on Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia is available in

paperback as a BFI Film Classic.

There was never another major Nazi Party rally film. There was no need for one. Triumph of the Will is Nazism on film.

RIGHT Riefenstahl, shown filming a difficult scene with the help of two assistants, 1936.

John Mullen’s history of songin WWI is a bracing read. Athrob of anger at what was

an international atrocity pulsesthrough this impeccably researchedbook. During a WWI centenarythat has often fixated on victoryand nationalism, this is a valuableaccount for those wanting tounderstand something of the truesuffering and resistance put up byour ancestors, coerced into fightinga war not in their interests. This willalso be a valuable resource for film-makers and playwrights needingperiod detail and vivid imagery.

The aesthetic and musical rootsof the popular music of WWI lie inVictorian and early 20th-centuryMusic Hall, and here Mullen presentsa thorough overview of that industry,with the developing genres of revueand pantomime. For, just like thefactories or railways, an industry it was:the Music Hall had a vast infrastructureof technicians, front-of-house staff,stage managers, and artistes, whoengaged in labour relations – strikesby stagehands and performers forbetter wages and conditions – as theyworked to amuse, cheer, entertain, and

ultimately console. The employers,owners of the theatre chains, weretypically attached to King and Empire,and turned many of the music hallsinto rallying and recruiting centres atthe start of the war.

ONWARD CHRISTIANSOLDIERSBy the turn of the century, MusicHall had all but replaced the moreprogressive folk song for theworking class; yet singing togetherwas still something people did. Thechurch was as important socially as itwas as a matter of faith, and formeda vital part of that singing culture.Many soldiers were attached tocertain hymns from childhood, andat the start of the war were comfortedby chaplain-led services encouragingthem to ‘kill the Hun’. The chaplainof the House of Commons, we learn,declared that ‘to kill Germans isa divine service in the fullestacceptance of the word’. Interesting,then, that soldiers’ songs are less oftenabout ‘killing the Hun’ than givingexpression to outrage against theirsuperior officers – for example, to thetune of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’:

Forward Joe Soap’s army, marchingwithout fear

With our old commander, safelyin the rear

He boasts and skites from morntill night,

And thinks he’s very brave,But the men who really did the jobAre dead and in their grave

There was later (if, indeed, theymade it to ‘later’) great resentmentagainst martial hymns, as soldierswere urged to sing them by thosewho did not fight.

Mullen also takes us throughthe other major events of the time.Spliced into the war are, of course,

November 2015

O T O T

the Irish uprising and the suff ragette movement. Again, we see the oft en reactionary nature of Music Hall, with songs either sentimentalising or mocking Irishmen and suff ragettes; most of the latter were sung by women. Even though many of its women performers wore male clothing and its men were feminised, Music Hall was essentially about maintaining the status quo, as were many of its stars (Marie Lloyd was a notable exception).

Short accounts of the lives of Harry Lauder, Vesta Tilley, Marie Lloyd, and Harry Champion, called

‘Stars in Focus’, act as stepping-stones throughout the book. During

THE SHOW MUST GO ON: POPULARSONG IN BRITAIN DURING THEFIRST WORLD WARJohn MullenAshgate, £18.99 (pbk)ISBN 978-1472441591


r e c o m m e n d sMHMMILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

The Music Hall had a vast infrastructure of technicians, front-of-house staff, stage managers, and artistes.

EDITED BY KEITH ROBINSON

the early days of the war, these stars entertained troops at the Front, but as the losses and suff ering hit home, Music Hall shed its jingoism, becoming part of a culture of compensation. The troops started to make their own entertainment: ‘The Front’ and ‘The Reserves’ were liter-ally masses of static men waiting foraction – and here a counterculture was emerging with a diff erent (and uncensored) emotional focus.

SOLDIERS’ SONGSThe long months of immobility, and a mass army raised on collective singing in the music halls, churches, and schools, produced a rich repertoire that had become somewhat polemical. Theearlier fl ag-waving patriotism of Music Hall had been eroded through suff ering,expressed famously through ‘Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire’.

The last two chapters, ‘Songs About the War’ and ‘I Want To Go Home’, form the heart of the book. Soldiers’ songs, detached from contemporary Music Hall, were as diff erent as slave songs were from blackface minstrelsy. In this sense, then, the songs were ‘free’. There is fascinating information here, giving context to those songs. A section in the fi nal chapter, ‘Live and Let Live’, gives an account of how ordinary soldiers colluded with the enemy to infl ict as few casualties as possible through timed raids. Offi cers who allowed this would be replaced and punished, yet not as harshly as ordinary Tommys, who could be crucifi ed by being tied to gun wheels


MHM REVIEWS

for indefi nite periods. Appalled Australian and Canadian troops would oft en free them. In a similar vein, although parachutes had been invented by WWI, airmen were not allowed them in case they did not fi ght hard enough. This culture of cruelty forms an important background to the development of soldiers’ songs.

OH! IT’S A LOVELY WARBy 1918, the song ‘Oh! It’s a Lovely War’ had hit the music halls. With its black humour, and anger rather than pathos, this was no part of compensatory culture. Its revival by Joan Littlewood and Attenborough’s fi lm in the 1960s, together with the founding of the Welfare State, were a background to the majority view in Britain that WWI should not have happened. In Mullen’s rich book we have a critique of that war from the grave – ordinary soldiers pointing the fi nger as surely as the poets did. Their songs call to us with defi ant vitality, as in the following verse, which would have been sung to the tune of ‘What a Friend I Have in Jesus’:

When this lousy war is over,No more soldiering for me.When I get my civvy clothes on,Oh, how happy I shall be!No more church parades on Sunday,No more begging for a pass.You can tell the Sergeant-MajorTo stick his passes up his arse. .

JAN WOOLFAuthor and playwright

LEFT & BELOW LEFT Both Marie Lloyd and Harry Lauder, stars of the Music Hall, entertained the troops at the Front during the early days of the war.

The troops started to make their own entertainment. ‘The Front’, and ‘The Reserves’ were literally masses of static men waiting for action.


T he past 18 months has seen aninevitable rush of new booksabout the First World War, with

the result that quality has often beensubsumed by quantity. So for any bookto rise above the rest, it needs to offersomething different – something thatauthor William Philpott sets out toachieve with Attrition: Fighting theFirst World War.

OO SATTRITION: FIGHTING THE FIRST WORLD WARWilliam PhilpottAbacus, £10.99 (pbk)ISBN 978-0349000077

THE BEST NEW MILITARY HISTORY TITLES THIS MONTH

This publication provides a detailed overview of the whole war, on every front, although for the author these are not the

‘traditional’ Western, Eastern, Middle Eastern, and African Fronts. Instead, he considers five other

‘fronts’: the Land Front, Maritime Front, Home Front, Diplomatic Front, and, fi nally, the United Front – that

‘A gincourt’: 600 years on, the name still resonates with the British public.Indeed, it is one of the few victorious battles in English history whose name is widely known. In her entertaining and readable book, Anne Curry attempts to fi nd out why this should be so, exploring the diff ering

accounts and myths surrounding the battle.

AGINCOURT Anne CurryOxford University Press, £18.99 (hbk)ISBN 978-0199681013

This is a careful examination of how Agincourt fi ts into what we now know as the 100 Years War: why Henry V invaded France (he wanted the glory), why the army included so many archers (they were cheap), as well as the story of the battle itself.

Part of Agincourt’s appeal lies in its tale of the plucky English heavily outnum-bered by the enemy. The battle-plan was decisive in this victory: with Henry’s troops forming a horseshoe shape, the French were funnelled into their centre, and then attacked from three sides. Forced to halt, and hindered by the soft ground, French bodies piled up, many suff ocated face down in the unforgiving mud under the weight of their countrymen.

As well as the battle itself, Curry looks at how the story has been subtly altered by chroniclers over the centuries. She considers how Shakespeare, in his play Henry V, made a major contribution to the myth. Curry also examines the fi lm of Shakespeare’s play, starring Laurence Olivier, which was released just six months aft er D-Day. These are examples of how Agincourt has been used over the centuries – exhumed and recast at times of national peril, invoking national identity, and bolstering the image of the superiority of the British.

Curry also debunks some of the myths and legends surrounding Agincourt. She tells us that the Welsh did not predominate among Henry’s archers: although fi gures of 5,000 are oft en quoted, records show that only 500 archers were raised from Wales. Nor was the ‘V-sign’ invented at Agincourt – there is no evidence that it began in the 15th century, nor that the French cut off the fi ngers of captured archers – apparently this is just another urban myth!

FRANCESCA TROWSE


Kitchener had a better graspof the global nature of thewar than anyone else.

MHM REVIEWS

T he Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was a remarkable unit. With theability to travel thousands of miles and operate for long periods behind en-emy lines, it was a force without equal in the North African theatre. TheLRDG can trace its roots to the long-range patrols that operated along

the Egyptian–Libyan border during the First Word War, although, ultimately,it was the brainchild of Ralph Bagnold who, between the wars, explored

THE EYES OF THEDESERT RATS:BRITISH LONG-RANGERECONNAISSANCEOPERATIONS IN THE NORTHAFRICAN DESERT 1940-42David SyrettHelion & Company, £35.00 (hbk)ISBN 978-1907677656

great tracts of the Libyan Desert in the company of a few like-minded fellow army offi cers. The story of Bagnold – adventurer, explorer, scientist, and warrior – would itself make fascinating and inspiring reading.

David Syrett’s study outlines these origins, then details the story of the LRDG from its formation in 1940 until the end of the fi ghting in North Africa in 1942. Principally a reconnaissance unit, it did occasionally perform small-scale raiding (‘piracy on the high desert’). But as was common among British Special Forces, there was a tendency for the LRDG to be misused: Wavell understood the purpose of the LRDG, but, initially at least, Montgomery did not.

Arguably, North Africa was the birthplace of British Special Forces during the Second World War, and while the heroics of the Special Air Service tend to grab the headlines, it was the LRDG that was the most eff ective. Yet the author still manages to devote a number of pages to the exploits of David Stirling’s men. Of course, the two units are very closely linked, but without the LRDG, the SAS probably wouldn’t have existed for more than a few months. So, given what has already been written about the SAS elsewhere, so much detail here seems unnecessary.

This, however, is no more than a minor distraction from what is a decent study. This is not a unique book, but what makes it really stand out are the excellent maps: these are a joy to view, and are sure to appeal to anyone with an interest in the topography of war.

DAVID FLINTHAM

is, the various alliances between the Great Powers, which he argues prevented war for several decades before 1914. Central to his thesis is the idea that between 1914 and 1918, warfare changed completely in its nature. But the resulting war of attrition was not something new: as the author highlights, attritional warfare existed, for example, in the Classical world, when Sparta ground down Athens in the Peloponnesian Wars or Fabius Maximus wore down Hannibal, to cite but two instances. In the context of the Great War, attrition was not limited to the battlefield but also applied to the Home Front and at sea.

This isn’t a military history in its purest sense: it does not go into great detail about the campaigns, the battles, or the formations involved, and, as the author himself points out, there are no maps contained within its

pages. Instead, this is a history of the First World War in its broadest context, one which considers the politics, diplomacy, and economics alongside the fi ghting. Militarism is also discussed, although in Britain, the author concludes, this took a distinct form: navalism.

The author writes that Joff re’s victory on the Marne was not miraculous – ‘it represented the calm, pragmatic utilisation of France’s railways by a man who understood the principles of strategic manoeuvre.’ His analysis of other Allied leaders is equally solid: Kitchener had a better grasp of the global nature of the war than anyone else; Churchill lacked the ability to listen to professional military advice; while even Lloyd-George had to acknowledge Foch as a ‘genius’. Haig, Philpott acknowl-edges, has been ill-served by history,

which has obscured the steady evolution of warfare and the growing eff ectiveness of Haig’s command. Lloyd-George’s proposal to defeat Germany by ‘knocking away the props’, completely overlooked the fact that instead of Germany’s allies supporting it, she supported them, and as each surrendered in 1918, Germany was able to concentrate its forces on the Western Front. In addition, he points out that Lloyd-George’s ‘New Eastern Strategy’ had little impact on the fi ghting in Europe, but rather fomented post-war Imperial problems in the Middle East.

It is impossible to fully appreciate the Somme Off ensive without an un-derstanding of the Battle of Verdun. In a fi rst-rate chapter, the author looks at both campaigns, as well as events on the Eastern and Italian Fronts, and in so doing provides a

very balanced assessment of Allied strategy in 1916. Arguably, however, the highlight of the entire book is the chapter that discusses the defeat of Germany in the summer and autumn of 1918, a victory spearheaded by the allied armies under Foch, but made possible by the war of attrition waged on land, sea, and at home.

Using a vast amount of informa-tion from a wide variety of sources, the author has written a clear and readable narrative, explaining in some detail how and why the war was fought as it was. His reas-sessment challenges many of the myths, revealing the organisation, the determination, and the ambition of the combatant nations. This is a first-class overview of the whole war, and is a useful addition to anyone’s library.

DAVID FLINTHAM

November 2015

MHM’S PICK OF THE LATEST RELEASES


Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany, Vol IMichael V LeggiereCambridge University Press, £24.99 (hbk)ISBN 978-1107080515

This is a comprehensive history of the campaign that followed Napoleon’s catastrophic defeat in Russia. Prussia was in alliance with the war-weary Russians, and in spring 1813, in a single campaign, Napoleon drove their army from the Saale to the Öder, where it was saved only by a last-minute armistice. The text includes many maps to clarify battle movements.

Life in Napoleon’s Army: The Memoirs of Captain Elzéar BlazeElzéar BlazeFrontline, £19.99 (hbk)ISBN 978-1848328228

Part memoir, part travel book, and part military history, this is the story of an offi cer in the army of Napoleon, whom he served from 1807 to 1815. From the privations of being in the fi eld, the hazards of the bivouac, the equipment, the food, the battles, the shortcomings of the Spanish – this is an all-encom-passing contemporary account of the Napoleonic period.

The Fighting 30th DivisionMartin King, David Hilborn, and Michael Collins Casemate Publishers, £20.99 (hbk)ISBN 978-1612003016

This history is told through the voices of the men who made up the 30th Infantry Division. Their war began four days aft er D-Day, when they arrived in Normandy to make good losses from Omaha Beach. The story follows them through northern France, the Rhineland, over the Ardennes, and on to victory. The authentic accounts bring out the human face of war.

Madness in Mogadishu Lt Col Michael Whetstone Stackpole Books, £19.77 (hbk)ISBN 978-0811715737

Two Black Hawk helicopters, tasked with capturing advisers to Somali warlords, were shot down over Mogadishu in 1993. The survivors of the crash tried to defend themselves against several thousand approaching militants, while a convoy led by Michael Whetstone attempted to reach them. This real-life thriller tells of the desperate drive to the crash site, under fi re, only to fi nd their comrades had already been killed.

The Art of Swordsmanship Hans Lecküchner (trans. Jeff rey L Forgeng) Boydell Press, £60 (hbk)ISBN 978-1783270286

Boydell’s latest off ering from their ‘Armour and Weapons’ series. This is a key textbook from the late medieval period. A kind of ‘teach yourself’ manual from the 15th century, it shows you every move you might want to make using a single-edged, one-handed sword, with text and illustrations. A book for the serious student of medieval personal combat.

Strategy: a historyLawrence FreedmanOxford University Press, £16.99 (pbk)ISBN 978-0190229238

This is the paperback version of what is one of the most horough histories of strategic hinking. It is erudite and yet

easily accessible to a more general audience interested n strategy.

We included a longer review of the hardback edition in MHM 40.

Scourge of RomeDouglas JacksonBantam Press, £18.99 (hbk)ISBN 978-0593070581

As a light read, this fast-paced yet well-researched novel by Douglas Jackson continues the adventures of his hero Gaius Valerius Verrens. This time the action takes place against the backdrop of the Middle East and the Judaean revolt (AD 66-73).

The Battle of Britain: an epic confl ict revisitedChrister BergströmCasemate Publishers, £35 (hbk)ISBN 978-1612003474Another book on the Battle of Britain, but one with a diff erence: it was written by a Swedish author, who balances Allied and Axis accounts of this famous struggle. With testimony from pilots on both sides, the book also challenges several myths – such as Göring’s incompetence as a leader and strategist. For many, though, the book will be most welcome for its inclusion of rare German photographs.

G E N E A L O G YG

MILITARY AND FAMILY GENEALOGYMilitary & Family Genealogy was formed by Peter Threlfall and Judith Beastall as a natural extension of their interests and hobbies. Jointly, we have over three decades of experience in local, family, and military research.

We pride ourselves in offering a friendly, value-for-money service to help trace your relatives’ military records, from the late 19th century to the end of the Second World War . This culminates in a highly readable and interesting biography of your relatives’ service, presented in booklet form for your records.

www.militaryandfamilygenealogy.co.uk

CENTRE FOR ARCHIVE AND INFORMATION STUDIES – UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEEWould you like to find out more about your family and local history? Enrol for one of our online courses and open up the past.

Our short courses will take you beyond the internet and open the world of UK archives to you. You will discover how to use archives and records to find your missing ancestors, learn about the world they lived in, and acquire the skills to read and use the records that will help you.

If you are interested in a specific subject, single-course study is available, giving you the chance to focus on areas such as military records and history, house history, and heraldry.

If you are experienced or contemplating a career as a professional researcher, why not consider a Postgraduate Certificate or Masters Degree in Family and Local History?

Our online courses are written and taught by expert archivists, genealogists, and local historians. Our Virtual Learning Environment

creates an interactive, supported experience, and the exchange of ideas between student and tutor is central to our approach to online learning.

www.dundee.ac.uk/cais

FAMILYSEARCH INTERNATIONALFamilySearch International is a nonprofit family history organisation dedicated to connecting families across generations. It has spent more than 100 years actively seeking out and preserving records of historical and genealogical importance, including military records. FamilySearch offers free access to a large and growing collection of British military records, including, among others:

Army soldiers’ documents (before 1882)World War I service filesOfficers’ records of serviceArmy Lists 1740 to the presentRegimental histories Continuous service engagement books

In addition to online access to military records, familysearch.org offers tools and resources to preserve and share family memories about ancestors who served in the military. Through photos, stories, and documents, users can create memorial pages to share with close and distant relatives to preserve in the FamilySearch archive.

www.familysearch.org

ANCESTOR NETWORK LTD.Ancestor Network is a collective of Ireland’s most experienced genea-logical experts in tracing people of Irish ancestry. Over the years, we have provided flexible, cost effective solutions to individuals, groups, and legal professionals seeking Irish family history research services. We also publish ‘how to’ guides on Irish genealogy under our publish-ing arm, Flyleaf Press.

www.ancestornetwork.ie and www.flyleaf.ie

November 2015

S U


Nudging its way into theBaltic Sea opposite themodern harbour of Gdanskin Poland, the Westerplatte

peninsula is a slender woodedsand spit only a few kilometres inlength, and the site of one of themost momentous military events in20th-century European history. On 31August 1939, a faked attack on a Ger-man customs post and radio stationnear the Polish border at Gleiwitz gavethe Nazis the excuse for war theysought: the next day German forcesfired on the small Polish armamentsdepot at Westerplatte, the first shotsof war, precipitating the conflagrationmany had expected. This was fol-lowed by a wholescale invasionof Poland by German and Sovietforces, and in five weeks the countryhad been defeated.

Westerplatte is now an open-air museum and memorial, and afascinating place to visit just 7kmfrom the historic centre of Gdansk.Buildings damaged in the attackhave been left in their ruined state,and a series of information boardsprovide a moving account of theevents and the ground over whichthey unfolded.

FROM SPA TOMILITARY DEPOTThe peninsula was originally a healthresort and spa, which by the 1880sand 1890s had over 140,000 visitorsannually. It served as a city beach forthe large numbers of visitors fromthe Kingdom of Poland as well asthe German Reich. But it had alsobeen involved in earlier wars, andentrenchments from the time of

Frederick the Great and the Napole-onic era can still be seen.

Aft er the First World War, Gdansk became the Free City of Danzig (its German name) under the protection of the League of Nations. The city comprised a majority German popu-lation, with Poles in the minority, and this was to create enormous diffi cul-ties with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in the early 1930s – Gdansk eff ectively became a German port. During the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921), a neutral Germany forbade the movement of arms to Poland across her territory; this led to intense diplomatic gestures from Poland towards the League to allow her to use Gdansk as a trans-shipment area. On 22 June 1921, the League fi nally recognised Poland’s right to use the port and to allocate a small military garrison to supervise arms movements; this was in the face of Free City opposition, and a dispute

over the precise location of the depot dragged on until the League ordered it should be located on the Wester-platte peninsula. In August 1924, the Polish Ministry of Military Aff airs be-gan to build the depot, which required a new wet dock on the peninsula’s western side, as well as warehouses and barracks. On 31 October 1925, Poland obtained Westerplatte on a perpetual lease, although the site was technically within the territory of the Free City. The building of any kind of fortifi cation was forbidden, and the maximum size of the depot garrison was set at 88 personnel.

In 1927 began the fi rst of several ‘courtesy visits’ by German naval ves-sels to Danzig, which were received with rapturous enthusiasm by the city and its predominantly German popu-lation. These military demonstrations were to have tragic consequences for the depot in 1939. The growing men-ace of a rapidly militarising Germany

REVIEWING THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EXHIBITIONS WITH STEPHEN MILES

VISIT

WESTERPLATTE: MUSEUM OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

PL 80-831 Gdansk, 81-83 Długa Street+48 58 323 75 20 www.muzeum1939.plOpen to visitors all year; there is a charge for the museum, New Port Lighthouse and Post Offi ce Museum Gdansk

FREEENTRY

01

02


MHM VISITS

in the 1930s and the proximity of the Nazifi ed Free City prompted the Polish government to strengthen its presence at Westerplatte: between 1933 and 1936 guardhouses were clandestinely built at the depot to form a defensive ring against attack. The remains of some of these can still be seen. In the spring of 1939, as tension in Europe grew, the depot’s defences were further augmented with the installation of a new alarm system, total nocturnal black-outs, heavier armaments, trip wires, and the thinning out of the forest to provide a clearer line of fi re for machine-guns. Additionally, by September 1939 the garrison had been secretly increased to 176 men and six offi cers.

THE BATTLE OFWESTERPLATTE On 25 August 1939, the German training battleship Schleswig-Holstein entered Gdansk harbour on the

pretext of a courtesy visit, but with much more sinister intensions. She had 596 men on board, as well as 175 cadets and 60 anti-aircraft gunners, but, more signifi cantly, hidden below were a company of 225 Stormtroopers. The ship was armed with four 280mm cannon, ten medium-sized 150mm cannon, and four anti-aircraft guns. She remained moored near the salt granaries directly opposite Westerplatte, and as her sojourn lengthened the Polishgovernment became increasingly concerned about her intentions.

At 04:47 on Friday 1 September, guns from the battleship opened fi re on the southern part of the depot in an enormous and sustained cannonade to prepare the ground for an amphibious assault by the Stormtroopers. The fi rst shots of World War II had rung out across the narrow waterway; there had been no warning. As German assault troops

pressed forward, Staff Sergeant Wojciech Najsarek fell under a hail of machine-gun bullets, becoming perhaps the fi rst combat victim of the entire war. The initial assault was thwarted by sustained Polish heavy and light machine-gun fi re, and the Stormtroopers eventually fell back leaving numerous dead and wounded. A further attack, just before 09:00, was also repulsed.

The Polish commander, Major Henryk Sucharski, realised that no help would come from the Polish Army, and that his small force would have to hold out alone. The battle was to last seven days, drawing in 3,500 German soldiers from the FreeCity area, as well as repeated naval and fi eld artillery fi re. In addition, late on the second day, some 60 Junkers Ju-87B dive-bombers attacked the depot. Its defences were repeat-edly hammered with 500kg, 250kg,and 50kg bombs, and strafed with

G D A S KP O L A N D

PICTURED ON BOTH PAGES:1. The former guardhouse now housesthe museum of the Westerplattememorial on the peninsula of thesame name in Gdansk, Poland.

2. This Nazi propaganda photographshows the raising of the German flagon the Westerplatte. The originalcaption reads: ‘The capture of theWesterplatte. The German war flagis raised on the Westerplatte. Thebravery of the German troops forcedthe Polish garrison to give up despitepersistant resistence.’

3. Inside the museum.

4. Inside the museum.

5. Ruined barracks, which were hit inthe air raid on 2 September 1939.

machine-gun fi re. A direct hit demol-ished Guardhouse Five, with only two defenders surviving, and the barracks building suff ered two direct hits, its special construction absorbing the impact, leaving all inside unharmed. The air raid killed ten defenders and wounded six; but its main eff ect was psychological, and there is every indication that, had the Germans launched a ground off ensive soon aft erwards, the depot would have fallen. At this point, Sucharski decided to surrender the peninsula, but he was met with vociferous opposi-tion from his second-in-command, Captain Franciszek Dabrowski; the garrison decided to fi ght on.

German attempts to destroy the depot continued with further shelling from two torpedo boats in the Bay of Gdansk on 4 September. On the night of 5/6 September, the attackers tried to set fi re to the Westerplatte forest, but the smoke only served to

03 04

05


camoufl age Polish positions, giving them a perfect fi eld of fi re. The depot came under sustained fi re again on 7 September from the Schleswig-Holstein, as well as artillery in the New Port. By this time, the defenders were in an impossible position – short of food, water, and medical supplies, and with two guardhouses knocked out and another two badly damaged. Considering the depot un-defendable, Sucharski decided to sur-render. The defence had impressed the Germans so much that he was initially allowed to keep his ceremo-nial sabre in captivity. The battle left 15 Polish dead and 26 wounded; Ger-man losses are thought to have been 50 dead and 121 wounded.

AN OPEN-AIR MUSEUM Like many Second World War sites in what was to become the Soviet sphere

of infl uence in the post-war era, Westerplatte fell victim to a distorted view of history. The Communists saw September 1939 as a failure of the Polish government at the time, and the only tribute to the defenders of the depot was a simple cross erected in 1946. This was replaced by a Soviet tank in 1962 (it was removed in 2007). In 1966, the huge Monument to the Defenders of the Coast was un-veiled, and by the 1970s Westerplatte had become a key symbol of Polish wartime resistance. Since the 1980s, it has been managed by the Historical Museum of Gdansk.

The most interesting feature of the site is the walking trail, which takes in the main places involved in the battle, following a series of informa-tion boards in English. A tiny three-room museum in Guardhouse 1 is open in season; it contains arma-

ments, uniforms, photographs, and radio equipment. But the most dramatic legacy of the battle is the shattered remains of the barracks destroyed in the air raid. The ordeal of those who hid in its basement as the bombs fell can only be imagined.

Westerplatte is open at all times, and admission is free apart from the museum, which has a small charge. The site can be visited in tandem with the New Port Lighthouse (open in season; entry charge) across the channel (some accounts claim the opening salvo came from German troops positioned here) and the Post Offi ce Museum in Gdansk (entry charge), which is also a memorial to its defenders, who held out against German attacks on 1 September 1939. A new Museum of the Second World War is due to open in Gdansk soon.

PICTURED ON THIS PAGE:6. Information boards in English,explaining the events of September1939, are positioned on a walking trail.

7. The Westerplatte Monument,in memory of the the Polish defendersof the site of the first battle ofWorld War II.

8. A distinctive sign marking theWesterplatte memorial.

06 07

08

November 2015

ISTI STHE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EVENTS, LECTURES, AND EXHIBITIONS


Staff Restaurant, The British Library,96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BDwww.bl.uk01937 546546

Author Lynne Olson will discuss the dramatic personal journeys of three American men

TALK

SHOULDER TO SHOULDER: AMERICANS IN BRITAINDURING WWII 4 November 2015

THE YEAR OF ANNIVERSARIES

6-8 November 2015

County Assembly Rooms, 76 Baligate, Lincoln, LN1 3ARwww.martinrandall.com020 8742 3355

This residential weekend of lectures, held in Lincoln’s County Assembly Rooms, will encom-pass 13 talks on this year’s anniversary topics: Magna Carta, the fi rst Parliament, Agincourt, Waterloo, Gallipoli, Yalta, and Potsdam. There will be discus-sion sessions, opportunities to meet and talk to speakers, and a drinks reception in the Chapter House of Lincoln Cathedral. Paul Lay chairs the event, and speakers include Dr Juliet Barker, Professor Jeremy Black, Dr Jona-than Foyle, Keith Lowe, Dr Marc Morris, Professor Nigel Saul, and Professor Gary Sheffi eld.

SYMPOSIUM

£420 ENTRY

THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT23 October 2015-31 January 2016

White Tower,Tower of London,London, EC3N 4AB

EXHIBITION

To commemorate the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, a special Royal Armouries’ exhibition will be held in the White Tower at the Tower of London. Bringing together rare objects for the fi rst time, including medieval arms and armour, art, music, sculpture, and manuscripts, the exhibition will reveal the story of the road to battle, the events of 25 October 1415, and the aft ermath,

while also exploring the popular myths, reality, and legacy of this extraordinary battle.

£8ENTRY

who spent the war in London: Edward R Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John G Winant. Determined to save Britain from Hitler, they helped convince a cautious FDR and reluc-tant American public to back the British at a critical time. Drawing on a variety of primary sources, Olson will explain how these men fought to save Britain in its darkest hour.

www.royalarmouries.org

020 3166 6660

£24.50 ENTRY

Imag

e: R

oyal

Arm

ourie

s


MHM VISITS

9-14 NOVEMBER 2015Conservation Centre Open WeekRoyal Air Force Museum Cosford, Shropshire, TF11 8UPwww.rafmuseum.org.uk

The RAF Museum’s Conservation Centre will be open for behind-the-scenes access for one week only. Visitors will be able to view progress being made on the Handley Page Hampden, Vickers Wellington, and Dornier Do 17 aircraft.

14 NOVEMBER 2015Night in the TrenchesStaff ordshire Regiment Museum, Linchfi eld, WS14 9PYwww.staff ordshiregreatwar.com

Experience a soldier’s life as it would have been in the WWI trenches. Re-enactors will evoke the conditions experienced and the life lived by troops, taking you back to the thick of the Great War. Pre-booking is essential.

16 NOVEMBER 2015The Indian Sepoy in WWI Culture36-39 Pall Mall, London,SW1Y 5JNwww.nam.ac.uk

Dr Santanu Das will explore the war experiences of Indian sol-diers by examining trench arte-facts, memoirs, photographs, paintings, and original sound recordings from prisoner-of-war camps in Germany.

DATES TO REMEMBER

MILITARY VEHICLES DAY15 November 2015

EVENT

ACTIVITY

MAKE A POPPY7-8 November 2015

Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZwww.iwm.org.uk 020 7416 5000

On Remembrance weekend, visit the IWM London to ‘grow’ your own poppy from paper, wire, and recycled military buttons in this family-friendly activity. While making poppies, participants of all ages will discover more about the history and heritage of the poppy, and its association with confl ict and memorials.

THE SUEZ CRISIS, 195610 November 2015

Museum of London, 150 London Wall, ECY 5HNwww.gresham.ac.uk020 7831 0575

After Egypt’s President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company in 1956, Britain – together with France and Israel – responded by attacking Egypt. The Suez War was opposed by the US and UN, compelling Britain and France to withdraw. The reputation of British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden was severely damaged, while Britain’s stature as a world power was challenged. For a full appraisal of the Suez Crisis, join Professor Bogdanor, Gresham Professor of Law, for this free-entry Gresham College lecture.

LECTURE

FREEENTRY

TOUR

BATTLE OF WAKEFIELD TOUR28 November 2015

Brooklands Museum, Brooklands Road, Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 0QN

www.brooklandsmuseum.com01932 857381

Sandal Castle, Manygates Lane, Wakefi eld, WF2 7DG

Head to Wakefi eld for a guided tour of Sandal Castle to explore its role in Richard of York’s catastrophic defeat in December 1460, during the English Civil War. The Castle tour will be followed by a short walk down Manygates Lane to the Duke’s monument and the last surviving fragment of the medieval battlefi eld, close to the site of his death.

Over 80 military vehicles, spanning the decades and from all across the world, are expected at Brooklands’ annual Military Vehicles Day. As well as spectacular displays in the Paddock and around the site, there will be the chance to see some of the machines being put through their paces as they tackle Test Hill and the off -road circuit at Mercedes-Benz World. In addition to the military vehicles, a host of wartime re-enactors will join the event.

FREEENTRY

£11ENTRY

FREEENTRY

Imag

e: T

im G

reen

THERE ARE A SELECT NUMBER OF BATTLEFIELD TOURS THAT EVERY MILITARY HISTORY ENTHUSIAST SHOULD EXPERIENCE. HERE WE LIST SOME OF THE FINEST, MOST REASONABLY PRICED WORLDWIDE TOURS AVAILABLE.

GALINA INTERNATIONAL BATTLEFIELD TOURSGalina began organising tours to the battlefields of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands in 1989. In those days, 20 or 30 people at the Last Post Ceremony in Ypres was regarded a crowd. Times change, but we remain an independent and family-owned company, offering the same high quality of personal service today as we did then. Whilst primarily a group travel company, we also arrange tours for individuals wishing to attend major anniver-sary events, drawing on our long experience as Official Tour Operators to organisations such as the Normandy Veterans Association. Our guides are selected and trained by us and have an academic or military background, great experience, and an enthusiasm for sharing their knowledge.

TEL: 01244 340 777EMAIL: [email protected]: www.wartours.com

TWITTER: @WartoursSELECTED TOURS: Somme 100th Anniversary, 29 June - 3 July 2016

KIRKER HOLIDAYSSpecialists in high quality escorted tours and tailor-made short breaks, Kirker Holidays provides a range of expert-led itineraries for those with an interest in history, archaeology, art, architecture, and music.

As we mark the centenary of the First World War and the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, Kirker has created a selection of carefully crafted itineraries which explore the sites of these influential conflicts in the company of expert historians. During 2015 and 2016, military historians Neil Faulkner and Hugh MacDonald-Buchanan will lead Kirker tours to the battlefields of the Western Front and Waterloo in Flanders, and the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. In addition, we are looking forward to embarking on a new tour which will trace the Duke of Wellington’s progress in Spain and Portugal during the Peninsular Wars – the campaign which eventually led to Napoleon’s humiliation and exile in Elba.

TEL: 020 7593 2283WEB: www.kirkerholidays.comSELECTED TOURS: The Battle of Waterloo, 3 nights, departing 8 July and 30 September 2016

The Duke of Wellington & The Peninsular War, 7 nights, departing 17 April 2016Istanbul & Gallipoli, 8 nights, departing 28 May 2016

GOLD CREST HOLIDAYSGold Crest Holidays have been providing specialist and enriching tours for over 20 years, including tours focussing on the Great War, complete with enthusiastic and expert guides. Our highly knowledgeable guides will help you to remember the past and witness the sacrifice made by soldiers and officers. Experience the centenary battle sites and moving war cemeteries with our included guided tours of the Flanders and the Somme battlefields, with visits including Flanders Fields Museum and the Last Post ceremony in Ypres. Our tours provide great value starting from only £199 and offer a memorable experience that can be enjoyed by military enthusiasts, those with family connections, and independent travellers looking to understand this truly memorable and historic conflict.

TEL: 01943 433457EMAIL: [email protected]: www.gold-crest.com

SELECTED TOURS: World War One Battlefield tours departing on various dates throughout 2015/16 for 4 days

GUIDED BATTLEFIELD TOURSWe pride ourselves on providing our guests with a quality, personal experience. Our greatest recom-mendation is the number of returning guests present on our tours. In addition to your expert guide, each tour is accompanied by a tour manager to ensure your comfort and the smooth running of the tour.

Our battlefield tours are inspired by both a passion for history and the belief that we must not forget the sacrifice of past generations. Our specialist guides bring the sites to life with the past events that took place there, putting them in their historical context.

We offer a comprehensive range of First and Second World War tours in France, Belgium and Holland. The cost of the tours includes all travel from the pickup point, bed and breakfast accommodation in a 3* or 4* hotel, refreshments each day, and entry to all museums. Our tours are protected for you through ABTOT.

TEL: 01633 258207EMAIL: [email protected]: www.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.ukSELECTED TOURS: Treading in Tommy’s Footsteps, 29 April - 2nd May 2016Walking the Somme Battlefields, 20 May - 23 May 2016Dunkirk, 28 May - 31 May 2016

The Battles of 1917- 1918, 17- 20 June 2016First Day of the Somme Centenary, 30 June - 4 July 2016Normandy and the D-Day Landings, 4 August - 7 August 2016

TO U R ST

WITH CHRISTMAS JUST AROUND THE CORNER, MHM LISTS A SELECTION OF GIFTS TO BUY FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON.

G I F T SG

SCRAMBLE: THE DRAMATIC STORY OF A YOUNG FIGHTER PILOT’S EXPERIENCES DURING THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN AND THE SIEGE OF MALTA by Tom Neil, with an introduction by James Holland

Tom’s memoir of four tumultuous years (1938-1942). The Germans were blitzing their way across France in the spring of 1940 when Tom received his first posting. Nineteen years old and fresh from training, he wassoon pitched into the maelstrom of air fighting in the Battle of Britain. By the end of the year, he had shot down 13 enemy aircraft and seen many of his friends killed or injured.

From the frying pan and into the fire, he was shipped off to the beleaguered island of Malta to face another Luftwaffe onslaught. Here he shot down another enemy fighter and survived several engine failures and emergencies. Miraculously, he survived two of the biggest ever aerial campaigns.

In his 95th year, Tom is one of only 25 Battle of Britain veterans still alive today. This vivid memoir is his last word on his fighter pilot experiences.

PUBLISHER: Amberley Publishing

PRICE: £25

WHERE TO BUY: www.amberley-books.com/scramble.html

EASY COMPANY 506TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY REGIMENT - IN PHOTOGRAPHS by The Men of Easy Company

The ‘Band of Brothers’ who comprised Easy Company (immortalised in Stephen Ambrose’s bestselling book and the celebrated mini-series co-produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks) will forever be remem-bered for their audacious acts of bravery throughout the Second World War.

For the first time, through an archive of over 400 rare photographs and items of memorabilia – including maps, rosters and diary extracts

– together with a 20,000-word original text from surviving company vet-erans, Genesis Publications presents the history of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne, in an unparalleled, signed, limited edition book.

It features a foreword by Tom Hanks and afterwords by Steven Spielberg and James Madio. Each copy is signed by Damian Lewis and at least seven veterans, including: Bill Guarnere, Bill Maynard, Bill Wingett, Buck Compton, Buck Taylor, Clancy Lyall, Don Bond, Don Malarkey, Earl McClung, Ed Joint, Ed Shames, Ed Tipper, and Forrest Guth.

PUBLISHER: Genesis Publications Ltd

PRICE: £245

WHERE TO BUY: www.BandofBrothersBook.com

TANKS A LOTThis Christmas don’t just buy a gift, buy a memory that will last a lifetime.

At Tanks A Lot we have over 20 years of experience in creating unforget-table memories. With over 130 vehicles on 100 acres of ‘playground’, our Full Monty Day is designed to challenge and exhilarate drivers and spectators alike.

Six different activities take you through every facet of our military themed day. From tank driving to mortar shooting, our instructors will drive you to excel and achieve the ultimate aim: the honour of driving 56 tonnes of fury, The Chieftain, over what is, normally, a perfectly functioning family car!

Our staff will make every effort to ensure you realise the maximum of your potential. Our youngest winner was 12, which means everyone is in with a shout.

Our feedback is second to none; but don’t take our word for it, check us out on Trip Advisor.

GIFT: Tank driving experience

PRICE: Gift vouchers available

from £199

WHERE TO BUY: Vouchers are

available on our website at www.tanks-alot.co.uk/vouchers.htmEMAIL: [email protected]

PHONE: 01295 768 400

attempted, as told by theSunday Times bestsellingauthor of A Higher Call.

Adam Makos takes usright into the cockpit astwo bold young aviators – awhite New Englander andan African Americanfarmer’s son – cut theirteeth on the world’s mostdangerous job: landingon the deck of an aircraftcarrier. When their fiercedefence of the Marinesagainst the North Koreaninvasion ends in one of the dbeing shot down behind enemy lines, the other faces an unthinkablechoice.

Devotion reveals the inspirational story of the US Navy’s most famousaviator duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, in all itsheart-pounding glory. Published 5th November 2015.

PUBLISHER: Atlantic Books

PRICE: £20 Hardback

WHERE TO BUY: All good bookshops and online retailers

MATRIX GAMESCan you balance and prioritise three different Theatres in order to achieve your objective?

In Barbarossa: Decisive Campaigns, you are in command of the German or Russian armies in the arduous Eastern Front of World War II. You will set Army postures, assign Theatre based Artillery, allocate Tactical Air Support and order your Theatre Commanders to provide specialised battalions and staff assets to the Panzergruppe or Army of your choice. But don’t be upset if they refuse.

Coming with a 300-page, hardbound book, the game is more than a digital strategy experience. If you are a true armchair general, it is a title you don’t want to miss, and a challenging representation of war that you’ve never seen before.

It’s this gnarly, gritty experience of frontline Operational Command that the game seeks to capture.

GIFT: Barbarossa: Decisive CampaignsPRICE: $49.99

WHERE TO BUY: www.matrixgames.comEMAIL: [email protected]: 01372 898025 ext. 1004

THE GREAT WAR: FROM MEMORY TO HISTORYedited by Kellen Kurschinski et al.

The Great War: From Memory to History offers a new look at the multiple ways the Great War has been remembered and commemorated since 1918. Drawing on contributions from history, cultural studies, film, and literary studies, this collection offers fresh perspectives on the Great War and its legacy at the local, national, and international levels. More importantly, it showcases exciting new research on the experi-ences and memories of ‘forgotten’ participants, often excluded from dominant narratives. Ground-breaking new research on the role of Aboriginals, ethnic minorities, women, artists, historians, and writers in shaping these expressions of memory will be of great interest to readers from a variety of national and academic backgrounds.

PUBLISHER: Wilfrid Laurier University PressPRICE: £27.99

WHERE TO BUY: www.gazellebookservices.co.uk

Direct Debit (UK Only) Please complete the form

YOUR DETAILS

Name

Address

Postcode

Email

Tel. no.

Cheque I enclose a cheque for payable to Military History Monthly

Credit Card Please debit my Mastercard/Visa the sum of

Card No.

Expiry Date

Signature Date

SAVE UP TO 20%Special Direct Debit rate, ONLY £43.95

RRP .

SAVE UP TO 15%Cheque/Credit Card rate ONLY £45.95

Overseas rate £55.95

RRP .

Account inthe name(s) of

Branch Sort Code Bank/Building Society Account Number

Banks and Building Societies may not accept Direct Debit instructions for some types of account

Originator’s identification number

Please pay Current Publishing Direct Debits from the account detailed in this instruction subject to the safeguards assured by The Direct Debit Guarantee. I understand that this instruction may remain with Current Publishing and if so, details will be passed electronically to my Bank/Building Society.

9 7 1 7 4 3

HOW TO PAY

Please quote: MHM62

Complete and send form to Current Publishing, Thames Works, Church Street, London W4 2PD

AUSTERLITZ: NAPOLEON’S GREATEST BATTLEIn 1815, an ageing Napoleon crashed to defeat at Waterloo. Ten yearsbefore, at the height of his powers, he had triumphed in an equallysignificant battle that had made him master of Europe. Next month’sspecial provides in-depth analysis of ‘the Battle of Three Emperors’.

IN THE NEXT ISSUEON SALE 12 NOVEMBER

POST Fill out and return form to address below

ONLINE www.military-history.org/sub/MHM62

PHONE 020 8819 5580 and quote MHM62

20%SAVE UP TO Save over £10

Never miss an issue

Delivered freto your door

MILITARY www.military-his ory.o g

JP

75

FP

W9

7R

WW

November 2015 ssue 62 £4.50

ROUTINREDCOAT

++Triumph of the WillTriumph of the Will


E THEO AN AV

T irs W

RISE OF THEROMAN NAVYThe F rst Punic War

the Jacobites won at Prestonpans, 1745

U N A VID OME

a e s 917UNITED IN WAR, DIVIDED BACK HOMEThe rish at Messines, 1917

the

C i dd 1

30/09/2015 11:15

DOWNLOAD THE MHM DIGITAL EDITION

SAVEUP TO44%ON ANNUAL DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS

Military History Monthly is now available as a digital edition that can be downloaded

to your PC, Mac, or iPad.

VISIT www.military-history.org/digital

SUBSCRIBE TO MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY MAGAZINE TODAY

ALSO NEXT ISSUE:The Tsar’s army: from the Crimea to the World WarHawker Hurricane: the biography of a battle-winning fighter planeTudor walls: the defence of England under Henry VIII

November 2015

TITIO S


PUT YOUR MILITARY HISTORY KNOWLEDGE TO THE TEST WITHTHE MHM QUIZ, CROSSWORD, AND CAPTION COMPETITION

ACROSS7 British tank, in production from 1945

to 1962 (9)

8 Island awarded the George Cross in

April 1942 (5)

10 Greek city-state defeated in 371 BC at

the Battle of Leuctra (6)

11 City where General Gordon was killed

in January 1885 (8)

12 Surname of actor playing Colonel Claus

von Stauffenberg in the film Valkyrie (6)

13 Tall fur hat normally worn as part of

ceremonial dress (8)

14 Defoliant used in great quantities by

the United States during the Vietnam

War (5,6)

19 Sir ___, Royal Navy RFA badly

damaged during the Falklands War (8)

21 Kurt ___, German general, in

command of the XXXVIII Panzerkorps

from 1942 to 1945 (6)

22 Japanese company that producedmany

military aircraft during World War II (8)

24Wilbraham ___, British general who,

as a lieutenant, was awarded the Victoria

Cross for action in the Crimea (6)

MHMCROSSWORDNO 62

Patrick Bishop’s book, The Cooler King,tells the astonishing story ofWilliamAsh.Ash was an American pilot who, havingbeen shot down in his Spitfire overFrance in early 1942, spent the rest ofthe war defying the Nazis by strivingto escape from every prisoner-of-warcamp in which he was incarcerated.It is a narrative full of incident and

high drama, ending with a break out

through the latrines of the Oflag XXIBprison camp in Poland – a great untoldepisode of the Second World War.The book is populated by a cast offascinating characters, includingDouglas Bader, Roger Bushell(who would go on to lead the GreatEscape), and Paddy Barthropp, a dash-ing Battle of Britain pilot, who, despitehis very different background, became

Ash’s best friend and shared manyof his adventures.The book weaves together

contemporary documents andinterviews with Ash’s comrades. Theauthor vividly recreates the multipleescape attempts, and examines thePoW experience, reavealing the pas-sion that drove some prisoners to riskdeath in repeated bids for freedom.

This month we have three copies of The Cooler Kingto be won, courtesy of Atlantic Books.MHMQUIZ


MHM OFF DUTY

25 Margaret of ___, wife of Henry VI

taken prisoner after the Battle of

Tewkesbury (5)

26 Battle fought in Maryland during

the War of 1812 (9)

DOWN1 German tank, which entered service

in 1965 (7)

2 ___ Bridge, battle fought in Scotland

in September 1297 (8)

3 Piece of armour covering the lower

leg (6)

4 City three miles north of which

the Battle of the Standard was fought

in 1138 (4)

5 Edict of ___, signed in 1598 at the end

of the French Wars of Religion (6)

6 Kingdom in existence between 1801

and 1807, created following the Treaty of

Aranjuez between France and Spain (7)

9 Battle fought in the West Indies in

1748 during the War of Jenkin’s Ear (6)

MHM CAPTION COMPETITION

Think you can do better?Go head-to-head with other MHM readers for the chance to see your caption printed in the next issue. Enter now at www.military-history.org/competitions

ANSW

ERS

OCTOBER ISSUE | MHM 61

ACROSS: 7 Potomac, 8 Air raid, 10 Drill, 11 Arkansas,12 Necessary Evil, 14 The Great Artiste, 17 Revolutionary,21 Canberra, 22 Harjo, 23 Sutlers, 24 Croatia.

DOWN: 1 Dordrecht, 2 Mobile, 3 Carlisle, 4 Pinkie,5 Brindisi, 6 Sinai, 9 Harry Truman, 13 Sturmovik, 15 Goebbels,16 Reinhard, 18 Orrery, 19 Norway, 20 Padua.

Sorry Sergeant… I had a night out on the tiles.Stephen Johnson

13 ___ & Voss, German company

which designed many unusual and

asymmetric aircraft during World

War II (5)

15 ___ Cota, US general awarded

the Distinguished Service Cross

for action at Omaha Beach on

D-Day (6)

16 Apache leader who surrendered

to US forces in September 1886 (8)

17 The ___ Objective, book by Wes

Davis about the secret war in Crete

against the Nazis (7)

18 The fl ags of a regiment (7)

20 Israeli Prime Minister who had

served as a general during the Yom

Kippur War in 1973 (6)

21 Spartan slaves who were

sometimes granted their freedom

aft er performing military service (6)

23 ___ Bagramyan, Soviet marshal,

commander of the First Baltic Front

from 1943 to 1945 (4)

RUNNERS-UP

WINNER:Where’s the bloomin’ idiot who said drinksare on the house?!Joe Agius

To be in with a chance of winning, simply answer the following question:

From which well-known war fi lm doesthe title ‘Cooler King’ originate?

?We continue our caption competition with an image from this month’s feature on the Italian Resistance. Pit your wits against other readers at www.military-history.org/competitions

Answer online at

www.military-history.

org

I am gonna kill the SOB who packed my ’chute!Hammerhead

LAST MONTH’S WINNER


ALL YOU NEED TOKNOW ABOUT…

Bristol Blood-hound Mark II Missile System

briefing room + Briefing room + Briefing room + Briefing ro

What's that, some kind of canine contraption?You’re barking up the wrong tree. The Bristol Bloodhound was a British surface-to-air missile developed during the 1950s as the UK’s main air-defence weapon. The Mark II came into service in 1964.

Sounds like rocket science. How did it work?It was. Two Bristol Thor ramjet engines provided the main propulsion. To speed acceleration on launch, four Gosling booster-rockets provided additional power. The boosters would fall away aft er some 3 seconds, when the missile would have achieved a speed around Mach 2.5 (about 1,900mph at sea-level).

Rams, goslings... sounds pretty rustic. What was the upgrade like?Though similar in appearance to the Mark I, the Mark II was more versatile. A major improvement was to the target-illuminating radar, which was far less susceptible to jamming than its predecessor. It was also given a larger warhead, had greater range, and was able to engage aircraft at higher and lower altitudes.

The Mark II was capable of intercepting targets at heights of between 150ft and 65,000ft . It had a maximum range of around 115 miles, with a minimum impact range at low level of 6.9 miles and a maximum impact range at high level of 86.25 miles.

As with the Mark I, the missile was kept on track by a receiver dish in the nose cone that picked up a refl ected signal from the target aircraft . But commands could also be issued from the launch control post during fl ight.

Detonation was controlled by a proximity fuse.

Explosive. How was it deployed?The Bloodhound was a relatively large missile, generally limited to stationary defensive roles.

When the Bloodhounds were brought back from Germany in 1983, they were stationed at three airfi elds in East Anglia. Here they were placed in groups of six, on eight-sided pads linked by servicing tracks, while the arming sheds were steel-framed, clad in corrugated sheeting, and surrounded by earthwork revetments.

Groundbreaking stuff. Who invented it?Well, if we ignore the ancient Chinese and their gunpowder, a giant acknowledge-ment is owed to von Braun and German scientists at work during WWII. But this particular variety of rocket is down to a team at the Bristol Aeroplane Company.

Every dog has his day. How many were used?Thankfully, none was ever fi red in anger.

Then what's all the fuss about?In tests, the Bloodhound scored direct hits on target bombers fl ying at 50,000ft . Mark II production models were, however, fi tted with proximity fuses, increasing their eff ectiveness by their ability to destroy attacking aircraft without even requiring a direct hit.

The missile also had an advanced continuous-wave semi-active radar homing system, off ering excellent performance against electronic countermeasures, as well as a digital computer for fi re control.

So was it any good?Fortunately, we will never know.

The Mark II fact fileMobility: static, though a mobile version was later developedCrew: unmanned Range: for maximum impact at high level around 86 miles,but maximum range was around 115 milesRate of fire: when it’s gone, it’s goneComplement: missiles were usually placed in groups of sixDate: in RAF service 1964-1991

Phot

o: C

ourt

esy

of R

olls

-Roy

ce p

lc

Documents

Military History Monthly - November 2015