Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 64 i History of War

From February 1915, civilian miners were recruited into the Royal Engineers’ newly founded Tunnelling Companies. These men were tough and resourceful, with many having experience of mining since childhood, but they had often been initially rejected by the British Army on grounds of health or age. They were now put to frontline underground work within days of recruitment. The tunnelling companies were then expanded to include Australian, Canadian and New Zealand units by 1916. Their work included digging subways, cable trenches, chambers and both defensive and offensive mining. Miners worked in constant fear of sudden death from carbon monoxide poisoning, collapsing tunnels, the abrupt explosions of pre-set mines or encountering the enemy underground. Nevertheless, the tunnellers gradually gained an advantage over their German counterparts and reached their zenith of achievement…

JOHN ROUSE MERRIOTT CHARD THE HERO OF RORKE’S DRIFT 1847–1897 Officers of the Royal Engineers are not usually expected to take on combat duties, but Lieutenant John Chard had no choice when his isolated post at Rorke’s Drift came under attack from thousands of warriors during the Anglo-Zulu War. Immortalised in the film Zulu, Chard is probably the most famous Royal Engineer in history, as he led his tiny garrison in a successful defence of the post against monumental odds. Commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1868, he worked on the dockyards in Bermuda and the naval defences at Malta before he was sent to Natal Province, South Africa, as part of the 5th Company Royal Engineers. His performance at Rorke’s Drift (he was only 31 years old at the…

NORWAY LEGION NORWEGEN SS-Schijaeger Bataillon SS-Polizei-Schijaeger-Bataillon 506. (mot.) 5. SS-Panzer-Division ‘Wiking’ 11.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division‘Nordland’ NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS: 6-7,000 UNITED KINGDOM Britisches Freikorps – Legion of St George NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS: <60 Thomas Cooper, who was half-German through his mother, was the only Briton to receive a Nazi battlefield decoration during the war – in his case the Wound Badge in Silver. BELGIUM FLEMISH - LEGION FLANDERN 6. SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade ‘Langemarck’ 27. SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division ‘Langemarck’ NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS: 15,000 WALLOON – LéGION WALLONIE 5. SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade ‘Wallonien’ 28. SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division ‘Wallonien’ NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS: 10,000 FRANCE Légion des Volontaires Français contre le bolchevisme (LVF) 8. SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade ‘Frankreich’ 33. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS ‘Charlemagne’ NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS: 20,000 SWEDEN No Swedish-only unit was ever formed. The limited number of volunteers mainly served with their fellow Scandinavians in the SS-Wiking…

Although it was shrouded in secrecy for decades, the codebreaking work of Bletchley Park is now recognised as an extraordinary wartime achievement. Prodigiously talented cryptanalysts devised various methods to decipher Axis communications. This produced vital intelligence to aid military operations. Their work shortened the war by two to four years and saved approximately 14 million lives. To achieve this astonishing success, Bletchley Park industrialised codebreaking to unprecedented levels by developing machines such as the Turing-Welchman ‘Bombe’ and the world’s first electronic computer ‘Colossus’. These devices were built in their hundreds and required many people to operate them. By 1945, almost 10,000 people worked for the Bletchley Park organisation. 75 per cent of these employees were women, and of those, 60 per cent were uniformed personnel. This included Ruth Bourne, who…

Timur wears a crown signifying he is the ruler of Transoxiana. He sports a richly embroidered coat in the Islamic Persian style and wears a cape over it to further signify his aristocratic status. His long curved sword rests in a decorative sheath. His large belt is typical of that worn by steppe nomads, who spent most of their time in the saddle. When armoured for battle, Timur donned a segmented helmet and mail aventail evocative of the Mongols. To protect his upper body, he wore a woollen coat atop lamellar body armour. His weapons were a composite bow, curved sword and bossed shield.…

The loss of HMS Truculent on 12 January 1950 remains one of the worst peacetime naval disasters in British post-war history. The Truculent was a T-class submarine that was commissioned in 1942 and had spent much of its WWII service in the Pacific theatre. It had survived the war and was returning to Chatham after sea trials in the North Sea when it collided with Swedish oil tanker Divina at night in the Thames Estuary. The submarine sank almost immediately with great loss of life. Truculent usually had a crew of 61 but on 12 January it was carrying an additional complement of 18 dockyard workers. 64 of the 79 men onboard died and there were only 15 survivors. Ten were picked up by the Divina while five others were…

Author: Lisa Traynor Publisher: Royal Armouries Price: £14.99 The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark that ignited World War I, is a familiar event – most people will know at least something about it. What most people will not know is that this was just one of a string of assassinations in a seemingly endless parade of knifings, bombings and shootings in which the upper echelons of society were picked off. Politicians, royalty and other notable figures in society were all fair game as anarchists, nihilists and nationalists sought to bring about radical change. Lisa Traynor’s fascinating book takes us into this period, which she dubs the “Era of Assassination”. This is not mere hyperbole. Traynor points out that “in the late 19th century alone, assassins tried to kill…

This issue, History of War readers have the chance to win a bottle each of Spitfire Gin and Supermarine Vodka, created by British company Spitfire Heritage Distillers. Concocted by award-winning distiller John Walters, Spitfire Gin is made with two types of orange, almonds, borage, coriander, rosemary, star anise and rose petals. As well as these two quality bottles to enjoy responsibly, one lucky winner will also receive a commemorative, 22-carat-gold-plate Spitfire Heritage pin, making a fantastic total prize value of £100. For your chance to win, please visit www.historyanswers.co.uk – you will need to be 18 years or older and a UK resident to be eligible. If you are not yet a subscriber to the magazine, there are some fantastic print and digital deals available online at www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk, where you…

TOM GARNER Tom spoke with Bletchley Park veteran Ruth Bourne, who discusses her work with the famous Bombe machine – find the interview, which includes a beautiful illustration of the machine by artist Dawn Monks, starting on page 60. JONATHAN TRIGG A former officer of the Royal Anglian Regiment, and before that a Sandhurst graduate, Jon is now a widely published authority on the history of the Waffen-SS. Turn to page 26 to find his feature on the foreigners who joined the Nazi ranks. MARC DESANTIS Even in a war characterised by futile loss of life and intense, protracted jungle combat, the Battle for Hamburger Hill still manages to stand out. Turn to page 38 for Marc’s blow-by-blow account of this infamous Vietnam clash. SIGN UP TO THE HISTORY OF…

Berlin is burning. After more than five years of war, the Nazis’ much-vaunted ‘thousand-year Reich’ is finally coming to an end. But the agony isn’t over quite yet. As the Soviet Red Army inexorably advances into the heart of the city, a few thousand surviving defenders desperately fight on. One of them – an officer – tries to get a better view of what is happening by climbing up a telegraph pole. Precariously hanging on with one hand while holding his binoculars with the other, he doesn’t see the Soviet marksman who shoots him. His men rush to his aid, but he’s already dead. As a sign of respect, and despite the chaos around them, they bury him in Plötsensee Cemetery, in a makeshift coffin made from old ammunition crates.…

Centenary commemorations of World War I in Britain have been largely fixated on the Western Front; most recently the horrors of Passchendaele and then the Hundred Days Offensive have inevitably captured the public’s attention. Often neglected is the extent to which it was a truly world war. One theatre receiving less attention than it deserves is the fighting in the Middle East, in particular the successes of General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force against the Turks and their German allies in the final two years of the war. In Palestine and Syria, he had launched his army against the Turks with a freedom of movement unimaginable on the Western Front, culminating in the audacious Battle of Megiddo in September 1918, in what is now northern Israel. Megiddo is a…

Based on a previous Polish deciphering device, the Bombe was initially designed by Alan Turing and later refined by Gordon Welchman. With the ability to assist in the breaking of 3,000-5,000 intercepted messages each day, the brilliance of Turing’s design was that the machine compared patterns of the encrypted message (‘cribs’) and a known portion of plain text to break the key. Additionally, Enigma could not code a letter as itself, so it inadvertently aided the Bombe. Therefore, encryptions could be lined up with a crib until no letter lined up with itself. The Bombe would mimic Enigma’s rotors and plug board and check 17,500 possibilities before it found a match and stopped. A checking machine would then process the match before the relevant information was passed on to codebreakers…

Among the most recognisable engines in the world, the Rolls-Royce Merlin was the power plant behind Britain’s WWII defenders – the Spitfire and Hurricane – as well as its trusty sword arm in the form of the Lancasters and Halifaxes of Bomber Command. On the other side of the Atlantic, the engine was the force behind the iconic Mustang escort fighter, which protected the US Air Force bomber fleet on its daylight raids. The P-51 was also used in the North African, Mediterranean and Pacific theatres. In this way, the Merlin worked day and night over the course of the war to secure Allied victory in 1945. The engine has rightfully been described as the most significant aircraft piston engine in history, and in the 21st century its distinctive drone…

Authors: Mark Connelly and Stefan Goebel Publisher: Oxford University Press Price: £18.99 Within months of the outbreak of the Great War, Ypres witnessed the first of a series of devastating battles that endured until the end of hostilities in November 1918. The location marked the beginning of trench warfare in the salient, as opposing forces dug in around the line. The authors tell the story of how this sleepy Belgian town, admired for its Gothic architecture and renowned for its role as a World War I battleground, is understood and interpreted by the belligerents on both sides. In this sense, the book offers the first transnational interpretation of the meaning of Ypres and, by extension, the Western Front. Ypres became the scene of some of the worst destruction of the…

Waffen-SS Encyclopedia Marc J. Rikmenspoel This book does exactly what it says on the tin; Rikmenspoel is an acknowledged expert on the Waffen-SS, and this work covers not only all the foreign Waffen-SS units but also the volunteers themselves by country and nationality. It has sections on the structure of the Waffen-SS, its weaponry and leading personalities, and is a great starting point. “THIS WORK COVERS NOT ONLY ALL THE FOREIGN WAFFEN-SS UNITS BUT ALSO THE VOLUNTEERS THEMSELVES BY COUNTRY AND NATIONALITY” For Europe Robert Forbes Forbes is one of the foremost experts on the French volunteers in the Waffen-SS, and his book For Europe is the English-language standard-bearer for the subject, exploring in detail the volunteers and the battles they participated in. First self-published in 2000, only 500 copies…

The contribution of Commonwealth nations in the fight against the Axis is today rightly recognised far more than in previous decades. However, a perhaps less glamorous but nonetheless vital part of this contribution was financial. Among the largest donors to Britain’s cause during WWII was the small Kingdom of Basutoland (now Lesotho), in southern Africa. Despite its small size, with a population of just over 400,000 at the time, the country directly financed 24 Spitfires – planes that helped defend Britain’s skies during 1940 and beyond. As thanks for this extraordinary gift, in 2016 the Spitfire Heritage Trust donated a full replica of the iconic aircraft to the nation of Lesotho. This is just one of the projects the Spitfire Heritage Trust has organised as part of its work to…

“WHEN 28 TOWERS WITH 1,500 SKULLS EACH HAD BEEN MADE, TIMUR DEPARTED, CONFIDENT THERE WOULD BE NO MORE REBELLIONS AT ISFAHAN” The presence of thousands of Tatars outside the walls of Isfahan in 1387 convinced its governor to surrender without resistance to the invading army of Timur. While negotiations were underway, the inhabitants of the great Persian city hid, trembling in their cellars. No sooner had Timur departed than loud drums reverberated throughout the city calling forth its citizens to slaughter the occupation force. They stabbed or hacked to death all of the Tatars. When Timur learned of their treachery, he returned to the city and ordered his troops to bring him the heads of the inhabitants. The Tatars dragged men, women and children from their hiding places in the…

In December 1940, the BBC broadcast an anonymous RAF fighter pilot talking about his experiences during the Battle of Britain earlier that year. That unnamed pilot was Flight Lieutenant James Brindley Nicolson, who had flown Hurricanes with 249 Squadron from RAF Boscombe Down. In fact, by the time of the broadcast, an announcement had been made in the London Gazette on15 November promulgating the award of a Victoria Cross to Nicolson. But for those listening to James Nicolson telling his story, there was absolutely no connection to the recent public announcement of his VC. By the middle of August 1940, the Battle of Britain was in full swing and many of the RAF’s fighter squadrons had already seen action. 249 Squadron, though, had been in the relative backwater of RAF…

Director: Claude Lanzmann Distributor: Eureka Released: 18 February 2019 Claude Lanzmann passed away in July 2018, aged 92. His final film, Shoah: The Four Sisters, originally made for (and broadcast on) French television earlier in 2018, is focused on a quartet of interviews with female survivors of the Holocaust (the women are not blood relations, the title refers symbolically to their Jewish heritage). Filmed in the 1970s, when Lanzmann was conducting extensive research for 1985’s Shoah, The Four Sisters is an epic oral history made up entirely of survivor testimony with zero use of archive materials. Individual episodes run between 50-90 minutes, but each covers the painful topic and recurring theme of survivor’s guilt. Ruth Elias talks about her harrowing pregnancy and being one of Dr Josef Mengele’s patients. Ada…

Author: David Bremner Publisher: Fonthill Price: £25 It takes a special kind of passion to build a reproduction World War I aircraft, and It also requires a little eccentricity to build a humble scout aircraft rather than one of the more glamorous fighter planes, but author David Bremner had his reasons. First of all, it was his grandfather (Frances Donald Holden ‘Bunnie’ Bremner) who had flown the Bristol Scout in the war. Secondly, it is recognised as one of the finest planes of the period. Bremner has actually penned two stories, both of them engrossing, and has interweaved them effectively through the book. The stories follow both the invention and development of the Bristol Scout and the efforts to build a reproduction a century or so later. Bremner’s love for…

In May 1982, the Dark Ages dramatically returned to the light when a mechanical digger struck an object below the soil during an excavation in York. This transpired to be an intact Anglo-Saxon helmet, which was discovered in a wood-lined pit containing fragments of antler, stone, glass and iron. Dated to the late 8th century CE, the headpiece is made of iron and copper alloy and is an outstanding example of early English craftsmanship. The helmet is stylistically Northumbrian, and the detail of the nose guard depicts animals entwined in an intricate pattern. The crest has a Latin inscription that states, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and God; and to all we say amen. Oshmere”. The helmet was clearly a prized possession and a…