Warfare in News

Posted on Monday 7th July

To mark the re-opening of the Imperial War Museum London on 19 July, Aardman have created a new animated film entitled Flight of the Stories.

The short film, produced by the Bristol-based company best known for the Wallace and Gromit series, features a flock of words rising from the First World War trenches and flying back through time and space to present day London where they arrive at the IWM.

You can view the film on the IWM website and it will also be shown in selected cinemas. It features the voices of actors reading extracts from diaries and letters sent back from the front, which are now held in the museum's archive.

The museum will re-open on 19 July, including the First World War galleries and an exhibition of British art from the war.

Of further interest...

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Bristol in the Great War

Tue 2nd September

Jacqueline Wadsworth, author of Bristol in the Great War and Letters from the Trenches takes a look at Shirehampton Remount Depot – where horses and mules shipped into Avonmouth during the war were stabled before being sent to the Front. Read article...

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Pilots of the Caribbean

Thu 17th April

A description of the RAF Museum London's latest exhibition 'Pilots of the Caribbean' by curator Peter Devitt, delving into the stories of black volunteers across two World Wars. Read article...

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Richard Mead tells all about The Men Behind Monty

Tue 12th April

Richard Mead explains how he came to write The Men Behind Monty – The Staff and HQs of Eighth Army and 21st Army Group, which has been shortlisted for the British Army Military Book of the Year. Read article...

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Author spotlight - Julian Putkowski and Mark Dunning

Wed 26th September

Julian Putkowski and Mark Dunning discuss their research methods whilst co-writing their new book, Murderous Tommies - the courts martial of 13 British soldiers executed for murder during WW1. Read article...

Dates in History

German forces cross the Somme River

24th March 1918

On March 24, 1918, German forces cross the Somme River, achieving their first goal of the major spring offensive begun three days earlier on the Western Front. Operation Michael, engineered by the German chief of the general staff, Erich von Ludendorff, aimed to decisively break through the Allied lines on the Western Front and destroy the British and French forces. The offensive began on the morning of March 21, 1918, with an aggressive bombardment. The brunt of the attack that followed was directed at the British 5th Army, commanded by General Sir Hubert Gough, stationed along the Somme River in northwestern France. This section was the most poorly defended of any spot on the British lines, due to the fact that it had been held by the French until only a few weeks before and its defensive positions were not yet fully fortified. Panic spread up and down the British lines of command, intensified by communications failures between Gough and his subordinates in the field, and German gains increased over the subsequent days of battle. On March 23, Crown Prince Rupprecht, on the German side of the line, remarked that The progress of our offensive is so quick, that one cannot follow it with a pen. The next day, German troops stormed across the Somme, having previously captured its bridges before French troops could destroy them. Despite having resolved to concentrate on weaker points of the enemy lines, Ludendorff continued to throw his armies against the crucial villages of Amiens (a railway junction) and Arras—which the British and French were instructed to hold at all costs—hoping to break through and push on towards Paris. By that time, German troops were exhausted, and transportation and supply lines had begun to break down in the cold and bad weather. Meanwhile, Allied forces had recovered from the initial disadvantage and had begun to gain the upper hand, halting the Germans at Moreuil Wood on March 30. On April 5, Ludendorff called off Operation Michael. It had yielded nearly 40 miles of territory, the greatest gains for either side on the Western Front since 1914. He would launch four more offensive pushes over the course of the spring and summer, throwing all of the German army’s resources into this last, desperate attempt to win the war. (www.history.com)

Further Reading

The Somme
(Paperback - 355 pages)
by Richard van Emden

The offensive on the Somme took place between July and November 1916 and is perhaps the most iconic battle of the Great War. It was there that Kitchener’s famous ‘Pals’ Battalions were first sent into action en masse and it was a battlefield where many of the dreams and aspirations… Read more at Pen & Sword...

Only £14.99 at Pen & Sword Books.

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