Great War Podcasts, Part 6: KCL WSD

It's been a long time since I posted some podcasts about the First World War. In the last few months, the Department of War Studies at King's College London has had a couple of good ones. The first is an interview with William Philpott about his book War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War. The second is more recent, and it features several speakers discussing the sideshows of the Great War - a topic which was also covered in an excellent podcast that I've linked to previously. Go check 'em out!

OGHAP: The Epic Great War Timeline

While studying for my MSc in Strategic Studies at the University of Aberdeen, I wrote my in-class essay for my course in Strategic Theory on the following prompt: "Explain why and how the conduct of war was transformed between 1815 and 1914." My preparations included developing a timeline of armament, geopolitical, military, sociocultural, technical, and diplomatic (treaty) developments from Waterloo to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When I came to the realization that I'd be writing a book about the First World War, I dug that note sheet out and used it to begin developing a timeline of dates relevant to the Great War.

Initially, I was only tracking the dates, events, and which of the aforementioned categories they fell into. As I began researching the early battles on the Western Front, I tried to categorize engagements that were subsets of the Battle of the Frontiers, the Great Retreat, the Race to the Sea. As the list began to balloon in scope, the data quickly became prohibitively unruly, so I decided to organize it - and if I was going to reorganize it, I might as well expand it, right? I re-coded the dates into a "YYYY//MM//DD" format for easier chronological sorting. I also added some additional categories: theater; campaign; whether the military events are ground, naval, or amphibious in nature; and whether the British Expeditionary Force, British Imperial Forces, or neither took place in the engagement. Where relevant, I also track the Wikipedia entry for a given event or topic - I know, boo, hiss, Wikipedia, but it can be useful if you know what you're doing.

Having initially kept the timeline in my .txt manuscript, the expansion made it too unruly for that format. Porting it over into Excel has made the it much easier to manage the data, and Excel allows me to manipulate that data so that I can clump it together for easier use. It ended up being a massive undertaking, and it's still not complete, but I consider it an investment of time that will ultimately make my effort to document the war more efficient in the long run. I can also take pride in the fact that I've amalgamated a variety of sources to create a fairly authoritative timeline of the conflict. Maybe it will have some use beyond OGHAP? Only time will tell.

OGHAP: Primary Sources

When I was studying history as an undergrad, one of my professors was a borderline deranged lunatic on the topic of primary sources. For the uninitiated, primary sources are pieces of historical evidence that constitute eyewitness or participant accounts. If you submitted a paper to him (I think I submitted a total of four) that didn't rest largely on the testimony of primary sources, you were going to have a bad time. As I've researched the service of the Great War Orcadian Gordon Highlanders, I've found myself making use of multiple primary sources.

Medal index cards are often the only remaining official record of a particular soldier's service. (Most First World War personnel service records were destroyed in the Blitz.) My contact in Orkney has diligently assisted me in identifying and procuring the medal cards for the soldiers in question. A few months ago, the BBC published this guide, which includes a guide to reading a medal card. These documents have been extremely valuable in establishing or confirming some basic facts about the various Orcadian Gordon Highlanders.

Earlier this year, I discussed my efforts to procure soldiers' wills for seven Great War Orcadian Gordon Highlanders from the National Archives of Scotland. Since I wrote that post, my contact back in Orkney discovered several additional Orcadian Gordon Highlanders, and one has a will. My good buddy, CN Constable, has agreed to get it for me since the last effort took about a month and cost far more than it needed to.

The United Kingdom's National Archives (known colloquially as "Kew") are releasing and/or digitizing many documents for the Great War's centenary. One such effort is Operation War Diary, about which I learned a couple of months ago from one of War on the Rocks' (W)archives posts. (Here's more information about Operation War Diary.) Since information about many of the Orcadian Gordons is so sparse, I thought that this might be a good way to find information about the various battalions of the Gordon Highlanders, and possibly even about individual Orcadian Gordon Highlanders from my own roster. I put off participating in OWD until I had some time, at which point I discovered that none of the diaries available for tagging pertain to the Gordon Highlanders. However, Kew has a total of thirty-eight individual war diaries, ranging in length from about twelve pages to nearly six hundred. I expect to procure these records in the near future. The National Archives has a good webinar (also available, albeit less illustrative, as a podcast) about how to search for and correlate the various documents available in the archives for the purposes of historical research. I'm not sure I'll have need for more than medal cards and war diaries, but it might be interesting to see what additional resources might be available to allow me to continue researching this and related topics in the future.

I've worked with primary sources before, but this has been my first opportunity to do much archival history. I have to say, I'm really enjoying it, and once I get the book published I may see if my undergraduate alma mater might be interested in having me out to lecture about my experiences doing historical research outside of academia.

OGHAP: Soldiers' Wills

A couple of weeks ago, I came into a very exciting new resource for the book: seven last wills and testaments.

Early in 2014, the BBC reported that the last wills and testaments of twenty-six thousand Scottish soldiers from the First World War were going online. Eventually, I ran every name on my master list through the search function at the National Records of Scotland website, and came up with seven hits: William Charles Allan, James Brown, Francis Eunson, John Logie, George A.C. Manson, John Kirkness Maxwell, and Ian Merrilees. The first six were Gordon Highlanders who died in the conflict (all of them Privates, save for Lance Corporal Manson), while Private Ian Merrilees was the son of one of the most noteworthy Orcadian Gordon Highlanders, Archibald Merrilees.

I checked a couple of websites - the NRS website, and Scotland's People, and eventually learned two things. First, the records are not available online. Second, you have to pay for them - in fact, you have to pay just to have the NRS staff ascertain how many pages of records your total order constitutes, and how much that will cost, and then that search fee goes toward your actual order fee. If you ask me, both of these developments are extremely silly. Why even announce their release if they're not being made available online? As the BBC article claimed:

The last wishes of 26,000 fallen Scottish soldiers will be made available online by the National Records of Scotland.

[...]

Welcoming the project, First Minister Alex Salmond said: "This year, when we mark the centenary of the start of the Great War, we reflect on the sacrifices made by generations of service men and women, including those currently serving.

"Digitally archiving all 26,000 wills online presents a unique glimpse into the lives of the individuals who fought and fell for our freedom."

So, the claim that the wills are "digitally archived" and "available online" were just a few more falsitudes from the lips of (now-)former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. Beyond that: why charge for hundred-year-old documents that are held by the Scottish government? So much for the myth of an oil-funded tartan socialist wonderland...

Anyway.

Despite my annoyance that the files weren't just available via the web, and weren't free, and (as I eventually learned) couldn't even be E-mailed, I ponied up the cash (around $25-30 when all was said and done) for the NRS staff to do the search for the documents, and then to have the records mailed across the Atlantic on a very smart-looking "Scotland's People" flash drive. I want to make a point of noting that despite my annoyance, the staff at the NRS were extremely professional, polite, and efficient; the Royal Mail and the U.S. Postal Service not quite so much, but I'm used to that by now. The documents - only about five megabytes of files - arrived, and save for the basically unreadable will of Private Merrilees, most of them are in great shape and entirely legible.

The soldiers in question, pretty much to a man, are individuals for whom we only had a few bits of basic information prior to the release and discovery of those wills. We basically have only the following information about many of the men on the list: name, rank, unit (battalion within the regiment, or other units in which they served before or after), date of death, age at time of death, final resting place, home, service number, potentially the location where they enlisted, the URL for any relevant websites (e.g. the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for those killed in action), and that's about it - some of those data points aren't even confirmed. Most have an accompanying medal card, and we have photos of more of them than I would have expected at the outset, but that's still a pretty thin historical record. So, I'm quite excited about these wills, because they provide more of these men's stories. After a break for emergent operational requirements (work projects at the office, and Christmas/New Year requirements at the house), research and writing will resume on January 5th. Stay tuned.

Great War Podcasts, Part 5: University of Oxford

Oxford University has done a series of podcasts entitled First World War: New Perspectives. I've listened to precisely none of these podcasts yet, but hey, Oxford, right?

The Historian and the Centenary

Rethinking British Volunteerism in 1914: A Rush to the Colours?

The Indian Sepoy in the First World War

Surplus Women

The Better Part of Valour

Conflict Culture

Morality in Wartime Britain

Wartime Art and Grief

Popular fiction in World War One

The Sandwich that Sabotaged Civilisation

Soldiers on Leave

Les Permissionnaires

Shot at Dawn

Stay tuned. More to come.

Remembering the Christmas Truce

Had it not been for this item at Small Wars Journal, I probably would have missed this year's Christmas advertisement by UK grocer Sainsbury's.


Having the tail end of 2013 and much of 2014 writing a book about the Great War, I found the video particularly moving - though I'll admit to finding it odd that it was an advertisement for Sainsbury's. Of course, being the United Kingdom, it's already generated some controversy. I question whether the advertisement is really "trivializing war". In fact, I think it's actually a moving reminder of the power that our shared traditions have to bind us together, even across seemingly vast divides; and that gifts and sacrifices, even small ones, can have a powerful impact on both benefactor and recipient. In a world that's been cursed by war since literally the beginning of time, it's also a cogent reminder that our commonalities are, ultimately, more important than our differences; whether that reminder will accomplish much, I don't know, but that doesn't make it trivial. Of course, people (and particularly British people) will be able to find controversy in just about everything.

Regardless, I hope that you've enjoyed the video. That's what really matters, isn't it?

Great War Podcasts, Part 4: ABC Radio National

Continuing in my series of posts about podcasts pertaining to the First World War, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National did a series of ten podcasts over two days earlier this year. I've only been through a couple, but they've been really good, including discussions between several British and Australian experts on one aspect of the conflict or another. I'm really looking forward to listening to the rest of them.

The Contested Beginning

Lions and Donkeys

Sideshows

The Enemy Within

Hell and Healing

The Pen and the Sword

The View from Berlin

God and Country

Other Voices, Other Battles

Endgame

Stay tuned, because there are more podcasts to come.

Great War Podcasts, Part 3: MacArthur Memorial

I used to live in southeast Virginia, in one of the "Seven Cities of Hampton Roads" - really, one big metroplex, but we'll humor them and let them keep thinking that they're actually seven different cities. Anyway, I occasionally found myself at or near MacArthur Center, itself directly adjacent to the Douglas MacArthur Memorial, in downtown Norfolk - often to see the Norfolk Admirals at the nearby Scope arena. A visit to the MacArthur Memorial was one of the top items on the infamous Hampton Roads To-Do List, but to date all I've been able to do is listen to the Podcast Tour.

Anyway, in addition to its series of podcasts on General MacArthur himself (of which you can use the following links to seasons one, two, three, four, and five), the MacArthur Memorial's Education Manager, Amanda Williams, has done two seasons of podcasts investigating various aspects of the First World War. Here's season one, and here's season two. They seem to be targeted for high school aged listeners; that said, they're well produced, and worth checking out if you're interested in some of the Great War's ancillary topics, such as Dazzle Painting, the Red Baron, and President Wilson's role in the war.

And who knows, now that I'm back on the East Coast, maybe I'll be able to remedy the egregious sin of having spent several years in Hampton Roads without having visited the museum.

Great War Podcasts, Part 2: Imperial War Museum

1914.org, which is operated by the Imperial War Museum, hosts a total of forty-seven podcasts on the First World War. As I write this, I have yet to listen to any of them, but when I was checking them out in a bit more detail, I saw that they're not exactly download-friendly. Don't get me wrong, you can download them; but in order to do so, you have to go to each individual episode's page. So, if you want to stream episodes, you can do so by using the individual episode pages at the main podcast page. If you want to download the files for offline or mp3 player listening, the following links will be a bit more user-friendly.

[UPDATE] I've been listening to these, and they're really good. They're called "Voices of the First World War", and they feature archival audio, mostly of soldiers who served in the conflict. They're not very long, so you can get sort of a bite-sized chunk of Great War history; but that chunk of Great War history isn't some stodgy old historian reciting antiquarian facts, but the voices of the folks who were there, discussing their experiences in their own voices. And, Episode 5 features a Gordon Highlander![/UPDATE]

Episode 1: The Shot That Led to War

Episode 2: Outbreak 4 August 1914

Episode 3: Joining Up

Episode 4: Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Episode 5: Training for War

Episode 6: Off to the Front

Episode 7: Into Battle

Episode 8: Over by Christmas

Episode 9: The Christmas Truce

Episode 10: War in Winter

Episode 11: War at Sea

Episode 12: Zeppelins over Britain

Episode 13: Gas Attack at Ypres

Episode 14: Gallipoli

Episode 15: Trench Raids

Episode 16: Munitions

Episode 17: Home on Leave

Episode 18: Mesopotamia

Episode 19: Sport in War

Episode 20: Trench Life

Episode 21: News From the Front

Episode 22: Jutland

Episode 23: The First Day of the Somme

Episode 24: Tanks on the Somme

Episode 25: Winter 1916-17

Episode 26: The Submarine War

Episode 27: Arras and Vimy

Episode 28: War in the Air

Episode 29: Wounded

Episode 30: Womens War Services

Episode 31: Passchendaele

Episode 32: Gunners

Episode 33: Shell Shock

Episode 34: Animals in War

Episode 35: Life on the Home Front

Episode 36: The Wider War

Episode 37: Conscientious Objection

Episode 38: Christmas at War

Episode 39: Weapons of War

Episode 40: Logistics of War

Episode 41: The German Spring Offensive

Episode 42: Prisoners of War

Episode 43: Arrival of the American Troops

Episode 44: Wartime Leisure and Entertainment

Episode 45: The Beginning of the End

Episode 46: The Allied Advance to Victory

Episode 47: Armistice

I'm looking forward to listening to these, as many of the subjects tie into various subjects that I'm listening to for my book about the Great War Orcadian Gordon Highlanders.

Great War Podcasts, Part 1: BBC

One thing I've recently been trying to do is mix podcasts about the First World War into my daily playlist. At this point, all of them have been from the BBC, so I figured I'd post some links. Their first major centennial podcast was World War One.

The brunt of the Beeb's podcast coverage has been a series they've titled "The War that Changed the World". They've done a number of events in a number of different locations: Nationalism The War That Changed the World, The War that Changed the World: Part Two, The War That Changed The World: Istanbul - Modernity and Secularism, The War that Changed the World: India, and St Petersburg: Revolution. Thus far, I've listened to the ones about St. Petersburg and Istanbul, and maybe one other, I'm not sure.

I listened to I Don't Remember the War, but wasn't as impressed. They basically had an event where they talked to people in a bunch of different locations that were, at best, tangentally involved in the Great War, and who were mostly just remotely acquainted with people who'd actually been involved in the role.

They've also done several episodes about India and South Asia: India's Forgotten War, and The Ghostly Voices of World War One. I haven't listened to the first, but I listened to the second, and it was interesting.

And in 2012, while I was languishing in Aberdeen during The Long Break, I listened to ANZAC.

Work continues on my book about the First World War, and that's the inspiration for my interest in podcasts on the subject to supplement the reading I've been (trying to) do. Generally speaking, the legitimate historians who taught me the craft between 2000 and 2005 would probably focus solely on the specific subject matter, but since I want to market my book to a wider audience (really, I'm writing the book so that as many people as possible will see and remember the men about whom I'm writing), I'm trying to cast a wider net. Seeing as how my pre-October 2013 exposure to the First World War was pretty spotty, that's left me with a great deal of catching up to do. Podcasts help because it's something I can absorb while doing other things, like working or commuting. So, as I listen to more of them, I'll be sure to share the wealth.