Given how little thought India’s contribution to the World Wars gets in our collective historical memory, it is almost strange to think that in the First World War India made the largest contribution to the war effort out of all of Britain’s colonies and dominions. Close to 1,700,000 Indians – combatants and non-combatants – participated in WWI. My own area of interest is India’s role in the Mesopotamian theatre. [more inside]
posted by infini
on Jul 8, 2012 -
7 comments
Land Girls and Lumber Jills is an exhibit at Scotland's
National War Museum. It explores the history of the
Women's Land Army and the
Women's Timber Corps. These two organizations were formed during the First World War to compensate for shortages in male laborers in agriculture and forestry, respectively. The museum's exhibition ties in a
collection on flickr,
interviews and a
book available for order online. Other sources online will allow one to hear
audio samples of the Land Girls' stories, read
Land Girls' and
Lumber Jills' memoirs and watch
old propaganda clips about them or more recent
documentary videos (
more on YT).
Officially commemorated in 2008, these civilian service organizations have also been the subject of a film,
"The Land Girls" (
trailer), an
ITV sitcom, and a
BBC series (Episode
1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
The British Women's Land Army model was successfully replicated in the U.S. with the
Woman's Land Army of America (whose members were known as
"farmerettes") and in Australia with the
Australian Women's Land Army.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal
on Dec 16, 2010 -
8 comments
H1t3r pwnd UK, USA! A gunnery has been discovered, buried beneath a metre of iron-rich
Normandy soil. It was likely part of a ruse on the part of the Axis forces: a fake gunnery was also built, less conspicuously, and
it took the abuse. It was forgotten -- or the memory at least buried by the locals and those who fought there -- until recently. Now it appears to explain some puzzles about
Bloody Omaha [
pic].
posted by five fresh fish
on Feb 7, 2006 -
49 comments
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 may have brought an end to the Great War, but the ending was merely the beginning of the aftermath.
The aftermath years were a time of paradox, where the men who returned from the horrors of the trenches wanted to forget, and where those who had stayed behind, and had lost husbands and brothers, and sons and fathers were equally determined never to forget. It was a time where remembrance of the dead became a way of life, and where it was somehow assumed that all the best, and the finest young men of a generation had died. The other side of that assumption was that those who had survived were somehow less than those who had died. . . The exploration of that time, that world, is the theme of these pages.
posted by ewagoner
on Nov 11, 2003 -
11 comments
You dropped a bomb on me... The movie "
Above & Beyond" was on TCM last night. It is about Col Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb. Surprise: Col Tibbets is still alive, making
appearances & speeches. What do you think goes through his mind when he recalls that fateful day? Would YOU have been able to drop the bomb that ended World War II?
posted by davidmsc
on Jul 18, 2001 -
92 comments
