Gallipoli is one of the most famous battles of World War I. Fought in on a Turkish peninsula in 1915 it was, like most Great War battles, a huge waste of life and largely fruitless. Jul Snelder's site has a wealth of information, the causes, history and aftermath of Gallipoli, the slang of the ANZAC forces, placenames in both English and Turkish, interesting little factoids, how Allied troops used subterfuge to hide their evacuation, the Turkish perspective, pictures of the battlesite today juxtaposed with old photographs, a mini-travel guide to Gallipoli and much more. One of the most famous units at Gallipoli was the Australian 12th Light Horse Regiment. To learn more about this type of unit, responsible for the "last successful great cavalry charge" two years after Gallipoli, I direct you to the excellent website of the Australian Light Horse Association, where you can learn anything you might reasonably want to know about the subject.
posted on Sep 15, 2008 - View this thread

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.
posted on Aug 6, 2008 - View this thread

Billy Hughes at War ― As Australia’s prime minister for most of the First World War, he steered the nation through the horrors of the war and the debates of the peace settlement. You can enter the conscription debate and examine political cartoons from the era. Billy Hughes provided Australia an independent voice on the world stage.
posted on Jul 1, 2008 - View this thread

The Heritage of the Great War
posted on May 8, 2008 - View this thread

Arthur Mole first developed his technique of collective portraiture in a religious context, photographing fellow church members gathered together in the shape of religious symbols. When the United States entered World War I, Mole and his colleague John Thomas turned to patriotic themes. They choreographed thousands of soldiers into formations such as the Liberty Bell and the Statue of Liberty. Their largest production was the U.S. Human Shield, photographed at Camp Custer, Battle Creek, Michigan, which comprised 30,000 men. Wiki.
posted on Apr 24, 2008 - View this thread

Famous, infamous, and interesting World War I draft cards, including The Bambino, Groucho, Moe, Satchmo, Scarface, and Sergeant York.
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

Crossing the Line a trailer for a short film by Peter Jackson.
posted on Oct 22, 2007 - View this thread

The Faces of War, a fascinating document of the prosthetic masks used to cover serious facial injuries from the battlefield. Before plastic surgery was widely practised and used to reconstruct the horrific facial injuries of the First World War soldiers, men with the most serious facial injured were often hidden away from society.

Men such as those recorded in watercolour, and in pastels (warning: some may find these images disturbing); patients of Harold Gillies, pioneer of facial reconstruction at Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, the wars major centre for facial reconstruction and plastic surgery.
posted on Oct 1, 2007 - View this thread

Photos of WWI poison gas and flamethrowers.
posted on Sep 14, 2007 - View this thread

The story of Sgt Stubby of the 102nd Infantry, the most decorated dog of WWI, is an amazing tale. As a stray he wandered onto a troop barracks in the U.S. & was adopted by one of the young recruits. Barely a pup when he was smuggled aboard a troop transport to the front lines, he served in over 17 battles, providing morale boost up & down the trenches, early warning (through his enhanced sense of smell) for gas attacks, and even uncovering & capturing a german spy in the trenches. Though largely forgotten today, upon his return to the U.S., Stubby was met with a hero's welcome, and went on to become the original mascot for the Georgetown Hoyas. After his passing in 1926, his preserved remains were put on display by the Smithsonian, wearing the special coat he was given to hold the large number of medals & awards he received for his service in the Great War.
posted on Sep 1, 2007 - View this thread

"Henry John Patch would be notable simply by virtue of his 109 years on earth... But Harry Patch is more than a gerontological phenomenon. The man arranging his medals and sitting up straight for a photograph in the conservatory of a nursing home in Wells is the last British man alive to have served in the trenches during the First World War."
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - View this thread

On this day in 1915 the ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat, which helped turn public sentiment in the US against Germany in The Great War. FirstWorldWar.com is your go to site for all things War to End All Wars related, from how it began to propaganda posters to maps to memoirs and diaries to the weapons and battles to audio and video and to the justly famous poetry of World War One. Also check out the feature articles and encyclopedia.
posted on May 7, 2007 - View this thread

Sgt. Alvin C. York was the most decorated individual US Soldier in WWI. Subject of the top grossing movie of 1941, He was credited with capturing 138 German soldiers nearly single handedly by flanking a Machine gun nest, and killing its occupants. The Machine gun in question may be destroyed because the library that owns it does not have a proper license.
posted on Apr 23, 2007 - View this thread

451 Postcards from World War I. Personal notes, propaganda, battle memorials, etc.
posted on Dec 26, 2006 - View this thread

Triplane Madness presents photos of a large selection of triplane (and quad- and quint- and more) experiments in avionics conducted in a wide variety of countries in the early days of aviation.
posted on Dec 23, 2006 - View this thread

The Great War in the Air is a 69-part video project, clearly a labor of love, by one Jan Goldstein, a musician, painter, and publican. Overwhelmed? Here's a representative sample: Part 7, on the French ace Georges Guynemer. Please note: extensive use of YouTube. Many of the images seen in the film may be perused at earlyaviator.com.
posted on Nov 11, 2006 - View this thread

A World War One sketchbook from an unknown soldier. Some of them are quite enigmatic.
posted on Oct 11, 2006 - View this thread

Etaples, 1917 - The first and last mutiny of the British Army. The story was first told in "The Monocled Mutineer" by William Allison & John Farley which was later made into a BBC drama (script written by Alan Bleasdale) broadcast in 1986. This program has never been shown since on British terrestrial TV and even resulted in questions being asked in Parliament about the BBC's left-wing bias. The true facts will be classified until 2017, 100 years after the events. [mi]
posted on Jan 5, 2006 - View this thread

Last Survivor of 1914 Christmas Truce Dies in Scotland
posted on Nov 21, 2005 - View this thread

Frank Hurley. You may be familiar with his work for Shackleton on the Endurance. Magnificent stuff, but only a fraction of what he was capable of. After the ice, he went to Europe where he did some of the most haunting photographs of WWI. Click the pictures to continue the series- they defy selection. (He did reluctantly create some fakes for the propaganda effort, but most of his stuff is straight and the better for it.) After the war he continued to travel, and for those with some time on their hands, the Australian government has been good enough to put a few thousand items of his work on line here)
posted on Nov 2, 2005 - View this thread

On my 19th birthday in 1917, we were in the trenches at Passchendaele... Haig put a three-day barrage on the Germans, and thought, "Well, there can't be much left of them." I think it was the Yorkshires and Lancashires that went over. I watched them as they came out of their dugouts and the German machine guns just mowed them down. I doubt whether any of them reached the front line.
Harry Patch, Private, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Born June 17 1898.
Of the millions who fought in WWI, only a handful are still alive today -- and all are now well over 100 years old. With the horror of the trenches about to slip from living memory, Max Arthur has tracked down and interviewed these last survivors of the 'carnage incomparable'.
posted on Nov 1, 2005 - View this thread

Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films as voted for by their (generally more clued-up than average) viewership has plenty for you to disagree with, but much to recommend. Filmsite.org has a history of war films (as does Berkeley) for the completists among you. There are more war films from and about Vietnam and Indochina than you can shake a bayonet at (see also the 1999 NYT article, Apocalypse Then: Vietnam Marketing War Films to learn a little about the Vietnamese government's 1960s and 70s archive of war film). The [British] national archives have archived film from pre-WWI to the Cold War.
posted on May 17, 2005 - View this thread

First built in the 1920's, and predating the use of Radar in World War II, early warning "sound mirrors" were used to provide some means of detecting incoming enemy aircraft. First used in World War I to listen for Zeppelins, their vestigial remnants dot the English coastline. The bizarre legacy of the sound collectors lives on through some decidedly nerdy enterprises.
posted on Apr 7, 2005 - View this thread

1917: The largest man-made non-nuclear explosion in history and yet (outside of Canada) a largely unknown disaster - The Halifax Explosion. [more inside]
posted on Mar 21, 2005 - View this thread

Aerial Propaganda Leaflet Database. Propaganda from WWI to Operation Iraqi Freedom, including many safe conduct passes. Also, leaflets from the Korean War & Vietnam, Sefton Delmer's "Black Propaganda Radio, and even some NSFW (work, not war) propaganda. Come On Boys, Himmler For President!
posted on Mar 9, 2005 - View this thread

Armistice Day: WW1 Document Archive. Verdun memorial. The Western Front today. A World War One Literature Blog. Trenches on the Web, unsurprisingly slammed today, it seems.

Consider visiting a nearby military cemetary today. I've found it to be a worthwhile use of my time in the past.
posted on Nov 11, 2004 - View this thread

Color Photographs of the French Army in WW1 (via MemeFirst)
posted on Oct 15, 2004 - View this thread

June 28th is the 90th Anniversary of the terrorist assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which touched off the First World War. The world today is not much different then 90 years ago. Nuclear 1914: The Next Big Worry, by Henry Sokolski.
posted on Jun 28, 2004 - View this thread

Before and After
Cosmetic surgery was born 2,500 years ago and came of age in the inferno of the Western Front. The Great War not only gave birth to plastic surgery as a modern medical specialty but also marked a rare moment when the proponents of reconstructive or “serious” surgery and the defenders of cosmetic or “frivolous” surgery declared a truce in what would become a long and morally charged battle.
posted on Jun 14, 2004 - View this thread

World War I Document Archive. Treaties, diplomatic documents and, of course, photos. even ee cummings.
posted on Aug 25, 2003 - View this thread

Photos of the Great War is a collection of nearly 2,000 photos from World War One, ranging from the tragic to the peaceful to the unexpected. It also contains war albums by ordinary soldiers (such as this German machinegunner or U.S. sergeant) and a section devoted entirely to animals, featuring things like this gas-mask-wearing dog.
posted on Jun 2, 2003 - View this thread

World War 1 Memoirs and Diaries , by soldiers, nurses and chaplains. 'With the advent of the world wide web, an opportunity arose for the descendants of many survivors to publish fragments of diary entries for the education and interest of others. '
The diary of Edwin Jones, who fought in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Via the firstworldwar.com website, which also features poetry and prose (including an overview of British World War 1 satire and how it reflected the class system at the time); propaganda posters; and miscellaneous features on everything from the Christmas truce to the disputed sexuality of T.E. Lawrence.
Related :- an interview with one of the last British WW1 survivors, aged 107 ('I survived the trenches - and would never go back'), and the BBC's 80th anniversary site, which includes five poignant, sometimes tragic, letters from soldiers to family and friends.
posted on Mar 31, 2003 - View this thread

The Fatal Salient. The First World War remembered; the letters and paintings of one of the participants, Harold Sandys Williamson. This and more via The Imperial War Museum's online exhibitions. [more inside]
posted on Mar 19, 2003 - View this thread

"The Christmas truce was the last twitch of the 19th Century. By that, I mean it was the last public moment in which it was assumed that people were nice, and that the Dickens view of the world was a credible view." -- Paul Fussell

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is an interesting footnote in history where German and British soldiers stopped fighting and fraternized in the middle of the battlefield. Some witnesses have claimed that enemy soldiers played a friendly game of soccer.

The events have since been chronicled in print, song, and on film.
posted on Dec 14, 2001 - View this thread

In Flanders Fields - by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields


MetaFilter readers wherever you are, please take a moment of silence to honour those who gave their lives so that we could live ours.
posted on Nov 11, 2001 - View this thread

Prototype mechanical soldier tried out in WWI! Your challenge on this site is to separate fact from fiction.
posted on Oct 25, 2001 - View this thread

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US Part Deux?? Old World War 1 and 2 posters, revamped. I'm kinda liking this weird trend of glorifying bad translations via Photoshop.
posted on Feb 16, 2001 - View this thread