Military History Monthly

November 2015 Issue 62 4.
50
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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD:

Martin Brown
Archaeological Advisor, Defence
Estates, Ministry of Defence
Mark Corby
Military historian, lecturer, and
broadcaster
Paul Cornish
Curator, Imperial War Museum
Gary Gibbs
Assistant Curator, The Guards Museum
Angus Hay
Former Army Officer, military
historian, and lecturer
Nick Hewitt
Historian, National Museum of the
Royal Navy, Portsmouth
Nigel Jones
Historian, biographer, and journalist
Alastair Massie
Head of Archives, Photos, Film, and
Sound, National Army Museum
Gabriel Moshenska
Research Fellow, Institute
of Archaeology, UCL
Colin Pomeroy
Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force
(Ret.), and historian
Michael Prestwich
Emeritus Professor of History,
University of Durham
Nick Saunders
Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol
Guy Taylor
Military archivist, and archaeologist
ilitary power sometimes works simply by virtue of its

existence. It has its effect without being used. This is
especially true of naval power.
If maritime supremacy goes unchallenged, there are no
big battles to report. Because of this, naval power is often
invisible, or at least little noticed.
The Roman Empire provides a clear example. Everyone
knows about the legions the kit, the training, the
discipline, the professionalism, their role in creating and
defending the Empire. But what about the fleet?
In our special this issue, Marc DeSantis, author of a
new book on the subject, argues that the founding of
the Roman Navy, in the context of the mid 3rd century
First Punic War, was a decisive event in Romes ascent
to imperial greatness.
The war lasted a quarter of a century. The combined
losses are estimated at 300,000 men and 1,200 ships.
It was one of the greatest wars in Roman history, and
the only one fought as much at sea as on land. And it
launched Rome on its career of overseas conquest a
career underwritten by the maritime supremacy wrested
from the Carthaginians between 264 and 241 BC.
Also this issue, we have Chris Bamberys account of
Prestonpans, the forgotten Jacobite victory of September
1745, Tom Farrell on Irelands divided loyalties during
the First World War, and Sarah De Nardis analysis of the
Italian Resistance in 1943-1945.
Julian Thompson
Major-General, Visiting Professor at
London University
Dominic Tweddle
ROUTIN the
REDCOAT
the Jacobites won at Prestonpans, 1745
UNITED IN WAR,
DIVIDED BACK HOME
The Irish
I i att Messines,
i 1917
1 7
RISE OF THE
ROMAN
NAVY
O
NAV
The First
Fi t Punic
P War
W
ON THE COVER: Prince Charles Edward

Stuart, known as the Young Pretender.
The background is part of The Dawn
March through the Riggonhead Defile
by Andrew Hillhouse.
Image: The Battle of Prestonpans (1745)
Heritage Trust.
WHAT DO
YOU THINK?
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MilitaryHistoryMonthly.
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Alternatively, send an email to
feedback@military-history.org
Director-General, National Museum

of the Royal Navy
ADD US NOW
and have your say
Greg Bayne
President, American Civil War Table
of the UK
CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTHS EXPERTS

TOM FARRELL
is a freelance journalist interested
in military history
and the evolution
of conflicts. He has
been published
in the Irish Times, Irish Independent,
Guardian and Janes Intelligence Review.
MARC DeSANTIS
CHRIS BAMBERY
is an historian
is a TV producer
and attorney who
and presenter,
writes extensively
an author, and
on military historia journalist. His
cal subjects.
books include
His book about
A Peoples History
naval warfare in the Punic Wars, Rome of Scotland and The Second World War:
Seizes the Trident, is published this year. A Marxist History.
DR SARAH
DE NARDI
is a landscape
archaeologist,
oral historian,
and anthropologist. She is
currently a Research Associate
at the University of Durham.
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MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY
November 2015 | ISSUE 62
The First Punic

War at Sea INCLUDES:
This month MHM focuses
on Romes naval battles
with the Carthaginians,
and explains how the
Roman navy emerged as
the supreme force in the
Mediterranean during the
3rd century BC.
26
FEATURES
UPFRONT
Welcome
Letters
Notes from the Frontline
Behind the Image
10
MHM looks at a photograph of

the masses of artillery shells that
were produced during WWI.
Conflict Scientists
18 ON THE COVER
Prestonpans
The forgotten Jacobite

victory of 1745
Chris Bambery describes how an army
of Highland Scots outmanoeuvred the
Redcoats at the marshes of the Firth of Forth.
12
Patrick Boniface assesses the

work of German chemist Christian
Friedrich Schnbein.
War Culture
Background
Timeline
The fleet
The battle
Battle maps
42 The Irish at Messines

14
Mark Bryant examines the war

cartoons of Punch cartoonist
Sir Bernard Partridge.
How soldiers from North and

South fought together in WWI
Tom Farrell explores the issues that

split a nation in an already divided
world between 1914 and 1918.
14
50 Resistenza Italiana
The Italian Resistance
of 1943-1945
Sarah De Nardi uncovers the hidden
history of the mass anti-Fascist resistance
movement that defeated the Nazi
occupation after the fall of Mussolini.
November 2015
EDITORIAL
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IN THE FIELD | MHM VISITS

Museum | 68
BACK AT BASE | MHM REVIEWS
War on Film | 58
Stephen Miles travels to Poland to

visit the Museum of the Second World
War in Westerplatte.
Taylor Downing reviews the Nazi

propaganda film Triumph of the Will.
Listings | 72
Book of the Month | 62

Jan Woolf reviews The Show Must Go On:
Popular Song in Britain during the First
World War by John Mullen.
Books | 64
David Flintham reviews
Attrition: Fighting the
First World War by
William Philpott and
The Eyes of the Desert
Rats by David Syrett, while
rancesca Trowse examines
Agincourt by Anne Curry.
The best military history events.
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MHM CONTENTS
Tel: 020 8819 5580
TWITTER
@MilHistMonthly
@MilHistMonthly
1 Sept 2015
Open to the public today:
The Sinews of War: Arms
and Armour from the Age
of Agincourt exhibition
@WallaceMuseum
@MilHistMonthly
3 Sept 2015
#OnThisDay in 1939,
Britain and France
declared war on Germany.
The Battle of the Atlantic
began hours later, with
the sinking of SS Athenia
@MilHistMonthly
22 Sept 2015
Yorkists & Lancastrians
fought #OnThisDay in
1459 at Blore Heath. Do
you know your WoTR?
www.
militaryhistory.org/
articles/
5-mythsabout-thewars-of-theroses.htm
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Military History Monthly, Thames

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L E T T ER OF T HE MON T H
DADS ARMY WITH GRIT
Many congratulations on a fine article by Mike Relph
(MHM 61), detailing the WWII defence of southern England.
Articles like this will help younger readers get behind
the stereotypification of life on the Second World War
Home Front. The reality lived by Captain Mainwarings
Home Guard platoon would have been a lot grimmer
and grittier than the humorous TV series made out.
The terrific use of contemporary and
original photographs showing the same village scenes really brought home exactly what was being
defended,how,andwhy. Virtually every walk we take into a local towns high street or village green is
a walk through an intense period of this countrys very recent history.
Such a great pity then that, for obvious security reasons, only too few pictures of the WWII local defences
were taken, or have survived.
JackLeatherhead
FACEBOOK
www.facebook.com/
MilitaryHistoryMonthly
22 Sept 2015
The Battle of
Bannockburn has been
voted Britains most
decisive battle in a new
BBC poll. Do you agree?
24 Sept 2015
The Siege of Przemysl
began#OnThisDayin
1914. Read our special
feature on the Eastern
Front, published in issue
49 of MHM.
25 Sept 2015
Harald Hardrada
died#OnThisDayin 1066
at #StamfordBridge. Is he
one of your top 5 Vikings?
London
SICILIAN REVELATION
Thank you for your excellent new Briefing Room
back page (MHM 58). I was captivated by the lowdown on the Roman Imperial Carroballista
the giant catapult or crossbow mounted on a
cart. I had no idea that artillery was invented by
the Greeks, let alone that it first appears at the
Sicilian city of Syracuse in 399 BC. We have just
returned from a blissfully (undramatic!) summer
holiday there.
Thanks for the good read,
Penny Deanna
Harrow
FRENCH
PERSPECTIVE
I read your recent
features on
Agincourt (MHM
61) and found them
incredibly enjoyable,
well thought out,
and very insightful
about the lessons
that could be
learned about English society of the middling sort.
There was, I feel, only one deficiency in that
more attention could and, indeed, should have
been paid to French society and the major agents
that opposed Henry.
Two other marvellous articles on the French
military (The Defence of Camerone and Behind
the Image) appeared in the issue, so it was frustrating to have the French reduced to cardboard
antagonists. An opportunity was missed to examine
Azincourt from a perspective that would be novel
to many of your readers.
Alex Mee
London
Please note: letters may be edited for length; views expressed here are those of our readers,
and do not necessarily reflect those of the magazine.
Our round-up of this months military history news
CROMWELLS CAPTIVES REVEALED

Skeletons discovered in two 17thcentury mass graves in Durham are
the remains of Scottish prisoners
captured after the Battle of Dunbar,
according to new analysis.
The Battle of Dunbar in 1650
between the English Parliamentarian
army under Oliver Cromwell and
the Scottish Covenanting army
supporting Charles II was one of
the shortest and bloodiest battles
of the Civil War. After having been
defeated, thousands of Scottish soldiers
were taken prisoner and marched
over 100 miles to Durham. Many died
from malnutrition, disease, and cold
during the long trek from Scotland and
during imprisonment in the Cathedral
and Castle of the city, these buildings

having been taken out of the hands of
the Church of England in 1645.
The skeletons were uncovered
during construction work in Durham
city centre in 2013. They were not
buried in a traditional Christian
arrangement but carelessly thrown
into mass graves. Quick burials like
this are often associated with plaque
pits. However, historically, plague pits
in Durham were buried outside the
city centre and contained a mixture
of men and women of all ages. They
were also covered quickly to prevent
further spread of the disease.
These bones, discovered on
Palace Green close to the Castle
and Cathedral, were all from men,

most aged between 13 and 25 years
old. Some bones showed signs of
scratching and gnawing from small
animals suggesting they were left
without a covering of soil for a time.
This pointed to a darker period in
Durhams past - the soldiers from
the Battle of Dunbar who were
imprisoned here. Further analysis
confirmed this - isotopic analyses
suggest many of the individuals
were of Scottish origin. There were
no indications of healed trauma or
wounds such as might have been

received in battle, which implies the
soldiers were relatively new recruits
rather than seasoned campaigners.
It seems that the centuries-old
mystery of what happened to the
bodies of the Scottish Covenanting
army can now be laid to rest.
New funding for IWM Holocaust displays

The famous Holocaust
exhibition at the Imperial
War Museum in London is to
be completely updated and
renewed alongside the development of the WWII galleries,
thanks to a 5m gift from the
Pears Foundation. Research and
development is already under
way, and the new exhibition
should be open in 2021.
Between 1933 and 1945, Jews
were targeted, segregated, and
exterminated. The Holocaust
saw the Nazis murder millions
of Jewish and non-Jewish people.

Since opening in 2000, the
Holocaust exhibition has seen
more than 1m people visit
every year to explore the photographs, documents, newspapers,
artefacts, posters, and films
shown in its galleries.
At the heart of the new exhibition will be personal stories and
survivor testimonies, which will
be surrounded by an array of
objects, artefacts, and material
to help visitors consider the
causes and consequences of
the Holocaust.
The exhibition is
a vital resource for
students, 21,000 of
whom visit every
year to take part in
learning sessions at
the museum. The
IWM will also bid to
be the site of the new
Holocaust Memorial
and Learning Centre,
led by the UK Holocaust

Memorial Foundation.
Diane Lees, Director-General
of Imperial War Museums, said,
We wish to play our part to
ensure that Britain has a

permanent fitting memorial
and meaningful educational
resources for generations
to come.
November 2015
The Black Book

The Black Book, a wanted list of prominent
British residents who were to be arrested on
the successful invasion of Britain by Nazi
Germany, has been translated into English
FINAL FLIGHT OF HALIFAX LV881

Aircraft wreckage and personal items belonging
to the aircrew of a WWII RAF bomber have been
uncovered in Germany, helping to piece together
the account of its last journey.
The work concerns the RAF 10 Squadron
Halifax LV881, whichwas taking part in the
Nuremberg Raid on the night of 30-31 March
1944 when it was shot down by a night fighter on
the approach to Nuremberg. During the attack, a
fuel tank burst open and caught fire. Three airmen
managed to escape the burning aircraft, but were
captured as prisoners of war. The other four
crewmen were killed during the crash. The pilot,
Walter Regan, stayed at the aircraft controls until
the end, in order to give his comrades the best
chance of survival.
TheAllied aircraft exploded onto
ahilltopnear the village of Steinheim in the
Hesse region, and this site has been under
investigation by the regional archaeological

authority, hessenARCHOLOGIE, alongside staff
and students from the University of Winchester
and Saxion University, Deventer, from the
Neatherlands. The siteis now largely covered
by trees,and thoughthis has helped to preserve
the original resting place ofthe wreckage,ithas
complicated the work of locatingthe remains.
Systematic metal-detector survey was used
to identify scatters of material across the hilltop
in the hope ofunderstandingmore aboutthe
aircrafts final moments. Excavationthenfocused
on the site where the fuselage is believed to have
landed. Some of the artefacts found include a
penknife, Perspex from windows, remains of
instrument dials, cabling and switches, a lens of
the bomb sight, and an RAF cap badge. Taken
together, this information has shone new light on
events surrounding the crash.
A memorial service for relatives of the aircrew
was held at the site in September.
GOT A STORY?
Military History Monthly, Thames Works,

Church Street, London, W4 2PD
Let us know!
020 8819 5580
editorial@military-history.org
Band of
Brothers
A mural depicting the exploits
during the Battle
of Britain of Polish
airmen who were subsequently stationed
in Northern Ireland was unveiled on the
International Wall in Belfast on the 75th
anniversary of the battle in September.
This unique painting was made to capture
the publics attention and remind them of the
exploits of Polish 303 Squadron, which moved to
Northern Ireland later in the war, and to help tell
the story of the Polish communitys contribution
throughout the war.
The launch of Band of Brothers also saw young
people from the Shankill and from Polish communities across the city come together to take part in
a series of workshops led by artist Ross Wilson.
MHM FRONTLINE
NEWS IN BRIEF
and digitised for
the first time.
The list,
compiled by
SS-OberfhrerWalter
Schellenberg (shown
right), documents
2,820 of the Reichs
most wanted people,
described as enemies
of the state, traitors
and undesirables,
marked for punishment or death. It includes notable names
including politicians, authors, journalists,
actors, scientists, musicians, heads of
industry, and religious leaders. Nol
Coward, Virginia Woolf, and H G Wells
are all on the list, as well as Conrad Fulke
Thomond OBrien-ffrench, the British
Secret Intelligence Officer who was the
inspiration for the character of James Bond.
Researchers from Forces War Records
have created an extensive database that the
public can access. The entire digital Black
Book can be seen and searched for free on
www.forces-war-records.co.uk
Age of
Empires
A new exhibition,
Artist and Empire,
is to open to the
public at Tate Britain
Image: Essex Regiment Museum, Chelm
sford
on the 25 November,
running until 10 April 2016. The exhibition
addresses the sometimes provocative term
Empire by examining how artists have looked
at war, conquest, and slavery over the years. It
will show work from people who helped create,
promote, or confront the British Empire.
The exhibition includes around 200 paintings,
drawings, photographs, sculptures, and artefacts
from staged paintings, international conquests, treaties, and last stands around the globe, among them
The Last Stand of the 44th Foot at Gundermuck
by William Barnes Wollen (shown above). The
exhibition will describe how artists through the ages
mapped the world and its resources.
Poppy
apparel
Also to mark the
75th anniversary
of the Battle of
Britain, the Royal
British Legion has
designed special jewe
made from authentic parts of the Spitfires
that fought in the battle.
A set of cufflinks, made in the shape of
poppies, have been crafted from bits of Spitfire
P7350 as a means of celebrating the pilots who
flew these aircraft in 1940. Poppy pins, lapel
pins, and necklaces are also available in the
provenance metal, with all profits going to the
Royal British Legion.
You can buy them from www.poppyshop.org.uk
No precise details survive of where or when this

picture was taken, though we know it dates from
the final year of the First World War. The photographer, Tom Aitken, was originally from Glasgow,
where he worked in newspapers. He was assigned
as a war photographer in December 1917, bearing
witness only to the conflicts final bloody months.
By then, total-war mass production had
reached a crescendo of industrialised killing.
The demand was always for more artillery,
more shells, more firepower.
The original caption reads, Some shell
cases on the roadside in the front area, the
contents of which have been despatched over
into the German lines matter-of-fact, official
war-speak that belies the meaning of this vast
heap of metal cylinders.
A lone soldier stands knee deep, but even
these thousands of cases represent only a tiny
fraction of the millions of tons of ammunition
manufactured and used during the war.
The volume of artillery-fire deployed against
human flesh is shocking. A river of metal cylinders
flows far into the haze of the distance, contrasting
with the elegant avenue of trees behind. The
shiny geometric shapes of the shell cases recall
the contorted geometric landscape compositions
of the painter David Bomberg, their shattered
arrangement serving as a metaphor for the
industrialised destruction wrought by the war.
The shells, we can assume, are in transit:
they have been collected to be refilled. They
may have killed already. They are being made
ready to kill again.
Between 1914 and 1918, an estimated 1.45
billion shells were fired by the opposing armies,
the majority along a relatively small area of the
Western Front. Before each major attack there
would be days of heavy shelling: in just one
week in advance of the Battle of the Somme
in July 1916, 1,700,000 shells were fired.
It is not surprising, then, that artillery caused
more casualties than any other weapon and
the fatalities continue to increase. As the landscape was churned up by the heavy bombardment, many shells (perhaps one in four) failed
to explode in the soft mud and were buried. As
such, since the end of the war, in France, some
360 people have been killed and 500 wounded
as a result of unexploded ordnance, known by
local farmers as the Iron Harvest.
Text: Maria Earle
Image: Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
ON THE WESTERN FRONT,

1918
MHM BEHIND THE IMAGE
THE IRON
HARVEST
11
Patrick Boniface considers the influence of science on warfare
hristian Friedrich Schnbein

was always seen as a bright
boy in the neighbourhood. Born
in the town of Metzingen in the
German Duchy of Wrttemberg, he
excelled at schoolwork and showed
a particular aptitude for chemistry.
At the tender age of 13, the young
man became an apprentice to a leading local chemical and pharmaceutical
company in the neighbouring town
of Bblingen.
His work ethic saw him asking
questions and amassing a sound
scientific knowledge of the processes involved in manufacturing
chemicals and drugs. Schnbeins
experience at the firm of Metzger
and Kaiser led him to seek permission to take an examination to test
his abilities. His superiors at first
questioned the need, but Schnbein
insisted that he take the exam, set
by Dr Kielmeyer of Stuttgart, which
he duly passed.
He served briefly in the army
as a conscript, before taking up a
position at the Augsburg chemical firm of Dr J G Dingler. He soon
moved again to study at Tbingen

and Erlangen Universities. After
1826, he travelled to Scotland
and London, where he developed
lifelong friendships with many of
the leading scientific minds of the
era, including Michael Faraday and
Thomas Graham.
Schnbeins intimate knowledge
of how various chemicals react
The year 1845 proved

to be explosive. He had
been forbidden by his
wife Emilie to conduct
his experiments in the
family kitchen. He did
not, however, always
do as he was told
BIOGRAPHY
Born: 8 October 1799 in Metzingen, Germany
Married: Emilie Benz in July 1835
Died: 29 August 1868; buried in Basel
Known for: inventing the fuel cell and guncotton
RIGHT The aftermath of an explosion

in a guncotton factory in England.
12
November 2015
CHRISTIAN
FRIEDRICH
SCHNBEIN
MHM CONFLICT SCIENTISTS
QUOTES
FROM
SCHNBEIN
Oxigen [Oxygen],
as you well know, is
my hero as well as my
foe, and being not only
strong but inexhaustible in strategies and
full of tricks, I was
obliged to call up all my
forces to lay hold of him,
and make the subtle
Being my prisoner.
ABOVE Dipping cotton in nitrating
troughs in a guncotton factory, c.1900.
with each other led him through a

number of studies, and eventually
to a position at the University of
Basel in 1828. Seven years later,
he was promoted to full professor,
a role in which he remained for the
rest of his life.
In July 1835, and back in Germany,
he married Emilie Benz, with whom
he had four daughters. During this
period, he discovered the basic
properties of the fuel cell, whereby
electricity could be generated using
hydrogen and oxygen.
Schnbein is also noted for his
discovery of ozone in 1840, found
by its unique odour when he was
conducting experiments with electrolysis of water. Schnbein called it
ozone from the Greek word ozein,
meaning to smell.
The year 1845 proved to be explosive in more ways than one. He
had been forbidden by his wife to

conduct experiments in the family
kitchen. He did not, however, always
do as he was told. One afternoon,
while Emilie was away, he accidentally spilled two chemicals two
bottles of nitric acid and a bottle
containing sulphuric acid on the
kitchen table. The two chemicals
mixed, and, perhaps fearing his
wifes temper, Schnbein tried to
soak up the mess with one of her
cotton aprons.
As he put the apron over the stove
to dry, it spontaneously combusted in
a bright flame, and almost instantaneously was gone. What Schnbein
had done was to mix the cellulose
of the apron with the nitro groups
from the nitric acid, add oxygen, and
apply heat, thus suddenly oxidising
the whole garment. As is so often
the way, he had made an important
invention entirely by accident.
For centuries, gunpowder
manufacturers had been trying
IN CONTEXT: SCHNBEIN
Creating cordite
Without the work of German chemist Christian Friedrich

Schnbein in the early 1800s, it is unlikely that many of
todays military technologies would exist. Put simply, Schnbein
created a more powerful propellant than simple gunpowder. His
new invention was more explosive, more powerful, and created
a whole new direction for firearms and explosives. He set a
course of development which continues to this day when he
first developed a new process that ultimately gave the world
guncotton, also later known as cordite.
to find ways of making powder

burn more quickly and efficiently.
With a simple mistake in a family
kitchen in Germany, Schnbein had
achieved this. Furthermore, gunpowder gave off thick black smoke
when burned, whereas his invention
was smokeless and would thus
prove ideal for use as a propellant
in artillery shells. Soon it had been
christened guncotton.
Although the possible uses for
guncotton seemed extremely
broad, manufacturing the product
was also highly dangerous. A single
stray spark could ignite whole
batches, and many factories were
burnt to the ground by accidental
explosions. Guncottons intrinsic
disadvantage was that its burning
speed was far too high to be usefully exploited for military use at
first. It would take another 39 years
before inventor Paul Vieille managed
to control guncotton, when he made
it into a progressive smokeless
gunpowder called Poudre B.
Christian Friedrich Schnbeins
original discovery would then, in
1891, be transformed by the use
of a gelatinised compound devised
by James Dewar and Frederick
Augustus Abel. In this form, the
guncotton could be extruded from
manufacturing plants, formed into
long thin cords, and dried. In this
form, guncotton became known as
cordite, a vitally important component in naval gunnery and artillery
right up to the modern day.
The phosphorous
smell which is developed
when electricity
(to speak the profane
language) is passing
from the points of a
conductor into air, or
when lightning happens
to fall upon some terrestrial object, or when
water is electrolysed,
has been engaging my
attention the last couple
of years, and induced me
to make many attempts
at clearing up that
mysterious phenomenon.
Though baffled for a long
time, at last I think I have
succeeded so far as to
have got the clue which
will lead to the discovery
of the true causes of the
smell in question.
Although far
advanced in the career
of life, I nevertheless
feel still rather youthly
and have not yet lost
to a perceptible degree
my ancient love for science and philosophical
research.
13
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the death of Sir Bernard
Partridge (1861-1945), one of the best known Punch cartoonists,
who worked for the magazine for more than 50 years and drew
powerful images throughout the Boer War and both World Wars.
Born in London on 11 October 1861, he was the youngest son
and sixth child of Professor Richard Partridge FRS, President of the
Royal College of Surgeons (and Professor of Anatomy at the Royal
Academy), and Fanny Turner. His uncle was John Partridge, Portrait
Painter Extraordinary to Queen Victoria.
Educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire (with Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle), he worked at first in the offices of the architect Henry Hansom,
the son of the inventor of the Hansom cab, and then with a firm of
ecclesiastical designers, before attending Heatherleys art school and
the West London School of Art.
Then, after working as a decorator of church interiors, he became
a professional actor, under the pseudonym Bernard Gould. One
of his early appearances was in the original production of George
Bernard Shaws first successful West End play, Arms and the Man
(1894), which was set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War.
After contributing to a number of publications throughout the 1880s,
Partridge started drawing for Punch in February 1891. By 1892 he had
joined the magazines staff, and in 1899, the year he also seems to have
ceased professional acting, he became Second Cartoonist, drawing a
number of whole-page political cartoons during the Boer War.
His most famous First World War cartoons included The Triumph of
Kultur (Punch, 26 August 1914) published shortly after the invasion
of Belgium, and showing a German soldier standing over a dead mother
and her daughter in the ruins of their house and Unconquerable
(Punch, 21 October 1914), featuring a victorious Kaiser and a defiant
Albert I, King of the Belgians. He also drew a striking colour cover for
the Punch Almanack for 1916 (1915).
A number of his wartime drawings were reproduced as postcards,
and he also designed postcards for Londons Blue Cross Quarantine
Kennels, for soldiers bringing their pet dogs home from the Front.
In addition, he drew posters for the all-party Parliamentary Recruiting
Committee, notably Take Up the Sword of Justice (No.105, 1915), in
which the figure of Justice floats above a seascape littered with bodies
from the sinking Lusitania. He was knighted in 1925.
Partridge continued to draw cartoons for Punch during the Spanish
Civil War and, despite being nearly 80 years old when it started, was
still able to produce powerful work during the Second World War.
He died in London on 9 August 1945, the same day an atomic bomb
was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. He was succeeded as Punchs main
artist by E H Shepard, illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh.
In 1951, by a strange quirk of fate, another cartoonist, John Gilroy
who had copied Partridges cartoons as a child and became best known
for his Guinness advertisements moved into his old house.
1
1. JOHN BULLS WAR AIM
Punch, 18 October 1939
2. A SELF-PORTRAIT
3. HAIL KITCHENER! VICTOR AND PEACEMAKER!
Punch, 9 July 1902
4. THE LAST WICKET
He has kept us in the field a deuce of a time, but

well get him now weve closed in for catches.
Punch, 15 May 1901
5. COVER OF THE PUNCH ALMANACK

FOR 1916 (1915)
14
November 2015
MHM WAR CULTURE
15
6. THE WOODEN DOVE
It came to me in a nightmare, Hermann

my secret weapon against the Allies for
next years campaign.
Punch, 27 December 1939
7. FROM NIGHT TO DAY

Punch, 9 July 1941
8. AND HOW ARE WE FEELING TO-DAY?
Punch, 21 February 1945
GO FURTHER
Mark Bryant is the author of World War I in Cartoons and
World War II in Cartoons, both of which have recently appeared
in paperback.
16
November 2015
WATERLOO 1815
The British Monarchy and the Defeat of Napoleon

A one-day Conference at Windsor Castle
Saturday 14 November 2015,10:00 am - 6:30 pm
A major international conference marking the 200th

anniversary of the battle, with debate among the leading
scholars of the period on the battles origins, conduct, and
consequences.
Speakers include: Roger Knight on the military
background, Tim Clayton on the fighting at Quatre Bras,
Brendan Simms on whether it was the German troops
that carried the day, Tim Blanning on how Waterloo was
commemorated, Saul David on Wellington at Waterloo,
and Adam Zamoyski on the consequences for
post-Napoleonic Europe.
The conference concludes with a private tour given by
curators of Royal Collection Trusts exhibition, Waterloo
at Windsor:1815-2015, in the State Apartments of
Windsor Castle, including documents, silver, furniture
and works of art and Napoleons magnificent scarlet
battlefield cloak.
Tickets for the conference, which include the private tour
of the exhibition, are 55 (or 49.50 concession).
To book online Google Royal Collection Waterloo
Conference or call 020 7766 7340.
Waterloo 1815 is a collaboration between Royal Collection
Trust, History Today, and the Humanities Research
Institute, University of Buckingham.
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PRESTONPANS
Prestonpans
1745
THE FORGOTTEN JACOBITE VICTORY
ABOVE The Dawn March through the Riggonhead Defile, 21 September 1745 by Andrew Hillhouse.
The Jacobite army is seen on the move in the foreground. Note the Hanoverian army in the background,
holding a strong defensive position protected by marshland plus the buildings and walls of two farms.
The Jacobites were able to outflank the Hanoverian position when told of a path through the marsh
that brought them onto the enemys eastern flank on the morning of the battle.
18
November 2015
Image: The Battle of Prestonpans (1745) Heritage Trust
Overshadowed by Culloden the following year the battle that finally terminated the
century-old Jacobite cause Prestonpans is little known. Chris Bambery researches the story.
19
PRESTONPANS
OPPOSITE PAGE The Battle of Prestonpans,
21 September 1745, showing the route of
the Jacobite night march, the realignment of
the armies, and the deployment of units prior
to the Jacobite charge.
The Redcoats
regarded the
Highland Scots, from
the mountainous
north of Britain,
as savages.
20
n September 1745, an army of British

regulars mustered near the village
of Prestonpans on the shores of the
Firth of Forth, ready to battle an
enemy whom they regarded as savages.
The Redcoats saw the Highland Scots, from
the mountainous north of Britain, as little
better than the indigenous natives whom
some had encountered while campaigning
in North America.
The commander of the Redcoats was
Sir John Cope. He was supremely confident
of victory. Although the two sides were
equal in number, Cope had more cavalry
and artillery, and his infantry was trained
to deliver well-aimed volleys. Facing west,
moreover towards Edinburgh, from which
his opponents had marched there were the
walls and dykes of two grand houses providing
protection for his men.
Copes opponents were the Jacobite
army raised in rebellion some weeks before
by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young
Pretender; he was the son of James Edward
Stuart, the Old Pretender, who was in
turn the son of King James II, ousted in the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. Charless shock
troops were Scottish Highland clansman,
most of whom spoke Gaelic, and were

regarded as barbarians by most Lowland
Scots and the English.
What was to happen at Prestonpans on
21 September 1745, however, was a signal
humiliation for the British Army.
THE JACOBITE ARMY

On 19 August, Charles had raised the Jacobite
standard at Glenfinnan in Lochaber in the
Western Highlands. Some 1,500 Highlanders
had mustered in his support, mainly from Clans
Cameron, MacDonald, and MacDonnell.
The latter had already fought a skirmish
with Government forces near Spean Bridge
to the east (where today a monument stands
to the Commandos of the Second World War
who trained there). A hundred men of the
BELOW LEFT Prince Charles Edward Stuart (17201788), the Jacobite Young Pretender, aka Bonnie
Prince Charlie. His father, James Edward Stuart
(1688-1766), the Old Pretender, was still alive at
the time of the Forty-Five, so it was in his name that
the rebellion was raised.
BELOW The Old Pretender is proclaimed King James III
at Edinburgh Cross after the Jacobites capture the
city in September 1745.
November 2015
Images: Ian Bull
Image: WIPL
21
A HIGHLAND ARMY?
The Jacobite army reached its greatest strength, some 9,000 men, at the
beginning of 1746.
Figures suggest less than 50% of the Jacobite army in 1745 came from
the Highlands, whereas 17-24% came from Moray, Aberdeen, and Banff,
and between 17% and 20% came from Perthshire.
The areas where Jacobite support was strongest coincide with those parts
of Scotland where Episcopalianism retained a powerful hold over the local
population, and most of those areas were to be found north of the Tay in the
north-eastern Lowlands a strong recruiting-ground for Charles in 1745.
Episcopalianism had been associated with the Stuarts since the 17th century.
The hierarchical structure of the church, with bishops directly appointed by the
monarch, dovetailed neatly with Stuart theories of absolute monarchy and the
divine right of kings.
Both James and Charles had been raised in the Catholic faith, and this fact
undoubtedly attracted a number of Scottish Catholics to their cause in 1745
notably the Glengarry and Clanranald MacDonalds.
A number of clan chiefs whose support Charles had hoped for failed to stir,
however, most notably Lord Seaforth, head of the Mackenzies, Macleod of
Macleod, and Sir Archibald Macdonald of Sleat. The latter raised two independent companies for the London Government, though these numbered just
200 men. Macleod of Macleod raised 450 (when he requested Government
funds afterwards, he claimed it had been 1,400).
A majority of the population opposed Prince Charles, largely for religious
reasons. The pro-Government side was demilitarised in the main, but it began
to train and arm forces against the Jacobites as the rising got under way. The
Government also benefitted from a chain of forts in the Highlands, control of
major strongholds like Edinburgh, Dumbarton, and Stirling castles, and the
presence of the Royal Navy off the coast, which made a French landing highly
problematic (though many blockade-runners got through).
Royal Scots sent to reinforce the garrison at

Fort William had been ambushed en route
and forced to surrender.
The commander of Government forces
in Scotland, Cope had advanced north into
the Highlands, but had chosen not to fight
Charless army as it headed towards Perth,
marched on to Inverness, and then passed
down the coast to Aberdeen, where it took
ship to Dunbar on the Firth of Forth, arriving
there on 17 September. The Jacobites had
taken Edinburgh virtually unopposed, though
the Castle had refused to surrender.
The Jacobite army, supplied with 1,000
muskets found in the citys magazines,
mustered at Duddingston, then a village
outside Edinburgh. The total number of
men was 2,500, with just 50 cavalry and one
artillery piece, too old to be of much use but
kept to bolster morale. They also had an able
commander in Lord George Murray. Sir John
Cope had roughly the same number of men,
but, with more cavalry and six artillery pieces,
was confident of victory.
Images: WIPL
THE JACOBITE FLANK MARCH

As the Jacobite army marched eastwards,
Cope ordered his men into a line running
north to south, from the Firth of Forth to the
edge of high ground, with cavalry and artillery
on each flank and infantry in the centre.
The Jacobites positioned themselves on
the high ground to the south, but discovered
that a bog lay between them and the enemy.
A council of war failed to come up with an
attack plan, and Charles and his men lay down
to sleep in the open. During the night, a local
man serving as an officer in the Jacobite army,
Anderson of Whitburgh, came to Murray to
tell him of a path through the bog.
At 3am, the Jacobite army filed along the
narrow path. It brought them to a position
east of Copes army, with firm ground between
the two forces.
On the morning of 21 September, the
Jacobite army lined up facing the enemy flank.
The Redcoats were forced to redeploy to meet
the threat. Cope ordered his artillery to open
fire, but the effect was to trigger an immediate

full-scale charge by the Jacobite army. The
pace of this caught the Hanoverian troops by
surprise, and gave them little time to reload
their muskets after the first discharge.
THE JACOBITE ATTACK

The centre of the Jacobite line was slowed by
soft ground, but the contingents on either
flank surged forwards. They attacked Copes
dragoons, who fled first to Edinburgh, where
the governor of the Castle refused to admit
them, threatening to open fire on them for
their cowardice.
Back on the battlefield, the Hanoverian
infantry found themselves pinned by the
advance of the Jacobite centre and under
heavy attack on both the left and right flanks.
Resistance began to crumble. Most of the
Government losses occurred as the troops
tried to flee the battlefield, and found themselves trapped between the walls of Preston
and Bankton Houses.
Just 170 of the infantry escaped, with 400
killed and the rest taken prisoner. A mere
30 Jacobites were killed and 70 were wounded.
The Jacobites captured Copes artillery, supplies,
and treasure chest.
Cope and the Earls of Loudon and Home
fled first to Coldstream and, on the following
day, to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Cope was
ridiculed as the commander who brought
the news of his own defeat.
A Jacobite song made fun of his flight:
Cope ordered his

artillery to open
fire, but the effect
was to trigger
an immediate
full-scale charge by
the Jacobite army.
Hey! Johnnie Cope are ye waukin yet?

Or are your drums a-beating yet?
If ye were waukin I wad wait,
Tae gang tae the coals in the morning.
King George II was left with no sizeable force
in Scotland, and in Edinburgh Prince Charles
was left celebrating a stunning victory.
Chris Bambery is a TV producer and presenter,

a journalist, and an author. His books include
A Peoples History of Scotland and The
Second World War: a Marxist history.
BELOW & ABOVE A Highland army on the march

in the 1740s. The scene had been witnessed in
Flanders, and this series of engravings is captioned
in French and German, but it presumably provides
a fair impression of the appearance of Bonnie
Prince Charlies army.
PRESTONPANS
A JACOBITE GENERAL
Lord George Murray was born the sixth son of the

Duke of Atholl in 1694. As a young man, he joined
the Jacobite army during the 1715 uprising. His elder
brother, William, Marquis of Tullibardine, commanded
the Atholl Brigade, with his younger brother serving
as battalion commander. Lord George missed the
major military encounter of the rising, the Battle of
Sheriffmuir, because he was in Fife attempting to raise
more men for the Stuart cause.
After the collapse of the rising, William and George
fled first to South Uist in the Hebrides, then on to
Bordeaux in France.
In 1719 Lord George accompanied a small Spanish
force that landed in Lochalsh in the Western Highlands,
along with his brother and other Jacobite exiles. Joined
by several hundred Highlanders, the Jacobite force
set off towards Inverness, but were intercepted by
Government troops at Glen Shiel.
Despite holding the high ground, the Jacobites
were exposed to artillery fire, the Hanoverian
troops attacked resolutely, and at 9pm the Spanish
surrendered and the Highlanders fled into the fog
coming down over the mountains.
Lord George Murray, who had commanded the
Jacobite right wing, had been wounded in the battle
but succeeded in escaping, eventually reaching
Rotterdam. It is widely believed that, while in exile,
he served in the army of the House of Savoy, rulers
of Piedmont and Sardinia.
The Government in London determined to
strengthen their hold on the Highlands by creating
a stronger chain of forts connected by military roads
(built by General George Wade), but at the same time
attempted to detach some of the prominent Jacobite
nobles through a policy of clemency. Thus, when
the Duke of Atholl died, Lord George Murray was
pardoned and allowed to return, having taken the
oath of allegiance to George II in 1739.
General John Cope, who appointed Murray Deputy

Sheriff of Perthshire.
Yet, when Prince Charles arrived at Blair Castle,
ancestral home of the Murray family, Lord George
joined the Jacobite army, saying his conscience allowed
him to do no other. His brother, the Duke of Atholl,
stayed loyal to King George, however.
Lord George Murray was made Lieutenant-General
of the Jacobite army, along with the Duke of Perth,
and his brother, Tullibardine. But Murray was the real
commander, taking charge of the army at Prestonpans.
After that victory, he opposed any advance into
England, arguing the French would not be able to land
an army in support, and that few English Jacobites
would join the venture; but he was overruled by the
Prince, who won a majority of the Jacobite council.
Murray did succeed in defeating Charless proposal
for an advance down the east coast to Newcastle,
where General Wade had based a Hanoverian army.
Instead, the Jacobites used the western route, leaving
Wade in their wake.
INVADING ENGLAND
The Jacobites took Carlisle after a two-day siege, and
then marched south through Preston and Manchester
before reaching Derby.
There Lord George Murray argued for a retreat,
pointing to the fact that Wade was to the north,
Cumberland was in the Midlands, and that militia had
been raised to defend London. The Jacobites could
not defeat three armies, and they were too weak to
hold London even if they took it. Few English Jacobites
had joined the rising, and the French had no plans to
land in the south-east.
Charles argued passionately, but did not prevail, and
the army turned north. At Clifton in Cumberland, Murray
defeated elements of the Duke of Cumberlands force
which had caught up with them (this was the last battle
on English soil), and the retreat continued to Glasgow.
At Falkirk on 17 January 1746, Lord George Murray
attacked and defeated a Government force of 6,000
led by Lieutenant-General Henry Hawley.
Hawley had ordered his dragoons to attack, but they

were met with heavy musket-fire, and those riders
who reached the enemy line found that the Jacobites
ignored them and struck at their horses instead.
The dragoons retreated, and the Jacobites charged,
routing Hawleys centre and left flank. The Hanoverians
then retreated south to Linlithgow, leaving over 300
dead on the battlefield.
LOST CAUSE
Despite their victory, the Jacobites continued
to retreat north, Charles marching from Perth to
Inverness directly, while Murray marched up the
east coast via Dundee and Aberdeen. But with
Cumberland in pursuit, the Jacobite army had
no choice but to turn and face him.
After an abortive night march in the failed hope
of launching a surprise attack, the tired and hungry
Jacobite army lined up on Culloden Moor east of
Inverness. Murray opposed this choice of ground,
preferring high ground to the south, pointing out that
the flat ground benefitted Cumberlands artillery and
cavalry. He was overruled, but proved right.
The result is well known. The Jacobite attack was
delayed, failed to break through, and then retreated
under attack from Cumberlands cavalry, who were
ordered to take no prisoners.
Murray eventually succeeded, in December 1746,
in escaping, making his way to Rome. There he was
received by Charless father, James the Old Pretender,
and awarded a pension. But when he visited Paris the
following year, Charles refused to see him.
Lord George Murray settled in Holland, dying aged
66 in 1760. He was buried in the church at Medemblik,
where his grave can still be found, marked with a stone
laid by the 7th Duke of Atholl.
TOP LEFT Lord George Murray (1694-1760).
BELOW The Battle of Culloden, 16 April 1746.
David Moriers famous painting captures the
asymmetrical character of the clash between
Highland clansmen and Hanoverian regulars.
A SCEPTICAL FORTY-FIVER
When Prince Charles Stuart landed in 1745, Lord
George Murray was sceptical about the chances
of Jacobite success, despite the fact his brother,
the Marquis of Tullibardine, was with the Prince.
Indeed, Murray accompanied his other brother,
now the Earl of Atholl (William had forfeited his
inheritance because of his loyalty to the Stuarts),
to visit the Government commander in Scotland,
24
November 2015
the first
Punic
wa r
at s e a
Introduction
BELOW When the Romans first built a fleet, they attempted to turn naval
battles into land battles. The corvus shown here in Peter Connollys
dramatic reconstruction was a combined grappling hook and
boarding bridge. It allowed Romes first-class infantry to get to grips
with their Carthaginian opponents before the Roman vessels could
be out-manoeuvred and rammed.
hen we think of the Romans, we think

of the legions. Between the 5th and 3rd
centuries BC, the legions conquered Italy.
Between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC,
they conquered first the western, then
the eastern Mediterranean. For the next half millennium,
under the Caesars, they controlled an empire that stretched
from Scotland to Syria, from the Caucasus to the Sahara. The
Roman Imperial Army was, quite simply, the finest fighting
machine of antiquity.
But Europe is almost completely surrounded by water, has
an exceptionally long coastline, and is bisected by numerous
navigable rivers. No other continent is so watery. Socrates
thought the Greeks were like frogs around a pond. The same
could be said for most Europeans. That is why naval power has
often been decisive in the continents geopolitics.
The Romans later spoke of the Mediterranean as our
sea (mare nostrum). But in 264 BC it was not their sea. The
maritime superpower of the age was Carthage, the great
Phoenician merchant city on the North African coast. And
because of this, when Rome embarked on its first overseas
adventure the invasion of Sicily it found itself bogged
down in an unwinnable war.
It was a war of the elephant and the whale. Rome (the
elephant) quickly established dominance on land, its citizen
legions far superior to the polyglot armies of mercenaries
raised by Carthage. But Carthage (the whale) could use its
naval supremacy to raid the coast, intimidate Romes allies,
and keep supplied the garrisons holding its main fortified
bases in western Sicily.
Rome was forced to build a navy. They used a captured
Carthaginian ship as a design model. Lacking seafaring skills,
they fitted their ships with a combined grappling hook and
boarding bridge of their own invention, and set out to turn
naval battles into a matter of the hand-to-hand fighting at
which they excelled.
Later, with experience, they abandoned artifice, having
become as adept at naval manoeuvre as their enemies. And,
finally, they crushed the Carthaginian maritime supremacy for
good, and made themselves masters of the Mediterranean.
In our special this issue, Marc DeSantis charts Romes
rise to naval power through the long, hard, brutal war against
Carthage for control of Sicily in the mid 3rd century BC.
27
Image: AKG/Peter Connolly
256
ROMAN VICTORY
AT BATTLE OF
ECNOMUS
TIMELINE
Lilybaeum, the great Carthaginian

fortress city on the west coast of Sicily,
symbolised the intractable nature of the
First Punic War. Rome was dominant on land,
but could not capture major coastal fortresses.
Even when successful at sea, she could not
establish an effective naval blockade. The
Carthaginians could continue the war even
when defeated on both land and sea, so long
as they could maintain a sufficient flow of
supplies into Lilybaeum.
264-261: ROMAN VICTORY ON LAND

A Roman army crosses from Italy to Sicily and takes
possession of Messana, beginning a war with the
Carthaginians for possession of the west of the island.
The Romans capture a Carthaginian war-galley, of the
type known as a quinquereme, when it founders on
the coast in 264. In 263, 40,000 Roman soldiers are
sent to Sicily, where they capture many towns.
The same year, King Hiero of Syracuse
becomes an ally of Rome, providing
her legions with crucial supplies. The
Carthaginians set about recruiting
MAMERTINES
REQUEST HELP FROM large numbers of mercenaries from
BOTH ROME AND
across the Mediterranean. The Punic
CARTHAGE
stronghold of Agrigentum is taken by
the Romans in 261.
264
272
BC
250: SIEGE OF LILYBAEUM
255
ROMAN
INVASION OF
AFRICA
FALL OF TARENTUM
Between 282 and 272 BC, Rome was at war

with Tarentum. This key Greek city was the
focus of resistance to Roman domination
of Magna Graecia, Great Greece, the Greek
settlements in southern Italy and Sicily.
The war sucked in the general-adventurer
King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army won two
battles, but lost the third and last (the Battle
of Beneventum) in 275 BC. The fall of Tarentum
three years
ter finally
nded Greek
esistance
o Roman
ule. The
omans
ontinued
o fear a
evolt of
heir subjecteoples in
taly, however.
260: BATTLE OF MYLAE
255
AND 253
ROMAN FLEETS
DESTROYED IN
STORMS WITH
MASSIVE LOSS
OF LIFE
Though dominant on land, the Romans realise

they will need a fleet of their own if they are to win the war.
For the first time ever, the Romans build a large fleet, with 120
war-galleys constructed in just 60 days. Most of the galleys are
quinqueremes, copied from the captured Carthaginian ship that
ran aground in 264. Because their ships are sluggish and their
oarsmen inexperienced, the Romans design the corvus boarding
bridge, placing one on each Roman quinquereme. At the Battle
of Mylae, the Romans win a crushing victory.
257
ROMAN FLEET
DEFEATS
CARTHAGINIAN
NAVAL FORCE OFF
TYNDARIS
TIMELINE
249
BATTLE OF
DREPANA
237: CARTHAGINIAN EMPIRE

FOUNDED IN SPAIN
218-202:
SECOND
PUNIC WAR
The Barca
amily became the
adership of a faction
The second
f hawks arguing for
war was
war of revanche
fought almost
gainst Rome.
entirely on
Hamilar Barca, the
land. Hannibal
eteran Carthaginian
invaded Italy,
ommander in
but was
western Sicily,
unable
ounded a
to destroy the alliance of Romans,
new empire
Latins, and Italian allies on which
HAMILCAR BARCA
n Spain,
Roman power in the peninsula
WAGES GUERRILLA
WAR IN WESTERN
ntending
rested. Scipio (later known as
SICILY
t to provide
Africanus) first destroyed the
the resources
Carthaginian empire in Spain, and
to rebuild the
was then allowed to mount an invasion
power and wealth
of Africa. This triggered Hannibals recall.
of Carthage. His son,
He was then defeated at the Battle of
Hannibal, became
Zama. The Romans imposed a victors
the leader of the Carthaginian
peace that destroyed Carthaginian power
army in Spain in 221 BC, following the death of
and reduced the city to third-class status
both his father and his brother-in-law.
247-243

149-146: THIRD PUNIC WAR
240-237: MERCENARY WAR
241
BATTLE OF
THE AEGATES
ISLANDS
After the First Punic War, Carthage faced a massive revolt

of its own mercenaries. While the city was preoccupied
with the defence of the homeland, the mercenaries
also revolted on Sardinia, and the Romans sensed an
opportunity. They quashed the mercenaries and seized
Sardinia for themselves. They justified their action by
claiming that the Carthaginian naval expedition then
fitting out to retake Sardinia was going to be used to
attack Italy. The normally pro-Roman historian Polybius
does not hesitate to call the Roman move an act of
sheer injustice. The seizure of Sardinia contributed to
the outbreak of a second war.
Carthage recovered
somewhat from
the disaster of
the Second Punic
War: the indemnity
was paid off, and
the citys trade
prospered again.
Rome found
a pretext to
launch a new war
when Carthage
attempted to
defend her
territory against
encroachments by
Romes Numidian
ally. Carthage made desperate attempts to secure
peace, but Rome demanded the abandonment of
the city, and the Carthaginians were forced to fight
for their very existence. The war took the form
of a gruelling four-year siege, culminating in the
destruction of the city.
146
BC
The fleet
Image: AKG
The Roman Navy
Sea power brought Rome victory in the First Punic War and set it on the course to empire.
Marc DeSantis describes the building of the first Roman fleet.
he First Punic War (264-241 BC)
began over a single city in Sicily.
In the 280s BC, the Mamertines, a
group of Campanian mercenaries,
tempted by the wealth and luxury of
the city of Messana (modern Messina) that they
had been hired to defend, seized control of it for
themselves. Hiero, tyrant of the nearby Sicilian
Greek city of Syracuse, moved against them,
seeking to reclaim Messana.
The Mamertines made appeals for aid to
both Rome and Carthage. As repugnant as
they found the mercenaries, the Romans
decided to send help.
The Carthaginians were dominant in
western Sicily. The Romans feared that if the
T
30
Carthaginians answered the Mamertines call

and took Messana just across the Strait of
Messina from the city of Rhegium at the toe of
Italy they might eventually come to control
the whole of the island. They might then use
it as a springboard for a future invasion of the
Italian peninsula.
The Greek cities of the Italian south had only
recently come under Roman control, and the
city of Tarentum had been the focal point of
Italo-Greek resistance to Rome. Further, King
Pyrrhus of Epirus, proclaiming himself champion
of Greek freedom, had invaded Italy and fought
a major war against the Romans in 280-275 BC.
The danger of disaffected states in Italy making common cause with an outside power, such
ABOVE The Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus shown

here depicts Middle Republican legionaries. Roman
supremacy in land warfare enabled them to make
rapid gains when war with Carthage erupted in
264 BC over the control of Sicily. But with no fleet
and no naval experience, the Romans were unable
to reduce the Carthaginian coastal fortresses. To
win the war, the Romans were forced to become
a naval power.
as Carthage, was very real. Rome decided to

go to war to foreclose any such possibility.
THE ROMAN INVASION OF SICILY

The Roman crossing to Sicily in 264 BC
was accomplished in the face of Carthaginian
naval opposition, during which a
November 2015
The fleet
Image: AKG
LEFT Naval warship design changed dramatically

between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC, but relatively
little in later antiquity. This bas-relief sculpture is a
Roman depiction from Praeneste that dates to
the late 1st century BC; it nonetheless gives a fair
impression of a quinquereme of the mid 3rd century.
Carthaginian quinquereme (war-galley)

ran aground and was captured.
The Romans took possession of Messana,
but Carthaginian and Syracusan armies stood
outside the city. The Romans defeated both
enemies, and enlarged their offensive in Sicily
in succeeding years.
In 263 BC, a massive army of 40,000 was sent
to Sicily to drive out the Carthaginians completely. By 261 BC, the city of Agrigentum on
the south coast had fallen to the Romans, and
Hiero of Syracuse shrewdly switched sides. He
agreed to provide the Romans with supplies.
Even with his aid, the Sicilian campaign
turned out to be far more arduous than Rome
had envisaged. The Romans took the inland
cities, but found it difficult to maintain the
loyalties of cities on the coast. Once the legions
had marched away, a Carthaginian fleet would
soon appear, cruise menacingly offshore, and
intimidate the coastal cities back into the
Carthaginian orbit.
Rome had no counter to the naval
power of its enemy. Stalemate was the result.
Carthaginian ships were even mounting raids
against the shores of Italy, causing Rome
BELOW In 1969 the wreck of a Carthaginian

quinquereme was found just off the coast of
Marsala (ancient Lilybaeum). Excavated from the
seabed and conserved in a local museum, it is the
single most important archaeological evidence we
have for the form of an ancient warship of the First
Punic War. As well as reconstructions of the Marsala
quinquereme, shown here are illustrations of the
crucial evidence: a Carthaginian coin of c.225 BC,
a Carthaginian bas-relief sculpture depicting a war
galley, and the actual wreck.
no small embarrassment before her allies.

Ultimate success depended on the neutralisation of the Carthaginian fleet.
The Romans decided to build a fleet of
their own. This was a momentous decision,
with great implications for Romes imperial
future. The Greek historian Polybius would
later write that It was this factor among
others that persuaded me to describe the
war at greater length than I would otherwise
have done. I was anxious that my readers
should not remain ignorant of an important
initiative of this kind: that is, how and when
and for what reasons the Romans first ventured
upon the sea.
THE FLEET TAKES SHAPE

For the most part Rome had been content
to rely on her socii navales, or naval allies,
among the Italian Greeks to provide
her with naval forces in wartime. These
naval allies had made the crossing to Sicily
in 264 BC possible.
Images: AKG/Peter Connolly
The Carthaginians
constructed their
ships in kit form,
with all pieces
made according
to precise
specifications.
31
Images: AKG/Peter Connolly
ABOVE & BELOW The corvus Romes secret weapon at sea. The corvus combined grappling hook (like a ravens claw corvus is Latin for raven) and
boarding bridge. It was mounted at the bow end, and could be used without tactical finesse: no manoeuvring was necessary, just a headlong charge
at the enemy line. The near end was firmly gripped by an upright pole to prevent the enemy pulling it away; the far end crashed down under its own
momentum to bury itself in the planking of the enemy deck and hold fast. The Romans would then storm across to capture the enemy vessel.
The new force now contemplated was one of

unprecedented size in comparison with the small
allied squadrons previously deployed. Polybius
says that the Romans used the Carthaginian
quinquereme captured in 264 BC as the model
for their own, and, says Polybius, built their
whole fleet according to its specifications.
The quinquereme war-galley would be the
workhorse of the Roman fleets for the duration of
the war. In 260 BC, according to Polybius, a fleet
of 120 ships was built in just 60 days. Of this total,
100 were quinqueremes, meaning five-oars,
while the remaining 20 were smaller triremes
(three-oars). Five, in the case of the quinquereme, referred not to the number of banks of
oars, which remained three, as in the trireme, but
to the number of men assigned to each group of
three oars when viewed in cross-section.
This has been proven to be a workable
design, as demonstrated by the modern
32
Athenian replica trireme Olympias, built in the

1980s. A quinquereme was a substantially larger
craft, and worked in the same way, though it
needed many more men at the oars. Two of the
oars, when viewed in cross-section, would have
two men apiece pulling them, while the third
and lowest oar would have just one.
Such a prodigious output of 120 ships in a
mere two months is fully plausible. A wrecked
Carthaginian warship dating to the later years
of the First Punic War was found in 1969 just off
the Sicilian city of Marsala (ancient Lilybaeum).
Though the ship was much decayed, the
recovered timbers showed carpenters marks
that indicate where the pieces were supposed to go. The Carthaginians, it appears,
constructed their ships in kit form, with all
pieces made according to precise specifications. This made for very rapid assembly,
since the various parts could be shaped and
stockpiled to await fitting into a ship as it was

being put together.
As the Romans copied their own design from
a Carthaginian original, it seems reasonable
to assume that they, too, would have adopted
the kit approach, maximising the speed with
which they could build and launch a fleet.
THE ANCIENT BATTLESHIP

No ancient treatise on how galleys were built
survives, so we are forced to rely on conjecture
and pictorial and archaeological evidence to
reconstruct a war-galley of this period.
On a trireme, there were three banks, or
levels, of oars, one above another, with one
rower pulling on one oar at a time, and a total
of 170 oarsmen. The beefier Carthaginian/
Roman quinquereme required 300 oarsmen.
Simply crewing the new fleet was troublesome, and the demands on Romes manpower
November 2015
The fleet
were extraordinary. She trained her own
youths on benches to get them used to moving
their oars in unison with other rowers, and
also relied heavily on allied communities from
the Greek cities of southern Italy to provide
additional oarsmen.
In such a crash programme, though the
Romans managed to create a fleet that was
able to move itself about well enough, their
rowers skills in naval manoeuvre left much to
be desired. The Carthaginians, on the other
hand a trading people with a strong maritime
tradition were talented practitioners of the
demanding art of rowing a ship, ramming an
opponent, and slipping away before another
enemy vessel could strike.
War-galleys were not particularly fast.
Sustained speeds of five or six knots were
feasible, with sprints at up to ten knots for
very short periods. Galleys also utilised masts
(a mainmast and a smaller boatmast set ahead
of the mainmast), but these were used only
for cruising, to spare the crews strength. The
masts were removed when battle was imminent,
and sometimes even left onshore.
NAVAL TACTICS
Galleys did not need much speed to be
effective. The great mass and momentum
of the galley was what powered the heavy bronze
ram at its prow through the timbers of an enemy
vessel. Once accomplished, the oarsmen aboard
the attacking ship would back-water that is, row
backwards to extract it from the holed, flooding, and perhaps sinking enemy vessel.
Some of these rams were tremendous. Many
have been recovered from the depths, including
the 2.26m-long, 476kg-weight ram found in the
waters off Athlit, Israel, in 1980. The Athlit ram
was once mounted on a quadrereme, or fouroar, and rams on the bigger quinqueremes
may have been even more substantial.
Apart from ramming, the most widely
used naval tactic was boarding. This involved
getting close to an opposing galley and sending
marines over to seize possession of it. This
was a crude but effective form of naval
warfare, typically adopted by people lacking
the necessary rowing skills to outmanoeuvre
an enemy fleet. The Romans, fully aware of
their skills deficit, were eager to close with the
Carthaginians and board.
CARTHAGE: NAVAL SUPERPOWER

The challenge that Rome faced at sea was
enormous. Carthage was a formidable foe,
with a naval heritage that extended back
several centuries.
Carthage or Qart Hadasht, meaning
New City had been founded in the 9th
century BC by semitic migrants and colonisers
from Tyre (in Lebanon). These early settlers
had inherited the naval aptitudes of their
Phoenician ancestors. (The Romans called
the Carthaginians Poeni, and our own adjective

Punic is derived from this.)
When Tyre came under Babylonian domination, Carthage took over her position as
overlord of the numerous Phoenician colonies
and trading-posts in the central and western
Mediterranean. She had grown very wealthy by
dominating the cargo-carrying trade, and had
developed extensive holdings in North Africa
and Sicily. The wealth flowing into the city
allowed the Carthaginians to fund the creation
of a large fleet and, when needed, large
mercenary armies.
FIRST BLOOD AT SEA

Though the Romans had prepared themselves
as well as they might, their first foray at sea
did not go well. The two consuls for the year
260 BC were Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio and
Gaius Duilius. Scipio was tricked into sailing
his squadron of 17 ships into the harbour
of Lipara on Lipari Island, and was trapped
The attacking ship

would back-water
to extract it
from the holed,
flooding, and
perhaps sinking
enemy vessel.
within it by a Carthaginian flotilla. The green
Roman crews escaped ashore, but their ships
were taken as prizes, and Scipio was captured.
The rest of the Roman fleet, which was still
fitting out at Rome, sailed south. Polybius
says that a few days later this fleet, presumably
of 103 ships (the original construction
of 120 minus the 17 lost at Lipara) met
a Carthaginian force of 50 ships under the
command of an admiral named Hannibal
near the Cape of Italy, possibly Cape Vaticano,
close to the toe of the peninsula.
The Romans were cruising in formation,
while the Carthaginians, probably still sailing
in line of column, with one ship ahead of the
one behind it, blundered into the Romans
with no inkling of their approach.
The Romans had the better of the encounter.
The Carthaginians lost most of their ships,
Polybius says, which must be taken to mean
26 or more, and there seem to have been
no Roman losses. Hannibal fled with what
remained of his fleet. The first battle of the

Roman navy with its Carthaginian enemy had
been a clear-cut victory.
While Scipio was losing his squadron at
Lipara and the rest of the fleet was fighting
the Carthaginians near the cape, consul Gaius
Duilius was directing Romes legions in Sicily.
On learning of Scipios capture, he hastened
to join the Roman fleet, which had probably
put in at Messana.
While waiting for the consul to arrive, the
Roman sailors, disappointed with the handling
of their ships during the battle at the cape,
which they considered clumsy, sought a means
to even the odds against the faster and more
manoeuverable Carthaginian ships. Their
solution was the corvus.
THE CORVUS
Few weapons of the ancient world were more
significant than the corvus, yet few remain
more wrapped in mystery. Polybius description of the machine is extremely brief, and
precisely how the device functioned in battle
has no definitive answer.
The basic components of the corvus were
few. Mounted at the bow of a Roman warship
was a 24ft-high pole of approximately 10in in
diameter. At the top of the pole was a pulley. A
rope was run through the pulley, and then tied
to a ring atop a downward-pointing iron spike
at the far end of a 36ft-long wooden bridge.
The spike, the length of which is unknown,
was probably the source of the boarding bridges
nickname. Corvus is Latin slang for raven,
and the name was perhaps bestowed because the
spike reminded the Romans of a ravens beak.
The gangplank was 4ft wide, and had a kneehigh railing on either side of it. The gangplank
also had an oblong slot cut within it, and
through this hole emerged the wooden pole.
When the Romans pulled on the rope, the
bridge could be lifted, lowered, and rotated
in an arc around the bow of the galley.
How this rotational movement was achieved
is not known, but it is probable that Roman
marines helped lift and turn the plank, while
others pulled the far end upward with the rope.
When they let go of the rope, the corvus
plunged. The iron spike would pierce the deck
of a Punic warship and stop it from getting
away. The hole in the gangplank, attached
as it was to the ship via the pole, prevented
the bridge from being pulled off the Roman
galley as the ships bobbed and jostled.
The corvus let the Romans hold a
Carthaginian warship in place while their
legionaries rushed across to fight the enemy
hand-to-hand. The boarding bridge evened the
odds in a sea fight by letting the Romans bring
their excellent heavy infantry to bear against the
handier Punic ships thus, as Polybius explains,
turning a naval engagement into something
that more resembled a battle on land.
33
The
Roman
Victory
The Battles
HOW THE LEGIONS BECAME MASTERS OF THE SEA
Marc DeSantis describes the long, hard, but ultimately victorious campaign that turned the
Romans from an Italian land-based power into a Mediterranean-wide naval power.
The Battles
THE BATTLE OF MYLAE, 260 BC

Once engaged, the corvus made all the
difference. The Romans dropped the boarding
bridges down on the unsuspecting Punic warships, which were held tight. After the bridges
had been laid, Roman marines sped over the
gangplank two-abreast, their shields held to the
front and sides, and battled the Carthaginians
on the decks of their immobilised ships.
The first 30 Punic galleys that had unwisely
rushed the Romans were captured. One of
these was the gigantic septireme (or sevenoar) flagship galley of Hannibal, who fled
from the disastrous encounter in a small boat.
Soon afterwards, the remainder of the Punic
fleet caught up, but these ships could do little
to alter the outcome. The fighting ships would
by this stage have been in a disordered mess,
with galleys pointing this way and that, and the
chaos must have hampered the Carthaginians.
When they attempted to ram the Roman
galleys in their sterns, steering clear of the
prow-mounted boarding bridges, they made
themselves vulnerable to other Roman ships,
which attacked their own exposed flanks
and sterns in turn.
The Carthaginians lost 50 galleys at Mylae.
Polybius does not report any losses for the
LEFT An imaginative reconstruction of the Battle
of Mylae in 260 BC. Note the (badly represented)
corvus, which Polybius, the Greek historian of the
war, tells us was the decisive weapon. It took the
Carthaginians who were used to manoeuvring,
ramming, and then back-watering completely
by surprise.
Romans. Though outnumbered, the

Romans had won a great victory over the
Carthaginian navy, despite its incomparably
longer naval heritage.
Duilius was allowed to hold the first-ever
naval triumph for a Roman commander. In his
own honour, he erected the columna rostrata
on the speakers platform in the Roman
Forum. Its inscription described, among
other things, his famous exploit against the
Carthaginian fleet. The column was adorned
with several of the bronze rams pried loose
from captured Punic warships.
Lest there be any doubt as to the magnitude
of his victory, Duilius built a temple to Janus to
commemorate the occasion; or so the later
Roman historian Tacitus records in his Annals.
Hannibal, on the other hand, decided it would
be best not to return home. Carthage had a draconian policy of crucifying failed commanders.
The Sicilian Greek historian Diodorus
Siculus preserves a story in which, after the
battle, Hannibal sent a friend to ask the
The Carthaginian
captains all
sailed straight
for the enemy,
like predators
after easy prey.
Carthaginian senate what he should do if
he encountered a Roman fleet, asking the
senators if he should do battle with 200 ships
against a Roman force of 120. The senators
responded strongly in the affirmative. Very
well, Hannibals friend said in reply, that is
just why Hannibal did fight, and we have been
beaten. But since you commanded it, he is
relieved of the blame.
THE ROMAN INVASION OF AFRICA

Though the Romans had won a great
victory at Mylae, the war for Sicily seemed
set to grind on for an eternity. Such was the
Carthaginians staying power that, ensconced
in their nearly invulnerable western fortress
ports at Lilybaeum, Panormus, and Drepana,
they were able to carry on the war despite
Romes numerical advantage and the blunting
of their naval supremacy. The ensuing years of
the First Punic War saw a return to the see-saw
match of the early Roman foray into Sicily,
with the Romans winning some great victories,
but then suffering extraordinary setbacks.
The siege warfare of the period after

Mylae suited the Carthaginians well, because
they were adept at defending fortified cities.
Though the Romans would win again at sea
in battles off Sulci in 258 BC and Tyndaris in
257 BC with the help of the corvus their
fleets could not eject the Carthaginians from
their coastal bases.
The Romans therefore decided to take the
war to Africa in 256 BC. A massive invasion
was planned, for which 330 galleys were
made ready. Polybius writes that each Roman
quinquereme, in addition to its 300 oarsmen,
also embarked 120 marines. Along with a
handful of sailors and officers, each Roman
ship probably had upwards of 420 men aboard.
So the Roman fleet had about 140,000 men
on its ships: an astonishing number.
For their part, the Carthaginians knew that
the Romans were coming, and readied a tremendous fleet of their own. It numbered 350
ships, and Polybius says that the Punic ships
embarked 150,000 men all told.
Both Rome and Carthage were prepared
for a climactic battle. This they got.
THE BATTLE OF ECNOMUS, 256 BC

The Roman fleet was coasting along with the
Sicilian shore to starboard to pick up Roman
soldiers at Ecnomus (Poggio Di SantAngelo)
when a Carthaginian fleet appeared and
anchored nearby at Heraclea Minoa. The
Romans embarked their best legionaries,
in preparation for battle.
The Roman fleet was divided into four
divisions. Two of these formed an arrowhead
front, with the consuls Lucius Manlius Vulso
commanding the First Squadron on the
right, and Marcus Attilius Regulus the Second
Squadron on the left. The Third Squadron
formed the base of the arrowhead, sailing in
line-abreast, towing the horse-transport ships,
while the Fourth Squadron brought up the rear.
The Carthaginians, when they saw the
Romans coming, arrayed their fleet in a long,
thin line. Three-quarters of the Carthaginian
fleet was in line-abreast, each ship sailing alongside its neighbour, extending far out to sea.
The remainder, on the left, also in line-abreast,
was advanced slightly and at an angle to the
Sicilian shore. Hanno was in command of the
right wing, while Hamilcar, from his position in
the centre of the line, led the left wing.
The Romans dashed straight for the centre of
the thin Punic line, which they saw was only one
ship deep, and thus weak. As the Romans closed,
Hamilcars centre ships hastily retreated.
They were not in flight, however: Hamilcars
plan was to lure the Roman ships out of
formation so that they could be attacked and
rammed without them being able to use their
prow-mounted boarding bridges.
As the First and Second Squadrons under
the consuls pursued Hamilcar, Hannos
Image: Alamy
onsul Gaius Duilius joined the

Roman fleet and took up command in late 260 BC. The work to
place the boarding bridges on the
decks of the quinqueremes was
already under way. When they were installed,
Duilius took the ships out to confront the
Carthaginian fleet, which was operating off the
Sicilian coast around Mylae (modern Milazzo).
The Punic fleet of 130 ships was under the
command of Hannibal, the same admiral who
had escaped the earlier battle at the Cape of
Italy. The Romans, with their 103 ships, were
badly outnumbered, and Polybius writes of the
Carthaginian captains that once contact was
made they all sailed straight for the enemy,
like predators after easy prey.
Their overconfidence proved their undoing.
The leading flotilla of 30 Carthaginian quinqueremes engaged the Romans without making
any attempt to array itself in proper battle
formation. They thereby sacrificed the support
of their fellows, who could have provided protection for their flanks and the extra numbers
to hit the Romans harder. The Carthaginians
were contemptuous of Roman ability, and saw
no need to treat Romes navy with respect.
35
The MAPS
CAMPAIGN MAP, BATTLE PLAN A

AND BATTLE PLAN B
Our Campaign Map (BELOW) shows the landmark events
of the First Punic War (264-241 BC).
Battle Plan A (OPPOSITE PAGE TOP) shows the three
main phases in the Battle of Ecnomus, possibly the
largest naval battle of all time, involving almost 700
warships and 300,000 men. Phase 1 shows the very
different opposing formations in the approach to battle.
36
Phase 2 shows the attack of the Roman First 1 and

Second 2 Squadrons on the centre of the Carthaginian
line, and the corresponding attack of the Carthaginian
wings on the Roman Third 3 Squadron (with the
transports) and Fourth 4 Squadron (labelled Triarii), which
turned the battle into three separate engagements.
Phase 3 shows the victorious Roman First and Second
Squadrons returning from defeating the Carthaginian
centre to rescue their Third and Fourth Squadrons.

Battle Plan B (OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM)
shows the Battle of Drepana, during which the
Carthaginians slipped out of the northern side
of their harbour to pin the approaching Roman
fleet against the coast, where it was defeated in
large part due to its inability to manoeuvre.
November 2015
The Battles
PHASE 2
PHASE 3
Images: Ian Bull
PHASE 1
37
right-wing galleys struck at the gap that

opened between them and the two trailing
squadrons to strike at Fourth Squadron.
The ships on the left of the Punic battleline then turned to starboard to attack the
Third Squadron and the horse transports.
Hamilcar at this moment raised a single
flag, and his fleeing ships turned about
and struck at the pursuing Romans of the
consular squadrons.
The horse transports were quickly cut loose,
but the Third Squadron found itself bunched
up along the Sicilian coast and in danger of
being forced to beach. Luckily for them, the
corvus boarding bridges kept the Carthaginian
ships from approaching too close.
Meanwhile, Hamilcars ships were overcome by the First and Second Squadrons,
and he fled with his surviving galleys. The
consuls then turned and went to the aid of
the other squadrons.
Hannos ships, which were harrying the
Fourth Squadron, departed when Regulus
ships arrived. Regulus, along with Vulso, then
rescued the Third Squadron and captured the
50 Carthaginian galleys that had cornered it.
SQUANDERED VICTORY
The Battle of Ecnomus was a tremendous
Roman victory, by any measure. A total of
64 Punic ships were captured. Additionally,
the Romans sank 30 enemy galleys for a loss
of only 24 of their own. The corvus had shown
its worth once more, by keeping the Punic
ships at bay when the Third Squadron was
trapped against the coast. The way to Africa
was now wide open.
Unfortunately for the Romans, the followup campaign in Africa was badly bungled
by the consul Marcus Attilus Regulus. The
Carthaginians requested peace, but Reguluss
terms were so harsh that they decided to
continue fighting. They hired a Spartan
mercenary general called Xanthippus, and
placed him in command of the home army
during the national crisis.
Xanthippus retrained the demoralised
Carthaginian army, and restored its confidence. The following year, 255 BC, he
crushed the Roman legions in a battle
outside Tunis, not far from Carthage,
captured the overconfident Regulus, and
put an end to the invasion of Africa.
The Roman defeat in Africa pointed up
the limitations of sea power in that or any
other age. Final victory had to be won on
land. Regulus had squandered the chance
for a negotiated peace agreement and then
lost. The clear-cut Roman victory at Ecnomus
perhaps the largest naval battle, in terms of
the numbers of men involved, ever fought
was anything but conclusive. Carthage was
still defiant, and willing to continue the war
with renewed vigour.
38
THE GREAT STORMS

In the summer of 255 BC, a rescue fleet
of 350 Roman ships went to Africa to retrieve
the Roman survivors who had taken refuge
in the North African city of Aspis. The
Romans were met by a Punic fleet of 200
ships off Cape Hermaeum (Cape Bon).
The Romans shattered the Carthaginian
fleet, capturing 114 galleys in the course
of the battle.
Whatever satisfaction the Romans might have
felt after Hermaeum vanished on the return
voyage to Italy. As the fleet, numbering now 364
ships and carrying the legionaries picked up at
Aspis, was close to Camarina on Sicilys southern
shore, it was hit by a ferocious storm.
The result was a catastrophe, with the
Romans losing all but 80 of their ships. This
translates into the loss of an estimated 85,000
oarsmen and perhaps 120,000 men in total:
a greater loss than any suffered in any battle
in Roman history.
The Romans were determined to retain
the initiative at sea, however, and built a new
Both Rome and

Carthage were
prepared for a
climactic battle.
This they got.
fleet of 220 ships in just three months. In
254 BC this fleet made for Messana, where
it picked up 80 additional ships, and helped
to seize Panormus.
The next year, 253 BC, the Romans
made another expedition to Africa, which
accomplished little. The fleet went back
to Panormus, and then made for Rome,
but along the way was hit by a storm that
destroyed more than 150 ships. The loss of
life was again calamitous, with perhaps
60,000 men drowning.
The Romans at last had had their fill of the
sea, and decided to build no more ships. Their
naval efforts had resulted in no appreciable
gains and hecatombs of dead. Instead, they
would concentrate all their military energies
on winning the ground-war in Sicily.
But success eluded the Romans even on
land. The years 252 and 251 BC passed with
little gain. The Carthaginians were adept at
hanging on by their fingernails in the two
fortress-seaports that they still possessed.
The Siege of Lilybaeum (modern Marsala)
continued, bitter and protracted.
In 250 BC, the Romans managed to advance

their siegeworks to within the city walls, but
the Carthaginians, under their resourceful
commander Himilco, stymied further efforts
to take the city. When a strong wind arose
that knocked down the Roman siege-towers,
Himilco ordered an attack on the enemy
siege-lines, and his men set fire to the
bone-dry wooden equipment there. Romes
patiently built siege-works went up in the
resulting conflagration, and thousands of men
were killed, including many oarsmen who had
left their ships to help in the assault.
DISASTER AT DREPANA, 249 BC

Appius Claudius Pulcher, an arrogant scion of
the noble clan of the Claudii, became consul in
249 BC. He was determined to make his mark.
The distinction of his clan and the reputation
of his family had so spoiled him, Diodorus said
of him, that he was supercilious and looked
down on everyone. He was a martinet, and
flogged transgressors against military discipline
ruthlessly. Diodorus did not hesitate to call
him mentally unstable.
Pulcher had a plan, and convinced his
officers to follow it. The consul had brought
with him a fresh draft of replacement rowers
for the fleet, about 10,000 men, and, he
reasoned, a surprise attack on the nearby
port of Drepana (Trapani), Carthages only
other Sicilian fortress, could succeed.
The Carthaginians knew that the Roman
fleets crews had taken heavy casualties in the
Lilybaeum fiasco, but they did not know that
Pulcher had come with reinforcements. As far
as the Carthaginians were concerned, Pulcher
argued, the Roman fleet was out of commission.
Pulchers officers liked what they heard and
agreed to the daring plan. The best legionaries
from what remained of the army, fired up by
the prospect of booty to be had at Drepana,
were put aboard ship to serve as marines. The
consul led his fleet of about 123 ships out at
night, with the northward voyage timed so that
it would arrive at Drepana by morning.
The ships appeared off the city at dawn,
but the operation immediately went wrong.
The vanguard Roman galleys sailed into
Drepanas harbour along its southern approach,
but the Carthaginians spotted them coming.
Their admiral, Adherbal, reacted at once.
His men hurried aboard their ships and
raced westward out of the harbour along its
northern edge, steering clear of the dawdling
Romans, who were bunching up inside it.
Pulcher was not at the front of his fleet, but
at its rear, possibly because he had been more
worried about rounding up straggling Roman
ships that had fallen behind in the dark than
what the Carthaginians might do once his fleet
showed up. This was a terrible misjudgement.
By the time Pulcher himself reached
Drepana, the entire Carthaginian fleet had
November 2015
Image: AKG/Peter Connolly
The Battles
pulled clear of the harbour and was formed

in a line at sea, while the Roman galleys had
collected inside it.
Pulcher frantically pulled out his ships and
put them into a ragged battle-line, but the
initiative had been completely lost, and the
Carthaginians held the tactically superior position. The Romans had the shore right at their
backs, while the Carthaginians had only open
sea behind them. In the ensuing battle, when
the Carthaginians were hard-pressed, they
retreated out to sea, while the Romans could
not manoeuvre at all, either to get away or to
go to the aid of a friendly ship under attack.
LET THEM DRINK!

The fight off Drepana was a fearsome debacle
for Rome. Pulcher escaped with around
30 galleys, but 93 ships and their crews were
captured, a loss of about 39,000 oarsmen and
marines. Polybius writes that in Rome Pulcher
was attacked on all sides for his conduct of the
battle, was put on trial, and hit with a hefty fine.
What had happened? A (doubtful) story

about the battle holds that Pulcher had been
hanging back at the rear of his fleet waiting
for the auspices to be taken. For Roman
armies and fleets, auspices were had by watching sacred chickens eat some food placed
before them. If the chickens ate hungrily, the
auspices, and thus the prospects for battle,
were good; if the chickens would not eat,
then the auspices were bad.
At Drepana, the chickens refused to peck,
and a frustrated and impious Pulcher had
seized the chickens and tossed them overboard. If they will not eat, he is said to have
roared, let them drink!
To pious Romans, the calamity at Drepana
would have been a punishment from the gods
for this sacrilege.
There might be another explanation besides
Pulchers dunking of the sacred chickens. What
about the corvus? Why had this battle-winning
device failed to win the battle as it had at Mylae
and Ecnomus? The corvus is not mentioned
ABOVE As the war progressed, the Romans became

increasingly skilled at sea less reliant on crude
corvus tactics, more on manoeuvre and the ram.
This cutaway shows the five-man sections that
gave the quinquereme its name (five-oars) that
is, two men on each of the upper and middle oars,
and one man on the shorter, lower one.
Carthage had a
draconian policy
of crucifying failed
commanders.
39
Image: AKG
again by Polybius after its use at Ecnomus in

256. In fact, it is never again mentioned by
any ancient historian.
The supposition of many modern historians is
that the boarding bridge had made the Roman
galleys top-heavy, and that this was a factor
in the terrible losses that the Romans suffered
in storms in 255 and 253 BC. It is assumed
that the corvus was removed and never put
back because it constituted a danger to the
stability of a Roman quinquereme greater than
any benefit it might bring in battle.
Without the corvus, the Romans were
not the equals of the Carthaginians at sea,
especially when the Carthaginians could
manoeuvre freely.
HAMILCAR BARCA
The Romans again gave up trying to win
control of the sea, and concentrated on
fighting on land. Yet the 240s BC in Sicily
were not easy for the Romans. In 247 BC,
a bold and resourceful Carthaginian general,
Hamilcar Barca, arrived on the island. He
conducted a hard-hitting campaign of raids
and ambushes from his bases at Hiercte
and then Eryx.
Romes navy was

just as important
to the building of
the Roman Empire
as her legions.
40
At their wits end after several years of costly

stalemate, in 242 BC the Romans decided to
make another major effort at sea to end the war.
The state treasury was empty, and ships cost
money to build. The solution was to rely on
subscription by private citizens to fund the
construction. One or maybe several Romans
together would contribute the money to build
a single quinquereme, with only the promise
of a share of any booty recovered as compensation. In this way, a fleet of 200 quinqueremes
was produced. When it was fitted out, it sailed
to Sicily under the command of consul Gaius
Lutatius Catulus.
The Carthaginians were caught flat-footed
by Romes renewed naval challenge, and took
many months to respond with a fleet of their
own. It seems that the Punic navy had been
allowed to decay while the war in Sicily was
confined to land operations, and Catulus used
the extra time to drill his men relentlessly.
The Carthaginians were faced with an acute
problem. Hamilcar Barcas men at Eryx were
in need of resupply, but to reach them their
relief fleet under Hanno would have to get
past Catuluss fast ships, offload their supplies
for the Eryx garrison, and then take on board
Hamilcars soldiers to be able to fight a proper
sea battle with the Romans. This was a tall order,
and the Romans caught the Carthaginian ships
before they could get into Eryx.
THE BATTLE OF THE AEGATES

ISLANDS, 10 MARCH 241 BC
Off the Aegates Islands, the Romans, now
trained to a pitch of perfection, trounced the
Punic fleet, sinking 50 galleys and capturing
70. With the failure of the resupply mission
and total Roman control of the sea, Carthages
few remaining positions in Sicily were bound
to collapse, and she sued for peace.
ABOVE The Roman Navy: mistress of the

Mediterranean, which the Romans came to know
as mare nostrum (our sea). This is one of a number
of bas-relief depictions of Roman quinqueremes,
the dreadnoughts of their age, a combination of
muscle-powered ram and heavily armed marines.
Sea power had at last brought Rome victory

after 23 expensive, exhausting, bloody years.
It is thought that Rome lost some 700 warships
during the war, many more to storms than to
Carthaginian action. Romes bid for mastery
of the sea had won it a new province in Sicily,
but the peace agreement that concluded the
war left so much bitterness that it, along with
Romes high-handed seizure of Sardinia in
239 BC, laid the groundwork for the Second
Punic War (218-201 BC).
That second war with Carthage might have
turned out very differently had Rome not
wrested control of the seas from Carthage
in the first. Though sea power could not win
Rome the war, it did prevent it from losing
it, and allowed her greater flexibility when
moving her armies around.
Carthage never seriously challenged Rome
again for naval dominance, not even when
Hannibal Barca, Hamilcars son, had humbled
several Roman armies in quick succession, and
was devastating Italy almost at will.
When Rome emerged triumphant at
the end of that conflict, her powerful and
well-trained navy was at the forefront of her
campaigns against the Hellenistic monarchies
of the eastern Mediterranean, which she
defeated in turn. Romes navy was thus just
as important to the building of the Roman
Empire as her legions.
Marc G DeSantis is an historian and attorney. His
book about naval warfare in the Punic Wars, Rome
Seizes the Trident, will be published in late 2015.
November 2015
The
Irish at
Messines
HOW SOLDIERS FROM NORTH AND
SOUTH FOUGHT TOGETHER IN WWI
It was a divided country in a divided world. Irelands contribution

to the Great War was bitterly contested by Irish men and women.
With his focus on the Battles of Messines, Tom Farrell explores
the issues that split a nation between 1914 and 1918.
I
Men from both
sides of Irelands
sectarian divide
waited for
the massive
underground
detonations that
would begin
the attack.
42
t would be a fine memorial to the men

who have died so splendidly, if we could,
over their graves, build a bridge between
north and south.
The sentiments in the letter sent to Sir Arthur

Conan Doyle in December 1916 were genuine,
and its author would pay for them with his life.
In the early hours of 7 June 1917, as troops
moved into their assembly positions near
Messines Ridge, Conan Doyles friend Major
Willie Redmond was commanding A Company
of the 6th Royal Irish Regiment, 47th Brigade.
Men from both sides of Irelands sectarian
divide waited for the massive underground
detonations that would begin the attack.
The 16th Irish and 36th Ulster Divisions of the
IX Corps were essential to Field-Marshal Haigs
plans to capture Messines Ridge, as the prelude
to a new Ypres offensive.
Since the attack had been conceived in
early 1916, 24 tunnels had been tortuously
dug under enemy lines by special mining
companies that were attached to the Royal
Engineers. By the following June, one had
been discovered, while four came outside
the eventual sphere of operation; the rest
were set to blow a series of gigantic holes
in the German front-line.
PLANS
Once the ammonal in the shafts had been
detonated, the planned attack was to be
carried out along a broad from St Yves to

Mount Sorel by three corps.
The ANZAC Corps were to assault in
a north-east direction and capture the
southern shoulder of the ridge, including
Messines. In the centre, IX Corps, including
the Irishmen, would advance east astride
the Spanbroekmolen saddle and the heights
of Kemmel and Wytschaete villages. The
X Corps would assault south-east to capture
the northern part of the ridge, between St
Eloi-Oosttaverne and Mount Sorel. The XIV
Corps was to be held in reserve at GHQ.
Before the battle, 2,266 guns, including
756 heavy and medium weapons, had been
November 2015
the line facing German-occupied Wytschaete.

The Irish were now part of the Second Army,
under the command of General Sir Herbert
Charles Onslow Plumer, known to his men
as Daddy Plum.
The 36th Ulster Division was led by MajorGeneral Oliver Stewart Nugent, and the
16th Irish by Major-General William Bernard
Hickie, both graduates of Sandhurst, and
both veterans of the Boer War. Hickie had
served with distinction at Bothaville in
November 1900. Nugent had been taken
prisoner after the Battle of Talana Hill the
previous year. The former was later elected a
senator in the Irish Free States upper house
ABOVE Men of the Royal Irish Rifles photographed

on the Somme on 1 July 1916. They were troubled
men in more ways than one: many of their
countrymen considered them traitors.
Image: Alamy
assembled. Approximately 144,000 tonnes

of ammunition was located in dumps behind
the line, with 1,000 rounds positioned in
each gun-pit.
The Germans had captured the high
ground in October 1914, preventing the
British Army from seeing beyond the German
front, except for observation carried out from
the air. Messines was a strategically vital objective
in the Ypres sector of the Western Front.
Both Irish divisions had incurred terrible
casualties on the Somme the previous year.
They had left the sector by September, moving
north to the relative calm of the Flanders line.
They relieved Canadian troops who had held
43
MESSINES
of parliament, chalking up a record number
of votes in the 1925 session.
PREPARATIONS
ABOVE On 7 June 1917, 19 mines were successfully

detonated along the Messines Ridge. An estimated
10,000 German soldiers were killed in historys
most devastating non-nuclear explosion.
We may not
change history
tomorrow, but we
shall certainly
change geography.
General Plumer
44
For the men they led, the winter of 1916/1917

had been brutal in western Flanders. There
were not enough billets, so many men had
been forced to sleep in tents.
The calamities of the Somme had taught
the generals the necessity of massive infrastructural work ahead of an attack. New roads
were built behind the front, and light-gauge
railways laid in order to ferry supplies to the
fighting and the wounded out of it. Both Irish
divisions underwent intense training. Ground
and air reconnaissance missions behind
German lines gathered intelligence.
Ahead of the attack, the men of the 16th
Irish Division enjoyed their longest phases out
of active combat since arriving in France. When
not engaged in training exercises, they played
games of rugby and soccer.
Given the rising tensions at home, it was
reported that there seemed to be relatively
little sectarian tension among the men
although many Ulstermen were taken aback
by the Catholicism of their French allies.
Many of these men, some from Belfasts shipyards, others from Queens University Officers
Training Corps, had begun the war digging
practice trenches in the countryside south
of Lough Neagh.
In the south, labour disputes immediately
before the war had thrown thousands of
men out of work. Even though Ireland was
exempted from conscription, introduced by
the wartime Coalition in March 1916, poverty
had compelled many men to join up in the
first two years of the war.
Known as National Volunteers, they had
heeded the call of the moderate leadership
of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) the
Nationalists who peddled the line that
Home Rule would be granted after the war
in return for loyal service.
It was at the end of 1915 that the 16th
Division had reached Flanders. Tom Kettle,
the Nationalist MP for East Tyrone, recorded:
There are two sinister fences of barbed wire
on the barbs of which blood-stained strips of
uniform and fragments more sinister have
been known to hang a figure in khaki stands
as he peers through the night towards the
German lines. His watch is over. The trench
has not fallen. As for him, he has carried his
pack for Ireland and Europe and now packcarrying is over. He has held the line.
THE MINES EXPLODE

At 3.10am, nearly one million pounds of
explosive detonated in the most devastating
non-nuclear explosion in any war to date. Four
mines exploded in front of the men of the 36th
Division and four in front of the men of the 16th.
The men had been briefed on what was

coming, but the actual explosions were far
more ferocious than expected. Later it would
be estimated that 10,000 German soldiers
had perished in the blast. On the eve of
the attack, General Plumer had remarked,
We may not change history tomorrow, but
we shall certainly change geography.
All of the men had lain down to receive
the shockwave. As they glanced up, they could
see rippling multi-coloured columns of smoke
pushing up into the night. Then debris began
raining down, claiming casualties. Lieutenant
T Witherow of the 8th Royal Irish Rifles
recorded: When the debris fell, the L/CPL,
one of my best section commanders, was
killed by a stone.
Officers and NCOs began shaking the
prostrate soldiers to their feet, but in the
dust and fumes many men were disorientated
and lost direction. In fact, if we had not the
German SOS lights to show us their positions,
recalled Witherow, it might have been as easy
to go right or left as ahead.
Units and sub-units skirted around the
vast smoking craters. For both the 16th
and 36th Divisions, the leading battalions
had two companies up and two behind.
At a designated Red line, the leading
companies would pause. Those in the
rear were then to leapfrog and take the
lead in the advance to the Blue Line,
with mop-up operations the responsibility
of a supporting battalion.
The follow-up battalions, having passed
through the Blue line, would then cross two
other lines, Green and Black, before halting
at the latter for the final mop up.
THE INFANTRY ADVANCE

Both divisions encountered heavy fire as
they went forward. The men of the 16th
(47th Brigade) then found themselves
involved in hand-to-hand fighting between
Petit Bois and Wytschaete village. But the men
of the Leinster Regiment reached the edge of
the Wytschaete at zero plus three hours and
40 minutes, even without their supporting
tanks, which had broken down.
The 49th Brigade followed up, encountering
resistance at LHospice, Sonen Farm, and
along the Red Line. After A Company of the
7th Inniskilling Fusiliers overcame resistance
along the Red Line, they took many German
prisoners; in the empty dugouts they found
breakfast and bottles of beer.
Plumer planned the second phase of
the Messines attack for 15.00 hours. By
then, the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles had taken
LHospice, with the loss of one officer
RIGHT The Battle of Messines, 7-14 June 1917,
showing the mine blasts, the British attack, and
the major gains made during the week-long battle.
November 2015
Map: Ian Bull
MESSINES
LEFT & BELOW Two British recruitment
posters aimed at Irish Catholics, one inviting
them to fight in defence of their Belgian coreligionists, the other calling for revenge for
Irish lives lost in the sinking of the Lusitania.
ABOVE John Redmond (1856-1918), the

moderate nationalist politician who advocated
Irish support for Britain during the First World
War in return for Home Rule afterwards.
One sergeant
managed to attract
the attention of a
tank by banging
on its hull with
a grenade.
46
and 17 soldiers killed, along with 130

men wounded.
The two brigades were relieved on the night
of 8-9 June, and four days later the 16th Division
marched off to the Merris area for training.
Meanwhile, the 107th and 109th Brigades
of the 36th Division got to the Red Line, but
encountered serious resistance from two
German machine-guns, until relieved by the
9th and 14th Rifles.
Then, after crossing the Blue and Black
Lines, they encountered further fire on the
Messines-Wytschaete road. When the 9th
Inniskillings were halted by a machine-gun, one
sergeant managed to attract the attention of a
tank by banging on its hull with a grenade.
Around 200 yards short of the road,
the men were fired on from two concrete
pillboxes, one on either flank. Both were
destroyed by platoon bombing attacks,
supported by Lewis guns.
By nightfall on 7 June, the 108th Brigade
had relieved the 107th and 109th Brigades
by moving its two mop-up battalions forward,
and by the following day the last elements
of the 36th Division had retreated to the
slopes of Mount Kemmel.
The Messines Ridge attack, which began
the Third Battle of Ypres, was a spectacular
military success. But the brutal campaign
that followed, culminating in the capture

of Passchendaele village in November,
would be hampered by torrential rain and
strategic hubris. Both divisions would suffer
thousands of casualties.
Messines itself had cost the 16th Division
748 dead, the 36th 700. Among them was
Major Willie Redmond MP. He had been
hit in the wrist within minutes of going over
the top, but had continued forward until hit
in the leg. Men from the 36th Ulster Division
then bore his stretcher to a field hospital,
where he died some hours later. Redmond
was posthumously awarded the Legion of
Honour by the French.
A DIVIDED ISLAND
As MP for East Clare, the 56 year old Willie
Redmond must have seemed unlikely material for the Western Front. A veteran nationalist since the days of Charles Stewart Parnell,
he was said to be more volatile, spontaneous,
and passionate than his older brother John,
now leading the IPP. He had condemned
the Boer War in the Commons in 1899, and
was associated with the emerging generation
of more forthright nationalists like Arthur
Griffiths and Maude Gonne.
More radical than his brother on many
issues, including female suffrage, Willie
Redmond had travelled widely in the
1900s, and admired the dominion status
of Australia and Canada. But on the outbreak
of the Great War, he was among thousands
of southern Irishmen who joined the newly
formed 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions at the
behest of his brother.
November 2015
THE ULSTER VOLUNTEER FORCE

Unionist Orange and Nationalist Green had
been on the brink of a bloody showdown
in 1914. Not for the first or last time, Ulster
Protestants were prepared to resort to arms
to resist the bogey of absorption by the Papist
hordes to the south. Incipient Home Rule
alarmed and outraged Unionists.
Like their descendents over half a century
later, confronted by a resurgent Republicanism,
the Unionists, led by James Craig and Edward
Carson, sought to stymie the efforts of Herbert
Asquiths government to negotiate some
form of power-sharing deal.
province had been thrown into mourning

by the events of that day.
The vast artillery barrage that began on
24 June had failed to soften the German
positions when the men of the 36th Division
scrambled past sandbags and coils of barbed wire
near Thiepval, at the heart of the 30-mile front.
Unlike most of the British troops that day,
the Ulstermen stormed forward to take five
lines of German trenches and establish a
foothold in the still-intact German citadel of
Schwaben Redoubt. But in the process they
BELOW A consignment of German guns is smuggled
into Ireland.
BOTTOM The famous proclamation of an Irish
Republic, made during the Easter Rising in 1916.
1916: THE DEFINING YEAR

Redmonds letter to Conan Doyle seems all
the more poignant given how events earlier
that same year would soon catalyse into oppositional Great War narratives, both of which
have echoed down the decades since.
A painting by James Beadle, donated by the
UVF to Belfast City Hall, depicts the slaughter
of the Somme on 1 July. It still appears on
Orange murals and sashes. A year before
Messines, whole towns and streets in the
Image: WIPL
BELOW James Connollys Citizen Army parades

outside Liberty Hall in Dublin, the headquarters
of the Transport and General Workers Union
and the Irish Labour Party. The banner above
proclaims a very different allegiance from that
of Irishmen fighting on the Western Front.
Craig, who stage-managed the Ulster

Covenant Day of 28 September 1912, was
enthusiastic about the looming partition of
the island. The Dublin-born Carson was more
resigned, and notably uneasy about the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in
January 1913, tasked with armed resistance
to Home Rule.
The formation of the UVF was reciprocated
when a meeting in Dublin on 25 November
1913 resulted in the Irish Volunteers forming
their own paramilitary wing. The mutiny of
20 March 1914 when a majority of British
officers stationed in the Curragh, County
Kildare, Irelands largest military camp,
signalled their collective refusal to implement
the Governments Home Rule policy revealed
to Irelands Nationalists that they would need
military muscle to back their political demands.
The following month, the UVF covertly
landed 24,000 rifles in Larne, County Antrim,
under cover of darkness. Once again, the move
was reciprocated: in July, the Irish Volunteers
landed weapons at Howth, north of Dublin.
In short, without the intervention of Gavrilo
Princip in faraway Sarajevo, Ireland might
have descended into civil war in late 1914.
Image: WIPL
John Redmond argued that, with thousands

of Ulster Unionists flocking to the recruiting stations in the north, abstention would weaken the
cause of the Third Home Rule Bill, introduced
in 1912 but postponed until after the war.
The IPP split over the war: most supported
Redmond, but the dissenting factions coalesced
around a more radical nationalist current,
whose leaders would soon attempt a major
armed uprising in Dublin.
There is little reason to doubt that, had a
General Election been called in 1915, the IPP,
whose support was crucial to the governing
Liberals at Westminster, would have secured a
major victory. But the long-term perspective is
another matter. Willie Redmonds letter to Conan
Doyle seems, in that light, nave, even delusional.
47
Image: WIPL
MESSINES
ABOVE Dublin during the Easter Rising, showing

the major military clashes. It was a hopelessly onesided struggle. The Irish people remained passive,
the armed vanguard isolated. Outnumbered
two to one at the beginning of the Rising, by the
end, a week later, the odds had increased to five
to one as the British rushed in reinforcements.
Without the
intervention of
Gavrilo Princip in
faraway Sarajevo,
Ireland might have
descended into civil
war in late 1914.
48
were exposed to machine-gun fire on both

flanks. Later, forced to withdraw, they suffered
heavily from shellfire in no-mans land. By the
end of the day they had suffered 5,200 casualties,
including over 2,000 dead.
The 16th Division also suffered on the
Somme, particularly at Guillemont and Ginchy.
On 27 April, two brigades lost 463 men when
chlorine gas drifted across no-mans land at
Hulloch. Many of the deaths were attributed
to poorly designed gas helmets. One witness
described finding corpses in all kinds of tragic
attitudes, some of them holding hands like
children in the dark.
But such tragedies found very different interpretations, north and south. For the Unionists,
descendents of 17th-century Scots Calvinist
settlers, the trenches could be seen as a latter-day
Exodus or Calvary, testing and validating the
mettle of the elect. For many Nationalists, the
Great War embodied British imperialism at its
most duplicitous and cruel, snuffing out the
lives of 30,000 Irishmen on a promise of Home
Rule that seemed increasingly derisory as the
Unionists armed for rebellion to prevent it.
BELOW The General Post Office in Dublin after

the Rising. It was largely destroyed during the
fighting, but was completely rebuilt afterwards.
THE EASTER RISING

Crucially, not all Nationalists had endorsed
the Redmondite line. A dissenting rump of
Irish Volunteers joined forces with other
November 2015
ABOVE A Sinn Fin election poster from 1918.

The radical nationalist party won a landslide. The
British were defeated in the subsequent Irish
War of Independence (1919-1921). The executed
rebels of 1916 were thus the posthumous victors.
factions who sought to establish a 32-county

Republic by an armed uprising supported
by German arms.
The Easter Rising began on 24 April 1916.
Having issued a proclamation outside the
cavernous General Post Office in Dublin, the
Irish Brotherhood seized key points around
the city and elsewhere across the country.
The Rising lasted six days, during which
the hoped-for island-wide revolt failed to
materialise. British forces shelled the centre
of Dublin, and by the time the Risings leaders
surrendered, 446 people, soldiers and civilians,
were dead, and over 2,000 wounded.
Unsurprisingly, Unionist troops on the
Western Front were unreservedly contemptuous of the Rising. But among the National
Volunteers, reactions were distinctly mixed.
Some enraged troops burned an effigy of
Sir Roger Casement, who had unsuccessfully
tried to land German arms in Ireland. But
others were appalled on hearing reports of
martial law and shelling.
Many soldiers reacted much like civilians
back home: initial apathy or animus towards the
Rising changed to outrage when its leaders were
court-martialled and executed. Sergeant John
Lucy of the 16th Division probably expressed
a common sentiment when he wrote: I experienced a cold fury, because I would rather see
the whole of the British Empire damned sooner
than hear of an Irishman being killed in his own
country by any intruding stranger.
THE SINN FIN LANDSLIDE

This shift in attitudes, combined with attempts
to introduce conscription in Ireland in early
1918, tied to the implementation of Home
Rule, drastically eroded support for the IPP.
Within nine months of Messines Ridge, John
Redmond, who had received hundreds of
messages of condolence on his brothers death,
including one from Edward Carson, was dead.
He reportedly told a Jesuit priest who administered the last rites, Im a broken-hearted man.
It was perhaps a mercy that he did not survive
long enough to see his party virtually obliterated in the 1918 General Election, when the
Republican movements political wing, known as
Sinn Fin, took 73 of 105 seats. Among them was
Willie Redmonds East Clare seat, taken by one
of the Risings senior figures, spared execution
and later amnestied: amon de Valera.
When another war erupted in Europe in
1939, de Valera by then Taoiseach (Prime
Minister) would refuse Winston Churchills
offer of Irish reunification in exchange for
ires entry into the war.
Although this decision was underscored by
myriad considerations, de Valera undoubtedly
had Redmonds fate in mind. His predecessor
had been destroyed by the Great War. And yet
he had seemed like a prime minister in waiting
in the summer of 1914.
Tom Farrell is a freelance writer and journalist
whose work has featured in numerous newspapers
and magazines in Britain and Ireland.
ROUND TOWER MEMORIAL

At Messines Peace Park, a round tower rises 110 feet above the
bucolic farmland. It is almost impossible to reconcile todays
expanse of green fields and grazing cattle with the wasteland of
mud and flooded craters that existed nearly a century ago.
The Park was opened on 11 November 1998 in a ceremony
attended by Irelands President Mary MacAleese, Queen Elizabeth II,
and King Albert II of Belgium.
When the 16th and 36th Divisions fought alongside each other
on the embattled Messines Ridges in June 1917, it represented,
not even the end of an era, but an aberration. The defining events
of the previous year, for north and south, ultimately led to partition
and separate parliaments in Dublin and Stormont. More violence
followed: a remorseless War of Independence (1919-1921) and
then Civil War (1922-1923) in the south; and, of course, more
recently, the long-running Troubles (1969-1998) in the north.
Tom Kettle MP had already fallen at Ginchy by the time of
Messines. But his reflections on his and his compatriots experiences are inscribed on one of the nine stone slabs surrounding
the tower: So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, and
tired men sigh, with mud for couch and floor, know that we
fools, now with the foolish dead, died not for Flag, nor King,
nor Emperors, but for a dream born in a herdsmans shed, and
the secret scripture of the poor.
49
Photo: PA Photo
Resistenza
Italiana
HOW THE ITALIAN RESISTANCE DEFEATED THE NAZIS

Sarah De Nardi uncovers the hidden history of the mass anti-Fascist movement that defeated the
German occupation of Italy after the fall of Mussolini.
50
November 2015
LEFT Hitler and Mussolini parade in Berlin in 1937.
Anglo-American forces. The request was granted.

Consequently, any act of hostility against
the Anglo-American forces must cease by the
Italian forces everywhere. However, they will
react to attacks from any other source.
This meant the Germans. And the
Germans were, predictably, livid about
the ultimate betrayal.
WHO WERE THE PARTISANS?

With the south of the peninsula in Allied
hands, the collapse of the Fascist regime left
a political vacuum in northern and central
Italy. This was filled by a Nazi occupation,
which began as early as 9 September, the
day after Armistice Day.
On 12 September, specialist SS forces
launched Operation Eiche, and sprung
Mussolini from captivity. Hitler installed
him as head of the Italian Social Republic
(RSI, or Sal Republic) in the occupied
north, on the shores of Lake Garda.
The different groups that constituted
the Resistance and particularly the armed
guerrilla bands known as the Partisans
were henceforward engaged against the
occupation of northern and central Italy by
German Nazi forces and their Italian Fascist
allies of the Sal Republic.
The Resistance was significant in both
military and political terms. Estimates of the
numbers involved vary, but journalist and
ex-Partisan Giorgio Bocca reckoned that as
many as 300,000 Italians were involved in
direct action against the Nazi-Fascist regime
by April 1945. Many more supported the
Partisans with food, provisions, intelligence,
shelter, and other assistance.
he Italian Resistance of
1943-1945 was an iconic
episode. Its legacy has had a
profound impact on political
and intellectual discussion
in the post-war period. It is still a topic of
heated debate today.
The Resistance originated amid the
tumult of the Second World War, and the
collapse of Italys Fascist regime. Various
forms of military and civil resistance emerged
between September 1943 and April 1945.
ARMISTICE DAY
Italy joined in the war on the German side
on 10 June 1940 the southern end of the
BerlinRome Axis. After a disastrous war effort
in which their German allies often ignored
or exploited the Italians, the King and the
(outlawed) opposition parties decided they
THE RESISTANCE GROWS

had had enough. More importantly, the
non-Fascist majority of the population wanted
an end to the war.
Prime Minister Benito Mussolini was
dismissed from office by King Emmanuel III
on 25 July 1943. The result was chaos.
British and American forces had landed
in Sicily on 9/10 July (Operation Husky).
A radio announcement by the King on
8 September 1943 one heard in every
Italian home with a wireless proclaimed
the following:
The Italian government, having recognised
the impossibility of continuing the unequal
struggle against the overwhelming power of
the opponent, and in order to prevent more
and more serious disasters to the nation,
has pleaded for an armistice with General
Eisenhower, supreme commander of allied
The rank and file of the Resistance grew

substantially through to 1945. From an
original base of around 9,000 in late 1943,
historian Paul Ginsborg estimates numbers
rising to 20,000-30,000 in the spring of 1944,
and perhaps 100,000 later that year, before
explosive growth in the last few months of the
war. This rapid rise in the number of Resisters
was due to more and more ex-Fascists and
Wehrmacht deserters joining Partisan bands.
SOE Special Forces expert Lawrence
Lewis claims that up to 70,000 of the armed
Partisans were killed, and 40,000 wounded.
Bocca estimates 35,000 fatalities. The Italian
historian and former Partisan Claudio Pavone
FAR LEFT A detachment of Italian guerrillas enter
Cesena on 20 October 1944. From September
1943 onwards, the Partisans were engaged against
the occupation of northern and central Italy by
German Nazi forces and their Italian Fascist allies.
51
ITALIAN RESISTANCE
LEFT Partisans posted on a spur of rock. Many
Resisters based themselves in the higher, less
accessible mountains.
BELOW LEFT A gathering of Partisans among
the mountains of Piedmont in 1943. These mobile
bands would need support from many civilians to
provide food, shelter, supplies, and information.
offers precise figures of 44,720 dead and

9,980 killed in reprisals.
THE CIVILIAN ROLE

Overall, all experts agree the Resistance
recruited significantly, and that these fighters
also relied on extensive support networks.
One estimate is that each Partisan in the
field (or mountain) needed 10-15 civilian
supporters to sustain their efforts with food,
shelter, supplies, and information.
These large support networks also increased
risks, however: shifting ideological allegiances
and the coercion of individuals to feed the
Partisans meant that betrayals and reprisals
were frequent. Given the large numbers
involved, and the wider context of what
was, in fact, an Italian civil war, it is unsurprising that the Resistance tradition has played
a key role in subsequent national memory
and debate.
What is also clear in the judgement of the
Allies at the time and many historians since
is that the Resistance played a central role in
defeating the Nazis. Like the French Maquis,
the Resistenza Italiana was a major fighting force
shaping the outcome of the Second World War.
Photo: Alamy
Photo: Topfoto
THE RESISTANCE: A GAMECHANGING ITALIAN PHENOMENON
52
Throughout Europe, the Second World

War was fought with savagery. Italy was no
exception. The people of central and northern Italy found themselves surrounded by
warring foreign armies as the Allies fought
their way northwards, and the Nazi-Fascist
forces sometimes applied a scorched-earth
policy as they retreated.
At the same time, while German troops
(with enlisted Italians) and Sal-Fascist
forces battled with the Partisans, Italians
often found themselves fighting each other,
some from conviction, others because they
were coerced.
Civilians faced demands for supplies and
support from all sides in the conflict, and
many non-combatants were subject to random
violence be it Allied bombing or massacre
by retreating Nazis, such as those at Civitella
and SantAnna di Stazzema in Tuscany.
As a result, in the aftermath of these
punishing episodes, the Resistance and
particularly the Partisans became increasingly symbolic for post-war Italy, and the
Resistance tradition came to dominate
the decades following the war.
November 2015
The Resistance was fractured. It seldom meant

the same thing to different participants, let
alone to Italians as a whole. It was formed from
a shifting mixture of men and women from
different Italian regions, of various political
allegiance, with Allied officers from overseas
adding to the cocktail.
The Resisters soon formed into small,
mobile units, and often based themselves in
the higher, less accessible mountains. Class and
political divisions differentiated the brigades:
Communist Garibaldi formations constituted
the majority in most regions, but liberal and
Catholic units also existed, and most brigades
established their own territories.
PARTISAN ACTIVITIES
The Partisans employed guerrilla tactics.
These included sabotage of power lines
and power stations, and the destruction of
bridges and roadways used by the Germans
to transfer livestock and other war necessities
to Germany.
The Partisans excelled at ambushes. They
would take the enemy by surprise, capture
soldiers or foodstuffs, and then retreat back
into their hidden mountain bases.
Some Partisans were based in local
communities, where they liaised with civilians
and passed on looted German supplies.
Community-based Partisans did not usually take part in active fighting, but rather
sought to further the cause of the Resistance
by disrupting normal life and spreading
propaganda pro-Allied material in the case
of the moderate and Catholic Partisans, or
pro-Communist material in the case of the
hardnosed Garibaldi brigades. Sometimes,
after carrying out their propaganda work,
these diplomatic Partisans, too, retreated
to inaccessible higher ground.
A DIRTY WAR
Fratricidal conflict was frequent and, on
occasion, bloody. On 7 February 1945,
Garibaldini Partisans massacred a group
of Catholic Osoppo Partisans (the Porzus
Bloodshed). But it was the continuous
cat-and-mouse game between Fascists and
Partisans that was truly lethal.
Mario, a witness who was part of the
Communist 18th Garibaldi Brigade in
Forl (central Italy), recalls:
The thought that it was enough to wear a
uniform to turn your neighbour into your
tormentor is still hard to accept. We [the
Partisans] were dying of hunger, typhus,
and fear. They [the Fascists] were laughing
and enjoying themselves. I still remember the
face of a little guy, half my size, who was hitting
me while I was tied to a chair. If only I could
move I would have beaten him to death. Their

laughter was for us the worst torture, like when
they lined us up in front of the wall and told us
it was our final hour, and then a shooter fired
blanks, only to terrorise us. Our hearts jumped
out of our chests.
WHERE DID THE

PARTISANS OPERATE?
The intensity of Resistance activity varied
greatly by region. The movement was especially strong in the north, the old industrial
region where the unions and the left parties
had traditionally been strong, and where the
Nazi-Fascist occupation was now entrenched.
The Resistance was, to a large degree, a
wind from the north that left much of the
south of the country untouched.
Books, articles, and films routinely locate the
Resistance in upland areas, and the otherwise
precise and detailed Resistance literature often
notes the retreat to the hills. The mountaindwelling Partisans have become noble, almost
Romantic figures hiding in pristine upland
forests before attacking the foreign invaders
occupying the cities and the plains.
In these generalised accounts, Partisans are
represented as being militarily, politically, and
geographically separate from the occupied,
perhaps compromised, lowland areas, and
from the lowland Italians enlisted in the Sal
Republics forces. These idealised Partisans
offer a vision of a purer Resistance untainted
by the necessities of compromise, consensus,
co-existence, and even collaboration that were
everyday realities for Italians living under the
Nazi-Fascist boot in urban and lowland areas.
HEROES IN THE MOUNTAINS

The image of the mountain Partisan is not
without controversy. Individuals who resisted in
the cities, the plains, or without taking up arms
often point out that their stories are told less
frequently than those of the mountain brigades.
Oral historian Luisa Passerini has questioned
the simplistic narrative of the noble mountain
guerrilla. The Resistance was, she argues,
diverse, fractured, and often deeply rooted in
the heavily populated and heavily occupied
cities and plains.
Indeed, former Partisans sometimes
invoked the mountains as spaces of purer,
untarnished Resistance especially by contrast
with the fraught, complex political negotiations
after the war between 1945 and 1947 to construct a new Italian republic.
Sometimes the mountain-hero imagery
was mobilised when former Partisans felt
their position in the post-war world was being
marginalised. In the rebellion of Santa Libera,
Piedmont, in August 1946, for example, former
Partisans returned to the hills, refusing to come
down for a week until a delegation of politicians
climbed uphill to listen to their grievances.
ABOVE Partisan hanged in the town of Bassano

del Grappa, Vicenza. The number of armed Partisans
killed has been estimated at up to 70,000.
This secession by former Partisans was

intended to reclaim the moral high ground
and regain some political visibility best
achieved by evoking the endurance and sacrifice implied by guerrilla warfare in the mountains. Little wonder that neo-Fascists claimed
that former Partisans raised themselves onto
a pedestal of mud and blood.
PARTISAN EXPERIENCES
Danger was ever-present in Resistance activity.
Taking part in, or supporting in any way, the
the activities of the rebels might be punished
by summary execution.
Rosetta Banchieri recalls:
We soon learn how to dodge German and
Blackshirt [Fascist] reconnaissance patrols, and
thus learn to fight against fear, tiredness, the
cold, the fog. For a long time I have lingered on
the memory of the relief when we reached the peak
[where the Partisan brigades HQ was located];
we often lost our way, missed the right path, and
lost our sense of direction because of the fog like
in a nightmare, we could often hear voices but not
figure out where they came from. I still remember
the joyous welcome, the bread and butter and jam
awaiting us when we reached our destination,
and then the well-deserved rest under warm
sheepskin rugs, and early in the morning down
we went back into the plains.
Rosetta, a young girl at the time, displayed
great bravery in enlisting as a messenger
Photo: ISTREVI
MYRIAD POLITICAL VIEWS

AND IDEALS
53
ITALIAN RESISTANCE
LEFT Italian Partisans in the Belluno province with
SOE men Captain Paul Brietsche (front) and Richard
Tolson (top right, with the hat).
BELOW Italian Partisans armed with rifles force a
man to crawl out from behind a steel gate, as they
conduct a search for Fascists throughout Rome after
the city had fallen to Allied troops on 17 June 1944.
Photo: Private archive of Richard Tolson
and Commonwealth prisoners-of-war who

escaped the former Italian enemys camps and
joined Partisan bands, recall with great gratitude the bravery and compassion of humble
Italian families who took them in, protected
them, and fed them whenever they needed it.
Members of the British Intelligence services
also remember civilians fondly, and acknowledge
the great risks they ran in order to help out.
Richard Tolson, an Englishman attached to an
SOE mission in the mountains of north-east Italy,
who lived and fought with the Partisans, recalls:
and courier for the local Partisan brigade.

Like many girls, she would look inconspicuous
during her missions, as the patrols would
seldom suspect a cheery, rosy-cheeked young
lass of concealing secret messages in the hem
of her dress and ammunition, even explosives,
in her bikes basket, underneath eggs and jars
of marmalade.
A DIFFICULT EXISTENCE
Most Resistance veterans, including several
I have interviewed personally, speak with
great pathos of the places where they were
active and the experiences shaping their
lives as combatants, helpers, or intelligence
personnel during those momentous years.
Veterans speak with emotional intensity of
the events they remember most fondly.
They recall not only favourite places but
also locales in nature so inhospitable that
they were forced to reshape and reinvent
them to make them suitable for temporary
human occupation. In return, they gained
secrecy, quiet, and safety: and it was this that
made them so special.
As in most guerrilla warfare, an experience
of forced nomadism, impermanence,
precariousness, and instability emerges
from all Resistance accounts. Communist
Partisan Giorgio Vicchi wrote about the
great strains of
our guide, who, owing to bad visibility, led

us on a course that lasted three hours when
it should have taken one, and along difficult,
perilous tracks provoked strong resentment
and anger in the Garibaldi brigades, leading
to an outburst of harsh criticism against
the Comandante.
It was not just the fighters and their direct
helpers who found the Resistance experience
exhausting and perilous. The Italian population, in the north especially, was, as a rule,
sympathetic to the cause of the anti-Fascists
(but not always) and helped in whatever
ways they could.
HUMBLE HELPERS
However, those harbouring rebels and Allied
officers faced dire consequences if they were
detected. Many Allied officers, and British
Sudden interruption Enemy Cossack Troops

are reported to be in San Francesco which is kms
away, and held by Garibaldini. We have packed
up radio and all kit and are ready, if necessary,
to flit. The old woman in whose house I have
a room is nearly in tears and thinks it will be
burned to the ground. But we will leave no trace
of our lodgement. I dont particularly like the idea
of running tonight, its started to rain again,
and the radio makes it no joke. Oh for arms and
ammo. It may not be as bad as we think.
Life was hard everywhere behind enemy
lines, but especially so for those who did not
feel as if fighting and the soldiers life were
for them. A former Partisan I interviewed,
Aldo De Bin, remembered how:
At night we marched for kilometres on end.
During the day we could rest a little. Mostly in
foresters huts or shepherds shelters, if the owners
54
Photo: AP Photo
a long and strenuous march after 13 hours

en route, a blizzard catches us out we carry
on regardless in an exhausting march lasting
all night The shattering march had some
really difficult moments. The woods, and the
snow, in places one and a half metres tall,
have hindered recognition of the right path
Already prostrated by the long march in appalling
weather, the men of the Garibaldi brigade are at
the end of their tether. The error on the part of
November 2015
LEFT Italian women Partisans on the Castelluccie

front keep their weapons ready as they wait their
turn to go on patrol with members of the US 5th
Army in November 1944.
BELOW Partisans, wearing the star badge of the
Communist Garibaldi brigades, celebrate the
liberation of Florence in August 1944.
were on our side and willing to run the risk and

shelter us Even so, we were still anxious, on
edge There was so much loneliness, especially
at night. You thought of your previous life, how
lovely and peaceful and calm and happy it was,
you know, being at home.
A RESISTANCE TO REMEMBER
The duress is hard to imagine. Yet so
many chose to fight, or to risk their lives
to support those who were fighting. Their
memories and their experience are important in assessing Italys contribution to
the European victory. The efforts of the

Resistance unified Italians and, to an extent,
glossed over political and social differences
in the face of a common menace. Not only
that: they paved the way for the re-establishment
of Italian democracy and the creation of the
modern Italian republic.
But there was a dark side. Italy experienced
not only armed occupation by the Nazis, but
also a fratricidal civil war, in which Fascists
fought Communists, Socialists, Liberals, and
Catholics, and, very occasionally, the latter
fought each other.
These conflicts still inform and sometimes misinform political debate in Italy
today. Recovering the truth about Italys
struggle between 1943 and 1945 is one
component in building understanding of
modern Europe. Knowing the social breadth
and depth of the Resistenza Italiana the
number of the participants and the intensity
and significance of their experience is an
essential part of any comprehensive study of
the Second World War.
55
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MILI
NOVEMBER Each month, the Debrief brings you the very best in film and
book reviews, along with suggested historical events and must-see museums.
Whether you plan to be at home or out in the field, our team of expert reviewers
deliver the best recommendations to keep military-history enthusiasts entertained.
com me
MHM REVIEWS
Attrition: Fighting the First
World War by William Philpott,
Agincourt by Anne Curry, and
The Eyes of the Desert
Rats by David Syrett.
RECOMMENDED
Taylor Downing
The Show
considers the film
Must Go On!
of the Nuremberg
by John
rally of 1934, Triumph
Mullen
of the Will.
WAR ON FILM
BOOKS
MHM VISITS
MUSEUM
HIGHLIGHT
The Year of
Anniversaries
symposium in
Lincoln
Westerplatte: Museum of the

Second World War, Poland, with
Stephen Miles, where the first
shots of World War II were fired.
MHM OFF DUTY

Test your problem-solving skills
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BRIEFING ROOM
O
TAYLOR DOWNING REVIEWS A CLASSIC WAR MOVIE
Then a copy turned up in the East
German film archive in the 1980s,
and it is now possible to see that
it was in fact a powerful piece of
propaganda and a fascinating
prelude to her later work.
The film was a huge success.
It has been estimated that 20 million
Germans saw it. Hitler was delighted
with her work.
Joseph Goebbels, the Minister
of Propaganda, was put out that
Hitler had asked Riefenstahl rather
than one of his male cronies in the
Propaganda Ministry to make the
film. This marked the beginning of
a falling out between the two of
them that lasted for much of the
rest of the Nazi era.
By the time of the next party
rally in 1934, two major events had
transformed the situation. In the
Night of the Long Knives in June
1934, Hitler had Ernst Rhm and
the top leadership of the SA
Brownshirts murdered.
Rhm had been one of Hitlers
closest supporters since the
earliest days of the Nazi Party.
The Brownshirts had helped the
party to victory in the 1932 elections.
But Hitler feared him as a rival,
and wanted him out of the way.
The problem was that Rhm had
been a leading figure of the party,
appearing alongside Hitler throughout the 1933 rally. Hence, Victory of
the Faith was now an embarrassment.
It was therefore withdrawn, and
copies were destroyed.
FILM | CLASSIC
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

Simply Media
7.99
eni Riefenstahls Triumph des

Willens (Triumph of the Will)
is not just a record of the Nazi
Partys annual rally in Nuremberg
in September 1934, but a film that
oozes with the ethos of Nazism. The
Fascist spirit in which the individual
is lost in the mass, united in strict
obedience to the leader and the
worship of the Fhrer, is present in
almost every frame of the film. It is
the ultimate instrument of Nazi
propaganda. So not only is it one
58
of the most controversial films ever

made, but also one of the most evil.
One year before, Adolf Hitler, the
new, young Chancellor of Germany,
personally asked Leni Riefenstahl
to make a film of the 1933 party
rally in Nuremberg called Sieg des
Glaubens (Victory of the Faith).
Riefenstahl later claimed that this
was a mere newsreel, with no merit,
that she had thrown together over a
few days. She could say this, because
the film had been lost.
A NEW FILM
The 1934 rally had to demonstrate
the loyalty of the entire Nazi Party
structure to Hitler as sole leader.
So Hitler requested (or ordered)
Riefenstahl to start making preparations for a new rally film that would be
twice the length of the previous one
and would be made on an epic scale.
Then, at the beginning of August,
one month before the rally, FieldMarshal Hindenburg, the elderly
President of the German Republic,
died. As the nation went into

mourning for the great war-hero
and elder statesman, Hitler redefined
his role as that of Leader, Chancellor,
President, and Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces all in one.
From now on he was to be known
as Fhrer Leader and the
September rally had to express
and extol his new position at the
head of party and nation.
Riefenstahl was given everything
she wanted to prepare for making
the new film, so important had it
become. She eventually assembled
a team of 170, including 16 cameramen, nine aerial photographers, a
sound crew of 13, a team of production managers, drivers, construction
staff, security, and so on. She even
had a photographer employed solely
to take production stills of her at
work. Bridges and towers were built
to locate cameras, and tracks were
laid so cameras could move in time
with marching troops.
Such a team would have been
excessive even for a grand feature
film, but was quite unheard of in the
production of a documentary.
Goebbels occasionally made
life difficult for her, but could not
stand in the way of Hitlers direct
wishes, and the Ministry ended up
giving her considerable financial
support. Filming took place over the
six days of the rally in Nuremberg
and in the vast arena constructed
by Albert Speer just outside the
city, known as the Luitpoldarena.
Afterwards, Riefenstahl staged a
few scenes to add details to the
film. In total, her cameramen shot
80 hours of material.
She then began to edit the footage
into a two-hour cinema film. This
she supervised herself, in a suite
of modern cutting rooms in Berlin.
It took six months.
In December, Hitler viewed a
rough-cut of the film, and expressed
himself delighted. Herbert Windt
wrote a score for the film, freely
calling on themes from Wagner
November 2015
MHM REVIEWS
THE YOUNG RIEFENSTAHL
Leni Riefenstahl was 32 when she directed Triumph of the Will. She had
grown up in an upper-middle-class family in Berlin, and her ambitious
mother had encouraged her to take up a career as a dancer.
In 1924, she changed direction, persuading Dr Arnold Fanck, a
film director, to cast her as the lead in his new movie. Fanck was the
most prominent director of the then very popular genre of mountain
adventure films, and Riefenstahl, still in her 20s, starred in six of these,
including The Holy Mountain (1925), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929),
and The White Frenzy (1931).
Riefenstahl became obsessed by the mountains, and entranced by
film-making. Ever ambitious, she directed her own first mountain
film, The Blue Light, in 1932. Hitler saw this film, and was hugely
impressed by it. In that same year she attended her first Hitler rally,
and was overwhelmed by the impact it had on her. She asked to
meet Hitler, and they soon became friends. A year later he asked her
to make the film of the 1933 party rally in Nuremberg that became
Victory of the Faith (1933) the film that was later withdrawn.
After this, Riefenstahl became Hitlers favourite film-maker. She
was promoted above all the male directors who had been working
in the industry for years and had become key players in Goebbels
Ministry of Propaganda.
Hitler knew what he was doing in picking her out, and in Triumph
of the Will (1934) and later in her official film of the Berlin Olympic
Games, Olympia (1938), she served Hitler well. It is a measure of her
prodigious talent that she ended up as one of the very few women to
play an important role in the otherwise exclusively male world of the
Nazi leadership.
nd Beethoven, along with several
azi marching songs.
On 28 March 1935 the film had its
remiere, with great fanfare, at the
fa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin. After
he screening was over, amid the
esounding cheers of the audience,
Hitler presented Riefenstahl with a
vish bouquet of lilacs. He had the
lm he wanted; Riefenstahl had the
ame and recognition she sought.
Millions flocked to see the film
n every city and town in Germany.
was shown in schools, church
alls, and barrack rooms across the
ountry. At the Venice Film Festival,
won several gold medals and,
more surprisingly, the Grand Prix
t the Paris Film Festival.
Riefenstahl always denied that she
as political in any of her film-making,
sisting that she was never even a
member of the Nazi Party. She said
she was only pursuing art. In fact,

she had produced one of the most
intensely political films ever made.
A NAZI PAGEANT
Triumph of the Will begins with a
prologue shot in the clouds above
Nuremberg. A Junkers Ju-52 descends
over the city.
Hitler had used this aircraft extensively during his election campaign
in 1932 to fly him from one rally to
another. When his plane lands in
Nuremberg, he steps out like a god
descending from the heavens. Vast
crowds line the route to his hotel.
The image of the outstretched right
arms of hundreds, thousands, tens of
thousands of cheering people giving
the Hitler salute dominates the film.
The film is then broken up into a
set of chapters, each of which marks
a different phase of the rally itself.
59
LEFT Riefenstahl, with Hitler.
WAS LENI RIEFENSTAHL HITLERS MISTRESS?
At dawn, tens of thousands of party

faithful emerge from hundreds of
tents. The militarisation of the newly
awoken Germany is another of the
themes of the film. Young men, like
soldiers, wash, dress, and eat food
served from giant army cauldrons.
Following this is a sequence
representing the medieval history
of Germany, as men and women in
traditional costume gather to pay
obeisance to Hitler. Then, in one of
the first of the huge rallies, there is
a montage of short statements from
many of the Nazi leaders. Most of
them praise the Fhrer. Under your
leadership, Germany will achieve
its goals, we are told.
The next chapter foregrounds
the workers of the new Germany.
Again, with military precision and
armed with hammers and spades
rather than rifles, the Labour Corps
march past Hitler. Workers from all
corners of Germany call out. Hitler
speaks for the first time in the film,
declaring that the workers are the
future of Germany.
This is followed by a night rally
lit by torches and magnesium
flares. The purged SA, now led
by ultra-loyalist Viktor Lutze, swear

their allegiance to Hitler. There is
no doubt any longer who is the sole
leader of the party.
In the rally arena, tens of
thousands of uniformed Hitler Youth
assemble, with drums beating
and trumpets playing. Baldur von
Schirach, the Reich Youth Leader,
pledges their loyalty. Hitler addresses them as the hope for the
new Germany. In a typical outburst
of rhetoric, he proclaims, Before us
Germany lies; in us Germany burns;
and behind us Germany follows. He
departs through the cheering masses.
Next up, it is the turn of the Army.
By this point, every soldier had sworn
a personal oath of loyalty to their new
Fhrer, and the rally gave the military
a chance to display their fidelity.
Cavalry, armoured cars, and horsedrawn artillery pass Hitler and the
party leadership. They were as
much the face of the new Germany
as were the party youth.
BLOOD AND SOIL MYSTICISM

It was estimated that about 700,000
people attended the 1934 rally.
Nuremberg had become the site
Bridges and towers were

built to locate cameras,
and tracks were laid so
cameras could move in
time with marching troops.
60
One of the key questions often asked about Leni Riefenstahl

is was she Hitlers lover? Rumours of an affair were common at
the time, and were given as the reason for her dramatic promotion
by Hitler over so many skilled male directors in Germany.
Riefenstahl had acquired a considerable reputation as the
leading player in many of the popular mountain films of the
late 1920s, as well as further plaudits as the director of her own
feature film The Blue Light. It did no harm to the new chancellor
for him to be associated with a glamorous young film-star, and
it certainly seems as though some of Hitlers entourage actively
encouraged the relationship, hoping that taking a lover would in
some way humanise him.
Riefenstahl was invited to many party events, and it seems that
after one of these in 1932 she did try to seduce Hitler when he
visited her sumptuous flat in Berlin. An affair with Hitler would
clearly have done her career no harm.
If, however, she had tried to start a relationship, it seems very
unlikely that she succeeded. Hitler thrived in the all-male atmosphere of the barrack room, the beer cellar, and the Nazi Party.
He never felt totally at ease among women, and at the time was still
in mourning after the mysterious suicide of his niece Geli Raubal.
He liked to surround himself with pretty women like Eva Braun,
whom he finally married hours before his death in the bunker in
Berlin in April 1945. But there is no evidence that he ever had a
sexual relationship with Leni Riefenstahl, although he did admire
her greatly for her film-making skills, and at one point called her the
perfect German woman a label she found embarrassing to live
up to at the time, and impossible to live down afterwards.
of the annual Nazi rally not only

because its architecture and history
epitomised the German spirit, but
because it was geographically central
and relatively easy to get to from all
parts of the country. Also, under
the local Gauleiter, Julius Streicher,
all the resources of the city were
turned over to the rally.
In one of the central sequences
in the film, about 200,000 of the
party faithful are gathered in massed
ranks in the arena grounds, adorned
with gigantic swastika flags. Hitler,
flanked by Himmler of the SS and
Lutze of the SA, parade through
the centre of them.
Riefenstahl puts every visual
trick into this extraordinary
sequence. Cameras are up high,
looking down on the vast spectacle;
others are down low, capturing
Hitler in close-up. One camera is
placed on a tiny lift that goes up
one of the flag poles.
As in an ancient ritual, Hitler blesses

each of the banners of the local Nazi
parties, using the bullet-torn flag from
the failed 1923 putsch. As the SS
march past, Hitler is told, My Fhrer,
we await your orders in the future.
This is one of the most memorable
and haunting sequences in the film.
Riefenstahl did not create the event.
It was set up by the party managers.
But the imaginative positioning
of her cameras and the rhythm of
her editing, often accompanied by
powerful marching songs recorded
by Herbert Windt, get inside the
very essence of Nazism. It is visually
stunning, enormously impressive,
and terrifying at the same time.
Something that is essentially a pile
of semi-mystic nonsense takes on
a heroic, awesome quality.
The next sequence is set in the
city of Nuremberg. People line the
streets in their thousands. At every
window, men and women are looking
November 2015
MHM REVIEWS
RIGHT Riefenstahl, shown filming

a difficult scene with the help of
two assistants, 1936.
out. Everywhere people strain to get

a glimpse of this new god driving
through their city in a motorcade.
Cameraman Walter Frentz travels
in Hitlers Mercedes, capturing giant
close-ups of his right arm and hand
outstretched. Women holding babies
rush out of the crowds to offer bouquets. In deadly seriousness, Hitler
accepts a tribute from a wooden
gallery set up in the main square. The
Army, the police, the workers, the SA,
and the SS all march past in perfect
order. It is as though the whole of
Germany has assembled to proclaim
their obedience to the new leader.
THE LEADER SPEAKS

The final ten minutes of the film record
Hitlers speech at the conclusion of
the rally. It is a fascinating record
of Hitlers speech-making style.
He starts off very slowly and low
key, but slowly builds into a frenzy,
exciting the audience into feverish
support, hanging on his every word.
He talks of the struggle of the Nazi
Party and of National Socialism to
get established. He tells the huge
crowd that the party will remain
unchanging in its doctrine, as hard as
steel in its organisation, supple and
adaptable in its tactics. Amid wild
cheers, he struts and postures, announcing that the state and the Reich
will last for a thousand years: We
can be happy in the knowledge that
the future will belong to us totally.
To rapturous applause, Rudolph
Hess, Hitlers deputy, leaps onto
the platform and announces, The
party is Hitler. Hitler is Germany.
And Germany is Hitler.
After this climax, the film ends with
close-ups of swastikas overlaid with
the party faithful marching, cut to
Herbert Windts bombastic version
of the Horst Wessel song.
NAZISM ON FILM
Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will
is made with immense craft and
skill. The camera-angles used, the
pacing of the music and editing are
masterly. It has an almost poetic
and heroic quality that is quite unlike
any documentary about Nazism that
had ever been made before.
There was never another major Nazi Party

rally film. There was no need for one.
Triumph of the Will is Nazism on film.
But it gives credibility to an evil
regime. It celebrates Hitler as the
leader of a newly revived nation. It
expresses and evokes the militarisation of the German people sought
by the new regime. It applauds the
unity of the nation behind the cult of
the Fhrer. The party is unified. The
nation is one. The leader rules.
No one knew in 1934 that
this would end in the horrors of
Auschwitz and Belsen, in the death
of millions on the battlefield, and in
the destruction of so much of Europe.
But in helping to promote Hitler and
the Nazi leadership, in making them
acceptable to millions of Germans,
Riefenstahls propaganda played
a crucial role in making the death
camps and the mass killings from
1939 to 1945 possible.
Riefenstahl presented the Nazi
regime exactly as it wanted to be
seen. There was never another major
Nazi Party rally film. There was no
need for one. Triumph of the Will
is Nazism on film.
In 1945, Leni Riefenstahl was
arrested by French and American
Intelligence on charges relating
to her pro-Nazi activities. But no
prosecution was ever brought, and

she was released in 1948. After this,
she spent most of the rest of her
life trying to distance herself from
the Nazi Party and from her close
friendship with Hitler.
She invented a story of her filmmaking career under the Nazis that
differs markedly from the surviving
official records. She always denied
that she was in any way political,
insisting she was merely an artist,
one with no awareness of the politics
of the subjects she worked on.
It is impossible to accept this:
Triumph of the Will is such a supreme
expression of the Nazi spirit.
Through the 1950s and 1960s,
she tried to restart her career, but
without much success, though
in the 1970s she acquired some
notoriety for her photos of the
African Nuban tribespeople, which,
once again, like her Olympia film,
caught her passion for the

body beautiful.
In her later years, she frequently
issued writs against anyone she
thought was trying to tarnish her
reputation, while continuing to
collect sums of money from anyone
who used extracts of her films. It has
only been possible after her death in
2003 to produce accurate assessments of her achievements.
Leni Riefenstahl was an immensely
creative film-maker who used cameras
and editing in a unique way. But she
came to her peak under one of the most
criminal regimes in history, and her
achievement can never be separated
from the politics of the time in which
she lived. Triumph of the Will is a great
film technically; it is also a supremely
powerful piece of political propaganda.
Taylor Downings book on Leni
Riefenstahls Olympia is available in
paperback as a BFI Film Classic.
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1935)

Created by: Leni Riefenstahl. Music: Herbert Windt.
The film is available in several DVD versions.
61
ds
com me
ultimately console. The employers,

owners of the theatre chains, were
typically attached to King and Empire,
and turned many of the music halls
into rallying and recruiting centres at
the start of the war.
ONWARD CHRISTIAN
SOLDIERS
By the turn of the century, Music
Hall had all but replaced the more
progressive folk song for the
working class; yet singing together
was still something people did. The
church was as important socially as it
was as a matter of faith, and formed
a vital part of that singing culture.
Many soldiers were attached to
certain hymns from childhood, and
at the start of the war were comforted
by chaplain-led services encouraging
them to kill the Hun. The chaplain
of the House of Commons, we learn,
declared that to kill Germans is
a divine service in the fullest
acceptance of the word. Interesting,
then, that soldiers songs are less often
about killing the Hun than giving
expression to outrage against their
superior officers for example, to the
tune of Onward Christian Soldiers:
The Music Hall had a vast

infrastructure of technicians,
front-of-house staff, stage
managers, and artistes.
62
TORY MON
H IS
TH
M
H
M
re
n
John Mullen
Ashgate, 18.99 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1472441591
ohn Mullens history of song
in WWI is a bracing read. A
throb of anger at what was
an international atrocity pulses
through this impeccably researched
book. During a WWI centenary
that has often fixated on victory
and nationalism, this is a valuable
account for those wanting to
understand something of the true
suffering and resistance put up by
our ancestors, coerced into fighting
a war not in their interests. This will
also be a valuable resource for filmmakers and playwrights needing
period detail and vivid imagery.
The aesthetic and musical roots
of the popular music of WWI lie in
Victorian and early 20th-century
Music Hall, and here Mullen presents
a thorough overview of that industry,
with the developing genres of revue
and pantomime. For, just like the
factories or railways, an industry it was:
the Music Hall had a vast infrastructure
of technicians, front-of-house staff,
stage managers, and artistes, who
engaged in labour relations strikes
by stagehands and performers for
better wages and conditions as they
worked to amuse, cheer, entertain, and
O T
LY
THE SHOW MUST GO ON: POPULAR

SONG IN BRITAIN DURING THE
FIRST WORLD WAR
TA
R
EDITED BY KEITH ROBINSON
T
MILI
Forward Joe Soaps army, marching

without fear
With our old commander, safely
in the rear
He boasts and skites from morn
till night,
And thinks hes very brave,
But the men who really did the job
Are dead and in their grave
There was later (if, indeed, they
made it to later) great resentment
against martial hymns, as soldiers
were urged to sing them by those
who did not fight.
Mullen also takes us through
the other major events of the time.
Spliced into the war are, of course,
the Irish uprising and the suffragette

movement. Again, we see the often
reactionary nature of Music Hall,
with songs either sentimentalising or
mocking Irishmen and suffragettes;
most of the latter were sung by
women. Even though many of
its women performers wore male
clothing and its men were feminised,
Music Hall was essentially about
maintaining the status quo, as were
many of its stars (Marie Lloyd was
a notable exception).
Short accounts of the lives of
Harry Lauder, Vesta Tilley, Marie
Lloyd, and Harry Champion, called
Stars in Focus, act as steppingstones throughout the book. During
November 2015
MHM REVIEWS
The troops started to make

their own entertainment.
The Front, and The Reserves
were literally masses of static
men waiting for action.
LEFT & BELOW LEFT Both Marie Lloyd and Harry Lauder, stars of the Music
Hall, entertained the troops at the Front during the early days of the war.
the early days of the war, these

stars entertained troops at the Front,
but as the losses and suffering hit
home, Music Hall shed its jingoism,
becoming part of a culture of
compensation. The troops started to
make their own entertainment: The
Front and The Reserves were literally masses of static men waiting for
action and here a counterculture
was emerging with a different (and
uncensored) emotional focus.
SOLDIERS SONGS
The long months of immobility, and a
mass army raised on collective singing
in the music halls, churches, and
schools, produced a rich repertoire that
had become somewhat polemical. The
earlier flag-waving patriotism of Music
Hall had been eroded through suffering,
expressed famously through Hanging
on the Old Barbed Wire.
The last two chapters, Songs
About the War and I Want To Go
Home, form the heart of the book.
Soldiers songs, detached from
contemporary Music Hall, were as
different as slave songs were from
blackface minstrelsy. In this sense,
then, the songs were free. There is
fascinating information here, giving
context to those songs. A section in
the final chapter, Live and Let Live,
gives an account of how ordinary
soldiers colluded with the enemy to
inflict as few casualties as possible
through timed raids. Officers who
allowed this would be replaced
and punished, yet not as harshly
as ordinary Tommys, who could be
crucified by being tied to gun wheels
for indefinite periods. Appalled

Australian and Canadian troops
would often free them. In a similar
vein, although parachutes had been
invented by WWI, airmen were not
allowed them in case they did not
fight hard enough. This culture
of cruelty forms an important
background to the development
of soldiers songs.
OH! ITS A LOVELY WAR

By 1918, the song Oh! Its a Lovely
War had hit the music halls. With
its black humour, and anger rather
than pathos, this was no part of
compensatory culture. Its revival by
Joan Littlewood and Attenboroughs
film in the 1960s, together with the
founding of the Welfare State, were
a background to the majority view
in Britain that WWI should not have
happened. In Mullens rich book we
have a critique of that war from the
grave ordinary soldiers pointing the
finger as surely as the poets did. Their
songs call to us with defiant vitality,
as in the following verse, which would
have been sung to the tune of What
a Friend I Have in Jesus:
When this lousy war is over,

No more soldiering for me.
When I get my civvy clothes on,
Oh, how happy I shall be!
No more church parades on Sunday,
No more begging for a pass.
You can tell the Sergeant-Major
To stick his passes up his arse.
JAN WOOLF
Author and playwright
63
OO S
THE BEST NEW MILITARY HISTORY TITLES THIS MONTH
ATTRITION: FIGHTING
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
William Philpott
Abacus, 10.99 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0349000077
he past 18 months has seen an

inevitable rush of new books
about the First World War, with
the result that quality has often been
subsumed by quantity. So for any book
to rise above the rest, it needs to offer
something different something that
author William Philpott sets out to
achieve with Attrition: Fighting the
First World War.
This publication provides a

detailed overview of the whole
war, on every front, although
for the author these are not the
traditional Western, Eastern,
Middle Eastern, and African Fronts.
Instead, he considers five other
fronts: the Land Front, Maritime
Front, Home Front, Diplomatic Front,
and, finally, the United Front that
AGINCOURT
Anne Curry
Oxford University Press,
18.99 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0199681013
gincourt: 600 years on, the name still resonates with the British public.
Indeed, it is one of the few victorious battles in English history whose
name is widely known. In her entertaining and readable book, Anne
Curry attempts to find out why this should be so, exploring the differing
accounts and myths surrounding the battle.
64
This is a careful examination of how Agincourt fits into what we now know as the
100 Years War: why Henry V invaded France (he wanted the glory), why the army
included so many archers (they were cheap), as well as the story of the battle itself.
Part of Agincourts appeal lies in its tale of the plucky English heavily outnumbered by the enemy. The battle-plan was decisive in this victory: with Henrys
troops forming a horseshoe shape, the French were funnelled into their centre,
and then attacked from three sides. Forced to halt, and hindered by the soft
ground, French bodies piled up, many suffocated face down in the unforgiving
mud under the weight of their countrymen.
As well as the battle itself, Curry looks at how the story has been subtly
altered by chroniclers over the centuries. She considers how Shakespeare, in his
play Henry V, made a major contribution to the myth. Curry also examines the
film of Shakespeares play, starring Laurence Olivier, which was released just
six months after D-Day. These are examples of how Agincourt has been used
over the centuries exhumed and recast at times of national peril, invoking
national identity, and bolstering the image of the superiority of the British.
Curry also debunks some of the myths and legends surrounding Agincourt.
She tells us that the Welsh did not predominate among Henrys archers: although
figures of 5,000 are often quoted, records show that only 500 archers were
raised from Wales. Nor was the V-sign invented at Agincourt there is no
evidence that it began in the 15th century, nor that the French cut off the fingers
of captured archers apparently this is just another urban myth!
FRANCESCA TROWSE
November 2015
MHM REVIEWS
Kitchener had a better grasp

of the global nature of the
war than anyone else.
is, the various alliances between
the Great Powers, which he argues
prevented war for several decades
before 1914. Central to his thesis
is the idea that between 1914 and
1918, warfare changed completely
in its nature. But the resulting war
of attrition was not something new:
as the author highlights, attritional
warfare existed, for example, in the
Classical world, when Sparta ground
down Athens in the Peloponnesian
Wars or Fabius Maximus wore down
Hannibal, to cite but two instances.
In the context of the Great War,
attrition was not limited to the
battlefield but also applied to the
Home Front and at sea.
This isnt a military history in its
purest sense: it does not go into great
detail about the campaigns, the battles,
or the formations involved, and, as
the author himself points out, there
are no maps contained within its
pages. Instead, this is a history of

the First World War in its broadest
context, one which considers the
politics, diplomacy, and economics
alongside the fighting. Militarism is
also discussed, although in Britain,
the author concludes, this took a
distinct form: navalism.
The author writes that Joffres
victory on the Marne was not
miraculous it represented the
calm, pragmatic utilisation of
Frances railways by a man who
understood the principles of
strategic manoeuvre. His analysis
of other Allied leaders is equally
solid: Kitchener had a better grasp
of the global nature of the war
than anyone else; Churchill lacked
the ability to listen to professional
military advice; while even LloydGeorge had to acknowledge Foch as
a genius. Haig, Philpott acknowledges, has been ill-served by history,
THE EYES OF THE

DESERT RATS:
BRITISH LONG-RANGE
RECONNAISSANCE
OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH
AFRICAN DESERT 1940-42
David Syrett
Helion & Company, 35.00 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1907677656
he Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was a remarkable unit. With the
ability to travel thousands of miles and operate for long periods behind enemy lines, it was a force without equal in the North African theatre. The
LRDG can trace its roots to the long-range patrols that operated along
the EgyptianLibyan border during the First Word War, although, ultimately,
it was the brainchild of Ralph Bagnold who, between the wars, explored
which has obscured the steady

evolution of warfare and the growing
effectiveness of Haigs command.
Lloyd-Georges proposal to defeat
Germany by knocking away the
props, completely overlooked the
fact that instead of Germanys allies
supporting it, she supported them,
and as each surrendered in 1918,
Germany was able to concentrate
its forces on the Western Front. In
addition, he points out that LloydGeorges New Eastern Strategy
had little impact on the fighting
in Europe, but rather fomented
post-war Imperial problems in
the Middle East.
It is impossible to fully appreciate
the Somme Offensive without an understanding of the Battle of Verdun.
In a first-rate chapter, the author
looks at both campaigns, as well as
events on the Eastern and Italian
Fronts, and in so doing provides a
very balanced assessment of Allied

strategy in 1916. Arguably, however,
the highlight of the entire book
is the chapter that discusses the
defeat of Germany in the summer
and autumn of 1918, a victory
spearheaded by the allied armies
under Foch, but made possible by
the war of attrition waged on land,
sea, and at home.
Using a vast amount of information from a wide variety of sources,
the author has written a clear and
readable narrative, explaining in
some detail how and why the war
was fought as it was. His reassessment challenges many of the
myths, revealing the organisation,
the determination, and the ambition
of the combatant nations. This is a
first-class overview of the whole
war, and is a useful addition to
anyones library.
DAVID FLINTHAM
great tracts of the Libyan Desert in the company of a few like-minded fellow
army officers. The story of Bagnold adventurer, explorer, scientist, and
warrior would itself make fascinating and inspiring reading.
David Syretts study outlines these origins, then details the story of
the LRDG from its formation in 1940 until the end of the fighting in North
Africa in 1942. Principally a reconnaissance unit, it did occasionally perform
small-scale raiding (piracy on the high desert). But as was common
among British Special Forces, there was a tendency for the LRDG to
be misused: Wavell understood the purpose of the LRDG, but, initially
at least, Montgomery did not.
Arguably, North Africa was the birthplace of British Special Forces
during the Second World War, and while the heroics of the Special Air Service
tend to grab the headlines, it was the LRDG that was the most effective.
Yet the author still manages to devote a number of pages to the exploits
of David Stirlings men. Of course, the two units are very closely linked,
but without the LRDG, the SAS probably wouldnt have existed for more
than a few months. So, given what has already been written about the SAS
elsewhere, so much detail here seems unnecessary.
This, however, is no more than a minor distraction from what is a decent
study. This is not a unique book, but what makes it really stand out are the
excellent maps: these are a joy to view, and are sure to appeal to anyone
with an interest in the topography of war.
DAVID FLINTHAM
65
MHMS PICK OF THE LATEST RELEASES

The Battle of Britain:
an epic conflict revisited
Christer Bergstrm
Casemate Publishers, 35 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1612003474
Another book on the Battle of Britain, but one
with a difference: it was written by a Swedish
author, who balances Allied and Axis accounts
of this famous struggle. With testimony from
pilots on both sides, the book also challenges
several myths such as Grings incompetence
as a leader and strategist. For many, though,
the book will be most welcome for its inclusion
of rare German photographs.
The Fighting 30th Division

Martin King, David Hilborn,
and Michael Collins
Casemate Publishers,
20.99 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1612003016
This history is told through the

voices of the men who made
up the 30th Infantry Division.
Their war began four days after
D-Day, when they arrived in
Normandy to make good losses
from Omaha Beach. The story
follows them through northern
France, the Rhineland, over the
Ardennes, and on to victory.
The authentic accounts bring
out the human face of war.
66
Madness in Mogadishu
Lt Col Michael Whetstone
Stackpole Books, 19.77 (hbk)
Strategy: a history
Lawrence Freedman
Oxford University Press,
16.99 (pbk)
Scourge of Rome
Douglas Jackson
Bantam Press,
18.99 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0190229238
ISBN 978-0593070581
This is the paperback version

of what is one of the most
horough histories of strategic
hinking. It is erudite and yet
easily accessible to a more
general audience interested
n strategy.
We included a longer
review of the hardback
edition in MHM 40.
As a light read, this fastpaced yet well-researched

novel by Douglas Jackson
continues the adventures
of his hero Gaius Valerius
Verrens. This time the action
takes place against the
backdrop of the Middle East
and the Judaean revolt
(AD 66-73).
Life in Napoleons Army:

The Memoirs of Captain
Elzar Blaze
Elzar Blaze
Frontline, 19.99 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0811715737
The Art of Swordsmanship

Hans Leckchner (trans.
Jeffrey L Forgeng)
Boydell Press, 60 (hbk)
Two Black Hawk helicopters,

tasked with capturing advisers
to Somali warlords, were shot
down over Mogadishu in 1993.
The survivors of the crash tried
to defend themselves against
several thousand approaching
militants, while a convoy led by
Michael Whetstone attempted
to reach them. This real-life
thriller tells of the desperate
drive to the crash site, under
fire, only to find their comrades
had already been killed.
ISBN 978-1783270286
Napoleon and the Struggle

for Germany, Vol I
Michael V Leggiere
Cambridge University Press,
24.99 (hbk)
Boydells latest offering from

their Armour and Weapons
series. This is a key textbook
from the late medieval
period. A kind of teach
yourself manual from the
15th century, it shows you
every move you might want
to make using a single-edged,
one-handed sword, with text
and illustrations. A book for
the serious student of
medieval personal combat.
ISBN 978-1107080515
ISBN 978-1848328228
This is a comprehensive history

of the campaign that followed
Napoleons catastrophic defeat
in Russia. Prussia was in
alliance with the war-weary
Russians, and in spring 1813, in
a single campaign, Napoleon
drove their army from the Saale
to the der, where it was saved
only by a last-minute armistice.
The text includes many maps
to clarify battle movements.
Part memoir, part travel book,

and part military history, this is
the story of an officer in the
army of Napoleon, whom he
served from 1807 to 1815. From
the privations of being in the
field, the hazards of the bivouac,
the equipment, the food, the
battles, the shortcomings of the
Spanish this is an all-encompassing contemporary account
of the Napoleonic period.
November 2015
G
GENEALOGY
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Judith Beastall as a natural extension of their interests and hobbies.
Jointly, we have over three decades of experience in local, family, and
military research.
We pride ourselves in offering a friendly, value-for-money service to
help trace your relatives military records, from the late 19th century to
the end of the Second World War . This culminates in a highly readable
and interesting biography of your relatives service, presented in booklet
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www.militaryandfamilygenealogy.co.uk
r Army soldiers documents (before 1882)

r World War I service files
r Officers records of service
r Army Lists 1740 to the present
r Regimental histories
r Continuous service engagement books
In addition to online access to military records, familysearch.org
offers tools and resources to preserve and share family memories about
ancestors who served in the military. Through photos, stories, and
documents, users can create memorial pages to share with close and
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www.familysearch.org
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STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE
Would you like to find out more about your family and local history?
Enrol for one of our online courses and open up the past.
Our short courses will take you beyond the internet and open the
world of UK archives to you. You will discover how to use archives and
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www.ancestornetwork.ie and www.flyleaf.ie
SU
02
REVIEWING THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EXHIBITIONS

WITH STEPHEN MILES
01
FREE
ENTRY
VISIT
WESTERPLATTE: MUSEUM OF
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
PL 80-831 Gdansk, 81-83 Duga Street
+48 58 323 75 20
www.muzeum1939.pl
Open to visitors all year; there is a charge for the museum,
New Port Lighthouse and Post Office Museum Gdansk
udging its way into the

Baltic Sea opposite the
modern harbour of Gdansk
in Poland, the Westerplatte
peninsula is a slender wooded
sand spit only a few kilometres in
length, and the site of one of the
most momentous military events in
20th-century European history. On 31
August 1939, a faked attack on a German customs post and radio station
near the Polish border at Gleiwitz gave
the Nazis the excuse for war they
sought: the next day German forces
fired on the small Polish armaments
depot at Westerplatte, the first shots
of war, precipitating the conflagration
many had expected. This was followed by a wholescale invasion
of Poland by German and Soviet
forces, and in five weeks the country
had been defeated.
68
Westerplatte is now an openair museum and memorial, and a

fascinating place to visit just 7km
from the historic centre of Gdansk.
Buildings damaged in the attack
have been left in their ruined state,
and a series of information boards
provide a moving account of the
events and the ground over which
they unfolded.
FROM SPA TO
MILITARY DEPOT
The peninsula was originally a health
resort and spa, which by the 1880s
and 1890s had over 140,000 visitors
annually. It served as a city beach for
the large numbers of visitors from
the Kingdom of Poland as well as
the German Reich. But it had also
been involved in earlier wars, and
entrenchments from the time of
Frederick the Great and the Napoleonic era can still be seen.
After the First World War, Gdansk
became the Free City of Danzig (its
German name) under the protection
of the League of Nations. The city
comprised a majority German population, with Poles in the minority, and
this was to create enormous difficulties with the rise of Hitler and the
Nazis in the early 1930s Gdansk
effectively became a German port.
During the Polish-Soviet War (19191921), a neutral Germany forbade the
movement of arms to Poland across
her territory; this led to intense
diplomatic gestures from Poland
towards the League to allow her to
use Gdan sk as a trans-shipment
area. On 22 June 1921, the League
finally recognised Polands right to
use the port and to allocate a small
military garrison to supervise arms
movements; this was in the face of
Free City opposition, and a dispute
over the precise location of the depot

dragged on until the League ordered
it should be located on the Westerplatte peninsula. In August 1924, the
Polish Ministry of Military Affairs began to build the depot, which required
a new wet dock on the peninsulas
western side, as well as warehouses
and barracks. On 31 October 1925,
Poland obtained Westerplatte on a
perpetual lease, although the site was
technically within the territory of the
Free City. The building of any kind of
fortification was forbidden, and the
maximum size of the depot garrison
was set at 88 personnel.
In 1927 began the first of several
courtesy visits by German naval vessels to Danzig, which were received
with rapturous enthusiasm by the city
and its predominantly German population. These military demonstrations
were to have tragic consequences for
the depot in 1939. The growing menace of a rapidly militarising Germany
November 2015
MHM VISITS
03
04
GDA SK
P OL A ND
05
PICTURED ON BOTH PAGES:

1. The former guardhouse now houses
the museum of the Westerplatte
memorial on the peninsula of the
same name in Gdansk, Poland.
2. This Nazi propaganda photograph
shows the raising of the German flag
on the Westerplatte. The original
caption reads: The capture of the
Westerplatte. The German war flag
is raised on the Westerplatte. The
bravery of the German troops forced
the Polish garrison to give up despite
persistant resistence.
3. Inside the museum.
4. Inside the museum.
5. Ruined barracks, which were hit in
the air raid on 2 September 1939.
in the 1930s and the proximity of

the Nazified Free City prompted the
Polish government to strengthen its
presence at Westerplatte: between
1933 and 1936 guardhouses were
clandestinely built at the depot to
form a defensive ring against attack.
The remains of some of these can
still be seen. In the spring of 1939, as
tension in Europe grew, the depots
defences were further augmented
with the installation of a new alarm
system, total nocturnal black-outs,
heavier armaments, trip wires, and
the thinning out of the forest to provide
a clearer line of fire for machine-guns.
Additionally, by September 1939 the
garrison had been secretly increased
to 176 men and six officers.
THE BATTLE OF
WESTERPLATTE
On 25 August 1939, the German
training battleship Schleswig-Holstein
entered Gdansk harbour on the
pretext of a courtesy visit, but with

much more sinister intensions. She
had 596 men on board, as well
as 175 cadets and 60 anti-aircraft
gunners, but, more significantly,
hidden below were a company of
225 Stormtroopers. The ship was
armed with four 280mm cannon, ten
medium-sized 150mm cannon, and
four anti-aircraft guns. She remained
moored near the salt granaries
directly opposite Westerplatte, and
as her sojourn lengthened the Polish
government became increasingly
concerned about her intentions.
At 04:47 on Friday 1 September,
guns from the battleship opened
fire on the southern part of the
depot in an enormous and sustained
cannonade to prepare the ground
for an amphibious assault by the
Stormtroopers. The first shots of
World War II had rung out across the
narrow waterway; there had been no
warning. As German assault troops
pressed forward, Staff Sergeant

Wojciech Najsarek fell under a hail
of machine-gun bullets, becoming
perhaps the first combat victim of
the entire war. The initial assault was
thwarted by sustained Polish heavy
and light machine-gun fire, and the
Stormtroopers eventually fell back
leaving numerous dead and wounded.
A further attack, just before 09:00,
was also repulsed.
The Polish commander, Major
Henryk Sucharski, realised that no
help would come from the Polish
Army, and that his small force would
have to hold out alone. The battle
was to last seven days, drawing in
3,500 German soldiers from the Free
City area, as well as repeated naval
and field artillery fire. In addition, late
on the second day, some 60 Junkers
Ju-87B dive-bombers attacked the
depot. Its defences were repeatedly hammered with 500kg, 250kg,
and 50kg bombs, and strafed with
machine-gun fire. A direct hit demolished Guardhouse Five, with only two
defenders surviving, and the barracks
building suffered two direct hits, its
special construction absorbing the
impact, leaving all inside unharmed.
The air raid killed ten defenders and
wounded six; but its main effect was
psychological, and there is every
indication that, had the Germans
launched a ground offensive soon
afterwards, the depot would have
fallen. At this point, Sucharski decided
to surrender the peninsula, but he
was met with vociferous opposition from his second-in-command,
Captain Franciszek Dabrowski; the
garrison decided to fight on.
German attempts to destroy the
depot continued with further shelling
from two torpedo boats in the Bay
of Gdan sk on 4 September. On the
night of 5/6 September, the attackers
tried to set fire to the Westerplatte
forest, but the smoke only served to
69
06
07
08
camouflage Polish positions, giving

them a perfect field of fire. The depot
came under sustained fire again on
7 September from the SchleswigHolstein, as well as artillery in the
New Port. By this time, the defenders
were in an impossible position
short of food, water, and medical
supplies, and with two guardhouses
knocked out and another two badly
damaged. Considering the depot undefendable, Sucharski decided to surrender. The defence had impressed
the Germans so much that he was
initially allowed to keep his ceremonial sabre in captivity. The battle left
15 Polish dead and 26 wounded; German losses are thought to have been
50 dead and 121 wounded.
AN OPEN-AIR MUSEUM
Like many Second World War sites in
what was to become the Soviet sphere
70
of influence in the post-war era,

Westerplatte fell victim to a distorted
view of history. The Communists saw
September 1939 as a failure of the
Polish government at the time, and
the only tribute to the defenders of
the depot was a simple cross erected
in 1946. This was replaced by a
Soviet tank in 1962 (it was removed in
2007). In 1966, the huge Monument
to the Defenders of the Coast was unveiled, and by the 1970s Westerplatte
had become a key symbol of Polish
wartime resistance. Since the 1980s,
it has been managed by the Historical
Museum of Gdansk.
The most interesting feature of the
site is the walking trail, which takes
in the main places involved in the
battle, following a series of information boards in English. A tiny threeroom museum in Guardhouse 1
is open in season; it contains arma-
ments, uniforms, photographs,

and radio equipment. But the most
dramatic legacy of the battle is the
shattered remains of the barracks
destroyed in the air raid. The ordeal
of those who hid in its basement as
the bombs fell can only be imagined.
Westerplatte is open at all times,
and admission is free apart from the
museum, which has a small charge.
The site can be visited in tandem
with the New Port Lighthouse (open
in season; entry charge) across the
channel (some accounts claim the
opening salvo came from German
troops positioned here) and the
Post Office Museum in Gdansk
(entry charge), which is also a
memorial to its defenders, who
held out against German attacks on
1 September 1939. A new Museum
of the Second World War is due to
open in Gdansk soon.
PICTURED ON THIS PAGE:

6. Information boards in English,
explaining the events of September
1939, are positioned on a walking trail.
7. The Westerplatte Monument,
in memory of the the Polish defenders
of the site of the first battle of
World War II.
8. A distinctive sign marking the
Westerplatte memorial.
November 2015
ISTI S
SYMPOSIUM
420
ENTRY
THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EVENTS, LECTURES, AND EXHIBITIONS
THE YEAR OF
ANNIVERSARIES
6-8 November 2015
Image: Royal Armouries
County Assembly Rooms,

76 Baligate, Lincoln, LN1 3AR
www.martinrandall.com
020 8742 3355
EXHIBITION
THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT

23 October 2015-31 January 2016
White Tower,
Tower of London,
London, EC3N 4AB
www.royalarmouries.org
020 3166 6660
24.50
ENTRY
o commemorate the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, a special Royal Armouries
exhibition will be held in the White Tower at the Tower of London. Bringing together rare objects
for the first time, including medieval arms and armour, art, music, sculpture, and manuscripts, the
exhibition will reveal the story of the road to battle, the events of 25 October 1415, and the aftermath,
while also exploring the popular myths, reality, and legacy of this extraordinary battle.
TALK
SHOULDER TO SHOULDER: AMERICANS IN BRITAIN

DURING WWII
who spent the war in London: Edward R
4 November 2015
Staff Restaurant, The British Library,

96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BD
www.bl.uk
01937 546546
Author Lynne Olson will discuss the dramatic
personal journeys of three American men
72
This residential weekend of

lectures, held in Lincolns County
Assembly Rooms, will encompass 13 talks on this years
anniversary topics: Magna Carta,
the first Parliament, Agincourt,
Waterloo, Gallipoli, Yalta, and
Potsdam. There will be discussion sessions, opportunities to
meet and talk to speakers, and
a drinks reception in the Chapter
House of Lincoln Cathedral.
Paul Lay chairs the event, and
speakers include Dr Juliet Barker,
Professor Jeremy Black, Dr Jonathan Foyle, Keith Lowe, Dr Marc
Morris, Professor Nigel Saul, and
Professor Gary Sheffield.
8
ENTRY
Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John G Winant.

Determined to save Britain from Hitler, they
helped convince a cautious FDR and reluctant American public to back the British at a
critical time. Drawing on a variety of primary
sources, Olson will explain how these men
fought to save Britain in its darkest hour.
November 2015
MAKE A POPPY
ENTRY
7-8 November 2015

Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ
www.iwm.org.uk
020 7416 5000
On Remembrance weekend, visit the IWM London to

grow your own poppy from paper, wire, and recycled
military buttons in this family-friendly activity. While
making poppies, participants of all ages will discover
more about the history and heritage of the poppy, and
its association with conflict and memorials.
TOUR
LECTURE
FREE
FREE
ENTRY
ENTRY
DATES TO
REMEMBER
MHM VISITS
FREE
ACTIVITY
9-14 NOVEMBER 2015
Conservation Centre
Open Week
Royal Air Force Museum
Cosford, Shropshire, TF11 8UP
www.rafmuseum.org.uk
The RAF Museums

Conservation Centre will be
open for behind-the-scenes
access for one week only.
Visitors will be able to view
progress being made on the
Handley Page Hampden,
Vickers Wellington, and
Dornier Do 17 aircraft.
14 NOVEMBER 2015
Night in the Trenches
Image: Tim Green
Staffordshire Regiment Museum,

Linchfield, WS14 9PY
www.staffordshiregreatwar.com
THE SUEZ CRISIS, 1956

BATTLE OF
WAKEFIELD TOUR
10 November 2015
Museum of London, 150 London Wall, ECY 5HN
www.gresham.ac.uk
020 7831 0575
28 November 2015
Sandal Castle, Manygates Lane,
Wakefield, WF2 7DG
Head to Wakefield for a guided tour of Sandal

Castle to explore its role in Richard of Yorks
catastrophic defeat in December 1460, during
the English Civil War. The Castle tour will be
followed by a short walk down Manygates Lane
to the Dukes monument and the last surviving
fragment of the medieval battlefield, close to
the site of his death.
After Egypts President Nasser nationalised the

Suez Canal Company in 1956, Britain together
with France and Israel responded by attacking
Egypt. The Suez War was opposed by the US and
UN, compelling Britain and France to withdraw. The
reputation of British Prime Minister Sir Anthony
Eden was severely damaged, while Britains
stature as a world power was challenged. For a
full appraisal of the Suez Crisis, join Professor
Bogdanor, Gresham Professor of Law, for this
free-entry Gresham College lecture.
EVENT
Experience a soldiers life as it

would have been in the WWI
trenches. Re-enactors will evoke
the conditions experienced and
the life lived by troops, taking
you back to the thick of the Great
War. Pre-booking is essential.
16 NOVEMBER 2015
The Indian Sepoy

in WWI Culture
36-39 Pall Mall, London,
SW1Y 5JN
www.nam.ac.uk
Dr Santanu Das will explore the

war experiences of Indian soldiers by examining trench artefacts, memoirs, photographs,
paintings, and original sound
recordings from prisoner-ofwar camps in Germany.
11
MILITARY VEHICLES DAY
ENTRY
15 November 2015
Brooklands Museum, Brooklands
Road,Weybridge,Surrey, KT13 0QN
www.brooklandsmuseum.com
01932 857381
Over 80 military vehicles, spanning the decades and from all across the world, are expected at
Brooklands annual Military Vehicles Day. As well as spectacular displays in the Paddock and
around the site, there will be the chance to see some of the machines being put through their
paces as they tackle Test Hill and the off-road circuit at Mercedes-Benz World. In addition to the
military vehicles, a host of wartime re-enactors will join the event.
73
T
TOURS
THERE ARE A SELECT NUMBER OF BATTLEFIELD TOURS THAT EVERY MILITARY HISTORY ENTHUSIAST SHOULD
EXPERIENCE. HERE WE LIST SOME OF THE FINEST, MOST REASONABLY PRICED WORLDWIDE TOURS AVAILABLE.
GALINA
INTERNATIONAL
BATTLEFIELD
TOURS
KIRKER HOLIDAYS
Galina began
organising tours to
the battlefields of
France, Belgium, and
the Netherlands in
1989. In those days, 20 or 30 people at the Last Post Ceremony in Ypres
was regarded a crowd. Times change, but we remain an independent
and family-owned company, offering the same high quality of personal
service today as we did then. Whilst primarily a group travel company,
we also arrange tours for individuals wishing to attend major anniversary events, drawing on our long experience as Official Tour Operators
to organisations such as the Normandy Veterans Association. Our
guides are selected and trained by us and have an academic or military
background, great experience, and an enthusiasm for sharing their
knowledge.
TEL: 01244 340 777
EMAIL: info@wartours.com
WEB: www.wartours.com
TWITTER: @Wartours
SELECTED TOURS: Somme 100th
Anniversary, 29 June - 3 July 2016
TEL: 020 7593 2283

WEB: www.kirkerholidays.com
SELECTED TOURS:
The Battle of Waterloo, 3 nights, departing
8 July and 30 September 2016
GUIDED
BATTLEFIELD
TOURS
We pride ourselves
on providing our
guests with a quality,
personal experience.
Our greatest recommendation is the
number of returning guests present on our tours. In addition to your
expert guide, each tour is accompanied by a tour manager to ensure
your comfort and the smooth running of the tour.
Our battlefield tours are inspired by both a passion for history and
the belief that we must not forget the sacrifice of past generations. Our
specialist guides bring the sites to life with the past events that took
place there, putting them in their historical context.
We offer a comprehensive range of First and Second World War tours
in France, Belgium and Holland. The cost of the tours includes all
travel from the pickup point, bed and breakfast accommodation in a
3* or 4* hotel, refreshments each day, and entry to all museums. Our
tours are protected for you through ABTOT.
TEL: 01633 258207

EMAIL: info@guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk
WEB: www.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk
SELECTED TOURS: Treading in Tommys
Footsteps,29 April -2nd May 2016
Walking the Somme Battlefields,20 May 23 May 2016
Dunkirk,28 May - 31 May 2016
Specialists in high
quality escorted tours
and tailor-made short
breaks, Kirker Holidays
provides a range of
expert-led itineraries for
those with an interest in
history, archaeology, art,
architecture, and music.
As we mark the
centenary of the First
World War and the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, Kirker has
created a selection of carefully crafted itineraries which explore the
sites of these influential conflicts in the company of expert historians.
During 2015 and 2016, military historians Neil Faulkner and Hugh
MacDonald-Buchanan will lead Kirker tours to the battlefields of the
Western Front and Waterloo in Flanders, and the Gallipoli peninsula
in Turkey. In addition, we are looking forward to embarking on a new
tour which will trace the Duke of Wellingtons progress in Spain and
Portugal during the Peninsular Wars the campaign which eventually
led to Napoleons humiliation and exile in Elba.
The Battles of 1917- 1918, 17- 20 June 2016

First Day of the Somme Centenary,30
June - 4 July 2016
Normandy and the D-Day Landings,4
August - 7 August 2016
The Duke of Wellington & The Peninsular

War, 7 nights, departing 17 April 2016
Istanbul & Gallipoli, 8 nights, departing
28 May 2016
GOLD CREST
HOLIDAYS
Gold Crest Holidays
have been providing
specialist and
enriching tours
for over 20 years,
including tours
focussing on the Great
War, complete with
enthusiastic and expert
guides. Our highly
knowledgeable guides will help you to remember the past and
witness the sacrifice made by soldiers and officers. Experience the
centenary battle sites and moving war cemeteries with our included
guided tours of the Flanders and the Somme battlefields, with visits
including Flanders Fields Museum and the Last Post ceremony in
Ypres. Our tours provide great value starting from only 199 and offer
a memorable experience that can be enjoyed by military enthusiasts,
those with family connections, and independent travellers looking to
understand this truly memorable and historic conflict.
TEL: 01943 433457

EMAIL: reservation@gold-crest.com
WEB: www.gold-crest.com
SELECTED TOURS: World War One

Battlefield tours departing on various
dates throughout 2015/16 for 4 days
G
GIFTS
WITH CHRISTMAS JUST AROUND THE CORNER, MHM LISTS A SELECTION

OF GIFTS TO BUY FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON.
SCRAMBLE: THE
DRAMATIC STORY OF A
YOUNG FIGHTER PILOTS
EXPERIENCES DURING
THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN
AND THE SIEGE OF MALTA
EASY COMPANY
506TH
PARACHUTE
INFANTRY
REGIMENT - IN
PHOTOGRAPHS
by Tom Neil, with an

introduction by James Holland
by The Men of Easy

Company
Toms memoir of four tumultuous

years (1938-1942). The Germans
were blitzing their way across
France in the spring of 1940
when Tom received his first
posting. Nineteen years old and fresh from training, he was
soon pitched into the maelstrom of air fighting in the Battle of Britain.
By the end of the year, he had shot down 13 enemy aircraft and seen
many of his friends killed or injured.
From the frying pan and into the fire, he was shipped off to the
beleaguered island of Malta to face another Luftwaffe onslaught. Here
he shot down another enemy fighter and survived several engine failures
and emergencies. Miraculously, he survived two of the biggest ever aerial
campaigns.
In his 95th year, Tom is one of only 25 Battle of Britain veterans still alive
today. This vivid memoir is his last word on his fighter pilot experiences.
PUBLISHER: Amberley Publishing
PRICE: 25
WHERE TO BUY: www.amberley-books.com/scramble.html
TANKS A LOT
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IN THE NEXT ISSUE

ON SALE 12 NOVEMBER
AUSTERLITZ: NAPOLEONS GREATEST BATTLE
ALSO NEXT ISSUE:
In 1815, an ageing Napoleon crashed to defeat at Waterloo. Ten years

before, at the height of his powers, he had triumphed in an equally
significant battle that had made him master of Europe. Next months
special provides in-depth analysis of the Battle of Three Emperors.

The Tsars army: from the Crimea to the World War

Hawker Hurricane: the biography of a battle-winning
fighter plane
Tudor walls: the defence of England under Henry VIII
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THE MHM QUIZ, CROSSWORD, AND CAPTION COMPETITION
MHM QUIZ
Patrick Bishops book, The Cooler King,
tells the astonishing story of William Ash.
Ash was an American pilot who, having
been shot down in his Spitfire over
France in early 1942, spent the rest of
the war defying the Nazis by striving
to escape from every prisoner-of-war
camp in which he was incarcerated.
It is a narrative full of incident and
high drama, ending with a break out
This month we have three copies of The Cooler King

to be won, courtesy of Atlantic Books.
through the latrines of the Oflag XXIB
prison camp in Poland a great untold
episode of the Second World War.
The book is populated by a cast of
fascinating characters, including
Douglas Bader, Roger Bushell
(who would go on to lead the Great
Escape), and Paddy Barthropp, a dashing Battle of Britain pilot, who, despite
his very different background, became
Ashs best friend and shared many

of his adventures.
The book weaves together
contemporary documents and
interviews with Ashs comrades. The
author vividly recreates the multiple
escape attempts, and examines the
PoW experience, reavealing the passion that drove some prisoners to risk
death in repeated bids for freedom.
MHM
CROSSWORD
NO 62
ACROSS
7 British tank, in production from 1945
to 1962 (9)
8 Island awarded the George Cross in
April 1942 (5)
10 Greek city-state defeated in 371 BC at
the Battle of Leuctra (6)
11 City where General Gordon was killed
in January 1885 (8)
12 Surname of actor playing Colonel Claus
von Stauffenberg in the film Valkyrie (6)
13 Tall fur hat normally worn as part of
ceremonial dress (8)
14 Defoliant used in great quantities by
the United States during the Vietnam
War (5,6)
19 Sir ___ , Royal Navy RFA badly
damaged during the Falklands War (8)
21 Kurt ___, German general, in
command of the XXXVIII Panzerkorps
from 1942 to 1945 (6)
22 Japanese company that produced many
military aircraft during World War II (8)
24 Wilbraham ___, British general who,
as a lieutenant, was awarded the Victoria
Cross for action in the Crimea (6)
80
November 2015
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? From which well-known war film does

the title Cooler King originate?
We continue our caption competition with an image from this

months feature on the Italian Resistance. Pit your wits against
other readers at www.military-history.org/competitions
LAST MONTHS WINNER

ANSWERS
OCTOBER ISSUE | MHM 61

ACROSS: 7 Potomac, 8 Air raid, 10 Drill, 11 Arkansas,
12 Necessary Evil, 14 The Great Artiste, 17 Revolutionary,
21 Canberra, 22 Harjo, 23 Sutlers, 24 Croatia.
DOWN: 1 Dordrecht, 2 Mobile, 3 Carlisle, 4 Pinkie,
5 Brindisi, 6 Sinai, 9 Harry Truman, 13 Sturmovik, 15 Goebbels,
16 Reinhard, 18 Orrery, 19 Norway, 20 Padua.
25 Margaret of ___, wife of Henry VI

taken prisoner after the Battle of
Tewkesbury (5)
26 Battle fought in Maryland during
the War of 1812 (9)
DOWN
1 German tank, which entered service
in 1965 (7)
2 ___ Bridge, battle fought in Scotland
in September 1297 (8)
3 Piece of armour covering the lower
leg (6)
4 City three miles north of which
the Battle of the Standard was fought
in 1138 (4)
5 Edict of ___, signed in 1598 at the end
of the French Wars of Religion (6)
6 Kingdom in existence between 1801
and 1807, created following the Treaty of
Aranjuez between France and Spain (7)
9 Battle fought in the West Indies in
1748 during the War of Jenkins Ear (6)
13 ___ & Voss, German company

which designed many unusual and
asymmetric aircraft during World
War II (5)
15 ___ Cota, US general awarded
the Distinguished Service Cross
for action at Omaha Beach on
D-Day (6)
16 Apache leader who surrendered
to US forces in September 1886 (8)
17 The ___ Objective, book by Wes
Davis about the secret war in Crete
against the Nazis (7)
18 The flags of a regiment (7)
20 Israeli Prime Minister who had
served as a general during the Yom
Kippur War in 1973 (6)
21 Spartan slaves who were
sometimes granted their freedom
after performing military service (6)
23 ___ Bagramyan, Soviet marshal,
commander of the First Baltic Front
from 1943 to 1945 (4)
WINNER:
Wheres the bloomin idiot who said drinks
are on the house?!
Joe Agius
RUNNERS-UP
Sorry Sergeant I had a night out on the tiles.
Stephen Johnson
I am gonna kill the SOB who packed my chute!
Hammerhead
Think you can do better?

Go head-to-head with other MHM readers for the
chance to see your caption printed in the next issue.
Enter now at www.military-history.org/competitions
81
g ro
in
f
ie
r
B
+
m
o
o
r
g
in
f
om + Brie
o
r
g
in
f
ie
r
B
+
m
o
o
r
briefing
ALL YOU NEED TO

KNOW ABOUT
What's that, some kind

of canine contraption?
Youre barking up the wrong tree. The Bristol Bloodhound was a British surfaceto-air missile developed during the 1950s as the UKs main air-defence weapon.
The Mark II came into service in 1964.
Sounds like rocket science.

How did it work?
It was. Two Bristol Thor ramjet engines provided the main propulsion. To speed
acceleration on launch, four Gosling booster-rockets provided additional power.
The boosters would fall away after some 3 seconds, when the missile would have
achieved a speed around Mach 2.5 (about 1,900mph at sea-level).
Rams, goslings... sounds

pretty rustic. What was
the upgrade like?
Though similar in appearance to the Mark I, the Mark II was more versatile.
A major improvement was to the target-illuminating radar, which was far less
susceptible to jamming than its predecessor. It was also given a larger warhead,
had greater range, and was able to engage aircraft at higher and lower altitudes.
The Mark II was capable of intercepting targets at heights of between 150ft
and 65,000ft. It had a maximum range of around 115 miles, with a minimum
impact range at low level of 6.9 miles and a maximum impact range at high
level of 86.25 miles.
As with the Mark I, the missile was kept on track by a receiver dish in the
nose cone that picked up a reflected signal from the target aircraft. But commands
could also be issued from the launch control post during flight.
Detonation was controlled by a proximity fuse.
Explosive. How was it deployed?
The Bloodhound was a relatively large missile, generally limited to stationary

defensive roles.
When the Bloodhounds were brought back from Germany in 1983, they
were stationed at three airfields in East Anglia. Here they were placed in
groups of six, on eight-sided pads linked by servicing tracks, while the arming
sheds were steel-framed, clad in corrugated sheeting, and surrounded by
earthwork revetments.
82
Photo: Courtesy of Rolls
-Royce plc
Bristol Bloodhound Mark II

Missile System
The Mark II fact file
Mobility: static, though a mobile version was later

developed
Crew: unmanned
Range: for maximum impact at high level around
86 miles,
but maximum range was around 115 miles
Rate of fire: when its gone, its gone
Complement: missiles were usually placed in group
s of six
Date: in RAF service 1964-1991
Groundbreaking stuff.
Who invented it?
Well, if we ignore the ancient Chinese and their gunpowder, a giant acknowledgement is owed to von Braun and German scientists at work during WWII. But this
particular variety of rocket is down to a team at the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
Every dog has his day.

How many were used?
Thankfully, none was ever fired in anger.
Then what's all the fuss about?

In tests, the Bloodhound scored direct hits on target bombers flying at
50,000ft.Mark II production models were, however, fitted with proximity fuses,
increasing their effectiveness by their ability to destroy attacking aircraft without
even requiring a direct hit.
The missile also had an advanced continuous-wave semi-active radar homing
system, offering excellent performance against electronic countermeasures, as
well as a digital computer for fire control.
So was it any good?
Fortunately, we will never know.
November 2015

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November 2015 Issue 62 4.

Partridges best war art

The Irish at Messines, 1917

The First Punic War

November 2015 Issue 62 4.50

Partridges best war art

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD:

ilitary power sometimes works simply by virtue of its

the Jacobites won at Prestonpans, 1745

ON THE COVER: Prince Charles Edward

Director-General, National Museum

CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTHS EXPERTS

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November 2015 | ISSUE 62

The First Punic

Notes from the Frontline

Behind the Image

MHM looks at a photograph of

The forgotten Jacobite

Patrick Boniface assesses the

42 The Irish at Messines

Mark Bryant examines the war

How soldiers from North and

Tom Farrell explores the issues that

MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

Advertising Sales: Grace Biggins

Marketing Manager: Emma Watts-Plumpkin

IN THE FIELD | MHM VISITS

Stephen Miles travels to Poland to

Taylor Downing reviews the Nazi

Book of the Month | 62

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Military History Monthly, Thames

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MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

Our round-up of this months military history news

CROMWELLS CAPTIVES REVEALED

and Castle of the city, these buildings

and Cathedral, were all from men,

wounds such as might have been

New funding for IWM Holocaust displays

MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

of Jewish and non-Jewish people.

led by the UK Holocaust

ensure that Britain has a

The Black Book

FINAL FLIGHT OF HALIFAX LV881

investigation by the regional archaeological

Military History Monthly, Thames Works,

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MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

No precise details survive of where or when this

MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY

Text: Maria Earle