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THE relatives of slain British soldiers have accused the Department of Veterans' Affairs of banning them from attending centenary commemorations for a catastrophic WWI battle that killed thousands of Australian soldiers. The Battle of Fromelles is among Australia's bloodiest military encounters and the brutal loss has long been blamed on a disastrous incompetence of British military strategy. A special service to mark the battle's 100th anniversary is to take place on July 19 this year at the Pheasant Wood military cemetery in Fromelles, northern France. The slaughter is viewed by historians as the darkest 24 hours in the Australia's history...

There is something hard, cold, and brutal about the structure. It looks like a concrete airplane hangar and rising above it is what is called the “Lantern of the Dead." The shape suggests, appropriately, an artillery shell. When you walk around the outside of the building you find small windows, and when you look through them what you see are bones. Human bones and skulls. Piles of them. They are the remains of more than 130,000 men who were killed here and whose bodies could not be recovered or identified and so remained in the mud, blown apart again and...

After listening to one of my favorite podcaster, Dan Carlin & his Hardcore History, about the beginning of World War I, I would love to find out more about this time in history. I know that Freepers are a well read bunch and I am asking for any recommendations you may care to make in a good book covering this time in history.

A massive artillery bombardment on the morning of February 21st 1916 signalled the start of the German attack on Verdun, the longest single battle of the First World War. More than 1,200 guns opened fire before German troops began their assault on fortifications of major symbolic inportance to France. Even by the standards of the Great War, the Battle of Verdun was a particularly brutal campaign of attrition, fuelled by the determination of both sides not to give way as the struggle wore on. The battle was to last 300 days, almost until Christmas, on a narrow front stretching no...

Jean-Marie Loret, who died in 1985 aged 67, never met his father, but went on to fight Nazi forces during the Second World War. His extraordinary story has now been backed up by a range of compelling evidence, both in France and in Germany, which is published in the latest edition of Paris's Le Point magazine. Hitler is said to have had an affair with Mr Loret's mother, Charlotte Lobjoie, 16, as he took a break from the trenches in June 1917. Although he was fighting the French near Seboncourt, in the northern Picardy region, Hitler made his way to...

Until his death in 1985, Jean-Marie Loret believed that he was the only son of Adolf Hitler. There is now renewed attention to evidence from France and Germany that apparently lends some credence to his claim. Loret collected information from two studies; one conducted by the University of Heidelberg in 1981 and another conducted by a handwriting analyst that showed Loret’s blood type and handwriting, respectively, were similar to the Nazi Germany dictator who died childless in 1945 at age 56. The evidence is inconclusive but Loret’s story itself was riveting enough to warrant some investigation. The French newspaper Le...

First use of Code Talkers in combat, 1918 The use of pre American languages to protect U.S. voice com began in, 1918. Early on, in World War I, "Captain Lawrence noted conscripts speaking Choctaw bla bla, and recognized a potential to secure line active, field communications. Choctaw com contributed directly to constriction and later withdrawal of two companies during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and were later used in the implementing a successful surprise attack on the Germans at Forest Farm. A belated program expanded in to World War II. http://www.comanchemuseum.com/code_talkers Comanche Code Talkers of World War II. In late 1940, 17...

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

THE Battle of Lone Pine was more a "vicious armed brawl" than an example of modern war, Governor-General Peter Cosgrove has told a centenary service to mark the bloody conflict. HUNDREDS of people endured sweltering heat on the Gallipoli Peninsula on Thursday to attend the service on a battleground where some 800 Australians died, 1500 were wounded and seven Victoria Crosses were won. In recognition of such gallantry VC winners Mark Donaldson, Daniel Keighran and Keith Payne took part in the service along with Doug Baird, the father of VC winner Corporal Cameron Baird who was killed in Afghanistan in...

Nearly 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, during World War I. Turks by and large do not believe mass killings were planned. CUNGUS, Turkey — The crumbling stone monastery, built into the hillside, stands as a forlorn monument to an awful past. So, too, does the decaying church on the other side of this mountain village. Farther out, a crevice is sliced into the earth, so deep that peering into it, one sees only blackness. Haunting for its history, it was there that a century ago, an untold number of Armenians were tossed...

WW100: When Jerusalem Met Gallipoli 100 Years Ago; When Turks Met Jews on the Battlefield Ottoman Imperial Archives Image image/mapWorld War I began in Europe in the summer of 1914 with major battles between the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary versus the Triple Alliance of the United Kingdom, France and Russia. The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) joined with the Central Powers and attacked the British at the Suez Canal in January 1915. In an attempt to put pressure on Germany and Turkey, Britain sent warships to the Dardanelle Straits in April 1915, planning sail up the narrow, 60-mile-long waterway...

In WWI Alvin York almost single handedly captured 132 German soldiers using nothing but a rifle and a pistol, while the German soldiers having among them 32 machine guns along with rifles and pistols and the advantage of being above him in the biggest of the forays.  And did I mention York was out in the open during the largest gun fight?  Ya, when the Germans attacked they pretty much mowed down almost the entire unit that York was with, including York’s commanding officer, which put him in charge.  The other soldiers left from the original group of 17, were...

With British and German forces separated only by a no-man's land littered with fallen comrades, sounds of a German Christmas carol suddenly drifted across the frigid air. "It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere: and at about 7 or 8 in the evening there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches and there were these lights -- I don't know what they were. And then they sang, "Silent Night" – "Stille Nacht." I shall never forget it, it was one of the highlights of my life. I thought, what a beautiful tune,"...

Yesterday, June 28, 2014, marked the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Assassin Gavrilo Princip fired the first shot in what was to become a horrific years-long bloodbath. However, after the sound of gunfire was silenced on Armistice Day, the deaths continued to mount. Revolutions spawned in Russia and Germany, arbitrary redrawing of national borders set the stage for decades of conflict, harsh reparation demands inspired the rise of Nazi Germany and the onset of World War II. The first World War continues to kill to this day - just this past March, two Belgian construction workers...

'A bank of fog was sitting a couple of miles out at sea and a heavy mist lay over the East Coast resort of Scarborough as postman Alfred Beal climbed the wide front steps of Dunollie, a porticoed mansion high on the town’s South Cliff. He never reached the door that fateful morning on December 16, 1914, almost exactly a century ago. Three German warships had burst out of the fog bank and were now steaming past the headland, firing volley after volley of shells. One caught poor Beal and blasted his shattered body back down the drive. A second...

“Retreat? Hell, we just got here!”

Between July and November of 1917, one of the greatest disasters of the Great War unfolded near the Belgian town of Ypres, where the British and their allies fought the Germans for control of some ridges running through Flanders. Better known as the Battle of Passchendaele, hundreds of thousands of men occupied trenches, dugouts and underground tunnels on the front lines. Among the British forces there were many seasoned infantrymen who could claim to have seen all the technological terrors so far gathered together on World War I battlefields—machine gun fire, poison gas, strafing and bombing by aircraft. But for...

More than 700,000 records relating to WWI, as well as photos, films and audio recordings were made accessible on a new portal on the Federal Archive's website. The collection includes private material as well as files of military and civilian authorities, records left by politicians and military officers, documentaries and propaganda films. Access to the complete archive is free. The archive will also help people compiling family histories, say curators, since it has extensive information about locations where individual soldiers served. It also contains letters written to and by combatants in the war, which began on July 28, 1914, and...

Estonian divers have discovered a watercraft in the Baltic Sea that they believe to be one of Russia's first battle submarines, Estonian media reported. The Shark, which was first launched in 1911, disappeared in 1915 at the height of World War I. It was carrying a crew of 35 at the time, whose fate has since remained unknown.

Austrian Soldier, Eastern Europe, 1915 German troops in Berlin, 1914 Ambulances in Palestine, 1918 French trenches, 1916 Senegalese troops, France, 1917 Dead Italian soldiers, Italy, 1915