As We Were

David Hargreaves

Description

Fought between 1914 and 1918, World War One - The Great War - was the most titanic and devastating conflict the world had yet seen. Detailing the course of the war week-by-week and the intimate accounts and experiences of soldiers and civilians alike, As We Were offers insight like no other into a war that impacted generations the world over.

Sujets

• Histoire
• World War I

Informations

• Publié par: whitefox Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 25 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913532666
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

AS WE WERE
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Tales from a broken world, week-by-week

BOOKS 1–4
WE SHALL BE CHANGED
•
THAT RICH EARTH
•
HELP ME TO DIE
•
ALL MY SONS
DAVID HARGREAVES MARGARET-LOUISE O’KEEFEE
First published in 2021 by David Hargreaves and Margaret-Louise O’Keeffe in partnership with whitefox publishing
http://centuryjournal.com/
Copyright © David Hargreaves and Margaret-Louise O’Keeffe, 2021 Cover photograph © Paul Popper/Popperfoto via Getty Images
The authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the authors.
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein, the authors and publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgments in any future editions.
As We Were eBook Edition (Books One–Four) 978-1-913532-66-6
We Shall Be Changed (Book One) That Rich Earth (Book Two) Help Me to Die (Book Three) All My Sons (Book Four)
Cover design by Tomás Almeida Editor: Elspeth Sinclair Barrie
About the Authors

David Hargreaves was born in 1959 and studied history at Worcester College, Oxford. He became a history teacher, working first at Stamford School and then, for nearly thirty years, at Westminster School, where he was head of the sixth form and a boarding housemaster. Since 2014, he has divided his time between writing and running his education consultancy, DHC London. He lives in North London.
David’s other writings include Bismarck and German Unification (Macmillan, 1991) and a novel, Under The Table (Unbound, 2018), as well as articles on a range of subjects for national newspapers and periodicals.
Margaret-Louise O’Keeffe was born in 1951. After reading English at Girton College, Cambridge, she completed a two-year MA in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her research there led to the redating of the Lorenzo Monaco altarpiece in the National Gallery.
After teaching at various schools and universities, she was Deputy Head at Princethorpe College, near Rugby, until 2007. Since then, she has worked as a freelance lecturer giving talks on literature and art history. Margaret-Louise appeared on both University Challenge and Mastermind .
Preface

In 2014, David was invited by Robert Cottrell, editor of The Browser , to write a series of weekly articles on the First World War. These were to be published to coincide exactly with the week’s events a century earlier. Miraculously, we never missed a week.
We doubt many people imagined the project would endure. The fact that it did is due to an extraordinarily happy and effective collaboration between us. In formal terms, David was the essayist and Margaret-Louise the researcher, but in every particular there has been an exhaustive and wholly even-handed exchange of ideas and weighing of views. We tried to recreate the experience of living through the war as it happened, including as much personal detail as possible. Our efforts have resulted in these four volumes.
We owe huge thanks to Dermot O’Keeffe who contributed greatly to the research for the first six months of the war. Our thanks also go to Elspeth Sinclair Barrie, William Barrie, Duncan Brown, Tim Clark, Francesco Coppola, Robert Cottrell, Anthony Fry, Julia Koppitz, Toby Mundy, Henry Raine, James Wan, Tom and Kate Weisselberg, Chris Wold.
David Hargreaves and Margaret-Louise O’Keeffe, November 2020
Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
About the Authors
Preface
As We were - We Shall be Changed
Dramatis Personae
1: Britain enters the war
2: A war of survival
3: First battles on the Western Front
4: Britain and France in retreat
5: The Allies in danger
6: The search for strategy
7: A missed chance of peace
8: The battle for the Aisne
9: The agony of Antwerp
10: Hubris
11: For lack of any better idea
12: First Ypres – beyond imagining
13: The triumph of the Worcesters
14: The best of men and the worst of men
15: The game book
16: Special destiny
17: Bracing words from Lord Kitchener
18: Settling old scores
19: Ruling the waves
20: No rhyme or reason
21: While alleluias rang
22: Cold turkey
23: His Master’s Voice
24: Dead Poets Society
25: Their knavish tricks
26: Smile, boys, that’s the smile
27: Brides in the bath
28: Glorious food
29: Oh Tiber! Father Tiber!
30: The single life
31: The soft underbelly
32: False dawn on the Western Front
33: Toujours la même chose
34: My boy Jack
35: Hope which springs eternal
36: A whiff of treason
37: Someone once loved the man
38: That rich earth
39: How dare he?
40: For those in peril on the sea
41: The dog it was that died
42: Do your worst
43: I cannot pray
44: Dear God: the flies
45: The tears of things
46: Whistleblower
47: A very good bloke indeed
48: Never out of my thoughts
49: Was it so hard, Achilles? So very hard to die?
50: Pantomime dame
51: The biter bit
52: Invoking the deity
53: Taking it and keeping quiet
54: Sorrows which came in battalions
55: Don’t duck, Fred
56: Gott strafe England
As We were - That Rich Earth
Dramatis Personae
57: Your old Papa
58: Greater loyalties
59: Tinker and the women
60: The British physique
61: An immense dignity
62: Neither hatred nor bitterness
63: Abide with me
64: Common clay
65: Rogue mare
66: Self-inflicted
67: The petulance of Sir John
68: If we had to die twice
69: Unfavourable comparisons with the French
70: Spreading the load
71: Our hearts together
72: You didn’t push us off, Jacko – we just left
73: Yet he shall live
74: I have shot a duke
75: The death of liberal England?
76: Always personal
77: Noblesse oblige
78: Stepping up to the plate
79: An unedifying business
80: Don’t mess with Mimi
81: The human chain
82: Verdun: a diabolical inferno
83: Pain and indignation
84: Le beau colonel
85: Lower extremities
86: The power to hate
87: Not for turning
88: The last moments of Don Juan
89: Imperial jitters
90: Imagine the rage
91: Not pretty
92: Vicious brew
93: The nearness of God
94: Hatreds which choke
95: The pleasures of paranoia
96: Our bloody ships
97: As if it mattered
98: Living without regret
99: Friends now
100: Help me to die, O Lord
101: Stornaway kippers and anchovy paste
102: The unspoken compact
103: My day was happy
104: In their pride
105: The death of Roger Casement
106: The tin man
107: Only his heart and his eyes
108: Everyman
109: What the butler saw
110: The noise, my dear – and the people
111: Most barbarous, I call it
112: Never prouder of anything
113: The claims of good sportsmanship
As We were - Help Me to Die
Dramatis Personae
114: Who made the law?
115: Gawping at amputees
116: Oh I was delighted
117: Now you’ll be frightened
118: Preconceived ideas
119: The root of the tragedy
120: Hard lessons learned
121: Numberless fears
122: A bombast and a bully
123: Cometh the hour
124: The only way
125: The professionals
126: Let it disappear
127: Eau-de-Cologne, triple strength
128: Are you being served?
129: Blinker and the boys and girls of Room 40
130: God or Mammon?
131: Bad call by the beancounters
132: Ice station
133: Loose tongue?
134: Family man
135: The sacred spark
136: Absolutely friendless
137: And so it goes
138: Hooligans, armed with rifles
139: Beelzebub
140: Invitation rescinded
141: It helps a lot
142: Absence of punishment
143: Adieu, Nivelle
144: Best of chums
145: Marked down for the gallows
146: The spirit is there
147: Afternoon sports
148: Working the vegetable patch
149: Jolly boating weather
150: Grace and humility
151: The last person on earth
152: Jerusalem by Christmas
153: Left wheel
154: The pain will return
155: Who would true valour see
156: A terrible sinking inside
157: The legs and the kilt went on running
158: Going to hell
159: Hats off
160: None of us the same
161: This year in France or Italy?
162: Something which is lost
163: I don’t like dying so young
164: The brothers
165: A little tearful
166: To laugh or cry?
167: The awful truth
As We were - All My Sons
Dramatis Personae
168: Missing Oxford
169: Like a meteor
170: No jokes or singing
171: The sapling
172: Bonjour, M. Clemenceau
173: Did we really?
174: My brother’s keeper
175: Next year in Jerusalem
176: It is terror
177: Guns and gallows
178: Just as I am
179: Within sight
180: Unrecognised
181: Go on, or go under
182: I shall meet my fate
183: Do you hear the people sing?
184: Daring to look ahead
185: Shafted
186: Stand in the corner
187: The dominatrix
188: The long tease
189: The dog it was
190: To lose a friend
191: The long Good Friday
192: The ghastly second prize
193: Backs to the wall
194: Burdened with glory
195: Life worth living
196: A nightingale sang
197: The very model of a modern major general
198: Change and decay
199: In full flow
200: Billing and the Black Book
201: A little local discomfort
202: Another country
203: The perfumed garden
204: At any cost
205: Sunday soldier
206: All my sons
207: Played out in three days
208: Ugly rumours
209: Death by solemnity?
210: Pearls before swine
211: I have not changed
212: An expression of love
213: For whose glory?
214: A pathetic tune
215: Airing their French
216: The breath of life
217: Peace is very good
218: To put a bullet in one’s head
219: Gentle rain from heaven
220: The little girl and the gunner
221: He looked so young
222: The old, old story
223: A