Tag Archives: War

Diary entries which mention aspects of the war (other than naval and aerial warfare, which are separately tagged) which ALL noted but in which he had no direct involvement.

29 April 1915; Thursday

April 1915, , ,

At work as usual. Busy all day. Finished late.

Germans using poisonous gases1  2 & made an advance near Ypres at this time.

  1. The first successful, large scale use of gas was in the German attack at Langemarck in the NW. angle of the Ypres Salient, on 22 April; initially against French African troops, but Canadian and British troops were soon involved. German prisoners had given detailed accounts of the preparations, but the French Corps commander, Balfourier, would neither believe the warnings nor transmit them to the British. ↩

  2. See also: Wikipedia: Chemical weapons in World War I and Wikipedia: Second Battle of Ypres ↩

23 April 1915; Friday

April 1915, , , ,

At work as usual. Got a sales book a bit further up today. Read a bit at night. Bought the “Roadmender.”1 Shipping between England & Holland stopped. Had short walk last thing. Mr Chadwick called at the shop. Edward off all day.

  1. “The Roadmender”, by ‘Michael Fairless’ (Margaret Fairless Barber, 1869 – 1901), is a consolatory Christian work, written by Fairless/Barber in her last illness and published 1902. It was immensely popular (reprinted 31 times in 10 years) before the era of effective modern medicine and during WW1; old copies still abound. See also: Arthur Linfoot’s Library ↩

22 February 1915; Monday

February 1915, , , ,

At work as usual. Busy all day. Busy in house at night. Charlie brought message that Father and I have to go to Heath’s tomorrow and see about compensation business.

Dardanelles1 Outer Forts bombarded by British & French fleet.

  1. The Dardanelles operation is probably too well known to need much explanation, but – there was disagreement throughout: whether any resources for it should be diverted from the Western Front; whether it was even possible to open the Dardanelles solely with naval action (this diary entry records the attempt to do so); whether, if that failed (which it did), troops should be sent in: they were, and that was a prolonged and very expensive failure, too. ↩

17 February 1915; Wednesday

February 1915, ,

Busy at work. Busy in house at night and didn’t go out. Two big Air Raids on Zeebrugge and thereabouts about this time. 34 machines in the first and 40 in the second1.

  1. “Two big air raids…”: This page at rallypoint.com suggests that, on February 12 1915, there was indeed a raid by 34 British planes on the coastal towns of Blankenberghe, Ostend and Zeebrugge in Belgium. There is no mention of any subsequent raid by 40 planes, although there is no reason to doubt it. ↩