Wales And World War One

The first book aimed at the general reader that deals comprehensively with Wales and the First World War in English and includes extracts from diaries and letters not previously published.

This study is the first thorough analysis of the extent of the opposition to the Great War in Wales, and is the most extensive study of the anti-war movement in any part of Britain. It is, therefore, a significant contribution to our understanding of people’s responses to the conflict, and the difficulty of mobilising the population for total war. The anti-war movement in Wales and beyond developed quickly from the initial shock of the declaration of war, to the civil disobedience of anti-war activists and the industrial discontent excited by the Russian Revolution and experienced in areas such as the south Wales coalfield in 1917. The differing responses to the war within Wales are explored in this book, which charts how the pacifist tradition of nineteenth-century Welsh Nonconformity was quickly overturned. The two main elements of the anti-war movement are analysed in depth: the pacifist religious opposition, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Nonconformist dissidents who were particularly influential in north and west Wales; and the political opposition concentrated in the Independent Labour Party and among the radical left within the South Wales Miners’ Federation.

In this, his third First World War related book, with the emphasis on the northern part of Wales, Robert H. Griffiths provides fresh insights into a plethora of themes and topics which make for absorbing reading.

This text provides a comprehensive examination of the social and political significance of remembrance in Wales. It places the commemoration process within the wider context of Welsh history in the decade following World War I, and studies the impact if that war upon local communities.

In Wales at War, Stuart Broomfield examines how World War II affected Wales and its people. He includes its role as a strategic refuge, attitudes to the conflict, air raids and the crisis in the coal industry. He also seeks to explain why the Labour Party did so well there in the General Election of 1945, despite Winston Churchill's status as victorious war-leader.

The author's compilation of a unique register identifying those individual South Wales miners who served in the tunneling companies has allowed a remarkable story to be told. For the first time, the lives of individual South Wales miners are highlighted from pre-war mining days: their very personal contribution within the tunneling companies, to the resting places of those who did not survive the war - and, for the survivors, their ultimate dispatch home. The underlying theme is of an indefatigable band of men, together with like-minded miners from other British coalfields, asked to carry out multi-tasked duties associated with a form of military mining not foreseen prior to the outbreak of war. Before a major battle, these men constructed large underground dugouts to house troops away from enemy shell fire. In exploding huge mines under German lines immediately before the British attack, they aided the advancing infantry in causing death and confusion in the German lines. During the British advance in 1918, they became experts in the dangerous work of defusing enemy booby-traps, delay-action and landmines in front of the advancing troops. They showed all the resolution, fortitude and determination - if not sheer bloody-mindedness - to see the job through; so reminiscent of the miner at home struggling to earn a decent rate of pay in the most arduous of conditions. There was a price to pay... Details are given of the 207 miners who died whilst on active service and of how many others were repatriated after gunshot wounds, gas poisoning or ill-health. Accounts are given of miners entombed underground as a result of enemy explosions; medals awarded for acts of bravery when attempting to free trapped miners; and of those taken as prisoners of war when the enemy broke into British workings. Old men and young boys lied about their ages to gain acceptance into the tunneling companies - and suffered the harsh consequences. A unique investigation such as this not only acknowledges the miners' personal contribution as tunnelers, but also serves as a scholarly and novel addition to the existing literature concerning the history of the Great War, its tunneling companies, South Wales, its coalfield and the lives of its miners. There can be little doubt that this work will, in years to come, establish itself as a standard text in the history of military mining not only in a specific sense, but also as a work on the Great War in general.

Memoirs of British medical officer J. C. Dunn during World War I: “The first duty of a battalion medical officer in War is to discourage the evasion of duty...not seldom against one’s better feelings, sometimes to the temporary hurt of the individual, but justice to all other men as well as discipline demands it.” “Sometimes, through word of mouth and shared enthusiasm, a secret book becomes famous. The War the Infantry Knew is one of them. Published privately in a limited edition of five hundred copies in 1938, it gained a reputation as an outstanding account of an infantry battalion's experience on the Western Front.”—Daily Telegraph “I have been waiting for a long time for someone to republish this classic. It is one of the most interesting and revealing books of its type and is a genuinely truthful and fascinating picture of the war as it was for the infantry”—John Keegan 'A remarkably coherent narrative of the battalion's experiences in diary form...a moving historical record which deserves to be added to the select list of outstanding accounts of the First World War”—Times Literary Supplement “A magnificent tour de force, the length of three ordinary books.”—London Review of Books