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Description: | Ts memoir (184pp), written as fiction but based upon his real-life service as a Private and later officer with an unidentified infantry regiment based at Gallipoli and on the Western Front during the First World War, recalling his and others' motives for enlisting in 1914 and their basic training with Lee Enfield rifles, British propaganda about German atrocities in Belgium, his leisure activities, marching songs, his secret visit ashore to Alexandria while his ship was en route to Gallipoli, his landing at Gallipoli and the role of the RIVER CLYDE, the terrain of the Peninsula and trench conditions, the risk from sniper fire, sentry duty, hygiene including latrines and cases of Dysentery and Typhoid, the bombardment of Turkish lines from land batteries and warships, his Battalion's assault on Turkish trenches and the landing at Suvla Bay, his involvement in digging tunnels under enemy trenches and an explosion which buried him and resulted in his being sent to a field hospital on Lemnos where he describes the hospital conditions, nurses and wounded travelling on the MAURETANIA, and his own evacuation back to the United Kingdom on the AQUITANIA via Naples; after recovering from his wounds, Blake was promoted to corporal and sent to France where he took part in the Somme offensive (July 1916) and describes support from tanks, the capture of a German underground dugout complex and pill boxes, his billets at a French farmhouse, underage enlistment, his return to the UK for officer cadet training in the Midlands before being commissioned and posted to Belgium in 1917, a phosgene gas attack and aerial attacks by German planes, and the mutiny at Etaples Base Camp (September 1917). Blake was wounded in 1918 and demobilised in January 1919.
Cataloguer JMG
Catalogue date 2002-12-13 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Blake, H | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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