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59th (2nd North Midland) Division
The 59th (2nd North Midland) Division was an infantry Division (military), division of the British Army during World War I. It was formed in late 1914/early 1915 as a 2nd Line Territorial Force formation raised as a duplicate of the 46th (North Midland) Division. After training in the United Kingdom and saw service in the Easter Rising in April 1916, the division joined the British Expeditionary Force (World War I), British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front (World War I), Western Front in early 1917. It saw action at Battle of Passchendaele, Ypres and Battle of Cambrai (1917), Cambrai, and was almost destroyed during the German Army (Wehrmacht), German Army's German spring offensive, Spring Offensive in March 1918. The reconstituted division took part in the Hundred Days Offensive, final advances of the war. Origin The formation of Reserve or 2nd Line units of the Territorial Force (TF) was authorised on 31 August 1914, and the units were quickly formed from the floo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nevill Smyth
Major General Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smyth, (14 August 1868 – 21 July 1941) was a senior officer in the British Army and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Early life Born the son of Warington Wilkinson Smyth, a noted geologist, his grandfather was Admiral William Henry Smyth. His father's sister, Henrietta Grace Powell, was Robert Baden-Powell's mother making Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout Movement, Smyth's first cousin. Smyth was educated at Westminster School and graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in 1888. He was posted to the Queen's Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards) in India as a second lieutenant on 22 August 1888. In 1890 he was attached to the Royal Engineers to assist with a railway survey during the Zhob Valley expedition. Sudan 1896 saw him stationed in Cairo with his regiment, and he was promoted lieutenant on 26 April. For his services ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Machine Gun Corps
The Machine Gun Corps (MGC) was a corps of the British Army, formed in October 1915 in response to the need for more effective use of machine guns on the Western Front in the First World War. The Heavy Branch of the MGC was the first to use tanks in combat and was subsequently turned into the Tank Corps, later called the Royal Tank Regiment. The MGC remained in existence after the war until it was disbanded in 1922. Formation At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the tactical potential of machine guns was not appreciated by the British Armed Forces. The prevalent attitude of senior ranks at the outbreak of the Great War can be summed up by the opinion of an officer expressed a decade earlier that a single battery of machine guns per army corps was a sufficient level of issue. Despite the evidence of fighting in Manchuria (1905 onwards) the army therefore went to war with each infantry battalion and cavalry regiment containing a machine gun section of just two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Staffordshire Regiment
The North Staffordshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, which was in existence between 1881 and 1959. The 64th (2nd Staffordshire) Regiment of Foot was created on 21 April 1758 from the 2nd Battalion of the 11th Regiment of Foot. In 1881, under the Childers Reforms, the 64th Regiment of Foot was merged with the 98th (Prince of Wales's) Regiment of Foot (originally raised in 1824) to form the Prince of Wales's (North Staffordshire Regiment). In 1921 the regimental title was altered to the North Staffordshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's). Formed at a time when the British Empire was reaching its peak, the regiment served all over the Empire, in times of both peace and war, and in many theatres of war outside the Empire. It fought with distinction in World War I and World War II, as well as in other smaller conflicts around the world. These other wars included the Second Sudanese War, the Second Boer War, the Anglo-Irish War and the T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Staffordshire Rangers
The Staffordshire Rangers was a volunteer unit of the British Army from the ' Potteries' area around Stoke-on-Trent. It fought on the Western Front in World War I as the 5th Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment. In World War II it served as a Royal Artillery searchlight regiment in Home Defence and was the first complete searchlight unit to land in North-Western Europe after the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944. Its successors continue to serve in the Army Reserve (previously the Territorial Army) as part of the Mercian Regiment. Origins As a result of an invasion scare in 1859, Rifle Volunteer Corps (RVCs) began to be organised throughout Great Britain. The 2nd Staffordshire RVC was raised in Longton, near Stoke-on-Trent, on 30 September 1859, and was quickly followed by others. By May 1860, there were enough company-sized RVCs in the Stoke area to be formed into the 1st Staffordshire Administrative Battalion. Brevet Major Coote Manningham Buller, a half-pay officer wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Staffordshire Regiment
The South Staffordshire Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army in existence for only 68 years. The regiment was created in 1881 under the Childers Reforms by the amalgamation of the 38th (1st Staffordshire) Regiment of Foot and the 80th (Staffordshire Volunteers) Regiment of Foot. The regiment saw service in the Second Boer War, World War I and World War II. Reduced to a single Regular Army battalion after the Second World War, the regiment was amalgamated, in 1959, with the North Staffordshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's) to form the Staffordshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's) which was later, in 2007, amalgamated with the Cheshire Regiment and the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment to form the Mercian Regiment. History Formation and antecedents The regiment was formed as part of the Childers Reforms on 1 July 1881 by the amalgamation of the 38th and 80th regiments of foot, which became the regular 1st and 2nd battalions of the South Staffordshi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Army (Wehrmacht)
The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Federal Republic of Germany, Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the German Navy, ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the German Air Force, ''Luftwaffe'' (German Air Force). , the German Army had a strength of 62,766 soldiers. History Overview A German army equipped, organized, and trained following a single doctrine and permanently unified under one command in 1871 during the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia. From 1871 to 1919, the title ''German Army (German Empire), Deutsches Heer'' (German Army) was the official name of the German land forces. Following the German defeat in World War I and the end of the German Empire, the main army was dissolved. From 1921 to 1935 the name of the German land forces was the ''Reichswehr, Reichsheer'' (Army of the Empire) and from 1935 to 1945 the name ''German Army (We ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Passchendaele
The Third Battle of Ypres (german: link=no, Dritte Flandernschlacht; french: link=no, Troisième Bataille des Flandres; nl, Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the Allies against the German Empire. The battle took place on the Western Front, from July to November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders, as part of a strategy decided by the Allies at conferences in November 1916 and May 1917. Passchendaele lies on the last ridge east of Ypres, from Roulers (now Roeselare), a junction of the Bruges-(Brugge)-to-Kortrijk railway. The station at Roulers was on the main supply route of the German 4th Army. Once Passchendaele Ridge had been captured, the Allied advance was to continue to a line from Thourout (now Torhout) to Couckelaere (Koekelare). Further operations and a British supporting attack along the Belgian coast from Nieuport ( Nieuwpoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Front (World War I)
The Western Front was one of the main theatres of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The German advance was halted with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, which changed little except during early 1917 and in 1918. Between 1915 and 1917 there were several offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. Entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties during attacks and counter-attacks and no significant advances were made. Among the most costly of these offensives were the Battle of Verdun, in 1916, with a combined 700,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Expeditionary Force (World War I)
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the six-divisions the British Army sent to the Western Front during the First World War. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the 1906–1912 Haldane reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The term ''British Expeditionary Force'' is often used to refer only to the forces present in France prior to the end of the First Battle of Ypres on 22 November 1914. By the end of 1914—after the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres—the existent BEF had been almost exhausted, although it helped stop the German advance.Chandler (2003), p. 211 An alternative endpoint of the BEF was 26 December 1914, when it was divided into the First and Second Armies (a Third, Fourth and Fifth being created later in the war). "British Expeditionary Force" remained the official name of the British armies in France and Flanders thro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
46th (North Midland) Division
The 46th (North Midland) Division was an infantry division of the British Army, part of the Territorial Force, that saw service in the First World War. At the outbreak of the war, the 46th Division was commanded by Major-General Hon. E.J. Montagu-Stuart-Wortley. Originally called the North Midland Division, it was redesignated as the 46th Division in May 1915.Becke, pp. 61–7. Formation The Territorial Force (TF) was formed on 1 April 1908 following the enactment of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 (7 Edw.7, c.9) which combined and re-organised the old Volunteer Force, the Honourable Artillery Company and the Yeomanry. On formation, the TF contained 14 infantry divisions and 14 mounted yeomanry brigades. One of the divisions was the North Midland Division. The North Midland Division was created by combining two existing Volunteer Infantry brigades, the Staffordshire Brigade and the North Midland Brigade. The Staffordshire Brigade was composed of battalions of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
