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Edmund Hakewill-Smith
Major General Sir Edmund Hakewill-Smith, (17 March 1896 – 15 April 1986) was a senior British Army officer who served in both the First and Second World Wars. Early life and First World War Hakewill-Smith was born in Kimberley, Cape Colony, on 17 March 1896. He was educated at the Diocesan College ("Bishops") in Rondebosch, Cape Town, and, during the First World War, he went to England to attend the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Scots Fusiliers, a line infantry regiment of the British Army, on 16 June 1915. He served with the 2nd (Regular) Battalion of his regiment on the Western Front, where he was wounded twice and, during the final Hundred Days Offensive in the latter half of 1918, was awarded the Military Cross. The citation for the award read: Between the wars After the war Hakewill-Smith remained in the army and served with the British Military Mission to South Russia in 1920. In 1921 he was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kimberley, Northern Cape
Kimberley is the capital and largest city of the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It is located approximately 110 km east of the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The city has considerable historical significance due to its diamond mining past and the siege during the Second Anglo-Boer war. British businessmen Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato made their fortunes in Kimberley, and Rhodes established the De Beers diamond company in the early days of the mining town. On 2 September 1882, Kimberley was the first city in the Southern Hemisphere and the second in the world after Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States to integrate electric street lights into its infrastructure. The first stock exchange in Africa was built in Kimberley, as early as 1881. History Discovery of diamonds In 1866, Erasmus Jacobs found a small brilliant pebble on the banks of the Orange River, on the farm ''De Kalk'' leased from local Griquas, near Hopetown, which was h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military Cross
The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC is granted in recognition of "an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land" to all members of the British Armed Forces of any rank. In 1979, the Queen approved a proposal that a number of awards, including the Military Cross, could be recommended posthumously. History The award was created on 28 December 1914 for commissioned officers of the substantive rank of captain or below and for warrant officers. The first 98 awards were gazetted on 1 January 1915, to 71 officers, and 27 warrant officers. Although posthumous recommendations for the Military Cross were unavailable until 1979, the first awards included seven posthumous awards, with the word 'deceased' after the name of the recipient, from rec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Dundas, 2nd Marquess Of Zetland
Lawrence John Lumley Dundas, 2nd Marquess of Zetland, (11 June 1876 – 6 February 1961), styled Lord Dundas until 1892 and Earl of Ronaldshay between 1892 and 1929, was a British Conservative politician. An expert on India, he served as Secretary of State for India in the late 1930s. Background and education Zetland, born in London, was the son of Lawrence Dundas, 1st Marquess of Zetland, and Lady Lillian, daughter of Richard Lumley, 9th Earl of Scarbrough. He was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he was a member of the University Pitt Club. Political career In 1900, Zetland became aide-de-camp to Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India. While working for Curzon in the British Raj, Zetland travelled widely through Asia, having experiences which would later inform his fictional and non-fictional writing. Zetland was returned to Parliament for Hornsey in 1907, a seat he held until 1916. Much of his public career centred on British India. In Septembe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hundred Days Offensive
The Hundred Days Offensive (8 August to 11 November 1918) was a series of massive Allies of World War I, Allied offensives that ended the First World War. Beginning with the Battle of Amiens (1918), Battle of Amiens (8–12 August) on the Western Front (World War I), Western Front, the Allies pushed the Central Powers back, undoing their gains from the German spring offensive. The Germans retreated to the Hindenburg Line, but the Allies broke through the line with a series of victories, starting with the Battle of St Quentin Canal on 29 September. The offensive, together with a German Revolution of 1918–19, revolution breaking out in Germany, led to the Armistice of 11 November 1918 which ended the war with an Allied victory. The term "Hundred Days Offensive" does not refer to a battle or strategy, but rather the rapid series of Allied victories against which the German Army (German Empire), German Army had no reply. Background The German spring offensive of the German Army (Ge ... [...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] |
Line Infantry
Line infantry was the type of infantry that composed the basis of European land armies from the late 17th century to the mid-19th century. Maurice of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus are generally regarded as its pioneers, while Turenne and Montecuccoli are closely associated with the post-1648 development of linear infantry tactics. For both battle and parade drill, it consisted of two to four ranks of foot soldiers drawn up side by side in rigid alignment, and thereby maximizing the effect of their firepower. By extension, the term came to be applied to the regular regiments "of the line" as opposed to light infantry, skirmishers, militia, support personnel, plus some other special categories of infantry not focused on heavy front line combat. Linear tactics and function Line infantry mainly used three formations in its battles: the line, the square and the column. With the massive proliferation of small arms (firearms that could be carried by hand, as opposed to cannon) i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until 1986. In the colonial forces, which closely followed the practices of the British military, the rank of second lieutenant began to replace ranks such as ensign and cornet from 1871. New appointments to the rank of second lieutenant ceased in the regular army in 1986. Immediately prior to this change, the rank had been effectively reserved for new graduates from the Officer Cadet School, Portsea which closed in 1985. (Graduates of the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) and the Royal Military College, Duntroon (RMC-D) are commissioned as lieutenants.). The rank of second lieutenant is only appointed to officers in special appointments such as training institutions, university regiments and while under probation during training. Trai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Officer (armed Forces)
An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, or a warrant officer. However, absent contextual qualification, the term typically refers only to a force's ''commissioned officers'', the more senior members who derive their authority from a commission from the head of state. Numbers The proportion of officers varies greatly. Commissioned officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel. In 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13.7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, and about 17.2% of the United States armed forces. Historically, however, armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers (partly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Military College, Sandhurst
The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infantry and cavalry officers of the British and Indian Armies. The RMC was reorganised at the outbreak of the Second World War, but some of its units remained operational at Sandhurst and Aldershot. In 1947, the Royal Military College was merged with the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to form the present-day all-purpose Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. History Pre-dating the college, the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, had been established in 1741 to train artillery and engineer officers, but there was no such provision for training infantry and cavalry officers. The Royal Military College was conceived by Colonel John Le Marchant, whose scheme for establishing schools for the military instruction of officers at High Wycombe and Great M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest (after Johannesburg). Colloquially named the ''Mother City'', it is the largest city of the Western Cape province, and is managed by the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The other two capitals are Pretoria, the executive capital, located in Gauteng, where the Presidency is based, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital in the Free State, where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located. Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 66% of the Western Cape's population. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Colony
The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa. The British colony was preceded by an earlier corporate colony that became an Dutch Cape Colony, original Dutch colony of the same name, which was established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company, Dutch East India Company (VOC). The Cape was under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and under rule of the Napoleonic Batavian Republic, Batavia Republic from 1803 to 1806. The VOC lost the colony to Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain following the 1795 Invasion of the Cape Colony, Battle of Muizenberg, but it was acceded to the Batavian Republic, Batavia Republic following the 1802 Treaty of Amiens. It was re-occupied by the British following the Battle of Blaauwberg in 1806 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
