De Groote Oorlog bekeken door een pince-nez.
Edward Anseele, het socialisme en de bezetting van Gent.

Willem Dedobbeleer

Scriptie voorgelegd aan de Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte,
voor het behalen van de graad van
Licentiaat in de Geschiedenis.

Academiejaar: 2006-2007

Universiteit Gent

Das Tagebuch eines Uskommandanten,
SELTSAME ERZÄHLUNGEN DER FLEET

EIN MARINE-LEUTNANT

1914--1918.

In the far right-hand corner a burial party was at work. I asked what had happened, and they told me. An hour before, the Germans had shelled the village, and four men had been killed. At breakfast the four lads were happy and bright, eating heartily and laughing merrily. By dinnertime they were wrapped in their blankets and lying silent in death. At teatime they were sleeping in the graves which comrades had dug for them. As I entered the village I saw the deep hole in the road where the shell had burst. There had been no time to fill it in, and I had to wheel my bicycle round it. The Sunday following we had our service on the stretch of grass within the cemetery. It did not seem a melancholy place for worship. Somehow death seems different out here. It looks more natural, for our burials have more of simple faith and less of pagan pageantry. We use no coffin, wear no black, shed no tears, and lay upon the graves no dying flowers. Our brothers fall asleep, we gently wrap them in their blankets, and lay them in their narrow beds. They are in God's keeping. It may be our turn next to 'go west.' But the day's work must be done, and the day's laughter found, ere the Last Post bids us retire for the night. We therefore held our services near our sleeping comrades, and felt no melancholy. We knew how they had died, and why. We did not think of them as dead, but as men who had 'done their bit' and were taking their rest. They were our 'great cloud of witnesses.'

A soldier of the Kaisers remembers
This website contains my translation of the memoirs written by grandfather, Adam Simmermacher (1894-1942), about his experiences as a German soldier in the 1914-18 war and as a policeman in the immediate post-war years. Completed in September 1932, the detailed descriptions of events suggest that Adam kept a meticulous diary.
Strikingly, many of his experiences bear similarity to Erich Maria Remarque's seminal novel All Quiet On The Western Front (now in many schools a literature textwork), if not in then details then certainly in the shared experience of the war.

Simmermacher bevond zich voornamelijk aan het westfront.

Diary
of My Trip Abroad
1915-19
538 Cpl. Ivor Alexander Williams

21st Battalion
Australia Imperial Forces

The Original Dairy is now in the Canberra War Memorial.

This is a true copy with his wording untouched.

This has been a great epic retyping this marvellous document, I have enjoyed being with my father in his youth, it has been one of the greatest adventures of my life.

It is a pity that few of us really knew what that generation went through. Our present lifestyle and happiness is attributed to their efforts and sacrifices.

Retyped by His very Proud Son,

Alexander Hugh Williams

in 1995

This is the First World War Diary of my Grandfather, Robert Lindsay Mackay, OBE, MC, MB, CHB, MD, DPH, giving an account of his day-to-day life with the 11th Batallion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders from 1915 until the end of the war.

De ervaringen van FML Jansma aan het Oostfront, Macedonie en Italie. Hij diende onder andere onder Mackensen en von Below.

De geschiedenis van het Sloveense stadje Kanaltal. Een groot deel wordt besteed aan de eerste wereldoorlog, omdat Kanaltal midden in het Isonzofront lag.

This description of the old front line, as it was when the Battle of the Somme began, may some day be of use. All wars end; even this war will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be forgotten. When the trenches are filled in, and the plow has gone over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. One summer with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began, will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps.

1917
By John Masefield.

Author of "Gallipoli," etc.
Macmillan; New York : 1917

Official History of the 120th
Infantry
"3rd NORTH CAROLINA" 30th DIVISION
From August 5, 1917, to April 17, 1919
CANAL SECTOR--YPRES-LYS OFFENSIVE
SOMME OFFENSIVE

By
Major John O. Walker, with the assistance of Major William A. Graham
and Captain Thomas Fauntleroy