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Letters from Major General W T Swan to his daughter Barbara and a picture sent to him on her 11th birthday in 1918. My favourite parts are the donkey outside his headquarters and the cat pissing on the stairs.

I don’t care if it’s sappy. This kind of stuff is really lovely to see and wonderfully humanises these people. They loved their children and told them silly stories and talked about pets just as much as we do. And viewing them as prim and proper, uptight robots does them and us a disservice.

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A 340 mm APC shell being loaded onto a hoist aboard the French battleship Bretagne, February 1916

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I thought I saw a little rising sun badge on his collar there, which means he's Australian. This of course piqued my interest and after poking around a little bit, what a classic Type of Guy our Signaller Skeyhill was.

His story was that he was blinded whilst fighting at Gallipoli, when a shell exploded in front of him. But it turned out this soldier-poet was an extremely charming man and a very charismatic speaker. He went on speaking tours of Australia and Canada before hitting it "big" in the US. The 'lectures' he gave were really more of a one man show, mixing war stories, poetry and humorous anecdotes with more political speeches. And at this he was very good and he spent the next few years touring his act.

Here he met an osteopath who relieved "the pressure of certain bones in the back of the neck", restoring Skeyhill's eyesight. After the "return" of his eyesight he returned to writing, putting out more poetry and some relatively well received plays. He also went on to ghostwrite Sergeant Alvin York's autobiography, which was made into the movie Sergeant York, the highest grossing film of 1941.

But, it should come as no great surprise that he was full of shit. He almost certainly wasn't blinded, and exaggerated the extent of his injuries to get himself evacuated from Gallipoli. The stories he told on his speaking tours were also largely fabricated, and there's even doubt about the authorship of at least one of his poems. Not that it seems to matter, as he's remembered mostly for his dope "smoked glass" shades and raising the equivalent to $2 billion dollars for the US government during the war.

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Bruce Bairnsfather in The Bystander, England, December 4, 1918 Image © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

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writing about the armenian genocide

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These two Battalions however, side by side pressed on to the top of Hill 70, when another counter-attack forced them back. A third attempt was being made when the Turks set fire to the scrub and many wounded men were burnt to death. Many actus of individual gallantry, in attempting to save wounded men were performed, but unfortunately few could be saved owing to the rapidity with which the scrub burned - a fairly high wind prevailing - both Battalions lost heavily.

One of the scrub covered hills around Suvla Bay, similar to Hill 70 described above.

Well that's a fresh new horror.

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These two Battalions however, side by side pressed on to the top of Hill 70, when another counter-attack forced them back. A third attempt was being made when the Turks set fire to the scrub and many wounded men were burnt to death. Many actus of individual gallantry, in attempting to save wounded men were performed, but unfortunately few could be saved owing to the rapidity with which the scrub burned - a fairly high wind prevailing - both Battalions lost heavily.

One of the scrub covered hills around Suvla Bay, similar to Hill 70 described above.

Well that's a fresh new horror.

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Giving up chemical warfare for Lent

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A battalion machine gun officer of the 3rd Division (Australia) employing a captured German Maxim as an antiaircraft gun. Marett Wood, Somme. 5 May 1918

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German two-tiered dugout on the Western Front, 1915

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The ration biscuit takes various forms, some of which are small and palatable, but the type most frequently met with in Gallipoli was large and square, possessing the appearance of a dog biscuit and the consistency of a rock. It was no doubt of excellent nutritive quality, but, unfortunately, no ordinary pair of teeth was able to cope with it. Some spread jam upon it, and then licked the surface, thereby absorbing a few crumbs; others soaked it in tea (when there was any); while a few pounded it between two stones, and found that the result did not make bad porridge. - Major Bryan Cooper

The universally loathed hardtack. The Australian War Memorial actually has a lovely little collection of hardtack dating back to the Boer War. There's also some excellent hardtack art.

Hardtack picture frame

Hardtack Victoria Cross

Hardtack christmas card

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Despatch riders always got the drip

Dispatch riders in WWII England

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absolutely.

Matter of fact, I'm in the trenches right now

anywhere can be the trenches with the right mindset

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Turkish Despair. Dope name.

Yep, really fits in with the aesthetic.

I think we usually call that neighbourhood the Balkans.

Well that's an appropriately depressing end to that little vignette.

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Turkish Despair. Dope name.

Yep, really fits in with the aesthetic.

I think we usually call that neighbourhood the Balkans.

Well that's an appropriately depressing end to that little vignette.

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…I dined with some other people to celebrate the presentation of a medal to our vet. A wonderful decoration given to him by the Minister of Agriculture of France for services rendered to agriculture.  Nobody knows quite what he has done except put a lot of horses out of their misery. However it was a good gathering with cheap champagne from the local wine shop in which by the way I am billeted.

Major Carr on some of the benefits of being a staff officer, 27 April 1917.

“services rendered to agriculture”