This article describes the battle of Shaggy Ridge in New Guinea which took place from October 1943 to January 1944.

The unprecedented scale of trench warfare in the First World War posed a series of challenges to attacking forces. This article tracks the early French steps to develop a coherent doctrine for launching offensives against established trench systems, focusing on a specific battle in May-June 1915: Second Artois. This battle would be the first based on lessons learned and digested by the French army after its initial tentative efforts at trench warfare from December 1914 to March 1915. As such it provides an interesting starting point for an analysis of the French army’s development of trench tactics in the First World War and of the part this played in the general effort made by the two sides to find ways to break the post-1914 stalemate on the Western Front.

Shortly and formally the Battle of Gallipoli, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign, can be described as a failed amphibious operation launched by the Allies in a strategically important region of Turkey in 1915-1916. Yet, this definition does not reflect the importance and the grandeur of the events. It is better to say that it was a major naval operation of the First World War, the biggest seaborne landing operation, the most significant Allies' defeat, and, subsequently, the biggest and the last military victory of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, the significance of the Battle of Gallipoli is not limited to these observations, because indirectly it had reflected on all major events of the Great War happening on the other fronts. And what is quite unique in the history of the mankind, it become a defining moment for three nations - Australia, New Zealand, and the Turkish Republic - where dates connected to the events of the battle have become their national holidays.

Nine days after the German invasion in Belgium and four days before the fall of the fortifications around Liège, a remarkable confrontation took place in Halen (province of Limburg) between the cavalry brigade of general von der Marwitz and the only cavalry division of the Belgian army, led by general De Witte. The fact that the landscape in the region of Halen is very varied influenced the choice of the location as well as the course of the battle. The combat, better known as the “Battle of Silver Helmets”, lasted for an entire day and for a long time threatened to end as a disaster for the Belgians. A late intervention by the infantry turned the tide and by dusk the German army for the first time - retreated for a few kilometres. Dozens of dead and wounded soldiers as well as hundreds of dead horses were left behind on the battlefield. Although the battle of Halen is only a footnote in Belgian war history, the location is not without importance. The small-scale independent victory of the Belgian army was at the same time one of the last great cavalry charges in European military history. This archaic 19th century way of warfare abruptly ended in Halen. There are still several relics referring to this exceptional battle in the open landscape between Halen and Loksbergen: a military cemetery, a museum, different memorials, a farmstead, cleared and relocated Belgian and German military graveyards, mass graves for horses... Still, this war heritage actually is almost completely unprotected and thus vulnerable. Only the memorial on the Halen church square and the military cemetery are protected as monuments. The historical ‘IJzerwinning’ farm, where heavy man-to-man fighting has taken place, was demolished in 2013 and replaced with a new building. The western part of the battlefield still consists of arable land, as it was on the eve of World War I. Only to a limited extent this original arable land has been changed into pastures or half-standard orchards. In regional planning, parts of this landscape are marked as agricultural land of significant landscape value. It is probably only possible to manage this historical battlefield in a well-considered way and to prevent its further degradation, in close consultation with environmental planning. Parallel with this attempt to secure the heritage values and awaiting the first convincing results of such action, an effort should be made to use the classic protection by means of sectoral legislation: the new Flemish heritage decree. War memorials at Halen, which have not yet been listed for protection, could thus be protected as monuments. A classic landscape protection could be considered in order to protect at least the centre of the battlefield. Furthermore, the cleared or relocated military cemeteries are quite important, as well as the mass graves for horses. These locations should be marked in an archaeological inventory. Before World War I got stuck in a trench warfare which was to last four years, a war of charges raged through Belgium. Very few physical traces have been preserved of those first weeks of the war. Moreover, this faint link between the Great War and the actual landscape is rapidly fading and about to disappear. Now more than ever the monumental, landscape and archaeological war heritage must be respected as a unique last witness which could keep the memory of the Great War alive. If we want to put our war past in a right perspective for future generations, it is crucial to take action in order to preserve and protect less tangible heritage such as the battlefield at Halen.

Demobilisation as an aspect of Military History is not often mentioned. This thesis is a study of the demobilisation of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force from November 1918 until September 1919. At the time of the Armistice with Germany and the Ottoman Empire, there were over 50,000 men and a few women who needed to be repatriated to New Zealand. There was the New Zealand Division on the Western Front which was selected to form part of the occupying force in the Rhine bridgeheads until March 1919 when the final drafts were sent to Britain. The New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade in Palestine would remain there until the last drafts boarded a vessel in August 1919. The base camps in Britain are a study of administrative history as the military infrastructure that supported the NZ Division in the field had to be closed down, the equipment returned to New Zealand or disposed of and the personnel demobilised and repatriated. This study also considers the place of the Maori Pioneer Batt...

Anzac Battlefield explores the transformation of Gallipoli's landscape in antiquity, during the famed battles of the First World War, and in the present day. Drawing on archival, archaeological and cartographic material, this book unearths the deep history of the Gallipoli peninsula and sets the Gallipoli campaign in a broader cultural and historical context. The opening chapters explore the physical landscape of the Gallipoli peninsula and the history of the Dardanelles waterway. This is followed by an examination of trench warfare, military engineering and what remains of the Anzac battlefield. The book presents the results of an original archaeological survey, the research for which was supported by the Australian, New Zealand and Turkish governments. The survey examines materials from both sides of the battlefield, and sheds new light on the environment in which Anzac and Turkish soldiers endured the conflict. The closing chapters trace the transition of Anzac from battlefield to cemetery and connect past and present through accounts of the evolution of Turkish and Anzac commemoration. Richly illustrated with both Ottoman and Anzac archival images and maps, as well as original maps and photographs of the landscape and archaeological findings, Anzac Battlefield is an important contribution to our understanding of Gallipoli and its landscape of war and memory.

The newly-created Reserve Army played a secondary role on the Somme in support of Fourth Army. Its commander, Lieutenant General Sir Hubert Gough, was given the opportunity to conduct limited operations on Fourth Army’s left flank in late July 1916. Using 1st Anzac Corps to capture the French village of Pozières, Gough’s intention was to continue to capture the high ground along Pozières Ridge to his ultimate goal: Thiepval. But his characteristic impetuosity and aggression derailed his plan, leaving 1st Anzac Corps with little direction other than to ‘think out and suggest enterprises’ of its own. Ultimately, his plans were for naught, and 1st Anzac Corps’ 23,000 casualties in 6 weeks of fighting were suffered for no material purpose. Gough’s role in this debacle has been largely overlooked, but is integral in understanding the Battle of Pozières Ridge in 1916.

The 100th Anniversary of the Second Battle of Ypres was marked with Royal Attendance of a remembrance ceremony and, perhaps more importantly to most Canadians, a “shout-out" to the battle given by Don Cherry on Coach’s Corner. The ways in which this battle has been remembered and written about have shifted significantly in the last 100 years, and this paper attempts to chart some of the ways in which it has been understood by scholars and soldiers. Just outside of the Belgian town of Ypres, a few paces from the village of St. Julien, at the former site of an intersection known as Vancouver Corner, the granite figure of a brooding soldier— bowed but unbroken— rises on a granite plinth to monumental height. At eleven metres high, the soldier looks down on an otherwise sleepy intersection. The base of the memorial is inscribed simply with the word “Canada.” It is surrounded by trees, farm buildings, and military cemeteries— thirty-two can be found within the twenty kilometres encl...