Commemorating the First World War Centennial in Kansas

Month: November 2021

Winston Churchill’s Soldiers Part 2

A few months after the Antwerp fiasco (click here) Churchill enthusiastically contributed the Royal Naval Division (RND) to his next brainchild, the Dardenelles campaign. They were landed on April 25th, 1915 at lightly defended ‘X’ Beach, but didn’t advance from the beachhead and were soon withdrawn by sea as the 29th Division needed reinforcement at Helles. The RND remained in that sector throughout and participated in all of the Krythia battles. In the first battle (April 28th) The Royal Marine Brigade assaulted but failed to capture the strongpoint later called Gurkha Bluff because the 1/6th Gurkhas eventually took it.   In the second battle (May 6th-8th) the RND served with two brigades of ANZACs in an ad hoc division-sized force. The Hood battalion succeeded in capturing a position called Kanli Dere but this only moved the line about 400 yards and the bulk of this attack was borne by the ANZACs, particularly the Kiwis. As a result of this brief association the ANZACS regarded the RND as poor fighters. ...read more

Centenary of the Unknown Soldier

Coming up this week at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia. You can read more about this by clicking here.

In addition to the original WW1 Unknown burial, there are side crypts for the Unknowns from WW2 and Korea. There was also a Vietnam War crypt but it is currently empty as subsequent DNA analysis identified the remains originally interred there in 1982 and they were reburied in a national cemetery in 1998. ...read more

Annie Oakley and WW1

Phoebe Ann Mosey (1860 – 1926), popularly known as ‘Annie Oakley’, was a sharpshooter who starred for 17 years in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.  It is said that, while performing in Berlin in 1887, she shot off the tip of a cigarette clenched between the teeth of the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. You can read more about Annie by clicking here. ...read more

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