August 4th marks the one hundred year anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War….often called the Great War…involving countries across Europe before spreading further afield to involve China, the US, Middle Eastern and African countries.
Britain was one of the key players in the war and will be marking the centenary with memorials and exhibitions across the country.
In London, the Imperial War Museum has just re-opened after a major refurbishment to tell the story of the Great War. Our reporter Catherine Drew went along to take a look.
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When war was declared in August 1914, there was a sense of excitement and even celebration in British towns and cities…. . The government requested 100 thousand volunteers to join the military but got over seven times that many in just one month.
Matthew Brosnan is a historian with the Imperial War museum
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There was a massive flock to the flag with people expressing their patriotic fervour for their country by volunteering for the armed forces and they did so in their thousands, I mean in September 1914 in one day about 30 thousand men joined up in just one day.
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Recruits for the military had to be over 18 years of age and many lied to say they were older….. Terry Charman who has written a book at the life in Britain during the war....known as the home front.... says many young men were excited about the prospect of war.
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A large number might have joined up or undoubtedly did rather because Britain had pledged its word to defence Belgium neutrality and there was this thing of gallant little Belgium. A lot of people joined up to get away from a boring job thats one factor. Or to improve their domestic lot, you know, because the army fed and clothed these men a lot better than they were in civilian times.
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If young men joined up with a sense of excitement, this was soon obliterated. The museum tries to conjure up the reality through sounds and a mock up of trenches.....The reality of war on the front was a brutal bloody conflict that brought death through fighting, bomb and poison gas attack and disease.
By the end of the war, approximately 8 hundred thousand to 1 million British soldiers had been killed in combat.
Matthew Brosnan from the Imperial War museum again.
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The first few months of the war were incredibly costly and difficult. It was a period where the modern fire power of the day was used in the open causing huge casualties and as a result of that both sides increasingly dug into the ground to dig trenches to protect their troops from this murderous fire. So it was something that changed from a war of mobility and open fighting to something that was quite static and slow moving and it caused a massive problem in how you were to overcome a entrenched while you were swell. So it became quite a static war for several years as both sides tried to overcome the deadlock.
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The family of 73year old Terry McGill from Bristol donated items to the exhibition.
Terry's career soldier Grandfather, Sergeant Frank Collins, had successfully fought in the boar war.....However he was not to survive the first world war.....Sergent collins was killed on christmas day 1914… a time when a series of widespread and unofficial ceasefires took place between British and German. A photo of him and the telegragh that delivered the news of his death are on show at the museum.
Terry McGill hopes younger generations will learn of the sacrifices young men and women made in the First World war.
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I don't think it should be forgotten should it. And people's personal tragedies especially the Christmas truce I think when most people think it was a joyous occasion, it wasn't joyous for everybody. It wasn't playing football and having a few drink with the enemy, killing was still going on
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And the killing did go on for a further four years…before an armistice between the waring nations was agreed in November 1918. By that time, an estimated total of 10 million soldiers and 7 million civilians had died across the conflict areas.
Catherine Drew, sign off, London.
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