First World War Galleries Podcast: Part IV - Global War

James Taylor: “The First World War was just that, a world war from the very beginning, the overseas empires of the European powers were drawn into the conflict. In the first months of war, a handful of German warships prowled the oceans, sinking British shipping. One of the more unusual objects in the galleries comes from one of those German warships, the Dresden. Paul Cornish is a member of the First World War Galleries team.”

Paul Cornish: “In the gallery we have this rather unusual exhibit, which is the stuffed head of a pig which was rescued from the last German surviving vessel and the sailors on HMS Glasgow which was present, saw this pig floundering in the water and saved it and kept it as a mascot. There is actually a picture of the pig on board HMS Glasgow and one of the sailors on board that ship recorded the pig as being “as fit as anything and a great pet. It is bathed every day and on Sundays it wears an iron cross round its neck.” And when the pig was brought back home, it was auctioned for war charities and made a lot of money for the Red Cross and then lived out its life at the Naval Gunnery School in Portsmouth. When it did die, the head and indeed the trotters were mounted and found their way eventually to the Imperial War Museum.”

James Taylor: “Neither side had planned to fight a war in Africa, but the Allies need to destroy wireless transmitters in Germany's African colonies, led to an unexpected war. The war in Africa became a long, gruelling struggle, and thousands of Africans suffered in a war not of their own making.”

Paul Cornish: “One of the items on display in the gallery is a Fez won by an Ascari, an African soldier in the service of Germany in Cameroon, and the British and French attacked Cameroon in 1914, but didn't actually manage to capture the whole of the German colony until 1916. So it is a relatively long campaign, not as long as that which occurred in German East Africa, where the war went on from 1914 right until 1918. In fact, the last Germans didn't surrender until two weeks after the Armistice had been signed in Europe, simply because they didn't know that this had occurred. And during that time the fighting raged over about 3000 miles of African territory. Everybody out there suffered from the conditions because this is one of the areas of the First World War where disease and sickness took many more casualties than the actual fighting did. A lot of Africans served with the forces, both sides, some of them were soldiers, but the great majority of them were porters because we're talking about areas where usually horses can't go because of the threat of disease, usually carried by Tsetse fly, which kills horses relatively swiftly. Therefore, human porters are what you need to carry supplies. And it took on average about three porters to carry enough supply to keep one man fighting. So, the porters greatly outnumbered everybody else. Britain alone recruited over a million of them. Porters were usually pressed into service in some way. They were treated very poorly. Their work was extremely hard and there was a lot of neglect, essentially of their nutrition. They didn't realise that people from West Africa, where many of these men had been recruited, didn't eat the same food as was eaten in other parts of Africa. They required food which needed long cooking and would seldom give them the time to do the long cooking so that they really weren't getting the proper nutrition out of the food that they did. As a result, over 100,000 of them died of hunger and sickness, so it was far safer, ironically, to carry arms for the British Empire in Africa than it was to carry supplies for the British Empire.”

James Taylor: “In November 1914, Turkey joined the war on the side of Germany. Britain started attacking Turkish territories in the Middle East. The Government of British India launched a campaign that would see Britain subjected to a humiliating defeat as one object in the First World War Galleries shows.”

Paul Cornish: “The Indian Government sent troops to the Persian Gulf area and landed them on Turkish territory at Basra, in what is now Iraq, what was then known as Mesopotamia, and their thinking was that by getting troops in that area, they'd be able to stop the Germans sending agents across Persia, into Afghanistan and India, where they would be likely to cause trouble. This intervention took on a life of its own because of the generals locally and also some of the people who are sending them orders got the idea that they might be able to advance up the River Tigris and actually capture Baghdad. So, this advance was made, but it was quite reckless. The forces involved were too small and they were badly supplied and set up and eventually they were forced back into this small town called Kut Al Amara, and they were besieged there for months, slowly starving, basically, and eventually, in April 1916, the Garrison at Kut was forced to surrender due to the fact that they had completely run out of food and 13,000 Indian and British troops went into Turkish captivity. And this was a massive humiliation for the British Empire to be beaten by what was seen as a third-rate power. An object we have on display shows that very humiliation because it's a placard which was put up actually on the Western Front by Germans over one of their trenches, which actually gives the news of the surrender of Kut and the fact that 13,000 men had become prisoners and it was put up the taunt the British troops opposite them, who were in fact an Irish regiment, the 8th Munster Fusiliers and they went out on a raid at night, captured the placard and brought it back, and it was later presented to the King by them, from the King it found its way eventually to the Imperial War Museum.”

James Taylor: “In 1915, Britain launched another campaign against Turkey, this time from the sea. The campaign was the idea of Britain's Navy minister, then Winston Churchill. He hoped to force Turkey out of the war by using warships to bombard the Turkish capital, Constantinople. The naval attack proved a complete failure. Troops had to be landed at Gallipoli. That too was a disaster and nine months later the last Allied soldiers were evacuated after heavy losses.”

Paul Cornish: “This was a 19th or even 18th century conception of warfare that you could send warships to bombard somebody into submission like this but because there was a feeling that the Western Front was a stalemate and there was nothing to be gained there in the short term, there was an urge to do something active to win the war. So British and French fleet sailed and attempted to force its way through the Dardanelles Straits, but it couldn't do so, so it was decided at short notice that troops would have to be landed. So, a landing was extemporised on the Gallipoli peninsula. The battle is notable, of course, for being the baptism of fire of the volunteers from Australia and New Zealand, who had sailed as far as Egypt, and they were training at the time, and they were formed into a division of troops known as the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, or Anzac for sure. And the Anzacs landed on one of the initial landing beaches, now renamed officially by the Turks actually, Anzac Cove. Unfortunately, this turned right into a bitter stalemate, almost like the Western Front. We've got a very evocative exhibit, which is the flag carried by the 12th Australian Battalion who were the first to set foot ashore at Gallipoli. It's a rather faded looking flag and was actually brought back after the campaign by a British soldier. It looks like he's been flying in hot sun and scorching winds, or it's all the more evocative for that.”

James Taylor: “Over half of the men in 12th Battalion were killed or wounded within 5 days of landing at Gallipoli on the 25th of April 1915. Their flag, like all the objects in the First World War Galleries, is not just the relic, it is a piece of evidence and a direct link to the past, which carries the scars of its own experience. Another object in the galleries, a Russian machine gun, tells a different story. It represents defeat and retreat for Russia in 1915 and the capture by German troops of weapons that the Russian army could not afford to lose.”

Paul Cornish: “German forces were taken away from the Western Front and massed in Russia, including a lot of artillery, and from May onwards in 1915 they launched a series of attacks all along the Russian front, which made huge advances, pushed the Russians back around 300 miles, and they were greatly helped in this by the fact that Russian industry was underdeveloped and hadn’t been able to keep up with the losses of equipment that the Russian army had suffered during 1914 and they hadn’t been able to keep up the army's demands for shells for its guns. One Russian general at the time said, “the Germans expend metal, we expend lives,” so there was this terrible situation where a lot of Russian artillery was actually standing around idle because it didn't have shells to fire, and we got on display in the gallery, a Russian machine gun, beautiful brass jacketed gun on a wheeled mount which was captured by the Germans on the Russian Front and later taken to the Western Front, they had it converted to fire their own military ammunition and it was taken to the Western Front where it was eventually captured by British troops, which is why it's in our collections. This is sort of symbol of what the Russians called the great retreat. However, Germany's plans didn't work because the Tsar decided to keep true to his alliance with Britain and France and basically, Russia was too big, and its army was too vast to destroy in a single campaign.”

The First World War Galleries at IWM London are open now. Find out more at www.iwm.org.uk/WW1.