Below are current event articles that relate to events, topics, and people found in Daredevils of the Desert.
Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail". When military historian Jeremy Banning stepped on to a patch of rough scrubland in northern France four months ago, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
WA's national treasure Claude Choules, Australia's oldest man and the world's last surviving World War I veteran, has died in Perth aged 110. Mr Choules was a man who made the best of life and devoted himself to his family and country. His fighting spirit helped him survive two world wars, and also live long enough to become the oldest man in WA and the last World War I veteran living in Australia.
Frank Woodruff Buckles, a onetime Missouri farm boy who was the last known living American veteran of World War I, has died. He was 110. Buckles, who later spent more than three years in a Japanese POW camp as a civilian in the Philippines during World War II, died Sunday of natural causes at his home in Charles Town, W.Va., family spokesman David DeJonge said.
CHARLES Bean's life was devoted to observing and recording the feats of others, and the war correspondent would have been perplexed to hear his life was considered worthy of documenting. So says Bean's granddaughter Anne Carroll, who remembers her grandfather as a gentle and modest man who wrote millions of words on World War I but who never discussed it at home.
Remembrance Day seems appropriate to remember the remarkable story of the French officer in the Canadian army in the First World War who invented mobile mechanized warfare. Raymond Brutinel, who died in France at age 82 in 1964, altered forever the face of war. An as-yet unpublished book tells how Brutinel, a reserve officer in the French army, made a fortune in Canada in Edmonton, and when the First World War started along with Sir Clifford Sifton and others financed the formation of what was to become the 1st Motor Machine Gun Brigade, (the Emma Gees), commanded by himself.
Bayonet: In the early 17th century, sportsmen in France and Spain adopted the practice of attaching knives to their muskets when hunting dangerous game, such as wild boar. The hunters particularly favored knives that were made in Bayonne—a small French town near the Spanish border long renowned for its quality cutlery.
A fresh insight into life in the trenches in World War One has been discovered in a series of amazing sketches and drawings found in a soldier's diary hidden away for 90 years. Lieutenant Kenneth Wootton's 120-page journal vividly brings to life the horror of major WWI battles, and even includes detailed ink drawings of tanks and battle movements.
In September 1914, at the very outset of the great war, a dreadful rumor arose. It was said that at the Battle of the Marne, east of Paris, soldiers on the front line had been discovered standing at their posts in all the dutiful military postures—but not alive. “Every normal attitude of life was imitated by these dead men,” according to the patriotic serial The Times History of the War, published in 1916. “The illusion was so complete that often the living would speak to the dead before they realized the true state of affairs.” “Asphyxia,” caused by the powerful new high-explosive shells, was the cause for the phenomenon—or so it was claimed.
It's one of the central threads of Anzac mythology. That at dawn on April 25, 1915, our gallant Diggers - ''lions led by donkeys'' - were sent on to the Gallipoli beaches and the lethal Turkish guns in an ill-planned assault ordered by incompetent British commanders.
AN expedition to uncover lost war relics beneath the waves at Gallipoli will set off for Turkey next month after being saved by a grant from the State Government. The archaeological survey, known as ‘Project Beneath Gallipoli’ will map the forgotten underwater battlefields of Anzac Cove, North Beach and Suvla Bay.
NOW they are gone. With the death of Jack Ross yesterday, none remain of the 416,809 who signed up for the Great War, a national baptism of blood and senseless slaughter that continues to hold Australia in emotional thrall. Mr Ross, who died peacefully in his sleep aged 110, never saw action after his mother pleaded with the authorities for him to remain in Australia rather than join his brother on the battlefields of France.
AS forensic archeologists unearth from mass graves the bodies of nearly 200 victims of the World War I battle of Fromelles, concern is growing that the prospects for DNA identification are plummeting and the long-dead Diggers will be reburied anonymously. The problem is that no decision has been announced about which genetics team will tackle the job. Meanwhile, the timeline established by British and Australian officials states all bodies will be exhumed by September, testing will be done by December and the remains will be re-interred in groups of 20, beginning next February.
A list of 191 Australian soldiers who are believed to have died in the Battle of Fromelles in 1916 has been published by the Defence Force. The group area among 400 Australian and British soldiers who are believed to still lie at Pheasant Wood in Fromelles, France, after fighting in the first battle fought by Australians at the western front in the First World War. An excavation last May confirmed the group burial.
Director of the Atatürk and Battles of Çanakkale Research Center (AÇASAM) Mete Tuncoku has said he came across letters and diaries of Australian and New Zealand soldiers that mentioned Turkish female warriors fighting against them during the Battle of Gallipoli, which was won by the defending Ottoman army in 1915 and laid the groundwork for the Turkish War of Independence and the foundation of the Turkish Republic.