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1918
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Sargent's famous portrait
of blinded soldiers.
It is impossible to see in this photograph, but
when looking at the original painting, one is shocked to see
through the gaps between the soldiers how the artist has
painted other soldiers playing football in the distance. In
this way he brings home the horror of war injuries -
especially blindness caused by gas.
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JANUARY
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President Woodrow Wilson lays a programme for peace
before Congress.
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22nd
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Restaurants in UK ordered not to serve meat on two days
per week.
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23rd
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103 British sailors lost at sea when two submarines
collide in night exercises.
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FEBRUARY 1918
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Rationing of meat, butter and margarine comes into force
in London.
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Mutilated unburied
Soldiers.
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MARCH 1918
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3rd
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Bolsheviks sign a peace treaty with Germany giving up all
claims to Poland, the Baltic States,the Ukraine, White
Russia, Finland, and Bessarabia.
Meat rationing introduced in UK.
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7th.
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Bolsheviks change their name to The Russian Communist
Party and male Moscow the Russian capital in place of
Petrograd.
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18th
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Germans repulsed on the Belgium front.
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21st
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German offensive in Picardy begins.
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23rd
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Paris shelled.
Butter, margarine, and meat rationing introduced in UK.
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29th
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Death and decay in a water
filled crater.
German shell destroys Paris Church during Good Friday
Service killing 75 and injuring 90 people.
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APRIL 1918
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9th
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German offensive on the Lys in Flanders begins.
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12th
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"Backs to the Wall'
Order of the Day issued by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.
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14th
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Marshal Foch appointed as General-Chief-of the Allied
Armies in France.
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1st
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Royal Flying Corp and Royal Naval Air Squadron
constituted into the Royal Air Force. Women's RAF founded.
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Food rationing introduced throughout the UK.
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22nd
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British naval attack on Zeebrugge.
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24th
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German offensive towards Amiens halted by the Australians
at Villers-Bretonneux.
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25th
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Last German Naval action.
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Daily Burials
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MAY 1918
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9th and 10th
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Naval raid on Ostend.
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27th
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German offensive on the Aisne begins.
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29th
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British and Dominion forces attack the Hindenberg Line.
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JUNE 1918
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15th to 18th
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Battle of Piave.
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21st
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American troops - after weeks of fighting - take Belleau
Woods.
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JULY 1918
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German troops, reaching the Marne, were beaten back by
the French Army
and the tide of the war turned in the Allies favour.
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6th
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Spanish Influenza outbreak becomes an epidemic.
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AUGUST 1918
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2nd
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1,500 British led force seizes Archangel to set up a base
form which to attack Germany.
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Allies attack with 450 tanks near the Somme and took the
surrender of thousands of Germans prisoners. Churchill's
tank ideas had worked.
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31st
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To date the war has cost France 38 Billion Francs.
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SEPTEMBER 1918
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19th
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Offensive in Palestine begins ( Battle of Megiddo).
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Allied counter offensive succeeded into breaking the
Hindenberg line and into open country the horror of mud and
trench warfare was now a thing of the past.
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30th
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Bulgaria sues for peace.
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OCTOBER 1918
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HMS Argus - the world's first aircraft carrier, goes into
service with the Royal Navy.
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1st
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Allied Forces enter Damascus.
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19th
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World epidemic of influenza kills millions.
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21st
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Surrender of German Fleet.
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24th
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Battle of Vittorio begins.
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30th
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Turkey signs and Armistice with the Allies.
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430 die at sea when a US troop ships collide.
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587 civilians die at sea when U boat sinks mail boat.
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Mutiny and strikes by German sailors spreads to ports and
cities.
Revolutionaries on the streets of Berlin
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Spanish 'flu costs the lives of 2,225 persons in the UK.
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NOVEMBER 1918
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3rd
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Austria -Hungary sues for peace.
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9th
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Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates and flees with
possessions and servants to Dutch frontier.
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11th
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Armistice between Allies and Germany. German Republic
declared.
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Official War Office figures declare 3 million British
causalities including nearly a million dead. The total war
dead is assessed at over 10 millions souls.
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DECEMBER 1918
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General election in Britain and women over 30 given the
vote for the first time.
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1919
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JUNE 1919
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German Fleet scuttled in Scapa Flow.
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The End
of The Great War.
1918 was a year of total disorganisation and
sudden - almost unexpected victory. Britain and France - with newly
arrived Americans - seemed almost to face defeat, when the Germans
proved that trench warfare could be overcome: but their attacks
petered out in total exhaustion and gave the Allies their chance to
break out.
The Italians broke out in in their Northern
front and took huge numbers of German prisoners. Damascus fell to the
Allies
An attack through the well defended
Hindenberg line by the Allies was done with astonishing speed. This
achievement has never been fully acknowledged. This victory led to
the Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicating and going to live in comfortable
retirement (!) whilst leaving to his politicians - who had little say
in the war - to sue for a humiliating peace treaty.
British historians have long held the
mistaken view that the first world world was a senseless waste of
908,371 young and older men
and vast amount of national
treasure.
For over 300 hundred years England had
pursued a European policy of the 'balance of continental powers' to ensure that neither Philip II Spain, Louis XIV or
Napoleon would control the Channel ports and thus threaten British
shipping or mercantile fleets.
By 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm's II's Germany had
built a high seas fleet capable of challenging the Royal Navy.
"I believe war is inevitable with
Britain . . . and the sooner the better"
said Helmuth von Moltke in 1912 and
the Kaiser agreed.
'Jews and mosquitoes are a nuisance that
humanity must get rid of in some way or another'
wrote Kaiser Wilhelm II.
'I believe the best way would be gas!'.
Germany under the Kaiser planned the
invasion of France and Belgium with the intention of subjugating
them.
The historian John Rohl claims the Kaiser
expressed his intention to be to create
'a united states of Europe under German
leadership'
Such an achievement would have spelled mortal danger for Britain.
Even fighting on two fronts Germany, in the
early years of the war, defeated Russia.
(15 years later Hitler claimed that Germany
had not been beaten, but was betrayed by weak democrats and thus the
war broke out again in 1939 - and was to be known as The Second World
War; during which 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other
peoples were sent to the gas chambers.
Let me finish this phase of our story of WHO
WAS CHURCHILL? by quoting what the youthful Winston Churchill wrote
in his second book - written long long before the Great War
started.
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"Year after year, and
stretching back to an indefinite horizon, we see the
figures of the odd and bizarre potentates against whom the
British arms continually are turned.
They pass a long procession:
The Akhund of Swat; Cetwayo, brandishing
an assegai (a spear)
as naked as himself;
Kruger, singing a psalm of victory: Osman Digna,
the Immortal and Irretrievable; Theebaw, with
his Umbrella; Lebengula, gazing fondly at the
pages of TRUTH
, Prempeh,
abasing himself in the dust; the Mad Mullah on
his white ass; and the latest of all, the
Khalifa in his coach of state. It is like watching a
pantomime scene at Drury Lane.
These extraordinary foreign figures
- each with his complete set of crimes, horrible
customs and 'minor peculiarities' - march one by one from
the dark wings of barbarism up to the bright footlights of
civilisation.
For a space their names are on the
tongues of men. The Sovereign on the Throne, the
Minister in his Cabinet, the General in his tent,
pronounce - or mis pronounce - their styles and
titles. A thousand compositors set out the same combination
of letters for their newspapers. The street boys bellows
their names in ours ears. The artisan laughs at them at
night in his cottage. The child in the nursery is cajoled
into virtue or silence by the repetition of the dread
accents.
And then the world audience claps
their hands, amused, yet impatient, and the
potentates and their trains pass on, some to exile,
some to prison, some to death."
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There - in Winston's youthful prose - is a lively survey of
Victorian encounters with hostile autocrats.
Even at this early age the young Churchill knew that over a far
longer period of history than he wrote about in the above book,
British forces had been measured upon far greater issues and against
far more powerful autocracies.
He knew long before the Great War started that autocrats (and
bureaucrats) who who seek to dominate the whole of Europe, sooner or
later will come up against Britain's enmity.
For Britain has never allowed one man to to rule the continent.
Nor will it permit it today. (Written in 1996)
The purpose of these pages is to
tell the story of Churchill's life - not to give a detailed account
of the wars he was involved in, for that is a vast subject.
Month by month factual and
photographic calendars of the Ist World War
1914.
1915. 1916.
1917. 1918.
It is important to remember that heavy censorship of news took
place throughout them, and therefore knowledge of many of these
events was not available until long after they happened - or until
after the wars had ended. Morevover, the experiences of the soldiers
were so terrible, that of the the few who returned, none spoke of
them for many many years.
Explanatory notes are given against some of these dates, but to
read about particular battles or political events please go to
Bibliography
