For those interested in the history of the Great War I would like to recommend these titles. I was fortunate enough a few years ago to attend a dinner after which Richard Holmes gave a talk about his book Tommy, when he finished there was not a dry eye in the house.
Richard Holmes was a noted military historian and TV presenter with a particular interest in both Wellington and Marlborough. He was a professor at Cranford and served as a Brigadier in the first Gulf war.

Tommy

Richard Holmes 2010 Harper Collins

As a accomplished military historian and ex-soldier, Holmes investigates in depth what sort of man the British soldier during the First World War was. How did he live day to day? What did he fight with and how did he do it?  By using quotes from interviews, diaries and published works of the men themselves, both officer and private soldier, he covers wartime formation, explaining its structure by battalion, regiments, brigades, and platoons. He defines what the differences were between regular units, reserve units and the New Army, further breaking these down by job and rank across the range from private to general.

The book includes the more commonly discussed trench life routine while discussing the changing levels of morale as the war moved from “it will all be over by Christmas” to the years of stalemate and the huge loss of life, finally looking at what effect all this had on the home front and how the Government used and controlled it.

Shots from the front line: The British Soldier 1914-1918

Richard Holmes 2010 Harper Collins

Holmes explains in Shots from the Front Line the technical limitations of early photography meant that the official war photographers relied on stationary or posed scenes. The unmoving dead offered an easy option, despite the strict rules prohibiting such photography. Holmes further suggests that some photographers were known to rearrange the dead for better composition.

This chapter also explains how many officers took their cameras with them to war despite the official Standing Order, which banned their use by any serviceman on pain of Court Marshall, however Holmes provides first-hand evidence of officers who defied the ban and even managed to have their photographs published in British newspapers. Holmes also discovers some of the more bizarre unofficial photographers such as the twenty members of the RAC who put themselves and their cars at the Army's disposal in 1914.

In some detail Holmes then investigates the accuracy of propaganda photographs, which were captioned and described as action shots, by using his knowledge as a military historian and ex-soldier.

 

Propaganda is the process of altering the way people think and feel about events. It affects how they look at values and priorities. It covers up what might be described as repulsive, immoral or otherwise unacceptable events by showing them as attractive and acceptable. Photographs used this way in war, for the first time it provided the ability to deceive and make things acceptable to the public. It was also used manipulate material and provide information easily accepted by the general public because it appeared to be from reliable government sources.

Some examples 

The  photograph,above with a retouched background, was published in the Russian newspaper Wes Mir with the title "The German robbers of Warsaw" and the caption of "A group of German looters, their hands filled with stolen goods    The bottom and original photograph first appeared in the German paper Berliner Lokalanzeiger in June 1914 and shows the victors of a pre war horse race.

In this further example, the top photograph shows the German leaders Hindenburg, the Kaiser and Ludendorff, looking at military maps at German headquarters.

In the bottom photograph The French paper Les Annales of January 27, 1918 retouched in a map of the Balkans and parts of Russia to show Germany's alleged military ambitions. The faces have also been manipulated to give a more brutal and sinister look    

Porthcawl Museum was approached for advice on the appropriate disposal of the building’s historical records and artefacts. The Museum’s advice was that the documents should be deposited with the Glamorgan Archive in Cardiff, which already holds substantial records for the Rest.

With the permission of the Board of Trustees museum volunteers collected the records and artefacts before the Rest closed its doors for the final time this week (Monday 7 October).

The written records, numbering over 130 volumes, some dating back to the 1890s, document the day-to-day running of The Rest. Of particular interest are the patient admittance records, which offer a fascinating view of local and wider social history.

The artefacts include the Glamorgan Yeomanry uniform jacket and hat worn by The Rest’s founder Dr. James Lewis, together with a selection of photographs that chart the history of the building. The uniform will be retained by the museum for display following inspection by the conservation team at the Museum of Wales, Cardiff.
The photographs below show David Swidenbank (R) handing over the records from the Rest to Harvey Thomas of The Glamorgan Archive and the Glamorgan Yeomanry tunic of Dr James Lewis 

Further research of the  records at the Porthcawl Rest this week reminded us of another sad centenary this month
At 8.00am on Tuesday 14 October 1913 a huge explosion rocked the tiny town of Senghenydd,. The explosion, and subsequent release of poisonous gas, at the Universal Colliery claimed the lives of 439 miners, making it the most lethal mining disaster in British history..

An electrical spark may have caused the explosion by igniting methane gas,(Firedamp) the explosion caused coal dust lying on the floor of the mine to rise and explode. The blast was so violent that the cage of the Lancaster pit was even blown back up the shaft to jam in the pithead winding gear.

The rescue teams did manage to find men and boys still alive in the wreckage, however, as the days wore on, survivors grew fewer and the carrying out of bodies became the norm.

The rescue attempts lasted for three weeks although, by then, It was estimated that over 1,000 people in the area were bereaved by the disaster. And despite the enquiry finding faults that could be laid at the door of the owners, compensation and fines were levied came to a total of £24  making a miners life was valued at 1s 1 1/4d’

Universal Colliery was back in use by the end of November 1913 and full production was again achieved by 1916.
The Rest records for the months of October and November 1913 show that 12 miners were admitted over a two week period the youngest being aged 15 and the oldest aged 40.
injuries ranged from the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning and broken bones.
The normal charge of 1s 6d per day was not made for their stay at the rest.


 

As my main interests are photography and family history I would like to take this opportunity over the next few months to share with you some of my recent research work .

David Swidenbank

Part one “The camera never lies”

The first British daily newspaper to achieve mass circulation was the Daily Mail, which appeared in 1896, owned by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe). In 1908 Harmsworth also bought The Times, which was seen as the mouthpiece of the British governing class.

By 1914, his newspapers accounted for about half the total daily sales in London alone. This introduced the era of the 'press baron' in British politics, including Sir Max Aitkin (later Lord Beaverbrook), owner of the Daily Express. Most adults in Britain had access to some form of a national or local newspaper. That said, it is important to understand that this was the period that gave us the phase “The camera never lies”. First quoted in an Ohio newspaper “He looked up from the proof at me and said: 
'Good Lord! Do I look like that?'
'The camera doesn't lie about such things', I replied”. (The Sandusky Register, February 1895)

Today we might argue that we are more media sophisticated, however evidence would indicate this was not the case in the early 1900s; when the above quote was made it would have been considered by many to be correct. An example of this belief is the 1917 Cottingley Fairies photographs, which were widely believed to be genuine evidence of the existence of fairies at the bottom of a garden, when photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. Two young cousins, aged 9 and 16 were using Elsie’s father’s quarter plate camera to take some photographs in their garden. When processed by Elsie (who had been trained in the use of the darkroom by her amateur photographer father) the photographs appeared to show Frances playing with a group of fairies. After the photographs were made public, the photographer, and photographic retouching expert Harold Snelling was asked to examine them by the girl’s parents. He declared the photos were "genuine and not fake photographs”; he concluded “they are of a single exposure, with no trace of studio work involving card or paper models, dark backgrounds, painted figures, etc." With this stamp of approval, the fairy images soon came to the attention of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a confirmed believer in spiritualism, (and a key contributor of published British war propaganda). He was convinced that the images were conclusive photographic proof of the existence of fairies.

Racism in the Great War

"Lord Kitchener said with the black race, he could whip the world,"

Enthusiasm for the battle was widespread across the Caribbean. While some declared it a white man's war, leaders and thinkers such as the Jamaican Marcus Garvey said young men from the islands should fight in order to prove their loyalty and to be treated as equals. The islands donated £60m in today's money to the war effort - cash they could ill afford

While Kitchener's private attitude was that black soldiers should never be allowed at the front alongside white soldiers, the enormous losses - and the interference of George V - made it inevitable. The Black men who came to Britain to volunteer met with a mixed response. The Manual of Military Law classed these men as 'aliens', even those that were British subjects, and the number of aliens who could enlist in a regiment was limited to one for every 50 British subjects.

When they arrived, they often found that fighting was to be done by white soldiers only - black soldiers were assigned the dirty, dangerous jobs of loading ammunition, laying telephone wires and digging trenches. Conditions were appalling.

A poem written by an anonymous trooper, entitled The Black Soldier's Lament, showed how bitter the disappointment was:

Stripped to the waist and sweated chest

Midday's reprieve brings much-needed rest

From trenches deep toward the sky.

Non-fighting troops and yet we die.

However there is evidence that black soldiers did see combat in the trenches and there are reports of West Indies Regiment soldiers fighting off counter-attacks - one account tells how a group fought off a German assault armed only with knives they had brought from home.

"They called us darkies," The West Indies Regiment solider said, recalling the casual racism of the time. "But when the battle starts, it didn't make a difference. We were all the same. When you're there, you don't care about anything. Every man there is under the rifle."

They also experienced racism from the Germans when confronted by some German prisoners the Germans would spit on their hands and try wiping our faces, thinking we were painted black."

In total 4,000 troops from the Caribbean were killed or wounded during the Great War.

During our local research we have looked at the records held by The Rest Hotel in Porthcawl.
The Rest was built as a hospital in the late 1800s for the recovery and rest of local people in the main from the then large South wales mining community. During World War One it housed Belgium refugees, provided accommodation for new recruits, and served as a hospital for troops recovering from wounds.


A page from the Rest soldier's autograph book dated 1916

we often have photographs passed on to us. one example is attached.  We know that the photograph is of the 23rd(Service) Battalion (Welsh Pioneers) The Welsh Regiment.

They were formed at Porthcawl in September 1915 and the photograph was taken during July 1916 before they left for Salonika they later saw action at the Battle of Doiran Macedonia as part of the 28th Div.

The only person in the Photograph we know is Pte.Isaac Owens who is third from the left in the back row.

Any information on the rest of the men in the photograph would be appreciated

We had four cousins visit the museum the other day all had the same grandfather Thomas Bevan born in 1860 he was a farmer at Manor Farm Newton and may have breed horses for the army during WW1 
In 1911 he lived at the farm with his wife (possible 2nd) and his five children has anyone any information about this family please?

A very successful day at the museum playing its part in the Open Doors scheme