© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

World War 1

Read more about the article March 1918: Miracle at Villers-Bretonneux

March 1918: Miracle at Villers-Bretonneux

Excerpt from The Hunter Region in The Great War, by Greg and Sylvia Ray The winter of 1917-1918 was almost as bad as the one before it, but at least the troops knew what to expect. They expected cold and snow, and they also expected a big German assault as soon as the weather improved. Behind their own lines, the Germans were training for a new phase of long-awaited open warfare.Knowing this, the Allied troops were full of dread. The futile Passchendaele bloodbath had sapped the Australian battalions and weakened the core of the entire British…

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Read more about the article Pozieres 1916: hell on earth under shellfire

Pozieres 1916: hell on earth under shellfire

This is an excerpt from our book, The Hunter Region in The Great War. After the slaughter of Fromelles, where the Australian 5th Division had been critically weakened in a failed “feint”, the main British attack on the Somme awaited an Australian contribution. The British attack had gotten off to a bad start. The artillery bombardment before the infantry attack didn’t do the damage the British generals had hoped for, so casualties on the British side were extremely heavy. About 20,000 died on the first day, with many more wounded. But the British, committed to trying…

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Read more about the article A Mesopotamian campaign album

A Mesopotamian campaign album

Part of the pleasure of collecting old photographs and negatives is the challenge of trying to reunite stray pictures and collections with their stories - as far as it is possible. This collection of negatives was bought at an antique fair in the Hunter Valley some years ago and sadly was accompanied by no information. I quickly ascertained that it came from a person who had been involved in the Mesopotamian campaign of The Great War. This was clear because some of the negatives were actually labelled as Kut el Amara, 1917. This was the scene…

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