Rudyard Kipling

Irish Guards in the Great War

The 1st and 2nd Battalions

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The Irish Guards were raised in April 1900 under the authority of Army Order 77 of that month, which stated: 'Her Majesty the Queen, having deemed it desirable to commemorate the bravery shown by the Irish regiments in the recent operations in South Africa, has been graciously pleased to command that an Irish regiment of Foot Guards be formed. This regiment will be designated - "The Irish Guards".' As the Fourth Regiment of Foot Guards, the regiment has the buttons on the tunic in two groups of four, and the plume on the bearskin cap is blue, worn on the right. The regimental march is 'St Patrick's Day' and the slow march 'Let Erin Remember.' When war broke out in August 1914 the 1st Battalion (there was only one battalion, then) was in Wellington Barracks (London), one of the four guards battalions that made up the 4th (Guards) Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. The battalion landed in France on 13 August 1914. In July 1915 Kitchener obtained the permission of the King to form a Guards Division, an idea he had not shared with the War Cabinet nor with the C in C in France. As there were only ten battalions of Guards at the time, including the recently (February 1915) formed Welsh Guards, he gave orders for another Grenadier and Irish Guards battalion to be raised to make up the required twelve battalions; a fourth Coldstream battalion was also formed as the divisional Pioneer battalion. Thus, on 18 July 1915 the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards came into existence, formed from the 2nd Reserve Battalion which itself had been created in August 1914. The author has followed the same pattern with both 1st & 2nd Battalions, concentrating on the events that affected the battalions and making use of official and private records, diaries and personal interviews with officers and men of the battalions. The book teems with Kipling's characteristic powers of description, his meticulous eye for detail and his empathy with fighting men at their last extremity as he narrates the Guards' progress from Mons to the Armistice via the fighting at La Bassee, Loos, Laventie, Ypres, the Somme, Gouzeaucourt and Arras.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Naval & Military Press
• Seitenzahl: 704
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. Februar 2014
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 140mm x 37mm
• Gewicht: 870g
• ISBN-13: 9781783310869
• ISBN-10: 1783310863
• Artikelnr.: 40554864

Autorenporträt

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English artist, brief tale essayist, and author, primarily associated with his works for young children and supporting the British government. He was born in British India in the nineteenth century and was shipped off to England when he was six years old for his schooling. Later, he got back to India to start his profession as a columnist, however, shortly after coming here, he went back to his native country where he focused full time on writing. After his marriage, he lived for certain years in Vermont, USA, before returning to England. He was a skilled author whose books for children are respected as a work for children writing. It is accepted that at one point he was offered artist laureateship and on a few other events, he was considered for knighthood, yet he denied them. Be that as it may, he accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature, which made him the main English essayist to get the honour. Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on 30th December, 1865 in Bombay (Mumbai), then known as British India. His parents named him after the Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, where they had met. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an artist and stoneware originator from North Yorkshire. After his marriage to Alice MacDonald, the young girl of Reverend George Browne MacDonald, they moved to India where he was delegated as a teacher of design form in the Jeejeebhoy School of Art. Rudyard had a sister, likewise named Alice, three years junior to him. Like most other British youngsters in India, they enjoyed most of the day with Indian babysitters and workers, paying attention to the extraordinary stories they told in their local tongue and exploring neighbourhood markets with them. Subsequently, Rudyard turned out to be more fluent in their language than in English. However, every one of these changed unexpectedly in 1871, when both the siblings were sent to homes in England to be instructed under the British framework. Showing up in England in October, they set up with Captain Pryse Agar Holloway and his significant other Sarah, who boarded offspring of British nationals serving in India in their home at Southsea, Portsmouth. Here he confessed to a school, however, found it difficult to change. Life at the cultivated home was difficult by the same token. ...