In 1914 Billericay was a peaceful compact village of about 2000 inhabitants. There was the High Street, Back Street, which today is called Chapel Street, and Back Lane which is now Western Road. Within half a mile of the High Street there were groups of cottages; Sun Street had some, which are still there today. There were others in Laindon Road at the beginning before you come to the Roman Catholic Church, and Stock Road, along with Norsey Road and Western Road. All of this policed by a couple of local Constables.In London Road there was Hodges Farm and others along Laindon Road where it verges on to Little Burstead, Norsey Road, Stock Road and Jacksons Lane. The roads back then were no more than dirt roads. They weren't flat and smooth and made of tar, but luckily horses were still king of the road.In 1914, between the bottom end of the High Street and the top end at Sun Street, there were only a total of 54 premises including private houses shops, pubs, a bank, Post Office, the Police station, two Blacksmiths, the undertakers, a school and a Church. The war began in August of that year and like the pace of life in the village, it started slowly for the people of Billericay. To start with it was something which they only read about in the newspapers. During the war soldiers started to be billeted in the town. There was an Army camp in Mountnessing Road opposite Station Road for the ordinary soldier, but the officers were billeted in people's houses. Initially there was excitement and enthusiasm about the war but when some of the local men who had gone off to fight in it were getting killed, suddenly it became very real and personal as local families started losing loved onesSeptember 1916 saw a Zeppelin crash in a field at nearby Great Burstead. The burnt and disfigured remains of the German airmen left nobody in doubt just of how real and painful the war was.'February 1918 even saw German soldiers come to the town as Prisoners of war interned in the local Billericay Work House. They were the enemy, but not monsters, just ordinary men like those from Billericay who had gone off to fight in a war that they most probably didn't want to be fighting in. When it was all over some would return to their families to get on with their lives and for the ones who didn't make it back, there would be the commemoration of their names on a war memorial for generations to remember forever more.

A brief history of how the people of Laindon and district coped with the problems of the First World War??´ Throughout the book are individual family memories, over 100 photographs and appropriate oems mostly written at the time.??´ Indication of why Britain went to war??´ Insight into the role of the local Explosive factories.??´ Individual stories of those who applied for exemption and the hysteria of suspected spies.??´ The role played by our Women Folk??´ Culminating in individual stories of our men folk who went to war on our behalf.

Almost 400 men from the Chelmsford were lost in the Great War. This book explores how the experience of war impacted on the Town, from the initial enthusiasm for sorting out the German Kaiser in time for Christmas 1914, to the gradual realization of the enormity of human sacrifice the families of Chelmsford were committed to as the war stretched out over the next four years. A record of the growing disillusion of the people, their tragedies and hardships and a determination to see it through. The Great War affected everyone. At home there were wounded soldiers in military hospitals, refugees from Belgium and later on German prisoners of war. There were food and fuel shortages and disruption to schooling. The role of women changed dramatically and they undertook a variety of work undreamed of in peacetime. Meanwhile, men serving in the armed forces were scattered far and wide. Extracts from contemporary letters reveal their heroism and give insights into what it was like under battle conditions.

Dartford was a hive of activity during the Great War years, with most in the community doing their bit for the war effort in what ever way that they could. For men that meant enlisting in the armed forces, and for women that they were to take up roles that previously belonged to men. They worked in industry, delivered post, drove buses and taxis, and became carpenters and plumbers. They were also heavily relied on by volunteer organizations, such as Voluntary Aid Detachments, the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and later in the war, the Women's Land Army. Nearby, there was a large munitions factory in the town, which maintained a large yet productive, mostly female, workforce to ensure it met the ever-increasing demand for shells and bullets and, throughout the town, hospitals to cared for the wounded servicemen of Britain, Australia, America and even Germany, whose captured military personnel were held at one of many local prisoner of war camps. Joyce Green Aerodrome was home to units of the Royal Flying Corps and latterly the Royal Air Force, who protected both Dartford and London from air raids. This book cover how Dartford endured thirty-seven German air raids. Miraculously, not one local resident was killed.At the end of the war, the people of Dartford returned to the normality of life as best as they could, but the world had changed forever. For those who had lost loved ones, and over 300 local families had, the changes would always be a painful reminder of the terrible price of the war.Dartford in the Great War is a meticulous and compelling account of this town and its dedicated people, who sacrificed so much in their effort to thrive in one history's most difficult periods.

An examination of the political and military controversies that turned out to be missteps on the road to greatness for the British Prime Minister. Winston Churchill is undoubtedly one of the most respected and best-loved characters England has ever known. However, much of how people view him is based on his leadership during the bleak and dire times of the Second World War. If it wasn’t for him, Britain would almost definitely have lost the war: there were those in government who encouraged Churchill to strike a deal with Hitler at the time of the Dunkirk evacuations, which took place just three weeks after he had been made Prime Minister, but he stuck resolutely to his guns and said, “no.” However, Churchill was never the favorite to take over after Neville Chamberlain resigned. Indeed, everyone believed Lord Halifax would be the next Prime Minister, although even he thankfully recognized that Winston Churchill was the best man for the job, even though King George VI disagreed. Yet there was another side to Churchill that is not often spoken of, and one that led to him making some questionable decisions. Some of these, it could be argued, were for national security reasons, but others were not, proving that even the very best are not always as perfect as they first appear. This book looks at Churchill’s most questionable decisions throughout his career—from the Sidney Street Siege in London in January 1910 through the Bengal Famine of 1943 to the Mau Mau Uprising in British Kenya between 1952 and 1964.

A historic profile of the London borough of Enfield during World War I and the conflict’s effect on the region and its people. The Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield was famous for producing the Lee Enfield .303 Rifle, the standard issued rifle provided to all infantry soldiers in the British Army during the First World War. The factory was so prestigious that King George V visited it in April, 1915. By the end of the war, its workforce of more than 9,000 had produced more than 2 million rifles. Their gun helped play a big part in winning the war. On July 7, 1917, the town was hit by a German air raid. Local anti-aircraft batteries did their best to thwart the enemy. Sadly, falling shrapnel from British anti-aircraft gunfire killed one woman, making her Enfield’s only resident to be killed in the town throughout the course of the war. A nearby young boy was also struck by some falling shrapnel but survived. After the incident, members of the Government Workers’ Union held a meeting to complain about the lack of a warning about the attack. Meanwhile, that month also saw a baker appear at Enfield Magistrates Court, charged under the Bread Order for selling loaves of bread that were over the permitted weight. For his heinous war time offence, he was fined the princely sum of ten shillings. Through researching local newspapers of the day, along with letters, diaries, photographs, parish magazines, trade journals, contemporary printed pamphlets, and more, author Stephen Wynn details the stories of Enfield during this dramatic era.

History has recorded that the first ever powered flight took place at Kitty Hawk in America, on 17 December 1903 and was carried out by the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, who were aircraft designers and manufacturers. By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, aviation was only eleven years old. The daddy of battlefield warfare until that point in time had been the cavalry, a position it maintained even as war was declared on the Western Front. Aircraft were not initially seen as an offensive weapon and were instead used by both sides as observation platforms, or to take aerial photographs from. Even when they were eventually used in an offensive capacity, they did not have machine guns attached to them; if the crew wanted to open fire then they had to use a pistol or rifle. As the war progressed so the use of aircraft changed from being an observational tool, to that of a fighter and bomber aircraft - something that had never been foreseen at the outbreak of the war. The book then looks at the fighter aces from all sides. These were pilots who had been credited with shooting or forcing down a minimum of five enemy aircraft, of which their were hundreds. While some of these aces survived, many of them were killed. The most famous fighter ace of all is without doubt the German pilot known as the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen.

“An eye-opening exposé of the Pre-D-Day disaster and incident of friendly fire tragedy and cover up that was the Slapton Sands.” —WorldWars.com This is a book of two stories. The first is the sad tale of how at least 749 American servicemen lost their lives on a pre-D-Day landing exercise, code-named “Operation Tiger,” on the evening of 23/24 April 1943. The second, was the unanswerable question of whether the attacking E-Boats of the German Kriegsmarine had fully grasped the importance of what they had stumbled across. Because of the time scale between the operation and the actual D-Day landings, secrecy surrounding the tragedy had to be stringently adhered to, and even after the invasion of Normandy, only scant information about the incident and those who were killed was ever released. The other factor that was of major concern, was if the Germans had understood the significance of the vessels they had attacked, then the intended Allied invasion of Europe was in grave danger of having to be postponed for an indefinite period of time. In late 1943, as part of the buildup to the D-day landings at Normandy, the British government had set up a training ground at Slapton Sands in Devon, to be used by the American forces tasked with landing on Utah Beach in Normandy. Coordination and communication problems between British and American forces, resulted in friendly fire deaths during the exercise, making a bad situation even worse. The story was then lost to history until Devon resident, Ken Small, discovered evidence of the aftermath washed up on the shore at Slapton Sands in the early 1970s.

Grays (Thurrock) in the Great War tells the story of Grays and the wider Thurrock area from the outbreak of the Great War until the peace of 1918. The Docks at nearby Tilbury were the source of much employment in the area for both fathers and sons alike. They also played their part in the war, but not as a hub of military deployments. In May 1915 the German spy Augusto Alfredo Roggen, a Uruguayan born in Montevideo, arrived at Tilbury on board the SS Batavia, which had sailed from Rotterdam in Holland. On his arrival in England he made his way to Scotland to carry out his spying activities at the Loch Long torpedo range. He was captured, found guilty and executed by firing squad at the Tower of London on 17 November 1915. In July 1915 the German Naval officer and pilot, Gunther PlŸschow, made good his escape from Donington Hall POW camp in Leicestershire and made his way safely back to Germany by hiding himself on board one of the many ships that sailed from Tilbury. He became the only German POW to escape from Britain and make it back to Germany during the First World War. The Kynochs munitions factory was situated near Fobbing on the site of what had previously been Borleys Farm. The site, which made shell cases, detonators, cordite and acetone for the British war effort, was so vast that it included its own housing estate for its workers, a hospital and a railway line. It became so big that it actually became known as Kynochtown and was a major source of employment in the area, particularly for women. There were Prisoner of War camps at Horndon House Farm, Puddledock Farm and Woodhams Quarry in West Thurrock which housed over 150 German prisoners. The Thurrock area also played an important part of protecting London from seaborne invasion up the River Thames with the help of Tilbury Fort and Coalhouse Fort at East Tilbury.

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Billericay and the surrounding area has changed over the last century.