On August 4th 1914 the declaration of war between Great Britain and Germany was announced in a short statement by the Foreign Office at11 p.m. On that morning day, the Tuesday edition of the Accrington Observer & Times, (which served Haslingden) carried front page news about the conflict in Belgium and the threat of war. [...]
Between early August 1914, when the war started, and 1916 over 150 men from St James-the-Less had joined the armed forces and gone to war, nine were reported dead and numerous men injured. By the time the war ended, on November 11 1918, over four years after it started, 30 men from St James-the-Less were [...]
Between late August 1914 and May 1915 250,000 Belgian refugees escaping the war in their country arrived in Britain. Now, one hundred years later, Europe is again dealing with the problem of large numbers of refugees, some escaping war. It is interesting to compare how British people reacted a hundred years ago with how they [...]
Despite the many thousands in the UK who thought it was their patriotic duty to enlist and fight the enemy at the start of the war, there were many ordinary people who objected to the war on moral or religious grounds. Conscription When the war effort needed more men to join the armed services, the [...]
Before Rossendale and the nation could think of getting back to ‘normal’ after the war, a new, deadly, silent threat appeared during 1918. It was a lethal virus that attacked soldiers both in the trenches and returning home and the population in Britain. The new, deadly, silent threat was the ‘Spanish flu’ virus, a pandemic [...]
In the two years before the war there were hundreds of sightings of what people believed were airships in the skies from across Britain. This caused panic with many people believing that Germany was spying on England, or worse, planning to invade! However, there was little or no hard evidence that any Zeppelin airships were [...]
Work Many of the men and women who remained behind supported the war effort in lots of ways. Because many men were away on the front line women stepped into their roles, some of which had never been opened up to women before. Many of these jobs were in industries and on the farms, essential [...]
Unlike today, when we have smartphones and a host of other electronic devices to make immediate contact with people anywhere in the world, the only method soldiers had of contacting home was by letter. Home sickness was a huge problem so the soldiers were given postcards and writing paper which could be sent home for [...]
There was a lot of patriotism and confidence in the first weeks and months of the war, both in the nation and in Rossendale. People thought the war would soon be over and the idea that ‘our brave soldiers will deliver a bloody nose to the Germans and be home by Christmas’ was commonly spoken [...]
In any war reliable and accurate communication is essential. Battles are often won or lost on the ability to communicate information on enemy positions and movement, as well as instructions. The battlefields of the First World War were so big, widespread and difficult, that all sorts of methods of communication were used. Wireless communication (radio) [...]
