The Armistice - the lives of men and women who shaped the First World War and its aftermath.
As the 90th anniversary of the Armistice approaches, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is inviting online visitors to remember the lives of some of the men and women who shaped the First World War and its aftermath.
Visitors to the Oxford DNB’s Armistice gallery will be able to read, for free, the life stories of 36 individuals arranged in six categories – Women and War; the Trenches; the Fallen; Empire; Land, Sea and Air; and Remembrance – reflecting different aspects of the 1914-18 conflict.
Remarkable stories of front-line soldiers, sailors, and airmen are featured – such as William Coltman, the war’s most decorated other-rank soldier; Noel Chavasse, the only man to receive the Victoria Cross twice during the conflict and John Cornwell, the boy-hero of Jutland.
Military strategists such as Gerald Boyd, commander of the forces that breached the Hindenberg line in September 1918 can be explored whilst the short life of Edith Cavell, executed by the Germans in 1915 is illuminated. Famous writers such as Wilfred Owen and Vera Brittain are also featured together with lesser known characters such as the patriotic poet Jessie Pope who reflected a very different attitude to the war.
Pope, whose much-read verse was notable for its doggerel urgings to enlistment and the glorification of combat, was seemingly oblivious to the horrors of the trenches. Her work attracted vilification at the time and she was the critical dedicatee of Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum Est. Forgotten after the war, her contribution to the war effort is only now being reassessed.
The website also illuminates the often forgotten author of the now famous lines ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old/Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.’
The words, from Laurence Binyon’s poem, For the Fallen, can be found carved onto many remembrance monuments and it will certainly be recited at many of this year’s remembrance services throughout the UK.
You can find out more about him together with the lives of 36 others at:www.oxforddnb.com/public/armistice.
