History of the 4th (British) Infantry Division
Cód:
491_9781905006151
On the 2nd August 1914, Germany declared war on France and its’ armies immediately crossed the Belgian border en-route to French territory. Under the terms of the Treaty of London, Britain issued an ultimatum to Germany but, as no response was received Britain declared war on Germany at 11:00pm on the 4th August 1914. There existed an urgency to get the British army to the Western Front. Britain possessed six infantry divisions on which she could call but responded initially by sending four of those formations at the shortest possible notice. The British Expeditionary Force was followed a week later, by the 4th Infantry Division, having landed on French soil in the early hours of the 23rd August 1914. Those divisions, with the later addition of the 6th Infantry Division, were to become the famous ‘Old Contemptibles.Many divisions that served in the Great War have been written, each cataloguing the events in which the lives of millions of young men were interrupted by the greatest conflict the civilised world had seen. However, there remains the history of some forty or more yet to be documented. Consequently, it is without doubt that a large gap remains in the library of knowledge of one of Britain’s greatest trials in military and civil history. The history of the 4th Infantry Division is an attempt to contribute to the filling of that gap. The 4th Division was one of the regular army divisions then in service and began mobilisation on the 4th August 1914, fought throughout, and undertook demobilisation in 1919, when it passed out of one of the most difficult and controversial periods of world history. In committing to pen the history of the 4th Division, so long after the cessation of hostilities, the author has relied on the collections of the Public Records Office, Imperial War Museum, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and the various Regimental Museums. Unit diaries, official histories, maps, and personal diaries have all been drawn upon. An effort has
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