WW1
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the War and the people who fought and died for our freedom.
World War I (WW1) World War, I also known as the First World War, was a global war centered in Europe that began on 28th July 1914 and lasted until 11th November 1918.
World War I (WW1) lasted exactly four years, three months and 14 days. Before World War II began in 1939, World War I was called the Great War, the World War or the War to End all Wars. 135 countries took part in World War I, and more than 15 million people died. World War 1 was a military conflict lasting from 1914 to 1918 which involved nearly all the biggest powers of the world. It involved two opposing alliances – the Allies and the Central Powers. The countries of the Allies included Russia, France, British Empire, Italy, United States, Japan, Rumania, Serbia, Belgium, Greece, Portugal and Montenegro. The countries of the Central Powers included Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria.
World War I began on June 28, 1914. World War 1 was triggered on 28 June 1914 by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his pregnant wife Sophie. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the throne of Austria and Hungary. The assassination was planned by a Serbian terrorist group, called The Black Hand and the man who shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife was a Bosnian revolutionary named Gavrilo Princip.
- A primary cause of WW1 was a difference over foreign policy. Although the assassination of Franz Ferdinand triggered WW1, that was only the immediate cause. Differences over foreign policy between the major world powers was the underlying cause of the war.
- WW1 had many causes:
- A tangle of alliances made between countries, to maintain a balance power in Europe, which brought about the scale of the conflict.
- The Bosnian Crisis where Austria-Hungary took over the former Turkish province of Bosnia in 1909 angering Serbia.
- Countries were building their military forces, arms and battleships.
- Countries wanted to regain lost territories from previous conflicts and build empires.
- The Moroccan Crisis where Germans were protesting in 1911 against the French possession of Morocco.
The Americans joined World War 1 after 128 Americans were killed by a German submarine. In 1915, the British passenger sip Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine. In all, 1,195 passengers, including 128 Americans, lost their lives. Americans were outraged and put pressure on the U.S. government to enter the war. President Woodrow Wilson wanted a peaceful end to the war, but in 1917, when the Germans announced that their submarines would sink any ship that approached Britain, Wilson declared that America would enter the war and restore peace to Europe. The United States entered the war on April 6, 1917. The United States only spent seven and a half months in actual combat. During which time 116,000 were killed and 204,000 were wounded.
- By 1918, German citizens were striking and demonstrating against the war. The British navy blocked German ports, which meant that thousands of Germans were starving and the economy was collapsing. Then the German navy suffered a major mutiny. After German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November 9th, 1918, the leaders of both sides met at Compiegne, France. The peace armistice was signed on November 11th. By the end of the war four empires — the Russian empire, the Ottoman empire, the German empire, and the Austro-Hungarian empire had collapsed because of the war.
- In 1919, The Treaty of Versailles officially ended WW1. The Treaty required that Germany accept full responsibility for causing the war; make reparations to some Allied countries; surrender some of its territory to surrounding countries; surrender its African colonies; and limit the size of its military. The Treaty also established the League of Nations to prevent future wars. The League of Nations helped Europe rebuild and fifty-three nations joined by 1923. But the U.S. Senate refused to let the United States join the League of Nations, and as a result, President Wilson, who had established the League, suffered a nervous collapse and spent the rest of his term as an invalid.
Interesting Facts The War helped us in many ways...
- Plastic surgery was invented because of WW1. One of the earliest examples of plastic surgery came during World War I when a surgeon by the name of Harold Gillies helped shrapnel victims with terrible facial injuries. Shrapnel caused many facial injuries in WW1 and the twisted metal would inflict far worse injuries than the straight-line wounds of a bullet. Dr Gillies pioneered the early techniques for facial reconstruction.
- Blood banks were developed during World War I. It was during WW1 that the routine use of blood transfusion was used to treat wounded soldiers. Blood was transferred directly from one person to another. In 1917, a US Army doctor by the name of Captain Oswald Johnson established the first blood bank on the Western Front. He used sodium citrate the prevent the blood from coagulating and becoming unusable. The blood was kept on ice for as long as 28 days and was transported when needed to casualty clearing stations for use in life-saving surgery on soldiers who had lost a lot of blood.
- The youngest Irish soldier in WW1 was just 14 years old. Over 250,000 underage soldiers were allowed to fight in World War 1. The youngest was a boy named John Condon from Waterford City who was just 14 years old but lied about his age to join. His grave in Poelcapelle Cemetery outside Ypres in Belgium is one of the most popular on the Western Front. Schoolchildren come from across Europe to see the last resting place of a soldier who learned how to handle a gun before he handled a razor blade.
- An explosion on the battlefield in France was heard in England. Most of World War One was fought in mud and trenches, but a group of miners would also dug underground tunnels and detonate mines behind the enemy’s trenches. In Messines Ridge in Belgium, these miners detonated over 900,000lbs of explosives at the same time, destroying the German front line. The explosion was so loud and powerful that it was heard by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George – 140 miles away in Downing Street.
The Commission, which looks after the graves of British and Irish servicemen and women killed in both world wars including thousands in Ireland, says it is satisfied having been presented with new evidence that Thomas Woodgate from Callan, Co Kilkenny was also only 14 when he died in October 1918.
Woodgate drowned along with 501 servicemen and women, passengers and crew when the RMS Leinster was sunk by a German submarine off the Kish Lighthouse on October 10th 1918 just a month before the war ended.
He joined the RAF’s 23rd Training Squadron as an apprentice mechanic just the previous month. In the latter stages of the first World War there was a surge of recruits for the rapidly expanding RAF especially for those looking to learn a trade.
His RAF attestation form shows he lied about his age stating that he was born on September 3rd 1900. Conveniently that made him exactly 18 when he joined the RAF, the legal minimum age for military service.
As a consequence the RAF, the CWGC and even his own family assumed that he was 18 when he died. The truth only emerged when records were being collated for a new memorial which was unveiled last month to the 827 men and boys from Co Kilkenny who were killed in the war.
His family found to their astonishment that he was born on December 22nd, 1903 making him 14 years, nine months and 18 days old when he died. He was baptised on the same day, according to the records held in his local parish church in Callan.
Woodgate will be one of 3,270 men and women from the county who fought in the first World War to be remembered when a second memorial is unveiled at MacDonagh Train Station in Kilkenny.
It also found that he is not listed in the 1901 census but is listed in the 1911 census as living with his parents Edward and Hanora Woodgate at their home in Mill Street Callan.
The CWGC has amended its electronic records accordingly and will change the age on his headstone in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin from 18 to 14 at a later date.
