Military History Matters 123

Cover Story

Nelson and Trafalgar Graham Goodlad concludes our series on naval leadership with a look at the legendary figure of Horatio Nelson.
Britain’s greatest naval victory Military History Matters' Neil Faulkner analyses Nelson’s culminating tactical masterpiece.

Features

The men behind the wire: British POWs in the First World War Joseph O’Neill lifts the lid on a hidden story of POW maltreatment.
The Battle of Cerami and the Norman Conquest of Sicily Robert C L Holmes analyses a decisive collision between two very different ways of war in the early medieval period.
Firing the Generals: Lincoln v McClellan President Abraham Lincoln and Prime Minister Winston Churchill have such iconic status as the victorious leaders of their countries in the American Civil War and World War II respectively that…
The Battle of Catarelto: September/October 1944 Patrick Mercer recalls a grim battle between two military elites, British Guards and Waffen SS, on the heavily fortified Gothic Line in northern Italy.

News

Museum acquires items from defender of Rorke’s Drift At the auction, the museum acquired three lots belonging to Chard: a small archive of material relating to his life; a manuscript copy concerning the battle; and surveying and drawing…
Project to restore Waterloo hero’s monument gets funding boost The site is dedicated to Henry Paget, who was second in command under the Duke of Wellington and leader of the allied cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Bodies identified in Spanish Civil War graves excavation The individuals were killed and buried in a civil cemetery at Almagro, in the Ciudad Real region of Spain, between 1939 and 1940.
Buffalo LVT excavated in Lincolnshire Lightly armoured amphibious landing craft, Buffalo LVTs (Landing Vehicles Tracked), were used by the Allies in the crossing of the Rhine and Elbe rivers in March 1945.
IWM to open ‘extensive’ new galleries on the Second World War and Holocaust The story of the Holocaust will be told through 2,000 photos, books, artworks, and letters, as well as personal objects from toys to jewellery.
‘World’s oldest war memorial’ identified in Syria Archaeologists have stated that a monument at the Banat-Bazi complex is over 4,000 years old.

Views

MHM LETTERS – June/July Letters Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
Military history events, lectures, and exhibitions – July 2021 Museum, What's on MHM offers a glimpse into the best military history exhibitions and experiences available to the public in July 2021, including The Tank Museum's fair and auction, and the National Army…
The Battlefields of England Books, British Army, Comment, Ideas I headed for the battlefield monument to get my bearings – an obelisk erected in 1740 to mark the spot where Warwick the Kingmaker, the greatest figure of the Wars…
ISU-152 self-propelled gun, Chernobyl, Ukraine The Picture Desk It was designed by the Soviet Union during the Second World War to take on the German Tigers and Panthers.
The D-Day Story Museum Museum, What's on Reviewing the best military history exhibitions, with Calum Henderson.
Back to the Drawing Board: T-35 Heavy Tank Ideas David Porter on Military History's doomed inventions.
War of Words: ‘PAWN’ Ideas Pawn emerges etymologically from the Anglo-Norman poun, which itself comes from the medieval Latin pedo (‘footsoldier’), derived from the Latin pes (‘foot’).

Reviews

Aftermath: life in the fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 The defeated German soldiers who returned from the Second World War were so broken by the conflict that a specific term for them emerged. Heimkehrer were, according to Harald Jähner,…
Military history events, lectures, and exhibitions – July 2021 MHM offers a glimpse into the best military history exhibitions and experiences available to the public in July 2021, including The Tank Museum's fair and auction, and the National Army…
Cleaning Cold War aircraft The team from Arco Services had to abseil from the hangar’s 30m-high roof to get access to the various aircraft, which include a Vulcan bomber and an English Electric Lightning.
River Kings: a new history of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads The sleepy village of Repton in south Derbyshire seems like an unlikely starting point for a voyage halfway around the world. But it is here that Cat Jarman begins her…
Barbarossa Through German Eyes Hitler’s invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941 – Operation Barbarossa – initiated a campaign of epic proportions. While the format of recounting a campaign through the recollections of individual…
The Battlefields of England I headed for the battlefield monument to get my bearings – an obelisk erected in 1740 to mark the spot where Warwick the Kingmaker, the greatest figure of the Wars…
The D-Day Story Museum Reviewing the best military history exhibitions, with Calum Henderson.
The Devil’s Bridge: the German victory at Arnhem, 1944 Few events in military history have been picked over as much as Operation Market Garden, now notorious only because it resulted in a German victory when it was believed that,…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles • Paths of Fire: the gun and the world it made • Pathfinders • The Viking Great Army and the Making of England • SBS: Silent Warriors • The Confidence…
War on Film: The Desert Rats (1953) The battle scenes are, in the main, well made, especially in showing what it was like for men hiding in dugouts and wadis in the desert under intense artillery-fire.

From the editor

Graham Goodlad and I have teamed up in previous issues to discuss the military achievements of some of the great British admirals of the late 18th century – Hawke, Rodney, and Howe. The culmination of their revolution in naval tactics was, of course, Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

This issue, we look at Nelson’s career in general and also analyse his greatest battle. What we find is less a model for all time than an extraordinary coincidence of man, moment, and military system.

How do you get rid of awkward generals? Not that simple, Nigel Jones discovers, reviewing the extended tussle between President Lincoln and General George B McClellan in the first year of the American Civil War. In a follow-up piece, he will look at Churchill’s clash with ‘the men of 1940’.

Patrick Mercer’s ‘forgotten battle’ this issue is a vicious close-quarters struggle between two elites – the hardened Nazis of the Waffen SS and Britain’s Scots Guards – on the Gothic Line in the mountains of Italy in late 1944.

Joseph O’Neill, meantime, lifts the lid on the brutality of German POW camps during the First World War, while Robert Holmes transports us back to 11th-century Sicily for an epic confrontation between Norman chivalry and Saracen resistance – a confrontation that ended two centuries of Muslim rule in the island.