Battle of the Yser
Bibliography
Australian official histories
Charles Bean, The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1917, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume III, Sydney, 1929
Charles Bean, The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1917, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume IV, Sydney, 1935
Charles Bean,The Australian Imperial Force in France during the Main German Offensive, 1918, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume V, Sydney, 1941
Charles Bean, The Australian Imperial Force in France During the Allied Offensive, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume VI, Sydney, 1942
Colonel A G Butler, The Western Front, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, Vol II, Canberra, 1940
Charles Bean, Anzac to Amiens, Canberra, 1983
- Official Histories - First World War
- Download all chapters of the Australian First World War Official Histories by Charles Bean as PDF files from the Australian War Memorial site
- ANZAC to Amiens (1983 reprint) C E W Bean
- One volume summary account of Australia's part in the 1914-1918 War. The story of all three fighting services is laid out in relief against a background of Australia's political and industrial problems, and of main world events.
- Volume III - The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1916 (12th edition, 1941) C E W Bean
- After the evacuation from the Gallipoli Peninsula at the end of 1915 the AIF returned to Egypt where it was reorganised into two corps, I and II Anzac. By mid-1916 both Corps had arrived on the Western Front where operations on the Somme were about to begin. In Volume III of the Official History, C.E.W. Bean describes the major Australian contribution to the Somme Campaign, destined to be its worst ordeal of the war.
- Introduction A Pedersen
- Volume IV - The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1917 (11th edition, 1941) C E W Bean
- After the AIF's terrible losses on the Somme and at Fromelles in 1916, the 1917 volume opens with plans for the coming twelve months. These were set back however when the Germans carried out an extensive evacuation. Its completion found the Germans behind well prepared defences, which the Entente forces, including the Australians, attached with little real success for the rest of the year.
- Introduction by Bill Gammage
- Volume V - The Australian Imperial Force in France during the Main German Offensive, 1918 (8th edition, 1941) C E W Bean
- This volume deals with the German offensive of March/April 1918, a decisive episode in the history of Europe and one of absorbing interest to the student of war. It could be argued that the most important battles in Australian military history were fought around Amiens and Hazelbrouck in the spring of this year. Although the Australians suffered over 15,000 casualties in March/April 1918, by the end of April their 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Divisions were holding half the crucial front from Arras in the north to Amiens in the southeast. The Australian Troops had never fought better or with more telling effect.
- Introduction by L C F Turner
- Volume VI - The Australian Imperial Force in France during the Allied Offensive, 1918 (1st edition, 1942) C E W Bean
- This volume covers the last six months of the war, beginning with the weeks of "peaceful penetration" (when the AIF almost alone was constantly on the offensive), then the model battle of Hamel on 4 July, and finally the great offensive beginning on 8 August in which the AIF was the main spearhead in a series of smashing victories. In this volume, Bean sums up his views on the Australian soldier and attempts to answer the great question, "If he was such a great soldier, why?" He also contributed a major biographical study of the corps commander, Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash, and unforgettable sketches both of other generals and heroes of every rank.
- Introduction by Geoffrey Serle
Some general histories
Corelli Barnett, The Great War, London, 2000
Joan Beaumont (ed), Australia’s War, 1914–1918, St Leonard’s, 1995
Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of the Somme, London, 1997
Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of 1918, Year of Victory,London, 1997
Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, London, 1999
Martin Gilbert, First World War, London, 1995
Martin Gilbert, The Somme, London, 2007
John Keegan, The First World War, London, 1998
Hew Strachan, The First World War, A New Illustrated History, London, 2003
David Stevenson, 1914–1918, The History of the First World War, London, 2005
Other secondary sources
Walter Belford, ‘Legs-Eleven’, Being the Story of the 11th Battalion (AIF) in the Great War of 1914–1918, Perth, 1940
Nicholas Boyack and Jane Tolerton, In the Shadow of War: New Zealand soldiers talk about World War One and their lives, Auckland, 1990
Peter Burness, Fromelles and the Somme, 1916, Australians on the Western Front, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Canberra, 2006
Peter Burness, Bapaume and Bullecourt, 1917, Australians on the Western Front,Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Canberra, 2007
Robin Corfield, The Australian Memorial Park, Fromelles, Office of Australian War Graves, Canberra, 1998
Siegfried Debaeke, Ieper, Before, During and After the Great War, Koksijde, 2007
Dominiek Dendooven and Jan Dewilde, The Reconstruction of Ieper, a walk through history, Ieper, no date
Dominiek Dendooven, Menin Gate & Last Post, Ypres as Holy Ground, Koksijde, 2003
Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (eds), Defining Victory, 1918, Canberra, 2000
William Devine, The Story of a Battalion, Melbourne, 1919
Walter Downing. To the Last Ridge, Melbourne, 1920, reprinted 2000
Captain J C Dunn, The War the Infantry Knew, 1914–1919, London, 1938
Geoff Dyer, The Missing of the Somme, London, 1994
Captain Alexander Ellis, The Story of the Fifth Australian Division, London, 1919
John Ellis, Eye Deep in Hell, London, 1977
Roger Freeman, Hurcombe’s Hungry Half Hundred : a memorial history of the 50th Battalion A.I.F. 1916–1919, Norwood, 1991
Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, Melbourne, 1990
Philip Gibbs, Now It Can Be Told, London, 1920
Martin Gilbert, The Somme, Heroism and Horror in the First World War, London, 2006
Gillian Hawkes, Greater Love Hath No Man: St George’s Memorial Church, Ypres, Ieper, no date
Tonie and Valmai Holt, Major and Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Ypres Salient, 1997
Tonie and Valmai Holt, Major and Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Somme, London, 1996
Tonie and Valmai Holt, Battlefields of the First World War: A Travellers Guide, London, 1998
Ken Inglis, Sacred Places, War Memorials in the Australian Landscape, Melbourne, 1998
J H Johnson, 1918: The Unexpected Victory, London, 2000
John Lack (ed), Anzac Remembered, Selected Writings of K S Inglis, Melbourne, 1998
John Laffin, We Will Remember Them, AIF Epitaphs of World War I, Kentworth, 1995
John Laffin, Guide to Australian Battlefields of the Western Front, 1916–1918, Canberra, 1992
J T Laird, Other Banners: An Anthology of Australian Literature of the First World War, Canberra, 1971
Philip Longworth, The unending vigil, a history of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 1917–1967, London, 1967
Dudley McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, the Story of CEW Bean, Sydney, 1983
Lyn MacDonald, They Called it Passchendaele, London, 1979
Lyn MacDonald, 1914, The Days of Hope, London, 1989
Lyn MacDonald, Somme, London, 1993
Lyn MacDonald, 1915, The Death of Innocence, London, London, 1997
Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, London, 1977
Martin Middlebrook, The Somme Battlefields, A Comprehensive Guide from Crécy to the Two World Wars, London, 1991
Leslie Newton, The Story of the Twelfth, Hobart, 1925
Phillip Orr, The Road to the Somme: Men of the Ulster Division Tell Their Story, Belfast, 1987
Geoff Page (ed), Shadows on Wire: Poems and Photographs of the Great War, Australian War Memorial, 1983
Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Passchendaele, the untold story, Carlton North, 2003
Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme, London, 2005
Richard Reid, He is not missing. He is here!, Australians and the Menin Gate, Canberra, 1997
Richard Reid, Beaucoup Australiens ici, The Australian Corps in France, 1918, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Canberra, 1998
Richard Reid, Ypres 1917, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Canberra, 2007
Lloyd Robson, The First AIF: A Study of its Recruitment, 1914–1918, Melbourne, 1982
Anthony Staunton, They Dared Mightily, revised edition, Canberra, 1986
Nigel Steele and Peter Hart, Passchendaele, The Sacrificial Ground, London, 2001
Barbara Tuchman, August 1914, The First Month of the War, London, 1980
Lionel Wigmore and Bruce Harding, They Dared Mightily, Canberra, 1963
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