Postponed : 8th President's Conference - Theme '1915 Revisited'
23 May

Given current situation with spread of coronavirus the President's Conference will be postponed until further notice.

The welfare of delegates and speakers is uppermost in our thoughts. 

Speakers:   

Aimee Fox : 'To Gallipoli and Back Again: Learning lessons between theatres, Gallipoli and the Western Front, 1915-1916'? Aimee Fox

This talk focuses on the relationship between two distinct operational theatres: Gallipoli and the Western Front. It considers how lessons were (or were not) shared between British expeditionary forces in those two theatres, arguing that numerous frictions and barriers associated with the movement of knowledge, expertise, and experience, such as scepticism, ideas around relevance, and human agency, led to a very uneven learning process. That certain lessons were heavily adapted, some ignored, while some failed sheds light on the nature of the British Army's learning culture and the military organisation itself.

 

Jack Sheldon

 

George Morton-Jack : The Indian Empire at War in 1915 

By mid-1915, the British had sent seven Indian Expeditionary Forces to fight in Europe, Africa and Asia. George Morton-Jack tells their global experience through personal stories of the Indian Army's British and Indian soldiers, comparing their war in 1915 on the western front with Gallipoli, the Western Desert and other theatres.

 

Rocky Salmon : 1915 – Gas Warfare Counter Measures

The first industrial scale use of poison gas by the Germans on the 22nd April 1915 is well documented, but is has been often overlooked how the Medical Services of the British Expeditionary Force and research institutes on the Home Front reacted to this significant development in warfare. Rocky Salmon revisited the overall effectiveness of gas warfare and the pace at which medical counter measures were implemented in his dissertation for his recently completed MA in First World War Studies and will present a perspective on how learning processes and innovation initiated in 1915 contributed significantly to minimising casualty levels as the gas war escalated through to the end of the war.

Speaker Profiles

Dr Aimée Fox

Aimée Fox is a lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King's College London based at the UK's Joint Services Command and Staff College. She earned her doctorate in 2015 from the University of Birmingham. Her first book, Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914-1918 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. It won the British Army Military Book of the Year prize in 2018 and the Society for Army Historical Research's Templer Best First Book prize in 2019. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Higher Education Academy.

George Morton-Jack

George Morton-Jack is a British historian whose recent book The Indian Empire at War (Little, Brown, 2018) is the first global narrative history of the Indian Army in the Great War, covering all theatres from Flanders to China. He studied history at Oxford University, and wrote his previous book, The Indian Army on the Western Front (2014), for Cambridge University Press.

Rocky Salmon

The full title of this talk is Gas Warfare Counter Measures : how the British Expeditionary Force developed triage and treatment processes for gas warfare casualties and its impact on the later stages of the Great War.

Alan Salmon served for 35 years in the Royal Navy, primarily flying Sea King Helicopters from Aircraft Carriers, whilst also completing numerous exchange tours with the Royal Air Force and United States Navy. He retired as a Captain in 2019 and, in his final tour, his Air Capability Management portfolio included acting as the Programme Director for the UK’s Chemical, Biological, Nuclear and Radiological (CBRN) development area. His passion for the history of the First World War began in 1982 when he completed a general studies project on the Battle of the Somme at college and has continued to read widely on the subject ever since. He is now taking the deeper appreciation of the Great War gained from completing an MA in First World War Studies under Professor Gary Sheffield at Wolverhampton University forwards as a Battlefield Guide and Early Career Researcher. He is a member of both the Western Front Association and the Guild of Battlefield Guides, whilst also acting as the area coordinator for West Cornwall in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission ‘Eyes-on, Hands-on’ Project. 

 

Tally Ho! Club, Pershore Rd, Birmingham B5 7RN
Postponed : 8th President's Conference - Theme '1915 Revisited', chairman@westernfrontassociation.com>
23 May 2020 09:00