This year the AGM will be held in Leeds at Weetwood Hall Estate
Start 10.15am. (Doors open at 9.30am).
Topics and Speakers:
- Anne Buckley ‘Germans on the Run, from Tsingtao to Skipton’
- Dr Irfan Malik ‘Dulmial village (in modern day Pakistan) in the Great War
- Fraser Skirrow ‘Most of the Work, Most of the Blame, None of the Credit. Platoon commanders in the Great War’
Anne Buckley 'Germans on the Run, from Tsingtao to Skipton'
This is a gripping, little-known, story. Two German POW officers, Fritz Sachsse and Herbert Straehler, escaped in 1915 from Fukuoka in Japan. They spent a year on the run. They planned to travel west through China, Afghanistan, Persia and Turkey on the way back to Germany. Instead they ended in Skipton, Yorkshire. Based on Anne's translation of a recently found detailed diary written by one of the fugitives.
Anne Buckley is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds. She teaches and researches in German and Translation Studies, with her main focus being the Great War POW camp in Skipton.
Dr Irfan Malik 'Dulmial village in the Great War'
This illustrated talk tells how 460 soldiers from a small village (then part of the Indian Empire, now in Pakistan) fought in the Great War and were rewarded with a 200-year-old British cannon. It also explores the wider role that Muslim soldiers played in the First World War.
Dr Malik was born in Nottingham and has worked as a GP in the city for over 20 years. He started researching this topic in 2014. Many members of his family are from Dulmial. Two of his great grandfathers, Capt Ghulam Mohammad and Subedar Mohammad Khan, feature in this talk.
Fraser Skirrow ‘Most of the Work, Most of the Blame, None of the Credit. Platoon commanders in the Great War’
Great War subalterns were mocked and satirised, then and now, as enthusiastic and patriotic but naïve and ignorant public school boys. They led gallantly from the front, looking after their men, but with few tactical responsibilities and little autonomy. Later, the platoon became the key tactical attack unit, a flexible group of specialists with real discretion on the battlefield. So how did the Young Gentlemen of 1914/15 change into the pivotal battlefield mangers of 1917/18?
Fraser is former TA officer and the author of 'Massacre on the Marne'. A popular and entertaining speaker, he speaks mostly about infantry talks and organisation during the Great War. at about twenty WFA branches. A graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford and the London Business School, he spends his spare time studying the Great War and visiting battlefields.
Followed by The WFA AGM at 2.45pm
(Charge for buffet lunch £10.00)
To book places and make payments for buffet lunch contact: membership@westernfrontassociation.com
Deadline for bookings is 5th April
All trustee positions for the Executive Committee come up for re-elections annually.
This year Trustee Nomination Forms were completed online and sent to the Hon. Secretary by 1 December.