Kaiser's warship still ferrying diamond smugglers on Lake Tanganyika

In 1913, on the eve of the First World War during the arms race between Britain and Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941) commissioned the shipyard of Papenburg in Lower Saxony to secretly construct a warship that would be shipped and carried in pieces to the shores of Lake Tanganyika in order to help hold on to Germany’s East African colonies. The ship was christened the Graf Goetzen.

It fought in the First World War, was sunk, and was then brought back up and put into service. It has since been used to ferry traders, prostitutes, diamond smugglers, refugees, missionaries and soldiers to the towns along the coast of Lake Tanganyika.

As a child, Hermann-Josef Averdung, a councillor in Papenburg, had heard many stories about how his grandfather had helped to build the great warship. In March, he travelled to Tanzania in search for the ship now known as the Liemba. Averdung wishes to return the ship to Germany. The state-run Tanzanian company that owns the Liemba has suggested it would be willing to part with the vessel in exchange for a newer one.

Clemens Hoges reports in Der Spiegel.

In Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Cartoonists Professor W. A. Coupe suggests, on the basis of the popular cartoon of the period, that the Emperor's person was the object of sustained criticism which seemed to augur well for the future political development of Germany.

In Germany, Britain & the Coming of War Richard Wilkinson explains what went wrong in Anglo-German relations before the First World War.

History should be reinstated for all GSCE students: ‘Its lessons are invaluable’

History should be reinstated for all GSCE students: ‘Its lessons are invaluable’
In The Telegraph, Editor Jeff Randall condemns the gradual disappearance of history from the curriculum in many state schools. He argues that history has much to teach us in today’s financial crisis and that the political challenge facing Cameron is not dissimilar to that faced by Churchill in 1951.

What was Charles I wearing on the day of his execution?
According to the Mail Online, historians and forensic scientist are to carry out DNA tests in an effort to solve the mystery of what Charles I was wearing when he was beheaded. Experts have long-believed that he was wearing a blue silk waistcoat which has been in the care of the Museum of London in 1925. The tests may provide an answer to their questions…

A short history of The Observer: the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper
The Observer was launched in 1791. A video clip on the website of The Guardian charts the newspaper’s history.

Comparing JFK’s love letters to modern sex texts
With the upcoming auction of John F Kennedy’s love letters to his Swedish lover, Alexander Chancellor argues in The Guardian that the future president appears far more ‘modest, solicitous, dignified, almost romantic in his womanising’ than today’s ‘celebrity sleazebags’ such as Tiger Woods or Ashley Cole. Chancellor may be right, but just how valuable is such a comparison?

Death of the last Canadian WW1 veteran
John Babcock died yesterday, February 18th, aged 109 in Spokane, Washington. He signed up for the Canadian military, aged 15, having lied about his age, and trained in Britain with the Young Soldiers’ Battalion. He never saw action, however, because the war came to an end before he reached the legal age of 19 to fight.
Read the article published on the website of the Toronto Star.

The Sassoon Archive’s new home

by Kathryn Hadley

On Friday, December 18th, Cambridge University Library took delivery of the personal archive of Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), marking the culmination of a six-month campaign to restore the collection for the nation.

The Sassoon Archive was in the possession of the poet’s son until his death in 2006. It went on the market two years later. Siegfried Sassoon studied as an undergraduate at Cambridge University and later became an Honorary Fellow of Clare College. The library already held an extensive collection of Sassoon’s manuscripts and letters and thus seemed a particularly suitable home for the Sassoon Archive. It launched a campaign to raise the necessary £1.25 million to purchase the collection. Prior to its purchase, the archive was the most important collection of any First World War poet’s papers still in private hands.

The collection includes the war diaries which Sassoon kept on the Western Front and in Palestine from 1915 to 1918, drafts of his autobiographical trilogy The Old Century, The Weald of Youth and Siegfried’s Journey, as well as a series of notebooks, which range from records of his schoolboy cricket scores to journals charting the progress of his literary career in the aftermath of the First World War.

In the words of poet Sir Andrew Motion:

‘The Sassoon Archive that has been acquired by the University Library is of the
greatest importance, nationally and internationally. As a memoirist and as a
poet, Sassoon occupies a unique place in the history of writing in English –
someone who combines writerly, political and social significance to an
exceptional degree. Their purchase is wonderful news.’

The Sassoon Archive is now due to be conserved, sorted and catalogued in preparation for a major display in the library’s Exhibition Centre in July 2010, which will bring together documents from the newly acquired archive and a selection of manuscripts and letters from the pre-existing collections.

In Between the Lines: First World War Correspondence, one of our latest feature articles published in November, Anthony Fletcher considers what the letters sent by British soldiers to their loved ones back home reveal about the men’s inner lives.
For an insight into why the First World War captured literary imagination, read First World War Literature by A.D. Harvey.

150 Years of the Red Cross

The story of the Red Cross is the story of modern warfare. Nothing illustrates this better than the tale of the charitable organisation's founding. The Battle of Solferino - a decisive battle between the armies of Piedmont, Austria and Napoleon III - was fought in 1859. In its bloody wake lay twisted corpses and desperate prisoners of war.

Ann Hills explains how

Three days later Henri Dunant, a businessman from Geneva, came to the scene and found soldiers dying from their wounds due to lack of medical attention. He returned home 'determined to do everything possible to organise relief of the wounded' and that determination led him to found the Red Cross movement

The charity grew quickly. By the outbreak of the First World War, the Red Cross was the largest and most important charity in Britain. Simon Fowler described how

During the war it raised some £22 million ... Its volunteers left no stone unturned in their efforts to make money. Unlike most other charities of the time they used a great deal of imagination in their fundraising efforts, and developed techniques which are still used by charities today.

During the Second World War, secret messages and symbols were stitched into Red Cross quilts by British women POWs interned in Singapore's Changi jail by the Japanese. Bernice Archer recalls how:

In the jail, communication with their menfolk was banned, writing materials scarce and the written word suspect and incriminating. But by substituting conventional pen and ink with needle, thread and bits of clothing the women skilfully recorded their specific view of internment and eventually circumvented the Japanese restrictions by sending the quilts to the hospital in the military camp ... where they remained throughout the war as symbols of defiance and messengers of cheer and reassurance.

The charity has also had its share of controversy. In the 1980s, a book called Une mission impossible? by Jean-Claude Favez (The Red Cross and the Holocaust when published in English) caused arguments over the organisation's role in publicising Nazism's crimes. Douglas Johnson, in a History Today review, notes how:

Dr Maurice Rossel, a member of the International Committee's Berlin delegation, visited the [concentration] camp of Theresienstadt on June 23rd, 1944, he was greeted by a site filled with flowers. He reported favourably, stating that the camp's inmates were well-fed and that they were housed in clean surroundings. In some respects, he claimed, conditions in the camp were better than those in a town such as Prague.

Next week (June 23-28), thousands of Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers and staff from around the world will gather in the town for a week of events commemorating the battle of Solferino and celebrating the work of the movement born out of the conflict.

Among the thousands attending will be 500 specially invited young volunteers from 150 National Societies. A youth declaration is to be drawn up and presented to representatives of the international community in Geneva following a symbolic journey from the battle site.

"Taking part in this anniversary shows the history of the Red Cross movement” said Caroline Sanderson, one of the British delegates. She continued

With so many young people here, it's also clear that the Red Cross and
its values will continue to be relevant long into the future.

In total, 56 British Red Cross volunteers and staff will be attending events in Solferino, culminating in a torchlight procession re-tracing the route taken by farmers transporting injured soldiers from the Solferino battlefield.

More info on both the charity and the 150th anniversary celebrations can be obtained from the homepage of the British Red Cross

The History Today articles quoted above are:-

• A Patchwork of Internment by Bernice Archer
• War Charity Begins at Home by Simon Fowler
• Review of The Red Cross & the Holocaust by Douglas Johnson
• Geneva's Museum to the Pity of War by Ann Hills
  

Harry Patch 111 Today!

by Kathryn Hadley

Harry Patch, the oldest surviving Tommy, celebrated his 111th birthday today.
Patch received a letter from the Queen and the Belgian Ambassador, Jean-Michel Veranneman de Watervliet, also congratulated Patch, sending him a box of chocolates, books and a letter.
Patch is not Britain's oldest war veteran, however. Henry Allingham, who was an air mechanic during the First World War, turned 113 on June 6th. Allingham is also Europe's oldest man.
An article reporting on Harry Patch's birthday celebrations was notably published on the BBC webiste.

Death of the last Australian First World War Veteran

by Kathryn Hadley

John ‘Jack’ Ross, Australia’s oldest man and the last remaining Australian to have served in the First World War, died yesterday, aged 110, at a nursing home in Bendigo in the state of Victoria. Ross was the last of 417,000 Australians who served in the First World War.

He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in February 1918, aged 18, and was posted to the 1st Battalion at Broadmeadows camp in Victoria. The war ended, however, before he could be sent abroad and he was discharged on Christmas Eve, 1918. He served with the Volunteer Defense Corps, which was inaugurated on July 15th 1940, during the Second World War, but, again, did not fight overseas. In 1998, Jack Ross was awarded the 80th Armistice Anniversary Remembrance medal. He also received the Centenary Medal for his contribution to Australian society in the 100 years since the formation of the federation of Australia, in 1901. He attended his last Aznac Day march in 2006.

The last Australian to serve in the First World War, Evan Allan, died in October 2005. He enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy when he was 14. The last battlefield Digger, Peter Casserly, died in June 2005, aged 107. The last Gallipoli Aznac, Alec Campbell, who lied about his age in order to enlist, died in May 2002, aged 103,

The Australian Veterans Affairs Minister, Alan Griffin, was quoted in an article published on the Reuters website:

‘It now falls to Australians everywhere to ensure that veterans memory is kept alive. We must ensure that their contribution to Australia's wartime history is passed on to future generations, so that their sacrifice is never forgotten’.

The Fallen of Fromelles: First World War Soldiers Unearthed

by Kathryn Hadley

Work began yesterday, May 5th, in the small village of Fromelles in northern France to recover the remains of over 400 British and Australian soldiers believed to be buried in a mass grave just outside the village. The soldiers were massacred during the battle of Fromelles, which was fought on July 19th, 1916, six miles west of Lille near the Belgian border.

The Fromelles offensive was a modest attack launched by Haig in an attempt to divert German resources away from the Somme, 50 miles to the south of Fromelles, following the outbreak of violent fighting 18 days earlier. The Australian 5th Division and the British 61st Division fought together in an effort to capture the village and the ridge overlooking the battlefield. The offensive was a disaster: during the 24-hour battle, the Australian Division suffered 5,533 casualties and the British suffered 1,547 casualties. At the time of the attack, the Australian troops had only been in France a couple of weeks and it was the first major action involving Australians on the Western Front. They suffered more casualties in a 24-hour period than at any other time in their history. In the aftermath of the battle, the commander of the Bavarian troops allegedly offered a truce so that the bodies could be recovered, however, the Allied commanders refused and the Germans consequently dug a mass grave and buried the bodies.

At the request of the Australian government, active research began on the site in May 2008, by a team from Glasgow University led by Dr Tony Pollard. Following preliminary excavation work, it is now believed that 170 Australian and 300 British troops are buried in a series of eight pits. British and Australian authorities have published the names of the soldiers they hope to identify and have asked families for DNA samples in order to identify the bodies. Once the remains have been removed from the grave, they will be taken to a temporary mortuary where they will be cleaned, photographed and preserved. The project is expected to last six months.

On July 31st 2008, the British and Australian governments officially announced their plans to rebury the bodies in individual graves in a new military cemetery. The building of the cemetery, due to open in the spring of 2010, will be overseen by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The new cemetery will be the first complete First World War cemetery to be built for almost 50 years.

In the aftermath of the battle, the bodies were buried by German troops and, somewhat ironically, the leading forensic anthropologist of the current project, Roland Wessling, is also German. In an article published on the website of the BBC, he described the importance of the project:

‘We are very aware of just how important the recovery of the bodies are to very
many people, both in the UK and in Australia. It's equally important to the
people in this part of France. They live daily with this and are very passionate
about this.’

Caroline Barker, the project’s leading anthropologist, also explained the aim of the research:

‘It is to ensure that we can take these soldiers out of the ground and give them
a decent burial, which is something they are entitled to as fallen soldiers. And
they will be the same as their mates. That is what we are trying to achieve and
I think that is unique.’

For more information on the project, visit the website of the Australian Ministry of Defence, which will be updated throughout the duration of the project: www.defence.gov.au/fromelles

For more information on the Battle of the Somme, read our articles Summing Up The Somme and The Somme Battlefield

Harry Patch Awarded French Légion d’Honneur

by Kathryn Hadley

On Monday, Harry Patch, one of only two surviving British veterans of the First World War, was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the highest decoration in France. He was awarded the medal by the French Ambassador, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, at his nursing home in Wells, Somerset.

Harry Patch, who is now 110 years old, was called up for service in the British Army in 1916, when he was working as an apprentice plumber. He began his army training in 1917 and was later recruited in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry as a Lewis gunner assistant. He fought as a machine-gunner in the 1917 Battle of Passhchendaele, which saw the death of 70,000 British troops. Patch himself was badly wounded and three of his best friends were killed. During the Second World War, he served as a maintenance manager at a US Army camp in Somerset and thereafter joined the Auxiliary Fire Service in Bath. Patch only began to talk about his wartime experiences in the 21st century. He has previously received various honours, including British War and Victory medals, and, in 1998, was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour along with over 300 other veterans from the First World War.

Harry Patch reportedly stated his gratitude upon receiving the award:

‘Now, but two of us remain at our post and the people of France, through their
president, have honoured us once more by appointing us as Officers of the Legion
of Honour. Ambassador, I greatly appreciate the way your people respect the
memory of those who fell, irrespective of the uniform they wore. I will wear
this medal with great pride and when I eventually rejoin my mates it will be
displayed in my regimental museum as a permanent reminder of the kindness of the
people of France.’

In the words of Veterans Minister, Kevan Jones:

‘[Harry Patch] served with such distinction during wars to protect our liberty.
I welcome this award which pays tribute to him for the huge contribution he has
made. We are justly proud of his service and thank the French government for
this honour.’

112-year-old Henry Allingham, who served as an airman, is the only other surviving British First World War veteran. He is also due to be honoured with the French Légion d’Honneur, next week.

An article reporting on the ceremony is available on the website of the Ministry of Defence http://www.mod.uk/.
For an insight into the social, cultural and historical significance of the Victoria Cross, a British medal, read our article The Victoria Cross

Bill Stone Remembered

by Kathryn Hadley

The funeral of the last remaining Royal Navy veteran from the First World War was held today in Oxfordshire. Bill Stone was also the last British serviceman to have seen active duty in both world wars because the other three surviving veterans only held civilian jobs in both world wars.

The service took place in St Leonard’s parish church, Watlington, Oxfordshire, where Bill Stone had lived since 1986. He died on January 10th at a care home near Wokingham in Berkshire. After the coffin was carried out of the church, a Royal Marines bugler sounded the Last Post and the Reveille and the church bells then tolled 108 times, one for each year of Stone’s life. A shrub was then planted and a plaque was dedicated to his memory in the grounds of the church.

Bill Stone was born on September 23rd 1900 in Ledstone, South Devon and was one of 14 children. He tried to join the Royal Navy aged 15, but his father, who already had sons fighting in the Great War, refused to sign the necessary papers. He eventually joined the navy on his 18th birthday, in 1918, as an Ordinary Seaman. He was then transferred to Stoker upon the insistence of his brothers who were already serving as Stokers. In 1922, he joined the battleship HMS Hood and travelled the world to various British colonies ‘showing the flag’. During the Second World War, he notably served as Chief Stoker on HMS Salamander and participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, making five trips to pick up the troops. He also took part in the Sicily landings in 1943 on board HMS Newfoundland.

After leaving the navy, Bill Stone returned to Devon where he ran a barber’s shop and throughout his retirement he regularly participated in commemorative ceremonies of both world wars. In 2004, he was presented with the National Veterans’ Badge. He appeared for the last time in public in November at the Cenotaph in London, where he led the remembrance ceremony with two of the three other surviving veterans of the First World War, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham. The third remaining 107 year-old veteran, Claude Choules, lives in Australia.

A few years Bill Stone was quoted:

I've had a wonderful life. I've always worked hard, never stopped for a minute and it's kept me going all right.

Commodore Al Rymer of the Royal Navy, who represented the Ministry of Defence at the funeral, said:

William Stone served in the Royal Navy for 27 years in a distinguished career that involved him in both world wars [...] I'm very honoured to represent the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy today in commemorating his remarkable life.

His life is an inspiration to us allIt was also 153 years ago today that the Victoria Cross was founded by Queen Victoria. For more information on the cultural, social and historical significance of the medal, read our article

The Victoria Cross

Romania’s 90th birthday

by Kathryn Hadley

Yesterday, Romania celebrated the ninetieth anniversary of its foundation, on December 1st 1918, when the northwest region of Transylvania joined the rest of Romania following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War. Some 2,000 members of the military participated in a parade in Bucharest and President Traian Basescu laid a wreath at the capital’s triumphal arch.

December 1st, known as Union Day, is the Romanian national holiday in commemoration of the assembly held in Alba lulia (Transylvania) on December 1st 1918, during which the ethnic Romanian delegates from Transylvania and Hungary passed a resolution calling for the assembly of all Romanians in a single state. Union Day also celebrates the unification of the provinces of Bukovina and Bessarabia with the kingdom of Romania. The date was declared a national holiday following the Romanian revolution in 1989.

The history of Romania, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, is one of successive domination under both the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires. In 1848, the revolution against foreign domination was defeated by combined Russian and Ottoman intervention. Russian forces withdrew from the region following the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856 and were replaced by Austrian troops. In 1856, in accordance with the Treaty of Paris, Moldavia and Wallachia were established as principalities under Ottoman rule. In 1859, the two principalities were united under a common leader, the prince John Cuza. Three years later, they joined to form the principality of Romania, the capital of which was established at Bucharest. Romania became independent as a result of the Treaty of Berlin, which ended the Russo-Turkish War in 1877-78, but ceded southern Bessarabia to Russia. Romania was proclaimed a kingdom in 1881.

Modern day Romania came into being in the aftermath of the First World War. Following its initial declaration of neutrality, Romania eventually joined the war in August 1916 on the side of the Allies. Its military campaign was, however, unsuccessful: two thirds of the country was conquered and majority of the army was captured within four months. Following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, however, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia were allowed to unite with the kingdom of Romania: the Treaty of Saint Germain in 1919 ratified the union of Bukovina; in accordance with the Treaty of Paris, Bessarabia joined the kingdom of Romania in 1920.

For more information of the construction of the Romanian nation read our article

The Return of Dracula

90th Anniversary Armistice Commemorations in the Champagne Region

by Kathryn Hadley

Yesterday, November 11th 2008, the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice was celebrated across the world. Alongside the official British and French ceremonies at the cenotaph in London and in Verdun, the victims of the First World War were also remembered in some of the more unknown towns and forgotten battlefields of the Champagne region in France.

In London, the three surviving veterans in England, Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone, each laid a wreath at the cenotaph. In Verdun, President Sarkozy, Prince Charles, Quentin Bryce, the Governor general of Australia, and Peter Mueller, the President of the upper house of the German parliament, attended the official French ceremony at the Douaumont Ossuary in Verdun.

Local commemorative ceremonies and events were also organised in towns across France. Both the municipal celebrations in Epernay, a town of 26,000 inhabitants 30 kilometres to the South of Reims, and the open day at the military camp of Suippes reached record attendance numbers.
Celebrations began at 10.30 in Epernay and were led by the local mayor and deputies, French veterans, local school children and an association of First World War re-enactors. The parade around the town centre was followed by the laying of wreaths at the monument to the victims of the Second World War and in front of the town hall and by a minute of silence.

There was, however, seemingly little need for the mayor and sub-prefect’s insistence on the ‘devoir de mémoire’, the duty to remember the victims of the war. The military authorities at Suippes fell short of buses to escort visitors from one village to another and many visitors were turned away. The military camp was last opened in September 2005 and the memory of the villages and of their families had largely been pushed aside. The area (larger than Paris) surrounding the five villages of Tahure, Ripont, Hurlus, Perthes-les-Hurlus and le Mesnil-les-Hurlus and the two farms of Navarin and Ripont was on the frontline during the war and was converted into a military camp in 1923, allegedly because it was too dangerous to be replanted and built upon.

According to one of the military commanders, the villages' inhabitants came back in 1919, but were expropriated from their lands. Ninety years later, their grandchildren are returning to see for themselves what is left of their lost family heritage: a couple of tombstones in le Mesnil-les-Hurlus and Hurlus and the church altar in Tahure. Others returned to witness the place where their grandfathers died in battle. Leon Carpentier had always wanted to go to the farm of Beauséjour to pay homage to his grandfather, a history teacher from the Pas-de-Calais, who was killed there on June 15th, 1915, aged 35.

For more on the lost villages in the camp of Suippes read Lost Villages of Champagne

First World War Veteran Dies

by Kathryn Hadley

Just a week before the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice, First World War veteran Sydney Maurice Lucas died in Australia, on Tuesday November 4th, aged 108. Lucas was born in Leicester on September 21st, 1900. He was among the last group of conscripts to be called up and was just 17 when he joined the Sherwood Foresters in August 1918. The armistice was signed, however, whilst he was still in training in England and he never saw the French trenches. He moved to Australia in 1928.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, he volunteered for the Australian army and was posted to a machine gun company. He travelled to Palestine where Australian troops were preparing to sail to Greece following the German invasion in April 1941. He developed appendicitis, however, and was unable to leave with his battalion. Sydney Lucas returned to Australia on board the Queen Mary and was discharged from the army in November 1941.

Speaking about his experiences, in 2005, he described how:

"We trained with a mix of fear and excitement, so when the war ended before we'd completed our training it almost felt like an anticlimax […] We wanted to fight for our country, but I think that was more to do with boyish immaturity […] My enduring memories are of being constantly cold, dirty, exhausted, homesick and lonely."

Lucas was one of the five surviving First World War veterans, one of whom, Claude Choules, 111, also lives in Australia. On November 11th, as part of the Armistice celebrations, the further three surviving veterans in Britain, Henry Allingham, 112, Harry Patch, 110, and Bill Stone, 108, are expected to lead a two-minute silence at the Cenotaph in London.

Read about those who did fight or see our First World War section

90th anniversary of the Armistice - events

by Kathryn Hadley

To mark the 90th anniversary of the Armistice, a series of ceremonies, remembrance days, exhibitions and film festivals are being held in France, Spain and the UK. Here is just a small selection…

• In Memoriam at the Imperial War Museum based on the personal stories of 90 individuals who fought or were involved in the war.
• Remembered, in Shrewsbury, a photographic exhibition of some of the memorials and cemeteries in the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
• Last Post at the Churchill Museum is about the role of the Post office during the war.
• A World War One Day is being organized at the National Museum of Ireland on November 8th
• The Imperial War Museum is hosting an evening dedicated to poetry and to the memory of war on November 11th.

In France, numerous ceremonies will be held on November 11th, including a ceremony at the British Thiepval Memorial.

• Photographies de l’enfer et du chaos: a display of photographs taken by the French, British, Canadian, Australian and German armies during the war.
• Two exhibitions at the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne about the depiction of the war by German artists and the commemoration of the war today.
• Orages de papier 1914-1918, in Strasbourg, about the role of the media during the war.
• The 19th edition of the Festival International du Film d’Histoire at Pessac is devoted to the First World War and the Invalides is organizing a screening of European and American films about the war.
• In Madrid, the exhibition 1914! The Avant-Garde and the Great War considers the influence of the First World War on the development of early avant-garde international art movements.

For a full list, visit our First World War events page.

Or for background information, visit our new First World War page, which includes a selection of related articles

History in the News: Assassins’ weapons on display

by Tom Bowers

A pistol and bomb used by the assassins of Franz Ferdinand are to go on display in Britain for the first time. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914 sparked the First World War. The items are part of the exhibition In Memoriam: Remembering the Great War at the Imperial War Museum, London, from September 30th.

In Memoriam, which runs until September 6th 2009, marks the 90th anniversary of the Armistice using evidence and memorabilia to highlight notable events in the conflict. Other artefacts on display include the Victoria Cross awarded to one of its youngest recipients, Jack Cornwell, who died at the Battle of Jutland; Wilfred Owen’s Military Cross; and a wreath given to David Lloyd George after the Treaty of Versailles.

For more info on the exhibition, just click here.