Features

This is the central repository of articles by our authors, including supplementary material for our books. It includes pieces written elsewhere online (which may now require Facebook login) as well as exclusives for this website.

My six-part series on my Saxon Great-Grandfather's war is complete and available here as downloadable PDFs.

My series on Saxon Landsturm infantry battalions is complete and indexed here.

The remainder of my weekly WW1 Saxon articles for Colonel Joe Robinson's WW1 German history group are complete and indexed here.

Oberleutnant der Reserve Alfred (or Alexander) Pache

This is the first in a series of weekly blog posts for Colonel Joe Robinson's Facebook group WW1 German History to promote our upcoming book For King and Kaiser. I will be archiving them all on here as and when I find the time to catch up.

The new book includes new personal accounts, from one of which I have taken today's extract. Herein we introduce our featured diarist, Oberleutnant der Reserve Alfred (or Alexander) Pache of IR 182. Freed from the pressure of space, I've expanded the biographical information to enlarge on Pache's later career and added some newly discovered biographical details. I am indebted to my wife Diana Zachau for discovering the shocking circumstances of his death!

My choice of subject was inspired by the crowdfunded excavations at Hill 80 in Wytschaete, which lay inside the regimental sector described in today's extract. The same archaeological team has recently unearthed evidence of the Kortestollen, a huge accommodation gallery constructed by the Prussians who took over Wytschaete from the Saxons in 1916.

Since the publication of Fighting the Kaiser's War we have inevitably discovered some errors. We were also frequently obliged to write more concisely than we would have liked due to pressure of space.

NB: This list of addenda and corrigenda applies primarily to the original 2015 hardback edition. Nearly all of the corrections and some of the additional information has been incorporated into the 2022 paperback edition (so far as the available space permitted). The list here will be updated irregularly as and when we feel the need to correct or expand on points in the book.

This is a snapshot of the final peacetime dispositions of the Kgl. Sächs. Armee which I drew up for Fighting the Kaiser's War.

A review of the latest German-language publication from the Arbeitskreis Sächsische Militärgeschichte e.V. Dresden. This is the vivid and frank diary of a staff officer serving with 53.RD / XXVII.RK at the 1st and 2nd Battles of Ypres.

My father Michael Lucas was the first published military historian in the family. His first book The Journey's End Battalion: The 9th East Surrey in the Great War - a through history of the 9th Battalion / East Surrey Regiment in WW1 - came out in 2012. Its title alludes to the most famous member of this unit, the playwright and screenwriter R.C. Sherriff - best-known as the author of Journey's End, widely acclaimed as the greatest theatrical work to emerge from the Great War. The play has been adapted for cinema several times, including in a German version (Die Andere Seite) prior to WW2, and an outstanding English remake earlier this year.

In this article my father revisits the book and supplies amendments and additions based on the additional information that has come to light since it was published.