FORGOTTEN FRONTS OF WORLD WAR I

Between 1914-18 over 30 nations declared war and joined in the conflict which we now remember as World War I. There were troops everywhere from the Middle East to Africa. Yet today when we see the conflict portrayed in films, books and documentaries the prevailing image is of the Western Front and France, from novels such as All Quiet On The Western Front to films such as Sam Mendez’s 1917.

Speaking to Dr Peter Johnston, head of research at the National Army Museum in Chelsea, we asked him about some of World War I’s ‘forgotten fronts’. “The popular memory of World War I in Britain is dominated by imagery of the Western Front, of trenches, of mud, and of British men struggling to advance over small patches of ground,” he says. “But the conflict saw the British Army engaged across the world; British troops fought in Europe, in east, west and south west Africa, at Gallipoli in Turkey, in Mesopotamia