In 1960, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing ordinary men and women who had lived through one of the most harrowing periods of modern history, the First World War. Veterans were interviewed in details about their day-to-day experiences, on and off the front. The project has since grown to be the most important archive of its kind in the world, and provides a unique account of life during the Great War.
Forty years on, the Imperial War Museum gave author Max Arthur and his team of researchers unlimited access to the complete WWI tapes. These are the forgotten voices of an entire generation of survivors of the Great War. The resulting audiobook is an important and compelling history of WWI, in the words of those who experienced it.
This collection includes:
-The Opening Shots: August 1914 - April 1915
-From Ypres to Gallipoli: April 1915 - June 1916
-The Somme and back to Ypres: July 1916 - July 1917
-The Struggle to Victory: August 1917 - November 1918
After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler's inevitable invasion attempt.
For the German Army to be landed across the Channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies - the RAF would have to be broken - so every day, throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties. Greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, the pilots of RAF Fighter Command scrambled as many as five times a day, and civilians watched skies criss-crossed with the contrails from the constant dogfights between Spitfires and Me-109s. Britain's very freedom depended on the outcome of that summer's battle.
Britain's air defences were badly battered and nearly broken, but against all odds, 'The Few', as they came to be known, bought Britain's freedom - many with their lives.
These are the personal accounts of the pilots who fought and survived that battle. We will not see their like again.
