This Day in World War 1 History: JULY 09, 1915 : GERMANS SURRENDER SOUTHWEST AFRICA TO UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA

On this day in 1915, with the Central Powers pressing their advantage on the Western Front during World War I, the Allies score a distant victory, when military forces of the Union of South Africa accept a German surrender in the territory of Southwest Africa.

The Union of South Africa, a united self-governing dominion of the British empire, was officially established by an act of the British Parliament in 1910. When World War I broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914, South African Prime Minister Louis Botha immediately pledged full support for Britain. Botha and Minister of Defense Jan Smuts, both generals and former Boer commanders, were looking to extend the Union s borders further on the continent. Invading German Southwest Africa would not only aid the British–it would also help to accomplish that goal. The plan angered a portion of South Africa s ruling Afrikaner (or Boer) population, who were still resentful of their defeat, at the hands of the British, in the Boer War of 1899-1902 and were angered by their government s support of Britain against Germany, which had been pro-Boer in the Boer War.

Several major military leaders resigned over their opposition to the invasion of the German territory and open rebellion broke out in October 1914; it was quashed in December. The conquest of Southwest Africa, carried out by a South African Defense Force of nearly 50,000 men, was completed in only six months, culminating in the German surrender on July 9, 1915. Sixteen days later, South Africa annexed the territory.

At the Versailles peace conference in 1919, Smuts and Botha argued successfully for a formal Union mandate over Southwest Africa, one of the many commissions granted at the conference to member states of the new League of Nations allowing them to establish their own governments in former German territories. In the years to come, South Africa did not easily relinquish its hold on the territory, not even in the wake of the Second World War, when the United Nations took over the mandates in Africa and gave all other territories their independence. Only in 1990 did South Africa finally welcome a new, independent Namibia as its neighbour.

Article Details:

July 09, 1915 : Germans surrender Southwest Africa to Union of South Africa

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  July 09, 1915 : Germans surrender Southwest Africa to Union of South Africa

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-surrender-southwest-africa-to-union-of-south-africa

• Access Date

  July 09, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: JULY 08, 1918 : ERNEST HEMINGWAY WOUNDED ON THE ITALIAN FRONT

On this day in 1918, Ernest Hemingway, an 18-year-old ambulance driver for the American Red Cross, is struck by a mortar shell while serving on the Italian front, along the Piave delta, in World War I.

A native of Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway was working as a reporter for the Kansas City Star when war broke out in Europe in 1914. He volunteered for the Red Cross in France before the American entrance into the war in April 1917 and was later transferred to the Italian front, where he was on hand for a string of Italian successes along the Piave delta in the first days of July 1918, during which 3,000 Austrians were taken prisoner.

On the night of July 8, 1918, Hemingway was struck by an Austrian mortar shell while handing out chocolate to Italian soldiers in a dugout. The blow knocked him unconscious and buried him in the earth of the dugout; fragments of shell entered his right foot and his knee and struck his thighs, scalp and hand. Two Italian soldiers standing between Hemingway and the shell’s point of impact were not so lucky, however: one was killed instantly and another had both his legs blown off and died soon afterwards. Hemingway’s friend Ted Brumbach, who visited him in the hospital, wrote to Hemingway’s parents that: A third Italian was badly wounded and this one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dugout. He says he did not remember how he got there, nor that he carried the man, until the next day, when an Italian officer told him all about it and said that it had been voted to give him a valor medal for the act. As Brumbach reported, Hemingway was awarded an Italian medal of valor, the Croce de Guerra, for his service. As he wrote in his own letter home after the incident: Everything is fine and I am very comfortable and one of the best surgeons in Milan is looking after my wounds.

Hemingway’s experiences in Italy during World War I would become an integral part of his larger-than-life persona, as well as the material for one of his best-loved novels, A Farewell to Arms, which chronicles the love of a young American ambulance driver for a beautiful English nurse on the Italian front during the Great War.

Article Details:

July 08, 1918 : Ernest Hemingway wounded on the Italian front

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  July 08, 1918 : Ernest Hemingway wounded on the Italian front

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ernest-hemingway-wounded-on-the-italian-front

• Access Date

  July 08, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: JULY 07, 1917 : BRITISH WOMEN’S AUXILIARY ARMY CORPS IS OFFICIALLY ESTABLISHED

On this day in 1917, British Army Council Instruction Number 1069 formally establishes the British Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), authorising female volunteers to serve alongside their male counterparts in France during World War I.

By 1917, large numbers of women were already working in munitions factories throughout Britain, serving the crucial function of supplying sufficient shells and other munitions for the Allied war effort. The harsh conditions in the factories were undeniable, with long hours spent working with noxious chemicals such as the explosive TNT; a total of 61 female munitions workers died of poisoning, while 81 others died in accidents at work. An explosion at a munitions factory in Silvertown, East London, when an accidental fire ignited 50 tons of TNT, killed 69 more women and severely injured 72 more.

In early 1917, a campaign began to allow women to more directly support the war effort by enlisting in the army to perform labors such as cookery, mechanical and clerical work and other miscellaneous tasks that would otherwise be done by men who could better serve their country in the trenches. By March 11, 1917, even Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander in chief, had come around to the idea, writing to the British War Office that “the principle of employing women in this country [France] is accepted and they will be made use of wherever conditions admit.”

The establishment of the WAAC in the summer of 1917 meant that, for the first time, women were to be put in uniform and sent to France to serve as clerks, telephone operators, waitresses and in other positions on the war front. Women were paid less than their male counterparts: 24 shillings per week for unskilled labor and up to twice that for more skilled labor, such as shorthand typing. As the stated purpose behind the WAAC was to release British soldiers doing menial work in Britain and France for active service at the front, the War Office set the restriction that for every woman given a job through the WAAC, a man had to be released for frontline duties. None of the female volunteers could become officers–according to traditions in the British army–but those who rose in the ranks were given the status of “controllers” or “administrators.” By the end of World War I, approximately 80,000 women had served in the three British women’s forces–the WAAC, the Women’s Relief Defense Corps and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry–as non-combatants, but full-fledged contributors to the Allied war effort.

Article Details:

July 07, 1917 : British Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps is officially established

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  July 07, 1917 : British Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps is officially established

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-womens-auxiliary-army-corps-is-officially-established 

• Access Date

  July 07, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks