A Scottish Soldier: A Lost Diary of WWI: thousands of black soldiers fought in the First World War. Poet Jackie Kay tells the story of one of them – Arthur Roberts. Arthur grew up in Glasgow and joined the King’s Own Scottish Borderers in 1917. He fought at Ypres and kept a detailed diary, which gives us a unique account of the war.
Arthur’s evocative writing and sketches paint a vivid first-hand picture of life in the trenches. Like Arthur, Jackie Kay is a black Glaswegian, and she explores what it was like being black 100 years ago.
A Scottish Soldier: A Lost Diary of WWI – Ypres
The Battle of Ypres was a series of engagements during the First World War, near the Belgian city of Ypres, between the German and the Allied armies (Belgian, French, British Expeditionary Force and Canadian Expeditionary Force). There were hundreds of thousands of casualties during the five engagements.
The First Battle of Ypres ( 19 October – 22 November 1914) was a battle of the First World War, fought on the Western Front around Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium. The battle was part of the First Battle of Flanders, in which German, French, Belgian armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fought from Arras in France to Nieuport on the Belgian coast, from 10 October to mid-November. The battles at Ypres began at the end of the Race to the Sea, reciprocal attempts by the German and Franco-British armies to advance past the northern flank of their opponents. North of Ypres, the fighting continued in the Battle of the Yser (16–31 October), between the German 4th Army, the Belgian army and French marines.
During World War I, the Battle of Ypres 1915 (2nd Battle of Ypres) was fought from 22 April – 25 May 1915 for control of the strategic Flemish town of Ypres in western Belgium. The First Battle of Ypres had been fought the previous autumn. The Second Battle of Ypres was the first mass use by Germany of poison gas on the Western Front. It also marked the first time a former colonial force (the 1st Canadian Division) defeated a European power (the German Empire) in Europe (at the battles of St. Julien and Kitcheners’ Wood).
