BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Forgotten Soldiers: The Experience of the Egyptian Expeditionary F
 orce in the First World War\, 1915-1918 - Justin Fantauzzo\, Darwin Colleg
 e
DTSTART:20111129T173000Z
DTEND:20111129T190000Z
UID:TALK34082@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Derek L. Elliott
DESCRIPTION:Fought over the shifting sands of Egypt\, the barren land of t
 he Sinai\, and the rolling mountainsides of the Judean Hills\, the Palesti
 ne Campaign of the First World War has received significantly less scholar
 ly attention than the Western Front or Gallipoli.  Contested by British tr
 oops engaged in\, as many had labeled it\, a ‘new Crusade’ against the
  Ottoman Empire\, contemporary public attention and support for the campai
 gn at home was initially minimal and frequently negative.  Prevailing cont
 emporary military and political thought dictated that the maximum concentr
 ation of the British war effort was to be directed at the Western Front.  
 It was not until the arrival of General Sir Edmund Allenby in June 1917 an
 d the capture of Jerusalem in December\, a ‘Christmas present’ at the 
 request of Prime Minister Lloyd George\, that the home front started recei
 ving consistent press coverage of the Palestine Campaign.  Fighting in a p
 eripheral theatre of war with minimal popular attention\, the aim of my st
 udy is to understand how British soldiers in Palestine – numbering close
  to a half million combatants by the war’s end – felt about their cont
 ribution to the British war effort.  Lacking the familial and infrastructu
 ral support that afforded soldiers of the Western Front comforts and conne
 ctions to and from England\, British soldiers in Palestine were confronted
  with a markedly different war experience than their countrymen in France 
 and Belgium.  By separating the wartime writings of British soldiers servi
 ng in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force from published diaries\, memoirs\, 
 and official histories\; a creative reconstruction of the campaign’s rel
 evance and importance emerges.
LOCATION:Seminar Room N7\, Pembroke College
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR