Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Egypt and Palestine Campaigns

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Egypt and Palestine Campaigns is the first book explicitly aimed at helping the descendants of those who fought in this part of the Middle East find out more about their ancestors actions, experiences and achievements. Their wartime lives were very different to those who served on the Western Front, and yet have never before been explored from this angle. Hundreds of thousands of British and Imperial troops fought in the Western Desert, Sinai Desert, Palestine, the Jordan Valley and Syria. They served in conditions quite unlike those more familiarly faced in France and Flanders, with everyday challenges to survival including the heat, lack of water, hostile wildlife and rampant disease. The fighting too was of a different character, with more open, sweeping campaigns across desert and mountains, and comparatively little systematic trench warfare. As well as giving the reader a vivid impression of the experience of wartime service in the region, Stuart Hadaways handbook provides a guide to main sources, archives and websites that researchers can consult to get an insight into their ancestors role and their contribution to the war effort. AUTHOR: Stuart Hadaway is Senior Researcher at the Air Historical Branch (RAF) and was previously curator of various regimental museums and at the RAF Museum. He is an expert on the First World War in the Middle East, but has also written and lectured on the history of the RAF. In addition to his many articles for history and family history magazines, he is the author of Missing Believed Killed, The British Airman in the First World War, The British Airman in the Second World War, Pyramids and Fleshpots and From Gaza to Jerusalem.