MAGAZINE - ICOMnetwork.icom.museum/.../icomam/Magazine/issue15.pdf · 2016. 9. 27. · ISSUE 14...

MAGAZINEISSUE 15 MAY 2016

Conference 2016Milan 5

Tracing the raw silk trade 10

33Guns of the Battle of Blair Mountain

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ICOM is the international organisation of museums and museum professionals committed to the conservation, continuation and communication to society of the world’s natural and cultural heritage, present and future, tangible and intangible. http://icom.museum/

The mission of ICOMAM, the International Committee of Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History is to develop a worldwide network within our field. We support each other and believe in international dialogue and cooperation.ICOMAM is composed of Institutions or staff of organi-sations in our field wishing to join a world wide network of scholars, specialists or enthusiasts. Example of fields are historic arms and armour, artillery, military uniforms and equipment, flags, fortifications, aircraft, military music, hunting collections, vehicles, ships etc. ACTIVITIES• CONFERENCES: Annual international conferences and major international conferences every three years. The location varies but the major ones take place at the location of the ICOM general conference. Conferences include a mix of working sessions such as papers and discussions and museum visits. Proceedings are published.• TOURS: Conferences are normally followed by a post-conference tour where delegates have the opportu-nity to see more of the country and its museums and a chance to get to know each other better. Many new ideas, partnerships and joint exhibitions have resulted from such informal collaborations. It is very often that new ideas and great joint projects and exchange of exhibitions are developed during the post tours.• AWARDS: ICOMAM supports young museum profes-sionals to attend conferences. Members of ICOMAM can also apply for the triennial Justius Lipsius award• NEWSLETTERS: Publication and distribution to mem-bers of the Mohonk Courier and the ICOMAM newslet-ter every other month.• The ICOMAM MAGAZINE is published twice a year with articles in our field and up-to-date news. HOW TO JOIN USMembership of ICOMAM is free to all ICOM members. An application form to join ICOM, and the annual fee schedule, can be downloaded from www.icom.museum or sent to you by your national ICOM representative.

http://icom.museum/the-committees/international-com-mittees/international-committee/international-commit-tee-for-museums-of-arms-and-military-history/

© Individual authors, Institutions and ICOMAM, 2016Published by Basiliscoe Press in association with ICOMAMBasiliscoe Press, Hawthorne Cottage, Moorfield Road, LEEDS, LS12 3SE, [email protected] by Basiliscoe Press

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ISSUE 14 MAGAZINE 3

Welcome

Kay Douglas SmithRuth Rhynas BrownEDITORS

ContentsNews

4 ICOMAM NewsEva Sofi Ernstell, Chair ICOMAM

5 ICOMAM Congress and ICOM Triennial Conference 3-9 July 2016, Milan, Italy

7 Exhibitions in northern Italy

10 Tracing the raw silk trade. Arme-nians and Georgians at the courts of Charles XI and Charles XII

12 Valletta exhibition preview

13 ‘Wars belong in Museums’ Current and upcoming exhibi-tions and events at the Museum of Military History in Vienna

15 Bits & Pieces between Life and Death: a travelling exhibition from the Army Museum in Stock-holm

16 News and events at the National Army Museum Chelsea, London

19 Two toolboxes belonging to the Spanish gunmaker Matias BaezaAlvaro Soler del Campo

Publications

21 Arms and Armour in the collec-tion of Her Majesty the Queen

22 Der Teufelsberg in Berlin. West-licher Horchposten in Kalten Krieg

Articles

23 Katyn Museum: a branch of the Polish Army MuseumMagdalena Sasal

27 1914-18: The War that changed landscapesGuy M Wilson

33 Guns of the Battle of Blair Moun-tainKenneth L. Smith-Christmas

38 Medieval gunpowder research group: Early gunpowder, guns and gunneryKay Smith

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ICOMAM News

Dear ICOMAM colleagues and friends

Here is, once again, a new issue of our MAGAZINE. It is spring and many of us are looking forward to

our conference in Milan in July. As this is one of the triennial ICOM conferences with more than 2000 par-ticipants it is a unique platform for networking. You can still sign up at http://network.icom.museum/icom-mi-lan-2016/.

We are trying hard to get our own new web up and running and it will be on line very soon. Keep on googling ICOMAM and one day you will be surprised as you will find a new and up-to-date site. There we will present the schedule in details for the ICOMAM part of the conference in Milan. I can really recommend our part of the program. Never before has ICOMAM had such a rush to be a speaker. Our deadline for lectures was on 15 January and we were prepared to extend the date. But surprisingly we had plenty of lectures by the deadline and all together we had some thirty lectures submitted. Today we have a waiting list for late arrivals who will be allowed to speak if someone drops out. We are sorry that not everyone can be allowed to speak but hope for an active audience and many ques-tions and discussions. Our Italian board member Mario Scalini has arranged a special excursion to Turin for our members and this is an extra opportunity to meet each other and to visit interesting places within our field. The final program can be found at: http://www.profes-sionalabstracts.com/icom2016/iplanner/

I also want to remind everybody about the upcom-ing elections for a new board. In Milan we will have elections for the next three years. All members can vote and instructions will follow in our next newsletter that will be sent out to you in May.

The board decided in Krakow to give out grants in the name of Piet de Grysse to young members. The purpose of the grant is to help young colleges who have never been to a conference before to be able to participate in one annual meeting. This year we will be able to present the fellows during the General Assem-

bly in Milan.It is very positive that ICOMAM is slowly growing and I see us all as ambassadors. When we meet colleagues I have noticed that people are not aware of the fact that there is no extra fee to become a member of ICOMAM. As we are a part of ICOM one can chose between different International Committees without paying extra. Please help us in getting even more mem-bers by explaining this to colleagues that show interest in ICOMAM.

In Stockholm now we are making preparations for our annual vexillilogical seminar where museum staff can exchange knowledge about flags. In many museums there are collections of flags but these are often hidden away and not on show. This is probably because they are, in many ways, very difficult items - they are often not only big but can be huge and very fragile and hard to handle and display. Therefore the Army Museum has seen it as their task to draw their attention and gather experts in order to highlight flags. This year we will gather experts from 11 countries and this is also an important network for ICOMAM and as I have written earlier, I hope we can organize an ICOMAM conference about flags one year. If you are interested in a publica-tion from our seminars do not hesitate to get in touch and I will send you a copy.

Eva-Sofi ErnstellChair of [email protected]

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Our conference in 2016 will be held in conjunction with the triennial ICOM Congress in Milan. The

theme for the overall event is Museum and Cultural Landscapes building up a Cultural Heritage.Registration is now open - go to: http://network.icom.museum/icom-milan-2016//

The Italian landscape is world famous and has been described and visited in all ages. The 18th century Grand Tour became an essential destination for those seeking a synthesis of history and natural beauty. Who does not know the extraordinary range of landscapes that make up the Italian peninsula, extending from the Alps to the centre of the Mediterranean, with its hinterlands and its Rivieras? Who does not have in mind at least one of the numberless monuments encountered while travelling through Italy, a country offering a unique stratified palimpsest from antiquity to the Middle Ages, from the Renaissance to the Baroque, from the Neoclassical age to the present day?

Although endangered by urban and industrial development, many of Italy’s celebrated landscapes have been preserved and although they have changed they

have not been deprived of their ancient charm. New landscapes have also emerged, and their modernity has already become a part of history, while the very idea of landscape has changed and has extended to increasingly new territories appealing to the mind as well as to the eyes.

Inviting colleagues from all over the world to the 24th General Conference of ICOM, which will be held in Milan 3 to 9 July 2016, the Italian National Committee offers a theme dear to Italian museology: the relation-ship between museums and cultural landscapes. This is a central issue for Italy, but also a strategic perspective for museums around the world in the third millennium. This theme offers both an opportunity and a challenge for museums to revive their mission and strengthen their cultural and social role. ICOM Italy’s theme implies two essential questions.

First, to what extent should museums, especially those whose collections are linked to their loca-tions, take the role of interpretation centre for the place and the community they belong to? Secondly, how can museums disseminate the knowl-

ICOMAM Congress and ICOM Triennial Confer-ence 3-9 July 2016, Milan, Italy

Museums and cultural landscapes building up a cultural heritage

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edge of the cultural heritage both inside and outside their walls? We believe that museums should not only take

all responsibility for their collections, but also for the cultural heritage around them. Thanks to the skills of their professionals, museums should become musei diffusi, extended museums and garrisons to protect the cultural heritage conserved outside their walls. Muse-ums have responsibilities for the cultural landscape; they should become:

• custodians of knowledge through their collections, research and scientific activities• protagonists of new investigations on cultural heritage and active institutions in the protection and conservation of cultural goods both within and outside their walls• extended museums and interpretation centres of local heritage • centres responsible for the education to cultural heritage and landscape• leaders in landscape protection, conservation and development, as well as for the urban and landscape planning and for the promotion of cultural tourism• custodians of the historical and cultural values of the landscape and promoters of sustainable devel-opment The schedule is full of lectures and interesting

things to do and ICOMAM has tried to schedule a pro-gramme so you can attend both the international ICOM sessions as well as those organised by ICOMAM. In the evenings we will have many joint social events and some spare time to discover the city of Milan. Every morning there will be two world-famous key-note speakers for all ICOM delegates and there will also be a special exhibition of ICOM’s 70th anniversary.

All this will take place in the Milan Expo, which is a huge conference centre where the expected 2000 delegates will spend their days. It is in this venue that the World Expo was held in 2015. The venue is situated a short way outside the centre of Milan but has easy access to the city centre with its own subway station. We have promises to have discount to La Scala, on the Night Watch and other ‘to do’ things that are available in Milan. All of us will have free underground tickets so we can easily go back and forth during the days. ICO-MAM lectures are scheduled from Monday - Wednesday and our preliminary program is looking like this:

Monday 4 July General Assembly and session 1; 14:00 – 18:00Tuesday 5 July Session 2; 11:00 – 13:00 and Session 3; 15:00 – 18:00,Wednesday 6 July Session 4; 11:30 – 13:00 and Ses-sion 5; 14:00 – 18:00

On Thursday 6 July we will have a tour to Turin to see three very special museums - the Armeria Reale, the Museo dell’Artigliera and the Museo Pietro Micca.

The Royal Armoury in Turin with its magnificent gallery from the early 19th century presents collections of weapons and armours. The Museum was opened in 1837 and is still displayed in neo-gothic showcases with mounted figures on stuffed horses. In 2011 the loggia, which opens onto the main square, was restored and it was from these windows that Carlo Alberto declared the first war of independence from the Austrians.

The Artillery Museum was founded in 1843 when the king of Sardinia, Carlo Alberto, approved the project of General Vincenzo Morelli di Popolo, General Artillery Commander, making it is the oldest military museum in Italy. It was intended to provide a sort of side museum to the Royal Armoury. With the most important guns came some light arms and white weapons, models, engravings, paintings many of which recall the inde-pendence war. Artillery is the most artistic part of the collections but may be considered a small part of the existing artefacts. Many objects are from the Reign of Sardinia and date to the 18th century.

The Museo Pietro Micca and the Siege of Turin 1706, is in a two-floor building, one of which is underground. The building, realized in 1961 for the celebration of the centenary of the unification of Italy, stands in the place on which, during the siege operations, there were a French battery of two large pieces of ordnance which were used to pull down the walls of the Cittadella. A visit to the Pietro Micca Museum is a journey into the past, back to the days of the War of the Spanish Succession (beginning in the 18th century) when Turin was besieged for four months by the French Army. The town was saved by the so called ‘war of mines’ which was fought across a vast network of tunnels extending under and beyond the external defence works (some 14 km), No less than 9 km have been preserved and can still be visited today.

Hope to see you all in Milan in July 2016

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In aliam figuram mutareMario Cresci e la Pietà Rondanini

Milano, Castello Sforzesco20 May to 28 August 2016

The exhibition shows a series of pictures of Michelan-gelo’s Pietà Rondanini, realized by the italian photogra-pher Mario Cresci (Chiavari, 1942) as a personal crea-tivity act of approaching to an extraordinary artwork.

Studio Azzurro. Immagini SensibiliMilano, Palazzo Reale6 April to 4 September 201635 years of Studio Azzurro video artworks, a long histo-ry of technology-driven art reasearches

Exhibitions in Northern Italy If you are going to the ICOMAM Congress, here are some of the exhibitions currently on in Milan and the surrounding area

Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916)Genio e Memoria

Milano, Palazzo Reale25 March to 10 July 2016

The exhibition presents more than 300 works (paint-ings, drawings, prints, books, sculptures, pfotos) of one of the most important protagonist of the ‘Futurismo’

movement.

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Emilio Isgrò Milano, Palazzo RealeJune to September 2016Hommage to Emilio Isgrò , conceptual artist, painter and poet, writer and director, who with his ‘erasures’ applied to books and encyclopedies has reinterpreted the written word into a visual element.

Antonio da Fabriano. La Madonna della MisericordiaMilano, Museo Diocesano

11 December 2015 to 20 November 2016The restoration of this ‘Mercy Madonna’, oil on wood

realized by this Central Italian artist in the 1470’s

Joan Miró. La forza della materiaMilano, MUDEC Museo delle Culture26 March to 11 September 2016Over 100 works displayed chronologically to recon-struct the artist’s career. The majority are from the collections of the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and from that of the artist’s family.

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Thomas Demand: L’image voléeMilano, Fondazione PradaMarch 18 to August 28, 2016‘L’image volée’ (The stolen image) is a group show curated by artist Thomas Demand and includes more than 90 works produced by over 60 artists from 1820 through the present day. Demand’s idea for the exhi-bition is to explore the way we all rely on pre-existing models, and how artists have always referred to existing imagery to make their own. Questioning the bounda-ries between originality, conceptual inventiveness and the culture of the copy, the project focuses on theft, authorship, annexation and the creative potential of such pursuits.

Italiani sull’Oceano. Storie di artisti nel Brasile moderno e

indigeno alla metà del ‘900Milano, MUDEC Museo delle Culture

26 March to 21 July 2016The relationship between Italian artistic culture and

Brazil’s modern and native culture in the 20th century, in dialogue with the Amazon collection of MUDEC.

Dimensione domestica. Achille e Pier Giacomo Castiglioni e una

strana idea di arredamentoMilano, Fondazione Achille Castiglioni

16 February to 30 October 2016The interior designs’ works of the Castiglioni brothers, pioneers of the italian school of industrial design in the

second half of the 20th century.

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Da Poussin agli impressionisti. Tre secoli di pittura francese dall’ErmitageTorino, Palazzo Madama11 March to 4 July 2016 From the collections of St Petersburg’s Hermitage, over 70 paintings showing the development of French art, from academies to impressionism, from Louis XIV to the dawn of the avant-garde.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Water Projects Brescia, Santa Giulia Museum 7 April to 18 September 2016The exhibition aims at presenting the projects within a historical framework, contextualizing their evolution, from 1961 to the present day, illustrating the artists’ water-related works in their different stages of realiza-tion, from the first concept sketches, to the drawings, collages and models that follow, all the way to the actual realization of the work documented in the form of photos and videos.

The new exhibition in the Royal Armoury in the Roy-al Palace of Stockholm is an unusual historical view

of the borders between the East and the West. It cen-tres on the trade with raw silk to Swedish ports across Russia in the 1680s, today forgotten, but as important then as the trade of crude oil today. The Swedish silk adventure came to a definite end when the Great Nordic War broke out in 1700. The cultural encounters, not least with Armenians and Georgians, in the traces of this trade, however, left their imprints in Swedish archives, libraries and museums.

Tracing the raw silk trade. Armenians and Georgians at the courts of Charles XI and Charles XII

The Royal Armoury, StockholmNovember 2015 - November 2016

The most valuable object of the exhibition is a coat from Isfahan, dated to shah Abbas I time, in the 1620s, called ‘Queen Christina´s Persian Coat’. To the far left some photos of Isfahan of today with its beautiful mosques and the still Christian quarters of the Armenians, New Djulfa.


In the cellar vaults of the Royal Armoury, next to the French coach of Charles XI from 1696, glimpses of this history are now exhibited until November 2016. The dream of silk to Sweden became true when the fabulous coach was new.

It includes the King´s Envoy Ludwig Fabritius and his diplomatic travels to Persia; the Armenian merchants who followed him and the Georgian Prince, who – in Sweden - struggled for the preservation of the Georgian language. Also included is the Armenians role as inter-mediaries between East and West, as well as the Geor-gians balancing between the Christian and the Muslim worlds.

Livrustkammaren, Slottsbacken 3, 111 30 Stockholmwww.livrustkammaren.se

This sabre, a gift from Shah Soleiman I to King Charles XI, was prented, in July 1687, by five Ar-menian merchants bringing raw silk from Persia to Sweden

The book by Engelberth Kaempfer, Aemoni-tates Exoticae, gives detailed descriptions of languages, buildings, places and people as well as of political institutions along the way from Stockholm to Isfahan in 1683-85. Kaempfer was the secretary of Ludvig Fabritius, a Swedish envoy to Persia for the purpose of establishing the silk trade to the Swedish port of Narva on the Baltic sea. The mace has been attributed as being of Armenian origin, the knife is a 17th century chama dagger typical for Georgia. The 19th century flat woven carpet comes from the Eastern Caucasus

These guns were brought from Moscow to Charles XI and his then five year old Prince Charles XII, by the multilingual expert, Johan Gabriel Sparfwenfelt arriving in Sweden in the summer of 1687. Sparfwenfelt had had a grant from the by King to study Russian in Moscow and is the first author of a Slavic dictionary

View of the exhibition. Two envoys to Persia with Swedish connections were accompagnied by two secretaries and authors of travel books: Adam Olerarius in 1633-39 and Engelberth Kaempfer in 1683-85. Both envoys were ennobled, Philipp Crusius von Crusenstierna by Queen Christina and Ludvig Fabritius by Charles XI.


Heritage Malta is currently preparing an exhibition commemorating the 450th anniversary of the laying

of the foundation stone of Valletta. This will serve as a sequel to last year’s 1565 Great Siege exhibition held at the Grandmaster’s Palace in Valletta. Due to the work involved in the restoration of the Grandmaster’s Palace which is presently taking place, the Valletta exhibition will be housed in two locations, the recently restored Fort St Elmo and the National Library of Malta. Both sites are very significant in that while the first was the first building on the Valletta peninsula serving as a key fortification to hold back the enemy during the 1565 siege, the library is the repository of the prestigious archives of the Order of St John.

The exhibition which will open in late June 2016 will continue to June 2017; it intends to highlight various aspects of Valletta as a renaissance city that has been lived in uninterruptedly over the past four and half centuries. Themes will identify the original planning of its urban layout according to the modern standards of the time, its military role in the defence of the island. Its buildings and role as a convent for the Order of St. John as well as its legislative and administrative role as a seat of government throughout the Order’s rule, the French interlude, British period and post-Independence Malta.

Other aspects will look at city life through the ages with its numerous trades and commerce, its markets, the clear social stratification of its inhabitants and its religious significance. The importance of water and food and their sources will be discussed. It has to be remembered that Valletta is a fortified peninsula mainly surrounded by the sea; as a fortress, emphasis was laid on self sufficiency in food and water in case of siege. It is enough to recall that the French withstood a block-ade in the city for two years.

Finally, a section addressing historical milestones that took place inside the city as well as aspects of its dark history will be represented with artefacts from National collections. A substantial section will deal with the Second World War and how post war reconstruc-tion heavily altered Valletta. Apart from the destruction of many significant historic buildings, the war contrib-uted to a demographic decrease in its population and altered the habits of its citizens.

The exhibition, which is being set up in collabora-tion with Malta Libraries and Archives, intends to shed new light on this unique Unesco World Heritage site. All this will be immortalized in an accompanying cata-logue that will be published this June.

Valletta exhibition preview

Robert CassarCurator, Palace Armoury, Heritage Malta


The Museum of Military History, one of the oldest in Vienna, owns an exclusive collection through which

the history of the armed forces of the Hapsburg Empire and Austria is displayed with equally unique exhibits. Re-ferring to this tradition and heritage, the museum cele-brates its 125th anniversary of its existence by present-ing a special exhibition in 2016 which will be opened on 25 May. This jubilee exhibition traces back many aspects of the interesting and eventful history of the museum up to present days. Authentic, rare exhibits, original documents and many photos will be on display. Starting with the laying of the foundation stone and the opening of the current museum`s predecessor in 1891 (called ‘k.u.k. Heeresmuseum’), the exhibition first issues the impressive artistic arrangements of its interior and the genesis of the collections at the end of the 19th centu-ry. Another remarkable part displays the development of the museum from the beginning of the First to the end of the Second World War, including its demolition by numerous bomb hits and lootings in 1945. Visitors will experience the reconstruction of the museum and further collecting as well as the concepts of the current exhibitions. An additional chapter of the exhibition will look behind the scenes of the museum to reveal activ-ities and operational needs which normally cannot be seen but are necessary to its proper function.

Nevertheless, the Museum of Military History not only reflects just the past. The main subject of discus-sion once a year is dedicated to existing war zones by issuing escape and war through the eyes of affected children. “Çavê min – My Eye”, the name of this tempo-rary exhibition, provides those innocents with a voice by presenting their paintings, photos and films. This concept enables the visitors to reflect the unspoken thoughts and emotions, these children faced in daily war life and during their migration away from the crisis area they fled from. In addition, a special guided tour as well as workshops for schools accompanies “Çavê min – My Eye”. Therein witnesses or even former child soldiers report their experiences to the audience.

The Museum of Military History is not only re-nowned as the first museum to learn all about the History of the Austrian Armed Forces, it is also famous for its major events. One of these activities is called “on wheels and tracks”; in 2016 it will be held from 4 June to 5 June. More than 100 historical military vehicles will be presented to the public in the historic park behind

‘Wars belong in Museums’ Current and upcoming exhibitions and events at the Museum of Military History in Vienna

Historical view of the Museum © HGM

Cave min - My eye © HGM


the museum building. These include various types of ve-hicles like bicycles and tanks but also alongside vehicles which have changed in time.

On 19 June the museum will celebrate a ‘Festival Of All Nations’, an unforgettable journey around the world, although actually prior to the museum. Based on the motto ‘live together – celebrate together’, choirs, cultural associations and folklore groups from all over the world will perform through singing, dancing and making music.

On wheels and tracks © HGM Festival of all nations © HGM

Uniform and Gunpowder © HGM

From 8 to 10 June a three-day festival of a journey through time in military history from the Middle Ages to the present will happen at the museum. The histor-ic park area behind the museum serves as a stage for story tellers, historical battle re-enactments, craftsmen, traders, musicians and knight tournaments. Uniform and Gunpowder, so the name of this event, brings history to live and generates an exciting experience!Visit our updated homepage www.hgm.at


At 17:00 on 28 April, our travelling exhibition Bits and Pieces between Life and Death, opened in Astana,

Kazakhstan. There were speeches, music and refresh-ments. This was the 10th and last opening after 8 500 kilometers and 6 years.

The exhibition has been on show in Stockholm, Oslo, Brussels, Warsaw, Brest, Minsk, Gomel, Grodno, Tallinn, and Astana. In all these places we have devel-oped exciting and outstanding partnerships with the hosting museums. Here are some examples. In Nor-way we received an exhibition in exchange, in Belgium we exchanged staff and one of our curators followed the work at Musée de l Armé for a fortnight and one conservator followed work in our museum for 2 weeks. In Poland we began to exchange researchers and two flag specialists came to Stockholm to study Polish flags in our collections. In Belarus we got partners for an exhibition that was brought to our museum. In Estonia we exchanged ideas and one curator is now involved in a new permanent exhibition in Tallinn. In Kazakhstan we have just agreed on exchanging lectures etc. for the next 10 years. These are just some examples of many good connections that we have developed and brought to our museum thanks to the travelling exhibition. We have broadened ourselves as we have met colleagues and we still work together long after the exhibition has left. We have acquired a lot of new knowledge, new Information, new ideas and new partners for future projects. This was also the meaning of this tour – to connect with other institutions and get new profession-al relations.

The exhibition opened for the first time in 2010 in Stockholm and was the first of its kind; almost all exhibitions in Army Museums, indeed everywhere, were chronological exhibition showing some battles or history. This one was different, a Swedish well known collector and graphic designer, Torbjörn Lenskog, came to the museum and asked if he could display a collec-tion of small military things, not weapons or uniforms, but simple things that help soldiers from all sides survive during a war. Torbjörns interests are how things look, the design of them. Why water bottles are differ-ent depending on the country they come from - even though they are made for exactly the same reason. The exhibition was the most esthetical exhibition in Sweden in 2010 and got the award the Golden Showcase. It is designed as identical anonymous gravestones from dead soldiers trying to tell you something about the past by

displaying memories in an elegant way. The things are not cleaned or conserved as it is important to show them the way they look without the treatment of mu-seum hands - and the objects are shown as highlights as if they were jewellry and not simple, military items.

It has been a pleasure to work with the Bits & Piec-es exhibition and in my opinion it is a great success. We are not a huge institution and the tour has been possi-ble through international connections and trust in one another. In Belarus for example, our staff trained local museum staff in how to mount our objects and then the local staff took care of the transport and mount-ings in four different locations within Belarus. Our staff checked the objects during the packing at the last stop, and everything was kept in good order. The exhibition included 1200 objects and 66 showcases and it has not been a quick fix to move it or pack it.

The Bits & Pieces exhibition is the first exhibition from a Swedish Museum that has travelled to Kazakh-stan and I am so proud that this could be realized. The Museum of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Ka-zakhstan opened on 1 December 2015, and is a brand new museum. The staff are very professional and they will become ICOMAM members very soon.

Bits & Pieces between Life and Death

A travelling exhibition from the Army Museum in Stockholm


News

The re-development of the National Army Museum building in Chelsea is well underway and we’ll be

welcoming visitors back in Spring 2017. The project promises to revolutionise what the Museum offers, cre-ating an interactive, engaging experience for all visitors, whether they’re seasoned historians or completely uninitiated in the history of the army.

This is the first major development of the building for 40 years, and it is essential that when completed it is able to meet the needs of audiences for the next 20 years. The first and most radical development has been carving out the inside of the building to make way for the new galleries, research facility, café and shop. The whole museum will now be lighter, more spacious and easier to navigate with a space devoted to temporary exhibitions and events. During closure, there is a pro-gramme of events and activities at alternative venues across the country, as well as regular news, blogs and

videos on the website. This year marks significant anniversaries in military

history including the introduction of conscription, the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme. We will be taking part in national events and visiting local festivals during the summer. We’re also recognising the role of women in the army with events taking place around the country and online. Further details available on the website at www.nam.ac.uk

The Daytime Talks and Evening Series (see below) will take a look at these key moments through today’s social and political eyes. Hosted by some of Britain’s leading writers, historians, professors and activists, the events will bring forward political debate about the definition, rights and responsibilities of British citizen-ship; and contemporary challenges facing a modern cit-izen army of reservists. The proposed central question of 2016 is – can your country make you fight?

News and events at the National Army Museum Chelsea, London

Concept image of the new Museum’s exterior.


Events

Daytime talksFrom April 2016, our Daytime Talks (formerly Lunch-time Lectures) will move to a new venue - the Royal Marsden Education and Conference Centre - and feature a diverse range of topics, from conscientious objectors to the army’s contribution to the Olympic Games.Dr Sue Hawkins: The Princess, the School Girl and the Novelist: Stories from the VAD ArchiveThursday 12 May 2016, 12.30pmDr Sue Hawkins, Senior Lecturer in history at Kingston University explores the stories behind those serving in the British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachments during First World War. Entombed at the British Red Cross HQ, Hawkins is leading a digitalisation project of 240,000 fragile VAD filing cards, which contain the details of those members who served their country in all manner of ways.

Dr Peter Johnston: Pictures, Papers and Posters: Propaganda in the First World WarThursday 19 May 2016, 12.30pmDr Peter Johnston, Collections Content Team Leader at the National Army Museum, explores the form and purpose of the propaganda produced during the First World War, and look at how both traditional mediums such as print were deployed alongside the latest tech-nology in cinema to cajole, persuade, enrage and sustain populations through the four years of war.

David Killingray: A ‘Side Show’ of the Second World War: East Africa in 1941 Thursday 2 June 2016, 12.30pmDavid Killingray, Emeritus Professor of Modern Histo-ry at Goldsmiths, looks at the war against Italy in the Horn of Africa 1940-41. Frequently regarded as one of the ‘side shows’ of the Second World War, this lecture will explore the often-ambiguous policies of the Great Powers towards Ethiopia, the question and purpose of recruiting large African armies, and the course of the military campaigns to defeat Italy in north-east Africa.

Peter Gattrell: Refugees, Armies and Volunteer-ing during the First World War Thursday 23 June 2016, 12.30pmIn this lecture, Peter Gattrell, teacher of history at the University of Manchester, considers the relationship between the European refugee crisis that erupted during the First World War and the actions of European armies – men in uniform, but also the ‘armies of volun-teers’ who came to the aid of civilian refugees.

Gary Haines: John Singer Sargent’s Gassed and Popular Perceptions of Blinded Veterans in the First World War Thursday 4 July 2016, 12.30pm Gary Haines, MA in Intellectual and Cultural History, investigates the representation of the blinded veteran during the First World War. Two key literature works will be discussed; D. H. Lawrence’s The Blind Man and Vera Brittain’s, Testament of Youth. These works will be discussed in relation to Gassed, 1919.

Lt Col (Retd) Alan Billings OBE and Major Gen-eral Shaun Burley CB MBE: ‘The British Army and the Olympic Games: The Road to Rio and Beyond’ Thursday 21 July 2016, 12.30pmHosted by Lt Col (Retd) Alan Billings OBE, Army Elite Sport Performance Manager.

Jennifer McNeice: Military Exemption Courts in Australia Thursday 8 September 2016, 12.30pmJennifer McNeice is a local and family historian: writing, providing consultancy advice and conducting workshops for other researchers.

Fiona Joseph: From Fact To Fiction: How the re-al-life stories of Cadbury women workers in the First World War inspired the novel, Comforts for the Troops Thursday 22 September 2016, 12.30pmThe factory women at Cadbury in Birmingham made a phenomenal contribution to the war effort, parcel-ling gifts (‘Comforts’) of chocolate and knitting for the servicemen abroad, as well as working voluntarily in the local auxiliary hospitals. In this talk Fiona Joseph discusses how and why her research into the Bournville Archives inspired her to write a novel.

Richard Vinen - National ServiceThursday 6 October 2016:

Dr Matthew Bennett - 950th anniversary of the Battle of HastingsThursday 27 October 2016:

Evening seriesBook your tickets to hear experts from the worlds of film, literature, health and academia discuss their fasci-nating experiences of working on projects connected to the army. Hosted at the Army & Navy Club.


Matthew Green, Dr Fiona Reid and Jake Wood: From Shellshock to PTSD - a discussion on how best to support our troops Thursday 19 May 2016, 7pm – 8pmExploring the 100-year development of research and understanding relating to the health and wellbeing of soldiers returning to civilian life, we host a public dis-cussion on how soldiers have been supported through-out history, how they are supported today and what more could be done. Our panel includes the author of ‘Aftershock: The Untold Story of Surviving Peace’, Mat-thew Green, and expert in the history of shellshock and PTSD, Dr Fiona Reid. Jake Wood, a veteran who worked with Matthew on his book, will join the panel. Matthew’s book will be available to purchase on the evening. This event will be live-tweeted.

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Rewriting the Somme - Hugh Sebag-Montefiore in Conversation Thursday 23rd June 2016, 7pm - 8pmThe Battle of the Somme is one of the most written about battles of the 20th century. It has come to epito-mise British popular memory of the horror and futility of the First World War. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s new book Somme: Into the Breach presents new research on allied breakthroughs during the battle. Our conver-sation with Hugh will explore the remarkable stories he uncovered and discuss the question of how the Battle of the Somme fits into our wider understanding of First World War history today.

Damian Jones: An Evening with Dad’s Army Pro-ducer, Damian Jones Thursday 14 July 2016, 7pm – 8pmIt was a brave endeavour to recreate the much-loved, iconic television programme, ‘Dad’s Army’, for the big screen. We are delighted to host an evening with the film’s producer, Damian Jones, for a discussion about the making of the film. There will be an audience Q&A with Damian at the end of the event. Damien Jones is a British film producer and the founder of DJ Films Ltd, whose award winning career spans over 30 feature films including The Iron Lady and The History Boys.

Commonwealth and Empire London Library TourThe National Army Museum is taking a new Common-wealth and Empire display on the road to a range of libraries around London this winter. Explore images, stories and family-friendly activities and learn about the vital role the Commonwealth, Empire and Dominions made to the British war effort. The display will be visit-ing Clapham Library 4 April – 17 April

Free Workshop At The Wallace Collection - London Monday 23 May 2pm – 4.30pm. We’ve teamed up with

the Wallace Collection to offer a workshop showcas-ing the work we’ve done. If you work in community learning, or you’re just interested in finding out more, come along to our free workshop to get hands on with Collection items and see artwork produced by commu-nity volunteers. Refreshments will be provided. Reserve your place by calling our booking line on 020 7730 0717 or visit nam.ac.uk

Volunteers and ConscriptsLambeth Country Show, Brockwell Park, London Sat 16 & Sun 17 July 2016, 12pm – 8pm Free entry. We’re delighted to be returning to the Lambeth Coun-try Show with our touring exhibition and handling col-lections exploring the introduction of conscription and what this meant to British and Commonwealth soldiers.

Ministry Of WomenMost stories about the army often relate to the service of men but did you know the first women’s units were formed in the British army almost 100 years ago.

Ministry of Women is a new graphic novel we have produced in collaboration with artist Carol Adlam and writer Helen Cross. Using our Collection and archives and through interviews with female veterans and serving soldiers, the novel will reveal and represent the historic and contemporary voices of women’s army experiences.

To coincide with the launch of the graphic novel, we’ll be visiting these events around the country. For further information and details of how to book visit: nam.ac.uk/outreach

Ministry of Women: Female soldiers, Carol Ad-lam and Helen Cross14 May 2016The Other Place Theatre, Stratford upon Avon (in part-nership with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Birmingham).

Ministry of Women: Why would a Museum make a graphic novel?18 May 2016 Laydeez do Comics, London

Ministry of Women: What’s it like to be a woman in the army?3 June 2016Hay Festival, Hay on Wye

For further information please contact:Nikki Reddit, Marketing Manager, National Army Muse-um [email protected] 0207 881 6606Follow us on Twitter: @NAM_London Facebook: facebook.com/NationalArmyMuseumWebsite: nam.ac.uk


Artisan creations rarely leave behind any sign of the instruments and tools with which they were cre-

ated, but even rarer are those objects that surrounded the products of an artist or craftsman. Being regarded as of secondary importance, they were more likely to disappear, not only with the passage of time but also unlikely to survive either the death of their owners or succeeding generations. Patrimonio Nacional has recently acquired for the Real Armería two toolboxes of the Madrid gunmaker Matías Baeza (active c. 1700-25), who worked for Cosimo III of Medici, sixth Grand Duke of Tuscany, and for the King Felipe V of Spain. Both toolboxes are constructed in pinewood, their elements assembled with dovetail joints, with an identical size of 37.3 x 21 x 25 centimeters. Each has, at the front, three rows of asymmetric drawers that prevent their inter-change; this is the reason why their positions must be the original ones. The first toolbox has eight drawers and the second seven. The surfaces are painted in two tones of green imitating marble, combined with red bands framing the front perimeter of each element or panel. Each drawer has a small button-like handle and a painted label with black letters on a white field that indicates its content. In the first box labels indicates, by order, the following content of their drawers: Dispara-dores (cocks); Marcas (marks); Fogones (touchholes); Pun-tos de oro (‘gold points’, front sights); Ganchos (hooks); Saca tacos (cleaning worms); Abrazaderas (barrel bands); Silex (flints). In the second: Bridas (bridles); Rastril-los (batteries); Quijadas (jaws); Anillos (rings); Muelles (springs); Gatillos (triggers); Agujetas (sear and trigger levers). These legends refer to the different elements of a hunting gun according to the technical terminology of the 18th century. The first toolbox was mainly for the components for barrels while the second one those of the locks. Each was therefore devoted to the construc-tion, or the maintenance, of a specific component of the weapon, clearly showing that both were the toolboxes used by Matías Baeza in his work. Each side of both boxes shows his mark or his counterfeit. More likely he constructed and decorated them, since we know that gun makers made the stocks for the firearms and the workshop furniture.

The decoration of these toolboxes indicates that Matías Baeza was in royal service, although he was not a royal gunmaker. We must call attention to the fact that he chose for the top cover of both boxes the fron-tispiece of a French pattern book by Claude Simonin, who partially gathered together the work of Laurent Languedoc, gunmaker of Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), titled:

PLVISIEURS PIECES ET ORNEMENTS / Darquebuzerie Les plus en Vsage tire des / Ouurages de Laurent Le Languedoc Arquebuziers / Du Roy et Dautres Ornement Inventé et gravé / Par Simonin et se Vend Le dit Livre Chez le dit / Simonin a Lantree du Faubour St Anthoine/ A Paris Auec Priuilege du Roy / 1684.

This book was published in Paris in two editions, 1684 and 1685, but in 1705 another two, based on that of 1684, were published. Like other pattern books, these designs were not always faithfully reproduced, such being the case with these boxes in which Matías Baeza freely recalls this cover, where introduces his full name: MATIAS BAEZA. The introduction also of a ducal crown suggests that they were made during his service

Two toolboxes belonging to the Spanish gunmaker Matias BaezaAlvaro Soler del CampoJefe del Departamento de ConservaciónPalacio Real, Madrid


to someone with this rank, perhaps Cosimo III, but this is not at all certain. These books circulated widely and were used in Madrid and there are many examples of it in various works.

The second association between the decoration and the Real Armería is the use of the colours red and green. Green is the colour associated with the working spaces for the servants inside the Spanish royal palaces during the 18th century. It was also the dominant colour of the Royal Hunting Armoury, established by Charles III years after Baeza´s death. This armoury was partially furnished with old cabinets from the Real Armería, so, in spite of the lack of documentation, we can suppose that

the cabinets of the historical armory where the guns were kept could have been painted in those colours. In any case, the boxes of Matías Baeza agree basically in their decoration with the later installation of the Royal Hunting Armoury.

This acquisition has allowed us to continue complet-ing our view of Madrid gunmakers. These toolboxes, linked as they are to the personal aspect of the produc-tion of a gunmaker, added to examples of his tools and the furniture were some of them were kept in Madrid, constitutes an unique ensemble in the Real Armería for our knowledge of the history of Spanish royal manufac-tures.


A new catalogue raisonné published by the Royal Collection Trust, Arms and Armour in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, European Armour is the first study of the European arms and armour in the Royal Col-lection for more than 100 years. Published on 25 April 2016 this substantial catalogue contains more than 250 objects, ranging from full sets of armour to spurs, stirrups and saddles. Highlights of the volume include the iconic armour made for Henry VIII in around 1540 and the exceptionally beautiful armour made for Henry, Prince of Wales, around 1608. It also includes specially commissioned reconstruction drawings of important Greenwich garnitures.The late A.V.B. Norman was a renowned historian of arms and armour, ending his career as Master of the Royal Armouries. His work on the Royal Collection catalogue remained unfinished at the time of his death and has been completed by Ian Eaves, a former Keeper of Armour at the Royal Armouries, Tower of London.

Arms and Armourin the collection of Her Majesty the QueenEuropean Armourby A V B Norman and Ian EavesRoyal Collection TrustHardback, approx. 528 pages, approx. 500 colour illus-trations. £95.00ISBN 978 1 905686 48 3

Far left: Armour garniture of Henry VIII, for field and tilt made at the palace armoury at Greenwich, about 1540Left: Gothic composite cap-a-pie field armour worn by Henry de la Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford (1811–59) at the Eglinton Passage of Arms in 1839.Above: Attributed to Eliseus Libae-rts, embossed round parade target known as The ‘Cellini’ Shield, mid-16th century


During the Cold War, Field Station Berlin staffed by British and American personnel high on the Teufels-

berg, an artificial hill raised from wartime bombing debris, was one of the West’s most important electronic listening and intelligence gathering posts. West Berlin lay over 100 miles behind the Iron Curtain surrounded by communist East Germany and at the centre of the densest concentration of Warsaw Pact forces anywhere - a vast armed camp threatening the security of the West. From the vantage point of the Teufelsberg, British and American personnel monitored the electronic emissions from the surrounding military forces, emis-sions that betrayed their organisation, technical capabil-ities and state of readiness, as well as high-level political intelligence. From the early 1960s, its white radomes and the now demolished red and white antenna tower rising above the wooded hill also became one of the city’s most prominent landmarks. Today, the Teufelsberg stands as a contemporary and spectacular ruin, repre-senting a relic of a lost cyber space of Cold War elec-tronic emissions and espionage, and a rare opportunity to investigate a modern signals intelligence facility.

Previous studies of the Teufelsberg, for example, Behlin and Jüttemann (2011) and Beckmann et al (2013), have been able to draw on archives of the Allied Museum Berlin, which predominantly reflects the expe-riences of the American intelligence personnel in Berlin.

Der Teufelsberg in Berlin. Westlicher Horchposten in Kalten KriegWayne D Cocroft and John SchofieldISBN: 978-3-86153-888-2

Further information on their contribution is available through books and on veterans’ web sites. The British intelligence services are far more reticent about releas-ing information on their past activities; a reluctance that applies to their work in Cold War Berlin. In preparing this book the authors have consulted the available files at the United Kingdom’s National Archives, including documents specially declassified for this work. Nev-ertheless, information on the Teufelsberg’s technical capabilities and the policy decisions taken as a result of the intelligence gathered remains beyond the reach of this generation of historians. This book is therefore in-evitably and unavoidably an archaeological investigation of the site, and specifically of the British presence there. In this regard at least the study presents a counterpoint to and extension of previously published works. See: http://www.christoph-links-verlag.de/index.cf-m?view=3&titel_nr=888


Katyn Museum is a place of con-templation and remembrance

of the victims of the Katyń Massa-cre. The massacre, perpetrated by the NKVD in the spring of 1940 on about 22,000 Polish POWs and prisoners captured after 17 Septem-ber 1939, left a heavy mark on the pages of Polish history. By Lavrentiy Beria’s decision of 5 March 1940, all prisoners held in the prison camps of Kozelsk, Starobyelsk and Ostashkov, and prisoners of western Ukraine and Belarus, were labelled ‘enemies of the Soviet state’. Executions began in April and went on until mid-May. Officers held in Kozelsk were trans-ported to the forest of Katyń and executed over open pits or in the neighbouring villa occupied by the NKVD. Inmates of the Starobyelsk camp were moved to Kharkov and murdered in the cellar of NKVD offices, their bodies buried in death pits in Piatykhatky forest; POWs from Ostashkov were killed in Kalin-in (modern Tver) and buried in mass graves in Mednoye. The bodies of victims from the so-called ‘Ukrainian list’ were deposited in the forest of Bykivnia. The names of about 3870 murdered victims, based on the ‘Bela-russian list’. remain unknown to this day. Though there are reasons to pre-sume they were buried in Kuropaty, the Belarussian government has been unwilling to allow research and exhumation work to be conducted in that area.

The issue of the Katyń massacres is not limited to the year they were perpetrated, but extends to its impli-cations and the actions undertaken after 1940, such as reprisals against the prisoners’ families, deportations, a whole spectrum of persecutions, as well as propaganda and the decades of silence regarding Soviet genocide

Katyn Museum: a branch of the Pol-ish Army MuseumMagdalena SasalPR Coordinator, Polish Army Museum

on the part of the international com-munity. The mass executions were only the beginning of the harsh fate of Poles under Soviet occupation. It took 50 years before the truth of the Katyń issue could be released and brought under the roof of the Katyń Museum.

The beginnings of the Katyń Mu-seum go back to early 1990s when the political transformation in Poland opened a door for descendants of Katyń victims to freely affiliate in what became known as Federations of Katyń Families, which in turn came together to form an Association. By the end of 1992, the Polish Minis-try of National Defense issued an official decision on the foundation of the Katyń Museum as a branch of the Polish Army Museum. The new museum was initially located in the casemates of the Czerniaków Fort in Warsaw’s district of Sadyba. The poor condition of the building, however, forced the museum staff to remove the artefacts and tem-porarily store them at the Polish Army Museum, where a temporary exhibition titled Memory Would Not Be Erased was opened in 2011. As the collection continued to expand by documents donated by Families and artefacts transferred from the Council for the Protection of Strug-gle and Martyrdom Sites, it became clear that the Museum would need a home of its own. In 2010 work began on the adaptation of the caponier of the Warsaw Citadel to house the Katyń Museum. Out of 22 submitted

entries, the design proposed by the team of the Maksa Studio was se-lected. Jerzy Kalina, a member of the Maksa team and a prominent Polish artist, became the author of the artistic narrative of the exhibition.

The new building of the Katyń Museum was officially opened on 17 September 2015. The Museum is integrated into the walls of the Warsaw Citadel, capping the history of anti-Polish tsarist policy with its Soviet climax. The symbolism of the exhibition brings visitors into direct contact with the crime of the Mas-sacres, allowing them to personally discover and respond to the recent tragic history of the Polish nation. Each installation of the Museum’s permanent exhibition presents a particular phase of the path walked by the victims and their loved ones or a stage in the struggle to expose the truth to the world.

A visit to the Katyń Museum begins at the gate to the Warsaw Citadel. The first installation that comes into view is the SENTINEL, a symbolic space referring to places which for decades held the truth of the Katyń massacres. It is an area filled with trees planted in straight lines, resembling soldiers standing to attention. It is cut across by a path laid out along a natural shift in the terrain. The path’s broken line and rugged surface represent the SCAR left by the trauma of the events of 1940. The darkened passage through the parade grounds is a reference to the contrast between the obscurity


of secrecy and the light of truth. It is also the first step in the passage from the world of the living into the sacred, which awaits visitors inside the caponier. As they descend through the postern - or narrow corridor - visitors are accompanied by the MISSING: dark, blurry figures projected on the walls on both sides of the passage. Emerging from the shadows with a soft sound of footsteps which become clearer with every step until they can be recog-nized as Polish officers. The soldiers appear, fade out and disappear in the tunnel, as they escort the visitor into the foyer of the Museum.

The part of the exhibition locat-ed on the first level of the caponier is called DISCOVERY. The recurring theme is the image of a broken dog-tag integrated into the original archi-tecture of the building’s arched walls. The dogtag, a symbol of thousands of military identification tags found in Katyń death pits, is the background for mixed media display cases and a motif decorating the walls; it also contains the TIMELINE, which guides

the visitor through key events of Polish history, beginning with the restoration of Poland’s sovereignty in 1918.

In the first two halls, visitors have an opportunity to learn about the social and political life of the Second Polish Republic, as well as the international events which led to the outbreak of World War Two. Interactive screens show the capture and imprisonment of members of the Polish army and police by the Soviet forces. They show letters and postcards sent by prisoners to their loved ones from NKVD prison camps. Multimedia charts show key events of the Second World War in chronological order. Some of them are placed in special exhibition chests, which gradually change their appearance until the visitor finds himself among sarcophagi which jealously hide their contents, only slightly disclosing certain classified items. The authors of the exhibition made sure to show the fate of the families of captives held in prison camps and prisons of Ukraine and Belarus. The ethnic cleansing of the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic, the trail of civilians deported to the ‘inhuman land’ and their circumstances after the shift on the international scene. Following this brief historical introduction, the visitor begins to discover the truth of the Katyń massacres by stepping into a photographer’s darkroom, where display cases containing glass processing trays are illuminated by red light from low-hanging lamps. Frozen frames from developed negatives prompt the reflection that the truth recorded on film was to remain concealed forever.

Adjacent to the darkroom is the ‘rift of exhumation’ showing footage from German exhumations of April 1943 which exposed the truth of Katyń – and Soviet exhumations of January 1944 which served to shift the blame for the massacre onto Nazi Germany. The film is shown on a wall blocked off by a sheet of metal, allowing visitors only an uncomfort-able glimpse through a horizontal slit slightly below an average adult’s eye

level. This measure not only protects the eyes of the youngest visitors from graphic images, but is also a symbol of a gap in time - a glimpse of truth which made a rift in the solid pane of an international conspira-cy of silence regarding the Katyń massacre.

At every stage of the tour, visitors pass by pillars of sandstone displaying portraits and biographies of men and women who contributed to the exposure of the truth of Katyń - PROFILES.

The final stage of the first level of the exhibition is symbolically called DECEPTION. This section shows the history of the Katyń lies and the struggle against it, beginning with the Nurimberg trials, through the communist era in Poland and the So-viet Union. Special cabinets contain records in the form of electronic media, books, files and albums, some published in exile - often at risk to the authors’ lives - others more contemporary, attempting to explore and present the true story of the Katyń massacres.

Having experienced the first part of the exhibition, visitors enter a special lift to descend to Level 0. The entire lower level of the caponier is an extraordinary and disquieting journey into the depth of the graves, where the coldness of walls is a con-stant reminder of the cruel nature of the place. Covered with frost, frozen dogtag halves symbolise the suspen-sion of time.bThis section, called RELICS, is the heart of the Katyń Museum. It holds objects which belonged to the victims and exca-vated from the death pits. To make the encounter with those poignant artefacts as personal as possible, this section of the exhibition was inten-tionally placed as one of the visitors’ final experiences.


Here, one finds few digital dis-plays; the focus is on the contents of the graves. Everyday items which usually escape our attention gain new meaning and power when associated with tragedy - as are the ones which accompanied the victims on their last journey. This part of the exhibition is designed for quietude, prayer, con-centration - powerful emotions are released as visitors silently reflect on those events. The only multimedia technology used at this level is the display of the victims’ faces on a screen of stone. It is a place where their descendants often spend long hours, contemplat-ing and anticipating the appearance of images of their loved ones. Occa-

sionally during the tour, visitors have an opportunity to tune their ears to soft voices coming from hidden speakers, telling the stories of the victims and their families.

The last room in the caponier is prisoner entrapment, a crime unpun-ished to this day. Small multimedia frames contain the perpetrators’ warrant posters. Visitors can look them straight in the eye through a tiny window typical of prison cell doors.

Leaving the Caponier building through a steel door imitating the cellar door leading to the Kharkov execution room, visitors enter the outdoor section of the exhibition - beginning with the TUNNEL OF DEATH, followed by the ALLEY OF THE MISSING. Here, they are ac-companied by granite pillars naming professions represented by the vic-tims, e.g. physician, architect, lawyer, writer, teacher, state official, actor, pilot, scientist. They are impersonal


and at the same time universally ded-icated to all those who were missing from post war Poland.

The Alley of the Missing takes the visitor to the EPITAPH, where steel walls resembling pages of a book offer the names of the victims. Placed in the same building under its chapel-like vault, special monuments hold an ever-burning flame, carrying light to the victims of the massacre. Each glass door leading to a section of the hall bears a religious symbol: A Roman Catholic Cross, a Prot-estant Cross, an Orthodox Cross, the Star of David and the Crescent Moon, emphasizing the ecumenical character of the space and reminding visitors that the victims of the Katyń massacre were men and women of every faith represented in pre-war Poland.

Emotions subside as visitors as-cend back to the world of the living through a stairwell built into a deep fissure in the ground. (photo 9) Both walls of the stairwell are lined with imprints of wooden planks which lined the death pits to keep the earth from collapsing too soon. In

random places an observant visitor will find prints of items found in the mass graves: an eagle badge, a medal, a dogtag. (Photo 10)This structure, so austere in its nature, strikes the mind more deeply than traditional monuments.

This is where a visit to the Katyń Museum ends. The idea of the Mu-seum was to help visitors under-stand the history of the personal and national tragedy of the Katyń massacres. Its straightforward form is to affect the visitors’ perception and bring about an internal transforma-tion, to carry on the Truth of Katyń.

I would like to thank Ewa Kowal-ska PhD, for reviewing,


Museums and Cultural Landscapes is the theme for the ICOM

conference in Milan this July. It is inevitably broad and intangible like all overarching themes. But what does it mean? The word ‘landscape’ started life at the beginning of the 17th cen-tury as a term for a pictorial rep-resentation of inland scenery and it took over a century for it to start to be used for the scenery itself. From there it has blossomed into a word for all seasons. Amongst other things it can mean an epitome (a condensed summary), an adumbration (an outline), a description, or a map or plan. You can now have landscapes of anything from politics to sport and, as a result of all this, landscape has been paired with many dancing partners, of which ‘cultural’ is one. So common has this pairing become that the Oxford English Dictionary has declared them married - well they have been going out together

for 97 years - and now includes two definitions of the meaning of them when they are together. It is the second meaning that I think the com-pilers of our conference theme had in mind: ‘a notional landscape which embodies the cultural or artistic features of a country, field of activity, etc’. And I doubt that in Milan we shall see as much emphasis put on the first meaning: ‘a landscape modi-fied by the effects of human activity, such as farming, building, etc’.

Thus far I had got by Easter. Then I went on a tour of the British sector of the Western Front. And I

found myself reflecting on whether there was any conceivable type of landscape that was not affected by the First World War. For a start the landscape of war itself would never be the same again. The 51 months of war saw profound revolutions in weapons, tactics, equipment, trans-port, logistics communications and command and control. Despite the generally bad press that the military have received for the conduct of the War it always surprises me how much was learnt so quickly and how much changed, though these ‘advanc-es’ did nothing to reduce casualty figures which were higher at the end than at the start of the War of the later stages of the War.

But the War affected far more landscapes than that of war itself. Perhaps most importantly it was responsible for profound changes in the political landscape that still have repercussions for us today. Three mighty empires collapsed, two of them being dismembered, and the other kept together only by the iron fist of Lenin’s brutal commu-nist dictatorship. There were fewer monarchs after 1918 than before, but more nations - nine in Europe and the beginnings of at least six in the Middle East. And the landscape of world political power shifted dramat-ically, too, away from the Old World of Europe to the New World of North America. Inside all belligerent

1914-18: The War that changed landscapesGuy M Wilson

Newfoundland Park, Beaumont Hamel. Specially planted New-foundland trees and time’s softening of contours creates a parkland where on 1 July 1916 the Newfoundland regiment suffered 80% casualties during its attack

In the still green and pleasant countryside around Beaumont-Hamel the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, is addressed by its divisional commanding officer, Major-General Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle, on the eve of the battle of the Somme


countries the War caused massive social changes and the development of new landscapes of political power. These could be truly revolutionary, as in Russia, or more subtle and evolutionary, as in Britain, which, nonetheless saw profound post-war changes in the balance of wealth and social and political power.

The post-war shifts in political landscapes, of course had their impacts on the landscapes of trade, industry and science and also on the cultural landscape. And the War also had a direct impact upon many of these landscapes, none more so than the cultural one. If all these impacts are amalgamated there seems little doubt that the War changed the landscape of pretty well everything. In terms of the second meaning of ‘cultural landscape’ its effects were far-reaching. In every country involved art, literature and music were profoundly altered by the War. Artists were lost and artists were changed by the War and this changed art, not everywhere in the same way, but everywhere as fundamentally and inexorably. The War did not

give birth to the ‘Peace Movement’ (which can be traced back at least to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century) or to communal remembrance (which can be traced back at least to Athens in the 5th century BC) but it massively stimu-lated both and created the landscape of peace and remembrance that we know today. The First World War caused a massive explosion of creativity, not all critical of armed struggle for fundamental rights and principles, but almost all suffused with pain for lives lost and potential wasted. And even now, 100 years on, the First World War remains an open sore in the European consciousness that many contemporary artists, authors and composers are forced back to by the very cultural land-scape that it itself created in order to probe and dissect and look for meaning and hope or their lack.

Books have been written on all of these landscapes and, in this brief piece, I dare not start to give examples, tempting as it is. Instead, I want to concentrate upon that first

meaning of ‘cultural landscape’ - a landscape modified by the effects of human activity. For the War had a major impact upon landscape. Across north-west Europe ran a band of ruined earth, bare, uprooted, churned, treeless but for torn and broken stumps, slimy from human and animal excretions, and above all muddy as drainage systems had been wrecked by shelling. And all this segmented by tangles of wire and madly meandering trenches. Joined to either side of this squalid band by umbilical roads and railways were the camps and dumps and arsenals and headquarters that fed the frenzy of destruction. And further back still farmland was taken for pits and factories - new pits which provided coal to new factories that made the munitions of war. The War had profound and lasting impacts on the real landscape. And the landscape had a major impact upon those who fought. Of whatever nation, what they wrote, be it a diary, a poem, a memoirs, or a novel, is suffused with landscape. And, because that band of ruined earth in which they fought was only relatively thin and soldiers spent much of their time training and resting in normal landscapes much of what they wrote contrasts the life-affirming and healing reality of na-ture and the unspoilt rural landscape of northern France and southern Belgium with the man-made hell of the front-line, ‘that place of desola-tion’ as one soldier described it. The ‘natural’ landscape proved a lifeline to millions of disorientated service-men. Indeed for many it became the incarnation of the good for which they longed. ‘What a beautiful country it was, and eminently worth our blood and our lives’ wrote Ernst Jüngers in his memoir Storm of Steel

The Somme battlefield today. A view from the Ulster Tower over the river Ancre towards Hamel. The white in the fields is chalk, perhaps disturbed during the trench-digging years between 1914 and 1918

A lone cross at Lochnagar Crater, La Boiselle, marks the spot where the body of Private George Nugent of the Tyneside Scottish Northumberland Fusi-liers, missing since 1 July 1916, was found in 1998

Some of the many names of the missing on the Menin Gate at Ypres


first published in 1920. ‘It is a lush green country, full of beauty. The war seems far away’ wrote Lieutenant Mark Plowman on his way to the front in 1916. Nature suffuses much of the music written in or inspired by the War. Listen to the haunting elegy that the Australian FS Kelly (killed on the Somme in 1916) wrote after wit-nessing the burial of Rupert Brooke on the Greek Island of Skyros. Listen and you will see the Olive grove where Brooke’s body lies and hear the rustling of the olive leaves. Listen to Vaughan William’s ‘Pastoral Sym-phony’. Listen and you will hear an evocation of the wartime landscape around Ecoivres in Picardy where he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. And landscape also domi-nates much of the visual arts of the war. While soldiers’ pocket books often included sketches of peaceful rural landscapes, the output of recog-nized artists more usually concen-trated on the unnatural landscape

of the man-made hell that was the front-line. Otto Dix served as a ma-chine-gunner on the western front, including during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and was wounded several times. Look at the prints that make-up his Der Krieg cycle of 1924. They depict dehumanized, frightened and mutilated men in a nightmare landscape where nothing is natural or as it should be. By contrast the paintings of Paul Nash, who also served on the Western Front, seem poignantly elegiac in their depiction of a blasted landscape that dwarfs the few, if any, human beings depicted. In his paintings the cultural landscape created by the destructive firepower of opposing armies is a manic grave-yard with its own macabre beauty in which the mass of men who fought have been swallowed almost without a trace.

Yet this very real landscape of war was not to last like many of the other metaphorical landscapes it created have lasted. Real nature has seen to that as Richard Aldington, who fought and survived, foresaw in his poem In the Trenches writ-ten in 1917. In it he speaks of the impotence of War when set against the great forces of nature. And the poem concludes with an unanswera-ble question and impossible challenge to War:

Can you stay them with your noise?Then kill winter with your cannon,Hold back Orion with your bayonetsAnd crush the spring leaf with your armies!

Well, Nature has, indeed, long since done its work on that brown band of death that once stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland. Now it is indistinguishable from the rest of the countryside, full of colour, full

A rural scene near Langemarck in West Flanders painted in 1914 by a German officer, Ru-dolfe Lange. In Flanders Field Museum, The Cloth Hall, Ypres

The impressive In Flanders Field Museum in the Cloth Hall, Ypres

The bomb crater at Caterpillar Wood on the Ypres salient. Now it is the peaceful spawning ground of frogs

An ‘original’ trench at Hill 62 on the Ypres salient


of life, full of crops, full of wildflow-ers. Shattered, cratered battlefields have now been levelled and are as intensively farmed as any fields anywhere. Well, most of them. But in places nature’s scars remain. A white streak on a field may betray that once here a trench was dug in chalk. And in places, too, man’s work has been left to moulder. A concrete bunker may still sit in the midst of a ploughed and sown field. But by far the greatest evidence of the War now remaining is that either pre-served or created in an attempt to ensure we never forget. And that has created an entirely new landscape – a landscape of remembrance. The most obvious sign is the many, many cemeteries, some large, many small, scattered in the countryside and villages and towns where men fell or where they died at dressing stations and hospitals. The Germans were given less space for their dead than the allies so there are fewer German cemeteries and more mass graves, but all the cemeteries, of whatever nationality are places of a sad beauty and tranquility. Some are so well designed as to be profoundly moving,

even uplifting. Surely, you feel as you walk quietly through, this place is right, this place must do good, this place must make people think? Then there are the great monuments to the missing fallen, the millions whose bodies were never recovered and identified. Whether in towns, like the Menin Gate in Ypres (Ieper), or the countryside, like the Thiepval and Vimy Ridge memorials, these often massive structures are unmissable and profoundly change the landscape. But they are not just massive so they cannot be ignored, they are massive because they need the wall-space to record so many names. Nowhere, including in the cemeteries does the scale of the loss of life so strike you as when you walk slowly around these monuments and gaze up at rank upon rank upon rank upon rank of names. This is the experience that teachers from schools around Europe and further afield take their pupils to have, and we must hope that they do not forget it.

But there is still more. Beyond the cemeteries and memorials there are areas that have been saved from the predations of farmers so that they could be ‘preserved’. Preser-vation comes in a variety of forms. In most, nature has done its best to soften the savagery of war, so what

was a brown, shattered hell has be-come a verdant undulating landscape where trenches are furrows and shell holes grass depressions, the whole, now that trees have returned, often looking more like a golf course than a war zone. In a few places man has assisted the development of a special remembrance-park landscape by planting trees not native to north-ern Europe but to the area from whence came the men who fought and died at that particular place. The effect is similar to the graveyards. A gentle calmness and poignant sense of loss, rather than the horror of those moments 100 years ago, pervade these landscapes. If anything they are in danger of becoming too beautiful. And that is even true of the surviving craters caused by the detonation in mines dug under front lines of vast quantities of explosives. Now they are grassy dells or placid ponds. Then they were the smoking

Coils of barbed wire recovered from battlefields and displayed at Hill 62

Names of the fallen at the Ger-man cemetery at Langemarck

The pock-marked battlefield of Vimy Ridge. Now a peaceful woodland

The restored trenches at Vimy Ridge wind through a golf-course-like park


graves of countless soldiers atom-ised in a millisecond. In some few places lengths of trench have been consciously ‘preserved’ but they do not seem quite right. They now look out on trees and grass not mud and blood and destruction. And, as at Vimy Ridge, trenches can be further sanitized by the replacement of real sandbag revetments and real wooden duckboards with concrete replicas. On the British sector of the Western Front only at Hill 62 are trenches preserved in their ‘original’ condition, but even here one wonders if the corrugated iron liners to parapet and parados can really have lasted the attack of wet earth for a cen-tury. And these trenches now wind through woodland which would not have stood after a few weeks of bombardment. This is not intended as a criticism, far from it. What has been done is very admirable and very moving. What I am trying to suggest is that this new landscape of the Western Front does not get us near to the reality of the fighting that took place there, but rather that it is

something entirely new, an extended landscape of remembrance. It is me-morialized Gettysburg spread along a corridor some 700 kilometres long. And it’s not just landscape that is involved. Look at Ypres. Its townscape has been altered, along with the whole economy of the town by Sir Reginald Blomfield’s massive Menin Gate and the ceremony of re-membrance that occurs there every evening. Even more fundamentally, however, todays Ypres is a product of the First World War. By Novem-ber 1918, after over four years of pounding there was nothing left of it but foundations and rubble. Winston Churchill suggested acquiring the ruins of the whole town for Britain as a memorial saying ‘a more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world’. But the people of Ypres were having none of it and in the interwar years they rebuilt their town much as it had been, allowing the British to build a memorial gate across the Menin Road down which so many British and allied soldiers marched to their deaths. Ypres now is a replica, the original went in 1914-18. But it is also a vibrant, thriving town, and much of its prosperity stems from remembrance tourism.

‘And sheep may safely graze’. The Vimy Ridge battlefield today

Atop the ridge the Canadian National Vimy Memorial can be seen for miles

One of the ‘mourning parent’ figures on the Canadian Na-tional Vimy Memorial with the names of the fallen on the wall behind

The figure of ‘Canada Bereft’ on the Canadian National Vimy Memorial overlooks the ground where many died

The Dud Corner Commonwealth War Graves Commission ceme-tery near the village of Loos-en-Gohelle some 8 kilometres north-west of Lens


While some may question the mo-rality of making money on the back of so much pain and loss there is no doubt that the First World War has left a lasting legacy to the areas of

The Menin Gate pierces Vauban’s 17th century town walls at Ypres

France and Belgium through which the frontlines ran. We can only hope that this landscape of remembrance has its effect upon us all and helps instill in us both a profound respect

for those who fought and a healthy scepticism about the wisdom of resorts to armed conflict to settle our differences.

Ypres today is a thriving market town re-built as if the First World War had not occurred


In May 2015, a new museum dedicat-ed to the story of the ‘Coal Wars’

that took place in the early years of the 20th century opened in the small town of Matewan, West Virginia, across the Tug River from Kentucky. This is a story that is hardly known outside of West Virginia, and is still a very charged and controversial topic in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. Indeed, until recent times, this was a tale that was not shared with succeeding generations, as many families could count members on both sides of the conflict.

The second largest armed insurrection in American history, only surpassed by the American Civil War, culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, near the town of Logan, West Virginia, during the late summer of 1921. Thousands of armed coal miners, pushed beyond the limits of frustration with the coal mine owners and operators, took up their guns and marched from the state capital, Charleston, towards the southernmost county in the state, in a spontaneous attempt to free fellow miners who capriciously had been imprisoned by local authori-ties for their attempts to unionize the coal fields. Rumours of the recently-formed state police ma-chine-gunning women and children in the camps of striking miners fueled the fires of their rage, and revenge for the assassination of their hero, Sid Hatfield, steadied their course. When the marching miners met the hurriedly assembled forces of Sheriff Don Chafin at Blair Mountain, they were carrying a wide array of firearms, while the Logan County Defenders, manning the trenches on the top of the mountain, had an equally disparate assortment of guns.

For decades prior to 1921, there had been unrest in the mining

industry across the nation. In their attempts to squeeze every penny of profit out of their enterprises, many mine owners and their operators not only employed unfair labour practices that forced many miners into a form of economic slavery, but also tolerated unsafe conditions that led to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of miners. The only re-dress on the part of the miners was the growing labour union movement, and by the summer of 1921 only the southern West Virginia coalfields had not yet been unionised. The mine operators there fiercely resisted unionisation, as the post-World War I recession had cut deeply into their profits, and, through a series of manipulations and machinations, they had the local and state authorities either firmly on their side, or literally in their pockets. The miners’ repeat-ed appeals for help to the federal government, for the most part, went unanswered.

In 1913, striking miners and their families living in a tent camp had been machine-gunned from a hastily improvised armoured train, manned by men of the notorious Bald-win-Felts Railroad Detective Agency, who were actually serving as mine guards and company ‘enforcers’. The resulting fracas at Paint Creek and Cabin Creek brought in the West Vir-ginia National Guard to disarm the miners, after a negotiated settlement was reached. Relations between the operators and the miners improved during the boom years of World War I, but steadily deteriorated after the war. They finally came to a head in May 1920, when a shoot-out in the streets of the small mining town of Matewan, in Mingo County, resulted in the deaths of several ‘detectives’ at the hands of the local authori-ties, who, in turn, were supported by armed miners. The town chief of police, ‘Smiling Sid’ Hatfield (one of many of that famous local clan

Guns of the Battle of Blair MountainKenneth L. Smith-Christmas

The Logan County Defenders included civilian volunteers, as well as police officers and mine guards. Those who reported without arms were issued state-owned M1903 Springfield rifles, loaned or commandeered civilian sporting firearms, and apparently at least one Thompson submachine gun (as seen here), as well as M1917 ‘Enfield’ rifles. Courtesy Kenneth King, West Virginia and Regional History Collection


who were involved in the Coal Mine Wars), a former miner, had stood up to the mine operators’ hired guns who were illegally and unceremoni-ously evicting the families of striking miners from company-owned houses.

After being tried for murder and acquitted, Hatfield, now the hero of the miners, was summoned to testify before the US Senate a year later. Meanwhile, a war between the mine operators and the striking miners had been raging in Min-go County, with miners and mine guards (usually referred to as ‘gun thugs’ by the miners) trading shots at each other daily, sometimes with serious casualties. Across the Tug River in Kentucky, tensions were also running high, with frequent shootings between miners and the Kentucky National Guard on both sides of the river. The governor of West Virginia responded by proclaiming martial law in Mingo, although he had no troops with which to enforce it, since West Virginia had not re-established its national guard after it was federalised for overseas service in World War I. The job fell to the newly established West Virginia State Police, support-ed by both mine guards and a local militia made up of the middle class and professional men of the county. Using their newly found powers, the authorities in Mingo County began jailing any miner suspected of union activity, without charge. Scores of miners were locked up in makeshift jails, and the authorities banned near-ly all of the union’s activities.

Shortly after his appearance before the US Senate, Sid Hatfield and a long-time friend, accompanied by their wives, were lured to the neighboring county of McDowell, to answer a spurious indictment. With-out provocation, a group of Bald-win-Felts detectives gunned down the two unarmed men, in front of their horrified wives, on the steps of the county courthouse in the town of Welch. Hatfield’s assassination, and the oppression of the striking miners in Mingo, galvanized coal miners across the state. Urged on at several mass meetings by ‘Mother’ Mary Jones, an elderly, feisty, and

outspoken labour agitator, the miners grabbed their guns and headed south to Mingo, in an ever-growing stream of armed men.

In response to the governor’s pleas, the Harding administration sent Major General Harry Hill Bandholtz to defuse the situation. The former Provost Marshal of the American Expeditionary Forces, and an accomplished diplomat (in 1919, he had single-handedly saved the Hungarian national museum in Buda-pest from destruction by confronting a mob of victorious Romanian sol-diers bent on looting it, while armed only with his M1911 Colt pistol and a riding crop), Bandholtz convinced the local leaders of the United Mine Workers of America to stop the march. Most of the miners turned around and began to return home, but Captain James R Brockus of the West Virginia State Police seized the opportunity to arrest some miners who had earlier humiliated some of his troopers by disarming them. Leading about 300 men, some armed with Thompson submachine guns, on a night raid, Brockus ended up in a fire fight with alarmed miners living in one of the mining camps. During the melee, several miners were killed and wounded, while their homes were sprayed indiscriminately with gunfire.

Exaggerated rumors about the ‘Sharples Massacre’ quickly reached the retreating miners, and they turned around, heading south again—but now with a vengeance—and appropriated more guns and ammu-nition from citizens and businesses along the route of the march. On the way, the miners also commandeered motor vehicles, as well as entire railroad trains. More miners joined the throng, now just one county away from their destination—Mingo County. The armed marching miners (estimated at anywhere from 7,000 to as many as 20,000 miners) then hit fierce resistance at the entrance to Logan County, where a formidable defensive line of World War I-style trenches had been constructed on top of Blair Mountain by Sheriff Don Chafin’s Logan County Defenders.

Don Chafin was a resolute and implacable foe of the union. He was also obviously in the pay of the mine owners and operators, in that he died a very wealthy man in the 1950s, after having received only a life-long meagre salary as county sheriff. The mine operators paid the salaries of his many deputy sheriffs, since they also doubled as mine guards, ‘keeping order’ in the mining camps. Chafin played on the fears of the citizens of the region, by equating the miners and unions with bolshevism,

Two Thompson Submachine Guns. These two M1921 Thompson submachine guns, serial numbers 134 and 135, were shipped to the chief of intelligence at Dublin Castle in the Spring of 1921. After testing, they were returned to Colt, as the Irish War of Independ-ence halted in a truce in July, and the guns were then re-sold to the West Virginia State Police some time later. It is possible that these two submachine guns may have seen action at Blair Mountain.Courtesy Michael Shyne


an already prevalent opinion openly shared by the Attorney General of the United States. While many of the miners were recent immigrants, or the sons of eastern and southern Eu-ropean immigrants, and some shared a more socialistic view of politics than many Americans at the time, the overwhelming majority of them were patriotic Americans, simply seeking a decent life and the American Dream. Moreover, a sizeable percentage of the overall-clad miners were veterans of World War I, and many of them brought their ‘tin hats’ and gas mask bags along with them. Many of the marching miners and at least two of their leaders were African-Amer-ican—perhaps another fear that was exploited.

Against these ‘redneck’ miners (so-called because their only uniform was a red bandanna, usually worn around the neck), Chafin was able to assemble an ‘army’ of West Virginia State Police, the neighboring Mingo County ‘Citizens’ Militia’, hundreds of his own deputies, volunteers (including many former WWI vet-erans, mainly officers) from across the state, American Legion detach-

ments from all over the state, willing businessmen and professionals (and others who simply were anti-union) from the local area, unwilling local citizens who nevertheless were quickly issued guns and sent to the front lines, and non-union miners who were threatened with dismissal if they refused to fight in Chafin’s ‘army.’ There were no formal mus-tering processes or record keeping, so estimates of the number of men enrolled in the Logan County De-fenders vary—somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500—and the ‘army’ was nominally under the command of Colonel William E Eubank, who, at the same time, was frantically trying to reconstitute the state’s national guard. However, it was no secret that Chafin, who had energetically acquired or commandeered every firearm at his disposal in the county, was really running the show. He even enlisted several civilian pilots who dropped improvised fragmentation and chemical bombs on the miners from their biplanes.

It is safe to say that at least one example of nearly every fire-arm produced in the United States

between the end of the Civil War and August 1921 saw service with either the Logan County Defend-ers, or the ‘Redneck’ Miners. Not only had Don Chafin emptied every hardware store in the county of its guns and ammunition (as well as having acquired current-issue military weapons and ammunition from the state armory in Charleston) but his volunteers showed up with an un-imaginable assortment of their own guns. Civilian hunting rifles, shotguns, and handguns of all makes, models, calibres, and gauges are described in the accounts of the period, as too are surplus obsolescent military arms (including some foreign weapons), and even some muzzle-loaders. In ad-dition, there were large numbers of Thompson submachine guns, as well as Winchester M1897 riot shotguns, available to the Logan County De-fenders. American Legionnaires car-ried the surplus US Krag rifles that had been distributed to Legion posts nationwide by the US government only the year before. Mine compa-ny-owned Colt-Browning ‘potato digger’ machine guns were pressed into service, and there are reports of Gatling guns and perhaps even some then-current US-issue automatic weapons being used. The miners had the same range of weapons, but with many more civilian shotguns, and with very few current-issue military rifles and machine guns. According to the lists kept by the West Virginia National Guard of the massive turn-in of weapons after the 1913 Paint Creek/Cabin Creek episode, the majority of the arms surrendered by the miners were Winchesters, ‘Trap-door’ Springfield rifles, shotguns, and Colt revolvers. The miners of 1921 would have had a similar, but much expanded, group of shoulder arms and handguns.

Of the cornucopia of weapons used at Blair Mountain during the Coal Wars, three firearms can be sin-gled out as being emblematic of the fight: the M1873 Winchester rifle, the Swiss Vetterli rifle and the Thompson submachine gun. The Winchester was one of the rifles most often seen among the ranks of the miners, the

Miners surrendering arms to US Army. This image is from a news-reel that was taken when the US Army Regulars arrived in the village of Blair in early September 1921. Three of the miners are surrendering various models of lever-action rifles, including a M1873 Winchester, while one is surrendering a M1873 ‘Trapdoor’ Spring-field rifle.Courtesy Kenneth King, West Virginia and Regional History Collection


Vetterli was considered as the ‘poor man’s bear gun’ and was a favourite in the region, and the Thompson sub-machine gun apparently earned its place in history as a significant game changer in battle at Blair Mountain.

Nearly every extant photograph of the armed miners shows at least one of them with a M1873 Win-chester rifle in his hands. Already a favorite of hunters for more than 45 years and just out of produc-tion at the time, the lever-action Winchester rifle, chambered mostly in .44-40 (or .44WCF), but also in .38-40, .32-20, and even .22 rim fire, carried a minimum of 12 rounds in its tubular magazine beneath the barrel, depending on the caliber. Accurate, and handy, the Winchester had a smooth toggle-link action that allowed the firer to shoot multiple rounds from the shoulder without interrupting his aim, unlike the case with many bolt-action rifles. While other lever action rifles are also seen in surviving photographs, and are noted in documentary sources, the Winchester M1873 rifle is by far the most prevalent.

The Swiss Vetterli was the most advanced military rifle in the world when it was adopted in 1868. Com-bining the bolt action of the German needle gun and the tubular magazine of the Winchester, it fired a 10.4x38 (.41 Swiss) rim fire black powder cartridge from a 12-round tubular magazine. When Switzerland adopt-ed the Schmidt-Rubin 7.5x53.5 mm straight-pull rifle in 1889, the country had thousands of Vetterli-designed military rifles on hand. These accu-rate, but now obsolescent arms were then dumped on the world market, with many of them being sold in America by the famed surplus dealer Francis P Bannerman of New York, and by both Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Company through their very successful mail-order busi-nesses. There were several variants of the Swiss Vetterli produced, but the version most commonly encoun-tered in the Appalachian Mountains was the full military rifle, although they were often ‘sporterized.’ While a Winchester M1892 rifle sold for

$13.16 in the 1908 Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog, a Swiss Vetterli cost only $7.00, and among the poor mountaineers, this was a significant advantage. Additionally, the .41 Swiss round was far more powerful than the .44-40 revolver cartridge— defi-nitely a consideration when hunting black bear.

The Thompson submachine gun emerged in early 1921 and its first use in combat most often is ascribed to an ambush of a British troop train at the Dublin suburban railway station of Drumcondra. There, on 16 June 1921, two members of the Irish Republican Army used two Thomp-son guns (one of which immediately jammed) to shoot up several railway carriages carrying a detachment of the Royal West Kent Regiment. Nevertheless, three days before the Drumcondra attack, West Virginia State Police troopers used Thomp-son submachine guns to ‘sprinkle’ the mountainside near Lick Creek, where striking miners were firing at passing automobiles. The police and militia then returned later in the day, and fought a pitched battle in the miners’ tent colony, resulting in the death of a striking miner.

Of the 3,250 Thompson subma-chine guns produced in the months

prior to August 1921, the West Virginia State Police, at the time numbering only about 100 troopers, had acquired at least 37 of them, and since about 70 troopers were then staged in Mingo, it is safe to assume that they brought as many submachine guns that were available in State Police armories with them to Logan. Moreover, according to the serialized manufacturing and shipping lists in Tracie Hill’s definitive book on the Thompson, a minimum of 56 guns had not only been acquired by the coal companies in the southern West Virginia coalfields for their guards, and by local law enforcement officers, but the guns were also being shipped to hardware stores in the region—all prior to the battle of Blair Mountain. The Logan Hardware and Supply store received no fewer than nine ‘Tommy Guns’ in April and May alone. There are extant photo-graphs of Thompsons being carried in the streets of Logan at the time of Blair Mountain, and when Sheriff Chafin appealed for volunteers from across the state, he specifically asked them to bring ‘raincoats and any au-tomatic weapons’ that were available.

Most chroniclers of the Battle of Blair Mountain refer to ‘machine guns’ having been used, and the

While the miners surrendered a few weapons, they hid most of their arms in caches and abandoned coal mines. This relic Winches-ter may have been hidden, or dropped by a miner during the battle.Courtesy Kenneth King, West Virginia and Regional History Collection


most often published photograph of the fight (and one of the very few known actual combat images) shows a Colt ‘potato digger’ tripod-mount-ed machine gun in action with the Logan County Defenders. While there certainly were crew-served machine guns on both sides, they can hardly account for the constant roar of gunfire up and down the more than ten-mile line of earthworks and barricades, as was reported in all of the accounts of the battle. Many of these reports came from WWI vet-erans, who had plenty of experience in determining the extent of gunfire. Indeed, one of the most readable books about the battle is even titled, ‘Thunder in the Mountains.’ The M1921 TSMG’s very high cyclical rate of fire (~900 rpm!), and the use of 100-round Type ‘C’ drum magazines, as well as 50-round Type ‘L’ drum magazines, certainly would have been a critical ingredient to the reported overpowering din of battle.

Finally, reports from a team of archaeologists that conducted a sur-vey of the battlefield in 2006, indicate that a surprisingly large number of spent .45ACP cartridge cases have been found in groups on the battle-field, and these findings would sup-

port the statement that the Battle of Blair Mountain was the first signifi-cant appearance of the ‘Tommy Gun’ as a pivotal element in battle. Some of the miners later admitted that every time they advanced up one of the many hollows leading to the top of the mountain, they were met with withering and constant gunfire, a testament to the likely widespread use of Thompson guns by the Logan County Defenders. Sadly, further properly funded and directed profes-sional excavations of the battlefield most probably will not happen again in the future, given the current fiscal climate, and the fact that the battle-field itself may very well become a victim to mountaintop removal coal extraction methods before such searches could occur.

Casualties on both sides are estimated to be from a low of thirty to as many as several hundred. The fighting raged on for five days, during which time Bandholtz summoned US regular infantry from Ohio, Indiana, and New Jersey. Not without mishap, the controversial aviation pioneer Brigadier General ‘Billy Mitchell flew in a squadron of DeHavilland fighter-bombers from Langley Airfield in Virginia and a squadron of Martin bombers from Bolling Airfield in Washington, DC. Faced with this threat, and not wanting to fight the troops, the miners abandoned the assault, surrendered some weapons (but hid the rest), and went home. Their fight was not with the federal government, but with the coal-mine owners and operators, and those who supported them. As loyal US citizens, the miners did not consider themselves to be insurrectionists in revolt against ‘Uncle Sam.’

Over a hundred miners were arrested and tried for treason at the same courthouse in which the abo-litionist John Brown had been tried for the same crime over sixty years before, but nearly all of them eventu-ally were acquitted. The march, the battle, and the expense of the trial broke the back of the UMWA in the region, and the southern coalfields were not completely unionized until the eve of World War II. Outside of

West Virginia, the story of the march and the battle has not been told until recent years, and questions concern-ing the rights of labour, capitalism, unions, militias, police, insurrection, government, vigilantes, confiscation, and the First and Second Amend-ments to the American Constitution are as relevant today as they were back then. While perhaps neither the Redneck Miners, nor the Logan County Defenders, had all the answers to these questions, they at least had their guns when they needed them.

The overwhelming majority of this article originally was published in the March 2014 issue of the National Rifle Association’s monthly magazine, The American Rifleman.

The author thanks Michael Shyne, Stephen Smith, Al Houde, Brandon Nida, the National Firearms Museum, the Coal Wars Living History Project, and especially Kenneth King, for their assistance in the preparation of this article. Not only did Kenny King pro-vide the period photographs from his collection— he broke his foot while taking photos of the battlefield relics!

Surprisingly large concentra-tions of .45 ACP spent cartridge cases have been found on the battlefield of Blair Mountain. Unfortunately, the battlefield may be lost to Mountain Top Removal mining methods. For more information about its fate, see http://www.blairmountain.org/ and http//www.friendsof-blairmountain.org/.Courtesy Kenneth King, West Virginia and Regional History Collection

Swiss Vetterli rifles are found throughout Appalachia. In addi-tion to cartridges found on the battlefield, other relic cartridges and cases have been found at abandoned home sites through-out the area.Courtesy Kenneth King, West Virginia and Regional History Collection


Introduction

The Ho Group based at the Me-dieval Centre in Denmark, was

formed in 2002 to investigate the history and development of early ar-tillery and gunpowder using a combi-nation of historical research, artefact studies and experimental archaeol-ogy. It’s overall aim is to understand more fully the nature and properties of early gunpowder and the ways in which it differs from modern material. This, it is hoped, will lead to a better understanding of the development of gunpowder weapons and their effects on castles, walls, ships and men. In order to do this, the Group has conducted, over the years, a number of experiments, re-constructions and studies of various gunpowder mixtures and composi-tions. The Group now has a better and more nuanced understanding of the properties of blackpowder and is in a position to attempt to carry out experiments which will start to answer that fundamental question.

Following two preliminary meetings of the Ho Group, a briefing in December 2015 and a discus-sion group in February 2016, the Ho Group set its sights on a large, wide-ranging programme of research into early guns, gunpowder, guns and gunnery. The firing trials, conducted by the Vasa Museum in 2014, and the work of the Ho Group over the last few years into the properties and forms of early gunpowder, led to the proposal to attempt to make and fire two replica guns with gunpowder all made in the closest possible ways and methods that they were in the late medieval/early modern period. The proposed two original guns from

which replicas would be made were a bronze piece, made in Sweden in 1535 and now in the Maritime Mu-seum in Stockholm, and a wrought-iron piece from the Anholt wreck site, dated to around 1525 and now in the Tojhusmuseet in Copenha-gen (A1). The gunpowder would be made from sulphur ore from Iceland, charcoal made at the Medieval Centre and saltpetre made in India. Of the two cannon, the wrought iron piece would be made at the Medieval Centre by Jens Christiansen and the bronze piece in a foundry in India.

Following this proposal, a study trip to |India was planned to look at the feasibility of the project and to ascertain whether any of this was, in fact, possible. A programme was devised and funding secured to allow three persons to travel to India for 2 weeks. The timetable was:Day 1 Arrival in India and travel to AgraDay 2 Visit to saltpetre works in JalaserDay 3 Visit to saltpetre works in JalaserDay 4 Travel to JaipurDay 5 Documenting gun foundry and boring machine at Jaigarh FortDay 6 Documenting gun foundry and boring machine at Jaigarh FortDay 7 Day Day 8 Travel to ChennaiDay 9 Investigation of Tranquebar Fort

Day 10 Visit to foundry in Swa mimalai to investigate cannon castingDay 11 Visit to foundry in Swa mimalaiDay 12 Travel to Pondicherry and exploration of European remainsDay 13 Travel to DelhiDay 14 Return

DelhiAs part of the preparation for this research visit, the Group made con-tact with Ganesh Explosives based in Dehradun, the capital of the state of Uttarakhand, some 240km north of New Delhi. A meeting was arranged in Delhi to meet Rishabh Jain, their Director of Business Development (see www.blackpowder.in).

We had a very productive meet-ing with Rish about our project and how he could help us achieve what we had set out to do. He suggested that we should seriously consider doing the entire project in India and not have components, the bronze cannon and the saltpetre, made in India and shipped back to Europe. He also offered to help us with the production of the necessary black-powder - from the ingredients we would supply - and also to assist in any way with the testing of the com-pleted cannon. During the discus-sions the idea was also advanced that we should include the casting and testing of an Indian piece as well as the copes of European pieces which we originally planned.

Medieval gun-powder research groupEarly gunpowder, guns and gunneryKay Smith

The cannon casting foundry at Jaigarh Fort, Jaipur


Jalaser and saltpetreIn 2006, members of the Ho Group, had visited India to investigate whether there were any remains of the industry which had supplied Europe, and particularly Great Brit-ain, with huge quantities of saltpetre from the 1620s to the last decades of the 19th century. This saltpetre had effectively enabled Europe to wage war on an unprecedented scale and dominate much of the world until the later 20th century. The visit were very successful and the Group found, in the town of Jalaser, north east of Agra, a small ‘factory’ which was still capable of produc-ing saltpetre in the traditional way.

However, the visit of the Group at that time coincided with a period when no saltpetre was being made - the process being highly seasonal. Undeterred they were shown all the stages of the process and were able to document it in some detail.

The purpose of our visit in 2016 was to re-visit the site and discuss with the owners whether we could acquire a significant quantity of salt-petre to make the necessary black-powder for the testing of the cannon we wanted to make. So, from Delhi, the Group travelled to Agra where we were based for 3 days. Here we were also joined by Dr Alok Kanun-go, Assistant Research Professor of Archaeology at IIT Gandhinagar.

In Jalaser the Group met up with the Mittal family to discuss our requirements. We had a very fruitful discussion with them, especially with Aditya Mittal, but the situation there was not as simple as it appeared. Aditya took us to the site of the fac-tory that we had seen in 2006 where we were disappointed to find that it had been significantly changed. The huge shallow purifying bowl had been removed (and consequently cut up), and the remaining plant had been changed to producing saltpetre in a more modern way. Similarly the area where the extraction had been car-ried out had been destroyed as had the wooden settling tanks, though some wooden planks from these were still lying around. This made us realise just how important our record of the site from 2006 was.

However, it turned out that there is still a store of perhaps some 2000 kg of raw saltpetre surviving from the last time the plant had operated and we able to negotiate a price for this to be purified by the traditional process. Aditya also agreed that he would be able to re-assemble the whole process for us, and produce some 200 kg of raw saltpetre, enabling us to document the whole process and fully record it one last time.

Jaipur and Jaigarh FortFrom Agra, the Group travelled to Jaipur to visit Jaigarh Fort and the cannon foundry and boring machine which survives within the Fort. We were very lucky to be able to meet with Mr Yunus Khimani, Director of

The saltpetre refiner as seen in 2006 - the iron pan containing the dissolved saltpetre

The same area - the square iron pans are used to make saltpetre in a modern method

The wooden side of one of the settling tanks we had seen in 2006

Jaigarh Fort as seen from the approach road


the Mararaja Sawai Man Singh II Mu-seum, the City Palace, Jaipur who has responsibility for the Fort. He was very enthusiastic about our project and gave us permission to go behind the scenes and document both the boring machine and the foundry in considerable detail. This proved to be very exciting as they are probably the best surviving examples in the world. Fred Hocker and Kay Smith hope to prepare a preliminary report of them late in 2016 but a brief description is given here.

The foundryThe foundry is a free standing struc-ture some 3 metres tall, excluding the modern railing at the top. It consists of essentially four parts. The main section of the standing build-ing, the furnace itself, contains the fire box and the melting chamber. The second section, at the rear. is an open structure enclosing the rear of the fire box and provides a cover over and around it. Below the fur-nace, the third part, is a ‘tunnel-like’ structure running beneath the main building which acted as an air chan-nel to provide a forced draft for the fire and greatly increasing its poten-tial heat-generating capabilities. The final section is the casting pit at the front of the building. There are three chimneys in the roof - one over the fire box and two over the melt-ing chamber. On either side of the melting chamber is a small opening, closed by sliding iron doors, which are opened by levers set in the roof of the building. Two sets of stairs, one on each side, provide access to the roof structure.

The foundry

This part of the foudry contains the melting chamber and has walls of around 1 metre thick. The small arched access hole is closed off with an iron plate op-erated by a lever set in the roof. The railing on top is a modern addition

At the rear of the foundry is an open structure which surrounds the opening to the firebox

The opening to the firebox at the rear of the foundry - the iron hooks would hold a locking bar to hold a door in position

The air passage under the foundry which provides an air draft for the fire

The charging hole in the side of the furnace. The metal door is operated by a lever set into the top of the furnace


The boring machineThe boring machine consists basically of two parts, an octagonal building containing the drive mechanism and a long track set in the floor which held the boring bar and the cannon to be bored. The power for the sys-tem comes from a capstan driven by animals, possibly oxen. The capstan drives a large toothed driving wheel set beneath the floor. A series of gears then transmit the drive to a final gear which rotates at approx-imately 10 times the speed of the capstan. This final gear has a cylindri-cal chuck secured to its centre into which a boring bar or drill is insert-ed. In front of the final drive wheel, a parallel sided trough extends some 4 metres along the floor. On each side of the trough is an iron plate very securely fastened to the floor with bolts. Between these iron plates, or

rails, are a number of cross pieces which can be used as a tool steady and to hold a cannon in place. What was not clear is whether the cannon was mounted in the chuck and turned and the boring bar secured in some way and forced down the bore. More probably, the cannon was mounted on a sliding ‘carriage’ of some sort which was secured to the iron rails and pulled onto the rotating boring bar secured into the chuck of the machine.

The front of the furnace with the ‘tapping’ arch and the casting pit behind the modern railing The casting pit below the

tapping arch of the furnace. A number of features are also visi-ble in the back wall though their function is unclear. The chain hanging down probably operat-ed the mechanism to open the tapping hole

Looking down into the casting pit. Although it is now roughly octagonal, it appears that it was originally circular

The chimneys - the two on the left are above the melting cham-ber, that at the rear is above the firebox

The capstan of the boring ma-chine


The squirrel cage second gear wheel

The underside of the main gear wheel showing its teeth and the second ‘squirrel cage’ gear wheel

The final and fourth gear wheel - it is driven by a third gear beneath the floor which was im-possible to photograph. The wall has been cut back to accom-modate the wheel leading us to think that there has been some adaption or change to the origi-nal configuration. The ‘chuck’ to hold the boring bar is mounted directly in front. The gear, like the second and third gears, runs on copper alloy bearings, one of which can be seen here between the gear and the ‘chuck’

The trough in front of the ‘chuck’ showing the iron rails on either side and the removable cross pieces that can be used as ‘steadies’

Detail of the ‘chuck’ with a bor-ing bar in place

Three dimensional drawings of the machinery of the boring mill. Drawings by Fred Hocker


Cannon moulds In addition there are the remains of at least five cannon moulds - three located with the boring machine it-self and two, more fragmentary ones, located with the tools collection. Intriguingly these moulds were made in a different way to those in Europe which were made in one piece. These were produced by making an initial twopart mould of the pattern. Each half mould was then built up to a thickness of about 100mm before the two halves were put together and the mould then built up in layers to a thickness of some 250mm. The layers differ in composition, the inner ones are made from a fine clay while the outer ones are composed of coarser clay with added materials, straw, small stones and animal dung. Finally the whole is bound with a cage of wrought-iron straps and the breech reinforced with a large circular iron plate. Although the moulds are now broken, to a greater or less extent, it appears that the cannon were cast without a casting head as was normal practice in Europe.

ToolsIn a separate courtyard are a number of small rooms containing a wide range of tools and equipment associated with the boring machine and the foundry. Unfortunately we were unable to study these in detail on this visit but they included boring bars and drills, boring heads, taps and dies, a gin as well as blacksmith and furnace tools.

Following discussion with Mr Kh-imani, we were able to visit another part of the Fort, normally closed to the public, where we were shown stores of armour, guns and artillery and rocket casings.

The rear of the mould showing the large iron plate to which the longitudinal reinforcing straps are secured. We were puzzled by the small square hole in the centre of the end, the purpose of which is still unclear

The front of the mould - the cir-cumferential layers of the mould are clear as are the join lines at top and bottom where the two half moulds were put together. These are only visible for about 100mm showing that the mould halves were reinforced that far before being put together and the final 150mm added over the whole mould

The most complete of the 5 moulds in Jaigarh

A series of boring reamers of various sizes

Mail and plate armour, small cannon and rocket casings in store at Jaigarh Fort


TranquebarFrom Jaipur the Group travelled to the south of India, to Tamil Nadu, to discuss the possibilities of casting cannon. Our first stop, however, was the former Danish colony of Tranquebar, now called Tharangam-badi. The settlement was established by the Danish Admiral Ove Gjedde in 1620 and a fortress, known as Dansborg, built there. The Fort had been somewhat neglected but has recently been extensively restored and renovated.

SwamimalaiThe state of Tamil Nadu in southern India was once ruled by the Chola dynasty who were noted, among other achievements, for their skills in bronze casting - skills which are still in evidence today and it was here that we were hoping to find craftsmen who could cast cannon for us. The Group stayed in Swamimalai, some 25 km north east of Thanjavur and visited the noted bronze casters at Sri Jayam Industries, S Devasena-pathy Sthapathy and Sons. This company, run by the three Sthapathi brothers, is justly famous for the abil-ity to cast high-quality bronze statues and works of art. Here we discussed the possibility that they could cast cannon using traditional methods - essentially casting a gun in one piece using the lost wax process. After showing them the methods used in the past of how the model and mould were made, we came to an

agreement that they would cast two cannon for us some time in 2017. As part of our visit, we were shown the casting of a small bronze piece. The Group was also able to visit Thanja-vur, the ancient capital of the Chola Empire, and visit the museum there and see some of the famous Chola statuary for ourselves.

PondicherryFrom Swamimalai the Group stayed briefly at Pondicherry, formerly a French colony south of Chennai. Here we were able to visit a tra-ditional paper making company, Sri Aurabindo Handmade Paper (www.sriaurobindopaper.com). A brief discussion confirmed that they were able to make traditional cartridge paper from which we could make up the cartridges of powder necessary for the cannon trials.

SummaryFollowing our conversation on the first day, with Rishabh Jain, the idea was discussed in detail among the Group and it was agreed that we should attempt to carry out the majority of the project in India. Most of the raw ingredients as well as the skills and experience are there and there seems no real reason not to carry out the work there rather than ship everything back to Europe. In addition, the very positive responses we had had from all our contacts more and more convinced us that this was a real possibility. In summa-ry:• The saltpetre we need would be

made and purified in Jalaser un-der the direction of Mr Mittal. We would also have the opportunity to fully document and record the process of saltpetre production.

• The saltpetre would be supplied to Ganesh Explosives for the production of the necessary gun-powder, made using traditional methods to our specifications.

• The very positive reaction from Mr Khimani in Jaipur also added to our hopes that we can do all the work in India - possibly basing the project at Jaigarh Fort.

• Our visit to Swamimalai convinced us that the foundry under the Sthapathi brothers can make bronze cannon cast in the traditional way.

• Cartridge paper for the test firings could be acquired from Sri Aurabindo Handmade Paper in Pondicherry

The main building in Dansborg

Sri Jayam Industries, S Devasenapathy Sthapathy Sons, Swamimalai


• The final large piece of the jigsaw, a suitable range on which we could carry out the test firings, could also be supplied by Rishabh Jain of Ganesh Explosives who said that he could help and find us a suitable site.

• Our meeting and discussion with Dr Alok Kanungo would, we hope, lead to a cooperation be-tween ourselves and his universi-ty, IIT Gandhinagar. The additional materials we

would need would be the sulphur for the gunpowder which we would still acquire in Iceland. The question of the charcoal needed would also need to be addressed and this might need to be made in Denmark and, together with the sulphur, shipped to India. We would also need suitable mounts and carriages which would be relatively easy to have made for us in India. Similarly the ammunition, cast-iron shot and stone balls, could easily be acquired in India.

AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank: Rishabh Jain, Ganesh Explosives Pvt. Ltd - DehradunMr Yunus Khimani, Director, Mararaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, the City Palace - JaipurAditya Mittal, Mittal Group - JalaserS Devasenapathy Sthapathy Sons - SwamimalaiDr Alok Kanungo, IIT Gandhinagar - AhmedabadSri Aurobindo Handmade Papers - Pondicherry

Financial support:The Ho Group would like to thank the Middelaldercentret and the Friends of the Vasa for their gener-ous support.

Members of the Group at Jaigarh Fort - Peter is second from left, Fred is third from thr right, Mr Khimani, second from right and Torben on the right

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