On 28 June, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria-Hungary issued a harsh ultimatum, and when Serbia failed to reply, they declared war, backed by German reassurances of support. Tensions escalated, alliances were formed, and by early August Britain had declared war on Germany

Shortly after the British declaration of war, British forces arrived in France to help support the French Army on the Belgian frontier against the German assault. The latter had invaded through Belgium and began a destructive assault on Liege as part of the Schlieffen Plan to capture France before its allies could arrive.

British forces were called into action again on 6 September, 1914, at the First Battle of the Marne, where French and British troops confronted the invading Germans. They halted the German advance and mounted a successful counteroffensive, pushing the Germans back and stopping their progression toward Paris. After this victory, the Western Front settled into a stalemate, and both sides dug trenches and settled in for a long war of attrition.

Without a large standing army, Britain called for volunteers to bolster its ranks from the British Isles. These volunteers, often referred to as Kitchener's Army, fought on land, and sea and in the air. Britain also benefiting from the large sources of manpower it could draw on from the Commonwealth and Empire.

In the east, the Allies mounted an attack on the Ottoman Empire in the Dardanelles Straits. Unable to overpower the Ottoman defences via naval attacks, they switched strategies. In April 1915, the Allies launched a land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, a small stretch of land between the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara. The invasion was unsuccessful, and after heavy fighting, the Allies abandoned the campaign and began evacuating its forces in December 1915, concluding in January 1916.

In that same month, Britain introduced conscription for the first time in its history. Single men between the ages of 18 and 41 were conscripted into the military from England, Wales, and Scotland; in May, conscription was extended to married men.

As more men were drafted into the army, many women began to fill their roles on the home front, thus allowing more men to be freed up for frontline service. Women worked in a variety of diverse roles: in munitions factories, as bus conductors, police officers, in agricultural work with the Women’s Land Army and as volunteers with the Red Cross. Women also served in the nursing services at home and overseas, in dangerous conditions often within reach of enemy artillery and aeroplanes. They served with the women’s branches of the armed forces, carrying out vital roles with the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the Women’s Royal Air Force and the Women’s Royal Naval Service.

Britain would need the additional troops as 1916 saw them fight in both Jutland and the Somme. Jutland was the biggest naval battle of the war with 250 ships and about 100,000 naval personnel involved, as the British and German navies went head to head. Both sides incurred heavy losses, and while Germany inflicted heavier losses in terms of shipping and casualties, the Royal Navy was back in action the following day and maintained control of the North Sea.

Just a few months later, Allied forces attacked German trenches on the Somme in France. The offensive lasted from July to November 1916 , with Britain unleashing it’s new weapon for the first time in battle: the tank. Though the Allies hoped to overwhelm German forces quickly, they were unsuccessful, lost tens of thousands of men, and settled back into a war of attrition.

The war at sea was also taking its toll on British shipping, as the latter struggled to combat German submarine attacks. At the beginning of the war, Germany had indiscriminately attacked merchant and passenger ships but later agreed to cease attacks on unarmed passenger ships after the tragic sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915. This peace did not last though, and in February 1917, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare and established the waters around the British Isles as war zones. Within two months of this announcement, and following leaks of a German attempt to form an anti-American allegiance with Mexico, the US declared war on Germany and joined the Allies. The damage to British shipping, meanwhile, was almost disastrous for the Allies, had it not been for the convoy system introduced to combat German attacks on shipping.

Back on land, Germany launched its Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918. Small infantry groups and brief artillery fire allowed German forces to push into France and get within 75 miles of Paris; the situation looked desperate for the Allies. However, bolstered by American reinforcements, Allied forces were able to resist the German offensives. They then launched their own push, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, on 8 August, a series of coordinated attacks across the Western Front. Outnumbered and overwhelmed, Germany agreed to an armistice on 11 November, 1918. After more than four years of fighting, the war was finally over.

Many soldiers, sailors and airmen were awarded medals and pensions for their service, but not everyone returned home. An estimated 880,000 British forces died during the war. They are commemorated on memorials and in cemeteries across the world, their final resting place a reminder of the sacrifices made by a generation of men and women caught up in one of the most brutal conflicts in history.

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