1915: Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warneford of the Royal Naval Air Service achieved the first air-to-air victory over a Zeppelin, destroying LZ37 by dropping six small bombs on top of the airship in a night action over Ghent. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, but was killed twelve days later when his aircraft broke up in mid-air.

1917: Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army launched a successful offensive against the German positions atop Messines ridge. The preparatory artillery bombardment was conventional in Western Front terms, having started on 21 May with 2,600 guns and mortars.

But at 0310 on 7 June, the British detonated nineteen huge mines underneath the German front line. Painstaking tunnelling efforts by British, Canadian and Australian miners had been required for over a year to dig the mines, which between them contained some 600 tons of high explosive. The explosions ripped apart the German defences, threw the British infantry waiting to attack 400 yards away off their feet, and was heard distinctly in London. Each of the nineteen mines produced a vast crater - the smallest 105 feet across, the largest 260 feet in diameter. Nine divisions of British infantry swept forward behind a poison gas barrage and within three hours the supposedly impregnable ridge had been captured.

An additional two mines were not detonated, and during the German advance the following spring, the plans of their location were lost. Subsequently, they were never disarmed. One exploded in a thunderstorm on 17 July 1955, the only casualty thankfully being a single cow The other mine is still there.

Captain Grieve of the Australian 37th Battalion and Lance-Corporal Frickleton of the New Zealand Brigade were both awarded the Victoria Cross in recognition of their heroic attacks on separate pairs of German machine-guns during the course of the infantry assault, which left both men wounded.

At sea in the North Atlantic, a German U-boat torpedoed the disguised HMS Pargust, one of the Royal Navy's Q-ship anti-submarine decoys. The ship's "Panic Party" took to the lifeboats, convincing the U-boat commander that it was safe to surface and finish off his victim, whilst Lieutenant Stuart remained aboard the sinking vessel with his gun crews.

Pargust's guns were hidden behind heavy steel covers, and the torpedo explosion tore loose one of these, which started to swing down and threatened to reveal the guns too soon Seaman Williams threw himself under the cover, and, taking its full weight on his body, managed to hold it in place until the U-boat had surfaced and was a sitting target only 50 yards away. Lieutenant Stuart then ordered the guns to open fire, and a devastating salvo sank the U-boat. Stuart and Williams each received the Victoria Cross.