The Struggle at home during The Somme

On August 11, 1916, Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, granddaughter of Queen Victoria declared open the Shakespeare Hut in London - while fighting raged along the Western Front, between the armies of Britain, France and Germany (and their allies) at Verdun and along the Somme.

The hut, however, provided a temporary refuge, a place of solace, for over 100,000 troops throughout #WW1 travelling either to or from the battlefields.

Catering mainly to soldiers from New Zealand, offering tea and billiards and many staged performances, it was a conscious attempt to keep the men from the temptations of nearby Soho - and its many pubs and brothels...

"The vast mock Tudor structure was the largest of thousands of prefabricated sheds hastily erected by the YMCA in the UK and on all the first world war battlefronts," according to The Guardian. "Vintage photographs show it with fireplace, gramophone and potted palms, packed with cheerful looking uniformed men."

(Meanwhile on another front, the diplomatic front, Romania was about to declare war in August against the Central Powers, and soon Romanian troops were fighting Austro-Hungary for control of the contested province of Transylvania.)