The tiny French hamlet of Serre is the subject of this guide. It covers four battles for the high ground upon which Serre is situated: June 1915: July 1916: November 1916 and July and August 1918.

From military historian Jack Horsfall, Mons 1914 explores the tactics and actions behind this significant World War I battle that ended in Allied defeat.August 1914. The British Expeditionary Force's (BEF) II Corps was stationed in the mining town of Mons, Belgium in preparation for an Allied offensive against German forces conducted with French military. Located less than twenty miles from Waterloo, the battle site that brought an end to the Napoleonic War...

The third in a trilogy of books, the others being Cambrai -The Right Hook and Bourlon Wood by the same authors covering the battle for Cambrai in November 1917. It covers the defense against the German counter strike, the defense of the Flesquieres Salient against the Kaiserschlact in March 1918 and its recapture in Sept/Oct 1918 all key elements in great Allied advance to victory. This book and guide to the Battle for Flesquieres Ridge tells of the onslaught by 470 tanks and infantry batt...

In 1917 Bourlon Wood on the Western Front was the scene of fierce back-and-forth fighting between the British and the Germans, with British gains on at least one occasion thrown away by lack of proper follow-up. The Wood formed the left flank of the massive British tank attack at Cambrai, the first of its kind, on November 20, 1917. Bourlon Wood once again came into prominence in September 1918 with the attack of the Canadian Corps against the German defenders, an action that rivaled the C...

Brave Battalion presents the story of four Canadian Highland regiments that were banded together as the 16th Battalion. Ninety years after the end of WWI, this work honours those soldiers and makes their stories a vivid reality. Focusing on the Canadian Scottish (Princess Mary’s) Battalion, Mark Zuehlke presents the harrowing experiences that bonded the men and which came to represent the uniting and rising of a nation beginning to realize its potential.Complemented by map...

This is an account of the British Expeditionary Forces battles in the summer and autumn of 1917. It begins with the Allied plan to free up the Flanders coast, to limit German naval and submarine attacks on British shipping.The opening offensive began with the detonation of nineteen mines on 7 June and ended with the capture of the Messines Ridge. The main offensive started with success on 31 July but was soon bogged down due to the August rains. Three huge attacks between 20 September and ...

This WWI history examines the significant yet overlooked British offensive that achieved major advances on the Western Front.Fought between April 9th and May 16th of 1917, the Battle of Arras was the most lethal and costly British offensive battle of the First World War. Lasting a brutal thirty-nine days, its average casualty rate was far higher than at either the Somme or Passchendaele. It also represented the longest advance against Germany up to that point since ...

The dramatic story of how a quarter million men were evacuated from the coast of France—and how the British Expeditionary Force fought on.This book, part of the Retreat and Rearguard series, covers the actions of the BEF during the retreat from the Dyle Line to the evacuation points of Dunkirk, Boulogne, Calais, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, and finally the Cherbourg Peninsula.Some of the engagements are relatively well known (Cassell, the Arras counter-attack, and...

A chronicle of the WWII British Expeditionary Force unit that faced a German firing squad after surrendering at the Battle of Dunkirk.In 1939, the BEF was deployed to counter the German aggression in Europe. The men of 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment, were some of the first to land in France. Less than a year later, they would be massacred by the Waffen-SS in one of the most egregious war crimes of the Second World War.After deploying to the Maginot Lin...

Ypres was a medieval town known for its textiles; however, it became infamous during the Great War with trench warfare, poison gas and many thousands of casualties.As the German Army advanced through Belgium, it failed to take the Ypres Salient. On 13 October 1914, German troops entered Ypres. On looting the city, the Germans retreated as the British Expeditionary Force advanced. On 22 November 1914, the Germans commenced a huge artillery barrage killing many civil...

A gripping account of the most famous military defeat and retreat in history, now the subject of a major motion picture, written and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy and Mark Rylance.The NEW YORK TIMES of 2 June 1940 summed up the greatest disaster in British history thus: 'As long as the English tongue survives, the word 'Dunkirk' will be spoken with reverence.'This book tells the story of the Dunkirk evacuation. It tra...

For sixty years the dramatic story of the Dunkirk evacuation and the defeat of France—the story of the German conquest of northwest Europe—has been the focus of historical study and dispute, yet myths and misconceptions about this extraordinary event persist. The ruthless efficiency of the German assault, the 'miracle' of Dunkirk, the feeble French defense—these still common assumptions are questioned in Geoffrey Stewart's highly readable and concise account of the campaign. The German vic...