The predictions of the war 'being over by Christmas' turned out to be far from the truth. By January 1915 the British Expeditionary Force found themselves trapped in the murderous stalemate of trench warfare. British troops had suffered badly in the early campaigns and by January 1915 were holding some 30 miles of trench. The year 1915 was to witness some of the bloodiest and bitter battles of the Great War, including the first blooding at Neuve Chapelle, the Second Battle...

For much of the First World War, the opposing armies on the Western Front were at a stalemate, with an unbroken line of fortified trenches stretching from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. The Allied objective after the bloody Battle of the Somme drew to a close in November 1916 was to decisively break through the German 'Hindenburg Line' and engage the numerically inferior German forces in a war of movement. The Arras offensive was conceived to achieve this breakthro...

Officially the war in Laos did not exist – both North Vietnam and the USA denied they had troops there. In fact, thousands of North Vietnamese were invading the country and pouring down the Ho Chi Minh Trail on their way to the south, and the Americans were fighting a vigorous war against them from the air. The Ravens were the pilots, all volunteers, who flew through heavy groundfire to identify targets and call in air-strikes. Their mission was so secret that they were ‘sold’ their prop-d...

Elite paratrooper Sgt. Don Malarkey takes us not only into the World War II battles fought from Normandy to Germany, but into the heart and mind of a soldier who lost his best friend during the nightmarish engagement at Bastogne.Drafted in 1942, Malarkey arrived at Camp Toccoa in Georgia and was one of the one in six soldiers who earned their Eagle wings. He went to England in 1943 to provide cover on the ground for the largest amphibious military attack in history...

"A precisely crafted and bracingly honest" memoir of war and its aftershocks from the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn ( The Atlantic).In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat, killing the enemy and watching friends die. M...

The true story of Australia's SAS and the soldier who was there from the start.Clint Palmer has spent much of his adult life in the SAS and has fought in this elite military unit as it developed from its fledgling beginnings into the highly trained, specialised fighting force it is today. He is an insider with the long view and this is his unique story of life in the SAS.As a bush kid in the Northern Territory of Australia, growing up in a one dog mining to...

From Andrew Wiest, the bestselling author of The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam and one of the leading scholars in the study of the Vietnam War, comes a frank exploration of the human experience during the conflict.Vietnam allows the reader a grunt's-eye-view of the conflict – from the steaming rice paddies and swamps of the Mekong Delta, to the triple-canopy rainforest of the Central Highlands and the forlorn Marine bases that dott...

Written by 43 Squadron's intelligence officer, Hector Bolitho, Finest of the Few revolves around Bolitho's friend, fighter ace John W.C. Simpson, who shot down 13 German aircraft during the Battle of Britain. The book was written in 1941 and was based on John Simpsons Combat Reports, his personal letters and papers together with Hectors own recollections of the heady days of the summer of 1940.Contains 80 black and white illustrations

Numbering 4,000 select officers and men, Combat Team 370 was part of n Europe during World War II the 92nd Infantry Division, the only all-Negro division to fight in Europe during World War II. In Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II, author Ivan J. Houston recounts his experiences, when, as a nineteen-year-old California college student, he entered the US Army and served with the 3rd Battalion, 370th Infantry Regiment, 92nd Division of the US Fifth Army from 1943 ...

One of the most important memoirs of the American Civil War, this is also one of the few to describe what life was really like for the common soldier. The author, a Union veteran of the Army of the Potomac, tells of how the men enlisted or were conscripted; how they lived in camp and on the march; what they ate and foraged; how they were equipped and provided for; how they lived, amused themselves, were disciplined and punished, cared for and healed, and ultimately how they died. Written ...

Many narrative accounts of men in combat during World War II have conveyed the horrors and emotions of warfare. However, not many reveal in such an intimate way the struggle of innocent youth to adapt to the primitive code of “kill or be killed,” to transform from lads into combat soldiers.Another River, Another Town is the story of John P. Irwin, a teenage tank gunner whose idealistic desire to achieve heroism is shattered by the incredibly different view of life the worl...

In Air Combat, veteran and military author Robert F. Dorr has collected dozens of interviews from combat veterans who have experienced what it’s like to face the enemy in the skies above, from the first days of World War II to the current war on terror.Each story tells a first-hand account of what it’s like to be in the thick of the fight, describes the history, strengths, and weaknesses of each man’s plane in detail, and offers readers a rare glimpse into...