Lewen Weldon was mapping the desert of Egypt when the First World War broke out. A fluent Arabic speaker, he was recruited to run a network of spies and confidential agents from a steam yacht onto the Syrian coast behind Turkish lines. He took his men ashore in small boats at night, which also allowed him to land and conduct personal interviews before returning back through the surf. This vivid tale of adventure becomes eyewitness history as we encounter Armenians escaping the massacres, p...

The British campaign in the Sudan in Queen Victoria's reign is an epic tale of adventure more thrilling than any fiction. The story begins with the massacre of the 11,000 strong Hicks Pasha column in 1883. Sent to evacuate the country, British hero General Gordon was surrounded and murdered in Khartoum by an army of dervishes led by the Mahdi. The relief mission arrived 2 days too late. The result was a national scandal that shocked the Queen and led to the fall of the British government.

A collection of autobiographical stories from an officer in the British Indian Army during World War II.John Randle served with the greatly respected Baluch Regiment of the former Indian Army right through the fiercely fought Burma Campaign, winning a Military Cross, yet on VJ Day he was only some sixty miles from where had started out nearly four years before.Unlike other conventional war memoirs, this book comprises a gratifying number of self-contained s...

When Australian troops stormed ashore in the pre-dawn darkness of April 25th 1915, it was the culmination of one of the most complex and daunting operations in the history of warfare - the seaborne assault of a heavily fortified shore, defended by a well-prepared and forewarned enemy.The risks were enormous, and the death toll on the beach at Anzac Cove could have been murderous - as it was with the British landings further south. Yet the Anzacs had been allowed to organise their o...

Pathan Rising tells the story of the large-scale tribal unrest that erupted along the North West Frontier of India in the late 1890s; a short but sharp period of violence that was initiated by the Pathan tribesmen against the British. Although the exact causes of the unrest remain unclear, it was likely the result of tribal resentment towards the establishment of the Durand Line and British 'forward policy', during the last echoes of the 'Great Game', that led the proud tribesmen to take u...

A study of British military defeats and disasters in the late nineteenth century: "An enthralling look at the Victorian army in adversity." — BBC History MagazineBetween the Crimean War and the dawn of the twentieth century, the British Army was almost continuously engaged in one corner of the globe or another, in military operations famously characterized by Kipling as the "savage wars of peace." In his new work on the most dramatic Victorian campaigns, M...

With British & American troops again in Afghanistan, this book looks back to a previous conflict when Islamic fundamentalists again sought to overthrow the government of Afghanistan and British troops went in to pacify the area.In September 1879 rebels against Emir Yaqub Khan massacred the British residents of Kabul. The British put together a column of 7,000 men to march on Kabul, punish the rebels and restore order.Led by the famous General Fred Roberts VC (later Earl Rob...

This WWII journal takes readers inside an elite reconnaissance and raiding unit operating behind enemy lines in the North African campaign.As a young man entering the maelstrom of World War II, Alastair Timpson had the good fortune to find his way into the most romantic of special force units, the Long Range Desert Group. In Rommel's Backyard describes the various roles of the LRDG, all of which involved great daring and endurance deep behind enemy lines. T...

A "moving, exciting and authentic" chronicle of the British Army's legendary recon and raiding unit in the desert of North African during WWII ( The Observer).During its two-and-a-half years fighting in North Africa, from 1940 to 1943, the Long Range Desert Group became the acknowledged master of the desert. This small, highly mobile force made a name for itself through daring exploits and vital reconnaissance far behind enemy lines. Emerging from the depth...

It was arguably the greatest fighting force in the entirety of the Great War. They were the very best: hardened, fearless, decorated, cocky fighting men, all veterans of Gallipoli and the Western Front. Yet this elite force secretly assembled in London in late 1917 remains an enigma even today.Barry Stone tells the story of these Australian, British, New Zealand, Canadian and South African men who were sent to the ethnic powder keg of the Caucasus to preserve British interests. The...

This edited diary is Colonel Bill Spackmans extraordinary personal record of his experiences as the Medical Officer of an Indian Infantry battalion during the Mesopotamian Campaign 1914 1916. In particular he describes the harrowing events of the five month siege of Kut and, after the surrender of the 10,000 strong garrison in April 1916, the hardships of the 1,000 mile forced march to Anatolia in Turkey. As a doctor he witnessed at first hand suffering the and deaths of many POWs, both Br...

The battle took place at Kerreri, 11km north of Omdurman in the Sudan. Kitchener commanded a force of 8,000 British regulars and a mixed force of 17,000 Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers. He arrayed his force in an arc around the village of Egeiga close to the bank of the Nile, where a gunboat flotilla waited in support, facing a wide, flat plain with hills rising to the left and right. The British and Egyptian cavalry were placed on either flank. Al-Taashi's followers, known...