The WW2 1944 EditionThis revised 1944 edition is the definitive version of Biddle's classic "Do or Die" manual of individual combat methods. With updated images and content, you will learn battle proven techniques, as taught to the USMC during WWII, for bayonet fighting, knife fighting, empty hand defense, and more.Col. Drexel Biddle was a renowned WWI & WWII hand-to-hand combat instructor...using his wealth of martial training in fencing/s...

In this brilliantly researched, deeply humane work of history, Michael Stephenson traces the paths that have led soldiers to their graves over the centuries, revealing a wealth of insight about the nature of combat, the differences among cultures, and the unchanging qualities of humanity itself.Behind every soldier’s death lies a story, a tale not just of the cold mathematics of the battlefield but of an individual human being who gave his life. What psychological and cultural pres...

The extraordinary story of "Paul" who for thirty days was Dictator of the World.

'Victor Gregg is the most remarkable spokesman for the war generation' Dan SnowIn Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut fictionalised his time as a prisoner of war in Dresden in 1945. Vonnegut was imprisoned in a cellar while the firestorm raged through the city, wiping out generations of innocent lives. Victor Gregg remained above ground throughout the firebombing. This is his true eyewitness account of that week in February 1945.Already a s...

Billy rubbed his hand along the smooth woodwork of the rifle slung over his shoulder. "Do you think we'll get to fight at last." For most of the new men their greatest fear had always been that the fighting would finish before they had their chance to join in.

This book provides a glimpse at the lives, weapons, and equipment of these soldiers through a collection of artifacts and exacting reproductions.As 1862 dawned, the Civil War, the conflict that had started the year before and that most Americans thought would last only a few months, showed no signs of ending. Hundreds of thousands of men across the divided nation enlisted in state volunteer regiments that poured into the sprawling military camps around Washington, ...

This book thoroughly explains military techniques of close combat fighting necessary for self-defense in every situation. They will enhance your strength, flexibility, balance, and cardio-respiratory fitness. The practice will help you build personal courage, self confidence and self-discipline. Be as prepared and skillful as a U.S. Marine and act instantly when an unexpected confrontation occurs. Close combat fighting is an engagement between two or more persons in an empty-handed struggl...

In this remarkably powerful book, James Bradley takes as his starting point one of the most famous photographs of all time. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima and into a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire from 22,000 Japanese. After climbing through a hellish landscape and on to the island's highest peak, six men were photographed raising the stars and stripes. One of those soldiers was the author's father, John Bradley. He never spoke to his family about...

No name in the annals of the Civil War conjures a more romantic and awe-inspiring image than that of Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby of Virginia.The epitome of the Southern cavalier, Colonel Mosby was a charismatic officer whose small band of partisans outwitted and outfought the Union army on the fields and farmlands of northern Virginia. So great was the panic inspired by this one officer's military ingenuity, so prominent was the threat he created to the Union forces, t...

From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning history A Stillness at Appomattox, an electrifying account of the end of the Civil War—Grant and Lee’s final maneuvers as four years of internecine conflict inched to a close.“The end of the war was like the beginning, with the army marching down the open road under the spring sky.” Here is the triumphant close of Bruce Catton’s history of the Army of the Potomac, the major Union army that fought and ultimately won th...

1941. Britain is under some of the heaviest air raids of the Second World War. Concerns about Nazi paratroopers landing in Britain and invading take hold in the hearts of the British citizenry. The Home Guard has been mobilised to defend against airborne assault – and it needs training.‘Yank’ Levy is brought in to Osterley Park to teach guerrilla warfare, from practical experience in the Spanish Civil War. ‘Yank’ trains soldiers of the Home Guard how to use surveil...

From Hampton Sides’s Ghost Soldiers, a gripping narrative of World War II POWs on the brink of freedom.The men of Cabanatuan had been held by the Japanese since the Bataan Death March, in increasingly dire circumstances. With the war turning in the Americans’ favor, the POWs worried that their captors would murder them all in the frenzy of an all-out withdrawal. Then one day in early January, 1945, the prison guards simply left.For a brief moment the haggard surviv...