A remarkable World War II survival story and combat memoir by "an indestructible wartime tank commander" ( The Telegraph).In campaign after campaign, from the defense of Calais in 1940 to the defeat of Germany in 1945, Bill Close served as a tank commander in Britain's Royal Tank Regiment—and he survived.His tanks were hit eleven times by enemy shellfire and he bailed out. He was wounded three times. He finished the war as one of the most experienc...

A gripping account of the Second World War, from the perspective of a young tank commander.In 1944, David Render was a nineteen-year-old second lieutenant fresh from Sandhurst when he was sent to France. Joining the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry five days after the D-Day landings, the combat-hardened men he was sent to command did not expect him to last long. However, in the following weeks of ferocious fighting in which more than 90 per cent of his fellow tank command...

A personal history of a Nazi battalion's experiences on the Eastern and Western fronts of WWII, told through the vivid accounts of the soldiers themselves.This is the little-known story of Heavy Panzer (Tiger) Battalion 507. Helmut Schneider, himself a veteran of the battalion, sought out as many survivors of the unit as possible and gather their reminiscences. The resulting account is a treasure trove of first-hand material, including personal memories, diaries, le...

A 1955 military memoir offering a first-hand account of life in the British 7th Armoured Division during World War II.Few accounts of the tank battles in the Western Desert during the Second World War have provided so vivid an evocation as Cyril Joly's classic account Take These Men. In such inhospitable conditions, this was armoured warfare of a particularly difficult and dangerous kind.From 1940 to 1943, battles raged back and forth as one side o...

A richly illustrated memoir by highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier—"recommended to anyone with an interest in the Panzerwaffe in the Second World War" (Recollections of WWII ).After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, Richard Freiherr von Rosen led a Company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (...

'One of the best half-dozen personal accounts of the Normandy campaign' - Richard HolmesStuart Hills embarked his Sherman DD tank on to an LCT at 6.45 a.m., Sunday 4 June 1944. He was 20 years old, unblooded, fresh from a public-school background and Officer Cadet training. He was going to war. Two days later, his tank sunk, he and his crew landed from a rubber dinghy with just the clothes they stood in. After that, the struggles through the Normandy bocage in a re...

A vivid firsthand account of armored warfare by a WWII Soviet tank commander.What was it like to command a T-34 tank on the Eastern Front during the Second World War? How were tank operations organized and carried out, what was the actual experience of combat, and what were the qualities that made the difference between success and failure? And what were the chances of survival?Vasiliy Pavlovich Bryukhov's vivid, detailed, and gripping memoir of his wartime...

The Hawker Typhoon despite numerous technical flaws, was the finest ground support aircraft in Europe during World War II. At the same time the stories of the brave men who flew this difficult aircraft remain untold and unacknowledged. From his enlistment in Toronto through the final flights over Germany, this is the memoir of Jack Hilton, an RCAF fighter pilot, who successfully flew this challenging aircraft.

A soldier with the German Army's Wallonian Legion chronicles his experience as a foreign volunteer for the Nazi war machine during WWII.A french-speaking Belgian, Fernand Kaisergruber volunteered to fight with the military force that occupied his country. His detailed chronicle of that time reads like a travelogue of the Eastern Front campaign. Until recently, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals who fought with the Germans. Kaisergru...

'An arresting chronicle of the life of an ordinary soldier during the push to victory' Daily ExpressTank Commander Sgt Trevor Greenwood of C Squadron, the 9th Royal Tank Regiment, sailed for France in June 1944 as part of the Allied invasion of Normandy. From D-Day until April 1945, he kept a daily diary of his experiences of the final push through France and into Germany, often writing in secret and in te...

A look at how British and Indian forces used tank warfare against the Japanese during World War II in modern-day Myanmar.Fighting in a somewhat forgotten corner of empire during the Second World War, the British and Indian armored regiments called upon to harness the power of tank warfare to extreme new levels did so in an effort to outwit an army until that point considered invincible: the Imperial Japanese Army. Their collective heroic, massively effective efforts...

The author of Case White: The Invasion of Poland delves into the strategy and weaponry of armored warfare during the early years of the Russo-German War.The German panzer armies that swept into the Soviet Union in 1941 were an undefeated force that had honed their skill in combined arms warfare to a fine edge. The Germans focused their panzers and tactical air support at points on the battlefield defined as Schwerpunkt—main effort—to smash through any defe...