The story of an infantry officer on the Western Front, of the Fourth Battalion of the Coldstream Guards who was awarded the MC. At first he had a relatively safe posting but this preyed on his conscience and asked for front-line duty. This he experiencced in large meaure and his account is hugely well worth reading. The book ends with a moving description of the liberation of French towns which had been under German occupation for four years.

This "brilliant and heartrending" memoir recounts one of the bloodiest battles of WWI—with a new introduction and a forward by the author's son (John Keegan).A joint operation between Britain and France, the 1916 Battle of the Somme was an attempt to gain territory and dent Germany's military strength. By the end of the action, the Allied Forces had made just twelve kilometers. For this slight gain, more than a million lives were lost.In this classic military...

The epic and brutal WWI battle is vividly recounted through the words and photos of the soldiers who lived through it.One of the most famous battles of the Great War, the offensive on the Somme took place in 1916, from July and November. It was there that Kitcheners famous Pals Battalions were first sent into action en masse. It was a battlefield where many of the dreams and aspirations of a nation, hopeful of victory, were agonizingly dashed.Because of its l...

What was the soldiers experience of the Battle of the Somme? How did the men who were there record their part in the fighting or remember it afterwards? How can we, 100 years later, gain an insight into one of the most famous and contentious - episodes of the Great War? Matthew Richardsons graphic account, which is based on the vivid personal testimony of those who took part, offers us a direct impression of the reality of the battle from the perspective of the ordinary soldiers and junior...

This is Bill Cull's unforgettable story of his experiences in WW1: he fought at Gallipoli and on the Western Front where he was captured by the Germans and was a POW until the end of the war.Captain William Cull fought the First World War from both sides of the wire. As a young infantry officer on the Allied side of the Western Front, Cull frequently led patrols out into No Man's Land and raids on the German trenches. He took part in bitter fighting on the Somme at Pozi res, and in...

Includes the First World War Illustrations Pack – 73 battle plans and diagrams and 198 photos"A young British soldier who went to war on two wheels"When the Great War broke out, the author of this book decided to leave his university studies and join the struggle. What attracted him immediately was the potential to combine his military service with his love of motorcycles and so it was that he found himself one of a select group of motorcycle despatch riders within the 5th Di...

In 1917, British, New Zealander and Australian troops stationed at the Étaples Training Camp in northern France protested against the inhuman conditions. The mutineers commandeered the camp's weapons and marched into Étaples, holding the town for three days, attacking military police and the commander of the training camp, General Thompson.Several of the mutineers were executed, but Toplis remained at large for three years. The Army immediately covered up the Mutiny; thousands of t...

Until recently James Beatson was one of the millions of forgotten soldiers of the Great War. But after 90 years his diary has been rediscovered, perfectly preserved, and his story can now be told. It is a moving, intensely personal and beautifully written narrative by an extraordinary young man who witnessed one of the darkest episodes in European history. His experience gives us a telling insight into the thoughts and reactions of a self- educated, patriotic and religious individual confr...

‘I do not want to die. The thought that we may be cut off from each other is so terrible and that our babe may grow up without my knowing her and without her knowing me. It is difficult to face. Know through all your life that I loved you and baby with all my heart and soul, that you two sweet things were just all the world to me’Captain Charlie May was killed, aged 27, in the early morning of 1st July 1916, leading the men of ‘B Company’, 22nd Manchester Service Battalion (the Man...

From escape attempts to camp conditions,Behind the Wire offers first-hand accounts of POWs during World War I.Before World War I the Geneva Convention established 'rules' for the treatment of Prisoners of War, and all belligerents during the war were to adhere to them; however, the rules were in many ways ambiguous and as a result, the treatment of POWs varied from nation to nation.In this book, Robert Jackson examines the treatment POWs received f...

The last untold story of the First World War: the fortunes and fates of 170,000 British soldiers captured by the enemy.On capture, British officers and men were routinely told by the Germans 'For you the war is over'. Nothing could be further from the truth. British Prisoners of War merely exchanged one barbed-wire battleground for another.In the camps the war was eternal. There was the war against the German military, fought with everything from taunting h...

In our collective memory, the First World War is dominated by men. The sailors, soldiers, airmen and politicians about whom histories are written were male, and the first half of the twentieth century was still a time when a woman's place was thought to be in the home. It was not until the Second World War that women would start to play a major role both in the armed forces and in the factories and the fields. Yet there were some women who were able to contribute to the wa...