Originally a Territorial unit with its roots in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the 49th Infantry Division saw action in the ill-fated Norwegian campaign in 1940, before it was appointed to garrison Iceland where it stayed for two years. In August 1944, under the command of the Canadian Army, the Polar Bears acted as Monty's left flank after the invasion of France. Following the battle for Normandy, the Polar Bears played a key role in the capture of Le Havre, campaigned vigorously in Belgiu...

This is the story of two British Army infantry divisions that were very highly regarded by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, and whose gallant roles in the Second World War deserve to be much better known.50th Northumbrian or Tyne-Tees Division was recruited from Durham, north and east Yorkshire and later from the Scottish borders, Lancashire and Shropshire. It fought with the British Expeditionary Force in 1940 in the Arras counter-attack. In North Africa, the division went fr...

This WWII history chronicles the legendary British Armored Division in combat across northern Europe with veterans' personal recollections.The British Army's 11th Armored Division, famous for its Black Bull insignia, was famous for its courageous fighting during the Second World War. In this volume, Black Bull veterans tell the story of their Division in their own words. Beginning with the Normandy invasions, they vividly describe the role they played in Operations ...

Commanded by the controversial Major-General Ivo Thomas, the 43rd (Wessex) Division was branded the Fighting Yellow Devils’ out of respect by its Wehrmacht and Waffen SS opponents. The 43rd’s distinctive divisional badge of a golden Wyvern — half-serpent half-dragon — was to be seen in all the ferocious battles in Normandy, the Low Countries and Germany between June 1944 and May 1945. They suffered 12,500 casualties including 3,000 killed in action.The 43rd had its roots firmly in ...

Early in 1945 the British Liberation Army (BLA), who had battled their way from the Normandy beaches to the borders of Germany, embarked on Operation Eclipse. This was the end-game of the Second World War, the unique military campaign to invade and conquer Hitler s Third Reich and liberate 20 million enslaved nationals from Holland, Denmark and Norway; to free multitudes of displaced persons (DPs) or slaves; and inter alia to free the survivors of twenty concentration camps and many Allied...

Operation Plunder was Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s swan song. It is rarely mentioned in the Second World War history books, and when it is, both American and British military historians dismiss it as being ultra-cautious.Monty was by nature a cautious commander with dwindling manpower resources. Operation Market Garden in September 1944 had not been successful in achieving a major lodgement over the Rhine. Monty knew that Hitler regarded the Rhine as his final barrier, and hi...

In the welter of popular and well-known stories and reminiscences about Churchill (many of them more legend than fact), it can be easy to forget that he was more than an inspirational leader and figurehead to a nation and its allies. For in spite of his many and varied successes, Britain's last great wartime Prime Minister was also a full-blooded human being, with all of the foibles, fallibility, bad temper, pig-headedness and vanity that are so often the shadows of such greatness. Ebullie...

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in April 1889, and shot himself in a bunker in Berlin in April 1945 with Russian soldiers beating at the door, surrounded by the ruins of the country he had vowed to restore to greatness. Adolf Hitler: The Curious and Macabre Anecdotes - part biography, part miscellany, part historical overview - presents the life and times of der Fuhrer in a unique and compelling manner. The early life of the loner son of an Austr...

This is the second volume, but the last to be published of a trilogy - the other volumes being Smashing the Atlantic Wall and The Battle of the Bulge. Monty's Rhine Adventure begins immediately after the Normandy invasion with the euphoria surrounding the belief that the war would soon be won. However, it was not to be as easy Monty hoped. The book covers the difficult next few months as the Allies slogged through France and Belgium fighting stern and skilled Nazi resistance. However, the ...

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 British infantryman shares his harrowing story of life on the frontlines of WWII, from the North African Campaign to the invasion of Germany.In April 1939, when Bill Cheall joined the famous Yorkshire infantry regiment known as the Green Howards, he could not have imagined the drama, trauma, rewards and anguish that awaited him. But he recounts it all here, in this vivid memoir of service and courage under fire.As a Green Howard, Cheall was on the receivin...

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...