A profound and very human account of the early years of the war, told from the perspective of a father rather than combatants, but no less revealing. Mr Britling lives in the quintessentially English town of Matching’s Easy in Essex. He is a great thinker, an essayist, but most of all an optimist. When war arrives he is forced to reassess many of the things he had been so sure of. The war brings great change - Belgian refugees come with dreadful stories and everywhere it seems there are young men dressed in khaki. The family’s young German tutor is forced to head back to Germany, and Mr Britling’s seventeen year old son enlists in the Territorials. Day by day and month by month, Wells chronicles the unfolding events and public reaction as witnessed by the inhabitants of one house in rural Essex. Each of the characters tries in a different way to keep their bearings in a world suddenly changed beyond recognition. Tragedy ensues, Mr Britling must wrestle with outrage, grief and attempts at rationalisation as he ‘sees it through’. Written in 1916, while the outcome of the war was still uncertain, this is both a fascinating portrait of Britain at war, and a chronicle of events seen from a contemporary perspective, and an insight into H G Wells himself, Mr Britling being a largely autobiographical character.

Set deep in the mountains of southern France, this charming short novel tells the story of a man from the Cèvennes Mountains called Roux, who refuses to join the army at the outbreak of war in 1914. Instead, he flees and hides in the hills, only returning occasionally to the farm where he left his mother and sisters. The people of the valley condemn his desertion and they hope the police will find his hideout. But as the months and the years go by, and the horrors of the trenches become known, the local people start to understand Roux’s actions. Roux begins to appear in the village more often, helping out and explaining that his decision was taken out of respect for the Bible. His arrest at the end of the War is therefore met with sadness and regret. Chamson explores questions of perception, morality and conscience with a lightness of touch coupled with an atmospheric picture of life in a WWI era rural community.

Upon the completion of the Sicily and Salerno Campaigns in 1943, the paratroopers of Colonel Reuben Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment were among the first Allied troops to enter Naples. A ghost town at first sight, the residents soon expressed their joy at being liberated. Four weeks later the 504th – upon the special request of General Mark Clark – spearheaded Fifth Army’s drive through the notorious Volturno Valley – the Germans’ next stand. January 1944 seemed to promise a period of rest, but the landing at Anzio meant deployment for the paratroopers again, this time by ship. A bombing raid during their beach landing was a forecast of eight weeks of bitter fighting. Holding the right flank of the beachhead along the Mussolini Canal, the paratroopers earned their nickname “Devils in Baggy Pants” for their frontline incursions into enemy lines, as well as their stubborn defense of the Allied salient. In this work H Company’s attachment to the British 5th Grenadier Guards – and the Victoria Cross action of Major William Sidney – are painted in comprehensive light for the first time. Also the story of Honorary Member of the 504th P.I.R., Italian veteran Antonio Taurelli, is included. Using war diaries, personal journals, letters and interviews with nearly 80 veterans, a close-in view of the 504th P.I.R. in the Fifth Army’s Italy Campaign is here provided in unsurpassed detail. This work is the third by Van Lunteren on the 504th P.I.R. In World War II following The Battle of the Bridges and Blocking Kampfgruppe Peiper. As readers will see, however, the Italian theater held second place to none in terms of grueling combat and courage against formidable odds, and an extremely expert enemy.

This book describes nine transplanted Poles who participated in the Civil War. They span three generations and are connected by culture, nationality and adherence to their principles and ideals. The common thread that runs through their lives—the Polish White Eagle—is that they came from a country that had basically disintegrated at the end of the previous century, yet they carried the concepts of freedom they inherited from their forefathers to the New World to which they immigrated. Once in America the pre-war political feuds, ferocious ensuing battles, captures, prison camp escapes and privations of war—often in the words of the soldiers themselves—are fully described. More highly trained in warfare than their American brethren—and certainly more inured to struggles for nationhood— the Poles made a more significant contribution to Civil war combat than is usually described. The first group had fought in the 1830 war for freedom from the Russian Empire. The European revolutionary struggles of the 1840’s molded the next generation. The two of the youngest generation came of age just as the Civil War began, entered military service as enlisted men and finished as officers. Of the group, four sided with the North and four with the South, and the other began in the Confederate cavalry and finished fighting for the Union side. All but one came from aristocratic backgrounds. In a war commonly categorized as a “brother against brother,” a struggle between two American regions, history has not devoted a great deal of attention to the participation of Poles, and foreigners in general. These men fought with a belief in European democratic liberalism. Whether for the North to keep a Union together or to form a new nation from the Southern states, they held to their ideals, and in America’s own greatest conflict continued to fight for their beliefs.

Ten years after the publication of his Services Spéciaux (1935-1945), Paillole took up his pen once again in order to shed further light on the critical role that the French Secret Service played in the infiltration of German agencies. In this first English edition of The Spy in Hitler’s Inner Circle, Paillole brings us to the very heart of the world of espionage and counterintelligence, providing unique insight into the key figures that led to the decoding of the Enigma machine at Bletchley and the ultimate collapse of Hitler’s Third Reich, most notably through Hans-Thilo Schmidt, France’s German spy embedded in the very heart of the Third Reich.In compelling narrative style Paillole details how Schmidt delivered intelligence to France right from the source of the German Cipher Office. Schmidt, whose brother Rudolf occupied one of the highest postings in the Third Reich, commander of 2nd Panzer Army in Russia, created an intelligence network between France, Poland and England, and successfully transmitted crucial details about Hitler’s strategic plans. From information about Germany’s rearmament and the reoccupation of the Rhineland, to fundamental technical intelligence about the Enigma machine, Schmidt’s contributions are key to the Allied victory in the intelligence war, despite the fact that France largely ignored his communications.Revealed here are the most secret aspects of the ‘secret war,’ the ‘war of numbers.’ Paillole also sheds further light on the interaction of secret agents working inside the German government, bringing attention to the cooperation between the French, English and Polish agencies surrounding the challenges of decoding the Enigma machine. We learn the innermost details of the roles that men such as Gustave Bertrand, Rudolphe Lemoine, and Richard Sorge played in this dramatic history and ultimately the pivotal role that Bletchley’s Alan Turing was able to perform as a result.Paillole brings renewed focus onto one of the most important espionage affairs of the war, revealing new aspects of the participation of Enigma during the decisive phases of the Second World War: the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Libya and the Battle of Normandy.

In the first years of the Civil War, Southern arms won spectacular victories on the battlefield; however, cooler heads in the Confederacy recognized the demographic and industrial weight pitted against them, and counted on British intervention to even those scales in order to deny the United States victory.Bluff, Bluster Lies and Spies is a wild ride through the mismanaged State Department of William Henry Seward in Washington, DC, to the more skillful work of Lords Palmerston, Russell and Lyons in the British Foreign Office. Fearful that Great Britain would recognize the Confederacy and provide the help that might have defeated the Union, the Lincoln administration was careful not to upset the greatest naval power on earth. At the same time, however, Great Britain needed to retain influence on American foreign policy, because her very safety as an empire depended upon it. In face of the growth of the Union navy—particularly its new ironclad ships—she turned out to be a paper tiger who relied on bluff and bluster to preserve the illusion of international strength. Britain had its own continental rivals with whom to vie, and the question of whether a truncated United States or a reunited stronger one was most advantageous was a vital question. Ultimately Prime Minister Palmerston decided that Great Britain would be no match for a Union armada that could have seized British possessions throughout the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, and he frustrated any ambitions to break Lincoln’s blockade of the Confederacy with Britannia.In addition to the naval arms race between Britain and France, Europe was covered with the spies, arms dealers, detectives and publicists who struggled to buy guns and to influence European opinion about the validity of either the Union or Confederate cause. This book describes in full how the Civil War in the New World was ultimately left to Southern battlefield prowess alone to determine, as the powers of the Old World declined to overtly intervene in the American question.

After the first successful flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, the age of aviation was born, and by 1910 army commanders in the United States and Europe began ordering aircraft and experimenting with them. But at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, no-one could yet possibly know how significant a role they would play in the fighting. Aerial reconnaissance, observation and photography impacted the fighting in many ways, but little has been written about it. Balloons and airplanes regulated artillery fire, infantry liaison aircraft followed attacking troops and the retreats of defenders, aerial photographers aided operational planners and provided the data for perpetually updated maps, and naval airplanes, airships, and balloons acted as aerial sentinels in a complex anti-submarine warfare organization. Reconnaissance crews at the Battles of the Marne and Tannenberg averted disaster. The story told here involves the early American Lafayette Escadrille pilots who were looking for heroic deeds and romantic adventure in aerial combat, as well as the German, British and French aces of popular imagination. But the real value of military aviation lay elsewhere; balloonists, unsung heroes, were an essential part of the observation chain, and forever altered the nature of artillery operations. Observation spotters from planes further enhanced the benefit of being able to extend the target range well out of the line of sight and direct artillery fire, though communicating information was far from easy and systems from weighted message bags through light flashes, smoke signals and wireless messages were tried and honed. Eyes All Over the Sky fully explores all the aspects of aerial reconnaissance, and its previously under-appreciated significance. Also included are the individual experiences of British, American and German airmen; true pioneers of aviation warfare.

This beautiful and evocative book gives an illustrated overview of the First World War, on land, on sea and in the air. With original drawings in full colour, Steven Patricia uses 30 years’ experience as a historical illustrator to give an informative and insightful account of the war, portraying the human faces of the participants and capturing moments in time with a vividness and immediacy that brings home both the emotional impact and the tragedy of war. Accompanied by soldier’s diary extracts and other contemporary literature, there are many drawings of the hardware of war: aircraft and airships, submarines and ships, guns and grenades. We also get a glimpse of weary officers relaxing in an RAF mess, see panicking sailors swimming desperately away from a sinking ship, soldiers stumbling across no-man’s land, and the dramatic scene of one of last great cavalry charges of any war, in Egypt. The role of animals is featured, including the importance of horses and rescue and messenger dogs. The text gives a concise introduction to the events of the war and why it started, with maps of the different fronts where fighting took place and a diagram of a trench system. Designed for readers with little familiarity of the conflict, this is a unique and unmissable book in the centenary of the ‘war to end all wars’.

Throughout the Vietnam War, one focal point persisted where the Viet Cong guerrillas and ARVN were not a major factor, but where the trained professionals of the North Vietnamese and United States armies repeatedly fought head-to-head. A Shau Valor is a thoroughly documented study of nine years of American combat operations encompassing the crucial frontier valley and a 15-mile radius around it—the most deadly killing ground of the entire Vietnam War. Beginning in 1963 Special Forces A-teams established camps along the valley floor, followed by a number of top-secret Project Delta reconnaissance missions through 1967. Then, U.S. Army and Marine Corps maneuver battalions engaged in a series of sometimes controversial thrusts into the A Shau designed to disrupt NVA infiltrations and to kill enemy soldiers, part of what came to be known as Westmoreland’s “war of attrition.” The various campaigns included Operation Pirous in 1967, 1968’s Operations Delaware and Somerset Plain, 1969’s Operations Dewey Canyon, Massachusetts Striker, and Apache Snow—which included the infamous battle for Hamburger Hill—culminating with Operation Texas Star and the vicious fight for and humiliating evacuation of Fire Support Base Ripcord in the summer of 1970, the last major U.S. battle of the war. By 1971 the fighting had once again shifted to the realm of small Special Forces reconnaissance teams assigned to the ultra-secret Studies and Observations Group—SOG. Other works have focused on individual battles or units, but A Shau Valor is the first to study the nine-year campaign—for all its courage, sacrifice and valor—chronologically and within the context of other historical, political, and cultural events. In addition to covering the strictly military aspects of the various campaigns in the A Shau, Tom Yarborough, author of the renowned Da Nang Diary, shows how events in both Vietnam and the United States became inexorably linked, as domestic dissent and a lack of realistic military strategy ultimately led to America’s first lost war.

In recent years the great powers of the West—primarily the US and UK—have most often been relegated to fighting “small wars,” rather than the great confrontational battles for which they once prepared. It has been a difficult process, with some conflicts increasingly being seen as unwinnable, or at least not worth the effort in treasure and blood, even as the geopolitical structure of the world appears to slip. It is thus worth paying heed now, to the experiences of another power which once encountered the same problems. This work examines the German analysis to the problem, covering their experiences from the Napoleonic era to the Third Reich. Though the latter regime, the most despicable in history, needed to be destroyed by US/UK conventional force, as well as that of the Soviets, the German military meantime provided analysis to the question of grassroots—as opposed to great-power—warfare. This work is built around the historical analysis titled Kleinkrieg, provided to the German High Command by Arthur Earhardt in 1935 (republished in 1942 and 1943) which examined insurgencies from French-occupied Spain to recurrent problems in the Balkans. It also calls upon the Bandenbekampfung (Fighting the Guerilla Bands) document provided to Germany’s OKW in 1944. In both, conditions that were specific to broader military operations were separated from circumstances in occupation campaigns, and new background in the German experience in suppressing rebellion in World War II is presented. Edited and annotated, along with new analysis, by Charles D. Melson, former Chief Historian for the U.S. Marine Corps, Kleinkrieg expands our knowledge of the Western experience in coping with insurgencies. Without partaking in ideological biases, this work examines the purely military problem as seen by professionals. While small wars are not new, how they should be fought by a modern industrial nation is still a question to be answered. Rediscovered and presented in English, these German thoughts on the issue are now made available to a new generation of guerilla and irregular war fighters in the West.

In this engaging book we see how an 18-year-old miner shoveling ore from deep in the ground in Utah suddenly found himself, only two years later, 30,000 feet in the air over Nazi Germany, piloting a Flying Fortress in the first wave of America’s air counteroffensive in Europe. Like thousands of other young Americans, Ray Brim was plucked by the U.S. Army to be a combat flyer, and was quickly pitted against the hardened veterans of the Luftwaffe. Brim turned out to have a natural knack for flying, however, and was assigned to the select squadron developing lead Pathfinder techniques, while experimenting with radar. He was among the first to test the teeth of the Luftwaffe’s defenses, and once those techniques had been honed, thousands of other bomber crews would follow into the maelstrom, from which 80,000 never returned. This work gives us vivid insights into the genesis of the American air campaign, told with the humor, attention to detail and humility that captures the heart and soul of our “Greatest Generation.” Brim was one of the first Pathfinder pilots to fly both day and night missions leading bomb groups of 600-plus bombers to their targets. At the onset of his missions in the spring of 1943, B-17 crews were given a 50-50 chance of returning. Each of his raids were nerve-wracking forays into the unknown; with struggles to survive the damage to his plane due to flak and German fighter attacks, in order to bring his 10-man crew home, often wounded but still alive. After Germany’s surrender, Brim held a number of commands during the Korean War and flew B-17 drone planes during atomic tests, in which the Pentagon wished to see the effects of nuclear fallout on aircraft. Surprisingly having lived on into his 90s, Colonel Brim has provided us a fascinating firsthand memoir of frontline air war during the 20th century.

‘Already loose sand had drifted over the stamped-down square which momentarily had distinguished the subaltern’s grave: no there was no sign, no mark, no indication whatsoever. There had been, here, eleven men. Now ten rode away’ In the Mesopotamian desert during World War I, the leader of a British patrol is shot and killed, by an unseen enemy. The officer is the only one who knows their orders and has not told anyone else where they are located. From then on the sergeant has to try to lead the men through a hostile desert landscape which is full of invisible Arab snipers. One by one they are picked off, and the group of diverse characters from different backgrounds has to try to come together in order to survive. The decision making process proves far from easy as tensions and prejudices from their former lives come to the fore. This thrilling tale of suspense goes right to the last page and was a best seller in the 1920s. The novel was filmed twice, by Walter Summers (as Lost Patrol in 1929) and by John Ford (as The Lost Patrol in 1934).

‘The million British dead have left no books behind. What they felt as they died hour by hour in the mud, or were choked horribly with gas, or relinquished their reluctant lives on stretchers, no witness tells. But here is a book that almost tells it……Mr Gristwood has had the relentless simplicity to recall things as they were; he was as nearly dead as he could be without dying, and he has smelt the stench of his own corruption. This is the story of millions of men – of millions.’ – H. G. Wells, from the prefaceIn The Somme and its companion The Coward, first published in 1927, the heroics of war and noble self-sacrifice are completely absent; replaced by the gritty realism of life in WWI for the ordinary soldier, and the unflinching portrayal of the horrors of war. Written under the guidance of the master storyteller H. G. Wells, they are classics of the genre.The Somme revolves around a futile attack in 1916 during the Somme campaign. Everitt, the central protagonist is wounded and moved back through a series of dressing stations to the General Hospital at Rouen. Both in and out of the line he behaves selfishly and unheroically, but despite this his circumstances and the conditions around him make his actions easy to understand. Based on A D Gristwood’s own wartime experiences, critics have said that few other accounts of the war give such an accurate picture of trench life.The Coward concerns a man who shoots himself in the hand to escape the war, during the March 1918 retreat – an offence punishable by death. He gets away with it, but is haunted by fear of discovery and self-loathing.

Under Fire, first published in French as Le Feu, was one of the first novels about WWI, appearing in December 1916, before the outcome of the war was clear. Set in early 1916, it follows a squad of French volunteer soldiers through the eyes of an unnamed foot soldier, who participates in and also observes the action. It combines soaring, poetic descriptions with the mundane, messy, human reality of soldiers living in their own excrement. Then slowly names and features are given to the men who emerge from the mud, from the dignified leader Corporal Bertrand, to the ebullient Volpatte and the obsessive Cocon. Intermingled with details of how they navigate daily life in the putrified atmosphere of the trenches are both harrowing descriptions and a political, pacifist argument about this war and war more generally. Caught up in events they cannot control, the soldiers go through their daily routines: foraging for food, reading letters from wives and mothers, drinking, fighting in battle, and in heavily realistic scenes which the novel is noted for, discovering dead bodies in advanced stages of decomposition; the human detritus of a brutal conflict. Through it all, they talk about the war, attempting to make sense of the altered world in which they find themselves. Under Fire drew criticism at the time of its publication for its harsh realism, but won the Prix Goncourt. The original translation by Fitzwater Wray which first appeared in 1917 is published here. It captures the essence of the era; a glossary is also provided to help with unfamiliar vocabulary.

The nearly half-million American airmen who served during World War II have almost disappeared. And so have their stories. In Unsung Eagles, award-winning writer and former fighter pilot Jay Stout has saved an exciting collection of those accounts from oblivion. These are not rehashed tales from the hoary icons of the war. Rather, they are stories from the masses of largely unrecognized men who―in the aggregate―actually won it. These are “everyman” accounts that are important but fast disappearing. Ray Crandall describes how he was nearly knocked into the Pacific by a heavy cruiser’s main battery during the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea. Jesse Barker―a displaced dive-bomber pilot―tells of dodging naval bombardments in the stinking mud of Guadalcanal. Bob Popeney relates how his friend and fellow A-20 pilot was blown out of formation by German antiaircraft fire: “I could see the inside of the airplane―and I could see Nordstrom's eyes. He looked confused…and then immediately he flipped up and went tumbling down.”

When Germany’s Sixth Army advanced to Stalingrad in 1942, its long-extended flanks were mainly held by allied armies—the Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians. But as history tells us, these flanks quickly caved in before the massive Soviet counter-offensive which commenced that November, dooming the Germans to their first catastrophe of the war. However, the historical record also makes clear that one allied unit held out to the very end, fighting to stem the tide—the Italian Alpine Corps. When the Don front collapsed under Soviet hammer blows, it was the Alpine Corps that continued to hold out until it was completely isolated, and which then tried to fight its way out through both Russian encirclement and “General Winter” to rejoin the rest of the Axis front. Only one of the three alpine divisions was able to emerge from the Russian encirclement with survivors. In this all-sides battle across the snowy steppe, thousands were killed and wounded, and even more were captured. By the summer of 1946, only 10,000 survivors returned to Italy from Russian POW camps.