Bloody Red Tabs

Bloody Red Tabs PDF Author: Frank Davies
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473812518
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Long before that ghastly and quite unnecessary slogging match in the mud which we now call the First World War had dragged to its blood-soaked conclusion the belief that most of the senior officers had spent their time in comfort and safety in chateaux far behind the lines with no idea of the conditions in which the men they commanded were fighting was firmly embedded in the public mind. As the years pass by that belief has, if anything, become more deeply held, gaining strength from plays like Oh! What a Lovely War, itself based on Alan Clark's book The Donkeys.It is the purpose of this book to show not only how the myth was born and grew but how totally at odds it is with the facts. Biographies of over 200 officers who held the rank of Brigadier-General or above who were killed or wounded during the war show how closely involved the men at the top were with the men at the front. Ironically, as the authors point out, this was more than just a waste of blood, for these were the very men whose experience was vital to the successful prosecution of the war. Had they actually stayed in their chateaux, as Lloyd George alleged, they might have done much more to hasten the end of the conflict.This is not only an invaluable work of reference but a tribute to those gallant senior officers who have been so unfairly traduced by many who should have known better.As featured in Essence Magazine.

Bloody Red Tabs

Bloody Red Tabs PDF Author: Frank Davies
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473812518
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Long before that ghastly and quite unnecessary slogging match in the mud which we now call the First World War had dragged to its blood-soaked conclusion the belief that most of the senior officers had spent their time in comfort and safety in chateaux far behind the lines with no idea of the conditions in which the men they commanded were fighting was firmly embedded in the public mind. As the years pass by that belief has, if anything, become more deeply held, gaining strength from plays like Oh! What a Lovely War, itself based on Alan Clark's book The Donkeys.It is the purpose of this book to show not only how the myth was born and grew but how totally at odds it is with the facts. Biographies of over 200 officers who held the rank of Brigadier-General or above who were killed or wounded during the war show how closely involved the men at the top were with the men at the front. Ironically, as the authors point out, this was more than just a waste of blood, for these were the very men whose experience was vital to the successful prosecution of the war. Had they actually stayed in their chateaux, as Lloyd George alleged, they might have done much more to hasten the end of the conflict.This is not only an invaluable work of reference but a tribute to those gallant senior officers who have been so unfairly traduced by many who should have known better.As featured in Essence Magazine.

Officers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919

Officers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919 PDF Author: Great Britain. War Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description


Vimy

Vimy PDF Author: Pierre Berton
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1783037237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
The bestselling, award-winning author of The American Invasion of Canada “has given great drama and immediacy to that turning point in Canadian history” (Maclean’s). On Easter Monday 1917 with a blizzard blowing in their faces, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in France seized and held the best-defended German bastion on the Western Front—the muddy scarp of Vimy Ridge. The British had failed to take the Ridge, and so had the French who had lost 150,000 men in the attempt. Yet these magnificent colonial troops did so in a morning at the cost of only 10,000 casualties. The author recounts this remarkable feat of arms with both pace and style. He has gathered many personal accounts from soldiers who fought at Vimy. He describes the commanders and the men, the organization and the training, and above all notes the thorough preparation for the attack from which the British General Staff could have learned much. The action is placed within the context both of the Battle of Arras, of which this attack was part, and as a milestone in the development of Canada as a nation. “This wonderful book brings to life the amazing men who came across the Atlantic nearly a century ago and won a famous victory which helped change a nation forever . . . the wonderful prose of Pierre Berton is all from the heart and you should share in it.” —War History Online “The cinematic writing plunks the reader in the midst of the actual battle, and a judicious use of quotes from soldiers’ diaries and letters helps provide a ground-level perspective.” —Quill & Quire

The Deaths of Others

The Deaths of Others PDF Author: John Tirman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199831491
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Americans are greatly concerned about the number of our troops killed in battle--33,000 in the Korean War; 58,000 in Vietnam; 4,500 in Iraq--and rightly so. But why are we so indifferent, often oblivious, to the far greater number of casualties suffered by those we fight and those we fight for? This is the compelling, largely unasked question John Tirman answers in The Deaths of Others. Between six and seven million people died in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq alone, the majority of them civilians. And yet Americans devote little attention to these deaths. Other countries, however, do pay attention, and Tirman argues that if we want to understand why there is so much anti-Americanism around the world, the first place to look is how we conduct war. We understandably strive to protect our own troops, but our rules of engagement with the enemy are another matter. From atomic weapons and carpet bombing in World War II to napalm and daisy cutters in Vietnam and beyond, our weapons have killed large numbers of civilians and enemy soldiers. Americans, however, are mostly ignorant of these methods, believing that American wars are essentially just, necessary, and "good." Trenchant and passionate, The Deaths of Others forces readers to consider the tragic consequences of American military action not just for Americans, but especially for those we fight against.

First World War Army Service Records

First World War Army Service Records PDF Author: William Spencer
Publisher: National Archives UK
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
The National Archives' celebrated First World War holdings include personal files of officers and other ranks, campaign medals, gallantry and meritorious service awards, courts martial and casualty lists. Its remarkable collection has records of Dominion forces and the Indian Army, the WAAC, the Royal Flying Corps and RAF, as well as auxiliary and nursing services. Over 10,000 individual unit war diaries cover all operational theatres of the British Army, while original trench maps illustrates areas from the Western Front to Salonica, Gallipoli to Mesopotamia, Palestine to Italy.

How America Won World War I

How America Won World War I PDF Author: Alan Axelrod
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493031937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Immediately after the armistice was signed in November, 1918, an American journalist asked Paul von Hindenburg who won the war against Germany. He was the chief of the German General Staff, co-architect with Erich Ludendorff of Germany’s Eastern Front victories and its nearly war-winning Western Front offensives, and he did not hesitate in his answer. “The American infantry,” he said. He made it even more specific, telling the reporter that the final death blow for Germany was delivered by “the American infantry in the Argonne.” The British and the French often denigrated the American contribution to the war, but they had begged for US entry into the conflict, and their stake in America’s victory was, if anything, even greater than that of the United States itself. But How America Won WWI will not litigate the points of view of Britain and France. The book will accepts as gospel the assessment of the top German leader whose job it had been to oppose the Americans directly - that the American infantry won the war - and this book will tell how the American infantry did it.

Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour

Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour PDF Author: Joseph E. Persico
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375760458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war’s last hour. Persico recounts the war’s bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory. The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called “the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought.”

Covenant with Death

Covenant with Death PDF Author: John Harris
Publisher: Sphere
ISBN: 0751557110
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Stirringly told from the view of everyday soldiers, Covenant with Death is acclaimed as one of the greatest novels about war ever written. With a new foreword by Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. They joined for their country. They fought for each other. When war breaks out in 1914, Mark Fenner and his Sheffield friends immediately flock to Kitchener's call. Amid waving flags and boozy celebration, the three men - Fen, his best friend Locky and self-assured Frank, rival for the woman Fen loves - enlist as volunteers to take on the Germans and win glory. Through ramshackle training in sodden England and a stint in arid Egypt, rebellious but brave Fen proves himself to be a natural leader, only undermined by on-going friction with Frank. Headed by terse, tough Sergeant Major Bold, this group of young men form steel-strong bonds, and yearn to face the great adventure of the Western Front. Then, on one summer's day in 1916, Fen and his band of brothers are sent to the Somme, and this very ordinary hero discovers what it means to fight for your life. 'Laden with knowledge yet sparely written, Covenant with Death is the work of an author immersed in the lives of those who fought' The Times 'The last line ought to be carved in stone somewhere . . . Find it. Read it. You'll be a better person for having done so' Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail An anti-war book right up there with Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front Shortlist (The Greatest War Novels of all Time) 'Covenant With Death . . . showed with unbearable actuality what happened to a newly formed Sheffield regiment on the first day of the battle of the Somme' Christopher Hitchens, Guardian 'The blood and guts, the nightmare stink of cordite . . . appalling realism' The Times 'Only one novel about the war since 1945 has the power and feeling of veracity to compare with the works of the 1920s and 30s . . . Covenant with Death by John Harris' The Western Front Organisation 'A superb novel' Daily Mirror 'John Harris's neglected masterpiece of a novel, Covenant With Death, is the success that it is because it follows a group of Sheffield workers from their flag-waving sign-up to the hecatomb on the Somme' The Atlantic 'True and terrible' Observer 'An outstanding achievement' Sunday Express

To the Last Man :.

To the Last Man :. PDF Author: Jonathan D. Bratten
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Six Weeks

Six Weeks PDF Author: John Lewis-Stempel
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
"Often fresh out of school, still with their recent Latin lessons fresh in their minds, many junior officers in the First World War went straight from being prefects to having to lead their men in a charge over the top, knowing that the German machine guns would be trained on the man at the front, knowing that so many of their predecessors had fallen before them. In this remarkable book, John Lewis-Stempel focuses on the oft-overlooked men who were crucial to Britain's war effort, the men who had to persuade the ordinary Tommy to follow them into action. Basing his account on a huge range of first person accounts, including poignant letters and diaries sent home or back to their school, Lewis-Stempel reveals what motivated these men who faced an average life expectancy of just six weeks once they reached the frontline. He shows the life they led in the trenches, how they sought to keep up the spirits of their men, and how they tried to behave with honour in a world where their codes of conduct were being quite literally shot to pieces."--Publisher's description.