Download or read book Somme written by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of battles as the irreducible building blocks of war demands a single verdict of each campaign—victory, defeat, stalemate. But this kind of accounting leaves no room to record the nuances and twists of actual conflict. In Somme: Into the Breach, the noted military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore shows that by turning our focus to stories of the front line—to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph—we can counter, and even change, familiar narratives. Planned as a decisive strike but fought as a bloody battle of attrition, the Battle of the Somme claimed over a million dead or wounded in months of fighting that have long epitomized the tragedy and folly of World War I. Yet by focusing on the first-hand experiences and personal stories of both Allied and enemy soldiers, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore defies the customary framing of incompetent generals and senseless slaughter. In its place, eyewitness accounts relive scenes of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, as soldiers ordered “over the top” ventured into No Man’s Land and enemy trenches, where they met a hail of machine-gun fire, thickets of barbed wire, and exploding shells. Rescuing from history the many forgotten heroes whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.

Download or read book The Battle of Verdun 1914 1918 written by and published by Clermont-Ferrand : Michelin. This book was released on 1919 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Flowers of the Forest written by Trevor Royle and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2011-08-12 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the brink of the First World War, Scotland was regarded throughout the British Isles as 'the workshop of the Empire'. Not only were Clyde-built ships known the world over, Scotland produced half of Britain's total production of railway equipment, and the cotton and jute industries flourished in Paisley and Dundee. In addition, Scots were a hugely important source of manpower for the colonies. Yet after the war, Scotland became an industrial and financial backwater. Emigration increased as morale slumped in the face of economic stagnation and decline. The country had paid a disproportionately high price in casualties, a result of huge numbers of volunteers and the use of Scottish battalions as shock troops in the fighting on the Western Front and Gallipoli - young men whom the novelist Ian Hay called 'the vanished generation'. In this book, Trevor Royle provides the first full account of how the war changed Scotland irrevocably by exploring a wide range of themes - the overwhelming response to the call for volunteers; the performance of Scottish military formations in 1915 and 1916; the militarization of the Scottish homeland; the resistance to war in Glasgow and the west of Scotland; and the boom in the heavy industries and the strengthening of women's role in society following on from wartime employment.

Download or read book Z Day 1st July 1916 The Attack of the VIII Corps at Beaumont Hamel and Serre written by Alan MacDonald and published by . This book was released on 2014-03-03 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first day of the Battle of the Somme, Saturday, 1st July, 1916, was the worst day in the history of the British Army. More than 57.000 soldiers were killed or wounded in just a few hours. Nowhere was the cost higher and the return less than on the front of the VIII Corps which attacked the small French villages of Beaumont Hamel and Serre. The ratio of British to German casualties was a staggering 11 to 1. 'The Attack of the VIII Corps' provides a detailed account of the planning of the attack, explaining why it was doomed to failure from the very start and who was responsible. Drawing on British and German sources, the desperate fighting is described from both sides of No Man's Land. Over 200 photographs, maps and plans.

Download or read book The First Day on the Somme written by Martin Middlebrook and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the British Army’s experience at the Battle of the Somme in France during World War I. After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7:30 AM on July 1, 1916, the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, July 1, 1916, was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognized, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener’s call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook’s research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that it was for front-line soldiers. Praise for The First Day on the Somme “The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words.” —The Guardian (UK)

Download or read book Carrying On after the First Hundred Thousand written by Ian Hay and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The first hundred thousand closed with the battle of Loos. The present narrative follows certain friends of ours from the scene of that .. experience, through a winter campaign in the neighbourhood of Ypres and Ploegsteert, to ... the battle of the Somme."--Author's note.

Download or read book The Somme written by Martin Gilbert and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most distinguished historians, an authoritative and vivid account of the devastating World War I battle that claimed more than 300,000 lives At 7:30 am on July 1, 1916, the first Allied soldiers climbed out of their trenches along the Somme River in France and charged out into no-man's-land toward the barbed wire and machine guns at the German front lines. By the end of this first day of the Allied attack, the British army alone would lose 20,000 men; in the coming months, the fifteen-mile-long territory along the river would erupt into the epicenter of the Great War. The Somme would mark a turning point in both the war and military history, as soldiers saw the first appearance of tanks on the battlefield, the emergence of the air war as a devastating and decisive factor in battle, and more than one million casualties (among them a young Adolf Hitler, who took a fragment in the leg). In just 138 days, 310,000 men died. In this vivid, deeply researched account of one history's most destructive battles, historian Martin Gilbert tracks the Battle of the Somme through the experiences of footsoldiers (known to the British as the PBI, for Poor Bloody Infantry), generals, and everyone in between. Interwoven with photographs, journal entries, original maps, and documents from every stage and level of planning, The Somme is the most authoritative and affecting account of this bloody turning point in the Great War.

Download or read book Zero Hour Z Day written by Jonathan Porter and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Somme 1916 written by Paul Kendall and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What really happened on the first day of the Somme? Much controversy has surrounded the Somme offensive relating to its justification and its impact upon the course of the war. General Sir Douglas Haig's policies have been the subject of considerable debate about whether the heavy losses sustained were worth the small gains that were achieved which appeared to have little strategic value. That was certainly the case on many sectors on 1 July 1916, where British soldiers were unable to cross No Man's Land and failed to reach, or penetrate into, the German trenches. In other sectors, however, breaches were made in the German lines culminating in the capture that day of Leipzig Redoubt, Mametz and Montauban. This book aims to highlight the failures and successes on that day and for the first time evaluate those factors that caused some divisions to succeed in capturing their objectives whilst others failed. An important new study, this book is certain to answer these questions as well as challenging the many myths and misconceptions surrounding the battle that have been propagated for the last 100 years. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Download or read book Battle Tactics of the Western Front written by Paddy Griffith and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war.

Download or read book Verdun written by Paul Jankowski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 976 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At seven o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1916, the ground in northern France began to shake. For the next ten hours, twelve hundred German guns showered shells on a salient in French lines. The massive weight of explosives collapsed dugouts, obliterated trenches, severed communication wires, and drove men mad. As the barrage lifted, German troops moved forward, darting from shell crater to shell crater. The battle of Verdun had begun. In Verdun, historian Paul Jankowski provides the definitive account of the iconic battle of World War I. A leading expert on the French past, Jankowski combines the best of traditional military history-its emphasis on leaders, plans, technology, and the contingency of combat-with the newer social and cultural approach, stressing the soldier's experience, the institutional structures of the military, and the impact of war on national memory. Unusually, this book draws on deep research in French and German archives; this mastery of sources in both languages gives Verdun unprecedented authority and scope. In many ways, Jankowski writes, the battle represents a conundrum. It has an almost unique status among the battles of the Great War; and yet, he argues, it was not decisive, sparked no political changes, and was not even the bloodiest episode of the conflict. It is said that Verdun made France, he writes; but the question should be, What did France make of Verdun? Over time, it proved to be the last great victory of French arms, standing on their own. And, for France and Germany, the battle would symbolize the terror of industrialized warfare, "a technocratic Moloch devouring its children," where no advance or retreat was possible, yet national resources poured in ceaselessly, perpetuating slaughter indefinitely.

Download or read book Ghosts on the Somme written by Alastair H. Fraser and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2009-04-19 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of the Somme is one of the most famous, and earliest, films of war ever made. The film records the most disastrous day in the history of the British army—1 July 1916—and it had a huge impact when it was shown in Britain during the war. Since then images from it have been repeated so often in books and documentaries that it has profoundly influenced our view of the battle and of the Great War itself. Yet this book is the first in-depth study of this historic film, and it is the first to relate it to the surviving battleground of the Somme.The authors explore the film and its history in fascinating detail. They investigate how much of it was faked and consider how much credit for it should go to Geoffrey Malins and how much to John MacDowell. And they use modern photographs of the locations to give us a telling insight into the landscape of the battle and into the way in which this pioneering film was created.Their analysis of scenes in the film tells us so much about the way the British army operated in June and July 1916—how the troops were dressed and equipped, how they were armed and how their weapons were used. In some cases it is even possible to discover what they were saying. This painstaking exercise in historical reconstruction will be compelling reading for everyone who is interested in the Great War and the Battle of the Somme.

Download or read book Somme Mud written by Edward P. F. Lynch and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Legacy of the Somme 1916 written by Gerald Gliddon and published by Alan Sutton Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of the Somme is widely regarded as one of the bloodiest and most controversial land battles ever fought. The first British troops went over the top on 1 July 1916 and by the day's end some 19,000 had been killed in the greatest one-day loss the British Army has ever known. This notoriety has ensured that the Somme and its many fallen warriors live on in countless books, plays and films. Documentary sources about the Somme abound and there is a voracious appetite among the book-buying public for more. Legacy of the Somme 1916 is a unique bibliographical and media guide to the battle, setting on record - in as comprehensive a listing as is possible - much of what has been written, filmed or sound-recorded in the English language between 1916 and 1995. This detailed listing includes official, unofficial and unit histories of the British and Commonwealth armies; biographies, autobiographies and memoirs; literature, drama and media; archives, tanks and war graves registers. Short commentaries accompany each entry and a detailed index enables accurate cross-referencing of subjects. First and foremost this is a unique work of reference which will appeal to all with an interest in the First World War. It will aid historians, researchers and enthusiasts to track down the vast amount of information available on the battle, and will also prove valuable to libraries, museums and the book trade.

Download or read book The Battle of the Somme written by Alan Axelrod and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fought during 1916, the Battle of the Somme was conceived by the French and British as a great offensive to be waged against Germany even as France poured incredible numbers of men into the slaughterhouse that was the desperate defense of Verdun. The French general-in-chief, Joseph “Papa” Joffre, was especially anxious to go on the offensive. For the French high command cherished the belief, born in the era of Napoleon, that the success of French arms depended on attack and that defense was anathema to what the nationalistic philosopher Henri Bergson called the “élan vital” of the French people, a quality, he argued, that set the Gallic race apart from the rest of the world. After more than five months, the British eked out a penetration of some six miles into German territory. The cost had been 420,000 Britons killed or wounded (70,000 men per mile gained)—and most of these were from “Kitchener’s Army,” so-called Pals Battalions, working- and middle-class volunteers promised that they could fight alongside their friends, co-workers, and neighbors. This meant that the Somme, more than any other battle before or since, devastated the young male population of entire British towns, villages, and neighborhoods. French losses were just under 200,000. The Germans lost at least 650,000. Just as the French refused to give up ground at Verdun, the Germans held on stubbornly at the Somme—so stubbornly that General Ludendorff actually complained that his men “fought too doggedly, clinging too resolutely to the mere holding of ground, with the result that the losses were heavy.” The only thing “conclusive” about the Somme was the ineluctable fact of death. No battle ever fought in any conflict provided a stronger incentive for all sides to reach a negotiated peace—the “peace without victory” that Woodrow Wilson, still standing on the sidelines, urged the combatants to agree upon. Instead, the Kaiser, appalled both by Verdun and the Somme, relieved Falkenhayn and replaced him with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who had achieved great success on the Eastern Front. The new commanders created two new defensive lines, both well behind the Somme front. On the one hand, it was a retreat. On the other, it was a commitment to draw the French and British farther east and invite them to sacrifice more of their soldiery. The modest advance the British made was but the prelude to additional slaughter.

Download or read book Simple History A simple guide to World War I CENTENARY EDITION written by Daniel Turner and published by Daniel Turner. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This year 2014 marks the 100 years centenary of the First World War, one of the most destructive and world changing conflicts in the history of mankind. Learn the fascinating facts about the First World War and discover this epic moment in history. With the fun illustrations and the unique style of the 'Simple History' series, let this book absorb you into a period of history which truly changed the world. Jump into the muddy trenches of World War I and on the way meet the soldiers and leaders of the conflict and explore the exciting weapons, tanks, planes & technology of battle. Illustrated in the popular minimalist style of today, young reader's imaginations will come to life. Simple history gives you the facts in a simple uncomplicated and eye catching way. Simple history is part of an ongoing series, what will be the next episode? Designed for children aged 9 -12 Visit the website information: www.simplehistory.co.uk Build your collection today!

Download or read book When the Somme Ran Red written by Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: