Download or read book Tracing British Battalions on the Somme written by Ray Westlake and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although seventy-eight years have passed since the Battle of the Somme was fought, interest in this, the bloodiest battle of the First World War, has never waned. Ray Westlake has collated all the information so painstakingly gathered, to produce a comprehensive compendium of the exact movements of every battalion involved in the battle. This book is invaluable not only to researchers but to all those visiting the battlefield and anxious to trace the movements of their forbears.

Download or read book British Battalions on the Somme written by Ray Westlake and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2004-06-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the infantry battalions belonging to regiments of the British Army and the 63rd (Royal Naval Division) during their service in the Somme area. Although seventy-eight years have passed since the Battle of the Somme was fought, interest in this, the bloodiest battle of the First World War, has never waned. Ray Westlake has collated all the information so painstakingly gathered, to produce a comprehensive compendium of the exact movements of every battalion involved in the battle. This book is invaluable not only to researchers but to all those visiting the battlefield and anxious to trace the movements of their forebears.

Download or read book British Battalions on the Somme 1916 written by Ray Westlake and published by Leo Cooper Books. This book was released on 1994 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Somme in 1916 was the supreme test of the British Army; this book covers all 616 battalions involved, including units of the London Division, 16th Irish and 36th Ulster Divisions, and Tyneside Irish and Scottish Brigades.

Download or read book The British Soldier on the Somme in 1916 written by Peter Liddle and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Somme written by Robin Prior and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Despite superior air and artillery power, British soldiers died in catastrophic numbers at the Battle of Somme in 1916. What went wrong, and who was responsible? This book meticulously reconstructs the battle, assigns responsibility to military and political leaders, and changes forever the way we understand this encounter and the history of the Western Front"--Publisher description.

Download or read book Pals on the Somme 1916 written by Roni Wilkinson and published by Pen & Sword Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pals on the Somme covers the history of all the Pals Battalions who fought on the Somme during the First World War. The book looks at the events which led to the war and how the 'Pals' phenomenon was born. It considers the attitude and social conditions in Britain at the time. It covers the training and equipping of the Battalions, the preparations for the 'Big Push', 1st July 1916, and going over the top, and how each battalion fared, failed or succeeded. It looks at how they Battalions had to undergo a change after the 1st July, due to the heavy casualties, and the final victory in 1918, and how the battalions were eventually amalgamated. The final chapter examines how each area coped in the aftermath of losing their men in the three year slaughter. It covers the organizations and visits to the Battlefields as they are today.

Download or read book British Battalions in France Belgium 1914 written by Ray Westlake and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1997-09-05 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique account of the 143 infantry battalions of the British Army that served in France and Belgium from August to the end of December, 1914, during WWI. Ray Westlake has painstakingly compiled a comprehensive compendium of the exact movements of every regiment involved on the various battlefields in France and Flanders during World War One. Detailed records of movements, both in and out of battle areas and on a day-by-day basis, are covered in the same meticulous style as the author’s previous books, British Battalions on the Somme and British Regiments at Gallipoli.

Download or read book British Regiments at Gallipoli written by Ray Westlake and published by . This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the huge success of British Battalions on the Somme (Leo Cooper 1994), Ray Westlake has now produced a source book of the same quality on the Gallipoli Campaign. It has come about as a result of many years of enquiries, not only from researchers keen to establish what part each regiment had played in the battle, but from the family historian eager to know just where relatives had served.Now that the Gallipoli Peninsula is more accessible, more and more people are visiting the area and forming an interest in this often neglected campaign. As with the Somme book, it is hoped that the family historian can once again follow in the footsteps of their grandfathers, fathers, uncles, etc.While military historians can for the first time, in a comprehensive volume, access important information on a regimental and battalion scale. British Regiments at Gallipoli is an account of every infantry battalion and yeomanry regiment of the British Army during their service on the Gallipoli Peninsula.Battles and engagements, along with movements both in and out of the line, are being dealt with at battalion level rather than on a larger and less detailed divisional scale.

Download or read book West Country Regiments on the Somme written by Tim Saunders and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previous works have concentrated on the 'Pal' in Britain's northern towns and cities. This book seeks to explore the little appreciated part in the Battle of the Somme played by the Regular and Volunteer Service battalions of two small West Country regiments; the Devonshire Regiment and the Dorset Regiment. These two regiments had five battalions in action on the first day of the battle and were represented in most of the significant attacks during the three and half months of the 1916. The reader will be able to form a clear picture of the battle's development as a whole through the eyes of Westcountry soldiers who fought on the Somme.

Download or read book Breakdown written by Taylor Downing and published by Little, Brown Book Group. This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paralysis. Stuttering. The 'shakes'. Inability to stand or walk. Temporary blindness or deafness. When strange symptoms like these began appearing in men at Casualty Clearing Stations in 1915, a debate began in army and medical circles as to what it was, what had caused it and what could be done to cure it. But the numbers were never large. Then in July 1916 with the start of the Somme battle the incidence of shell shock rocketed. The high command of the British army began to panic. An increasingly large number of men seemed to have simply lost the will to fight. As entire battalions had to be withdrawn from the front, commanders and military doctors desperately tried to come up with explanations as to what was going wrong. 'Shell shock' - what we would now refer to as battle trauma - was sweeping the Western Front. By the beginning of August 1916, nearly 200,000 British soldiers had been killed or wounded during the first month of fighting along the Somme. Another 300,000 would be lost before the battle was over. But the army always said it could not calculate the exact number of those suffering from shell shock. Re-assessing the official casualty figures, Taylor Downing for the first time comes up with an accurate estimate of the total numbers who were taken out of action by psychological wounds. It is a shocking figure. Taylor Downing's revelatory new book follows units and individuals from signing up to the Pals Battalions of 1914, through to the horrors of their experiences on the Somme which led to the shell shock that, unrelated to weakness or cowardice, left the men unable to continue fighting. He shines a light on the official - and brutal - response to the epidemic, even against those officers and doctors who looked on it sympathetically. It was, they believed, a form of hysteria. It was contagious. And it had to be stopped. Breakdown brings an entirely new perspective to bear on one of the iconic battles of the First World War.

Download or read book 1st Bedfordshire written by Steven Fuller and published by Soldier Lads - First World War. This book was released on 2012-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In August 1914 the 1st Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment were amongst the small professional British Army who gathered and prepared for a war that would 'be over by Christmas'. With a long and proud history, dating back to 1688, the regiment's fighting men had already served through numerous wars and rebellions over and above long periods on garrison duties in the 'Fever Isles', the New World, and throughout the expanding British Empire. So when war was declared the 'Old Contemptibles' of the 1st Battalion would find themselves heavily engaged in more intense fighting during the first three months of the Great War, as it came to be known, than many of the newly raised 'Service' battalions would experience during their entire existence. Despite heavy casualties, atrocious conditions, and a steep learning curve, they remained professional and stoic through the early fire and movement battles and then the stagnant, arbitrary nature of trench warfare. They endured pitched battles, heavy shelling, snipers, gas attacks, fended off overwhelming numbers of enemy troops, and carried their bayonets across no man's land into the seething infernos of machine gun and artillery barrages. This is the first part of their story, from their first defiant defense amongst the slag heaps at Mons, through to the ferocious fighting during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. By integrating a wide variety of official and personal sources, supported by maps, and personalised with individual stories and photographs, Steven Fuller brings the fascinating and extraordinary history of this distinguished battalion and it's 'Soldier Lads' to life.

Download or read book From the Somme to Victory written by Peter Simkins and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Simkins has established a reputation over the last forty years as one of the most original and stimulating historians of the First World War. He has made a major contribution to the debate about the performance of the British Army on the Western Front. This collection of his most perceptive and challenging essays, which concentrates on British operations in France between 1916 and 1918, shows that this reputation is richly deserved. He focuses on key aspects of the army's performance in battle, from the first day of the Somme to the Hundred Days, and gives a fascinating insight into the developing theory and practice of the army as it struggled to find a way to break through the German line. His rigorous analysis undermines some of the common assumptions - and the myths - that still cling to the history of these British battles.

Download or read book The First Day on the Somme written by Martin Middlebrook and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2006-06-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words - Guardian 'For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways' On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches of the Somme into No Man's Land and began to walk towards dug-in German troops armed with machine-guns. By the end of the day there were more than 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatal. Martin Middlebrook's now-classic account of the blackest day in the history of the British army draws on official sources from the time, and on the words of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror.

Download or read book British Battalions on the Western Front written by Ray Westlake and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2000-11-12 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author's previous three books in this series—British Battalions on the Somme, 1916, British Regiments at Gallipoli andBritish Battalions in France and Belgium, 1914 have achieved all that they set out to do. On the historical side it is now agreed by a large number of grateful historians, researchers, museum curators, librarians etc. that for the first time they are able to establish quickly and conveniently what part each unit played in these important campaigns. It was also intended to provide family historians with a means of tracing the war service of their relatives. This again has been accomplished. British Battalions in France and Belgium, January- June, 1915 sets out with the same objectives in mind, on this occasion providing a unique account of the 291 infantry battalions of the British Army that served in France and Belgium from 1st January to the end of June, 1915. Over 500 volumes of war diaries and unit histories have been consulted, along with personal memoirs and diaries. Detailed records of movements, both in and out of battle areas and on a day-by-day basis, being covered in the same meticulous style as before.

Download or read book The Somme written by John Harris and published by Conran Octopus. This book was released on 1975 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Borrowed Soldiers written by Mitchell A. Yockelson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-01-18 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The combined British Expeditionary Force and American II Corps successfully pierced the Hindenburg Line during the Hundred Days Campaign of World War I, an offensive that hastened the war’s end. Yet despite the importance of this effort, the training and operation of II Corps has received scant attention from historians. Mitchell A. Yockelson delivers a comprehensive study of the first time American and British soldiers fought together as a coalition force—more than twenty years before D-Day. He follows the two divisions that constituted II Corps, the 27th and 30th, from the training camps of South Carolina to the bloody battlefields of Europe. Despite cultural differences, General Pershing’s misgivings, and the contrast between American eagerness and British exhaustion, the untested Yanks benefited from the experience of battle-toughened Tommies. Their combined forces contributed much to the Allied victory. Yockelson plumbs new archival sources, including letters and diaries of American, Australian, and British soldiers to examine how two forces of differing organization and attitude merged command relationships and operations. Emphasizing tactical cooperation and training, he details II Corps’ performance in Flanders during the Ypres-Lys offensive, the assault on the Hindenburg Line, and the decisive battle of the Selle. Featuring thirty-nine evocative photographs and nine maps, this account shows how the British and American military relationship evolved both strategically and politically. A case study of coalition warfare, Borrowed Soldiers adds significantly to our understanding of the Great War.

Download or read book Slaughter on the Somme 1 July 1916 written by Martin Mace and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2013-08-19 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 07.30 hours on 1 July 1916, the devastating cacophony of the Allied artillery fell silent along the front on the Somme. The ear-splitting explosions were replaced by the shrill sound of hundreds of whistles being blown. At that moment, tens of thousands of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches on their part of the Western Front, and began to make their way steadily towards the German lines opposite. It was the first day of the Battle of the Somme.By the end of the day, a number of the regiments involved had met with some degree of success; others had suffered heavy losses for no gain, whilst a few quite literally ceased to exist. That day, the old infantry tactics of the British Army clashed head-on with the reality of modern warfare. On what is generally accepted as the worst day in the British Armys history, there were more than 60,000 casualties a third of them fatal.In this publication, the authors have drawn together, for the first time ever, all the War Diary entries for 171 British Regiments that went over the top that day a day that even now still touches so many families both in the United Kingdom and around the world. The result will be a vital work of reference to the events of 1 July 1916, a valuable information source for not only for those interested in military history, but genealogists and historians alike.