Download or read book Gunner on the Somme written by W. R. Price and published by History Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gunner of the Somme is a remarkable memoir detailing the life of a gunner on the Western Front as observed by a gentleman scientist who served in the ranks.William Price was a Cambridge botanist who worked at Kew Gardens but a speech impediment made him feel unable to serve as an officer. He enrolled in the ranks and left this incredible description of how the brigade operated, how men worked on the guns and his experiences as a gunner.His account runs from the outbreak of war until he was wounded in late 1917, and there is a moving postscript written in 1958 when he returned to the battlefields around Ypres. In addition to his descriptions of the fighting at the Somme and Passchendaele, he includes fine detail - such as food and swearing in the ranks - that is hard to find elsewhere.
Download or read book Somme Gunners written by Frank Baldwin and published by Battleground Somme. This book was released on 2024-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part history book and part travel guide, Somme Gunners is aimed at anyone interested in the artillery on the first day of the Somme, as it fills a gap in the story of one of the most famous and bloodiest dates in British military history. Much has been written about the first day of the Somme. The focus has understandably been on the experience of the infantry, Kitchener's new Army and the stories of the locally recruited pals battalions and their fate on 1 July. Much less, however, has been written about the artillerymen who fired the barrage and whose effectiveness determined whether the attacks succeeded or failed. A quarter of the British Army were artillerymen. This book contains a collection of much-neglected stories about these brave men who carried out the preliminary bombardment and gives an insight into the problems they faced. It is the only book to give the locations of the artillery batteries, which supported the attack on the first day of the Somme, and the details of the barrage fired on that momentous day. This is key information for anyone seeking to discover more about their family members who witnessed the Somme. The book also aims to help those seeking to understand where their relatives fought by providing walking and driving tours, to help visitors understand the gunners' experience and contribution to the battle.
Download or read book A Gunner s Great War All Artilleryman s Experience from the Somme to the Subcontinent Large Print 16pt written by Ian Ronayne and published by ReadHowYouWant. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the First World War had not happened when it did, Channel Islander Clarence Ahier would almost certainly have led a mostly unremarkable life. But it did, and in October 1915, aged just 23 - years - old, Clarence left his home and volunteered to join the British Army. He would spend the next two and half years serving as an artilleryman on the Western Front.Now this in itself is not remarkable - millions of other young men did the same thing. But Clarence Ahier did do something remarkable, and it was something to set him out from almost all his contemporaries. From the very beginning of his time at the front, he wrote a graphic and moving account of his experiences of war.Clarence's ultimate plans for his meticulously written journal are unknown. But having lain unnoticed for years, it was recently discovered in a collection of dusty ephemera handed to a local history society.The complete journal consists of around 25,000 words, with a focus on Clarence's experience during the Battle of the Somme, in the fighting around Ypres, and, after he was wounded for the second time, the journey to India and his time there as a member of the garrison. This will be supported by additional explanatory text.
Download or read book With a Machine Gun to Cambrai written by George Coppard and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of trench warfare as experienced by a young volunteer during World War I.
Download or read book Machine Gunner on the Somme written by Captain Eric L Bird and published by . This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 The Missing of the Somme written by Geoff Dyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Missing of the Somme is part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance—and completely, unabashedly, unlike any other book about the First World War. Through visits to battlefields and memorials, Geoff Dyer examines the way that photographs and film, poetry and prose determined—sometimes in advance of the events described—the way we would think about and remember the war. With his characteristic originality and insight, Dyer untangles and reconstructs the network of myth and memory that illuminates our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.
Download or read book Mud Blood and Bullets written by Edward Rowbotham and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2010-12-26 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1915 and the Great War has been raging for a year, when Edward Rowbotham, a coal miner from the Midlands, volunteers for Kitchener's Army. Drafted into the newly-formed Machine Gun Corps, he is sent to fight in places whose names will forever be associated with mud and blood and sacrifice: Ypres, the Somme, and Passchendaele. He is one of the 'lucky' ones, winning the Military Medal for bravery and surviving more than two-and-a-half years of the terrible slaughter that left nearly a million British soldiers dead by 1918 and wiped out all but six of his original company. He wrote these memoirs fifty years later, but found his memories of life in the trenches had not diminished at all. The sights and sounds of battle, the excitement, the terror, the extraordinary comradeship, are all vividly described as if they had happened to him only yesterday. Likely to be one of the last first-hand accounts to come to light, Mud, Blood and Bullets offers a rare perspective of the First World War from an ordinary soldier's viewpoint.
Download or read book Thunder in the Skies written by Derek Grout and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2015-08-29 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary, newly discovered account from an ordinary Canadian on the ground in the crucial battles of the First World War. What was it like to be a field gunner in the Great War? Drawing on the unpublished letters and diary of field gunner Lt. Bert Sargent and his fellow soldiers, Thunder in the Skies takes the reader from enlistment in late 1914, through training camp, to the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, the Hundred Days Offensive, and home again with peace. Posted just behind the front lines, Sargent and field gunners like him spent gruelling months supporting the infantry in the trenches. Theirs was a very different war, as dangerous or more at times as the one on the front lines. As an ordinary Canadian writing letters home to ordinary people, Sargent gives a wrenching, insightful account of a tight-knit band of soldiers swept up in some of the most important battles of the war that shaped the twentieth century. Thunder in the Skies details the daily life of artillerymen fighting in the First World War in a way no other book has before.
Download or read book Machine Gunner 1914 1918 written by C. E. Crutchley and published by Pen & Sword Books. This book was released on 2014-02-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1914 there were only two machine guns supporting a British infantry battalion of 800 men, and in the light of the effectiveness of German and French machine guns the Machine Gun Corps was formed in October 1915. This remarkable book, compiled and edited by C E Crutchley, is a collection of the personal accounts of officers and men who served in the front lines with their machine guns in one of the most ghastly wars, spread over three continents. The strength of the book lies in the fact that these are the actual words of the soldiers themselves, complete with characteristic modes of expression and oddities of emphasis and spelling. All theatres of war are covered from the defence of the Suez Canal, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia in the east to France and Flanders, the German offensive of March 1918 and the final act on the Western Front that brought the war to an end. SELLING POINTS: * A harrowing story of the types of combat used in World War I * Pulls together the experiences of different people who served, helping yo to understand what these men went through 8 pages of b/w plates
Download or read book The Young Gunner written by David Hutchison and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Young Gunner describes the history of the Royal Field Artillery in France and Flanders in the Great War, including the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The book is based on the letters and journals of Second Lieutenant Colin Hutchison who joined the army aged 19 just before the war started. He found himself in command of a single gun in battle in 1914, a section of guns in 1915, a battery of six guns in 1916, and a brigade of 24 guns by the end of the war. He tells the story of front line action in thirteen battles on the Western Front, including Mons 1914, Ypres 1915, The Somme 1916, Passchendaele 1917 and Ypres 1918. His personal stories are inspiring, but more importantly his letters and journals describe, in a consistent style, not only life on the front line with the artillery, but also the details of his tactical deployment in battle. David explains, from his perspective, why so many men died unnecessarily in that war, and why the changes in tactical thinking he saw as necessary to achieve success and to prevent casualties were so slow to be adopted. One cannot understand the battles of the First World War without understanding the artillery. This book, with copious factual footnotes and helpful maps, gives new insights into many of the battles, and also covers all aspects of the field artillery at war on the Western Front, with the final chapter drawing together the tactical developments year on year. The Young Gunner will appeal to readers of military history, and in particular to those interested in the stresses and experiences of any one of the 140,000 men who served in the Royal Field Artillery in the First World War.
Download or read book Machine Gunner on the Somme written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Machine Gunner 1914 18 written by C. E. Crutchley and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-11-28 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1914 there were only two machine guns supporting a British infantry battalion of 800 men, and in the light of the effectiveness of German and French machine guns the Machine Gun Corps was formed in October 1915. This remarkable book, compiled and edited by C E Crutchley, is a collection of the personal accounts of officers and men who served in the front lines with their machine guns in one of the most ghastly wars, spread over three continents. The strength of the book lies in the fact that these are the actual words of the soldiers themselves, complete with characteristic modes of expression and oddities of emphasis and spelling. All theatres of war are covered from the defence of the Suez Canal, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia in the east to France and Flanders, the German offensive of March 1918 and the final act on the Western Front that brought the war to an end. October 2006 is the 90th anniversary of the formation of the Machine Gun Corps.
Download or read book Fighting the Somme written by Jack Sheldon and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * A thought-provoking study of the doctrine, particularly command and control, that the German army developed in fighting the defensive battle of the Somme 1916. * Insight into the development of German army doctrine and command and control. * Uses archival evidence and contemporary accounts to illustrate how the Germans put doctrine into pract
Download or read book Shadows of the Somme written by Paul Coffey and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-09-18 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'He looked up at the sky, crystal blue and cloudless ... he closed his eyes, put the whistle to his lips and blew.' The first of July 1916 and in the French countryside tens of thousands of doomed British soldiers are being killed and wounded as the bloody Battle of the Somme begins. Captain Edward Harris, vainly encouraging his men over the top and headlong into the murderous German machine guns, is badly wounded. Crawling to a shell hole for cover, he lies helpless as the carnage continues around him. October 2015 and Tom Harris has no interest in the First World War. For him it's a conflict from another age. But during a visit to the battlefields he becomes fascinated by a headstone in a British war cemetery showing his namesake. Desperate to learn more Tom begins to delve into the past where he discovers ordinary men consumed by extraordinary times. And in doing so he unearths a remarkable and moving story of loss, despair, hope and redemption.
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 The 1916 Battle of the Somme written by Peter Liddle and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not restricted to the view of the front-line infantryman, this text also describes the experiences of the gunner, sapper, airman, medical officer, and nursing sister. The author explains how the Somme became scorched into the nation's heritage and into its historical consciousness, but with a distortion produced by a literary legacy as regrettable as it is understandable.
