Download or read book Gunners in Normandy written by Major Frank Baldwin and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The official account of the Royal Artillery's activities in the Normandy campaign, this volume breaks down the historic achievements of the Regiment, integrating newly published research with a detailed account of their activities, logistics and equipment in the offensive. Gunners in Normandy includes mention of every regiment that served, a Roll of Honour, and a list of the dead by unit. This book presents the definitive record of events, assembled from interviews with veterans, papers and documents from the Firepower Archives, terrain studies, personal memoirs, war diaries and other official documents. Serious students of the battle for Normandy should find this essential reading, with comprehensive coverage of the role of the Royal Artillery, and much material not published anywhere else, including orders of battle, the details of targets engaged by the guns and their effectiveness.
Download or read book Gunners in Normandy written by Frank Baldwin and published by History Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the Royal Artillery at Normandy: unparalleled level of information drawing on personal account and official records
Download or read book D Day Gunners written by Frank Baldwin and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-07-20 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part history book and part travel guide, D-Day Gunners is aimed at anyone interested in the artillery on the D-Day beaches and landing grounds. While the heritage of the D-Day beaches and landing sites is well documented, this rarely includes the artillery story. The author of this book aims to correct this by providing a visitors' guide to the artillery stories associated with the battlefield heritage that remains on the D-Day beaches, mapping the fire-plan for D-Day against the known German locations, and looking at what happened at these places. There is relatively little explanation about the role of the artillery in general or the deeds of artillerymen, in particular those of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. This book tells of the significance of artillery on D-Day and the part it played in the outcome. Initial reports published stressed that the coastal defences were effectively neutralized by the bombing and that no significant counter attacks developed on D-Day. However, post-war accounts increasingly attributed allied success to allied fire power. The book tells the story of the men who served the guns on the D-Day beaches, and the effects they had on the outcome of the battles on D-Day and afterwards. This volume is primarily about British Gunners and certain German Kannoniers. The book has been written as a guide to the battlefields on the D-Day beaches and landing grounds, telling the gunners’ stories that are not always commemorated on memorials, interpretation boards, or recorded in more general guides. These poignant stories include war poets and heroes decorated for bravery, or just the tales of some of the men buried in the war cemeteries or commemorated on the memorials. It also provides a guide in lay terms of the technical impact of field anti-tank and AA artillery on the war. A second volume will tell the story of artillerymen on the American beaches and landing grounds.
Download or read book The Guns of Normandy written by George Blackburn and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2012-03-26 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the weeks after D-Day, the level of artillery action in Normandy was unprecedented. In what was a relatively small area, both sides bombarded each other relentlessly for three months, each trying to overwhelm the other by sheer fire power. The Guns of Normandy puts the reader in the front lines of this horrific battle. In the most graphic and authentic detail, it brings to life every aspect of a soldier’s existence, from the mortal terror of impending destruction, to the unending fatigue, to the giddy exhilaration at finding oneself still, inexplicably, alive. The story of this crucial battle opens in England, as the 4th Field Regiment receives news that something big is happening in France and that after long years of training they are finally going into action. The troop ships set out from besieged London and arrive at the D-Day beaches in the appalling aftermath of the landing. What follows is the most harrowing and realistic account of what it is like to be in action, as the very lead man in the attack: an artillery observer calling in fire on enemy positions. The story unfolds in the present tense, giving the uncomfortably real sense that “You are here.” The conditions under which the troops had to exist were horrific. There was near-constant terror of being hit by incoming shells; prolonged lack of sleep; boredom; weakness from dysentery; sudden and gruesome deaths of close friends; and severe physical privation and mental anguish. And in the face of all this, men were called upon to perform heroic acts of bravery and they did. Blackburn provides genuine insight to the nature of military service for the average Canadian soldier in the Second World War – something that is all too often lacking in the accounts of armchair historians and television journalists. The result is a classic account of war at the sharp end. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book Citizen Soldiers written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Stephen E. Ambrose, bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the inspiring story of the ordinary men of the U.S. army in northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bitterest days of World War II. In this riveting account, historian Stephen E. Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Citizen Soldiers opens at 0001 hours, June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and ends at 0245 hours, May 7, 1945, with the allied victory. It is biography of the US Army in the European Theater of Operations, and Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war. From the high command down to the ordinary soldier, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.
Download or read book The Guns of War written by George G. Blackburn and published by Constable. This book was released on 2000 with total page 1060 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is one of the rare first-hand accounts to come out of this period of the war and covers the Battle of Caen, the closing of the Falaise pocket, through to the crossing of the Seine.
Download or read book The Guns of Normandy written by George G. Blackburn and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the weeks after D-Day, the level of artillery action in Normandy was unprecedented. In what was a relatively small area, both sides bombarded each other relentlessly for three months, each trying to overwhelm the other by sheer fire power. The Guns of Normandy puts the reader in the front lines of this horrific battle. In the most graphic and authentic detail, it brings to life every aspect of a soldier's existence, from the mortal terror of impending destruction, to the unending fatigue, to the giddy exhilaration at finding oneself still, inexplicably, alive. The story of this crucial battle opens in England, as the 4th Field Regiment receives news that something big is happening in France and that after long years of training they are finally going into action. The troop ships set out from besieged London and arrive at the D-Day beaches in the appalling aftermath of the landing. What follows is the most harrowing and realistic account of what it is like to be in action, as the very lead man in the attack: an artillery observer calling in fire on enemy positions. The story unfolds in the present tense, giving the uncomfortably real sense that "You are here." The conditions under which the troops had to exist were horrific. There was near-constant terror of being hit by incoming shells; prolonged lack of sleep; boredom; weakness from dysentery; sudden and gruesome deaths of close friends; and severe physical privation and mental anguish. And in the face of all this, men were called upon to perform heroic acts of bravery and they did. Blackburn provides genuine insight into the nature of military service for the average Canadian soldier in the Second World War -- something that is all too often lacking in the accounts of armchair historians and television journalists. The result is a classic account of war at the sharp end.
Download or read book Gunner written by Bill Todd and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: GUNNER is the diary, photos and postcards of an ordinary soldier from Normandy to Germany in 1944-45. It also includes extracts from the regimental war diary and history. Sergeant Leslie Todd served with the 90th (Middlesex) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery (Territorial Army) which was formed on April 1, 1939, with its headquarters at Alexandra Palace, North London. It began as a cadre from the Finchley-based 61st AA regiment. Recruits were drawn from the Muswell Hill, Palmers Green, Southgate, Crouch End and Hornsey areas of North London. The 90th mobilised on August 24, 1939, ten days before the declaration of war. The regiment provided home air defence during the Battle of Britain and afterwards, later training to engage ground and sea targets before landing in Normandy on July 7, 1944, a month after D-Day. The 90th took part in the Battle of Normandy before supporting the advance through Belgium and Holland, fighting at Nijmegen before crossing the Rhine into Germany. All proceeds from GUNNER go to the Not Forgotten Association military charity.
Download or read book Soldiers in Normandy written by Alexandre Thers and published by Casemate Pub & Book Dist Llc. This book was released on 2005 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This full color mini-guide shows all the uniforms and equipment of the various types of US soldiers deployed in Normandy.
Download or read book Voices from D Day written by Jon E. Lewis and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2014-04-03 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary and compelling story of the 6th of June, 1944, Operation Overlord and the Battle for Normandy is told here through first-hand testimonies from civilians and soldiers on both sides. It features classic accounts by soldiers such as Rommel and Bradley, together with frontline reports by some of the world’s finest authors and war correspondents, including Ernest Hemingway and Alan Melville. Highlights of this unique collection include the break-out from Omaha beach as told by the GI who led it, a French housewife’s story of what it was like to wake up to the invasion, German soldiers’ accounts of finding themselves facing the biggest seaborne invasion in history, a view from the command post by a member of Eisenhower’s staff, combat reports, diaries and letters of British veterans of all forces and services, and accounts of the follow-up battle for Normandy, one of the bloodiest struggles of the war. The Allied armada involved over 5,000 craft, which had by the end of ‘the longest day’ succeeded in landing 156,000 men, and in breaching Hitler’s much vaunted defensive wall. Dramatic and historic though the events of D-Day were, they were but the opening shots of a much larger and equally remarkable battle – the battle for Normandy. It took the Allies ten weeks of bloody fighting to get out of Normandy, during which the infantry casualty rate rivalled that of the Western Front in the First World War. This book is the story of that fateful day, the preparations which led up to it, and the ten weeks of fighting in Normandy which followed it, told by the men and women who were there, who witnessed it at first hand. It is compiled from interviews with scores of veterans, from diaries, memoirs and letters. Occasionally, exact chronology has been sacrificed in the interests of communicating better the experience of Normandy, for above all this is a book about how the invasion looked and felt to those who were there. It is often brutally honest, far removed from the comfortable romantic version of D-Day and the battle for Normandy. (For example, there are accounts here of crimes committed against German POWs by Allied soldiers.)
Download or read book A Machine Gunner s War written by Ernest Albert Andrews and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2022-06-20 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A machine gunner chronicles his time on the frontlines of WW2 from D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge and the Wehrmacht’s last stand. American machine gunner Ernest “Andy” Andrews arrived in the UK just before deploying to fight in D-Day. Struck by a bullet in Normandy, he was evacuated to England before returning to participate in the race across France. Andy’s squad defended a bunker in the Siegfried Line and fought its way through the Hurtgen Forest to take Hill 232. When the Germans attempted to retake the hill, Andy faced his toughest battle and suffered a shoulder wound. Andy rejoined his company in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and the Rhine campaign, and in Germany's Harz Mountains, where the Wehrmacht was trying to organize a last stand. Andy's outfit ends the war fighting in Czechoslovakia, where Andy witnesses the German surrender. Following occupation duty, Andy returned to the States in October 1945. The war shaped Andy's postwar life in countless ways, and in 1994, Andy made the first of three return visits to the European battlefields where he had fought. This vivid firsthand account takes the reader along from Normandy to victory with Andy and his machine-gun crew.
Download or read book Armor in Normandy written by Alexandre Thers and published by Histoire Et Collections. This book was released on 2005 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This full color mini-guide shows all the uniforms and equipment of the various types of US soldiers deployed in Normandy.
Download or read book Normandy 1944 written by Dick Stodghill and published by Publishamerica Incorporated. This book was released on 2006-07-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the Battle of Normandy, neither glamorized nor sanitized, as seen from ground level during the bloody summer of 1944the personal experiences of an 18-year-old 4th Infantry Division rifleman who joined his company shortly after D-Day. He quickly came to admire and respect the men of G Company, then was close by as one by one many of them died during the horrific fighting in the fields and streets of a normally beautiful and tranquil land. Here are the realities of that war: opening the casualty blanket rolls, seeing the dead being buried in mattress covers, the sounds, the smells and the fears of men in infantry combat. A glimpse, too, of the boys who fought the battles of World War II as they grew up or matured during the Great Depression, the rigors of infantry basic training, life in England in the weeks leading up to D-Day.
Download or read book The Normandy Campaign 1944 written by John Buckley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-07-29 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With essays from leading names in military history, this new book re-examines the crucial issues and debates of the D-Day campaign. It tackles a range of core topics, placing them in their current historiographical context, to present new and sometimes revisionist interpretations of key issues, such as the image of the Allied armies compared with the Germans, the role of air power, and the lessons learned by the military from their operations. As the Second World War is increasingly becoming a field of revisionism, this book sits squarely within growing debates, shedding new light on topics and bringing current thinking from our leading military and strategic historians to a wider audience. This book will be of great interest to students of the Second World War, and of military and strategic studies in general.
Download or read book Battles of a Gunner Officer written by John Philip Jones and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-05-31 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was it like to serve as an artillery officer during the Second World War? How did he view the battlefield and experience combat? And how did his work with the guns combine with that of the other arms - the infantry, the tanks? Peter Pettit's diary, covering his entire wartime career in the Royal Artillery, edited and with an extensive introduction by John Philip Jones, offers a rare insight into the day-to-day existence of a gunner at war, and it is a valuable record of the role played by the Royal Artillery during the conflict. Since Peter Pettit served as a field officer in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy and during the Allied advance across France and Belgium into Germany, his account shows the wide range of challenges that confronted the artillery in different conditions at each stage of the war. Although the landscapes and battlefields changed, the practical problems and acute dangers he faced remained much the same, and he recorded them in the same open and forthright way. His authentic record, combined with John Philip Jones's meticulous description of the planning and progress of each campaign, provide a rounded view the nature of the artillery war and the men who fought it.General Sir Richard Barrons, Commander, Joint Forces Command: 'Professor John Philip Jones breaks new ground as he brings into the light for the first time the private record of one rather special participant. Peter Pettit's personal and contemporaneous notes detail his journey from the first encounters with a determined enemy in Tunisia, through the difficult invasion of Sicily, and finally on to the outstanding events of Normandy in 1944 . . .. . . This story is made much more interesting and accessible for the general reader by the accompanying succinct historical overview of the events. . .. . . For anyone looking for a rare insight into the hard business of field soldiering in the crucible of war, these diaries paint a very colourful, accurate and illuminating picture.'
Download or read book D Day Through French Eyes written by Mary Louise Roberts and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A moving examination of how French civilians experienced the fighting” at Normandy during WWII from the acclaimed author of What Soldiers Do (Telegraph, UK). “Like big black umbrellas, they rain down on the fields across the way, and then disappear behind the black line of the hedges.” Silent parachutes dotting the night sky—that’s how one Normandy woman learned that the D-Day invasion was under way in June of 1944. Though they yearned for liberation, the French had to steel themselves for war, knowing that their homes, lands, and fellow citizens would have to bear the brunt of the attack. With D-Day through French Eyes, Mary Louise Roberts turns the conventional narrative of D-Day on its head, taking readers across the Channel to view the invasion anew. Roberts builds her history from an impressive range of gripping first-person accounts by French citizens throughout the region. A farm family notices that cabbage is missing from their garden—then discovers that the guilty culprits are American paratroopers hiding in the cowshed. Fishermen rescue pilots from the wreck of their B-17, then search for clothes big enough to disguise them as civilians. A young man learns to determine whether a bomb is whistling overhead or silently plummeting toward them. When the allied infantry arrived, French citizens guided them to hidden paths and little-known bridges, giving them crucial advantages over the German occupiers. As she did in her acclaimed account of GIs in postwar France, What Soldiers Do, Roberts here sheds vital new light on a story we thought we knew. "In the great tradition of Studs Terkel and Is Paris Burning?, Mary Louise Roberts uses the diaries and memoirs of French civilians to narrate a history of the French at D-Day that has for too long been occluded by the mythology of the allied landing.”—Alice Kaplan, author of Dreaming in French
Download or read book Normandiefront written by Vince Milano and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-10-21 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the cold morning of June 6, 1944, thousands of German soldiers are in position from Port en Bessin eastwards past Colleville on the Normandy coast, aware that a massive invasion force is heading straight for them. According to Allied Intelligence, they shouldn't be there. 352 infantry division would ensure the invaders would pay a massive price to take Omaha beach. There were veterans from the Russian front amongst them and they were well trained and equipped. the presence of 352 Division meant that the number of defenders was literally double the number expected - and on the best fortified of all the invasion beaches. What makes this account of the bloody struggle unique is that it is told from the German standpoint, using firsthand testimony of German combatants. There are not many of them left and these accounts have been painstakingly collected by the authors over many years.
