Download or read book The Hell They Called High Wood written by Terry Norman and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2003-08-19 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This WWI military history presents a close examination of the costly but victorious Attack on High Wood during the Battle of the Somme. From July 1st to November 18th of 1916, British and French allies fought against the German Empire in the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest military engagements of all time. Its fiercely contested focal point was a 75-acre patch of forest known as High Wood. The Germans showed great determination and sacrifice defending the feature. It was not until September that it finally fell to the attackers. Yet despite the historic victory, the successful divisional commander was dismissed for "wanton waste of men". In The Hell They Called High Wood, military historian Terry Norman paints a graphic and gruesome picture of the fighting in this pivotal battle. He also sheds light on the frontline force’s relationship to high command—and the problems it caused.

Download or read book High Wood written by Michael Harrison and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bois de Fourcaux, a luxuriant woodland covering 75 acres, set in the area of the battlefields of the Somme, dominates the surrounding landscape today, as it did in the summer of the year 1916. Known to the British Army as High Wood, the invading Germans had occupied the wood as it proved to be a natural field fortification and a menace that had to be neutralized if the British were to find a way forward in their attempts to breach the trench systems of the German Army and break out into the Green Fields Beyond.This insightful publication will take the battlefield visitor, and also those who are unable to visit the site, on a journey through the history of the battles for High Wood and its environs. It covers the most significant dates in the British Armys struggle to eject the invader and the Germans determination to hold that which they considered to be their new National Frontier. This is the story of the largely amateur British Army of 1916. Lessons were learned in the roaring furnace of the Somme that would transform the fighting ability of the British irrevocably: High Wood was at the epicentre of that learning process.The book contains detailed maps from the time of the High Wood battles using the excellent British Trench maps and, importantly, an explanation on the use of the numbered grid system, which enables the visitor to locate, to within 5 yards, the site of an action that took place 100 years ago. Photographs are also included to enhance the visitor experience. Join us for the journey

Download or read book Real Jeeves written by Brian Halford and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Real Jeeves tells the story of a young cricketer whose glorious life was snuffed out, but whose name will live forever. Plucked from country-house cricket, all-rounder Percy Jeeves was to outshine the Golden Age's greats over two seasons with Warwickshire, clean bowling Jack Hobbs, hitting Wilfred Rhodes for six, and outclassing England captain Plum Warner. In September 1914, Jeeves bowled Warwickshire to victory over champions Surrey. It was his 50th first-class match-and his last. The Real Jeeves traces Percy's life from idyllic childhood via county cricket into the nightmare of war. Excerpts from battalion diaries detail the horrors of the Western Front, and ultimately his demise on the Somme. Yet Percy Jeeves' name lived on thanks to P. G. Wodehouse, who saw him play at Cheltenham in 1913 and was so impressed he noted the name for a character who shared the modest Yorkshireman's immaculate conduct and appearance.

Download or read book Aspects of Birmingham written by Brian Hall and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are now over 25 books published as part of the Aspects Series, each one taking readers on a voyage of nostalgic discovery through their town, city or area. Here Birmingham, once 'The Workshop of the Empire' is revealed in twelve studies of the city and its people. Here we find 'Birmingham Municipal Bank', the only successful council operated bank and 'Lesser Known Characters' about the city. We see the work of the 'Birmingham Mission' and 'Birmingham Children's Emigration Homes'. During the troubled 1930's, Birmingham held a 'Great Pageant' and as war clouds gathered over Europe, the city's young men fought in 'The Spanish Civil War'. All this and so much more is available in this, the first Aspects of Birmingham.

Download or read book Walking the Somme written by Paul Reed and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of the classic WWI battlefield guide is updated with current information and a new walking tour through Mametz Wood. Paul Reed’s Walking the Somme is an essential traveling companion for anyone visiting the site of the 1916 Battle of the Somme. It distills a lifetime of research into the battle and the landscape over which it was fought. Combining expert insight, historical context and practical information, Reed guides visitors on walks through Gommecourt, Serre, Beaumont-Hamel and Thiepval to Montauban, High Wood, Delville Wood and Flers. The fifteen original walking tours have been fully revised and updated. There is also a new walking tour tracing the operations around Mametz Wood. Walking the Somme brings the visitor not only to the places where the armies clashed but to the landscape of monuments, cemeteries and villages that make the Somme battlefield so moving to explore.

Download or read book The Indian Army in the Two World Wars written by Kaushik Roy and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of seventeen essays based on archival data breaks new ground as regards the contribution of the Indian Army in British war effort during the two World Wars around various parts of the globe.

Download or read book Somme Great War 100 Years written by Nigel Cave and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication, SOMME THE BATTLE 100 YEARS ON, has been published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd, with the purpose of creating an awareness and an interest in theSomme battles of 1916. For nearly thirty years, Pen & Sword Books Ltd has published numerous titles covering various Pals battalions formed for the Big Push. They have also been fore-runners in setting up the Battleground Series guides, which are packed with then and now illustrations, using battle maps from the time and road maps of the sites today. They are all specifically designed to take the tourer safely through these now historic sites. Many more books have been written and published by Pen & Sword on the other battles of the First World War. Only a small portion relating to 1 July 1916 has been taken from each book appearing in this publication. Much more information can been gleaned from reading about the events of the Somme battles and the awful aftermath of the day through reading the books mentioned at the end of each extract.These publications would not have been possible without the skill and dedication of our authors who have painstakingly researched and written about the subjects that bring to light these historic events.

Download or read book The Somme 1916 Beyond the First Day written by Jon Cooksey and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-06-09 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their second Visitor’s Guide to the 1916 Battle of the Somme Jon Cooksey and Jerry Murland focus on the series of secondary battles that were key stages in the five-month struggle that followed the start of the offensive on 1 July. They take the visitor – and the reader – across the entire battlefield, covering in graphic detail sites where actions took place that are almost as famous as the Somme itself in the history of the First World War, including Mametz Wood, High Wood, Deville Wood, Guillemont, Ginchy, Pozieres and Flers. They also provide tours of the less-well-known but equally interesting sites which played important parts in the offensive as a whole. In a sequence of routes that can be walked, biked or driven they describe what happened in each place, identify the units involved, highlight the experience and exploits of individual soldiers, and point out the notable sights, monuments and cemeteries. This highly illustrated guidebook is essential reading for visitors who wish to enhance their understanding of the Battle of the Somme and the war on the Western Front. It is also the ideal companion volume to The First Day of the Somme: Gommecourt to Maricourt by the same authors.

Download or read book Bazentin Ridge written by Edward Hancock and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2000-09-13 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book covers in detail the attacks of 14–18 July 1916 against the Bazentin Woods and villages and beyond. Walks and tours of the surroundings areas are included with detailed action maps.

Download or read book Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880 1918 written by Stephen Badsey and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book fills a significant gap in the historiography of British military thought, doctrine and practice for the First World War (1914-18) and the generation beforehand, including the Boer War (1899-1902). It investigates a major doctrinal controversy: what the role and tactics of horsed soldiers were to be in the face of increasing firepower and demands placed upon them by the expansion of mass armies. Contrary to widely held modern belief, the doctrine developed proved quite successful in dealing with the conditions that they faced on the battlefield.

Download or read book The 51st Highland Division in the Great War written by Colin Campbell and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scotland provided two Territorial Force divisions at the outbreak of the First World War, in due course taking their place in the order of battle as the 51st (Highland) Division and the 52nd (Lowland) Division. 1066 and All That concluded that the war was won by the Americans, assisted by the Australians (AZTECS) and some Canadians, and 51 Highlanders. If nothing else, this ironic analysis showed that Major General George (Uncle, sometimes Daddy) Harper was a master of positive publicity and knew its value in building the Divisions image and morale. He commanded the Division from late September 1915 until shortly before the opening of the German Spring Offensive in March 1918, when he was promoted to the command of IV Corps; his name is firmly linked to the 51st.The Division arrived in France in May 1915 and took part in a limited (and unsuccessful) attack in French Flanders in June 1915, which revealed hardly surprising weaknesses in training. The next year was spent relatively quietly on the Somme and, from March 1916, the southern end of Vimy Ridge. Thereafter it fought on the Somme at High Wood and Beaumont-Hamel, at the Battle of Arras, at Third Ypres, Cambrai, faced two of the German spring offensives of 1918 and was then involved in the successful series of allied offensives that ended the war, in the Divisions case starting with an attack with the French and the Italians in the Champagne in July 1918.No history of the Division has been written since Brewshers in 1921. This book aims to cast a more objective light on its activities and to challenge its post war critics. It makes full use of official records and first hand accounts, including those provided by descendants with previously unpublished family records or illustrations. The books main purpose is to pay tribute to a generation that met hitherto unimagined horrors with fortitude, adaptability, resilience and humour and, despite the awful price in lives, broken bodies and minds, carried on until the job was done.

Download or read book Liverpool Pals written by Graham Maddocks and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2008-01-30 with total page 687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liverpool Pals, is a record of duty, courage and endeavour of a group of men who, before war broke out in 1914, were the backbone of Liverpool's commerce. Fired with patriotism, over 4,000 of these businessmen volunteered in 1914 and were formed into the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th (Service) Battalions of the King's (Liverpool Regiment); they were the first of all the Pals battalions to be raised, and they were the last to be stood down. It is commonly held that the North of England's Pals battalions were wiped out on the 1st July, 1916, certainly this befell a number of units, but the Liverpool Pals took all their objectives on that day. From then on they fought all through the Somme Battle, The Battle of Arras and the muddy hell of Passchendaele in 1917, and the desperate defence against the German offensive of March 1918.

Download or read book A History of the 9th Highlanders Royal Scots written by Neill Gilhooley and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This regimental history chronicles the Dandy Ninth Battalion Royal Scots from its first forays in the Boer War through the brutal fighting of WWI. After suffering the disastrous Black Week of the Second Boer War, the British Army formed a new Highland battalion, the kilted 9th Royal Scots, which became affectionately known as the Dandy Ninth. It sent volunteers to South Africa and established itself as Edinburgh’s kilted battalion, part of the Territorial Force of part-time soldiers. Mobilized in 1914 as part of the Lothian Brigade, the Dandy Ninth defended Edinburgh from the threat of invasion, and constructed part of the landward defenses around Liberton Tower. They were part-time soldiers and new recruits, drawn from the breadth of society, from lawyers to rugby players and artists, such as the Scottish Colorist F.C.B. Cadell, and William Geissler of the Edinburgh School. In the Great War they mobilized to France and Flanders and served in many of the major actions: in Ypres and on the Somme; at Arras and Cambrai in 1917; and during the 1918 German Spring Offensive at St Quentin. In the Advance to Victory, they were with the 15th (Scottish) Division.

Download or read book The Middlebrook Guide to the Somme Battlefields written by Martin Middlebrook and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2007-10-06 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While best known as being the scene of the most terrible carnage in the WW1 the French department of the Somme has seen many other battles from Roman times to 1944. William the Conqueror launched his invasion from there; the French and English fought at Crecy in 1346; Henry Vs army marched through on their way to Agincourt in 1415; the Prussians came in 1870.The Great War saw three great battles and approximately half of the 400,000 who died on the Somme were British a terrible harvest, marked by 242 British cemeteries and over 50,000 lie in unmarked graves. These statistics explain in part why the area is visited year-on-year by ever increasing numbers of British and Commonwealth citizens. This evocative book written by the authors of the iconic First Day on the Somme is a thorough guide to the cemeteries, memorials and battlefields of the area, with the emphasis on the fighting of 1916 and 1918, with fascinating descriptions and anecdotes.

Download or read book Memory Narrative and the Great War written by David Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memory, Narrative and the Great War examines the varied and complex war writings of Patrick MacGill within a contemporary framework. David Taylor tracks how MacGill shifted from heroic wartime narratives in his autobiographical writings to the pessimistic, guiltridden characters in his postwar novel, Fear!, and play, Suspense. Using these texts to show how MacGill remembered and reremembered his wartime experiences, Taylor analyzes MacGill's writings with implications for a broader interpretation of Great War literature, highlighting wartime memory and narrative as an ever-changing kaleidoscope in which pieces of memory take on different—but equally valid—shapes with the passing of time.

Download or read book Sassoon Graves written by Helen McPhail and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war memoirs of these two officers with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers have never been out of print since their first publication. Both men won instant and enduring fame with these very different narratives, which made them two of the most influential participants in shaping later attitudes to the war. Graves gave offence in many quarters with his factual inaccuracies and/or slurs on various units of the British Army. Sassoon's nostalgic evocation of his cricketing and fox-hunting background contrast with the detailed narrative of personalities and life in the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Arras. The thinly disguised names of real fellow officers are unravelled to help illustrate Sassoon's poetry and actions.

Download or read book Somme 1916 written by Gerald Gliddon and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2009-11-20 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set out topographically, it covers everything from the famous battle sites of High Wood and Mametz Wood to obscure villages on the outlying flanks. The British first began to take the Somme sector over from the French Army in June 1915. From this time onwards they built up a very close bond with the local population, many of whom continued to live in local villages close to the front line. The author draws on the latest research and analysis, as well as the testimony of those who took part, to present all aspects of a battle that was to become a symbol of the horrors of the Great War.