Download or read book Three Armies on the Somme written by William Philpott and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the Battle of the Somme has exemplified the horrors and futility of trench warfare. Yet in Three Armies on the Somme, William Philpott makes a convincing argument that the battle ultimately gave the British and French forces on the Western Front the knowledge and experience to bring World War I to a victorious end. It was the most brutal fight in a war that scarred generations. Infantrymen lined up opposite massed artillery and machine guns. Chlorine gas filled the air. The dead and dying littered the shattered earth of no man’s land. Survivors were rattled with shell-shock. We remember the shedding of so much young blood and condemn the generals who sent their men to their deaths. Ever since, the Somme has been seen as a waste: even as the war continued, respected leaders—Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George among them—judged the battle a pointless one. While previous histories have documented the missteps of British command, no account has fully recognized the fact that allied generals were witnessing the spontaneous evolution of warfare even as they sent their troops “over the top.” With his keen insight and vast knowledge of military strategy, Philpott shows that twentieth-century war as we know it simply didn’t exist before the Battle of the Somme: new technologies like the armored tank made their battlefield debut, while developments in communications lagged behind commanders’ needs. Attrition emerged as the only means of defeating industrialized belligerents that were mobilizing all their resources for war. At the Somme, the allied armies acquired the necessary lessons of modern warfare, without which they could never have prevailed. An exciting, indispensable work of military history that challenges our received ideas about the Battle of the Somme, and about the very nature of war.

Download or read book With Three Armies on and Behind the Western Front written by Arthur Stanley Riggs and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A History of the British Army To the close of the seven years war written by Sir John William Fortescue and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Armies in Britain written by Douglas Biggs and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-01-22 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work reexamines the political and military aspects of the Revolution of 1399 that removed Richard II and placed Henry of Lancaster on the English throne. It argues that Henry of Lancaster was not the "all conquering" hero of 1399 but was rather the leader of a coalition of disaffected noblemen who had old scores to settle with Richard II. It also proposes that Richard II was not an incompetent king whose personality disorder(s) and/or tyrannical behavior brought about his fall. Rather, it argues that the king was in no worse a political position in 1399 than in 1387 or even 1381. As on the previous two great crises of the reign, the king forwent a military option of dealing with his opponents and decided to let the issues of 1399 play themselves out on the field of politics. Both in 1381 and 1387 this tactic had proven effective and there was nothing to suggest in 1399 that it would not be so again.

Download or read book The British Army and the First World War written by Ian Beckett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive new history of the shaping and performance of the British army during the First World War.

Download or read book Waterloo written by Bernard Cornwell and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the internationally bestselling author of the Sharpe novels and in the bicentenary year of the battle - this is the true story of Waterloo. On the 18th June, 1815 the armies of France, Britain and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days the French army had beaten the British at Quatre Bras and the Prussians at Ligny. The Allies were in retreat. The blood-soaked battle of Waterloo would become a landmark in European history, to be examined over and again, not least because until the evening of the 18th, the French army was close to prevailing on the battlefield. Now, brought to life by the celebrated novelist Bernard Cornwell, this is the chronicle of the four days leading up to the actual battle and a thrilling hour by hour account of that fateful day. In his first work of non-fiction, Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting account of every dramatic moment, from Napoleon's escape from Elba to the smoke and gore of the battlefields. Through letters and diaries he also sheds new light on the private thoughts of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, as well as the ordinary officers and soldiers. Published to coincide with the bicentenary in 2015, Waterloo is a tense and gripping story of heroism and tragedy - and of the final battle that determined the fate of Europe.

Download or read book The British Army and the First World War written by Ian Beckett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a major new history of the British army during the Great War written by three leading military historians. Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly survey operations on the Western Front and throughout the rest of the world as well as the army's social history, pre-war and wartime planning and strategy, the maintenance of discipline and morale and the lasting legacy of the First World War on the army's development. They assess the strengths and weaknesses of the army between 1914 and 1918, engaging with key debates around the adequacy of British generalship and whether or not there was a significant 'learning curve' in terms of the development of operational art during the course of the war. Their findings show how, despite limitations of initiative and innovation amongst the high command, the British army did succeed in developing the effective combined arms warfare necessary for victory in 1918.

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 Over There and Back in Three Uniforms written by Joseph Shuter Smith and published by New York : E.P. Dutton. This book was released on 1918 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book At the Front with Three Armies written by Granville Roland Fortescue and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Toward Combined Arms Warfare written by Jonathan Mallory House and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Grande Arm e and Wellington s Scum written by Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures Nearly 50 years after Napoleon met his Waterloo, generals across the West continued to study his tactics and engage their armies the same way armies fought during the Napoleonic Era. Despite advances in military technology and the advent of railroads for transportation, all of which made defensive warfare more effective, acclaimed military geniuses like Robert E. Lee used flank attacks and infantry charges against superior numbers in an effort to win decisive victories, and it would not be until World War I that concepts of modern warfare made the Napoleonic Era of the early 19th century outdated. For those questioning why generals continued using tactics from the Napoleonic Era even as technology changed the battlefield, the Battle of Austerlitz may provide the best answer. Napoleon is regarded as one of history's greatest generals, and Austerlitz was his greatest victory. In 1805, Britain, Austria, and Russia allied together to form the Third Coalition against the French, and the Third Coalition's forces consisted of armies from Austria and Russia, with Britain providing naval support as well as its financial powers. Napoleon had already defeated and mostly destroyed an Austrian army in October at Ulm before it could link up with the Russians, setting the stage for the Battle of Austerlitz to be the culmination of the war against the Third Coalition as a whole in early December. The influence Austerlitz had on Europe's political and military situation cannot be overstated. The Third Coalition's defeat led to the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, allowed France to redraw the map of Central Europe, and ultimately put into place the chain of events that would lead to France's subsequent wars. Furthermore, Austerlitz set the model that every general hoped to emulate in battle, and the results were undoubtedly on Napoleon's mind when he tried to use the same movement strategies in an attempt to keep Prussian and British armies from linking together at the Battle of Waterloo nearly 10 years after Austerlitz. Napoleon's enemies would famously say he was worth 50,000 men in the field, but the simple truth is he wasn't able to dominate Europe on his own. In fact, the subordinates and soldiers underneath him participated in several of history's most famous battles and charted the course of Napoleon's rise and fall. No single factor can account for these victories, which could be attributed to a combination of high morale, a truly egalitarian approach to promotion from the ranks, a radical army organization, and the inspired leadership of Napoleon, all of which combined to make the Grande Armée virtually unbeatable for the first few years of its existence. The 18th century was a tumultuous period for the British army, one often overlooked in popular accounts of British history. It began with the formal unification of Britain, a period of great success for the nation's armies, which were led by one of Britain's greatest generals, the Duke of Marlborough. This was followed by a period of global activity and military reform as the British Empire expanded. Though naval power played a greater part in this success, it led to new obligations and challenges for the army. Even as the empire soared to new heights, the 18th century was one that was initially marked by triumph but ended in failure and decline. The late 1770s and early 1780s brought about a disastrous war for control of the American colonies, during which the British Army was ultimately defeated by colonial militiamen allied with French forces. In the aftermath came a period of decline and complacency, leaving the nation ill-prepared for war with Napoleon and France. Nonetheless, Wellington famously referred to his men as the scum of the earth, even as he took pride in their skill and successes. This was an army that took rough material and shaped it into something refined and effective.

Download or read book Women Families and the British Army 1700 1880 Vol 3 written by Jennine Hurl-Eamon and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series concentrates on women and the soldiers in the ranks whose lives they shared, assembling a wide body of evidence of their romantic entanglements and domestic concerns. The new military history of recent decades has demanded a broadening of the source base beyond elite accounts or those that concentrate solely on battlefield experiences. Armies did not operate in isolation, and men's family ties influenced the course of events in a variety of ways. Campfollowing women and children occupied a liminal space in campaign life. Those who travelled "on the strength" of the army received rations in return for providing services such as laundry and nursing, but they could also be grouped with prostitutes and condemned as a 'burden' by officers. Parents, wives, and offspring left behind at home remained in soldiers' thoughts, despite an army culture aimed at replacing kin with regimental ties. Soldiers' families' suffering, both on the march and back in Britain, attracted public attention at key points in this period as well. This series provides, for the first time in one place, a wide body of texts relating to common soldiers' personal lives: the women with whom they became involved, their children, and the families who cared for them. It brings hitherto unpublished material into print for the first time, and resurrects accounts that have not been in wide circulation since the nineteenth century. The collection combines the observations of officers, government officials and others with memoirs and letters from men in the ranks, and from the women themselves. It draws extensively on press accounts, especially in the nineteenth century. It also demonstrates the value of using literary depictions alongside the letters, diaries, memoirs and war office papers that form the traditional source base of military historians. This third volume includes personal accounts of service in the Napoleonic Wars Era.

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 The Marne 15 July 6 August 1918 written by Stephen C. McGeorge and Mason W. Watson and published by . This book was released on with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Great Britain s Part written by Paul D. Cravath and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Great Britain's Part: Observations of an American Visitor to the British Army in France at the Beginning of the Third Year of the War HE following observations I were prepared for the New York Times, in which they first appeared. I have acquiesced in the sug gestion that they be published, in the hope that they may aid a few Americans to a better appreciation of the greatness of England's achievements in the Euro pean War. I instinctively hesitate to write about France, because her appeal to the sympathy and admiration of the civilized world is so direct and dramatic that no words of mine seem adequate for the telling of her story. I cannot help feeling that with England the case is different. The British people and press have so liberally exercised the English man's inalienable right to abuse the gov ernment that we in America often hear v. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Download or read book Forgotten Armies written by Christopher Alan Bayly and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early stages of the Second World War, the vast crescent of British-ruled territories stretching from India to Singapore appeared as a massive Allied asset. It provided scores of soldiers and great quantities of raw materials and helped present a seemingly impregnable global defense against the Axis. Yet, within a few weeks in 1941-42, a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, sweeping suddenly and decisively through south and southeast Asia to the Indian frontier, and provoking the extraordinary revolutionary struggles which would mark the beginning of the end of British dominion in the East and the rise of today's Asian world. More than a military history, this gripping account of groundbreaking battles and guerrilla campaigns creates a panoramic view of British Asia as it was ravaged by warfare, nationalist insurgency, disease, and famine. It breathes life into the armies of soldiers, civilians, laborers, businessmen, comfort women, doctors, and nurses who confronted the daily brutalities of a combat zone which extended from metropolitan cities to remote jungles, from tropical plantations to the Himalayas. Drawing upon a vast range of Indian, Burmese, Chinese, and Malay as well as British, American, and Japanese voices, the authors make vivid one of the central dramas of the twentieth century: the birth of modern south and southeast Asia and the death of British rule.