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 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 501 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 The German Army on the Somme 1914 1916 written by Jack Sheldon and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2005-10-19 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking WWI history presents a detailed narrative of German Army operations from the start of the war to the 1st Battle of the Somme. A renowned expert on the German Army during the First World War, historian Jack Sheldon draws on his extensive research into German sources to shed new light on the famous battleground. In an account filled with graphic descriptions of life and death in the trenches, Sheldon demonstrates that the dreadful losses of July 1st, 1916, were a direct consequence of meticulous German planning and preparation. Although the Battle of the Somme was a close-run affair, poor Allied co-ordination played into the hands of the German commanders. The German Army was able to maintain the overall integrity of its defenses and continue its delaying of battle until winter ultimately neutralized the considerable Allied superiority in men and material.
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 The Somme written by Peter Hart and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new history of the most infamous battle of the First World War, as described by the men who fought it. On 1 July 1916, Douglas Haig's army launched the 'Big Push' that was supposed finally to bring an end to the stalemate on the Western Front. What happened next was a human catastrophe: scrambling over the top into the face of the German machine guns and artillery fire, almost 20,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed that day alone, and twice as many wounded - the greatest loss in a single day ever sustained by the British Army. The battle did not stop there, however. It dragged on for another 4 months, leaving the battlefield strewn with literally hundreds of thousands of bodies. The Somme has remained a byword for the futility of war ever since. In this major new history, Peter Hart describes how the battle looked from the point of view of those who fought it. Using never-before-seen eyewitness testimonies, he shows us this epic conflict from all angles. We see what it was like to crawl across No Man's Land in the face of the German guns, what it was like for those who stayed behind in the trenches - the padres, the artillerymen, the doctors. We also see what the battle looked like from the air, as the RFC battled to keep control of the skies above the battlefield. All this is put in the context of the background to the battle, and Haig's overall strategy for the Western Front, making this the most comprehensive history of the battle since Lyn MacDonald's bestselling work over 20 years ago.
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 The British on the Somme 1916 written by Bob Carruthers and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new volume in the long-running Images of War series features the actions of the British Army on the Somme. Not only is the book comprised of rare photographs illustrating the actions of the British army fighting on the Somme, but it is accompanied by a powerful text written by Official War Correspondent Philip Gibbs, who was an eyewitness to the events. Photographs from the battlefield illustrate the terrible conditions, which the British forces on the battlefield endured in the notorious engagement, which has become synonymous with vainglorious sacrifice.This book incorporates a wide range of images encompassing the actions of the British infantry and their supporting artillery. Also featured are images, which depict the almost incomprehensible reality of landscape, which characterized the war in the trenches. Portraits of the British troops are contrasted with German prisoners of war and the endless battle to get the supply columns through to the front.
Download or read book Pals on the Somme 1916 written by Roni Wilkinson and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 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 Through German Eyes written by Christopher Duffy and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key battle of the First World War from the German point of view The Battle of the Somme has an enduring legacy, the image established by Alan Clark of 'lions led by donkeys': brave British soldiers sent to their deaths by incompetent generals. However, from the German point of view the battle was a disaster. Their own casualties were horrendous. The Germans did not hold the (modern) view that the British Army was useless. As Christopher Duffy reveals, they had great respect for the British forces and German reports shed a fascinating light on the volunteer army recruited by General Kitchener. The German view of the British Army has never been made public until now. Their typically diligent reports have lain undisturbed in obscure archives until unearthed by Christopher Duffy. The picture that emerges is a far cry from 'Blackadder': the Germans developed an increasing respect for the professionalism of the British Army. And the fact that every British soldier taken prisoner still believed Britain would win the war gave German intelligence teams their first indication that their Empire would go down to defeat.
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 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 Somme 1916 written by Edgar Norman Gladden and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book CWGC Battlefield Companion Somme 1916 written by Bloomsbury Publishing and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of the Somme was the most devastating engagement in which British troops fought during the First World War. The 141 days of conflict saw 400,000 British and Commonwealth casualties, with 60,000 on the first day alone. Since the end of the war, the battlefield has become hallowed ground as visitors fall silent at the sight of the rows of white gravestones marking the resting place of tens of thousands of soldiers. Published in partnership with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), this is a thematic guide to about 30 locations on the Somme. Released as part of the commemorations of the anniversary of the battle, this a high quality, weather resistant battlefield companion, spiral bound and containing a map and battlefield trails. It suggests sites to visit, and reveals some of the lesser-known stories behind CWGC sites and the men and women they commemorate, providing a snapshot of the day's fighting and its casualties. This is an invaluable resource for anyone travelling to the Somme in this centenary year.
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 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 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.
