Download or read book The Gordon Highlanders written by Trevor Royle and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gordons recruited from the north-east of Scotland and the regiment's character was moulded by men from the farming counties of Aberdeenshire, Moray and Nairn. It was raised in 1794 by an aristocratic landowner, the Duke of Gordon, whose wife played a major role in attracting recruits by riding through her husband's estates and offering a guinea and a kiss to each man who enlisted. Originally raised as the 100th Highlanders, it was later renumbered the 92nd Highlanders and in 1881 was amalgamated with the 75th (Stirlingshire) Regiment to form The Gordon Highlanders. In the nineteenth century the two regiments were in constant service throughout the empire and in 1879 the 92nd Highlanders were involved in Lord Roberts' historic march from Kabul to Kandahar during the fighting in Afghanistan. One of the first Victoria Crosses was awarded to a Gordon Highlander, Private Beach, who was decorated for his supreme gallantry while serving in the Crimea in 1854. Another Victoria Cross winner was Major George White (Afghanistan, 1879), who went on to become a field marshal. During the fighting on the north-west frontier of India in 1897, Piper George Findlater was awarded the Victoria Cross for continuing to play his pipes despite being wounded and under heavy enemy fire. In 1994, The Gordon Highlanders amalgamated with Queen's Own Highlanders to form The Highlanders and in 2006 became the 4th Battalion of The Royal Regiment of Scotland. This is a celebratory account of the regiment's long and distinguished history.
Download or read book The Gordon Highlanders 1919 1945 written by Wilfrid Miles and published by Naval & Military Press. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A well written Regimental History covering the Second World War. The Gordon's fought with valour in France in 1940 when they were trapped with the majority of the division forced to surrender. The 2nd Div. fought in the battle for Singapore in 1942. They saw heavy fighting in Normandy and the Netherlands and in the Battle of Uelzen in Germany.
Download or read book The Life of a Regiment written by Wilfred Miles and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book St Val ry and Its Aftermath written by Stewart Mitchell and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the German May 1940 offensive, the 51st (Highland) Division, including the 1st and 5th Battalions Gordon Highlanders, became separated from the British Expeditionary Force. After a heroic stand at St Valery-en-Caux the Division surrendered when fog thwarted efforts to evacuate them. Within days, scores of Gordons had escaped and were on the run through Nazi-occupied France. Many reached Britain after feats of great courage and tenacity, including recapture and imprisonment often in atrocious conditions in France, Spain or North Africa. Those imprisoned in Eastern Europe were forced to work in coal and salt mines, quarries, factories and farms. Some died through unsafe conditions or the brutality of their captors. Others escaped, on occasion fighting with distinction alongside Resistance forces. Many had to endure the brutal 1945 winter march away from the advancing Allies before their eventual liberation. This superbly researched book contains many inspiring stories that deserve and merit reading.
Download or read book The Gordon Highlanders 1919 1945 written by Gordon Highlanders and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Forgotten Highlander written by Alistair Urquhart and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders, captured by the Japanese in Singapore. Forced into manual labor as a POW, he survived 750 days in the jungle working as a slave on the notorious “Death Railway” and building the Bridge on the River Kwai. Subsequently, he moved to work on a Japanese “hellship,” his ship was torpedoed, and nearly everyone on board the ship died. Not Urquhart. After five days adrift on a raft in the South China Sea, he was rescued by a Japanese whaling ship. His luck would only get worse as he was taken to Japan and forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later, he was just ten miles from ground zero when an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. In late August 1945, he was freed by the American Navy—a living skeleton—and had his first wash in three and a half years. This is the extraordinary story of a young man, conscripted at nineteen, who survived not just one, but three encounters with death, any of which should have probably killed him. Silent for over fifty years, this is Urquhart’s inspirational tale in his own words. It is as moving as any memoir and as exciting as any great war movie.
Download or read book A Bibliography of Regimental Histories of the British Army written by Arthur S. White and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2013-02-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one of the most valuable books in the armoury of the serious student of British Military history. It is a new and revised edition of Arthur White's much sought-after bibliography of regimental, battalion and other histories of all regiments and Corps that have ever existed in the British Army. This new edition includes an enlarged addendum to that given in the 1988 reprint. It is, quite simply, indispensible.
Download or read book A Bibliography of British History 1914 1989 written by Keith Robbins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 962 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing over 25,000 entries, this unique volume will be absolutely indispensable for all those with an interest in Britain in the twentieth century. Accessibly arranged by theme, with helpful introductions to each chapter, a huge range of topics is covered. There is a comprehensiveindex.
Download or read book Soldier Sailor Beggarman Thief written by Clive Emsley and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first serious investigation of criminal offending by members of the British armed forces both during and immediately after the two world wars of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Montgomery written by Trevor Royle and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unique leadership and lasting legacy of the greatest British army commander of the Second World War and one of the most professional and well-liked generals in the allied coalition. Bernard Law Montgomery was a dedicated battlefield tactician, though a controversial one. In North Africa in 1942, he commanded the Eighth Army to a great triumph against Rommel at El Alamein, which Churchill hailed as the beginning of the end of the war. During the planning stages for the invasion of Sicily, Montgomery proved himself to be a splendid organizer and a great believer in simplicity. But he was also known as a complicated man whose legacy remains tainted by his insensitive and boastful nature and desire for personal glory—all of which can have dangerous consequences on the battlefield. In the end, though, it was only due to Montgomery's influence that the weight of the Allied attack at Normandy was increased, and the Allied success of D-Day owes much to his far-sightedness. In the field, especially during the planning stages, he was at his best. An inspirational commander whose self-confidence was legendary, Montgomery's military life has proved to be a great lesson for leaders in the years since.
Download or read book Churchill s Army written by Stephen Bull and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winston Churchill, Britain's iconic war time Prime Minister, is inextricably linked with the victorious British Army of 1939 to 1945. Yet hindsight, propaganda, and the imperative of the defeat of Hitler and Imperial Japan, have led to a tendency to oversimplify the image of Churchill the war leader, and 'his' Army. For whilst Churchill was undeniably a towering statesman, his relations with both the Army and War Office were ambiguous and altered considerably not only with the progress of the Second World War, but over decades. In this comprehensive book, Stephen Bull examines every aspect of the British Army during the Second World War, and considers in detail the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation that was tested to its limits on many fronts but made an immense contribution to the successful Allied outcome. The book explores the structure of military power from the men who ran it, the Generals to the detail of the regiments they commanded. It looks at the uniforms the soldiers wore and the badges and insignia they bore on their uniforms. The weaponry Churchill's army used is discussed in detail, from small arms including rifles, bayonets, grenades, carbines and machine guns to the massed firepower of the artillery along with the increasing sophistication of tanks and other military vehicles during the period. Finally the role of auxiliary and special forces and their contribution to the campaign is considered. The comprehensive text is enhanced by more than 200 contemporary photographs.
Download or read book Military History of Scotland written by Spiers Edward M. Spiers and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 857 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Scottish soldier has been at war for over 2000 years. Until now, no reference work has attempted to examine this vast heritage of warfare.A Military History of Scotland offers readers an unparalleled insight into the evolution of the Scottish military tradition. This wide-ranging and extensively illustrated volume traces the military history of Scotland from pre-history to the recent conflict in Afghanistan. Edited by three leading military historians, and featuring contributions from thirty scholars, it explores the role of warfare in the emergence of a Scottish kingdom, the forging of a Scottish-British military identity, and the participation of Scots in Britain's imperial and world wars. Eschewing a narrow definition of military history, it investigates the cultural and physical dimensions of Scotland's military past such as Scottish military dress and music, the role of the Scottish soldier in art and literature, Scotland's fortifications and battlefield archaeology, and Scotland's military memorials and museum collections.
Download or read book The Deserters written by Charles Glass and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A]n impressive achievement: a boot-level take on the conflict that is fresh without being cynically revisionist." --The New Republic A groundbreaking history of ordinary soldiers struggling on the front lines, The Deserters offers a completely new perspective on the Second World War. Charles Glass—renowned journalist and author of the critically acclaimed Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation—delves deep into army archives, personal diaries, court-martial records, and self-published memoirs to produce this dramatic and heartbreaking portrait of men overlooked by their commanders and ignored by history. Surveying the 150,000 American and British soldiers known to have deserted in the European Theater, The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II tells the life stories of three soldiers who abandoned their posts in France, Italy, and Africa. Their deeds form the backbone of Glass’s arresting portrait of soldiers pushed to the breaking point, a sweeping reexamination of the conditions for ordinary soldiers. With the grace and pace of a novel, The Deserters moves beyond the false extremes of courage and cowardice to reveal the true experience of the frontline soldier. Glass shares the story of men like Private Alfred Whitehead, a Tennessee farm boy who earned Silver and Bronze Stars for bravery in Normandy—yet became a gangster in liberated Paris, robbing Allied supply depots along with ordinary citizens. Here also is the story of British men like Private John Bain, who deserted three times but never fled from combat—and who endured battles in North Africa and northern France before German machine guns cut his legs from under him. The heart of The Deserters resides with men like Private Steve Weiss, an idealistic teenage volunteer from Brooklyn who forced his father—a disillusioned First World War veteran—to sign his enlistment papers because he was not yet eighteen. On the Anzio beachhead and in the Ardennes forest, as an infantryman with the 36th Division and as an accidental partisan in the French Resistance, Weiss lost his illusions about the nobility of conflict and the infallibility of American commanders. Far from the bright picture found in propaganda and nostalgia, the Second World War was a grim and brutal affair, a long and lonely effort that has never been fully reported—to the detriment of those who served and the danger of those nurtured on false tales today. Revealing the true costs of conflict on those forced to fight, The Deserters is an elegant and unforgettable story of ordinary men desperately struggling in extraordinary times.
Download or read book Alamein written by Jon Latimer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It also changed the way the British Army fought, using concentrated artillery on a scale not seen since 1918 to break through Axis defences built in depth."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Tracing Your Tank Ancestors written by Janice Tait and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want to find out about the career of a soldier who served in tanks, are researching medals awarded to a tank crew member or just want to know more about a particular regiment squadron or operation, this book will point you in the right direction.Assuming that the reader has little prior knowledge of the history of British armored forces, Janice Tait and David Fletcher trace their development from their formation during WW1, through WWII and on to their role as an essential part of today's British army. Most importantly, they demonstrate how you can explore this history for yourself. The authors describe the records that are available and show how they can help you to reconstruct the career of a soldier who served in tanks or was connected with them. They also describe the kind of work the soldiers did, the armored vehicles they worked with, and the men and women they served alongsideThis accessible, information-packed introduction to the history of British armored forces will be essential reading and reference for anyone who is researching this aspect of military history.
Download or read book A History of Modern Urban Operations written by Gregory Fremont-Barnes and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the complexities of modern urban operations—a particularly difficult and costly method of fighting, and one that is on the rise. Contributors examine the lessons that emerge from a range of historical case studies, from nineteenth-century precedents to the Battle of Shanghai; Stalingrad, German town clearance, Mandalay, and Berlin during World War II; and from the Battle of Algiers to the Battle for Fallujah in 2004. Each case study illuminates the features that differentiate urban operations from fighting in open areas, and the factors that contribute to success and failure. The volume concludes with reflections on the key challenges of urban warfare in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Download or read book The Era of World War II written by Louise A. Arnold-Friend and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
