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George C. Marshall once called him "the brains of the army." And yet General Lesley J. McNair (1883-1944), a man so instrumental to America's military preparedness and Army modernization, remains little known today, his papers purportedly lost, destroyed by his wife in her grief at his death in Normandy. This book, the product of an abiding interest and painstaking research, restores the general Army Magazine calls one of "Marshall's forgotten men" to his rightful place in American military history. Because McNair contributed so substantially to America's war preparedness, this first complete account of his extensive and varied career also leads to a reevaluation of U.S. Army effectiveness d...
Awakened by great shouted oaths below. Peeped over the side of the manger and saw a Belgian lass milking and addressing a cow with a comprehensive luridness that left no doubt in my mind that British soldiers had been billeted here before.' - Private Norman Ellison, 1/6th King’s Liverpool Regiment Humor helped the British soldier survive the terrible experiences they faced in the trenches of the Western Front during the Great War. Human beings are complicated, and there is no set pattern as to how they react to the outrageous stresses of war. But humor, often dark and representative of the horrors around them could and often did help. They may have been up to their knees in mud and blood, soaking wet and shot at from all sides, but many were still determined to see the ‘funny side’, rather than surrender to utter misery. Peter Hart and Gary Bain have delved deep into the archives to find examples of the soldier’s wit. The results are at times hilarious but rooted in tragedy. You have to laugh or cry.
After the end of World War II, General George Patton declared that artillery had won the war. Yet howitzers did not achieve victory on their own. Crucial to the success of these big guns were forward observers, artillerymen on the front lines who directed the artillery fire. Until now, the vital role of forward observers in ground combat has received little scholarly attention. In Bracketing the Enemy, John R. Walker remedies this oversight by offering the first full-length history of forward observer teams during World War II. As early as the U.S. Civil War, artillery fire could reach as far as two miles, but without an “FO” (forward observer) to report where the first shot had landed i...
This book was inspired by the author’s discovery of an extraordinary cache of letters from a soldier who was killed on the Western Front during the First World War. The soldier was his grandfather, and the letters had been tucked away, unread and unmentioned for many decades. Intrigued by the heartbreak and history of these family letters, Fletcher sought out the correspondence of other British soldiers who had volunteered for the fight against Germany. This resulting volume offers a vivid account of the physical and emotional experiences of seventeen British soldiers whose letters survive. Drawn from different regiments, social backgrounds, and areas of England and Scotland, they include ...
For soldiers in the Great War, going over the top was a comparatively rare event; much more frequently, they were bored and lonely and missing their families at home. Needing an outlet for their affection, many found it in the animal kingdom. Tommy's Ark looks at the war through the eyes of the soldiers who were there, and examines their relationship with a strange and unexpected range of animal life, from horses, dogs and cats to monkeys and birds - even in one case a golden eagle. Animals became mascots - some Welsh battalions had goats as mascots, some of the Scots had donkeys. And then there were the animals and insects that excited curiosity amongst men drawn into the army from the indu...
This book uncovers the vital relationships between British troops and local inhabitants in France and Belgium during the First World War.
The Organizational History of Field Artillery, 1775-2003, traces the evolution of one of the U.S. Army's premier combat arms-field artillery, the King of Battle. Janice E. McKenney's study is a systematic account of the organization of artillery units, both field and coast (until their separation in the early twentieth century) and then field artillery alone until 2003. Tracing the development of one of the Army's most complex arms, the author highlights the rationale behind each major change in the branch's organization, weapons, and associated equipment, and lays out for all field artillery soldiers the rich heritage and history of their chosen branch. The work also complements the forthcoming revised edition of the lineage volume Field Artillery.