The experiences of a tank gunner with the 1st Queen's Dragoon
Guards in WWII. A brief "trip to France in May 1940" - followed by
transfer to the Middle East in 1941, fighting in the Western
Desert and the battles of El Alamein and the Mareth Line where the
writer was awarded the Military Medal. His Regiment moved to Italy
and campaigned there until the end of the war. A graphic account
of service in a front-line armoured regiment.
In the early 1960s the US formed secret armies in
Vietnam and Laos in response to President Kennedy's
summons for 'a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly
different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly
different kind of military training.' Yet guerrilla
warfare, the impetus behind the creation of the modern
Special Forces units during the Second World War, has
throughout history spawned unconventional yet highly
skilled forces. Swords of Lightning relates the history of
the Special Forces by considering their many and varied
peacetime and battlefield tasks.
A study of the series of British defeats by Japanese forces,
1941-42, suffered by all three of Britain's armed services. The
book considers the Japanese side of events as well as the British.
Includes the loss of The Prince of Wales and Repulse, the fall of
Singapore, the Malayan Campaign, the fall of Rangoon, and the
retreat from Burma. The author attributes the main cause of the
British disaster to the skill and determination of the Japanese.
FEARFUL
HARD TIMES: THE SIEGE AND RELIEF OF ESHOWE 1879
by Ian Castle & Ian Knight
British forces under Colonel Charles Pearson confronted
part of the Zulu army at Nyezane in the first battle of
the Anglo-Zulu War. The British victory was not without
cost. Elsewhere they had lost disastrously at Isandlwana.
Left without support, Pearson dug in on the Eshowe
heights. For 72 days his command was subject to a heavy
siege. Relief came eventually as a result of Lord
Chelmsford's offensive on which he field-tested the
close-order tactics which were later to prove so
successful.
New in d/w - 256pp, 67 b/w photos
& illustrations, 18 line drawings, 10 maps/plans, index
