George Ashurst served with the Lancashire Fusiliers, taking part in First Ypres, Gallipoli and the Somme, and enduring months of trench warfare on the Western Front, making numerous grim and dangerous patrols into no man's land. His memoirs vividly reveal the reality of life in the trenches and the feelings of those who had to suffer it. Ashurst was often frightened and uncertain, occasionally infuriated by the 'shirking' amongst the officers, was usually ready for a cigarette or drink, bu...

A first-hand account of World War I by a nineteen-year-old Englishman who led a platoon into the carnage of the Battle of the Somme.While researching his excellent earlier book: Veterans of World War I, author Richard Van Emden encountered a fascinating personality of that long-ago conflict. After witnessing German naval attacks on British civilians, Norman Collins enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders of the 51st Highland Division, even though he was under ...

For nearly 100 years Canada's role in ending WWI sooner than anyone thought possible has gone largely unrecognized. The Canadian Corp led by citizen soldier, Arthur Currie, became the premiere fighting force on the Western Front. The fact that Canada was not yet a formalized nation but a Dominion at the close of the war may be the reason for the absence of recognition yet the record of the Canadian WWI military accomplishments is irrefutable.Canadian soldiers unlike British "city b...

Includes the First World War Illustrations Pack – 73 battle plans and diagrams and 198 photosThe classic account of sniping on the Western Front."Herbert Wesley McBride was a Captain in the Twenty-first Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, during the First World War. He was a sniper and commander of a machine gun unit known as the "Emma Gees." He was also the author of two books on the war: "A Rifleman Went To War" (1933) and "The Emma Gees" (1918)...When the war started,...

The Germans could not believe their eyes. The English infantry were advancing at walking pace in four upright ranks, a yard or so apart from each other. They were sitting ducks. As the German machine guns rattled into life, the English died in their hundreds. On the first day of the battle, those parade-ground advances caused the greatest number of casualties of any single day in the history of the British Army.Read about the first Battle of the Somme, a battle that went on to beco...

In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture a small village called Pozières. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task.At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed Pozières. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having suffered 23,000 casualties to gain a few miles of barren landscape. Despite the toll, the operation was heralded a...

On the brink of the First World War, Scotland was regarded throughout the British Isles as 'the workshop of the Empire'. Not only were Clyde-built ships known the world over, Scotland produced half of Britain's total production of railway equipment, and the cotton and jute industries flourished in Paisley and Dundee. In addition, Scots were a hugely important source of manpower for the colonies. Yet after the war, Scotland became an industrial and financial backwater. Emigration increased ...

A gripping memoir of a Soviet sniper who fought against the Nazis during the siege of Leningrad and throughout World War II.Joseph Pilyushin, a top Red Army sniper in the ruthless fight against the Germans on the Eastern Front, was an exceptional soldier. His first-hand account of his wartime service gives a graphic insight into his lethal skill with a rifle and into the desperate fight put up by Soviet forces to defend Leningrad.Pilyushin, who lived in Lenin...

Our Lancaster raced over the perimeter track and then tore down the slope through the dispersal area... with its wheels thumping on the grass but still firmly on the ground. It now seemed that nothing could save us and that, in the next couple of moments, we would disappear in a great explosion. I could hear Bob saying "Get off the ground, you bastard, get off," while Harry just said nothing..."Into the Darkness" is the true story of a young Australian thown into the crucible of th...

Just sixteen minutes into D-Day and their glider had already crash-landed onto the field. Scrambling out to storm the bridge, the young British soldiers began the fight of their lives. Five miles inside enemy territory, they ran headlong into the day that shaped the twentieth century, paving the way for the invasion of Normandy. There was no going back…Read about the daring capture of Pegasus Bridge by British Airborne troops in the first hours of D-Day, along with the savage fight...

During World War II fighter pilots were, at times, detailed to perform out-of-the-ordinary operations. "Duck Hunting in a Hurricane" was an event that resulted in just such an operation in order to recover the Hurricane and bring back the ducks.

The Second World War was the final global conflict of the twentieth century. It involved more combatants, and a wider range of battlefield terrain than any other conflict in history, from the frozen plains of Russia to the baking Libyan desert, and from the atolls of the Pacific to the skies over Britain.In Turning the Tide, Nigel Cawthorne has taken a fresh look at the crucial battles which decided the outcome of the Second World War, beginning with the evacuation of Dunkirk in 19...