In early 1939, 19-year-old Salopian Eric Lock joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve to fulfil his dream of flying. Within eighteen months, he found himself pitted against one of the largest air forces in the world, fighting for the survival of his homeland in a pivotal battle that, if lost, had the potential to change the course of world history. As his training was not completed until after the Dunkirk evacuations, he was not posted to his first operational unit, 41 Squadron, until late June 1940, j...
During the Second World War, thousands of American servicemen were uprooted from the US and deposited in rural England and immediately thrust unceremoniously into the frontline of the largest conflict the world has ever seen. Fortunately, many remembered to pack small cameras in kitbags and snapped photographs of their everyday lives as the war unfolded. Yank Bomber Boys in Norfolk: A Photographic Record of the USAAF in the Second World War features over 500 of these personal photographs to prod...
Harry Askin was 22 when he enlisted at Nottingham in September 1914 and was sent to train with the Royal Marines at Portsmouth. He set sail with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in late February 1915. On 25 April he was towed ashore to Gallipoli. So began a nine month ordeal of constant fighting and shelling on that bare and desperate Peninsula. In this diary he captures the atmosphere of danger and death, blazing heat in summer and rain and cold at other times. The smell of dead bodie...
Archibald Wavell was born a few years before Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and died shortly after the end of the Second World War (1883-1950). During that time the country in which he was born and brought up in changed beyond recognition, undergoing a fundamental revision in the attitudes, expectations, prejudices and hopes of the British people. His life epitomises that of a generation of famous men whose education and upbringing equipped them for a future that was to prove an illusion.At sev...
Daring All Things is a unique and extraordinary autobiography, which was published for the first time 55 years after its completion (shortly before The Rev George Kendall died suddenly in 1961, aged 79). The book is the life story of a man born into a working-class rural Yorkshire childhood in the late Victorian era, who through self-education, piety, ambition and sheer hard graft projected himself onto the then British Empire's biggest stages. Kendall chose the life of a primitive Methodist...
The armoured reconnaissance units were the spearheads of Hitler's Panzer divisions, moving stealthily ahead of the tanks to locate the enemy. Otto Henning's armoured car unit of the elite Panzer-Lehr-Division fought throughout the campaigns in the West in 1944 and 1945, arriving in Normandy a few weeks before D-Day and finally surrendering in the Ruhr pocket in mid-April 1945. Henning describes the difficulties that reconnaissance forces such as his faced in the close terrain of the Normandy bo...
Ben Walsh lied about his age to join the RAF, determined to play his part in the Second World War. He volunteered to be an intruder pilot, flying low level operations in the dark. Initially flying ops in Douglas Boston Intruder IIs, he then converted to the legendary de Havilland Mosquito FB VI. Ben flew ops for three years, starting in the skies over with Europe with 418 (RCAF) Squadron, then ferrying one of the first Mosquito FB VIs to India before flying in the Burma campaign with 27 Squadron...
The husband: charming cad and powerful Congressman, with hopes of becoming the next President; The wife: beautiful society hostess, 20 years old, of Italian descent; The lover: the most handsome widower in Washington. This is the starting point of American Scoundrel, a true story every bit as colourful as a novel. The shooting and trial are described with all Thomas Keneally's powers of dash and drama, against a backdrop of double-dealing, intrigue and 'the slavery question'. Having - through hi...
Duke started WWII as a fighter pilot with 92 Squadron at RAF Biggin Hill. Awarded the DSO, he became an RAF test pilot towards the end of the war, and continued as a peacetime test pilot with the Hawker Aviation Company. Published in 2003, marking the 50th anniversary of the Hawker Hunter’s world speed record.
Major Roderick Dallas is Australia's leading air ace of all time and, with fifty victories, also one of the highest-scoring Commonwealth aces. Even so, until this excellently researched volume, there has never been a full biography of this exceptional pilot, whose fighting career spanned from 1916 to 1918. Flying Nieuport Scouts, Triplanes and Camels with the RNAS and RAF, he was an ever-present threat over the Western Front and the scourge of the German Air Force. Hellwig's book has been taken...
On the eve of World War II, the Squalus, America's newest submarine, plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic. Miraculously, thirty-three crew members still survived in the stricken vessel. While their loved ones waited in unbearable tension onshore, their ultimate fate would depend upon one man, US Navy officer Charles 'Swede' Momsen - an extraordinary combination of visionary, scientist and man of action. In this thrilling true story, prize-winning author Peter Maas vividly re-creates a mom...
Tom 'Bud' Abraham was one of the very few Englishmen to serve in Vietnam. As an officer in the 1st Cavalry Division during 1967/8, he saw combat in some of the fiercest encounters of the war. His gallantry earned him a chestful of medals, including the Silver Star, one of the highest decorations awarded by the American Army. During the Tet Offensive, Tom was captured by the Vietcong. The suffering he endured during his interrogation and torture tested him to the limits, and yet his daring escape...
As commander of No. 11 Group, Fighter Command and responsible for the air defence of London and South-East England, Keith Park took charge of the day-to-day direction of the battle. In spotlighting his thoughts and actions during the crisis, Vincent Orange reveals a man whose unfailing energy, courage and cool resourcefulness won not only supreme praise from Churchill but the lasting respect and admiration of all who served under him. However, few officers in any of the services packed more acti...
Honor. Courage. Commitment. These are the core values of the US Navy, a foundation of ethics by which every sailor must stand to be successful. From the time US Navy recruits raise their right hand and take the oath of enlistment, they are told these values are enough to make them respected sailors. But imagine when these values are not enough. Landon Wilson enlisted in the US Navy in 2011 at the age of twenty-one. Wilson served within the military with distinction and was appreciated by his co...
The astonishing true story of a young woman's adventures, and misadventures, in the dangerous world of Nazi-occupied France.'A most strange and compelling book driven by the writer's unsparing search for truth: now an optimistic hunt for a family heroine, now a study in female wiles of survival, now a portrait of one very ordinary person's frailty in the face of terrible odds.' John le Carré When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his late aunt he was completely...
One of the last major untold stories of the war, this is the first-hand account of a conscientious objector born into a famous artistic family who, after the death of his brother on active service, decides to fight the Nazis and joins SOE. Barely 28 years of age he ends up as a leader of French resistance, set up by Jean Moulin, whose horrific death features in the story, and heads a massive underground movement of some 20,000 men.The book has been compiled by Ray Jenkins, a distinguished TV, fi...
The anthology Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors showcases writing from military veterans and their families from across the nation, including writing about WWI and WWII, Vietnam, the Gulf Conflict, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The anthology is the sixth in an annual series published by Southeast Missouri State University Press in Cooperation with the Missouri Humanities Council's Veterans Projects and the Warriors Arts Alliance. The Missouri Humanities Council plans to expand the partnership t...
The Lifeline: Salomon Grumbach and the Quest for Safety (Brill's Jewish Studies)
by Meredith L Scott
During the first months of World War II, nearly one thousand refugees and asylum seekers held in French internment camps sought the help of one man: Salomon Grumbach. Meredith Scott's The Lifeline is a ground-breaking study of Grumbach, an Alsatian Jew, journalist, and socialist politician who became one of Europe's most important interwar refugee advocates. Focusing on his remarkable life in Germany and France, it uncovers the identities that drove his international crusades for democracy and h...