Series:

Penguin Classic Military History S.

3 total works

Cover of The First Day on the Somme

The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words - Guardian

'For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways'

On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches of the Somme into No Man's Land and began to walk towards dug-in German troops armed with machine-guns. By the end of the day there were more than 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatal.

Martin Middlebrook's now-classic account of the blackest day in the history of the British army draws on official sources from the time, and on the words of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror.

Cover of The Kaiser's Battle
At 9.30am on 21 March 1918, the last great battle of World War I commenced when three german armies struck a massive blow against the weak divisions of the British Third and Fifth armies. It was the first day of what the Germans called the "kaiserschlact" (the kaiser's battle), the series of attacks that were planned to break the deadlock on the western front, knock the British Army out of the war and finally bring victory to imperial Germany. Through first-hand accounts by survivors of the battle, Martin Middlebrook discusses the battle.

Cover of Battleship

Battleship

by Martin Middlebrook

Published 29 November 2001
On Wednesday 10 December 1941, the third day of the war with Japan, two Royal Navy capital ships were sunk off Malaya by air torpedo attack. They had not requested the air support that could have saved them and 840 men died in the battleship "HMS Prince of Wales" and the battle cruiser "HMS Repulse". Taking full advantage of British Second World War documents and the Japanese Official History, the authors re-create for the reader not only what happened on that sunny morning, but also what it was like for the men involved. They dispose of several myths to explain what happened in those confused hours, and address the uncertainty, controversy and strong emotions that surrounded the militarily disasterous sinkings and the tragic aftermath.