Author: Richard Holmes
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Published: 2011-12-21
Total Pages: 1203
ISBN-13: 0007383487
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Groundbreaking and critically-acclaimed, Tommy is the first history of World War I to place the British soldier who fought in the trenches centre-stage.
Author: Richard Holmes
Publisher:
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 717
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Contains primary source material.
Author: Malcolm Brown
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2018-10-30
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 1784383309
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The image of the innocent British soldier (or Tommy) setting off with a spring in his step in 1914 to fight the Great War would not last long.Indeed that initial euphoria would soon give way to a deep-seated bitterness as these young men endured the horror of the First World War.In a new edition of this extraordinary book, the uncensored letters, diaries, documents and many photographs tell the story of the British soldier (nicknamed Tommy) in their own words.While there are flashes of their wit and humour, the overwhelming feeling is that of a generation who felt let down by their superiors and left to perish.There are visceral, terrifying insights into life in the trenches and agonising descriptions of the squalor and privations of war.This haunting account also looks at the aggressive drive to recruit more soldiers through the Pals Battalion or Chums Battalion. Friends from the same town or village; professional bodies, or work colleagues among others were encouraged to enlist en masse. They would fight together alongside their friends or colleagues. Many of them would sadly die together and leave communities wild with grief for a lost generation, robbed of a future having barely had a past.With a concise analysis of the British Army in the First World War, we are reminded of the terror of war, the fury, the fear and the frustration of what has been described by some as a war typified by the devastating assessment: lions led by donkeys.
Author: Julian Walker
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
Published: 2021-05-12
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 1526765934
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →‘Napoo’, ‘compray’, ‘san fairy ann’, ‘toot sweet’ are anglicized French phrases that came into use on the Western Front during the First World War as British troops struggled to communicate in French. Over four years of war they created an extraordinary slang which reflects the period and brings the conflict to mind whenever it is heard today. Julian Walker, in this original and meticulously researched book, explores the subject in fascinating detail. In the process he gives us an insight into the British soldiers’ experience in France during the war and the special language they invented in order to cope with their situation. He shows how French place-names were anglicized as were words for food and drink, and he looks at what these slang terms tell us about the soldiers’ perception of France, their relationship with the French and their ideas of home. He traces the spread of ‘Tommy French’ back to the Home Front, where it was popularized in songs and on postcards, and looks at the French reaction to the anglicization of their language.
Author: Richard van Emden
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2014-09-09
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 1408844362
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Shares excerpts from the personal diaries and photographs of British soldiers to depict the daily life of a Tommy in the trenches between 1914 and 1918.
Author: Richard Holmes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 542
ISBN-13: 9780393052114
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Based on the letters and diaries of the British soldiers who served as the backbone of the army from 1760 to 1860, this illuminating book is rich in the history of a fascinating era. of illustrations.
Author: Paddy Griffith
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1996-01-01
Total Pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9780300066630
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war.
Author: Richard Holmes
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Published: 2011-10-06
Total Pages: 856
ISBN-13: 0007370342
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Sahib is a magnificent history of the British soldier in India from Clive to the end of Empire, making full use of personal accounts from the soldiers who served in the jewel in Britain’s Imperial Crown.
Author: Peter Doyle
Publisher: Haynes Publishing UK
Published: 2013-12-01
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780857332417
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Great War continues to fascinate, and never more so as we approach 2014, the centenary year of its outbreak. There is an abiding fascination in the uniform and equipment of the British Great War soldier. What was it like to wear? What were puttees? What does a gas mask look like? How heavy was the equipment? How did you dig a trench? These and other typical questions will be answered in Haynes Manual style, providing a vivid insight into life during the Great War for the average “Tommy Atkins."