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For most people, climbing a ladder to clear the gutters is a challenge. Jack Williams and his colleagues in the specialist signals unit supporting the SAS in Northern Ireland had to climb towers and maintain vital communications - often in full view and under fire from terrorists.
This is the gripping insider story of the tension, fear and comradeship of these specialists, who needed more than just a head for heights.
Written in a racy popular style...
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Military bridging, often impeded by mines and hostile enemy fire, is a vital part of the advance of any modern army. Britain's Royal Engineers have played a leading role in this crucial military operation, from the ravines behind the D-Day beaches to recent operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. The Royal Engineers have displayed incredible ingenuity in developing responses to the increasing amounts of firepower directed at bridging troops. This definitive...
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The white mercenaries who attracted the world's attention in the Congo during the early 1960s were never more than a few hundred in number. In contrast, no fewer than a million Swiss troops served as mercenaries in the armies of Europe during the preceding 500 years. Swiss mercenaries form a significant strand in the rope of European military history, and this book draws on many French and German-language sources to describe how the Swiss emerged...
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This is the story of the 6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles from the Regiment raising in 1817 as the Cuttack Legion in the service of the Honourable East India Company until it's amalgamation with the 2nd King Edward VII's Gurkha Rifles ( The Sirmoor Rifles) to form the First Battalion of The Royal Gurkha Rifles in 1994. In the course of its 177 years' existence the Regiment has had many changes of title, acquiring its present one in 1959 when...
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Mining disasters attracted the attention of the public and the press during the twentieth century, just as they had done a few generations earlier. This interest was made even more immediate and certainly more graphic through the increasing use of photographic images and film; and the impact of broadcasting via radio and, eventually, television was immense. The disasters also demonstrated and underlined the tremendous courage that miners had for their...
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A fearless act of journalism in 1960s Nigeria and the true story behind the international bestselling novel The Dogs of War. The Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s was one of the first occasions when Western consciences were awakened and deeply affronted by the level of suffering and the scale of atrocity being played out in the African continent. This was thanks not just to advances in communication technology but to the courage and journalistic...
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Adrian Carton de Wiart’s autobiography is one of the most remarkable of military memoirs.
He was intended for the law, but abandoned his studies at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1899 to serve as a trooper in the South African War. Carton de Wiart’s extraordinary military career embraced service with the Somaliland Camel Corps (1914-15), liaison officer with Polish forces (1939), membership of the British Military Mission to Yugoslavia (1941), a...
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At the end of the Cold War the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction replaced the Soviet Union as the new enemy of world peace. The pariah WMD states became enemy No. 1. The significance of militant Islam’s growing disgust with Western foreign policy and apparent indifference to the suffering of Muslims worldwide was missed until it was too late.
In Rise of Militant Islam Anthony Tucker-Jones examines from an insiders perspective how Western...
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This latest book in the highly successful Images of War series covers the dramatic events that saw ultimate Allied victory over the Japanese in remote Northern Burma on the Chinese border. The plan involved two separate but concurrent operations. US Army General Joseph Stilwell was ordered to train up two Chinese divisions and together with a US special force (Merrill's Marauders) advance to seize the key Japanese base at Myitkyina.
At the same time...
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A British Naval commander's eyewitness account of the 1982 war in the South Atlantic. Since he was in charge of the amphibious operations in the Falklands War, it goes without saying that there is no one better qualified to tell the story of that aspect of the campaign than Commodore Michael Clapp. Here he describes, with considerable candor, some of the problems met in a Navy racing to war and finding it necessary to recreate a largely abandoned...
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This is the untold story of the Falklands War as experienced by a below-decks seaman on one of the most important ships to be despatched to the South Atlantic. It is a no-holds-barred account as seen through the eyes of a Royal Navy matelot who shared the terror of the first encounter with Argentinean forces when South Georgia was retaken from the invaders in Operation Paraquat. Then HMS Antrim lead the first attack into the North Falklands Sound...
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Wednesday 22 January 1879 was one of the most dramatic days in the annals of military history. In the morning, a modern British army was swept aside by the onset of a seemingly unstoppable host at Isandlwana. Nearby, at a remote border outpost on the Buffalo River, a single company of the 24th Regiment and a few dozen recuperating hospital patients were passing another hot, monotonous day. News of the disaster across the river came like a bolt from...
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General Sir Harry Smith won the lifelong respect and affection of the Duke of Wellington. Famously married to the Spanish beauty, Juana, after the siege of Badajoz in 1812, they served together to the end of the Peninsula war. With the French defeated, Harry left with the British expedition to America in 1814, and witnessed the burning of the White House. The fiery Admiral Cochrane raged bitterly I am sorry you left a house standing in Washington...
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Many British baby boomers are very nostalgic about a supposed golden age; a vanished world when children were generally freer, happier and healthier than they are now. They wandered about all day; only returning home at teatime when they were hungry. Nobody worried about health and safety or 'stranger danger' in those days and no serious harm ever befell children as a result.
In Post-War Childhood, Simon Webb examines the facts and figures behind...
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Germany wasn't really a place for settling in, because after the war it was pretty devastated, and there wasn't really a chance to start again, so I thought Id come to England. It was a case of people between 18 and 50 and you had to be fit because it was mainly physical work. For men, it was mines and agricultural work and brick factories and women, mainly textiles. We were thinking it was temporary. We were thinking the war would restart with the...
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Derek Bond is better remembered as an actor then a soldier and certainly deserves a measure of immortality for his portrayal of Nicolas Nickleby. His career as an actor, however, was very much in its infancy when Hitler invaded Poland, and Bond abandon the boards for the drill square. His height naturally propelled him towards the Brigade of Guards and he was soon bulling his boots with the best of them. Though his background was not such as is normally...
17) Typhoon Pilot
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This is not only the story of one man's war, but of an aircraft - the Typhoon, or "Tiffy" as it was affectionately known - which the author describes as a "low-bred carthorse whose pedigree had received a sharp infusion of hot-headed sprinter's blood". He recounts his time as a young commander of a rumbustious New Zealand Air Force squadron, and later as the RAF's youngest Group Captain at the age of 25. His story includes conflict in the air over...
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By all accounts, Friedrich Lindau was a remarkable soldier of the Kings German Legion. He served with distinction under Wellington from Lisbon to as far as Bayonne, and was involved in all major engagements, including Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria and San Sebastian. Most notably, he fought and was captured at La Haie Sainte but was the only ranking soldier mentioned by name in Major Baring's account of the battle. For his actions, he was awarded...
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The armies of the Napoleonic Wars fought in a series of devastating campaigns that disturbed the peace of Europe for twelve years, yet the composition, organization and fighting efficiency of these forces receive too little attention. Each force tends to be examined in isolation or in the context of an individual battle or campaign or as the instrument of a famous commander. Rarely have these armies been studied together in a single volume as they...
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The Arabian Gulf has been at the center of the world stage and a major 'flash point' for over 40 years. Expert naval historian Iain Ballantyne examines the role of the US and Royal Naval forces in this troubled area over the period from 1961 to this present day. He describes the various build-up of forces to counter numerous international threats and wars, be they the Israeli/Arab conflicts, Iran/Iraq War, the US hostage dramas, Iraq's invasion of...
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