38 War Memoirs


68920 MEYRICK’S MEDIEVAL KNIGHTS AND ARMOUR


by Samuel Rush Meyrick Since earliest times man has fashioned items for personal defence: shields, swords, crossbows, helmets and ornate suits of body armour for knights and their steeds. Brimming over with full colour illuminated engravings from his


original 1842 survey of weaponry from the Middle Ages, this volume is a stunning historical showcase of European armour spanning the 9th to the 15th centuries. From Richard the Lionheart in full battle regalia to the equipage of numerous anonymous knights, he presents a splendid panorama of medieval paladins and their weapons and chronicles the military regalia of the Middle Ages in all its forms - even, when applicable, highlighting its connection with mythology, religion, the arts, civil polity and entertainment in ancient as well as modern times. 69 full page plates in colour and b/w. 8" x 11" paperbound. £19.99 NOW £4.50


68568 LAST CRUSADERS by Barnaby Rogerson


Subtitled ‘East, West and the Battle for the Centre of the World’, the book is about the titanic contest between Hapsburg-led Christendom and the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries. The battles that were fought and the men who led the armies include the crusader prince of Portugal, Henry the Navigator, 1415- 60, Ferdinand and Isabella against Muslim Granada, 1480-1510, the emergence of the Muslim Corsairs 1480- 1510, the conquest of commerce, Sharifs, sultans and smugglers, the division of Christendom between Charles V and Francis I, Suleyman the Magnificent and his five victories, the Barbarossa brothers, the Siege of Malta and the victory of Lapanto. With list of key characters, comparative timelines, family trees, illus and maps. 481pp, softback. £14.99 NOW £4


69024 WINGS OF WAR: Airborne Warfare 1918-


1945 by Peter Harclerode Parachutists were originally used in warfare mainly for tactical and spying purposes. The very first were men of the Italian army, were dropped behind Austrian lines from aircraft of the British Army’s Royal Flying Corps in 1918. In the 1930s in particular these new fighting units radically changed how war on the ground was to be


conducted in the future. The new technologies associated with airborne warfare and military transport rapidly pushed forward man’s ability to wage war with ever- increasing effectiveness, and in WWII airborne warfare would prove to be crucial to the outcome. 656pp paperback which tells the complete story from 1918 to the end of 1945, covering both the key individual operations as well as the aircraft and systems developed for the safe deployment of troops, vehicles, weapons, supplies and other equipment. £10.99 NOW £4


68573 NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS 1933- 1945 by Saul Friedlander


An omnibus edition of ‘The Years of Persecution’ and the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘The Years of Extermination’, abridged by Orna Kenan. Himself a Holocaust survivor, world authority Saul Friedlander’s eloquent and richly documented study answers a question that has cast a long shadow over the post-war world - how did one of Europe’s most advanced nations embark on a systematic and sustained genocide that claimed six million innocent lives? Friedlander gives voice to the perpetrators and victims alike, exploring the events and attitudes that led to the horror of the Final Solution. In this book, the Holocaust has found its definitive representation. 482pp in paperback.


£12.99 NOW £5.50 WAR MEMOIRS


Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.


- Winston Churchill


69259 ALL MUCK, NOW MEDALS: Landgirls by


Landgirls by Joan Mant The Women’s Land Army was actually founded in 1917, but it was during WWII that it attracted the kind of attention which assured its place in the history of the British war effort. It was hard, demanding and frequently dangerous work, with food and wages at subsistence levels, living conditions which were at best Spartan and accidents,


sometimes fatal, commonplace. The author appealed for contributions from former WLA ladies on the radio and in the press, received some 300 responses, and has used 200 of them for this book, directly quoted. Here is Elsie Druce, leaving home for the first time, Betty Schibler in a hostel up a steep hill, threshing - a filthy and noisy job, adventures at silage time, work on a ‘market garden’ and reminiscences of dozens of ‘green’ girls. Getting up at 4am, eating raw potatoes, they cover all facets of the WLA experience, from initial volunteering, training, uniforms and dealing with bombing raids to all aspects of the farming and building work they undertook and, of course, their limited but heartily enjoyed social lives, which improved noticeably when the first US Airmen arrived, with their money and dance bands, including Glenn Miller! But what is most noticeable is the common thread of humour, camaraderie and pride in a job well done that runs through all of these touching accounts. 259pp paperback with b/w photos, a fitting tribute to the heroic efforts of the WLA.


£9.99 NOW £5


69402 48 HOURS OF KRISTALLNACHT by Mitchell G Bard PhD


Subtitled Night of Destruction/ Dawn of the Holocaust/ An Oral History. On the night of November 9th 1938, rampaging mobs throughout Germany and the newly acquired territories of Austria and the Südetenland freely attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places of work and worship. Over the next 48 hours, at least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, as many as 2,000 synagogues were burned, almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalised, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This pogrom has been named Kristallnacht or Night of the Broken Glass. Drawing on his unprecedented access to key archives, the author presents a more than shocking story, an almost unbelievable tale of horror and suffering that centres on the words of those who, as children, were on the scene first-hand. This is the first book to thoroughly chronicle these pivotal 48 hours by presenting a wide array of eye-witness testimony, much of it previously unpublished and setting the event firmly in a historical context. These accounts, and Mitchell Bard’s incisive analysis, reveal what led up to the pogroms, how they transpired, their aftermath, and why the Holocaust can be dated from these two harrowing nights. Before this, Jews had little reason to believe their safety was at stake as only restrictions had been imposed on German Jews’ economic activity and job opportunities. 240 pages with notes and six appendices. £12.99 NOW £4.50


69309 VOICES OF THE CODEBREAKERS: Personal Accounts of the Secret Heroes


of World War II by Michael Paterson


Mention WWII and the images that first leap to mind are those of bombing raids, fighter aircraft, the Blitzkrieg and the U-boats picking off trans-Atlantic shipping, but underlying every single action of the war was the act of communication,


from a simple order to engage the enemy to the major decisions of military tactics around which the entire conflict could turn. Keeping this information - which may have had to be transferred across oceans and continents - secret represented an immense challenge, and the breaking of the cryptography devised to do it represented an even greater one. The winning of this “hidden war”, especially toward the end of hostilities as resources were becoming more stretched, was absolutely vital. Smuggled written messages, encoded radio transmissions and the work of agents on the ground were monitored and scrutinised microscopically in order to gain any slight advantage and to get this information to the men at the sharp end. The work of the men of Bletchley Park and in particular those who broke the Enigma code is well known and rightly celebrated, but there were many thousands of others involved in codebreaking and counter-espionage who, by the very nature of their work, never got the full credit they deserved. Michael Paterson has collected here a gripping selection of first-hand accounts from the men and women from all the Allied powers. Bletchley Park has its own chapter, but the work of others, particularly those improvising in the field and those operating in occupied countries make for reading worthy of the finest wartime thrillers, which makes it particularly appropriate that Robert Harris, author of Enigma, provides the book’s foreword. 16 pages of b/w photos, 352pp paperback. £8.99 NOW £4


69502 TALES BY JAPANESE SOLDIERS by Kazuo


Tamayama and John Nunneley Over 305,000 Japanese soldiers fought in Burma between 1942 and 1945 of which 180,000 died. Our book tells how the common soldier of the Imperial Japanese Army lived, fought and died in that most terrible conflict. Here are harrowing, honest accounts, translated from Japanese, of what it was like to


fight a strange war in a strange country, short of food and weapons, confused and far from home, facing death and disease, starvation as well as enemy action. The 62 ‘tales’ trace the Burma campaign in chronological sequence and together offer a new perspective of a long and arduous war. Dr Kazuo Tamayama, Secretary of the Japan-British Society, was appointed an honorary MBE in 1988 as was his co-author in 2001. At times the accounts are humorous and touching. 254pp in paperback with maps. £8.99 NOW £4.50


69598 BETTY’S WARTIME


DIARY 1939-1945 by Betty Armitage


Edited by Nicholas Webley from scribblings and scraps of paper which were badly decomposed when found, here is the wartime diary found in a small house in Norfolk written by a seamstress born in the 1880s. Betty Armitage was a theatrical dresser during the first part


of the century and moved to Norfolk during the war. Her unusual diary recounts her day to day struggle through an ordinary small-town wartime life, and it is funny touching and full of wry observations. The many posters and contemporary artworks which illustrate the text give a superb flavour of the period. Here is privation relieved by the occasional poached pheasant, upheaval as thousands of bright young US servicemen ‘invade’ East Anglia, quiet heroes and small-time rural villains. 260pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £4.50


53996 YESTERDAYS - OUR FINEST HOURS by Eric Midwinter


September 1939, the month the life and landscape of Britain changed - ‘Hitler invades Poland’. 80 b/w photos tell the story of Britain from that terrible day, through the years of barrage balloons hovering over parks and quarrying in Hyde Park for sandbags, rationing and queues, spivs selling nylons in Petticoat Lane and the Home Front spirit detectable in the smiles of jolly WAAFs and dance hall get-togethers. 1945 did not see the end of all this, with National Service and continued rationing, so this evocative record goes on through the 40s until, with the Festival of Britain, the Ashes win and


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the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, optimism and brighter horizons were on the cards. Taking us up to 1953, with Teddy Boys and the New Look. 95 pages. £14.99 NOW £5


66123 MEMORIES OF RESISTANCE by Shirley Mangini


Subtitled ‘Women’s Voices from the Spanish Civil War’, this is the first book to focus on Spanish women’s contributions to the war effort. During the turbulent 1920s and 30s, women tried to become part of mainstream politics. The ‘invisible’ women who came to the fore during the revolutionary years of the Second Spanish Republic from 1931-36 became activists in the protest against the military insurrection of 1936. The book looks at the imprisonment and exile of women after the war and the ensuing long years of persecution and silence under the Franco regime from 1939-1975. 226pp with many photos. £30 NOW £4


66691 SAS HEROES: Remarkable Soldiers,


Extraordinary Men by Pete Scholey


The author was a member of the SAS from 1963 to 1983, serving in some of the world’s most hostile terrain. His book contains his personal recollections of 20 warriors who really were the best of the best. Following a foreword by Frederick Forsyth, each of the 20


men get their own chapter, detailing not only their special achievements but also Scholey’s personal recollections of their time spent serving together and, where applicable, after leaving the Regiment. Includes interesting appendices of ranks, squadrons and chronology. Colour and b/w photos. 288pp. £17.99 NOW £5


66141 CARELESS TALK: The Hidden History


of the Home Front 1939-45 by Stuart Hylton Drawing on Home Intelligence, the monitoring of public opinion by the Ministry of Information and other sources such as Mass Observation, the author builds up a picture of an inefficient bureaucracy and frequent public desperation. Jewish shops were attacked and Jews accused of black marketeering. The campaign against careless talk was resented as patronising, campaigns for equal pay failed and by the end of the war the middle ground in politics had almost disappeared. Enlivened by the hilarious opinions of The Evening Standard cartoon character Colonel Blimp (“To preserve British liberty, we must lock up the entire Labour Party”). 226pp, paperback, photos. £9.99 NOW £3


66209 STRANGER IN THE HOUSE: Women’s Stories of Men Returning from the Second World War by Julie Summers


From 1945, more than four million British servicemen were demobbed and sent home. The author interviewed over a hundred women who were on the receiving end of demobilisation. Women who had coped with poverty, rationing, rearing a family and doing a job at the same time rose to the challenges and embraced a new independence. Now they had to deal with an injured, emotionally-damaged husband, children who had never seen their father before and men who had been presumed dead but now reappeared after their wives had re-married. There were also women who had illegitimate children following a wartime affair as well as those whose steadfast optimism was rewarded with a delighted reunion. 363 pages with b/w archive photos. £18.99 NOW £7.50


66639 LOST VOICES OF THE ROYAL NAVY by Max Arthur


Originally published in two volumes ‘The True Glory: The Royal Navy 1914-1939’ and ‘The Navy: 1939-To the Present Day’, this paperback edition has been edited to cover the years 1914-1945. It is based entirely on first-hand accounts of naval action, with vivid recollections from Gallipoli to the Far East, by way of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Max has woven a unique narrative history of life at sea into a memorable and moving testament to the courage, spirit, skill and irrepressible humour of those who served in the Royal Navy during these crucial years. 563pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £2.50


66640 LOST VOICES OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCE by Max Arthur


One of the best in Max Arthur’s award-winning series, the reprint of the 1993 original ‘There Shall Be Wings: The RAF From 1918 to the Present.’ Max presents a moving collection of first hand accounts which record the role of the RAF in World War Two and particularly the Battle of Britain and the desert battles of North Africa, as well as the Falklands and the Gulf War. Through original interviews with air and ground crew, the spirit and comradeship, the stress, courage, isolation, vulnerability and the wonder of the wartime flying experience is vividly explored. 504pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £2.50


66756 WARTIME WRITINGS 1943-1949 by Marguerite Duras


Growing up in Cambodia, Duras joined the French Resistance during WWII as a communist spy and her wartime notebooks are a mixture of fact and fiction containing the basis of a number of her later writings. In “Memories of Italy” she explores love and loss under a baking sun with her wartime lover Dionys, using a semi- surreal voice which is very distinctive. In “The horror of such love” the narrator gives birth to a stillborn child which is described with intense poignancy and in “The Sea Wall” she draws on the experience of her childhood when her mother was trying to run a plantation in Cambodia in a constant struggle against the elements. Fascinating shifts of style and tone. 296pp. £26.95 NOW £4.50


66787 DRAWING FIRE: The Diary of a Great


War Soldier and Artist by Len Smith Arthur Leonard Smith (1892-1974) was born in Walthamstow and enrolled as an infantryman in the 7th City of London Battalion in September 1914. Following his training at Watford he sailed for France in March 1915, and from then on saw action at Festubert (1915), Loos (1915), Vimy (1916), High Wood (1916), Butte de Warlencourt (1916), Messines (1917) and Cambrai (1917), surviving the war with a mixture of whimsical humour, bravery and sheer good luck. In 1916 he became an accredited War Artist, using his sketching


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skills to map out terrain and report enemy troop movements. He crept within yards off enemy headquarters and spent four days avoiding enemy fire to produce a two-yard long panoramic view of enemy troop lines at Vimy Ridge. 350 drawings, 384pp. £20 NOW £6


67156 ESCAPER’S PROGRESS: The Remarkable POW Experiences of a Royal Naval Officer by David James


David James, who was in motor gunboats, was captured after abandoning ship following an engagement with three armed German trawlers in the North Sea. Imprisoned initially in Dulag Marlag, he immediately decided to escape. His first tunnel was discovered before completion. In December 1943 he succeeded in escaping and was on the run for almost a week but was captured while attempting to board a ship at Lubeck. Undeterred, in February 1944 he broke out again, dressed as a Swedish sailor. Travelling by train, his search for a suitable ship took him to Bremen, Hamburg, Lubeck, Rostock and eventually Danzig. From there he succeeded in reaching Stockholm. Subsequently he entered the world of politics as an MP. 166 pages, 16 photos, maps. £19.99 NOW £7


67200 WE ARE SOLDIERS: Our Heroes, Their


Stories, Real Life on the Front Line by Danny Danziger


Find out from the men and women who have experienced it what it is like to throw yourself into the slipstream of a C-130 Hercules in the dead of night, or to climb through the hatch of a Warrior armoured personnel carrier to save the life of a comrade under fire. Through these soldiers’ eyes, you will be taken on training exercises in the jungles of Borneo and the Arctic tundra, and enter the Muslim compound of Gorazde as the Serbians fire on children making their way to school. You will sit in on negotiations with Afghan warlords and learn what troops ask the Regimental Padre as they stand on the front line. 285 pages, maps. £17.99 NOW £2.75


68922 POOR BLOODY


INFANTRY 1939-1945 by Charles Whiting


In 1944-5 a young subaltern’s life- expectancy was 30 days, and life revolved round the bliss of a mess- tin full of canned “M. and V.” stew, washed down with a mug of “char”. After the fall of Caen in 1944 the Wehrmacht was in a desperate retreat and most of the young men on the Allied front line were doomed. Meanwhile in Italy the


slaughter of Monte Cassino was followed by a dogged combat in the mountains, with even the New Zealanders, rated highly by the Germans as assault infantry, beginning to lose heart. Eyewitness accounts include that of Rifleman Bowlby, a volunteer straight from university who vividly described the carnage. Bowlby was briefly hospitalised and had an encounter with a nymphomaniac nurse, but back on the line he felt that the US 5th and British 8th armies had been forgotten by the politicians far away. Back in Europe the frontline fighting to take Metz and Aachen created so many casualties that new recruits were stretchered out before they even knew the name of their sergeant. 278pp, paperback, b/w photos. £14.99 NOW £6.50


67224 WARCHILD: A Boy Soldier’s Story by Emmanuel Jal and Megan Lloyd Davies From child soldier to refugee to rap star was seven years old when Sudan’s bloody civil war separated him from everything he knew. Believing he was being sent to school, Emmanuel trekked to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, where he became one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Here he was taught that the gun, machete and spear were now his mother and father. Then a British aid worker smuggled him into Kenya and he finally began to have a childhood and an education. After the tragic death of his rescuer, Emmanuel’s new-found happiness was destroyed and he was forced to struggle to put his past behind him. Through the power of prayer and music, he eventually succeeded. 272 paperback pages, colour photos. £12.99 NOW £2.50


67389 STORY OF ANNE FRANK by Mirjam Pressler


Some of the most famous Diaries in the world are those of Anne Frank, written when she was just 14 years old. Yet many of us do not know the terrible facts that lie beyond the end of the diary - Anne’s imprisonment in Auschwitz concentration camp, followed by her death in disease-ridden Bergen-Belsen. Here are new insights into her early life, relationships with family and friends, and of course the family’s harrowing two years spent hiding in the “Secret Annexe”, the sealed-off backrooms of an Amsterdam office building, concealed from the Nazis. Written by her noted translator. 8 pages of photos. 192pp in paperback. £5.99 NOW £1.75


67820 FIVE OF THE FEW by Steve Darlow The book tells the intriguing story of five special airmen who earned the right to wear the Battle of Britain clasp with pride. The fascinating accounts of 501 Squadron Hurricane pilots Ken Lee and Tony Pickering, 151 Squadron Hurricane pilot John Ellacombe, 603 Squadron Spitfire pilot Peter Olver, and 219 Squadron Blenheim and Beaufighter radar operator Terry Clark cover the entire Battle of Britain period and the subsequent night Blitz. Each man would then go on to distinguish himself in further service of the RAF, fighting in North Africa and the Mediterranean, the night defence of the UK, offensive operations over the continent and support to D- day and beyond. However, two of them would end up behind barbed wire. 254pp, photos. £20 NOW £5


67854 BATTLES WITH PANZERS: Monty’s


Tank Battalions 1 RTR and 2 RTR at War by Patrick Delaforce


The author interviewed some 40 veteran officers and men of both battalions of the Royal Tank Regiments, including the late Field Marshal Lord Carver, a young tank commander in North Africa at the outbreak of war in 1939. During the First World War, 1 RTR won two Victoria Crosses and were victors in the first ever tank versus tank engagement. 2 RTR fought in all the key Western Front battles from Messines in June 1917 to the armistice. Both formations took part in the massed armoured attack at Cambrai in November 1917, a key


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