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Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.One of the most remarkable actions in ancient or modern military history took place at Thermopylae in 480BC. Rupert Matthews has personally examined the battlefield in order to try to explain how 300 Spartans could hold at bay the hordes of the Persian Emperor Xerxes. This was no vain sacrifice; the delay gave breathing space for the Greek states to organise their defence, and ultimately defend successfully their homelands. Among other intriguing revelations the author explains the importance of the half-ruined wall that sheltered the Spartans against the onslaught. With concise diagrams and maps of the entire campaign, the reader can begin to understand the extraordinary, apparently impossible outcome of the war.

Between 15 June 1968 and 13 May 1996, the Polaris submarines of the 10th Submarine Squadron carried out a total of 229 patrols, travelling over 2 million miles. Wherever you sit on the nuclear debate, it makes an impressive tale; delivered on time and on budget essentially by a small group of naval officers and civil servants, the Polaris programme ensured that Britain had a Continuous at Sea Deterrence for twenty-eight years. Polaris is not just the history of the weapons, submarines and politicians: it is the history of those who were there. Combining through history with personal memories and photographs, Keith Hall has created a long-lasting legacy to a fascinating project and provided an insight into a world that no longer exists.

In August 1914, Kitcheners Contemptible Little Army was highly professional but small, equipped with only what they could carry and they were facing a force of continental proportions, heavily armed and well supplied. The task of equipping the British Army was truly Herculean. Many able men had volunteered to fight in the trenches, and others would soon be called up, so this vital work was to be undertaken by the ordinary men and women left behind. In time, the government recognised the need for skills of engineering and logistics, and many of those who had survived the onslaught were brought back home to work. Ordnance is the story of these men and women. It traces the provision of equipment and armaments from raw material through manufacture to the supply routes that gave the British Army all the material it needed to win the war. It is a story of some failures, but also of ingenuity and effort on the part of ordinary people to overcome shortfalls in organisation. It is a story of some lessons learnt, but of others that werent, and these would have long-lasting repercussions.

Tobruk was one of the greatest Allied victories and one of the worst Allied defeats of the Second World War. The 1942 fiasco rocked the very foundation of Winston Churchills premiership. It revived the flagging hopes of the German people and fanned the flames of Arab unrest.Furthering Rommels ascendency and souring relations within the British Commonwealth, it marked a turning point in Anglo-American relations in the fight against Adolf Hitlers Third Reich.Utilising a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Tobruk 1942 examines why the fortress fell to Rommels Axis forces in just 24 hours when it held out against repeated attacks the previous year.Comparing the 1941 and 1942 battles, this book presents a new perspective on Tobruk the isolated Libyan fortress, and symbol of Allied freedom, which for a period in the war captured the worlds attention.

In the First World War many battles on the Western Front had lasted weeks or months. All too often they degenerated into glacial and indecisive campaigns of attrition. By the 1930s, however, military science had recreated the possibility of a decisive battle. An unprecedented rate of technological change meant that a stream of new inventions were readily at hand for military innovators to exploit. Aircraft, armoured vehicles and new forms of motorised transport became available to make possible a fresh style of offensive warfare when the next European war began in 1939.A belief in the importance of effective war fighting was vital to the Nazi vision of Germanys future. Nazi Germanys political and military leaders aimed for rapid and decisive victory in battle. From 1939-45 new ideologies and new machines of war carried destruction across the globe.Alan Warren chronicles the sixteen most decisive battles of the Second World War, from the Blitzkrieg of Poland to the fall of Berlin.

On 20 September 1944, a force of US paratroopers launched a desperate, near suicidal river crossing in an effort to reach their airborne brethren trapped at Arnhem, only to see their efforts squandered by British tank crews who, instead of racing ahead, sat down to drink tea. The story of the Waal crossing as told by American veterans of the operation has become a part of the Arnhem legend, a legend of airborne heroism set against the timidity of the armoured forces sent to relieve them; of American professionalism wasted by British incompetence. But what really happened? Why was the operation even necessary? Using first-hand accounts and official records, Operation Market Garden examines the legend of the Waal Crossing and the truth behind it, revealing how a culture of elitism mixed with national and personal rivalries led to arguably the greatest western Allied defeat of the war.

The Battle of Arnhem in September 1944 has been much publicised, with its extraordinary parachute drop and gallant defence by Frosts few men of the bridge at Arnhem. Although the campaign came close to success, its relative failure left the Allies trapped within a thirty-mile stretch of road. The Arnhem debacle saw vast stretches of Holland to the left and right of the salient occupied by enemy forces. These areas of Holland, criss-crossed by unfordable rivers and closely populated by small villages, had to be cleared by Allied troops in platoon or company strength, fighting in tight situations against bitter skilled resistance. There was none of the awesome and inspirational massing of troops seen in the battle of Normandy, for Arnhem itself. Interweaving his engaging narrative style with the eyewitness accounts and personal reminiscences of British, Canadian and Polish troops, Ken Tout reveals how these men performed their heroic deeds. They suffered and died in unheralded, largely forgotten minor skirmishes, but on a scale far exceeding the casualties of the immediate assault on Arnhem. They deserve to be remembered. This is their story.

This is the story of the British Armys endeavours during the Great War to deceive the enemy and trick him into weakening his defences and redeploying his reserves. In this year-by-year account, Martin Davies shows how Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig actively encouraged their Army commanders to employ trickery so that all attacks should come as a complete surprise to the enemy. The methods of concealment of real military artefacts and the creation of dummy ones were ingenious enough but the real art lay in the development of geographically dispersed deception plans which disguised the real time and place of attack and forced the enemy to defend areas threatened by fake operations. Some of these plans, such as disguising mules as tanks and creating dummy airfields bordered on the farcical but were often amazingly effective. The driving force behind the deception plans was GHQ and the Army commanders, further dispelling the myth of Lions led by Donkeys. Evidence shows that the British Army employed deception to advantage in all their theatres of operation.

Regarded as one of the most outstanding commanding officers on the Western Front, Wilfrid Abel Smith commanded an elite unit of 1,000 of the finest soldiers in the British Army. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, Smith was a career soldier who led his battalion of Grenadiers with distinction through the First Battle of Ypres and the winter trench warfare of 191415. He died of wounds received at the Battle of Festubert in May 1915.The letters and diaries provide a vivid, first-hand account of the fighting and suffering on the front line, written by a compassionate commander and affectionate family man. Most of his brother officers were Old Etonians, including his brigade commander, Lord Cavan, and his second-in-command, George Ma Jeffreys. Smiths account offers a poignant insight into the way in which the privileged world of a Guards officer responded, with the highest sense of duty and courage, to the unprecedented demands of industrial warfare.From Eton to Ypres is edited by his great-grandson, Charles Abel Smith.

Originally published in 1964, this is a critically acclaimed classic history of the military engagements of the Somme that raged from July to November 1916. It tells of bloody battles interspersed with trench actions of dreadful intensity. In addition to the key confrontations, Farrar-Hockley provides a detailed background to the Somme planning and why it failed with dreadful casualties. In its entirety, the conflict along the Somme scarred the minds of a whole generation, becoming recorded by historians as the graveyard of the flower of British manhood.With a new introduction by Charles Messenger, and a touching foreword by the authors son, Dair Farrar-Hockley, this new edition of The Somme is a testament to those who gave their lives on this famous battlefield.

Cheltenham in the Great War is the first book to portray the town, its people and the impact of the war to end all wars from the declaration of war in 1914 to Armistice Day in 1918. Almost 1,000 Cheltenham women left by train every day for munitions work, hundreds made airplanes in the Winter Gardens, many were nurses and most former suffragettes joined the WVR. Why did two schools do double shifts and for what did the townspeople raise 186,000 in one week in 1918? How did Cheltenham cope with 7,250 soldiers billeted in the town and khaki fever? This book gives an insight into the lives of different social classes in Cheltenham including stories of remarkable women and how their war was fought on the Home Front. The Great War story of Cheltenham is told through considerable new research and is vividly illustrated throughout with evocative, informative images, many of which have not been published previously.

In 1992 Bosnia descended into a savage and bitter civil war, which by 1995 had claimed over a quarter of a million lives. Following the Dayton Peace Agreement between the warring Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats, NATO began its first land operation, taking over from the UN Protection Force. With a total of only 200 men, a British battlegroup was charged to enforce the peace in a 100km area, through which wound a front line separating the territory of the Bosnian Muslims from that of the Bosnian Serb forces. In this updated edition of the acclaimed book A Cold War, Brigadier Ben Barry has produced the definitive account of the British Armys dangerous and groundbreaking operations in Bosnia.

The Palestine campaign of 1917 saw Britains armed forces rise from defeat to achieve stunning victory. After two failed attempts in the spring, at the end of the year they broke through the Ottoman line with an innovative mixture of old and new technology and tactics, and managed to advance over 50 miles, from Gaza to Jerusalem, in only two months. As well as discussions of military strategy, Stuart Hadaways gripping narrative of the campaign gives a broad account of the men on both sides who lived and fought in the harsh desert conditions of Palestine, facing not only brave and determined enemies, but also the environment itself: heat, disease and an ever-present thirst.Involving Ottoman, ANZAC, British and Arab forces, the campaign saw great empires manoeuvring for the coveted Holy Land. It was Britains victory in 1917, however, that redrew the maps of the Middle East and shaped the political climate for the century to come.

During the Great War almost 650 men enlisted from the small market town of Alton, Hampshire. These soldiers served all over the globe, including the Western Front, India, Mesopotamia, Salonika, Turkey and Russia, and were never the same again; some choosing to tell their stories, others desperately trying to forget what they had experienced. But they were the lucky ones: around a third of those who left for distant shores were never to return and instead lie buried in cemeteries across the world. The stories these men couldnt tell themselves are uncovered here as a monument to their bravery and sacrifice. Heres to the Men of Alton is a collection of personal accounts of courage and hardship which provides a lasting tribute to those ordinary men who gave their lives for King and Country.

Between 1945 and 1990 the Western Allies mounted some of the most audacious and successful intelligence collection operations of the Cold War. Conducted in great secrecy, aircrews flew specially modified transport and training aircraft along the Berlin Air Corridors and Control Zone to gather intelligence on Soviet and East German military targets in the German Democratic Republic and around Berlin. The Air Corridors comprised three regulated airways for civil and military air traffic that connected West Berlin to West Germany. Operating under the guise of innocent transport and training flights, the pilots used their right of access to gather huge amounts of imagery for forty-five years. They also provided the western intelligence community with unique knowledge of the organisation and equipment used by Warsaw Pact forces.For the first time, using recently declassified materials and extensive interviews with those involved, Looking Down the Corridors provides a detailed account and analysis of these operations and their unique contribution to the Cold War.

The failure of the Gallipoli campaign was instantly blamed on a great untruth that the War Office was unprepared for Dardanelles operations and gave Sir Ian Hamilton little in the way of maps and terrain intelligence. This myth is repeated by current historians. The Dardanelles Commission became a battleground of accusation and counter-accusation. This book, incorporating much previously unpublished material, demonstrates that geographical intelligence preparations had indeed been made by the War Office and the Admiralty for decades. They had collected a huge amount of terrain information, maps and charts covering the topography and defences, and knew a great deal about Greek plans to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula. At least one plan was Anglo-Greek!Much of this material, which is here identified and evaluated, was handed over to Hamiltons Staff. Additional material was obtained in theatre before the landings, T. E. Lawrence playing a part. Grasping Gallipolli, which is the first book to examine the intelligence and mapping side of the Dardanelles campaign, looks closely at its terrain, and describes the production and development of new operations maps, and clarifies whether the intelligence was properly processed and efficiently used. It also examines the use of aerial photos taken by the Royal Naval Air Service during the campaign, and charting, hydrographic and other intelligence work by the Royal Navy.

Despite being the inventor of the tank and responsible for campaign-winning tactics, by the start of the Second World War the United Kingdom had fallen well behind other nations in the design and build of armoured vehicles. Here, William Suttie uncovers the history of tank design from a government perspective and the decisions and failures that led to that state of affairs, and details the formation of the Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment at Chertsey. Known as the Tank Factory, the Chertsey establishment sought to ensure that the United Kingdom became world-leading in the field of military vehicle research and design, and that the British Army would never be underprotected or outgunned again. Drawing on unpublished sources and photographs, this fascinating book reveals the establishments history, its groundbreaking research and its inventions and designs, including first-hand insights from those who worked there.

After the Second World War, 400,000 German servicemen were imprisoned on British soil, some remaining until 1948. These defeated men in their tattered uniforms were, in every sense, Hitlers Last Army. Britain used the prisoners as an essential labour force, especially in agriculture, and in the devastating winter of 1947 the Germans helped avert a national disaster by clearing snow and stemming floods, working shoulder to shoulder with Allied troops. Slowly, friendships were forged between former enemies. Some POWs fell in love with British women, though such relationships were often frowned upon: Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough but with a German POW ! Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective that of Britains German prisoners, from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended.

This is the story of how the Cold War impacted on the people of East Anglia. Had nuclear conflict broken out, the region would have found itself as the target of a Soviet strike for the simple reason that it housed the launch pad for not only the British deterrent, but also Americas first line of defence. The book also examines the early development of the UKs nuclear arsenal, with ballistic and environmental testing of nuclear bombs at Orford Ness and storage and maintenance at one of the countrys most secret sites, Barnham. Cold War: East Anglia reveals the secrets of the years of confrontation, and looks at what life might have been like had the Cold War turned hot.

Carshalton in Surrey was deeply affected by the First World War: over 1,900 local men enlisted to fight. Of those men, 243 lost their lives and are commemorated on the war memorial. As we find ourselves commemorating the centenary of the war, it is more important than ever that these men are not forgotten. Drawing on over six years of research, this book brings together the stories of the lives and deaths of these men. Utilising a wide variety of sources and complemented by many previously unseen photographs, their stories are told here, from the fourteen sets of brothers who were killed, to the devastating effect of the Somme campaign in which nineteen local men lost their lives on the opening day alone.