Nets, mines and bullets
Very rarely, as we warm our hands by a coal fire or eat our fish supper, do we think about what it took to heat our rooms or fill our plates. We may feel grateful that the task was fortunately undertaken by others-that it is something we would not wish to do ourselves-but nothing more. The life of the fishermen of Northern waters is, and always has been, a perilous one, many brave sailors have drowned in pursuit of food for our nation. When war came the fishing fleet, aware of its duty, did not dry dock and hang its nets until peace returned. It still set out to fish, aware that the perils of its trade would be worsened by the presence of an enemy that knows that a hungry nation will be subdued more quickly. It would have been enough if that was all British fishermen had done, but they also gathered intelligence, cleared mines, fought actions from armed fishing vessels and many other incredible acts of courage and devotion. These were not men whose achievements were seen as glamorous, but they were nonetheless brave, unsung heroes in war as well as in peace. This book details the actions of British Fishermen in Northern waters during the First World War; it is, of course, an account so full of action and incident that it is essential reading for those interested in the study of maritime warfare.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

An insightful account of the devastating impact of the Great War, upon the already fragile British colonial African state of Northern Rhodesia. Deploying extensive archival and rare evidence from surviving African veterans, it investigates African resistance at this time.

In October 1911, Winston S. Churchill was an accomplished young Liberal politician who, as the newly appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, still wore his ambition and emotion on his sleeve. Robert L. Borden was the new Canadian Prime Minister, less emotional and much older than Churchill. They became companions in an attempt to provide naval security for the British Empire as a naval crisis loomed with Germany. Their scheme for Canada to provide three Dreadnought battleships for the Royal Navy as part of an Imperial squadron was hotly debated by the Canadian Parliament and rejected by the Senate. It was one of the most divisive debates in Canadian parliamentary history. Churchill invested considerable time and effort in trying to deliver the scheme and even believed he might need to resign when it failed. The decision had great implications for the future, leading to the crises in shipbuilding foreshadowing the outbreak of WW1.

In this book, seven internationally renowned experts on Japanese and Asian history have come together to investigate, with innovative methodological approaches, various aspects of the Japanese experience during and after the First World War.

In Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War David J. Fine offers a surprising portrayal of Jewish officers in the German army as integrated and comfortably identified as both Jews and Germans. Fine explores how both Judaism and Christianity were experienced by Jewish soldiers at the front, making an important contribution to the study of the experience of religion in war. Fine shows how the encounter of German Jewish soldiers with the old world of the shtetl on the eastern front tested both their German and Jewish identities. Finally, utilizing published and unpublished sources including letters, diaries, memoirs, military service records, press accounts, photographs, drawings and tomb stone inscriptions, the author argues that antisemitism was not a primary factor in the war experience of Jewish soldiers.

The First World War in Computer Games analyses the depiction of combat, the landscape of the trenches, and concepts of how the war ended through computer games. This book explores how computer games are at the forefront of new representations of the First World War.

The New Nationalism and the First World War is an edited volume dedicated to a transnational study of the features of the turn-of-the-century nationalism, its manifestations in social and political arenas and the arts, and its influence on the development of the global-scale conflict that was the First World War.

Short Flights With the Cloud Cavalry
by "Spin"
Cavalry of the Clouds
by "Contact"
Air Combat over the trenches by those who fought
The first hand accounts of the experiences of men in time of war always make fascinating reading. Their stories are, of course, always as varied as the individuals concerned and the eras to which they belonged, whether they were soldiers, sailors or airmen, the branch of their service, their nationalities, the conflict in which they were participants and in which theatre they fought. This is what makes military history so fascinating. Sometimes many men report a common experience that abided for decades. Occasionally we hear, across time, the voices of a few notable men who fought their own war in their own special way and once their time had past history would never know their like again. That is especially true of the pilots of the First World war. The machinery of flight was a new technology. The aircraft were raw, basic, flimsy and unproven machines and both they and the brave men who piloted them were fighting their first conflict while learning and evolving their skills and equipment, quite literally, as they fought and died. The dogfight days of the early biplanes, triplanes and early mono winged fighters would be short, but their images together with those of the iconic airships which they ultimately destroyed will remain indelibly imprinted on the history of conflict and the development of man's mastery of the air. Heroes to a man, these trailblazers were almost always young, carefree, well educated and modest young men full of the joy of living and commitment to their aircraft and to flying. This special Leonaur edition contains the writings of two such men from the Royal Air Force, written anonymously during wartime, which take the reader back to those dangerous and epic delays of aerial combat over the muddy trenches of the Western Front in Europe during the Great War. Available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket for collectors.

The epic battle of the Marine Fusiliers in the Great War
The men of the French Fusiliers Marins were always bound to draw public attention because irrespective of their proud military tradition, which often had them fighting alongside the celebrated French Foreign Legion, their distinctive uniform set them apart from the ordinary 'poilus' of the French infantry. The 'naval style' uniform of the men with their characteristic jaunty red pompomed hats and their officers in naval finery made them a unit guaranteed to draw attention and inspire admiration and romance. The role of this unit should not be confused with that of British Royal Marines. They were not intended to be sea going soldiers but to serve as land based infantry primarily in defence of naval stations and in campaigns where amphibious landings and naval support was essential. In the opening stages of the First World War between the middle of October and the middle of November 1914, these remarkable troops fought at Dixmude in Flanders, against the overwhelming tide of the German Army, in a fierce action that upheld their finest traditions, but all but annihilated them. This book is the account of that battle.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

The 'shark killers' of the U. S. fleet
The United States of America entered the First World War in April 1917, though its support for the allied war effort had, of course, been immensely influential in terms of the provision of material up to that point. The direct intervention of America in the war, with its vast resources of military personnel and equipment, backed by a huge manufacturing capacity, was inevitably pivotal. This account, part history, part anecdotal and part first hand account, was written shortly before the end of the conflict and describes in some detail the endeavours of the United States Navy during the war at sea in general and, more particularly, how it dealt with the omnipresent menace of the, 'German Shark'-the U Boats of the German Navy. This hidden undersea threat bore directly on America's role in the war. Men and vitally needed supplies had to traverse the Atlantic in merchant vessels to reach Europe. They were perilously exposed to the depredations of the German submarine force whose task it was to prevent them reaching their destinations. This well written and engaging book takes the reader to war on the United States Navy destroyers and with the navy pilots of early military aircraft whose task it was to pursue and destroy U-Boats in order to protect the vulnerable convoys of merchantmen on the high seas. Many interesting engagements, duels and sinkings are described in compelling detail from first hand experience. An essential book for all those particularly interested in submarine and anti-submarine warfare or the Great War generally.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

This transnational, interdisciplinary study argues for the use of comics as a primary source. In recuperating currently unknown or neglected strips the authors demonstrate that these examples, produced during the World Wars, act as an important cultural record, providing, amongst other information, a barometer for contemporary popular thinking.

Far from the battlefront, hundreds of thousands of workers toiled in Bohemian factories over the course of World War I, and their lives were inescapably shaped by the conflict. In particular, they faced new and dramatic forms of material hardship that strained social ties and placed in sharp relief the most mundane aspects of daily life, such as when, what, and with whom to eat. This study reconstructs the experience of the Bohemian working class during the Great War through explorations of four basic spheres-food, labor, gender, and protest-that comprise a fascinating case study in early twentieth-century social history.

Ranging from soldiers reading newspapers at the front to authors' responses to the war, this book sheds new light on the reading habits and preferences of men and women, combatants and civilians, during the First World War. This is the first study of the conflict from the perspective of readers.

James D. Startt previously explored Woodrow Wilson's relationship with the press during his rise to political prominence. Now, Startt returns to continue the story, picking up with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and tracing history through the Senate's ultimate rejection in 1920 of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate delves deeply into the president's evolving relations with the press and its influence on and importance to the events of the time. Startt navigates the complicated relationship that existed between one of the country's most controversial leaders and its increasingly ruthless corps of journalists. The portrait of Wilson that emerges here is one of complexity-a skilled politician whose private nature and notorious grit often tarnished his rapport with the press, and an influential leader whose passionate vision just as often inspired journalists to his cause.

The American, his motor car and the cavalry in its last great conflict
This essential Leonaur Original, combines two works by American author Frederic Coleman, and has been published to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Coleman, an American member of the Royal Automobile Club, together with a number of like minded volunteers, offered his own motor vehicle and services as a driver to the war effort. In 1914 they and their collection of superior cars arrived at the Western Front to be used as chauffeurs and couriers by staff and regimental officers of division and brigade. For many the Great War means massive armies locked in a war of attrition fought over a ' No Man's Land ' fringed with barbed wire behind which helmeted soldiers cowered in squalid trenches. For much of the war that image is accurate, but it was not always so. In the early stages infantry marched, cavalry charged and artillery was pulled into action by horsepower, just as it had been for hundreds of years. The invading Imperial German Army, superior in numbers and equipment of every kind, swept through Belgium and France as the allied armies fought and retired before its might. Coleman was allocated to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of De Lisle as part of Allenby's First Cavalry Division. He kept a meticulous diary that enabled him to write these well crafted and detailed books full of anecdote, narrative and action. 'President' Coleman (as he was christened by the cavalry) was an eyewitness in the very heart of the conflict and in the company of the officers and men of the British Army's cavalry regiments he takes the reader from the campaigns of 1914 and the retreat from Mons to the war of stalemate of 1915. His descriptions of cavalry in action on the field of battle are riveting. Aside from his fascinating insights into some of the last campaigns of mounted soldiers, Coleman also provides the reader with a thrilling account of his own adventures with his trusty and almost indestructible motor car.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

The importance of the Italian front in the First World War is often overlooked. Nor is it realised that British troops fought in Italy. The Forgotten Front demonstrates Italy's vital contribution to the Allied effort, including Lloyd George's plan to secure overall victory by an offensive on this front. Although his grand scheme was frustrated, British troops were committed to the theatre and played a real part in holding the Italian line and in the final victory of 1918. George H. Cassar, in an account that is original, scholarly and readable, covers both the strategic considerations and the actual fighting.
Faced by stalemate on the Western Front, Lloyd George argued strongly in 1917 for a joint Allied campaign in Italy to defeat Austria-Hungary. Knocking Germany's principal ally out of the war would lead in turn to the collapse of Germany itself. While his plan had real attractions, it also begged many questions. These allowed Haig and Robertson to join the French high command to thwarting it. The disastrous Italian defeat at Caporetto in October 1917 led, however, to the deployment of a British corps in Italy under Sir Herbert Plumer, which bolstered the Italians at a critical juncture. Subsequently led by the Earl of Cavan, British troops fought gallantly at the battle of Asiago in February to March 1918 and contributed significantly to the final defeat of Austria-Hungary at Vittorio Veneto in October.