A young reader's edition of The Volunteer - Jack Fairweather's Costa Book of the Year 2020. An extraordinary, eye-opening account of the Holocaust. Occupied Warsaw, Summer 1940: Witold Pilecki, a Polish underground operative, accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands interned at a new concentration camp, report on Nazi crimes, raise a secret army and stage an uprising. The name of the camp - Auschwitz. Over the next two and half years, and under the cruellest of conditions, Pilecki's underground sabotaged facilities, assassinated Nazi officers and gathered evidence of terrifying abuse and mass murder. But as he pieced together the horrifying Nazi plans to exterminate Europe's Jews, Pilecki realized he would have to risk his men, his life and his family to warn the West before all was lost. To do so meant attempting the impossible - but first he would have to escape from Auschwitz itself... For children aged 12 and up. Written from exclusive access to previously hidden diaries, family and camp survivor accounts, and recently declassified files. Critically acclaimed and award-winning journalist Jack Fairweather brilliantly portrays the remarkable man who volunteered to face the unknown. This extraordinary and eye-opening account of the Holocaust invites us all to bear witness.

Shelby Foote's monumental historical trilogy, "The Civil War: A Narrative," is our window into the day-by-day unfolding of our nation's defining event.  Now Foote reveals the deeper human truth behind the battles and speeches through the fiction he has chosen for this vivid, moving collection.



These ten stories of the Civil War give us the experience of joining a coachload of whores left on a siding during a battle in Virginia  . . .marching into an old man's house to tell him it's about to be burned down . . .or seeing a childhood friend shot down at Chickamauga.



The result is history that lives again in our imagination, as the creative vision of these great writers touches our emotions and makes us witness to the human tragedy of this war, fought so bravely by those in blue and gray.

'A great and inspiring book from Doncaster's bravest son. Read it in a day' - Jeremy Clarkson 'Ben is the embodiment of positive thinking. What he has achieved, in large part through willpower, is nothing short of miraculous. An inspiration to us all' - Ant Middleton The story of Ben Parkinson MBE, the most injured soldier to have survived Afghanistan --- What were you doing when you were 22? Where were you in the world? What did you want to do with your life? Ben Parkinson was a 6'4" Paratrooper. He was in Afghanistan fighting for his country. He wanted to always be a soldier, to be a father and to get home in one piece. But we don't always get what we want. So the question is: how do we react when that happens? Easy: You find something new to fight for. Ben Parkinson MBE is an inspiration to everyone. He suffered 37 injuries when his Land Rover hit a mine in Helmand in 2006, including brain damage, breaking his back and losing both his legs. This book follows the story of what led him to that moment his life changed forever - and what happened next. Doctors didn't think Ben could survive the trauma - then they didn't think he would wake up, or talk again, or walk again. Time after time, Ben pushed the ceiling on what was possible, going on to carry the Olympic flame in 2012 and receiving an MBE for the enormous feats he has undertaken for charity. What he has achieved in the face of adversity - for others as well as for himself - is nothing short of a miracle. Nerve-wracking, heart-warming and full of classic soldier's humour, Losing the Battle, Winning the War is a book you'll be thinking about long after the last page. 'Ben Parkinson is my hero. His story is one of immeasurable courage and character, a testament to the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit' Dan Jarvis MP, author of Long Way Home

The product of nearly 25 years of research, Pershing: General of the Armies remains one of the most authoritative biographies of the man known as "Black Jack." Newly appointed head of the American Expeditionary Forces, Pershing sailed for Europe in May 1917. Once in France, he set about the task of building an army. By October the Americans were at the front and over the next year became involved in increasingly significant battles, all vividly recounted here: Cantigny, Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, and the 47-day slugfest in the Meuse-Argonne. Although the impact of the American forces on the outcome of the war has been much debated, there is no question that the troops acquitted themselves well under Pershing s command. Pershing s postwar life included an unsuccessful run for president, a stint as Chief of Staff, and a secret romance with a French woman 34 years younger than he; nonetheless, his influence as a leader extended into World War II."

Immediate Action is a no-holds-barred account of an extraordinary life, from the day Andy McNab was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital to the day he went to fight in the Gulf War. As a delinquent youth he kicked against society. As a young soldier he waged war against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. As a member of 22 SAS Regiment he was at the centre of covert operations for nine years - on five continents. Recounting with grim humour and in riveting, often horrifying, detail his activities in the world's most highly trained and efficient Special Forces unit, McNab sweeps us into a world of surveillance and intelligence-gathering, counter-terrorism and hostage rescue.There are casualties: the best men are so often the first to be killed, because they are in front. By turns chilling, astonishing, violent, funny and moving, this blistering first-hand account of life at the forward edge of battle confirms Andy McNab's standing in the front rank of writers on modern war.

An urgent, insightful account of the human side of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine by seasoned war reporter Tim Judah Making his way from the Polish border in the west, through the capital city and the heart of the 2014 revolution, to the eastern frontline near the Russian border, Tim Judah brings a rare glimpse of the reality behind the headlines. Along the way he talks to the people living through the conflict - mothers, soldiers, businessmen, poets, politicians - whose memories of a contested past shape their attitudes, allegiances and hopes for the future. Together, their stories paint a vivid picture of what the second largest country in Europe feels like in wartime: a nation trapped between powerful forces, both political and historical. 'Visceral, gripping, heartbreaking' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Haunting . . . timely . . . Interviewing a wide range of people who have been caught up in the recent conflict, Judah concentrates skilfully and affectingly on the human cost' Alexander Larman, Observer 'Comes close to the master, Ryszard Kapuscinski' Roger Boyes, The Times 'A kaleidoscopic portrait . . . Judah looks at the present - what Ukraine looks and feels like now' Marcus Tanner, Independent

'An unpretentious Aussie's experiences in one of the most ramshackle and soul-destroying military organisations on Earth.' COURIER-MAIL A real-life boy's own adventure, MARCHING WITH THE DEVIL is a hell-raising account of five years in the infamous French Foreign Legion. 'In 1894 a French Foreign Legion General said, "Legionnaires, vous etes faits pour mourir, je vous envoie la ou on meurt." Legionnaires, you are made for dying, I will send you where you can die. When I was in my mid-teens and first read those words they were powerful and confronting. I read them as a challenge and an invitation. The words, and the feelings they evoked, remained with me until I was ready. On 20 May 1988, I enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.' Searching for something he wasn't finding in his life in Australia, David Mason joined the French Foreign Legion. This is a frank account of how Mason came first in basic training, trained other Legionnaires, went to Africa, did sniper, commando and medic training and took part in two operations, both in the Republic of Djibouti where a civil war nearly crippled the nation. It tells of his daily life in the Legion, in the training regiment, in Africa and with the Legion's Parachute Regiment. But more than this: it reveals his disillusionment, frustration and disappointment with the much mythologised Legion, and how the Legion today is not what it seems - or could be. Now part of the HACHETTE MILITARY COLLECTION. 'Remarkable' THE AGE

'The wartime spy career of Mathilde Carre - aka "the Cat" and "Agent Victoire" - is so extraordinary it almost defies belief' The Times An exhilarating true story of espionage, resistance, and one of WW2's most charismatic double-agents. Occupied Paris, 1940. A woman in a red hat and a black fur coat hurries down a side-street. She is Mathilde Carre, codenamed 'the Cat', later known as Agent Victoire - charismatic, daring and a spy. These are the darkest days for France, yet Mathilde is driven by a sense of destiny that she will be her nation's saviour. Soon, she is at the centre of the first great Allied intelligence network of the Second World War. But as Roland Philipps shows in this extraordinary account of her life, when the Germans close in, Mathilde makes a desperate and dangerous compromise. Nobody - not her German handler, nor the Resistance and the British - can be certain where her allegiances now lie... 'A truly astonishing story, meticulously and brilliantly told' Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline 'Gripping... Enough plot twists and moral ambiguity to satisfy any spy novelist' Spectator

Often overlooked in accounts of World War II is the Soviet Union's quiet yet brutal campaign against Polish citizens, a campaign that included, we now know, war crimes for which the Soviet and Russian governments only recently admitted culpability. Standing in the shadow of the Holocaust, this episode of European history is often overlooked. Wesley Adamczyk's gripping memoir, "When God Looked the Other Way," now gives voice to the hundreds of thousands of victims of Soviet barbarism.
Adamczyk was a young Polish boy when he was deported with his mother and siblings from their comfortable home in Luck to Soviet Siberia in May of 1940. His father, a Polish Army officer, was taken prisoner by the Red Army and eventually became one of the victims of the Katyn massacre, in which tens of thousands of Polish officers were slain at the hands of the Soviet secret police. The family's separation and deportation in 1940 marked the beginning of a ten-year odyssey in which the family endured fierce living conditions, meager food rations, chronic displacement, and rampant disease, first in the Soviet Union and then in Iran, where Adamczyk's mother succumbed to exhaustion after mounting a harrowing escape from the Soviets. Wandering from country to country and living in refugee camps and the homes of strangers, Adamczyk struggled to survive and maintain his dignity amid the horrors of war.
"When God Looked the Other Way" is a memoir of a boyhood lived in unspeakable circumstances, a book that not only illuminates one of the darkest periods of European history but also traces the loss of innocence and the fight against despair that took root in one young boy. It is also a book that offers astark picture of the unforgiving nature of Communism and its champions. Unflinching and poignant, W"hen God Looked the Other Way" will stand as a testament to the trials of a family during wartime and an intimate chronicle of episodes yet to receive their historical due.

The First Cavalry Division came under surprise attack in Sadr City on April 4, 2004, now known as "Black Sunday." On the homefront, over 7,000 miles away, their families awaited the news for forty-eight hellish hours-expecting the worst. ABC News' chief correspondent Martha Raddatz shares remarkable tales of heroism, hope, and heartbreak.

A Sunday Times bestseller. A miraculous true-life Second World War survival story that is being featured on the BBC's ONE SHOW (The show attracts on average a daily audience of 5 million viewers) with a ten minute dramatised documentary to be broadcast in early October 2018. A Daily Mail true life story feature is in development. Further review and BBC radio coverage Trade Advertising to accompany the release `I could see that still no one had been able to get out from the cockpit. It must have been at this moment that I thought I was going to die because I became remarkably calm'. Trapped inside a burning Lancaster bomber, 20,000 feet above Berlin, airman John Martin consigned himself to his fate and turned his thoughts to his fiancee back home. In a miraculous turn of events, however, the twenty-one-year-old was thrown clear of his disintegrating airplane and found himself parachuting into the heart of Nazi Germany. He was soon to be captured and began his period as a prisoner of war. This engaging and compulsively readable true-life account of a Second World War airman, who cheated death in the sky, only to face interrogation and the prospect of being shot by the Gestapo, before having to endure months of hardship as a prisoner of war.

A brilliantly vivid Second World War memoir by one of 'the Few' Spitfire fighter pilots. Following the D-Day landings, Battle of Britain hero Tom Neil was assigned as an RAF liaison to an American fighter squadron. As the Allies pushed east, Neil commandeered an abandoned Spitfire as his own personal aeroplane. Erasing any evidence of its provenance and stripping it down to bare metal, it became the RAF's only silver Spitfire. Alongside his US comrades, he took the silver Spitfire into battle until, with the war's end, he was forced to make a difficult decision. Faced with too many questions about the mysterious rogue fighter, he contemplated increasingly desperate measures to offload it, including bailing out mid-Channel. He eventually left the Spitfire at Worthy Down, never to be seen again. THE SILVER SPITFIRE is the first-hand, gripping story of Neil's heroic experience as an RAF fighter pilot and his reminiscences with his very own personal Spitfire.

This engaging study pits the volunteers of Kitchener's 'New Armies' against the German veterans who defended the Somme sector in the bloody battles of July-November 1916. The mighty struggle for the Somme sector of the Western Front in the second half of 1916 has come to be remembered for the dreadful toll of casualties inflicted on Britain's 'New Armies' by the German defenders on the first day of the offensive, 1 July. The battle continued, however, throughout the autumn and only came to a close in the bitter cold of mid-November. The British plan relied on the power of artillery to suppress and destroy the German defences; the infantry were tasked with taking and holding the German trenches, but minimal resistance was anticipated. In the event the defences were damaged but not destroyed, and small numbers of defenders, many of whom had garrisoned the Somme sector for many months and knew the ground well, inflicted appalling casualties on the British attackers. Both sides incurred major losses, however; German doctrine emphasised that the first line had to be held or retaken at all costs, a rigid defensive policy that led to very high casualties as the Germans threw survivors into ad hoc, piecemeal counterattacks all along the line.
Featuring specially commissioned full-color artwork and based on meticulous reassessment of the sources.

'An adrenalin-fuelled, gritty story of heroism on the frontline in Afghanistan' Andy McNab

The rounds were single shot from the same two enemy positions, trying to pick me off. They were kicking up the dirt around me. Then all hell broke loose as the gunship's Gatling vomited ammo right over my head. The sound was deafening. It was now or never. I got up and ran.

A captain in 29 Commando, Johnny Mercer served in the army for twelve years. On his third tour of Afghanistan he was a Joint Fires Controller, with the pressurized job of bringing down artillery and air strikes in close proximity to his own troops. Based in an area of northern Helmand that was riddled with Taliban leaders, he walked into danger with every patrol, determined to protect them. Then one morning, in brutal close quarter combat, everything changed . . .

In We Were Warriors Johnny takes us from his commando training to the heat, blood and chaos of battle. With brutal honesty, he describes what it is like to risk your life every day, pushing through the fear that follows watching your friends die. He took the fight back to the enemy with a relentless efficiency that came at a high personal cost. Back in the UK, seeing the inadequate care available for veterans and their families, he was inspired to run for Parliament in the hope he could improve their plight. Unflinching, action-packed and laced with wry humour, We Were Warriors is a compelling read.

Franz (Frank) Oberle was nine years old when his family was relocated from Forchheim, Germany to Poland. There, he was taken from his parents to an isolated school where adolescents were being prepared for indoctrination into Hitler's Youth Movement. As the tide of war changed, he became a refugee fleeing the Russian advance only to arrive in Dresden as the city became the target of the most horrific Allied bombing raid of the war. Surviving on grass and stolen eggs, Franz and a friend walked 800 kilometres to his ancestral village on the edge of the Black Forest -- only to find that his parents had not returned and to be rejected by his remaining family. The indomitable Franz not only survived amid a disillusioned populace of the Fatherland, but, with Joan, his youthful sweetheart at his side, he also dreamed of a new life in a new land. With her blessings, he set off for Canada, promising to send for her when he was able to provide for her. Their subsequent life together in BC has encompassed tragedy and pure joy, hard work and hard times, failure and triumph as Frank Oberle rose from self-educated immigrant to acclaimed federal politician. 'Finding Home', the first volume of Oberle's memoirs, is set against backdrops of World War II and the raw British Columbia frontier. It covers Oberle's fascinating life story up until the time he, as a successful business person, returned to Germany after little more than a decade in the promised land, knowing that in Canada, he, Joan and their children had found their true home. Rich in detail, drama, and humour, this is a love story, an inspirational saga, and a book that sings the song of the Canadian immigrant.

Even by SAS standards Mike Curtis has had a remarkable career. A former coal miner and likely Welsh international, he served with 2 Para in the Falklands before going on to join the SAS. In C.Q.B. he describes his gruelling experience in the Falklands and also focus on two more of his major SAS operations; the first in Iraq where he spent several weeks behind enemy lines; the second in Bosnia where he worked closely with all factions and latterly led a close protection team guarding visiting heads of State. Goose Green, the first land battle of the Falklands conflict, was the longest, hardest-fought, and most controversial. The outcome there was to set the tone for the remainder of the war, affect international opinion and the morale and determination of both armies. The SAS infiltrated Iraq in two guises - as road-watch patrols and mobile fighting columns. Constituting the biggest SAS overland fighting force since the Second World War, Mike Curtis's troop constituted a coherent, mobile weapon able to operate round the clock and defend itself against surprise attack. C.Q.B. is also the first published account of the SAS's activities in former Yugoslavia by a Close Quarter Battle Specialist and John Major's personal bodyguard.

When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered the fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their longtime allies, Britain and France. But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be different--that war itself would never be the same again. For this was to be a protracted, global conflict waged with new and chillingly efficient innovations--the machine gun, the airplane, poison gas, and trench warfare.

Across the Americas, the fighting raged like wildfire on multiple and far-flung fronts. As President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the northern states--Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews--Confederate President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a Confederacy still beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions. And as the war thundered on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, found themselves fatefully drawn into a climactic confrontation . . .

THE ULTIMATE WARRIORS
Highly trained and equipped to kill, special-ops forces take on the world's most dangerous and courageous missions. Warrior Elite zeroes in on the most lethal special- ops encounters of all time.
- RAID AT SON TAY
Helicopter gunships drop 100 Green Berets into North Vietnamese jungle on a virtual suicide mission to rescue POWs
- MAERSK ALABAMA
Perfect planning and precise execution come together as Navy SEALs fire the greatest simultaneous sniper shots ever
- BATTLE OF TORA BORA
In the pitch-black labyrinthine caves of Afghanistan, Special Forces dispatch Taliban insurgents in a video game-like scenario of infrared warfare
- KILLING OF BIN LADEN
With the plan up in smoke as a Black Hawk goes down, SEAL Team 6 deftly adjusts on the fly--getting in and eliminating the target in just 7 minutes

Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush, Stephen Bourne's War to Windrush explores the lives of Britain's immigrant community through the experiences of Black British women during the period spanning from the beginning of World War II to the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948. In those short years, Black British women performed integral roles in keeping the country functioning and set the stage for the arrival of other black Britons on the MV Empire Windrush. The book shows first-hand what life was like in Britain for black women through photography and evocative prose. War to Windrush retraces the history of those women who helped to build the great, multicultural Britain we know today. It is a celebration of multiculturalism and immigration, much needed in today's political climate.

Dragan was a Yugoslav peasant who flirted with the ideals of Communism and aspired to become a teacher. Instead, he became a slave in a German labour camp. Galina was an only child growing up in the harsh reality of Stalinist Russia. She survived the siege of Leningrad only to be exiled and enslaved in her turn. Chance is the true story of two ordinary people who lived in extraordinary times. Displaced by war and the vagaries of politics, Dragan and Galina met and married in the chaos that followed the conflict. For them, survival was not a question of heroes and victims but simply a matter of chance.

Submarine duty in World War Two took the lives of more than twenty per cent of American submariners. As a young ensign, William J. Ruhe kept a journal on eight action-filled patrols in the South Pacific. His colourful memoir has earned a place alongside the best naval fiction, with such classics as Run Silent, Run Deep and The Hunt For Red October.

"We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives." So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or "tokkotai," who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II.
This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the "tokkotai "and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer, and in their diaries and correspondence they often wrote heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear and expressed profound ambivalence toward the war as well as opposition to their nation's imperialism.
A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II. "Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's book is designed to challenge Western perceptions of the kamikaze generation. By assembling brief biographies of some of the young Japanese who perished on suicide missions, and by quoting extensively from their wartime diaries and poetry, she portrays a group of literate, thoughtful people, most of whom hated the war and were reluctant to die."--" SundayTelegraph "(UK)

Spoken from the Front is the story of the Afghan Campaign, told for the first time in the words of the servicemen and women who have been fighting there. With unprecedented access to soldiers of all ranks, as well as pilots, reservists, engineers, medics, Royal Military police, mechanics, cooks and other military personnel, Andy McNab has assembled a portrait of modern conflict like never before. This is the full experience of our troops on the ground and in the air. The horrors, cruelties, drudgery, excitement and banter of these soldiers' lives combine to form a chronological narrative of all the major events in Helmand during the British Army's time there. From their action-packed, dramatic, moving and often humorous testimonies in interviews, diaries, letters and emails written to family, friends and loved ones, emerges a 360-degree picture of guerrilla warfare up close and extremely personal. It is as close to the real thing as you can get.

In 1945, as Allied bombers continued their final pounding of Berlin, the panicking Nazis began moving the assets of the Reichsbank south for safekeeping. Vast trainloads of gold and currency were evacuated from the doomed capital of Hitler's 'Thousand-year Reich'. Nazi Gold is the real-life story of the theft of that fabulous treasure - worth some 2,500,000,000 at the time of the original investigation. It is also the story of a mystery and attempted whitewash in an American scandal that pre-dated Watergate by nearly 30 years. Investigators were impeded at every step as they struggled to uncover the truth and were left fearing for their lives. The authors' quest led them to a murky, dangerous post-war world of racketeering, corruption and gang warfare. Their brilliant reporting, matching eyewitness testimony with declassified Top Secret documents from the US Archives, lays bare this monumental crime in a narrative which throngs with SS desperadoes, a red-headed queen of crime and American military governors living like Kings. Also revealed is the authors' discovery of some of the missing treasure in the Bank of England.