In this riveting account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.

From its introduction in 2007, the International Harvester Navistar MaxxPro evolved to meet the demands of U.S. military personnel in defeating the effects of improvised explosive devices on vehicles in the theaters of operation in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2015, nearly 9,000 MaxxPro MRAP variants had been in service with 16 nations in addition to the United States. Based on the sturdy and reliable line of International Harvester commercial trucks, the MaxxPro MRAP variants would grow to encompass the M1224; M1224A1; M1234; M1235 and the massive M1249 wrecker. Noted military vehicle experts John Adams-Graf and David Doyle tackle this subject like never before. Tracing the origins of the MaxxPro from its conception in 2006 and throughout its varied career in all combat theaters, this is a Visual History title like no other. Drawing on official documents and Defense Department imagery every facet of the vehicle's development and deployment are covered. Each of the full-page color photographs is more stunning than the next. Arranged chronologically, the coverage depicts Iraq and Afghanistan zones, as well as training areas and finally the redeployment of the MaxxPro family in the hands of Iraqi and Afghani national troops. This coverage is also supplemented with detailed walk around images of the M1224 and M1249 wrecker. All in all, a title not to be missed by the modern vehicle enthusiast and an indispensable reference for anyone owning the Kinetic or Bronco scale model kits.

Diocletian and Constantine were the greatest of the Late Roman emperors, and their era marks the climax of the legionary system. Under Constantine's successors the legions were reduced in size and increasingly sidelined in favour of new units of elite auxilia, but between AD 284 and 337 the legions reigned supreme. The legionaries defeated all-comers and spearheaded a stunning Roman revival that humbled the Persian Empire and reduced the mighty Goths and Sarmatians to the status of vassals. This title details the equipment, background, training and combat experience of the men from all parts of the empire who made up the backbone of Rome's legions in this pivotal period.

Despite the importance of warfare in the collapse of the Roman Empire, this is the only comprehensive study of the subject available. Hugh Elton discusses the practice of warfare in Europe, from both Roman and barbarian perspectives, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. He analyzes the military practices and capabilities of the Romans and their northern enemies at political, strategic, operational, and tactical levels, and covers civil wars, sieges, and naval warfare.

China's Military in Transition is the most comprehensive study of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) ever published. Drawing upon a broad range of documentary sources and interviews, many of the world's leading specialists on the Chinese military provide in-depth and expert analyses of China's military modernization programme. This unprecedented volume covers many aspects of the PLA on the eve of the twenty-first century: party-army relations and the role of the PLA in domestic Chinese politics; the changing officer corps; the paramilitary People's Armed Police; troop reorganizations and the demobilization programme; the national security and defence policy decision-making processes; the military-industrial complex and defence industrial conversion; defence finance, budget, and training; weapons procurement; nuclear force modernization; threat perceptions; power projection capabilities; and the military balance in the Taiwan Strait.

This innovative study examines the early years of the Red Army as it developed from a revolutionary partisan force into a modern, professional institution under the leadership of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, an important and controversial figure in the politics of the Stalin period. Sally Stoecker combines her institutional analysis of the formative period of the Soviet military with an astute look at the person and political maneuvers of Marshal Tukhachevsky and his complex relationship with Stalin, which eventually led to his spectacular downfall and execution in the Great Terror of the late 1930s.Based on newly available archival materials, the book will be welcomed not only by military historians but also by Russian historians for the light it sheds on a vital area of Soviet political history.

Major John L. Plaster, a three-tour veteran of Vietnam tells the story of the most highly classified United States covert operatives to serve in the war: The Studies and Observations Group, code-named SOG. Comprised of volunteers from such elite military units as the Army's Green Berets, the USAF Air Commandos, and Navy SEALs, SOG agents answered directly to the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs, with some missions requiring approval from the White House. Now for the first time, the dangerous assignments of this top-secret unit can at last be revealed

To Serve My Country, to Serve my Race is the story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit composed of African-American women to serve overseas. While African-American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African-American women were excluded for overseas duty throughout most of WWII. Under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the black press, and even President Roosevelt, the U.S. War Department was forced to deploy African-American women to the European theater in 1945. African-American women, having succeeded, through their own activism and political ties, in their quest to shape their own lives, answered the call from all over the country, from every socioeconomic stratum.Stationed in France and England at the end of World War II, the 6888th brought together women like Mary Daniel Williams, a cook in the 6888th who signed up for the Army to escape the slums of Cleveland and to improve her ninth-grade education, and Margaret Barnes Jones, a public relations officer of the 6888th, who grew up in a comfortable household with a politically active mother who encouraged her to challenge the system. Despite the social, political, and economic restrictions imposed upon these African-American women in their own country, they were eager to serve, not only out of patriotism but out of a desire to uplift their race and dispell bigoted preconceptions about their abilities. Elaine Bennett, a First Sergeant in the 6888th, joined because I wanted to prove to myself and maybe to the world that we would give what we had back to the United States as a confirmation that we were full- fledged citizens. Filled with compelling personal testimony based on extensive interviews, To Serve My Country is the first book to document the lives of these courageous pioneers.It reveals how their Army experience affected them for the rest of their lives and how they, in turn, transformed the U.S. military forever.

No soldier went off to the Civil War with quicker step than 17-year-old James Patrick Sullivan. A hired man on a farm in Juneau County, Wisconsin, he was among the first to anwer Lincoln's call for volunteers in 1861. Sullivan fought in a score of major battles, was wounded five times, and was the only soldier of his regiment to enlist on three separate occasions. An Irishman in the Iron Brigade is a collection of Sullivan's writings about his hard days in President Lincoln's Army. Using war diaries and letters, the Irish immigrant composed nearly a dozen revealing accounts about the battles of his brigage-Brawner Farm, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg as well as the fighting of 1864. Using his old camp name, "Mickey of Company K," Sullivan wrote not so much for family or for history, but to entertain his comrades of the old Iron Brigade. His stories-overlooked and forgotten for more than a century- are delightful accounts of rough-hewn "Western" soldiers in the Eastern Army of the Potomac. His Gettysburg account, for example, is one of the best recollections of that epic battle by a soldier in the ranks. He also left a from-the-ranks view of some of the Union's major soldiers such as George McClellan, Irvin McDowell, John Pope, and Ambrose Burnside. An Irishman in the Iron Brigade is in part the story of the great veterans' movement which shaped the nation's politics before the turn-of-the-century. Troubled by economic hardship, advancing age, and old war injuries, Sullivan turned to old comrades, his memories, and writing, to put the great experiences of his life in perspective.

This text examines the history of the Japanese army in the 1920s. In this decade, the 'Meija military system' disintegrated and was replaced by a new 'Imperial Army System'. The Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 had changed the direction of Japanese military thought from almost total dependence on western rational military thinking to a more traditional reliance on morale as the preponderant factor for victory in combat. The author focuses on the intense and complex struggle which took place over leadership of the Army, the application of the principle of the primacy of morale, and the quite contradictory but obvious necessity for the army to modernize. This internal turmoil was intensified by a background of increasingly difficult economic circumstances, and the terrible effects of the great earthquake and fire of 1923. This crucial decade of Japanese history set the stage for the shattering events of the 1930s and 1940s.

The first two volumes of the History of the Panzerwaffe have described how the Germans transformed armoured warfare from a lumbering and ponderous experiment in World War I into something that could decide the outcome of conflicts, and how the legendary Panzerwaffe overran Western Europe and reached the gates of Moscow to the east, before taking its place in the forefront of German defence from the D-Day landings to the valiant last stand in Berlin. This third volume focuses on the most important units in the Panzerwaffe, and some of the most famous units in the history of warfare: the Panzer Divisions. It details their pre-war origins and how they developed over the course of the war, covering all the specialized units and how they operated on the battlefield. The title is illustrated throughout with many rare and previously unpublished images and the text draws heavily on original German documents.

No soldier went off to the Civil War with quicker step than 17-year-old James Patrick Sullivan. A hired man on a farm in Juneau County, Wisconsin, he was among the first to anwer Lincoln's call for volunteers in 1861. Sullivan fought in a score of major battles, was wounded five times, and was the only soldier of his regiment to enlist on three separate occasions. An Irishman in the Iron Brigade is a collection of Sullivan's writings about his hard days in President Lincoln's Army. Using war diaries and letters, the Irish immigrant composed nearly a dozen revealing accounts about the battles of his brigage-Brawner Farm, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg as well as the fighting of 1864. Using his old camp name, "Mickey of Company K," Sullivan wrote not so much for family or for history, but to entertain his comrades of the old Iron Brigade. His stories-overlooked and forgotten for more than a century- are delightful accounts of rough-hewn "Western" soldiers in the Eastern Army of the Potomac. His Gettysburg account, for example, is one of the best recollections of that epic battle by a soldier in the ranks. He also left a from-the-ranks view of some of the Union's major soldiers such as George McClellan, Irvin McDowell, John Pope, and Ambrose Burnside. An Irishman in the Iron Brigade is in part the story of the great veterans' movement which shaped the nation's politics before the turn-of-the-century. Troubled by economic hardship, advancing age, and old war injuries, Sullivan turned to old comrades, his memories, and writing, to put the great experiences of his life in perspective.

In April 1861, Dick and Tally Simpson, sons of South Carolina Congressman Richard F. Simpson, enlisted in Company A of the Third South Carolina Volunteers of the Confederate army. Their letters home--published here for the first time--read like a historical novel, complete with plot, romance, character, suspense, and tragedy. In their last year of college when the war broke out, Dick and Tally were hastily handed their diplomas so they could volunteer for military duty. Dick was twenty; Tally was twenty-two.
Well educated, intelligent, and thoughtful young men, Dick and Tally cared deeply for their country, their family, and their comrades-in-arms and wrote frequently to their loved ones in Pendleton, South Carolina, offering firsthand accounts of dramatic events from the battle of First Manassas in July 1861 to the battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. Their letters provide a picture of war as it was actually experienced at the time, not as it was remembered some twenty or thirty years later. It is a picture that neither glorifies war nor condemns it, but simply "tells it like it is." Written to a number of different people, the boys' letters home dealt with a number of different subjects. Letters to "Pa" went into great detail about military matters in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia--troop movements, casualties, and how well particular units had fought; letters to "Ma" and sisters Anna and Mary were about camp life and family friends in the army and usually included requests for much-needed food and clothing; letters to Aunt Caroline and her daughter Carrie usually concerned affairs of the heart, for Aunt Caroline continued to be Dick and Tally's trusted confidante, even whenthey were "far, far from home."
The value of these letters lies not so much in the detailed information they provide as in the overall picture they convey--a picture of how one Southern family, for better or for worse, at home and at the front--coped with the experience of war. These are not wartime reminiscences, but wartime letters, written from the camp, the battlefield, the hospital bed, the picket line--wherever the boys happened to be when they found time to write home. It is a poignant picture of war as it was actually experienced in the South as the Civil War unfolded.
My dear Aunt
With pleasure do I attempt to scratch you a few lines. I have passed the line of sentinels and am now far out in the woods sitting on the ground writing with a pencil about long enough to ketch with two fingers and on a little piece of plank about as large as my paper, so you must excuse this scrawl....We are now in the land of danger, far, far from home, fighting for our homes and those near our hearts. I have been from home for months at a time, but I never wished to be back as bad in my life. How memory recalls every little spot, and how vividly every little scene flashes before my mind. Oh! if there is one place dear to me it is home sweet home. How many joys cluster there. To join once more our family circle (I mean you all) and talk of times gone by would be more to me than all else besides...your
Most affectionate nephew
R W S

Mine-protected and mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles are today standard in the US, most major western armed forces and many other armies as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The South African Army was already routinely using mine-protected armoured personnel carriers and patrol vehicles forty years ago even if they looked primitive and ungainly. A few years later, the South African Army had reached the stage where it could deploy entire combat groups into battle zones equipped with only mine-protected vehicles, including their ambulances and supply trucks. By then the mine-protected vehicles had also become effective for use in combat, rather than just protected transport, the Casspir being the chief example. More to the point, they saved countless soldiers and policemen from death or serious injury, and the basic concepts now live on in the various MRAP types in service today. The valuable lessons learned by the South Africans with their early designs of these combat-proven vehicles has led the country to become one of the global leaders in the design of MRAPs which are locally manufactured and exported around the world. Surviving the Ride is a fascinating pictorial account featuring more than 120 of these unique South African-developed vehicles, spanning a forty-year period, with over 280 photographs, many of which are previously unpublished.

A concisely detailed guide to the Allied tanks that fought from D-Day to the break out from Normandy, their qualities, numbers and performance, and how they were used on the battlefield. When Allied tanks began to roll off the landing craft on D-Day, it marked the start of one of the great periods of tank warfare in World War II. Often outgunned by the German Panzers, and fighting in the close confines of bocage country, they nevertheless managed to break out of Normandy and begin the liberation of Europe. It was a battle that was dominated by the Americans' legendary Sherman, but also saw a wide and complex range of armour committed to battle across the many armies involved, from British Churchills and special-purpose 'Funnies' to the Canadians' Ram tank. This book explains the qualities, strengths and weakness of the major British and US tank types as well as associated Allied units in Normandy including those of the Canadians, Poles and French, and describes how they really fought. It discusses the organization and equipment of the units, providing thumbnail sketches as well as statistical data on the types and categories of AFVs that saw action. This is a handy and concise guide for military historians, wargamers and military modelers interested in tank warfare of World War II.

The famous Sherman tank was the most widely used Allied tank of the Second World War, and the sheer number of units produced played a crucial part in the Allies winning the war. Using rare footage from the film archive at IWM, this flip book shows the famous Sherman tank move up to the front, as a tank squadron prepares for action north of Caen in early July 1944.

Since the first edition of this book appeared in 1982, El Salvador has experienced the most radical social change in its history. Ten years of civil war, in which a tenacious and creative revolutionary movement battled a larger, better-equipped, U.S.-supported army to a standstill, have ended with twenty months of negotiations and a peace accord that promises to change the course of Salvadorean society and politics.This book traces the history of El Salvador, focusing on the two actors--the oligarchy and the armed forces--that shaped the Salvadorean economy and political system. Concentrating on the period since 1960, the author sheds new light on the U.S. role in the increasing militarization of the country and the origins of the oligarchy-army rupture in 1979. Separate chapters deal with the Catholic church and the revolutionary organizations, which challenged the status quo after 1968. In the new edition, Dr. Montgomery continues the story from 1982 to the present, offering a detailed account of the evolution of the war. She examines why Duarte's two inaugural promises, peace and economic prosperity, could not be fulfilled and analyzes the electoral victory of the oligarchy in 1989. The final chapters closely follow the peace negotiations, ending with an assessment of the peace accords and an evaluation of the future prospects for El Salvador. An Epilogue analyzes the 1994 elections. Dr. Montgomery's prognosis in the first edition--that no lasting, viable political solution was possible without the participation of the revolutionary organizations--has been borne out by events: Today the FMLN is a legal political party.

At 21:00 on 9 May 1940 Codeword Danzig was issued alerting Adolf Hitler's airborne troops that they were about to spearhead an attack on Belgium and the Netherlands. The following day his blitzkrieg rolled forward striking the British Expeditionary Force and the French armies in Belgium and in northern France at Sedan. The desperate attempts of the allied armies to stem the Nazi tide proved futile and, once their reserves had been exhausted and the remaining forces cut off, Paris lay open. By early June, it was all over - trapped British, Belgian and French troops were forced to evacuate Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne and the defeated French army agreed to an armistice leaving the country divided in two. This dramatic story is shown in a sequence of over 150 historic photographs that Anthony Tucker-Jones he has selected for this memorable book. The images he has chosen cover every aspect of this extraordinary campaign, but his main focus is on the vital role played by the armoured fighting vehicles of both sides. The book is a graphic record of the destruction wrought by the Wehrmacht's lightning offensive through the Low Countries and France.

Expert author Michael Green has compiled a full inventory of the tanks developed and deployed by the Allied armies during the six year war against Nazi Germany and her Axis partners. There were four categories of tank: Light, Medium, Heavy and Super Heavy. Combat experience proved Light tanks (such as the Stuart and T-26) to be ineffective. Medium tanks (the US M4 series, named Sherman by the British, and Russian T-34) soon dominated with their fire power, protection and mobility. The later stages of the War required the Allies to answer the Axis Panther and Tiger tanks with up-gunned and up-armoured second generation M4s, T-34-85s and the Sherman Firefly. Totally new heavy tanks such as the M-26, Pershing, Soviet KV-1 series and the British Centurion only saw action in the final months. Allied Tanks of the Second World War covers all these categories in detail as well as the few super heavy tanks such as the French Char 2C and the TOG. For an informed and highly illustrated work this book has no comparable rival.

When the Panzer VI Ausf. E Tiger I tank first arrived on the battlefield, it started the Allied and Soviet intelligence race to discover everything they could about this new threat. The British Army quickly needed to know how to knock it out, then communicate that information back to the troops that had to face this new German metal monster either by official means or via newspapers. This is not a typical book on the Tiger tank. It tries to show the reader what the British and Commonwealth forces knew about the Tiger I tank during the war and the results of scientific firing trials. Unpublished Second World War original documents, discovered in different archives, have been transcribed and reproduced along with any existing photographs found in those official secret reports. These include top-secret Bletchley Park and Enigma intercepts of German messages that were decoded and translated before being sent to wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Illustrated with over 360 images, "How to Kill a Tiger Tank" is the definitive examination of a world-changing fighting vehicle.

Part history book and part travel guide, D-Day Gunners is aimed at anyone interested in the artillery on the D-Day beaches and landing grounds. While the heritage of the D-Day beaches and landing sites is well documented, this rarely includes the Gunner story. The author of this book aims to correct this by providing a visitors' guide to the gunner stories associated with the battlefield heritage, which remains on the D-Day Beaches, and usefully mapping the fire-plan for D-Day, against the known German locations and looked at what happened at these places. There is relatively little explanation about the role of the artillery in general or the deeds of artillerymen, in particular those of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. This book tells of the significance of artillery on D-Day and the part it played in the outcome. Initial reports published stressed that the coastal defences were effectively neutralized by the bombing and that no significant counter attacks developed on D-Day, however, post-war accounts increasingly attributed allied success to allied fire power.The book largely documents the stories of the men who served the guns on the D-Day beaches, mostly British, but with the occasional view of the Kannoniers. The main sources for this are the accounts by veterans and contemporary accounts. The medal cards within The National Archives contain some information about the actions, which resulted in awards. The last part of the book has been written as a guide to the D-Day Beaches, telling the gunner stories that are not always commemorated on memorials, interpretation boards, or recorded in more general guides. These poignant stories include war poets and heroes decorated for bravery or just the tales of some of the men buried on the war cemeteries or commemorated on the memorials.

Military historian John Keegan's groundbreaking analysis of combat and warfare
The Face of Battle is military history from the battlefield: a look at the direct experience of individuals at the "point of maximum danger." Without the myth-making elements of rhetoric and xenophobia, and breaking away from the stylized format of battle descriptions, John Keegan has written what is probably the definitive model for military historians. And in his scrupulous reassessment of three battles representative of three different time periods, he manages to convey what the experience of combat meant for the participants, whether they were facing the arrow cloud at the battle of Agincourt, the musket balls at Waterloo, or the steel rain of the Somme.
"The best military historian of our generation." -Tom Clancy

'One of the best half-dozen personal accounts of the Normandy campaign' - Richard Holmes Stuart Hills embarked his Sherman DD tank on to an LCT at 6.45 a.m., Sunday 4 June 1944. He was 20 years old, unblooded, fresh from a public-school background and Officer Cadet training. He was going to war. Two days later, his tank sunk, he and his crew landed from a rubber dinghy with just the clothes they stood in. After that, the struggles through the Normandy bocage in a replacement tank (of the non-swimming variety), engaging the enemy in a constant round of close encounters, led to a swift mastering of the art of tank warfare and remarkable survival in the midst of carnage and destruction. His story of that journey through hell to victory makes for compulsive reading.

Between 1940 and 1945, large numbers of trucks of all categories were delivered to the U.S. Army by the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors. Over 160,000 of these trucks were the G-506 light four-wheel drive trucks - which became the standard 1 1/2-ton, 4x4 truck for both the U.S. Army and Army Air Corps during the war. In addition, many more thousands were delivered to Allied forces as part of the Lend-Lease program, including nearly 50,000 delivered to the Soviet Union. Tough, well-built and more agile than the deuce and a half, the Chevy 11/2ton played a part in every theater of operations during the war. Its durability and mechanical reliability made it ideal for a wide range of missions. Not for nothing did Chevy advertise the trucks during the war as "Vehicles of victory." More than 75 years after it was designed, the small Chevrolet truck is still a favourite with collectors. This fully illustrated book details the different series of trucks and their many uses within the U.S. Army including cargo trucks, panel delivery trucks for the Signal Corps, dump trucks for engineers, telephone trucks, tractors, bomb service trucks for the air force. It also covers their part in the Lend-Lease program, and their continued use after the war.