The first complete biography of one of the legendary heroes of World War II and the most famous paratroop leader of that war draws from Gavin's own papers, including his unpublished autobiography, to provide this candid portrait. Photos.

In the early hours of 6th June 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defence forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War Il. This gripping account of it brings to life a daring mission so crucial that, had it been unsuccessful, the entire Normandy invasion might have failed. The author of this book traces each step of the preparations over many months to the minute-by-minute excitement of the hand-to-hand confrontations on the bridge, a story of heroism and cowardice, kindness and brutality.

This is the first study to analyze the content, training, and performance of a World War I draft division from its formation onward. The 82nd division consisted heavily of non-English speaking European immigrants and conscripts fresh from farming towns in Tennessee and North Carolina. Despite these apparent obstacles, it would evolve into an effective combat unit on the front lines of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. These All-Americans would prove that they could fight and accomplish several difficult missions in the Great War.

From its birth at Camp Gordon, Georgia, to the battlefields of the Western Front, the 82nd division became a highly successful combat unit through good leadership and hard work. After initial training in France by both British and French forces, the 82nd entered the trenches to face the Germans. Given a difficult mission during the St. Mihiel offensive, the diverse division performed well; and during the Meuse-Argonne battle, it achieved its objectives despite heavy casualties. Despite an early lack of preparation, this force would be a true American success story.

An in-depth illustrated study of the T-64 Battle Tank, the Soviet Union's most secret and controversial Cold War weapon. The T-64 tank was the most revolutionary design of the whole Cold War, designed to provide the firepower and armour protection of a heavy tank in a medium-weight design. It pioneered a host of new technologies including laminate armour, stereoscopic tank rangefinders, opposed-piston engines, smooth-bore tank guns with discarding sabot ammunition, and gun-fired guided projectiles. These impressive features meant that the Russians were loath to part with the secrets of the design, and the T-64 was the only Soviet tank type of the Cold War that was never exported. Written by an armour expert, this detailed technical history sheds light on the secrets behind the Cold War's most controversial tank, revealing how its highly advanced technologies proved to be both a blessing and a curse.

This regiment-by-regiment survey traces the origins and history of Scotland's fighting men, from their organization in the 17th and 18th centuries through to their participation in the campaigns in the Falklands and the Gulf.;This book looks beyond uniforms and military hardware to reveal the traditions, character and individuality of the regiments of the Scottish Division, past and present.;For each regiment, the topics covered include badges and mottoes, tartans and clan affiliations, battle honours, Victoria Cross winners, music, toasts and allied and affiliated regiments.

This book looks at the militaries of the late-Soviet and post-Soviet republics. Beginning with the end of the Soviet era, it recognises that the successor states did not spring from nowhere, but inherited a legacy that influenced all that followed. The book discusses how politicians control the instruments that are the manifestation of the state's monopoly on violence, and how society views and supports the military. By taking a bottom up empirical approach that examines the personnel, leaders, organisations and institutions, and their outlook and attitudes, the book presents a comprehensive picture of the armed forces, showing how the armed forces are very significantly shaped by the surrounding political and social environment. The book goes on to examine the armed forces in action, and highlights that to truly understand the militaries, studies need to go beyond looking at the static structures.

The war in the Persian Gulf marked the greatest "projection of power" in history, dwarfing in its scale and speed even the D-day landings of 1944. It dramatically demonstrated the revolution in military affairs which has followed the end of confrontation in Europe. Yet the Gulf War and its aftermath also demonstrated the vast complexities of the projection of power, even in the favorable conditions witnessed in the Gulf.
In this important and timely study, Richard Connaughton, who has visited a peace-keeping operation in Kurdistan and has worked in close collaboration with U.S. military authorities, makes a valuable contribution to the study of international affairs. "Military Intervention in the 1990s" provides the first comprehensive professional study of the problems of future interventions in the context of a complex of political and military issues at the operational level.

The ability to organize millions of people for political purposes is a potent and relatively recent weapon in the struggle for power. Political scientists have studied two types of mass organization, the political party and the interest group. In this book Gregory Kasza examines a third type, which he calls the administered mass organization. AMOs are mass civilian bodies created by authoritarian regimes to implement public policy. Officials use them to organize youths, workers, women, or members of other social sectors into bodies resembling the mass conscript army. A network of AMOs produces a conscription society, a major force in twentieth-century politics in over 45 countries. Using comparative history and organization theory, Kasza analyzes the politics of the conscription society in both military and single-party regimes. He discusses the origins of AMOs in Japan, the Soviet Union, and Fascist Italy and their subsequent spread to China, Egypt, Nazi Germany, Peru, Poland, and Yugoslavia. He focuses on the use of AMOs to curb political opposition, to mobilize for war, and to shift control over the means of production. Kasza shows how, in the hands of despotic rulers, AMOs have contributed to the extremes of political barbarism characteristic of the twentieth century.

The history of the often-overlooked chewa Ethiopian warriors and their crucial role in defending their homeland against invasion, as well as their strong influence on political identity and the social infrastructure. Today best known for their role in defending Ethiopia from Italian invasion 1935-41, chewa warriors protected Ethiopia for centuries. Yet, depicted by some 19th-century Western observers as little more than "a horde" of warmongers, and later suppressed by Ethiopian monarchs who sought to create a centralized modern state, their contribution has been neglected. Drawing on oral and written sources, as well as the zeraf poetry through which theyexpressed themselves, this book explores for the first time in depth the history, practices and principles of warriorhood of the chewa, and their wider influence on society and state. Often self-trained individuals who began by defending their communities, by the end of the 19th century there were chewa warrior groups from almost all linguistic groups who fought together to resist foreign invaders. Some chewa enrolled in the service of the Ethiopian "kings of kings", who organized them as named corps that supplemented the formal defence of the state. Today, chewa political identity, which transcended social, familial, political and other groupings, remains deeply rooted in Ethiopian society.

In November 1950 The US 1st Marine Division was trapped in the Chosin Reservoir following the intervention of Red China in the Korean War. Fought during the worst blizzard in a century, the ensuing battle is considered by the United States Marine Corps to be 'the Corps' Finest Hour.' The soldiers who fought there would later become known as the `Frozen Chosen'. Published now in paperback, this incredible story is based on first hand interviews from surviving veterans, telling of heroism and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, as a handful of Marines fought desperately against wave after wave of Chinese forces. Sometimes forced into desperate hand to hand combat, the fighting retreat from Chosin marked one of the darkest moments for Western forces in Korea, but would go on to resonate with generations of Marines as a symbol of the Marine Corps' dogged determination, fighting skill, and never-say-die attitude on the battlefield.

Pathological Counterinsurgency critically examines the relationship between elections and counterinsurgency success in third party campaigns supported by the United States. From Vietnam to El Salvador to Iraq and Afghanistan, many policymakers and academics believed that democratization would drive increased legitimacy and improved performance in governments waging a counterinsurgency campaign. Elections were expected to help overcome existing deficiencies, thus allowing governments supported by the United States to win the "hearts and minds" of its populace, undermining the appeal of insurgency. However, in each of these cases, campaigning in and winning elections did not increase the legitimacy of the counterinsurgent government or alter conditions of entrenched rent seeking and weak institutions that made states allied to the United States vulnerable to insurgency. Ultimately, elections played a limited role in creating the conditions needed for counterinsurgency success. Instead, decisions of key actors in government and elites to prioritize either short term personal and political advantage or respect for political institutions held a central role in counterinsurgency success or failure. In each of the four cases in this study, elected governments pursued policies that benefited members of the government and elites at the expense of boarder legitimacy and improved performance. Expectations that democratization could serve as a key instrument of change led to unwarranted optimism about the likely of success and ultimately to flawed strategy. The United States continued to support regimes that continued to lack the legitimacy and government performance needed for victory in counterinsurgency.

Extensively illustrated with 52 detailed campaign and battle maps and diagrams, this book, originally published in 1990, surveys the evolution of warfare in Europe from Napoleon to the end of the twentieth century and in Asia from the Middle Ages. It considers the interaction of technology and warfare. With wide-ranging examples, the book includes two in depth case studies, one on the Soviet Operational Manoeuvre Group and its predecessors in the Russian Imperial Army, the other on the history of land warfare, including guerilla warfare, in Asia. In this book the author demonstrates that military history can be of immense practical help to the modern military analyst and professional. Now updated with a new introduction to take into account changes since 1990, this book remains of essential value to students, teachers & professionals in political & social history, international relations, defence, war & peace studies.

The U.S. Army evolved into a truly modern fighting force during World War I. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, the infantry was its primary offensive arm. Training focused mainly on target practice, bayonet charges and marching drills. Antiquated tactics emphasized massive attack waves relying on ferocity to achieve battlefield objectives. Heavy casualties resulted when inexperienced American troops encountered entrenched German veterans trained in the use of modern artillery and machine guns. By war's end the American Expeditionary Force had progressed along a bloody learning curve, developing sophisticated techniques-small flexible formations, fire-and-maneuver and infiltration-for breaking the trench warfare stalemate. Eventually, the AEF integrated new weapons like poison gas, tanks and aircraft into its offensive tactics and pioneered the mechanized combined arms warfare still practiced by the U.S. Army. The exploits of the Fifth ""Red Diamond"" Division exemplify this critical period of development.

Updated and revised from the popular 2011 edition, with full-colour maps and new images throughout, this is a concise study of the American Revolutionary War. The American Revolution, or the American War of Independence, has been characterized politically as a united political uprising of the American colonies and militarily as a guerrilla campaign of colonists against the inflexible British military establishment. In this book, Daniel Marston argues that this belief, though widespread, is a misconception. He contends that the American Revolution, in reality, created deep political divisions in the population of the Thirteen Colonies, while militarily pitting veterans of the Seven Years' War against one another, in a conflict that combined guerrilla tactics and classic 18th-century campaign techniques on both sides. The peace treaty of 1783 that brought an end to the war marked the formal beginning of the United States of America as an independent political entity. With revisions from the author and 50 new images, this illustrated overview of the American Revolution provides an important reference resource for the academic or student reader as well as those with a general interest in the period.

'The way I look at it is this...When you're behind the line and get yourself into trouble, you've got to get your bloody self out irrespective of anybody else. That's why I like it.' Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head. At the helm of his 26-foot whaleboat, the Bastard, McLaren sailed brazenly into enemy-held harbours, wreaking havoc with his mortar and machine guns before heading back out to sea. In early 1945 he joined Australia's secretive Z Special Unit, parachuting into Borneo to carry out reconnaissance and organise anti-Japanese resistance ahead of Allied landings. He cheated death on numerous occasions and saved his own life by removing his appendix without anaesthetic, using 'two large dessert spoons' and a razor blade. Drawing on Allied and Japanese wartime documents, Bastard Behind the Lines brings the story of a courageous digger vividly to life and throws light on a rarely explored aspect of Australia's Pacific war.

This book provides a pictorial overview of the progress of American military airplane design from approximately the end of World War I to the present time. It covers all types including attack, pursuit or fighter, cargo, trainer, and other models via a series of type sections. There are introductions to each section followed by photographic coverage along with extensive photo captioning providing highlights of characteristics and service use. Thus over three quarters of a century of Army and Air Force airplanes are displayed. Primary sections include production airplanes and variants, and a following photo gallery section covers experimental models. A few important export military types are also included. The illustrations and text portray in quite dramatic fashion the advances in U.S. military plane design over the period, including progress from stick and wire craft to the latest sleek turbine powered types.

Militias have proven to be a consistent and enduring challenge to achieving peace in war zones around the world. Whether armed by embattled governments in defence of their territory or fostered by external actors in the interests of greed or grievance, these groups occupy an uncertain and deeply controversial position in the changing landscape of conflict. Linked variously to atrocities against civilians or international criminal elements, part of what distinguishes them from more traditional combatants is their willingness to engage in violent tactics that defy international norms as well as a proclivity to embrace expediency in alliance-making. As such, their diversity of form, unorthodox nature and sheer numbers make achieving short-term stability and an enduring peace a consistently difficult proposition. Bringing together the lessons learned from four intensively researched case studies - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Timor-Leste, Afghanistan and Sudan - the book argues that the overly rigid 'cookie-cutter' approach to demilitaristation, developed and commonly implemented presently by the international community, is ineffective at meeting the myriad of challenges involving militias. In doing so, the authors propose a radical new framework for demilitarization that questions conventional models and takes into account on-the-ground realities.

The military is supposed to stand aside from British society. This book illustrates that from the earliest times the British have relied on the military for the preservation of law and order. The creation of the professional police force in Britain habitually met with the stiffest opposition, and even after it came into existence in the 19th century, the military were still called in to suppress civilian disorders, often admidst the confusion and clumsiness tht led to incidents such as the notorious 'Peterloo massacre'. In the 20th century, the unarmed police had to become more used to dealing with riots, several of which are here discussed in meticulously researched detail.

Photo history of one of the most elite fighting units in WWII by one of its former members. Includes listing of Knight's Cross Winners.

The successes of the German Blitzkrieg in 1939-41 were as surprising as they were swift. Allied decision-makers wanted to discover the secret to German success quickly, even though only partial, incomplete information was available to them. The false conclusions drawn became myths about the Blitzkrieg that have lingered for decades. It has been argued that German victories in the early part of the war rested less upon newly developed tanks and aircraft and more on German military traditions: rather than creating a new way of war based on new technology, the Germans fitted the new weapons into their existing ideas on warfare. These doctrines focused on independent action, initiative, flexibility, decentralized decision-making and mobility. The conduct of German soldiers, particularly the lower-ranking men, on the battlefield was at the core of the concept and German victories rested upon the quality of the small combat units. This book focuses on the experience of the enlisted men and junior officers in the Blitzkrieg operations in Poland, Norway, Western Europe and Russia. Using accounts previously unpublished in English, military historian Niklas Zetterling explores how they operated, for example how a company commander led his tanks, how a crew worked together inside a tank, and the role of the repair services. The author fits these narratives into a broader perspective to give the reader a better understanding of why the Germans were so successful in 1939-41.

This book, originally published in 1977 examines in detail the organisation, training, and personnel of the British Army during the eighteenth century, and explains how the government policies of containing the enemy and colonial conquest were achieved. It also illustrates how the Army survived the constant nervousness of Parliament in reducing its strength after each emergency had passed. There are specific chapters devoted to the strategies of Marlborough, Amherst and Howe and to tactics as displayed at the battles of Ramillies, Fontenoy, Camden and Guildford Court House.

The M113 is the most widely used and versatile armoured vehicle in the world. Fielded in 1960 as a simple 'battlefield taxi', over 80,000 M113s would see service with 50 nations around the world and 55 years later, many thousands are still in use. In addition to its original role of transporting troops across the battlefield, specialized versions perform a multitude of other functions including command and control, fire support, anti-tank and anti-aircraft defence, and casualty evacuation. This new fully illustrated study examines the service record of the M113 from its initial fielding through to the end of the Vietnam War. It will also describe the many US, South Vietnamese, and Australian variants of the M113 used in the Vietnam War as well as information on tactics, unit tables of organization and equipment, and a selection of engagements in which the M113 played a decisive role.

Germany used many types of Russian battle tanks captured during WWII, and this book gives an accurate account in both photographs and text.

A new illustrated study of the devastating, but little-known, Soviet armored blitzkrieg against the Japanese in the last weeks of World War II, and how it influenced Soviet tank doctrine as the Cold War dawned. Although long overshadowed in the West by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USSR's lightning strike into Manchuria in August 1945 was one of the most successful and unique campaigns of the era. Soviet forces, led by over 5,500 tanks and self-propelled guns, attacked across huge distances and deserts, marshes, and mountains to smash Japan's million-strong Kwantung Army in a matter of days. Japanese forces were short of training and equipment, but nevertheless fought fiercely, inflicting 32,000 casualties on the Soviets. Red Army operations were characterized by surprise, speed, and deep penetrations by tank-heavy forces born of the brutal lessons they had learned during years fighting the Wehrmacht. Lessons from the campaign directly shaped Soviet Cold War force structure and planning for mechanized operations against the West. Illustrated with contemporary artwork and rare photos from one of the best collections of Soviet military photos in the West, this fascinating book explains exactly how the last blitzkrieg of World War II was planned, fought, and won, and how it influenced the Red Army's plans for tank warfare against NATO in Europe.