This account of the life of Jacques Vaillant de Guelis follows him from his birth in Cardiff, through school and University and French Military Service. Newly married he was recalled to France in 1939 and was assigned to a company of British engineers as liaison officer until reportedly captured. He escaped via Dunkirk, only to return to France a few days later. He retreated south, escaped over the Pyrenees only to be caught again and flung into the Miranda del Ebro Concentration camp. On his release he returned to England where he was recruited by the fledgling SOE, after an interview with Churchill. He became a familiar figure in Baker Street as a recruiting and conducting officer until he was sent to France on a fact- finding mission in 1941. A stay in Algiers in 1942-3 followed when he took part in the liberation of Corsica before returning to London and leading his 2nd mission to France in 1944. In 1945 he joined SAARF and led his last mission to Germany which culminated in collision with another vehicle when he was badly injured. He died later as a result

For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital.

The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal.

Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time has gone on, David Nott began to realize that flying into to a catastrophe - whether war or natural disaster – was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the Foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets.

War Doctor is his extraordinary story.

First published in 1918 Whizzbangs and Woodbines presents a candid portrait of life behind the lines on the Western Front by Reverend Durell, then Rector of Rotherhithe, and Chief Commissioner of the Church Army in France.The Church Army, along with its counterparts the YMCA, TOC-H and Salvation Army played an important part in the support and morale of soldiers in war. In addition to providing spiritual support,the Church Army welcomed more than 200,000 men each day to their recreation huts and provided visits and gifts to the wounded, tents and hostels near the front lines, drove ambulances, mobile canteens and kitchen cars.In addition to voluntary Church services, for those who wished to attend, a simple salvation from trench life was offered; music, singing, concerts, card games,billiards and refreshments, all small measures of joy in the midst of dangers and hardships and as vital to the continued war effort as bullets and shells. For a packet of woodbines and a cup of tea was restorative ammunition enough for the average British Tommy.

Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and events on the Eastern Front that same year were pivotal to the history of World War II. It was during this year that the radicalization of Nazi policy -- through both an all-encompassing approach to warfare and the application of genocidal practices -- became most obvious. Germany's military aggression and overtly ideological conduct, culminating in genocide against Soviet Jewry and the decimation of the Soviet population through planned starvation and brutal antipartisan policies, distinguished Operation Barbarossa-the code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union-from all previous military campaigns in modern European history. This collection of essays, written by young scholars of seven different nationalities, provides readers with the most current interpretations of Germany's military, economic, racial, and diplomatic policies in 1941. With its breadth and its thematic focus on total war, genocide, and radicalization, this volume fills a considerable gap in English-language literature on Germany's war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and the radicalization of World War II during this critical year. Alex J. Kay is the author of Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941 and is an independent contractor for the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences. Jeff Rutherford is assistant professor of history at Wheeling Jesuit University, where he teaches modern European history. David Stahel is the author of Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East and Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East.

First published in 1918, this book is a record of observations and evidence compiled by the then US Consul in Queenstown, Eire. A rare study from first-hand accounts. Contains detailed testimonies of survivors from over fifty vessels attacked and often sunk by German submarines during the Great War.A vivid and accurate picture of the tactics and motives of German submarine warfare is provided in the first part of the book. The second part concentrate son the attack and sinking of RMS Lusitania. The sinking of the Lusitania remains a controversial topic with the loss of 1,198 lives on 7May 1915

Georg Bucher, a German infantryman from 1914 had lost almost all of his closest friends by 1918. The last friend he lost, Riedel, was crushed by a tank in one of the last battles of the war. This is his tale in their memory. A sergeant by 1918, Bucher describes nearly every part of the Western Front - the Marne, Verdun,Somme, Ypres, the Vosges and the 1918 Spring Offensive in vivid detail. He illustrates how his psychological state changed over the course of the war, how a soldier can in a split second turn from a human being into a killing machine without pity, killing as second nature, without thought.The raw endurance required to survive the trenches is narrated in undiluted fashion, no horrors are spared; the quagmire of 3rd Ypres, unrelenting lice and rats, the stench of death and descriptions ofa bhorrent actions such as (so Bucher alleges) French soldiers, under the influence of absinthe, mutilating some of his company for revenge on the Senegalese.Fans of 'All Quiet on the Western Front' or 'Storm of Steel' will be delighted to discover Bucher's work.

The first political history of the Second World War, of building the Grand Alliance to defeat Hitler, by the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Appeasing Hitler.

After the fall of France in June 1940, only Britain stood between Hitler and total victory. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination.

By 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place. Yet it was an improbable and incongruous coalition, divided by ideology and politics and riven with mistrust and deceit. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were partners in the fight to defeat Hitler, yet they were also rivals who disagreed on strategy, imperialism and the future of liberated Europe. Only by looking at their points of conflict, as well as of co-operation, are we able to understand the course of the war and world that developed in its aftermath.

Allies at War is a fast-paced, narrative history, based on material drawn from over a hundred archives. Using vivid, first-hand accounts and unpublished diaries, we enter the rooms where the critical decisions were made while going beyond the confines of the Grand Alliance to examine, among other themes, the doomed Anglo-French alliance, fractious relations with General de Gaulle and the Free French, and interactions with Poland, Greece and Nationalist China.

Ambitious and compelling, revealing the political drama behind the military events, Allies at War offers a fresh perspective on the Second World War and the origins of the Cold War.

The story of the 39th Divisional Field Ambulances beings in the year of 1915 at various recruiting offices, and continues in a thin, uncertain stream of variable humanity, finding its way to the Sussex Downs, facing the sea, at Cow Gap, Eastbourne, Here the lines of white tents, the whitewashed stones, the martial sounds and atmosphere welcomed the embryo soldier to the service of his country, and to fellowship unique and abiding. These embryo soldiers were to become the men that would be responsible for the mobile frontline medical units and had special responsibility for the care of casualties of the Brigades in their Division. Via Ypres tells of these young men - mostly mere boys and non-militaristic in their education - faced with the task of preparing to go to war to take part in the great struggle. These happy, cheerful and perhaps a bit casual soon-to-be soldiers remained just so once training was over but also became the gallant and efficient men who were to be faced with the danger and misery that war cannot help but bring; in doing so potentially risk their lives to save those of their comrades.

This is a rare chance to re-discover a contemporary account of a military conflict which took place a Century ago. The Agony of Belgium, written in 1914 by Frank Fox, a war correspondent, recounts events that the modern European mind would probably wish to forget. The bravery and resilience of the relatively new and untested Belgian Army, following the rejection of the German Ultimatum by the King, deserves a wider audience. Throughout this account the courageous and noble qualities of King Albert in the dark days come to the fore. Whether at the Front as an active Commander-in-Chief; with his people during Zeppelin raids and artillery bombardments at Antwerp; declining refuge in France after the retreat from Ostend; or rallying his troops for rearguard actions his conduct was of the finest. His account of the "frightfulness" of the events in Louvain against the civilian population- including women and children- and the sacking of cultural treasures was not at first believed by Officials in Antwerp. However his reporting of Zeppelin raid shelped to arouse public opinion in the United States.Fox provides vivid descriptions of a terrible, and little known, conflict.

`I was on a train, and a German soldier began shouting at me and poking me in the ribs with his machine gun. I just thought that was it, the game was up . . .' Downed airman Bob Frost faced danger at every turn as he was smuggled out of France and over the Pyrenees. Prisoner of war Len Harley went on the run in Italy, surviving months in hiding and then a hazardous climb over the Abruzzo mountains with German troops hot on his heels. These are just some of the stories told in heart-stopping detail as Monty Halls takes us along the freedom trails out of occupied Europe, from the immense French escape lines to lesser-known routes in Italy and Slovenia. Escaping Hitler features spies and traitors, extraordinary heroism from those who ran the escape routes and offered shelter to escapees, and great feats of endurance. The SAS in Operation Galia fought for forty days behind enemy lines in Italy and then, exhausted and pursued by the enemy, exfiltrated across the Apennine mountains. And in Slovenia Australian POW Ralph Churches and British Les Laws orchestrated the largest successful Allied escape of the entire war. Mixing new research, interviews with survivors and his own experience of walking the trails, Monty brings the past to life in this dramatic and gripping slice of military history.

Inspired by the discovery of her father's long-forgotten photos, diaries and letters from home, the author set about creating this book as a tribute to the bravery and sacrifices made by the armed forces in the often over-looked Indian sub-continent area of conflict, 5,000 miles away from home. Now, after six years of work and research, this book has culminated in a tremendous insight into the appalling hardships and working conditions as well as the ingenuity of the often forgotten RAF ground crew who kept the warbirds in the air. Deprived by the RAF of his Pilot's Licence due to colour blindness, Peter was based firstly in central India, maintaining old planes that were already obsolete, and then in Burma where the ground crew were also flying as cargo handlers and stretcher bearers, having to land and take off in the most hazardous of conditions on short bush strips hacked out of the Japanese-infested jungles.