This collection of writings covers the war on the Western Front. Whereas, traditionally, attention has been given to strategic or political matters, these essays highlight tactical issues. They show that the British high command could boast more achievements in tactics than is usually assumed.
The volume covers: the extent of tactical reform in the British Army after the Somme battle; the medical analysis of the treatment of casualties; the progress of British Artillery from 1914 to the 1990s; the role of the British military police; the rise of armour; the importance of the cavalry in the development of breakthrough doctrine; and the new spirit inspiring the rising generation of BEF studies.

Critical acclaim for William B. Breuer

"A first-class historian."
–The Wall Street Journal

Top Secret Tales of World War II

"A book for rainy days and long solitary nights by the fire. If there were a genre for cozy nonfiction, this would be the template."
–Publishers Weekly

"Perfect for the curious and adventure readers and those who love exotic tales and especially history buffs who will be surprised at what they didn’t know. Recommended for nearly everyone."
–Kirkus Reviews

Daring Missions of World War II

"The author brings to light many previously unknown stories of behind-the-scenes bravery and covert activities that helped the Allies win critical victories."
–Albuquerque Journal

Secret Weapons of World War II

"Rip-roaring tales . . . a delightful addition to the niche that Breuer has so successfully carved out."
–Publishers Weekly

Professor Graham compares the performance of the British Army in the two world wars. He identifies as a source of failure in the World War I, Sir Douglas Haig's inability to adopt appropriate operations for his chosen strategy, or suitable tactics for the operations. Montgomery usually avoided that mistake in the World War II. Graham draws upon his own experience of combat to help the reader make a connection between the orders given to corps and their effect on small units.

This book examines the postwar memoir fight over the broad front versus the single thrust strategy, the Allied advance on the Rhine, and the British call for a ground-forces commander other than General Eisenhower. It traces the argument in the postwar memoirs from 1946 through 1968 as well as the official histories of the United States, Britain, and Canada to see what the documents really said. What were men willing to say, what did they feel that they had to cover up? Field Marshal Montgomery was deeply chagrined that he had only one army group to command when he thought himself the most professional commander in Northwest Europe. Montgomery had little grasp of the intricacies of politics and could not understand that American public opinion made it impossible for Eisenhower to name him ground-forces commander. During the Battle of the Bulge the U.S. President and Chief of Staff settled the issue in Eisenhower's favor.

Synthesizing a vast body of scholarly work, Henry Patterson offers a compelling narrative of contemporary Ireland as a place poised between the divisiveness of deep-seated conflict and the modernizing - but perhaps no less divisive - pull of ever-greater material prosperity. Although the two states of Ireland have strikingly divergent histories, Patterson shows more clearly than any previous historian how interdependent those histories - and the mirroring ideologies that have fuelled them - have been. With its fresh and unpredictable readings of key events and developments on the island since the outbreak of the second world war, "Ireland Since 1939" is an authoritative and gripping account from one of the most distinguished Irish historians at work today.

When David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill began their long friendship, one of their numerous enemies nicknamed the new friends "the Heavenly Twins" after a set of gifted, irresponsible, and inseparable twins in a late Victorian novel. In Lloyd George and Churchill: How Friendship Changed Politics, Marvin Rintala explores the lengthy and unexpected friendship between these two statesmen, from its beginning in early 1901 to its end at Lloyd George's death in 1945. Rintala examines the dynamics that shaped the friendship between two powerful men (a friendship that belied Lloyd George's statement that "there are no friends at the top") and the ways in which this friendship shaped British politics during the first half of the twentieth century.

In 'Marching to the Sound of Gunfire' scores of soldiers from almost every echelon of the British Army tell their amazing stories of life - and death - at the sharp end. In the eleven frenzied months of warfare that followed D-Day, these soldiers successfully drove the Nazi hordes back into their Fatherland, and beat them into surrender. There are stories from the 'poor bloody infantry' with their machine-gunners, mortar men, stretcher bearers and pioneers; the brave assault troops who stormed the Normandy beaches and forced bridgeheads over rivers and canals in four countries; the outgunned 'tankies' in their Shermans, Cromwells and Churchills, slogging it out against the mighty German Tigers and Panthers, and the fearsome dug-in 'eighty-eights'; the dashing recce types in their thin-skinned armored cars and carriers, sending back vital radio reports; the sappers building bridges and clearing minefields under fire; the gunners with their dedicated FOOs bringing down furious and accurate barrages; the signalers, patching up communication links; the non-combatant stretcher-bearers picking up the dead and dying from the battlefield, their Red Cross armbands no guarantee of immunity from fire; the RAMC doctors and orderlies tending the wounded in their RAP under the most terrible conditions; the immediate support services of the RASC, bringing up vital food and ammunition for the morrow; and the REME repairing armored vehicles to fight another day.