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The Australian Independent Companies and the Commandos into which they evolved were unique sub-units of the Australian Army during the Second World War. The very concept of such units was a radical one for the deeply conservative Australian Army and came about because of the personal intervention from the Chief of the General Staff, who alone advocated their establishment. The Independent Companies were unlike any other unit in the Australian Army. They were raised to fight in an autonomous, unconventional manner and while supporting them, were independent of higher formations. During 1942 and 1943 the Independent Companies conducted a multitude of tasks that tested their attributes and skills to the full, be it trekking across and surveying virgin tropical wilderness, long range patrols, raiding and harassing, stalking the enemy and amazingly skilled stealthy close range reconnaissance. As the war progressed, the Army, which had never approved of allowing too much independence to its sub-units, reassessed its requirement for such troops and in a sweeping change transformed the Independent Companies into Commando Squadrons. These were to be much more tightly controlled than the Independent Companies had been, essentially designed to operate as light infantry rather than a radically unconventional model. Throughout 1944 and 1945 Australian Commandos participated in every campaign fought by the Australian Army. The Second World War Australian Commando experience was very much one of an army unready for the challenge that was initially imposed on it, but an Army that rose to the trial and eventually, despite missteps, ultimately successful mastered the manner in which it chose to employ its commandos.

Nicaragua, 1961-1990, Volume 2 provides an in-depth coverage of military history during the second phase of one of bloodiest, and most-publicised armed conflicts of Latin America in modern times.

Based on extensive research, with help of Angolan and Cuban sources, the War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 2, traces the military build-up of the Cuban and Soviet-supported Angolan military, the FAPLA and its combat operations.

The Army of Louis XIV is frequently depicted as being the apogee of the early modern standing army. It was large, well organised and the product of the French Absolutist Monarchy. The result was the creation of an entirely original instrument of war unlike any other European armies.

The inaugural ¿From Reason to Revolution Conference¿ took as its theme ¿Command and Leadership¿, which was explored in a variety of different ways by eight speakers whose papers took in the armies of France, Austria, Portugal, and Britain (and touched in passing on those of Prussia and the Netherlands too), and whose geographical remit encompassed North America, Europe, and Africa. This volume presents the proceedings of that conference.The first three chapters consider lower-level leadership, with a focus on ideas of expertise and professionalism. Will Raffle explores the tensions between local experts in New France and professional officers from the mother country, taking as its case study the campaign for Oswego in 1756. Tobias Roeder looks at the Habsburg officer corps during the eighteenth century and the tensions between the dictates imposed by the profession of arms on the one hand and the social expectations of a gentleman on the other. Lastly, Mark Thompson reviews a little-known body of men from the Peninsular War in the shape of the Portuguese Army¿s corps of engineers.The next pair of chapters address the opposing commanders in the Jacobite Rising of 1745, drawing some interesting parallels between two young royals who were both obliged to rely on their own charisma and force of character to address difficult and complex military situations. For Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite Prince of Wales, the challenge was to create an army from scratch out of a collection of self-willed and self-opinionated individuals. Arran Johnston looks at how he did this, but also at the tensions that were inherent in the Jacobite command structure. Conversely, Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, inherited command of an army of regular troops but one which had its morale at rock bottom after defeat at Falkirk, and Jonathan Oates addresses how Cumberland was able to restore order and self-respect to his command, and take it on to victory at Culloden.The final three chapters jump forwards by a half-century, to look at the events of the French Revolutionary Wars. Carole Divall looks at the Flanders campaigns of 1793-1795, considering the problems faced by generals on both sides and concluding that all would have been far better off without the interference of their respective political masters. Jacqueline Reiter, by contrast, considers someone who was both general and politician in the shape of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, and her study of his role in the 1799 Helder Campaign both restores a reputation as a brigadier unfairly sullied by Sir John Fortescue but also considers the tensions caused by his dual role as subordinate general on the one hand and senior cabinet minister on the other. Finally, Yves Martin looks at the three very different personalities who successively commanded the French Army of the Orient in Egypt, providing very illuminating pen-portraits of three larger-than-life characters each with pronounced strengths and weaknesses.

Albrecht von Wallenstein! His very name is synonymous with the Thirty Years War. From a poor nobleman he rose to become the Duke of Friedland and Mecklenburg. Many see his assassination at Eger in 1634 as the end of the ¿interesting¿ period of the war, since he was the last of the war¿s titans to be killed.However, his army continued to serve the Emperor loyally to the end of the war, and a few regiments existed well into the 20th century. These would see action in the First World War as part of the Austrian Army and, after the Austrian Anschluss of March 1938, in the German Army during the Second World War.Despite Wallenstein¿s Army being infamous, very little has been written about it, especially in English. However, by using archives from record offices from Germany, Czechoslovakia (formerly Bohemia), Sweden and Britain, as well as the latest archaeological evidence from mass graves of the Thirty Years War period, this book looks to rectify this by giving a vivid account of what life was like for a soldier in Wallenstein¿s Army.The chapters include recruiting the army, its officers, as well as the logistics of clothing, equipping and feeding the army. There are also chapters on regimental colours, how to quarter an army, and the arms industry, plus case studies on siege warfare using Stralsund and the Alte Veste as an example, as well as Wallenstein¿s tactics at the Battle of Lutzen.It also dispels the myths that have arisen about Wallenstein¿s Army, such as it being one of the first to be well clothed during the war, and did not follow the Catholic League¿s General Johan von Tilly¿s alleged doctrine of ¿a ragged soldier and a bright musket¿ (which in itself is incorrect).Therefore this book will be essential reading to anyone interested in the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War or warfare in the early modern period.

The proportion of wartime soldiers dying of disease as against combat injury, ran at about 70-75 percent in armies campaigning in Europe in the century and a half (1648-1789) between the end of the Thirty Years War and the French Revolution. During this time, field armies doubled in size and regimes usually fought for limited territorial gains, so it was safest to ¿occupy, entrench, and wait¿. Consequently, this was an era of massive and protracted encampments: the Christian army that sat down before Belgrade in 1717 had more mouths than any city within 500 miles, but lacked basic urban amenities like regular markets, wells, privy pits, and night soil collectors. Yet the impact of sickness on military operations has been neglected. This study uncovers how many soldiers sickened and died by consulting quantitative data, such as casualty returns and hospital registers, generated by the new state-contract armies which displaced the mercenary hordes of the Thirty Years¿ War. As plague began to recede from Europe, this study explains what exactly were these ¿fluxes and fevers¿ that remained to afflict European armies in wartime and argues that they formed a single seasonal continuum that peaked in late summer. The isolation and incarceration of the military hospital characterized the response of the new armies to ¿disorder¿ and to revivified notions of contagion. However, the hospital often prolonged the late summer morbidity/mortality spike into mid-winter by generating ¿hospital fever¿ or typhus, the lice-borne disease that erupted whenever the cold, wet, hungry, transient, and unwashed huddled together. The cure was the disease. This scope of the study includes French army operations in some of its contiguous campaigning theatres, north Italy (1702 and 1734), the Rhineland (1734), Roussillon (1674), possibly Catalonia (1693), and, further afield, Bohemia (1742). The study also includes three case-studies involving the British army that include Ireland (1689), Portugal (1762), Dutch Brabant (1748), and the Rhineland (1743). The outliers are studies of Habsburg operations in and around Belgrade (1717 and 1737), and Russian operations in Crimea (1736).

The book provides a complete guide to the forces fighting in Marlborough's armies in Iberia.

From the war on the southern sector of the Eastern Front to a bomb-shattered Berlin populated largely by old men and demoralised lonely women, this candid eyewitness account offers a unique and sometimes surprising perspective on the life of a young Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler volunteer.

This book traces the little-known and fascinating history of the United Arab Emirates' Armed Forces.

The brainchild of Winston Churchill, the Dardanelles campaign was intended to strike at Turkey through the Dardanelles Straits. The French government consented to join the expedition, less because it had faith in the success of the enterprise than to prevent the British from establishing themselves in areas of the Ottoman Empire that it coveted. Th

This book addresses the work of the Royal Engineers during the Gallipoli Campaign. It seeks to demonstrate the involvement and commitment of the Corps of Royal Engineers for almost nine months of the campaign.

As Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig in 1918, General Sir Herbert Lawrence played a key role in the defeat of Germany in the First World War. This biography traces his remarkable career.

The book which is presented to the reader describes all Polikarpov's original projects, both those put into reality and unimplemented ones. It took the author many years to prepare for the creation of the book.

Forged on the battlefields of France, Greece and North Africa, the Italian Army's armoured units fought effectively despite inferior weapons and equipment and the challenging conditions that they faced This book describes the formation and battle performance of the major armoured units such as the Ariete, Littorio and Centauro divisions together w

The book is about how Colonel Zygmunt Berling, a disgruntled Colonel of the Polish inter-war army - once captured by the Red Army and imprisoned - betrayed his country whilst in captivity between 1939-1941.

The main theme of this book is the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the defences it constructed in France during September 1939-May 1940.

This work sets out to show how tremendous progress was made in the treatment of wounded soldiers during the Great War which significantly improved chances of survival. It describes ground breaking advances in resuscitation, anaesthesia and surgery which established the foundations of modern war surgery. It stresses the importance of blood transfusion.In 1914, definitive management of wounds took place at base hospitals after a journey which sometimes took days. Resuscitation was practically non- existent, anaesthesia was poor and surgical methods were hopelessly inadequate. Many soldiers developed catastrophic wound infections and died as a result of overwhelming sepsis when they should have survived.During the Second Boer War, surgeons followed the teaching of Joseph Lister who had introduced antiseptic surgery in 1867. Antiseptic dressings were applied to prevent harmful organisms gaining access to wounds which were considered sterile. Results were satisfactory, but the Boer War was fought in dry grasslands of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and most wounds were caused by rifle bullets fired from long range and of relatively low energy. The Great War on the Western Front was fought in richly manured fields of France and Flanders and wounds were caused by high energy shell fragments or bullets carrying potentially lethal organisms into their depths. Many wounds were sutured, and antiseptic dressings applied in dressing stations of field ambulances, before patients were transferred to base hospitals for definitive surgery. Results were appalling.Two pioneering surgeons challenged established doctrine and introduced new surgical methods against much opposition and hostility from clinicians who lacked vision to see beyond existing methods of treatment. Resuscitation and anaesthesia were transformed as knowledge increased and by 1917 blood transfusion became very important in improving survival. From May 1918, Field Ambulance Resuscitation Teams were employed by Australian medical personnel to deliver resuscitation and surgery to wounded soldiers within a very short time, saving limbs and lives.When hostilities were over, it was hoped by many that lessons learned during the conflict would be applied subsequently to civilian practice. Professional jealousy and rivalry sometimes prevented this from happening.

The core of this volume is the 'Journal of the Army', translated from the original French and annotated by historian Neil Cogswell.

The book begins by discussing for comparison inclusion and treatment of black Americans by the various Crown forces (particularly British and Loyalist commanders and military units). The next section discusses broadly black soldiers in the Continental Army, before delving into each state.

Gott Strafe England Volume 2 continues with the same high level of detail as to be found in Volume 1: giving the precise routes of every German raider, where every bomb fell, the damage caused and casualties on both sides, whether on the ground or in the air. Often reading like the tales from of a Boys Own Adventure Story, the full details of combats, eye witness accounts and the details of the anti-aircraft gun positions and numbers of shells fired are recorded. Never before has such a project ever been attempted that goes into so much detail to record precisely what happened in the skies over Britain during the Great War. An essential guide to any historian who is either researching their local area in the war, with long forgotten incidents of bombs falling and lives lost being recounted or those who are seeking the complete account of the war in the air over Britain.

This two-volume series will explore all the German air operations against the British Isles during 1914 to 1918, and assess the effectiveness of this new form of warfare.

This book presents fresh analyses of unpublished, published and significant primary source material relevant to the medical aspects on the Eastern campaign of 1854-1856 ¿ commonly called the Crimean War. The aim has been to produce an account based on robust evidence. The project began with no preconceptions but came to seriously question the contributions made by the talented and well-connected Florence Nightingale and the suitably-qualified Sanitary Commissioners. The latter had been sent by the government to investigate matters on the spot. This may prove an unexpected and possibly unsympathetic conclusion for some of Nightingale¿s many admirers. Rigorously weighing the evidence, it is unmistakeably clear that there is very little proof that Nightingale and the Sanitary Commissioners significantly influenced the improvement in the health of the main Army in the Crimea. The principal problems were at the front, not in Turkey, and it was there that matters were gradually rectified, with the health of the troops beginning to improve during the early weeks of 1855. The historiography of the campaign has tended to concentrate on the catastrophic deterioration in the health of the Army during the first winter and the perceived incompetence of the heads of department. The contributions made by Nightingale and the Sanitary Commissioners have been greatly over-emphasised. As a consequence, the medical aspects of the war have been inaccurately portrayed in both academic works and popular culture. The author¿s analyses should alter existing preconceptions or prejudices about what happened in Crimea and Turkey during those fateful war years. The ¿Victory over Disease¿ took place in the Crimea, and not at Scutari ¿ and this was not due to the contributions of any one person, or even a group of individuals. Rather it represented the involvement of many people in many walks of life who worked, possibly unwittingly, for a common purpose, and with such a gratifying result.

The second title in The Paperboys on Campaign series, some 46 pages of artwork enabling you to make French, British, Portuguese, Spanish, and several other countries' troops which fought for and against the Iron Duke in his epic campaign against Napoleon's forces.

This book is the first attempt by a Polish author to recreate the last stages of the 33. Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS's history in the struggle for Pomerania.

The Battle of the Dnepr: The Red Army¿s Forcing of the East Wall, August-December 1943', details a critical period in the Red Army¿s advance along the southwest strategic direction during the general offensive that followed the fighting in the area of the Kursk salient in July-August 1943. The Germans, who were now on the strategic defensive in the East, sought to fall back and consolidate their front along the line of the Dnepr River. The Red Army¿s success in overturning these expectations along this particularly important sector is the subject of this study. This is a composite work based upon three studies carried out by the Red Army General Staff¿s military-historical directorate, which was charged with collecting and analyzing the war¿s experience. The first is a lengthy internal document, dating from 1946, which was eventually published in Russia in 2007, although heavily supplemented by commentary and other information not contained in the original. The present work omits these additions, while supplying its own commentary in places deemed necessary. Two short articles from another publication round out the collection.The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with the efforts by General N.F. Vatutin¿s Voronezh (later renamed First Ukrainian) Front to exploit the Soviet victory during the battle of Kursk and to carry the war to the Dnepr River and beyond. This involved pursuing the retreating Germans and attempting to seize crossings over the Dnepr in the Kiev area before the Germans could get across and consolidate their position. Although they were able to seize several small footholds, the Soviets were unable at first to expand them to bridgeheads of operational significance. By shifting their efforts to the bridgehead north of Kiev, the Soviets were eventually able to break out and capture Kiev, although a German counterattack from the Zhitomir area threw them back somewhat. Nevertheless, by the end of the year the Red Army in this area was ready to resume the offensive to retake the Ukrainian right bank.The two articles, which comprise the second part, cover the combat operations of General I.S. Konev¿s Steppe (later renamed Second Ukrainian) Front through Poltava and Kremenchug and to cross the Dnepr and seize bridgeheads south of Kiev. This is a more narrowly focused tactical-operational study, dealing with the efforts of the front¿s 37th and 52nd armies to expand their positions on the Ukrainian right bank into operational bridgeheads capable of supporting a larger offensive to the west in 1944.

This comprehensive reference strives to provide a complete picture of the Hungarian armed forces between the years 1919-1945.

This book covers the major battles of the war, not all of them on the Western Front, through the experiences of the battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment.

A compelling account of a neglected but intense air campaign of the interwar period.

A detailed look at the Russian army during the Great Northern War utilising material previously unseen in the West.