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The First Battle of the Aisne, between 12-15th September 1914, was essentially a follow-up to the Battle of the Marne (8-10th September) in which the German advance on Paris had been checked and then turned back. This pamphlet, maps and tour is the official War Office guide to the battlefield, which was the watershed between the war of movement and the beginnning of trench warfare, published in 1934. Acting in conjunction with the French Fifth army on its right, and the Sixth Army on its left, and under the orders of the French C-in-C Gen. Joffre, the BEF advanced on the 12th, gaining the heights south of the River Aisne, and on the left south of Venizel reached a bridge over the river itself, which was captured that night in heavy fighting. To the left of the BEF, the French had also reached the Aisne between Compeigne and Soissons, while on the right the French had reached the River Vesle between Beaumont and Fismes. By the night of the 12/13th the gap between Von Kluck''s First and Von Bulow''s second Armies had widened to 18 miles, making it difficult for the Germans to man a defensive line along the Aisne. On 13th September the BEF crossed the Aisne, despite heavy opposition from the Germans who had brought up reserves to strengthen their line. On the 14th, hampered by a heavy mist, the BEF made little progress in their advance; fighting was intense and losses heavy, with every battalion but one of the BEF engaged. On the 15th, the final day of the battle, GHQ ordered the BEF to entrench the positions they had reached. Determined German counter-attacks were all repulsed. The guide gives an account of the battle, notes from the 1914 Training Manuals; lessons learned from the fighting; a study of operations at night; and the order of battle for the British, French, and German forces engaged. The pack comes with three main battlefield maps illustrating the unfolding action and five sketch maps showing the stands to view the panorama of the battlefield.

Le Cateau, with Mons, was one of the two major engagements fought by the British Expeditionary Force in France in the opening weeks of the Great War. The battle, fought chiefly by the BEF''s II Corps under the command of General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien on 26th August 1914, came about because of the confusion caused by the unexpected speed and weight of the German advance, which had routed General Lanrezac''s French Vth army. The BEF, endeavouring to cover for the French, found itself out oon a limb around the small town of Le Cateau. On the night of 25th August, the local commanders, - aware that to continue the retreat at daylight in conjunction with the fleeing French, as ordered by GHQ, would open them to the dangers of an attack by General von Kluck''s 1st Army in front of them while they were in the process of retiring - took the decision to stand and fight. GHQ, some 23 miles away at St Quentin, concurred. The discipline of the BEF"s musketry, including units of the Argyll and Suffolk regiments, held the advancing enemy at bay, although the German machine-gun fire inflicted heavy casualties. The action held up the German juggernaut for a vital day, but the retreat continued. This official combined tour guide and pack of battlefield maps, produced by the War Office in 1933 as another war with Germany loomed, gives a clear step by step unfolding of the battle with the aid of a series of topographical sketches and a main battle map showing the movements of the opposing armies. There are notes on the units involved, the mistakes made, and the lessons learned. An invaluable addition to the armoury of the growing number of Great War enthusiasts and visitors to the western front. Smith-Dorrien was made the scapegoat for the battle and lost his command.

A nail-bitingly exciting narrative, this is the history of a specialist RFC Scout squadron formed in in 1916. which served above the western front in the battles of the Somme, Arras, third Ypres (Passchendaele) and the German offensives in March 1918, when it became Sixty Squadron of the new RAF. Although there is a full discussion of technical problems, a glossary of technical terms and a guide to the aircraft with which the Squadron was equipped, the main aim of the book is telling the thrilling story of air combat against the formidable German enemy. As Lord Hugh Cecil writes in his vivid Preface: ''Many people feel apprehensive at flying at all....but to fly and fight, to sit alone in an aeroplane thousands of feet above the ground, to catch sight of an enemy, to go to attack him, flying faster than an express train moves, to venture near as may be dared, knowing that the slightest collision will cast both helpless to the ground, to dodge and dive and turn and spin, to hide in clouds or in the dazzle of the sun, to fire a machine gun while not losing mastery of the control and rudder of one''s own aeroplane, to notice the enemy''s bullets striking here and there on one''s machine, and know that if a bullet hits the engine it means either death or a precarious landing and captivity, and if a bullet hits the petrol tank it means being burned alive in the air, and yet to fight on and, escaping, to go forth afresh next day - surely to read of this is to realise with new and penetrating force the stupendous measure of what human skill can do and human courage dare''. Illustrated with 21 photographs and pictures; and two maps, and accompanied by two appendices listing officers who served in the squadron and their fates, this is a book that no-one remotely interested in the Great War in the air will want to be without.

The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders), 42nd/73rd Foot, entered the Great War with two Regular, one Special Reserve (the 3rd) and four Territorial Force battalions (4th to 7th); by the end of the war the total had grown to twenty-two battalions (Becke), twenty-five according to the History''s Foreword. Thirty thousand served in the Regiment in France, Belgium Salonika, Palestine and Mesopotamia and of these 8,390 died. The Regiment was awarded 69 Battle Honours, three VCs were won and a fourth was awarded to a BW officer in 1917 while he was commanding 1st Lincolns. This three-volume history is outstanding - Vol 1 deals with the Regular and the Special Reserve battalions, Vol 2 the TF battalions and Vol 3 the New Army (Service or Kitchener) battalions. Common to all three volumes are the Preface, Foreword (by the Colonel of the Regiment) and the page listing the Regiment''s Battle Honours. In each volume the battalions are treated separately and for all the front line battalions, following the narrative describing their war service there are the same six appendices: Record of Officers'' Service, Summary of Casualties, Officer casualty list, Other Rank casualty list, Honours and Awards and finally the list of Actions and Operations. In Volume 1 there is a seventh appendix to the 1st and 2nd Battalion narratives - a list of Other Ranks of each battalion who were commissioned during the war. In the case of the TF the second and third line battalions, which did not leave the UK, all are dealt with together. There is a bonus in Volume 2; at the end there is a section on the Royal Highlanders of Canada represented by the 13th, 42nd and 73rd Canadian Infantry Battalions, giving a brief account of their actions with appendices showing for each battalion a summary of killed, list of Honours and Awards and list of Actions and Operations. I believe this has got all you can hope for in a regimental history.

Volume 1 in the official Great War history''s account of the tragic Gallipoli campaign covers the early stages from its inception down to May 1915. Gallipoli was conceived - by Winston Churchill among others - as a bold and imaginative surprise, aimed at severing the links between Turkey and her European allies; forcing a route through the Dardanelles straits from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea to supply southern Russia; and possibly even capturing the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Sadly, none of these ambitious goals were achieved. Launched at first as a purely naval enterprise in March, the element of surprise was lost after several ships hit mines and others were shelled from the Turkish forts. A gap followed in which military reinforcements - including Churchill''s Royal Naval Division, and the Anzac Corps - were shipped to the sector. The Turks used the time to reinforce the defences of the Gallipoli peninsula under German guidance, so the Allied troop landings in April met with fierce and determined opposition. The conduct of the Allied troops was equally courageous and, ironically, a campaign designed to escape the trench warfare on the western front became bogged down in a similar slogging match for control of the heights above the beaches. The author, who served on the staff of the commanders Sir Ian Hamilton and Sir William Birdwood, has written a gripping and authoritative account.

Originally conceived as a bold and imaginative surprise stroke to get around the stalemate of the trenches and attack Germany through the back door of her Turkish ally, the Gallipoli campaign became a byword for bungling incompetence as well as for the bravery and horrendous conditions endured by both sides. This second, concluding volume of the Official History tells the story from May 1915 down to the evacuation of the embattled peninsular. It tells of the subsidiary landings once it was clear that the element of surprise had been lost after the initial invasion, and of the stubborn refusal of the High Command to abandon an enterprise in which so much had been invested. Ironically, after the bungled conduct of the campaign, the evacuation itself was a flawless example of a textbook operation that took the Turks completely by surprise.

Prior to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 the British cavalry establishment consisted of some five regiments of heavy cavalry, thirteen of medium cavalry, including lancers and dragoons, and thirteen hussar regiments. In Cavalry and Yeomanry Badges of the British Army, 1914 over 250 cap badges are described and illustrated.

This edition of Badges of the British Army presents a wholly new, completely revised guide for the collector. All the photographs are new, and the coverage extended to encompass the badges that had appeared since the book was first published.

More than any other family, the Verney's - a dynasty of Buckinghamshire squires - embody the tragic conflicts and divided loyalties of the English Civil War. The family patriarch, Sir Edmund Verney, was a courtier and former close friend of King Charles I, even accompanying Charles on his fruitless marriage mission to Madrid when he attempted to woo the Spanish Infanta. However, as MP for Wycombe, Verney often found himself in opposition to Royal policy - and as a staunch Protestant particularly deplored Charles' devotion to High Anglicanism and Bishops. However, when the push of Parliamentary politics came to the shove of Civil War, Verney reluctantly placed his loyalty to the Crown above his conscience, telling a friend: 'For my part I do not like the quarrel and do heartily wish that the King would yield and consent to what they [Parliament] desire... [but] I have eaten his bread and served him near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him; and choose rather to lose my Life (which I am sure I shall do) to preserve and defend those things, which are against my conscience to preserve and defend'. Sure enough, in accordance with his own prophecy Verney did die in the Civil War's first battle, Edgehill. According to legend, he defended the Royal Standard so stoutly that his severed hand was found still clutching it after the battle. Verney's eldest son and heir, Sir Ralph, also an MP, was a stout Parliamentarian; but his younger brother, Edmund junior. was a passionate Royalist who died at the hands of Cromwell's troops in the massacre that followed the storming of Drogheda in Ireland. This two-volume family history, published in 1892, and much drawn upon by Civil War historians, tells the story of the conflicted family's fortunes - and the tragic wounds inflicted on close families who find themselves 'by the sword divided'.

At the end of a long and uncommonly eventful life, when these thrilling memoirs were written, it was his distant youth as a soldier in the Peninsular War that Joseph Anderson (1790-1877) recalled most vividly. A Scottish soldier, who ended his career a Lieutenant-Colonel, a CB and a Knight of Hanover; Anderson joined the 78th Regiment of Foot in his native Stirlingshire at the tender age of 15. After service in Italy and Egypt, the 78th landed in Spain where Joseph took part in the Battle of Talavera where he was wounded. His potential was soon recognised and he was quickly commissioned as a Lieutenant. After battling the French under the wily Marshal Massena, Wellington's army retreated into Portugal, taking refuge behind the lines of Torres Vedras before Lisbon. Anderson took part in the battles of Busaco and Fuentes D'Onoro - where he risked death to recover the body of a comrade. Training in the army as a Judge-Advocate, Anderson was ordered to accompany a shipload of three hundred convicts bound for Australia where he was placed in charge of the penal colony on Norfolk Island. The convicts promptly mutinied, but after it was put down Anderson was cleared of any responsibility for the outbreak.and retired to Melbourne where he wrote these much-admired memoirs at 74 and died aged 88.

Held to be the best written of all the official histories of operations on the Western Front begins with a review of the allied prospects for 1917 as discussed at the Chantilly Conference and then covers the first five months of 1917: the operations on the Ancre in Jan/Feb, the German withdrawal and the British Arras Offensive April - May 1917 Vimy, the battles of the Scarpe (3), of Bullecourt (2), and of Arleux.