An explosive story of blunders and courage in the battle that might have brought victory in Europe in 1944. “I believe my book could be described as an attempt at an heroic history of a very long and important battle, which is truly a series of battles. All the events ‘depicted’ in it happened, and if I have erred it has been on the side of understatement, for heroism often is beyond the ordinary use of prose, and if one feels unable to express it beyond a doubt it is better to let it speak for itself in the deed....”—Foreword
Documents the 1889 competition between feminist journalist Nellie Bly and Cosmopolitan reporter Elizabeth Bishop to beat Jules Verne's record and each other in a round-the-globe race, offering insight into their respective daunting challenges as recorded in their reports sent back home. 50,000 first printing.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker" by Ezra Meeker. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
The author of this book needs no introduction as the one who wrote the monumental History of the British Army which to this day remains one of the greatest masterpieces in the field of military history. It covers a period of great crisis in Britain's history, the threat posed by Napoleon and is an account of recruiting in the Army during this period with all its difficulties and problems. In preparing this book the author draws on all the official records, returns, journals he can trace and which bear upon the problem. Fortescue calls this an "overflow" from his History, and with the encouragement (financial and otherwise) of the Secretary of State for War he turns what might have otherwise been thirty-page document into a detailed study ten times as long. Beginning with the desperate state the military forces had been brought to during the period 1784 to 1792 by the neglect of Pitt, he takes through the efforts to build up not just an army, but a very large army to back up his foreign policy. The county was a vital cog in the recruiting machine of those days of the Regular Army, Volunteers and Militia and the role of the Lords Lieutenant of those counties was of equal importance. There are a number of interesting tables of statistics for those twelve years:- casualties year on year with a high point of 21,630 in 1809, during the Peninsular War; recruits for the regular army totalling 115,967 men plus 18,349 boys; effective strengths by arm of service; effective strengths of Volunteers in Great Britain and in Ireland and much more besides.
During the Allied advance across northwest Europe in 1944, the opening up of the key port of Antwerp was a pivotal event, yet it has been neglected in histories of the conflict. The battles in Normandy and on the German frontier have been studied often and in detail, while the fight for the Scheldt estuary, Walcheren and Antwerp itself has been treated as a sideshow. Graham Thomass timely and graphic account underlines the importance of this aspect of the Allied campaign and offers a fascinating insight into a complex combined-arms operation late in the Second World War. Using operational reports and vivid first-hand eyewitness testimony, he takes the reader alongside 21 Army Group as it cleared the Channel ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk, then moved on to attack the Scheldt and the island stronghold of Walcheren. Overcoming entrenched German resistance there was essential to the whole operation, and it is the climax of his absorbing narrative.
