Death Was Our Bedmate

Death Was Our Bedmate

Author: Agnes McEwan

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2013-03-27

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1473822483

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The book tells the story of a little known artillery regiment, the 155th (Lanarkshire Yeomanry) Field Regiment, RA which saw constant action during the ill-fated Malayan Campaign of 1941/42 and whose members later experienced the worst kind of hell as POWs of a cruel and bestial enemy.Following the Japanese invasion of Malaya, the Regiment fought a brave and resolute rearguard action all the way down the Malayan Peninsular and onto the so called impregnable fortress of Singapore. Held in the highest respect by comrades and foe alike, this former territorial cavalry regiment fully deserved its Royal Artillery moto Ubigue everywhere.In the years that followed, the Gunners slaved, suffered an d died on the infamous Burma Railway, in copper mines of Formosa and camps throughout the Far East. More men of the Regiment died as POWs than fell in action. They should not be forgotten.Included is a full nominal roll which allows the reader to identify the camp/s where each individual Gunner was held. A Roll of Honour provides the date, place and cause of death and place of burial/commemoration of the Regiments casualties.


Battle for Malaya

Battle for Malaya

Author: Kaushik Roy

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-12-02

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0253044243

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The historian and author of The Army in British India analyzes the British Indian Army’s devastating loss to the Imperial Japanese during WWII. The defeat of 90,000 Commonwealth soldiers by 50,000 Japanese soldiers made the World War II Battle for Malaya an important encounter for both political and military reasons. British military prestige was shattered, fanning the fires of nationalism in Asia, especially in India. Japan’s successful tactics in Malaya—rapid marches, wide outflanking movement along difficult terrain, nocturnal attacks, and roadblocks—would be repeated in Burma in 1942–43. Until the Allied command evolved adequate countermeasures, Japanese soldiers remained supreme in the field. Looking beyond the failures of command, Kaushik Roy focuses on tactics of the ground battle that unfolded in Malaya between December 1941 and February 1942. His analysis includes the organization of the Indian Army—the largest portion of Commonwealth troops—and compares it to the British and Australian armies that fought side by side with Indian soldiers. Utilizing both official war office records and personal memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories, Roy presents a comprehensive narrative of operations interwoven with tactical analysis of the Battle for Malaya.


Last Post over the River Kwai

Last Post over the River Kwai

Author: Cecil Lowry

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2018-10-30

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1526736926

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Last Post Over the River Kwai is the carefully researched account of the experiences of the officers and men of 2nd Battalion The East Surreys during the Second World War.Stationed in Shanghai in the early 1940s, the Battalion was deployed to Malaya and fought gallantly to slow the Japanese advance. After heavy losses the survivors found themselves POWs in Singapore in February 1942 after the humiliating surrender which Churchill described as Britains worst ever military disaster.The next three and a half years saw members of the Battalion suffering appalling hardship at the hands of their brutal Japanese captors, whether in Singapore, on the Death Railway, Malaya or Japan itself, as wells as on hellships. Many died but remarkably the majority survived to tell their story. Their prolonged captivity with unbelievable hardship, deprivation and cruelty makes for distressing but inspiring reading.


Literal Madness

Literal Madness

Author: Kathy Acker

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2018-02-27

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0802146600

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A collection of three novels from the experimental feminist writer: “Literal Madness is Acker at her most powerful, disturbing, and provocative.” —Catherine Texier, author of Victorine Kathy Goes to Haiti, the first of three novels in Literal Madness, “speaks to us out of a delightful mock-naivete that reminds one at times of the Dick and Jane readers rewritten as manuals for politics and sex . . . At once hilarious and terrifying, [it] has all the logic of a Caribbean tour and a nightmare combined” (Los Angeles Times). My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini—wherein, among other things, the late Italian filmmaker solves his own murder, with the help of, among others, Romeo, Juliet, and the Bronté sisters—is a “scathing commentary on false values in art” (The Hartford Courant). In the haunting Florida, Acker achieves “a nearly telegraphic reduction of the Bogart-Bacall movie Key Largo to fatalistic, tough-guy essentials” (Booklist). “There’s a haunting method to Acker’s ‘madness’: a rough, raw, erudite wail against the postmodern loss of meaning and emotion.” —Kirkus Reviews


Frank Pantridge MC

Frank Pantridge MC

Author: Cecil Lowry

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2020-07-30

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1526777347

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A biography of the British World War II veteran and Japanese POW camp survivor who went on to create a life-saving device. Countless thousands of men and women around the world have good reason to be thankful that Frank Pantridge survived three and a half years of brutal Japanese captivity. Had he not, they too would in all probability have died too. Taken prisoner at the fall of Singapore in February 1942, Frank was forced to endure appalling deprivation. Conditions on the Burma railway were notorious, and the death rate was horrendous. On returning to Belfast in late 1945, Frank specialized in heart diseases. Convinced that the prompt application of electric shock after cardiac arrest could save lives, he reasoned that ventricular defibrillation should be applied not just in hospitals but in the workplace, the home, the street or ambulance. His first “portable” defibrillator was produced in 1965 and over the intervening years evolved into the compact units so prevalent today. The importance of Pantridge’s invention was well demonstrated when U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnston’s life was saved in 1972. This stirring biography reveals the full story of a remarkable man who survived against the odds to save countless lives. Praise for Frank Pantridge MC “Cecil Lowry's book describes a man who...survived against all the odds. . . . A fascinating and moving story.” —Books Monthly (UK)


Endure (Defy Trilogy, Book 3)

Endure (Defy Trilogy, Book 3)

Author: Sara B. Larson

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2015-12-29

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0545644925

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Alexa must face enemies known and unseen in the ultimate fight for survivial. The remarkable third novel in Sara B. Larson's bestselling Defy series! At last, Alexa and King Damian are engaged to be married. But their lives are far from safe. The kingdom of Antion is under siege, and Rylan is a prisoner of the enemy. Even worse, Alexa remains at the mercy of the evil Dansiian Rafe, who controls her mind and can force Alexa to kill or harm Damian at any moment. Despite this, Alexa is determined to rescue Rylan, which soon leads her far from Damian and deep into enemy territory.When she arrives, what awaits her is deadlier than anything she could have ever imagined: an army of black sorcerers, and a horrifying plot to destroy the world as Alexa knows it. Will she be able to gather the strength to free herself, protect the love of her life, and save the land? Will there ever be true peace?Acclaimed author Sara B. Larson has woven a stunning, romantic, and evocative finale to the Defy trilogy that is sure to leave readers breathless until the very last page.


The Oresteia

The Oresteia

Author: Aeschylus

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1984-02-07

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780140443332

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In the Oresteia Aeschylus addressed the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. As they move from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration. In Agamemnon, a king's decision to sacrifice his daughter and turn the tide of war inflicts lasting damage on his family, culminating in a terrible act of retribution; The Libation Bearers deals with the aftermath of Clytemnestra's regicide, as her son Orestes sets out to avenge his father's death; and in The Eumenides, Orestes is tormented by supernatural powers that can never be appeased. Forming an elegant and subtle discourse on the emergence of Athenian democracy out of a period of chaos and destruction, The Oresteia is a compelling tragedy of the tensions between our obligations to our families and the laws that bind us together as a society. The only trilogy in Greek drama that survives from antiquity, Aeschylus' The Oresteia is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction, notes and glossary written in collaboration with W.B. Stanford in Penguin Classics. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


Mussolini's Death March

Mussolini's Death March

Author: Nuto Revelli

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2013-04-05

Total Pages: 576

ISBN-13: 0700619089

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In his quest for military glory, Benito Mussolini sent the Italian Eighth Army to the Eastern Front to help fight the Russians, only to have his forces routed within little more than a month of the launch of the Soviet counteroffensives of the winter of 1942-1943. The Cuneense, a division of mountain troops, was hit especially hard, with only a small percentage of its troops straggling back to Italy; the rest were killed in action or died of frostbite or in captivity from malnourishment, overwork, and disease. All told, the Italians suffered roughly 75,000 dead, more than in their six-month campaign in Greece and Albania or in their three years in North Africa. Nuto Revelli, who fought in Russia himself, interviewed forty-three other survivors of the campaign for a book that has become a classic among Italian war memoirs. First published in Italian in 1966 as La strada del davai, Revelli's account, now available in English, vividly recaptures the experiences and sobering reflections of these men. It provides a chilling look at an experience that, in English-language writing, has been overshadowed by that of the main actors on the Eastern Front. When news of the rout reached Italy, the shock was devastating. In Revelli's home province of Cuneo, the recruiting territory of the annihilated Cuneense Division, some villages lost almost all men of military age. The resulting rage and bitterness later fueled the partisan war against the Germans and Italian fascists. The veterans of Mussolini's Death March speak candidly of nights in the open, of extreme cold, gnawing hunger, and eruptive madness. Thousands who survived the Soviet onslaught were taken prisoner and died on the so-called davai marches-named for Russian guards' command to keep prisoners moving-or later in the camps themselves. Even so, they developed a favorable impression of the Russian people, who provided hospitality in their small houses and aid to the wounded. Together, their recollections provide an eye-opening look at a largely neglected aspect of World War II.


The Mad Hatter Murders

The Mad Hatter Murders

Author: Marrisse Whittaker

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1504073975

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“GRIPPING! Wow . . . kept me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end, so many twists and turns, that kept me thinking, just one more chapter! . . A rollercoaster ride!” —Amazon reviewer, five stars A British police detective’s latest case gets curiouser and curiouser in this hard-hitting novel by the author of The Devil’s Line. DSI Billie Wilde’s romantic relationship is intense—but it’s nothing compared to the pressure of her latest case, especially since the new chief of police is gunning for her squad. If they don’t get a handle on a series of deaths—which seem to have a connection to Alice in Wonderland—they could wind up being demoted. And the identity of one of the victims has made things devastatingly personal for Billie. In search of clues, she winds up working closely with PI Ellis Darque, who is working undercover. But as Billie works to sort out what’s going on behind the scenes, and confronts dark truths about her own family, she starts to feel like she’s gone through the looking-glass herself . . . This chilling police procedural by the author of The Magpie, finalist for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction, is a compelling tale filled with complex motives, tangled mysteries, and shocking surprises.