The Day We Won The War
The Day We Won The War

Author: Charles Messenger

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2008-09-18

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0297856189

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How the British, ANZACs and Canadians finally broke the German army on the most decisive day of the Great War. The British attack at Amiens was the most decisive day of the Great War. In earlier offensives, a gain of a few hundred yards counted as a 'victory', but this time our troops advanced seven miles in a day and broke clean through the German defences. The long agony on the Western Front was nearly over. Spearheaded by tanks and armoured cars and supported by the RAF, the attack was led by the Australian and Canadian Corps, with British and French troops on the flanks. Elaborate deception measures were employed to ensure surprise. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, as well as eyewitness accounts, this book describes how the attack was conceived, the preparations, and the actual assault itself, as well as what happened on the subsequent days and how Amiens paved the way for the final victorious Allied advance.

Reveille in Washington
Reveille in Washington

Author: Margaret Leech

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2011-06-07

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 1590174674

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Featuring a foreword by Battle Cry of Freedom author James McPherson A vibrant portrait of Civil War-era Washington, D.C. that is “packed and running over with the anecdotes, scandals, personalities, and tragi-comedies of the day”—from the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for History (The New Yorker) 1860: The American capital is sprawling, fractured, squalid, colored by patriotism and treason, and deeply divided along the political lines that will soon embroil the nation in bloody conflict. Chaotic and corrupt, the young city is populated by bellicose congressmen, Confederate conspirators, and enterprising prostitutes. Soldiers of a volunteer army swing from the dome of the Capitol, assassins stalk the avenues, and Abraham Lincoln struggles to justify his presidency as the Union heads to war. Reveille in Washington focuses on the everyday politics and preoccupations of Washington during the Civil War. From the stench of corpse-littered streets to the plunging lace on Mary Lincoln’s evening gowns, Margaret Leech illuminates the city and its familiar figures—among them Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, William Seward, and Mary Surratt—in intimate and fascinating detail. Leech’s book remains widely recognized as both an impressive feat of scholarship and an uncommonly engrossing work of history. “The best single popular account of Washington during the great convulsion of the Civil War.” —The Washington Post

Monash's Masterpiece
Monash's Masterpiece

Author: Peter FitzSimons

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Published: 2018-04-24

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0733640095

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The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph, and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle - where infantry, tanks, artillery and planes operated together as a coordinated force. Monash planned every detail meticulously, with nothing left to chance. Integrated use of tanks, planes, infantry, wireless (and even carrier pigeons!) was the basis, and it went on from there, down to the details: everyone used the same maps, with updated versions delivered by motorbike despatch riders to senior commanders, including Monash. Each infantry battalion was allocated to a tank group, and they advanced together. Supplies and ammunition were dropped as needed from planes. The losses were relatively few. In the words of Monash: 'A perfected modern battle plan is like nothing so much as a score for an orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are their respective musical phrases.' Monash planned for the battle to last for 90 minutes - in the end it went for 93. What happened in those minutes changed for the rest of the war the way the British fought battles, and the tactics and strategies used by the Allies. Peter FitzSimons brings this Allied triumph to life, and tells this magnificent story as it should be told.

From the Somme to Victory
From the Somme to Victory

Author: Peter Simkins

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-10-30

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 1473841046

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Peter Simkins has established a reputation over the last forty years as one of the most original and stimulating historians of the First World War. He has made a major contribution to the debate about the performance of the British Army on the Western Front. This collection of his most perceptive and challenging essays, which concentrates on British operations in France between 1916 and 1918, shows that this reputation is richly deserved. He focuses on key aspects of the army's performance in battle, from the first day of the Somme to the Hundred Days, and gives a fascinating insight into the developing theory and practice of the army as it struggled to find a way to break through the German line. His rigorous analysis undermines some of the common assumptions - and the myths - that still cling to the history of these British battles.

Ranks and Columns
Ranks and Columns

Author: Alfred E. Cornebise

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1993-03-30

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13:

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Since the Revolutionary War, American military men have published troop newspapers to provide amusement, to keep themselves informed, to aid in maintaining morale, and to encourage those engaged in boring or dangerous pursuits. Beginning as informal ventures, these papers received official sanction as high command began to realize their morale benefits and eventually became an accepted adjunct to the waging of war. Based on a close reading of many soldiers' newspapers, this volume is the first book to provide a historical survey of the U.S. military press from the Revolutionary War to the present. Drawing on the rich detail in the troop newspapers, the book also provides a social record of the attitudes, aspirations, and life of those engaged in war, and considers the increasingly controversial issue of freedom of the press in war time. Taking a chronological approach, the study opens with a consideration of the Revolutionary War and turns to a consideration of the Mexican War of 1846-1848 in chapter 2. The Civil War papers are covered in chapter 3. Chapter 4 discusses the period from 1865 to 1917, when the military press matured. The next two chapters cover the ground forces papers and the air service papers of World War I. Chapters 7 and 8 are devoted to World War II, and the final chapter covers the period since World War II. This volume should become a standard in journalism history.

Anzac, The Unauthorised Biography
Anzac, The Unauthorised Biography

Author: Carolyn Holbrook

Publisher: NewSouth

Published: 2014-09-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1742241816

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Raise a glass for an Anzac. Run for an Anzac. Camp under the stars for an Anzac. Is there anything Australians won’t do to keep the Anzac legend at the centre of our national story? But standing firm on the other side of the Anzac enthusiasts is a chorus of critics claiming that the appetite for Anzac is militarising our history and indoctrinating our children. So how are we to make sense of this struggle over how we remember the Great War? Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography cuts through the clamour to provide a much-needed historical perspective on the battle over Anzac. It traces how, since 1915, Australia’s memory of the Great War has declined and surged, reflecting the varied and complex history of the Australian nation itself. Most importantly, it asks why so many Australians persist with the fiction that the nation was born on 25 April 1915.