A Moonlight Massacre

The Third Battle of Ypres was officially terminated by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig with the opening of the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917. Nevertheless, a comparatively unknown set-piece attack - the only large-scale night operation carried out on the Flanders front during the campaign - was launched twelve days later on 2 December. This volume is a necessary corrective to previously published campaign narratives of what has become popularly known as 'Passchendaele'. It examines the course of events from the mid-November decision to sanction further offensive activity in the vicinity of Passchendaele village to the barren operational outcome that forced British GHQ to halt the attack within ten hours of Zero. A litany of unfortunate decisions and circumstances contributed to the profitless result. At the tactical level, a novel hybrid set-piece attack scheme was undermined by a fatal combination of snow-covered terrain and bright moonlight. At the operational level, the highly unsatisfactory local situation in the immediate aftermath of Third Ypres' post-strategic phase (26 October-10 November) appeared to offer no other alternative to attacking from the confines of an extremely vulnerable salient. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the affair occurred at the political and strategic level, where Haig's earnest advocacy for resumption of the Flanders offensive in spring 1918 was maintained despite obvious signs that the initiative had now passed to the enemy and the crisis of the war was fast approaching. "A Moonlight Massacre" provides an important contribution and reinterpretation of the discussion surrounding Passchendaele, based firmly on an extensive array of sources, many unpublished, and supported by illustrations and maps.

When outlaws in the Nueces Strip ruthlessly massacre innocents by the light of every full moon, Texas Ranger C. W. Wallace is dispatched to stop the next bloody murder. The crime and brutality rampant in the 1877 South Texas brush country threatens people in every community, but using Texas Rangers to combat the problem is as controversial as the violence itself, so C. W. rides alone and is rarely welcomed where he goes. To track the cattle thieves, he and other Rangers need the civilian population to become their extra eyes and ears. Clues at an isolated homestead suggest that a secretive young widow could be a valuable resource, but C. W. is hesitant to trust her. In an effort to identify the ringleaders, C. W. and the widow, Esther, ride breakneck for the border and illegally cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. But disaster plagues them, and C. W. realizes Esther is herself a target for death, even as his affections turn toward her. Now Ranger Wallace must do all he can to prevent Esther’s murder and discover where the marauders have planned the next moonlight massacre.

Between July and November 1917, in a small corner of Belgium, more than 500,000 men were killed or maimed, gassed or drowned - and many of the bodies were never found. The Ypres offensive represents the modern impression of the First World War: splintered trees, water-filled craters, muddy shell-holes. The climax was one of the worst battles of both world wars: Passchendaele. The village fell eventually, only for the whole offensive to be called off. But, as Nick Lloyd shows, notably through previously unexamined German documents, it put the Allies nearer to a major turning point in the war than we have ever imagined.

The military scholar and author of The Human Face of War analyses the nature of 20th-century war and warfare in this wide-ranging study. The 20th Century was possibly the most violent and turbulent century in history. The wars waged in those ten decades reshaped the globe and wreaked an incalculable toll on human life. In The Hall of Mirrors, military analyst and historian Jim Storr explores what can we learn from war, and warfare, in the 20th century. Rather than presenting a narrative history, The Hall of Mirrors takes a deep look at the nature of 20th Century war and warfare. Storr looks at the strategy, operational art, and tactics employed. He analyzes how technology developed, and how those technologies affected military events. He also considers the effect of individual human beings and organizations. By 1919 the First World War was already over. Millions had died, empires had crumbled, new nations had been born. And yet the so-called Great War was merely setting the stage for another eighty years of crisis, conflict, and change; of alliances forged and broken; of apparent chaos that can appear futile, and yet has enormous consequence.

This book focuses on the extent to which the physical terrain features across Egypt, Libya and Tunisia affected British operations throughout the campaign in North Africa during the Second World War. One main theme of the work analyses the terrain from the operational and tactical perspective and argues that the landscape features heavily influenced British operations and should now be considered alongside other standard military factors. The work differs from previous studies in that it considers these additional factors for the entire campaign until the Axis surrender in May 1943. Until now it has been widely assumed that much of the Western Desert coastal plateau was a broadly level, open region in which mobile armored operations were paramount. However this work concentrates on the British operations to show they were driven by the need to capture and hold key features across each successive battlefield. At the operational level planning was led by the need to hold key ground across Libya and especially the province of Cyrenaica during the crucial middle period of the campaign. A secondary theme of the work argues that British forces began to improvise certain tactical doctrines, which altered the early practice of combined arms assaults into one of the Infantry and Armored formations fighting largely separated battles until the autumn of 1942. Other developments in doctrine which were affected by the terrain included the practice of unit dispersal to hold key ground and the use of temporary units such as Jock columns to harass and engage the enemy. The two themes are inter-linked and contribute fresh insights to the debate on British methods of warfare. The author has consulted key primary documents, reports, war diaries and published memoirs, from major UK archives and compared these with the campaign historiography to develop the main themes of the work. These include the National Archives, the Churchill Archives Center, the Liddell-Hart Center for Military History, the National Army Museum, John Rylands Center, Imperial War Museum at London and Duxford and London and the Tank Museum Archives at Bovington. The sources include unit war diaries, after action reports, along with many of the key published and some unpublished memoirs. His text is supported by 24 pages of specially commissioned color maps.

Using a combination of new perspectives and new evidence, this book presents a reinterpretation of how 21st Army Group produced a successful combined arms doctrine by late 1944 and implemented this in early 1945. Historians, professional military personnel and those interested in military history should read this book, which contributes to the radical reappraisal of Great Britain’s fighting forces in the last years of the Second World War, with an exploration of the reasons why 21st Army Group was able in 1944–45 to integrate the operations of its armor and infantry. The key to understanding how the outcome developed lies in understanding the ways in which the two processes of fighting and the creation of doctrine interrelated. This requires both a conventional focus on command and a cross-level study of Montgomery and a significant group of commanders. The issue of whether or not this integration of combat arms (a guide to operational fighting capability) had any basis in a common doctrine is an important one. Alongside this stands the new light this work throws on how such doctrine was created. A third interrelated contribution is in answering how Montgomery commanded, and whether and to what extent, doctrine was imposed or generated. Further it investigates how a group of ‘effervescent’ commanders interrelated, and what the impact of those interrelationships was in the formulation of a workable doctrine. The book makes an original contribution to the debate on Montgomery’s command style in Northwest Europe and its consequences, and integrates this with tracking down and disentangling the roots of his ideas, and his role in the creation of doctrine for the British Army’s final push against the Germans. In particular the author is able to do something that has defeated previous authors: to explain how doctrine was evolved and, especially who was responsible for providing the crucial first drafts, and the role Montgomery played in revising, codifying and disseminating it.

When Great Britain and its dominions declared war on Germany in August 1914, they were faced with the formidable challenge of transforming masses of untrained citizen-soldiers at home and abroad into competent, coordinated fighting divisions. The Empire on the Western Front focuses on the development of two units, Britain’s 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division and the Canadian 4th Division, to show how the British Expeditionary Force rose to this challenge. By turning the spotlight on army formation and operations at the divisional level, Jackson calls into question existing accounts that emphasize the differences between the imperial and dominion armies.