An Englishman At War The Wartime Diaries Of Stanley Christopherson Dso Mc Bar 1939 1945

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY. From summer camp in Yorkshire in August 1939 all the way to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Palestine, Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day and Nijmegen, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of one man's war. Christopherson's regiment, The Sherwood Rangers, started as amateurs, equipped with courage but very little else, and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and highly decorated tank regiments in the British Army. They were not only the first British troops to enter Paris and the first unit to cross into Germany, but also took part in the last cavalry charge undertaken by the British Army in Palestine in 1940. Over the course of the conflict, the regiment amassed an astonishing thirty battle honours. Stanley Christopherson himself was to rise from a junior subaltern to become the commanding officer of the regiment after the Normandy invasion.

‘An astonishing record...There is no other wartime diary that can match the scope of these diaries’ James Holland ‘An outstanding contribution to the literature of the Second World War’Professor Gary Sheffield From the outbreak of war in September 1939 to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day and the crossing of the Rhine, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of the Second World War. Stanley Christopherson’s regiment, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, went to war as amateurs and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and most valued armoured units in the British Army. A junior officer at the beginning of the war, Christopherson became the commanding officer of the regiment soon after the D-Day landings. What he and his regiment witnessed presents a unique overview of one of the most cataclysmic events in world history and gives an extraordinary insight, through tragedy and triumph, into what it felt like to be part of the push for victory.

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY. From summer camp in Yorkshire in August 1939 all the way to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Palestine, Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day and Nijmegen, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of one man's war. Christopherson's regiment, The Sherwood Rangers, started as amateurs, equipped with courage but very little else, and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and highly decorated tank regiments in the British Army. They were not only the first British troops to enter Paris and the first unit to cross into Germany, but also took part in the last cavalry charge undertaken by the British Army in Palestine in 1940. Over the course of the conflict, the regiment amassed an astonishing thirty battle honours. Stanley Christopherson himself was to rise from a junior subaltern to become the commanding officer of the regiment after the Normandy invasion.

The First World War Diaries of Manchester Pals Captain Charlie May written and kept in secret and published now for the first time. A born storyteller, Charlie May s vivid eye for detail and warm good humour brings his experience in the trenches (and the experience of millions of ordinary men like him) to life for a 21st-century readership. Captain Charlie May was killed, aged 27, in the early morning of 1st July 1916, leading the men of B Company, 22nd Manchester Service Battalion (the Manchester Pals) into action on the first day of the Somme. This tolerant and immensely likeable man had been born in New Zealand and against King s regulations he kept a diary in seven small, wallet-sized pocket books. A journalist before the war and a born storyteller, May s diaries give a vivid picture of battalion life in and behind the trenches during the build-up to the greatest battle fought by a British army and are filled with the friendships and tensions, the home-sickness, frustrations, delays and endless postponements, the fog of ignorance, the combination of boredom and terror to which every man that has ever fought could testify. His diaries reflect on the progress of the war, tell jokes good and bad, give details of horse-rides along the Somme valley, afternoons with a fishing rod, lunch in Amiens, a gastronomic celebration of Christmas 1915 and concerts in Whiz Bang Hall . He describes battles not just with the enemy, but with rats, crows and on the makeshift football pitch all recorded with a freshness that brings these stories home as if for the first time. The diaries are also written as an extended and deeply-moving love letter to his wife Maude and baby daughter Pauline. I do not want to die, he wrote Not that I mind for myself. If it be that I am to go, I am ready. But the thought that I may never see you or our darling baby again turns my bowels to water. Fresh, eloquent and warm, these diaries were kept secret from the censor and were delivered to his wife after his death by a fellow soldier in Charlie s company. Edited by his great-nephew and published for the first time, these diaries give an unforgettable account of the war that took Charlie May s life, and millions of others like him."

The Royal Welch Fusiliers were present at all Marlborough's great victories; they were one of the six Minden regiments; they fought throughout the Peninsula and were present at Wellington's final glorious victory at Waterloo. In The Great War their officers included the writer poets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves; their 22 battalions fought not just on the Western Front but at Gallipoli, in Egypt, Palestine, Salonika, Mesopotamia and Italy. In WW2 they won battle honours from the Reichswald to Kohima. More recently they have served with distinction in the war against terror in the Middle East. Like so many famous regiments the RWF are no longer in the British Army's order of battle having been amalgamated into the Royal Regiment of Wales. But this fine book is the lasting memorial to a fiercely proud and greatly admired regiment.

Lion Rampant is Robert Woollcombe's graphic account of his experiences as a front-line infantry officer with the King's Own Scottish Borderers during the desperate battle for Normandy and the Allied advance into Germany. Vividly evoking the confusion, horror and comradeship of war - from the killing fields of Normandy bocage, through house-to-house fighting in shattered Flemish towns, to the final Rhine crossing - Lion Rampant is a powerful, authentic and moving story, telling with extraordinary clarity how the author, his fellow officers and the men of his company lived through one of the most bitter campaigns in history.

"If you survive your first day, I'll promote you." So promised George Wilson's World War II commanding officer in the hedgerows of Normandy -- and it was to be a promise dramatically fulfilled. From July, 1944, to the closing days of the war, from the first penetration of the Siegfried Line to the Nazis' last desperate charge in the Battle of the Bulge, Wilson fought in the thickest of the action, helping take the small towns of northern France and Belgium building by building. Of all the men and officers who started out in Company F of the 4th Infantry Division with him, Wilson was the only one who finished. In the end, he felt not like a conqueror or a victor, but an exhausted survivor, left with nothing but his life -- and his emotions. If You Survive One of the great first-person accounts of the making of a combat veteran, in the last, most violent months of World War II.

A gripping account of the Second World War, from the perspective of a young tank commander. In 1944, David Render was a nineteen-year-old second lieutenant fresh from Sandhurst when he was sent to France. Joining the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry five days after the D-Day landings, the combat-hardened men he was sent to command did not expect him to last long. However, in the following weeks of ferocious fighting in which more than 90 per cent of his fellow tank commanders became casualties, his ability to emerge unscathed from countless combat engagements earned him the nickname of the 'Inevitable Mr Render'. In Tank Action Render tells his remarkable story, spanning every major episode of the last year of the Second World War from the invasion of Normandy to the fall of Germany. Ultimately it is a story of survival, comradeship and the ability to stand up and be counted as a leader in combat.