Armageddon Fed Up With This

In 1940 Eric Nudd, like millions of others, found himself unexpectedly in uniform – a raw conscript in a heavy anti-aircraft regiment. He grew over the next five years into a seasoned professional with the Normandy and North West European campaigns under his belt. A previously unsuspected talent for maths took him from heaving shells to fire-control and then radar, giving him a ringside view of the manic wartime technology race. As a Fleet Street journalist, prolific letter-writer and occasional poet Eric published improvised news sheets from a succession of gun sites and dugouts. Armageddon Fed Up With This – A Gunner’s Tale is told by a ‘civilian-in-uniform’ who was an acute observer and literate recorder of what he saw. His wry, sometimes scathing observations on the humour and idiocy of army life, and the military, political and cultural events of the time are set against the global cataclysm going on around him. The author, Derek Nudd, colours in the background for those of us lucky enough to have missed it. Inspired by authors such as Cyril Demarne and Spike Milligan, Armageddon Fed Up With This provides a new perspective – from underneath – on the anti-aircraft forces who, for a while after the fall of France, were the only part of the army shooting back. This book will appeal to readers who enjoy historical and military biographies, and provide new insights for students of the period. The title was a contemporary joke.

Its been a State secret for more than seventy years. The official line in the UK has always been that it never happened but this new work challenges the assertion that no German force set foot on British soil during the Second World War (the Channel Islands excepted), on active military service. Churchills Last Wartime Secret reveals the remarkable story of a mid-war seaborne enemy raid on an Isle of Wight radar station. It describes the purpose and scope of the attack, the composition of the raiding German force and how it was immediately, and understandably, hushed-up by Winston Churchills wartime administration, in order to safeguard public morale. Circumventing the almost complete lack of official British archival documentation, the author relies on compelling and previously undisclosed firsthand evidence from Germany to underpin the books narrative and claims; thus distinguishing it from other tales of rumored seaborne enemy assaults on British soil during the 1939-45 conflict. After examining the outcome and repercussions of this astonishing incident, what emerges is an event of major symbolic significance in the annals of wartime history. Its been a State secret for more than seventy years. The official line in the UK has always been that it never happened but this new work challenges the assertion that no German force set foot on British soil during the Second World War (the Channel Islands excepted), on active military service.

Volume 4: Two distinct parts of the story. Book 1 - 'The Longest Night' is set between 8pm and 8am, the critical night battle in Germany between NATO and the New Red Army. The war in Europe has reached critical mass and it is a race between the Red Army and the newly arrived US and Canadian 4 Corps. The winner owns Europe. Just one last push by the New Warsaw Pact will clear away SACEUR's gambit and the last division standing between the Red Army and the Channel Ports. It is the Longest Night for everyone, and the last night for many. Book 2 - 'Crossing the Rubicon' The war in Europe has reached its bloody end and the troops came home to less than gratitude from the politicians. In the Pacific all eyes are on the Spratly Islands as the Allies combat the Chinese 3rd and 6th Armies, but the aftermath in Europe may have left the US and the ANZACs standing alone, or has it? Soldiers have more honour than politicians at the end of the day.

This biography illuminates the life of the controversial champion of Social Gospel in early 20th-century America. Harry F. Ward began life in a family of Methodist shopkeepers and butchers in London, but his pursuit of social justice would lead him to the US and a career of religious activism.

The conclusion of World War I and the subsequent breakup of the Ottoman Empire led to the independence of a number of Arab nations and resulted in a Western scramble for roles of control and influence over them. It was not until after World War I that Syria and the United States had a formal diplomatic relationship - prior to then the only Americans who had developed a relationship with the nation were missionaries, particularly those involved with the Syrian Protestant College, established in 1866. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, however, single-handedly brought Syria into the sphere of influence of the Western world, and as Sami Moubayed here illustrates, particularly that of the United States. The relationship between the two nations was by no means uncomplicated, and there were a number of challenges from the years following World War I to the early years of the Cold War. Though relations were warm between the United States and Syria while Emir Faisal was ensconced in Damascus, Washington saw little point in pursuing an American-Arab alliance, and Faisal's reputation suffered greatly as a result of his relationship with Wilson, particularly with respect to his stance on the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Relations cooled between the two nations during the presidencies of both Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, neither of whom saw any value in being involved in Middle East affairs. However, with the discovery of large oil reserves in the Middle East, as well as Syria's siding with the Allies and declaring war on Nazi Germany, interest in the American-Syrian relationship was greatly revived. As quickly as the relationship warmed though, it also cooled: in the aftermath of World War II, the United States was linked to involvement in a series of coups and counter-coups that destabilized Syria from 1949 until the Syrian-Egyptian union of 1958. Furthermore, Washington's initially benevolent attitude towards the right to self-determination gradually evolved into one of manipulation, espionage and covert activity during the Cold War when the US considered Syria as a Soviet proxy in the Middle East. The forty years between 1919 and 1959 saw the creation and unravelling of America's relationship with Syria. In this book, Moubayed brilliantly explores the events of these years and, using original research and previously unpublished material, sheds light on an often overlooked subject. Syria and the USA is an essential read for scholars of the Middle East, US diplomatic history and twentieth-century international relations.

Impressionistic sketches of a young waiter's reaction to life in the late 1970s - musings on existence, politics, and the restaurant business. Handwritten while high on 'shrooms and naked for all the world to see. An attempt to find meaning in a culture dominated by celebrities and materialism. Seen thru' the prism of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tarot Cards, the Bible and the Bistro, the European restaurant at which he worked. Some of the themes; Work is good, Become yourself, Face the Void, Align with the Divine by listening to the Little Voice

From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives—an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. For thirty-five years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume history of the entire war. Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people—of soldiers, sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two-year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews—Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developments—Hitler’s refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late; Stalin’s ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army; Churchill’s leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941; Roosevelt’s steady hand before and after the United States entered the war—and puts them in real human context. Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the war’s penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalin’s invading Red Army; and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehru’s words, “the final epitaph of British rule” in India. Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the twentieth century.