From Chauffeur To Brigadier Founder Of The Machine Gun Corps Pioneer Of The Development Of The Tank

An outstanding pioneer of mechanised and armoured warfare While the story of a man who was a civilian driver in 1914, but who rose to become a Brigadier-General in consequence of his services during the four years duration of the First World War cannot be anything but incredible, readers will be astonished to learn that this was by no means the most remarkable aspect of Christopher Baker-Carr's military career. Recognised as the officer in the British Army who knew 'more about machine guns than anyone', Baker-Carr, often opposed, almost single-handedly, brought about the specialised training of machine gunners, the creation of the Machine Gun Training School, the increased manufacture and widespread adoption of the machine gun by the British Army and the creation of the Machine Gun Corps itself. Recognising the potential of a new weapon to break the stalemate of trench warfare, he then became a primary influence in the development of the battle tank becoming commander of the First Tank Brigade. There can be few other British soldiers, who have all but faded from military history, whose role has averted imminent disaster in times of great peril and of whom it can be said that he made a contribution to victory of such importance. Republished in this new edition in cooperation with the author's family, this book is highly recommended to all those interested in the development of modern warfare. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Off to the sidelines of the brutal western front of World War I was a nasty little campaign by British and India troops sent to secure Persian oil fields. Explaining what and how this happened in the early decades of the twentieth century goes beyond being just another history of a distant campaign in the 1914 to 1918 war. The highs and lows of what many British military planners in London considered to be a minor campaign in a distant theatre of operations proved to be a long, costly conflict the results of which still influence events today. Oil and the Creation of Iraq describes how the policies of allied military leaders of the time resulted in pushing the Ottoman government into partnership with Germany and Austria during World War I, resulting in its disintegration and loss of its Middle Eastern territories. The book then describes how the political and economic aims of the nations involved in the Mesopotamian campaign influenced the fighting and subsequent creation of Iraq, a new nation with few defensible boundaries, but one sitting atop an almost inexhaustible supply of oil and gas.

Designed to fill an overlooked gap, this book, originally published in 1972, provides a single unified introduction to bibliographical sources of British military history. Moreover it includes guidance in a number of fields in which no similar source is available at all, giving information on how to obtain acess to special collections and private archives, and links military history, especially during peacetime, with the development of science and technology.

Originally published in 1930, these are the remarkable memoirs of Brigadier General Christopher D'Arcy Bloomfield Saltern Baker-Carr (1878-1949), a British Army staff officer who went on to rise through the ranks to become an important military commander during World War I. His account begins in August 1914 with his departure for the front in France and concludes four years later with his experiences at his last headquarters, situated in a small town in northern France, Caudry. “It was my unique privilege during the Great War to be closely associated with the development and organisation of the most important defensive weapon, the machine gun, and of the most important offensive weapon, the tank. “Today, perhaps, it will seem incredible that the High Command failed to appreciate the true value of the machine gun and the tank in the early stages of their development. It will seem even more incredible that, at a later period, it was necessary to scheme and struggle against official lukewarmness, at times almost indistinguishable from hostility, in order to secure the increase in the numbers of these arms, which, as was evident to everybody else, had proved themselves to be the greatest preservers of life yet discovered. “In the following pages I have endeavoured to set down an account of the difficulties encountered, of failures and successes, of high hopes brought to the ground by lack of faith and vision, of the ultimate recognition at long last, of the superiority of machinery and metal over beef and brawn. “Much of what I have written, especially in the earlier portions of the book, is, of necessity, a personal narrative, and I have described events and occurrences as I, myself, saw them.”—Brig.-Gen. C. D. Baker-Carr

Deborah is a British First World War tank that rose from the grave after taking part in one of the most momentous battles in history. In November 1917 she played a leading role in the first successful massed tank attack at Cambrai. Eighty years later, in a remarkable feat of archaeology, the tank’s buried remains were rediscovered and excavated, and are now preserved as a memorial to the battle and to the men who fought in it. John Taylor’s book tells the tale of the tank and her crew and tracks down their descendants to uncover a human story every bit as compelling as the military one.

Featuring over 1,000 alphabetically arranged, biographical entries, Who's Who in World War One builds up a complete and vivid picture of the major figures of the Great War. The subjects are drawn not only from the political and military spheres of all thirty-two nations involved, but also from the social and cultural life of the period. This book's breadth of coverage makes it the definitive biographical guide to the First World War; * from the British air ace, Albert Ball, to the German foreign secretary, Richard von Kuhlmann * from David Lloyd George to Rasputin * from the British war poet Siegfried Sassoon to the Serbian assassin Trifko Grabez and the Emperor Wilhelm II. Each entry provides biographical data and basic factual information about its subject's role in the Great War, and in the case of major figures there is also an assessment of their reputation in the light of current scholarship. Maps, cross-referencing, a list of military ranks, a guide to further reading and a thorough introduction complete what is at once a comprehensive work of reference and a fascinating overview of a crucial period in twentieth century history.

Includes the First World War Illustrations Pack – 73 battle plans and diagrams and 198 photos Major-General Ernest Swinton had already had a long and illustrious career in the British Army before the advent of the First World War in 1914. Appointed as the official war correspondent by the war Minister Lord Kitchener in 1914, his reporting home was the only way for the British people to follow the war as journalists were at that time banned at the front. In these dispatches from the front Swinton told the public of the bloody fighting in Flanders and the heroic efforts of the Allies to stop the German Juggernaut. The miserable conditions and bloody siege warfare of the trenches left a lasting impression on him and he looked to a scientific solution to the muddy stalemate of the Western Front. He would gain lasting fame as the architect of the “tank” project that was to revolutionize warfare in the First World War and for many years thereafter. In this volume of reminiscences he traces his involvement in the early years of the war and his later years as the driving force in the development and adoption of the tank.