The Mammoth Book Of Soldiers At War

Using memoirs, letters, and diaries from common soldiers, the author introduces readers to warfare during the Napoleonic Age, covering the battlefields in Europe and America during the French Revolution, as well as the Napoleonic Wars and the the War of 1812. Original.

By 1969, following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, over 500,000 US troops were `in country? in Vietnam. Before America?s longest war had ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, 450,000 Vietnamese had died, along with 36,000 Americans. The Vietnam War was the first rock ?n? roll war, the first helicopter war with its doctrine of `airmobility?, and the first television war; it made napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange infamous, and gave us the New Journalism of Michael Herr and others. It also saw the establishment of the Navy SEALs and Delta Force. At home, America fractured, with the peace movement protesting against the war; at Kent State University, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed students, killing four and injuring nine. Lewis?s compelling selection of the best writing to come out of a war covered by some truly outstanding writers, both journalists and combatants, includes an eyewitness account of the first major battle between the US Army and the People?s Army of Vietnam at Ia Drang; a selection of letters home; Nicholas Tomalin?s famous `The General Goes Zapping Charlie Cong?; Robert Mason?s `R&R?, Studs Terkel?s account of the police breaking up an anti-war protest; John Kifner on the shootings at Kent State; Ron Kovic?s `Born on the Fourth of July?; John T. Wheeler?s `Khe Sanh: Live in the V Ring?; Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh on the massacre at My Lai; Michael Herr?s `It Made You Feel Omni?; Viet Cong Truong Nhu Tang?s memoir; naval nurse Maureen Walsh?s memoir, `Burning Flesh?; John Pilger on the fall of Saigon; and Tim O?Brien?s `If I Die in a Combat Zone?.

Over a hundred eyewitness accounts of the reality of combat from some of the finest writers of the last century and our own. Lucid, vivid, complex images of conflict, from Walt Whitman on the American Civil War to contemporary reporting from Afghanistan. The collection includes Martha Gellhorn on the Battle of the Bulge, Michael Herr at Khe Sanh, David Rohde's and Anthony Shadid's Pulitzer-winning accounts of Bosnia and Iraq respectively, Christina Lamb's famous account of being under fire from the Taliban, Robert Fisk on being attacked in Afghanistan, and Nicholas Tomalin's 'The General Goes Zapping Charlie Kong' (one of the inspirations for Apocalypse Now) among many other pieces of exceptional war reporting.

From the start of the 20th century to the most recent major offensives, here are fifty accounts of the battles that made the modern world, described in superb detail by historians and writers including John Keegan, Alan Clark, John Strawson, Charles Mey, John Pimlott, and John Laffin. All the major conflicts are covered, from two world wars, through Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Chechnya, to Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the battles featured are: the Somme, Passchendaele, Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, El Alamein, Monte Cassino, Omaha Beach, Iwa Jima, Dien Bien Phu, Ia Drang, Hamburger Hill, Desert Storm, Kabul, Baghdad, and Basra.

This is the entire story of the Third Reich at war, covering all the Wehrmacht's major battles and campaigns of World War II, among them Barbarossa, Stalingrad, the Battle of the Bulge, the bitter fighting for Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean, and the final retreat to Berlin.

A collection of sixty stories from the front lines of war includes accounts from Ernest Hemingway on the Spanish Civil War, Tim O'Brien on the War in Vietnam, and John Reed on the Mexican Revolution, among others. Original.

The spectre of the Great War still haunts us. No other conflict so dramatically illustrates the waste of life, and the slaughter of innocents, as that of 1914-18. And none has so dramatically shaped the modern world: the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the break-up of Empire, the supremacy of America and World War II all stem from the four years of the 'war to end all wars'. Here is the eye-witness chronicle of that war, from the trenches of Flanders to the staff rooms of the Imperial Germany Army, from T. E. Lawrence in the desert to the 'Red Baron' in the air, from Land Girls in England to German U-boat crews in the Atlantic, it leaves nothing out. And if all the horror of the war fought by the Tommies in the trenches is captured, so too are the machinations of the 'top brass' and politicians.