To War With A 4th Hussar

This vivid WWII memoir recounts the exploits of a 4th Queen’s Own Hussar through the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatre of combat. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Peter Crichton was quick to enlist and escape his journalistic job in London. The adventuresome young man transferred to the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars and soon found himself fighting a desperate and ill-fated rear-guard action in the mountains of Northern Greece. One of the few in his Regiment to be evacuated, Crichton went on to see combat in the battles of Alam Halfa and El Alamein. But he also found time to play polo and fall in love. Crichton was later deployed to Yugoslavia where he was attached to Tito’s partisans, a guerilla resistance movement that fought their way North, island by island, hurrying the Germans’ withdrawal. After four and a half years’ absence, he returned to London on VE Day, 1945, grateful to be alive.

In his foreword to this book, Winston Churchill rightly calls it a ‘plain yet careful record of the fortunes and services of the 4th (Queen's Own) Hussars in the Great War (which) deserves and will repay attentive study from those to whom the history of the regiments of the British Army is of vivid interest'. The 4th Queen’s Own were one of the Army’s elite cavalry regiments which fulfilled their traditional role in the open warfare which characterised the campaigns in 1914 and 1918 at the beginning and end of the Great War. In between, of course, came the static horrors of trench warfare, when, as Churchill tactfully says: ‘the fond hopes which cavalry Generals and cavalry soldiers cherished of a great eruption of cavalry through the German lines as the culmination of a decisive battle never materialised’. Nevertheless, the 4th took part in the retreat from Mons in 1914; the first and second battle of Ypres - in which they experienced the first German poison gas attack - and the battles of Loos, the Somme and Arras. In 1918 they saw action in both the great German spring offensives and the victorious allied counter-attacks that summer and autumn. Illustrated with maps, photographs and appendices containing rolls of honour, decorations, lists of officers etc. this is a complete unit history for those interested in cavalry regiments in the Great War.

The war the British mounted soldiers knew on the Western Front This is an anonymously written recollection of a British cavalry officer (possibly of the 4th Hussars) from the first year of the Great War on the Western Front. We join the author at the First Battle of Ypres, upon the Somme and at the Battle Arras. After a rest period he returned to the front at Cambrai-Bourlon Wood and the defence of Amiens. The final chapters include the cavalry's experience of the final offensive of the war as the allies were at last able to 'put the Gee in gap', and as the army reached the Rhine bring the conflict to a close. The author survived the war and describes Germany at the end of the war. An excellent First World War memoir written in a personable style and full of dialogue and anecdotes. The book contains illustrations reflecting the incidents described in the text as they appeared in the original edition. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

An autobiographical novel about Norbert Landsheit, an old soldier at the Chelsea Pensioners Hospital who relates the fascinating experience of his military life. Born within the German states, this young cavalryman first goes to war as one of Hompesch's Hussars engaged in the disastrous campaign in the Low Countries against the armies of Revolutionary France. Transferred into the British Army this horse-soldier then sees years of campaigning during the long wars against the First Empire, including hard service in the Peninsular War. As a light dragoon and once again as a hussar, Landsheit takes us on an engaging journey through early nineteenth century warfare filled with detail of camp life and adventures on and off the battlefield.