Borrowed Soldiers

Borrowed Soldiers
Author: Mitchell A. Yockelson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2016-01-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806155604

The combined British Expeditionary Force and American II Corps successfully pierced the Hindenburg Line during the Hundred Days Campaign of World War I, an offensive that hastened the war’s end. Yet despite the importance of this effort, the training and operation of II Corps has received scant attention from historians. Mitchell A. Yockelson delivers a comprehensive study of the first time American and British soldiers fought together as a coalition force—more than twenty years before D-Day. He follows the two divisions that constituted II Corps, the 27th and 30th, from the training camps of South Carolina to the bloody battlefields of Europe. Despite cultural differences, General Pershing’s misgivings, and the contrast between American eagerness and British exhaustion, the untested Yanks benefited from the experience of battle-toughened Tommies. Their combined forces contributed much to the Allied victory. Yockelson plumbs new archival sources, including letters and diaries of American, Australian, and British soldiers to examine how two forces of differing organization and attitude merged command relationships and operations. Emphasizing tactical cooperation and training, he details II Corps’ performance in Flanders during the Ypres-Lys offensive, the assault on the Hindenburg Line, and the decisive battle of the Selle. Featuring thirty-nine evocative photographs and nine maps, this account shows how the British and American military relationship evolved both strategically and politically. A case study of coalition warfare, Borrowed Soldiers adds significantly to our understanding of the Great War.

The British Army and the First World War

The British Army and the First World War
Author: Ian Beckett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2017-05-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107005779

A comprehensive new history of the shaping and performance of the British army during the First World War.

The British Army in World War I (1)

The British Army in World War I (1)
Author: Mike Chappell
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781841763996

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the British Army was unique: it was a small force raised entirely by voluntary recruitment. The first campaigns of the British Expeditionary Force brought admiration from the enemy, but by the end of 1914 it had been virtually eliminated. Kitchener's call for new volunteers drew such a patriotic response that by mid-1916 the BEF had grown to 55 divisions. This book explains and llustrates the uniform, equipment and organization of the British Army up to the end of the battle of the Somme.

A Nation in Arms

A Nation in Arms
Author: Ian F. W. Beckett
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2004-12-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1473816629

The Great War was the first conflict to draw men and women into uniform on a massive scale. From a small regular force of barely 250,000, the British Army rapidly expanded into a national force of over five million. A Nation in Arms brings together original research into the impact of the war on the army as an institution, gives a revealing account of those who served in it and offers fascinating insights into its social history during one of the bloodiest wars.

Battle Tactics of the Western Front

Battle Tactics of the Western Front
Author: Paddy Griffith
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300066630

Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war.

Uniforms & Equipment of the British Army in World War I

Uniforms & Equipment of the British Army in World War I
Author: Stephen J. Chambers
Publisher: Schiffer Pub Limited
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2004-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780764321542

This book contains over 600 rare and never before published photographs of the British Soldier in World War I. The quality images selected were photographed in peace and wartime, in the studio and the field, and show in detail the service dress uniform, equipment and weapons in use by the British Army between 1900-1918. The chapters contain photographic postcards of: Infantry officers and other ranks, Dominion Troops, Infantry Weapons, Machine Gun and Tank Corps, Royal Artillery, Wheels and Transport, Army Service Corps, Royal Army Medical Corps, Royal Engineers, Royal Flying Corps and Battle Insignia. Also included is a full color section of Army, Corps and Divisional signs. Each photograph caption has been carefully and thoroughly researched affording the reader information not to be found in any other single source. The introduction discusses early war photography and goes into further detail on the service dress and equipment to make this a must book for the military historian, collector, researcher, modeller and general enthusiast.

First World War Army Service Records

First World War Army Service Records
Author: William Spencer
Publisher: National Archives UK
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2008-07-14
Genre: History
ISBN:

The National Archives' celebrated First World War holdings include personal files of officers and other ranks, campaign medals, gallantry and meritorious service awards, courts martial and casualty lists. Its remarkable collection has records of Dominion forces and the Indian Army, the WAAC, the Royal Flying Corps and RAF, as well as auxiliary and nursing services. Over 10,000 individual unit war diaries cover all operational theatres of the British Army, while original trench maps illustrates areas from the Western Front to Salonica, Gallipoli to Mesopotamia, Palestine to Italy.

Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars

Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars
Author: Mark Frost
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501755862

In the first and only examination of how the British Empire and Commonwealth sustained its soldiers before, during, and after both world wars, a cast of leading military historians explores how the empire mobilized manpower to recruit workers, care for veterans, and transform factory workers and farmers into riflemen. Raising armies is more than counting people, putting them in uniform, and assigning them to formations. It demands efficient measures for recruitment, registration, and assignment. It requires processes for transforming common people into soldiers and then producing officers, staffs, and commanders to lead them. It necessitates balancing the needs of the armed services with industry and agriculture. And, often overlooked but illuminated incisively here, raising armies relies on medical services for mending wounded soldiers and programs and pensions to look after them when demobilized. Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars is a transnational look at how the empire did not always get these things right. But through trial, error, analysis, and introspection, it levied the large armies needed to prosecute both wars. Contributors Paul R. Bartrop, Charles Booth, Jean Bou, Daniel Byers, Kent Fedorowich, Jonathan Fennell, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Richard S. Grayson, Ian McGibbon, Jessica Meyer, Emma Newlands, Kaushik Roy, Roger Sarty, Gary Sheffield, Ian van der Waag

The British Army and Signals Intelligence During the First World War

The British Army and Signals Intelligence During the First World War
Author: John Ferris
Publisher: Alan Sutton Publishing
Total Pages: 376
Release: 1992
Genre: History
ISBN:

"Historians have paid little attention to the British Army's experience with signals intelligence during the First World War. However, this was one of the Army's most important sources of information about crucial matters such as the order of battle and intentions of the German and Turkish Armies. Britain's successes and failures in signals intelligence profoundly affected battles ranging from the race for the Channel Ports, first Somme, third Gaza and Amiens, among many others." "While efforts to weed the records on these topics have created major gaps in the sources, surviving evidence throws an entirely new light on the British Army in the Great War. It allows one to trace the evolution of the Army's signals intelligence organisations, to determine many of their successes and failures, to show how this intelligence affected various operations and, indeed, to demonstrate that signals intelligence influenced the operations of the British Army as much as those of the Royal Navy." "The material reproduced in this volume includes excerpts from reports by Army Headquarters in France, Italy and Mesopotamia and the Military Intelligence Directorate. It includes the memorandum "Enemy Codes and their Solution" by the G.H.Q. codebreaking section in January 1918, which is one of the two best sources known to exist about the techniques of "codebreaking"; surviving reports on the enemy radio networks in the Balkans and Anatolian Turkey, which are the most illuminating evidence from any theatre on the approach toward "traffic analysis" and a report on the breaking of German and Turkish Army ciphers in Mesopotamia during 1917, which is the best source known about the techniques of "cryptanalysis" used by an Army in the Great War."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief

Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief
Author: Clive Emsley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2013-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199653712

The first serious investigation of criminal offending by members of the British armed forces both during and immediately after the two world wars of the twentieth century.