In the vein of his other phenomenal compendiums of amazing battlefield blunders, How to Lose a Battle and How to Lose a War, Fawcett focuses on some amazing catastrophic missteps of Axis and Allies alike.

    The original 51st had gotten separated from the main British army before Dunkirk in 1940 and had been captured at St. Vale'ry, the surrender being taken by Irwin Rome in person. The reconstituted 51st had fought Rome in the desert and knew that 10,000 Scotsmen were now entering their fourth year in German prison camps.The original edition of So Few Got Through appeared just after the war and chronicles the campaigns of the 1st Gordon Highlanders from Normandy to V-E Day. Martin Lindsay was the Gordons' commander and his book has long been considered the best account of a British battalion in the war.

    Lieutenant David Brent and his crew are waiting on a torpedo boat – fast, agile and terribly vulnerable.They are the sole members of a Commando raiding party, poised to charge ashore on a carefully orchestrated rescue mission. Little do they know that Hell is about to break loose…The near-suicidal mission has been ordered at the very highest level of government. Now, engines idling, alert for the tell-tale sounds of patrolling E-boats, they can only pray to come out of this alive… A nerve-shredding war thriller that crackles with intensity, perfect for fans of Anthony Trew, Douglas Reeman and Philip McCutchan.

    Photographs and maps.

    Stoically poised for battle in the spring of 1945—when even Japan’s last desperate technique of arms, the kamikaze, was running short—Yamato arose as the last magnificent arrow in the imperial quiver of Emperor Hirohito. Here, Jan Morris not only tells the dramatic story of the magnificent ship itself—from secret wartime launch to futile sacrifice at Okinawa — but, more fundamentally, interprets the ship as an allegorical figure of war itself, in its splendor and its squalor, its heroism and its waste. Drawing on rich naval history and rhapsodic metaphors from international music and art, Battleship Yamato is a work of grand ironic elegy.

    

    Sikh (due to wartime restrictions, the ship's name in the book is the H.M.S. Skye); the ship is stationed in the eastern Mediterranean in the defense of Malta. Centering on the lives of the crewmen who are part of a gun crew, the book portrays the ship's almost daily encounters with German and Italian ships and planes (as the author states: “...Daylight each morning brings with it almost complete certainty of attack...the comparatively confined waters, the proximity and strategic excellence of Axis air bases, means that to avoid discovery and attack is virtually impossible.”) Eventually, the Skye's luck runs out and on September 14, 1942, she is sunk by German artillery with the loss of 115 men, with more men taken prisoner, and others rescued by nearby friendly ships. Includes a Glossary of naval terms used in the book.

    Their mission is simply to provide a temporary Top Secret special intelligence communications center to support U.S. members of a high level Allied war planning meeting.An easy mission quickly goes awry. Only two months after the Allied assault and occupation of Casablanca (Operation TORCH), the city remains a hotbed of Vichy and German sympathizers and spies. One unexpected event leads to another. Things get dicey, with life threatening situations, shots fired and dead bodies. Tony is diverted from Casablanca on a brief classified fact-finding mission to a neutral country's island. That mission gets complicated and ultimately results in spy catching and another death. Returning to Casablanca, events result in Tony meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.Between "Casablanca's" covers are communications intelligence, counter-intelligence, military politics, diplomatic tension, WWII history, family dynamics, and in the final analysis, a very exciting, twisting and fast moving story.

    Night was coming, the skies were dark, and so were the men's thoughts--they'd just found freshly dug NVA bunkers inside a scrub-brush tree line and their position was not secure. As they carefully searched for better night lager, they learned the hard way that they had walked into an ambush kill zone: NVA fire quickly downed two men and wounded two others. In minutes, Team 5-2 had been transformed from the hunters to the hunted. They had no radio comms with their headquarters and had just two rifles and fifteen magazines of ammunition.Two men were down, but the team was not out. MIA RESCUE is the story of Team 5-2 and the heroic and ultimately successful attempts to rescue them despite extraordinarily bad weather and an angry and aware enemy. "Seldom can an author stimulate emotions, from the taste of fear to sweaty palms to the feeling of relief when the mission is over, but Jorgenson does and much more. If the reader was never in combat, he will feel like a Nam vet when he finishes this book."--Jerry Boyle Author of Apache SunriseFrom the Paperback edition.

    In 1942, before El Alamein turned the tide of war, the German merchant fleet was re-supplying its war machine with impunity. So Operation Frankton, a daring and secret raid, was launched by Mountbatten's Combined Operations and led by the enigmatic 'Blondie' Hasler - to paddle 'Cockleshell' canoes right into Bordeaux harbour and sink the ships at anchor.

    The place the Germans had chosen for this stand was Monte Cassino.Over the next few months it was to turn into one of the most famous, bitterly fought and controversial conflicts of World War II. It was here, under the shadows of the famous and ancient Benedictine Abbey, that four fierce and punishing battles were fought out between the Allies and the German Army. Few battles of the Second World War compare with Cassino for drama of the conflict nor for the prolonged agony of the combatants or the controversy over the tactics of the commanders that was to rage for years afterwards. 'Cassino: Portrait of a Battle' is the inside, first-hand account of that titanic struggle. Fred Majdalany, who fought in the battle as an infantry officer, provides the definitive history of Cassino, from the highest strategic level down to the bitter fighting on the ground, and the heroism and suffering of individual soldiers.It is a classic World War Two story that will appeal to students, military specialists and the general reader alike. Fred Majdalany's books have been widely praised. "Majdalany recounts the battle with the clarity of full comprehension."—New Yorker"A shrewd and valuable survey. . . . The course of the battle is lucidly and succinctly described in its successive stages."—Times Literary Supplement

    "What They Did There: Profiles From the Battle of Gettysburg" offers a unique view of its subject, telling the story of the battle not through convention narrative but via 170 mini-bios of not only combatants blue and gray, but of civilians, doctors, nurses, artists, photographers, Samaritans; saints, sinners and the moral terrain in-between.

    Nazi Germany reels from nightly battering of her cities by the RAF. Catastrophe looms at Stalingrad. With the Allies poised to invade Western Europe, Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring desperately seeks to delay the invasion and slow the Red Army’s inexorable westward march. He turns to Siegfried von Rall, the “best pilot in the Luftwaffe,” to solve his dilemma. Siegfried hatches strategic air strikes designed to buy time for Germany to refine Hitler’s vaunted “Victory” weapons. Two targets galvanize his attention: Soviet hydro plants in the Urals and killing FDR. He chooses cutting-edge aircraft and a team of combat experienced experts for the missions. Göring fast-tracks detailed planning and training. In Britain, codebreaker Evan Thompson reads Siegfried’s radio messages but can’t detect his objective. The chilling truth emerges only after an Amerika-Bomber bearing “smart bombs” leaves Norway for the U.S. FALL EAGLE ONE has aerial combat, trans-Atlantic assassination flights, Eastern Front action, codebreaking at Bletchley Park, intrigue at the highest levels of the German High Command, and fast-paced wartime romance.

    On June 9, 1945, torpedoes from nine American submarines - 'The Hellcats' - were launched at dozens of Japanese freighters, paralyzing maritime operations between Japan and Korea. Each U.S. sub was equipped with newly designed mine-detectors and Mark-18s -- electronic torpedoes that left no traceable wakes or fume exhausts. Operation Barney continued for 15 days and proved a crucial breakthrough in the war, with U.S. submarines sinking 28 Japanese ships totaling some 70,000 tons. Hellcats of the Sea is a riveting account of the planning and events of those 15 days.*Annotated edition with original footnotes.*Includes photographs from Operation Barney.

    This was exciting enough but only a taste of what was to come. The Japanese advance into Burma threatened India and, along with many thousands of British and Colonial troops, Lowry found himself fighting in the Arakan region, where he earned a further Mention in Despatches. Conditions were appalling and the fighting was bitter by any standards. At one point his Battalion was cut off by the Japs for three weeks but surrender was never an option. Yet even worse was to come as the Battalion was thrown into the thick of the action at Kohima which is rated as the most desperate defensive action for the campaign. In one week 173 members of his Battalion were lost. All this is vividly described in this fascinating and inspiring memoir which will enthrall its readers.