Testament of Youth


Vera Brittain - 1933
    Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western Front. By war's end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as a book that helped “both form and define the mood of its time,” it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably changed by war.

Crossfire-An Australian Reconnaissance In Vietnam


Peter Haran - 2001
    One of this platoon’s section commanders was a 20-year old regular soldier called Bob Kearney, who led a series of deadly patrols, operating in isolation and extreme danger ahead of the main Australian forces.

On Full Automatic: Surviving 13 Months in Vietnam


William V. Taylor Jr. - 2021
    Taylor Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real, but entirely surreal nightmare. Now after more than fifty years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit and often horrific detail and with a reverent honor for those Marines who did not live to tell the tale.Taylor reveals what it truly means to walk the path of a warrior, to sacrifice, and to live a lifetime with the memories of a war—seeking answers to the question, “Was it worth it?"

The Red Baron


Richard Fox - 2014
    What he found was misery. Sentenced to a meaningless staff position after losing his first battle, Richthofen joins the fledgling German air force and discovers his deadly talent for air to air combat. In the air, victory and renown come at the expense of other men’s lives and with a burden that grinds against his soul. To the soldiers and people of Germany, he was the pride of an empire. To his foes, he was the Red Baron. As wounds to his body and spirit mount, Richthofen learns that even heroes have limits. As the war enters the final stages, finding the strength to keep fighting will be his greatest battle.

Hans Sturm: A Soldier's Odyssey on the Eastern Front


Gordon Williamson - 2015
    However, few can match Hans Sturm in his astonishing rise from a mere private in an infantry regiment, thrown into the bloody maelstrom of the Eastern Front, to a highly decorated war hero. A young man who had displayed fearless heroism in combat, earning him some of Germany's highest military awards, Sturm hated bullies and injustice, and reacted in his normal pugnacious and outspoken manner when confronted with wrongdoing. From striking a member of the feared Sicherheitsdienst for his treatment of a Jewish woman, to refusing to wear a decoration he felt was tainted because of the treatment of enemy partisans, Sturm repeatedly stuck to his moral values no matter what the risk. Even with the war finally over, Sturm's travails would not end for another eight years as he languished in a number of Soviet labour camps until he was finally released in 1953. ** This electronic edition includes 60 black-and-white photographs **

1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War


Charles Emmerson - 2013
    Our perspectives narrowed by hindsight, the world of that year is reduced to its most frivolous features—last summers in grand aristocratic residences—or its most destructive ones: the unresolved rivalries of the great European powers, the fear of revolution, violence in the Balkans.In this illuminating history, Charles Emmerson liberates the world of 1913 from this “prelude to war” narrative, and explores it as it was, in all its richness and complexity. Traveling from Europe’s capitals, then at the height of their global reach, to the emerging metropolises of Canada and the United States, the imperial cities of Asia and Africa, and the boomtowns of Australia and South America, he provides a panoramic view of a world crackling with possibilities, its future still undecided, its outlook still open.The world in 1913 was more modern than we remember, more similar to our own times than we expect, more globalized than ever before. The Gold Standard underpinned global flows of goods and money, while mass migration reshaped the world’s human geography. Steamships and sub-sea cables encircled the earth, along with new technologies and new ideas. Ford’s first assembly line cranked to life in 1913 in Detroit. The Woolworth Building went up in New York. While Mexico was in the midst of bloody revolution, Winnipeg and Buenos Aires boomed. An era of petro-geopolitics opened in Iran. China appeared to be awaking from its imperial slumber. Paris celebrated itself as the city of light—Berlin as the city of electricity.Full of fascinating characters, stories, and insights, 1913: In Search of the World before the Great War brings a lost world vividly back to life, with provocative implications for how we understand our past and how we think about our future.

STUPID WAR STORIES: Tales from the Wonder War, Vietnam 1970-1971


Keith Pomeroy - 2015
    The Atomic Outhouse, Hot Extractions, Listening Out, and Best Vacation Ever, will have you enthralled. These stories and sixty more like them pull no punches to give you a genuine understanding of a war that was more bizarre than you ever imagined.

Tin Cans and Greyhounds: The Destroyers that Won Two World Wars


Clint Johnson - 2019
    Nicknamed "tin cans" or "greyhounds," destroyers were fast escort and attack ships that proved indispensable to America's military victories. Beginning with destroyers' first incarnation as torpedo boats in 1874 and ending with World War II, author Clint Johnson shares the riveting stories of the Destroyer Men who fought from inside a "tin can"—risking death by cannons, bombs, torpedoes, fire, and drowning. The British invented destroyers, the Japanese improved them, and the Germans failed miserably with them. It was the Americans who perfected destroyers as the best fighting ship in two world wars. Tin Cans & Greyhounds compares the designs of these countries with focus on the old, modified World War I destroyers, and the new and numerous World War II destroyers of the United States.  Tin Cans & Greyhounds details how destroyers fought submarines, escorted convoys, rescued sailors and airmen, downed aircraft, shelled beaches, and attacked armored battleships and cruisers with nothing more than a half-inch of steel separating their crews from the dark waves.

Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew


Max Egremont - 2014
    And while World War I devastated Europe, it inspired profound poetry—words in which the atmosphere and landscape of battle are evoked perhaps more vividly than anywhere else.The poets—many of whom were killed—show not only the war’s tragedy but also the hopes and disappointments of a generation of men. In Some Desperate Glory, the historian and biographer Max Egremont gives us a transfiguring look at the life and work of this assemblage of poets. Wilfred Owen with his flaring genius; the intense, compassionate Siegfried Sassoon; the composer Ivor Gurney; Robert Graves, who would later spurn his war poems; the nature-loving Edward Thomas; the glamorous Fabian Socialist Rupert Brooke; and the shell-shocked Robert Nichols—all fought in the war, and their poetry is a bold act of creativity in the face of unprecedented destruction.Some Desperate Glory includes a chronological anthology of the poets’ works, telling the story of the war not only through the lives of these writers but also through their art. This unique volume unites the poetry and the history of the war—so often treated separately—granting readers the pride, strife, and sorrow of the individual soldier’s experience coupled with a panoramic view of the war’s toll on an entire nation.

In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign


Leon Wolff - 1958
    The total gain - a few thousand yards of indefensible slough - cost about a million Allied lives.

A Rifleman Went To War


Herbert W. McBride - 1935
    McBride was familiar with rifles, at first watching his father prepare for the hunt, later learning the game himself: he was destined to become a Rifleman.Growing up in Indiana, surrounded by veterans of the Civil War, he followed his father and his father before him into a military life, rising in time to become a Captain.“Missing” two conflicts, when war was declared in 1914 a burning curiosity to find out what a “real war” was like led McBride to resign his commission and head to Canadian forces.Assigned to the 38th Battalion, upon finding out it was slated for garrison duties he transferred to the 21st Battalion, fearing war’s end before he could taste the fire of battle.As a Private in the Machine Gun Section, a rifle always on his shoulder, McBride served in France and Belgium from September 1915 to April 1917.Weaving his experiences and observations into a gripping narrative, his account of his time in the Canadian Corps offers fascinating insight into the role of a Rifleman in WWI.McBride’s emphasis on the use of the military rifle in sniping, its place in modern armament, and the work of the individual soldier is as valuable as the insight given into soldiers’ minds.‘A Rifleman Went to War’ not only offers a unique insight into the Canadian Corps, and in turn, the British Army of WWI, but also into military science.Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Sprinting Through No Man's Land: Endurance, Tragedy, and Rebirth in the 1919 Tour de France


Adin Dobkin - 2021
    From Paris, the war-weary men rode down the western coast on a race that would trace the country’s border, through seaside towns and mountains to the ghostly western front. Traversing a cratered postwar landscape, the cyclists faced near-impossible odds and the psychological scars of war. Most of the athletes had arrived straight from the front, where so many fellow countrymen had suffered or died. The cyclists’ perseverance and tolerance for pain would be tested in a grueling, monthlong competition.An inspiring true story of human endurance, Sprinting Through No Man’s Land explores how the cyclists united a country that had been torn apart by unprecedented desolation and tragedy. It shows how devastated countrymen and women can come together to celebrate the adventure of a lifetime and discover renewed fortitude, purpose, and national identity in the streets of their towns.

One Young Man


John Ernest Hodder-Williams - 2007
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The War Poets: A Selection of World War I Poetry (a selection of poems from Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen, all with an active Table of Contents)


Rupert Brooke - 2011
    The collection includes:RUPERT BROOKEPEACESAFETYTHE DEADTHE DEADTHE SOLDIEREDWARD THOMASADLESTROPTEARSTHE OWLRAINTHE CHERRY TREESAS THE TEAM'S HEAD-BRASSSIEGFRIED SASSOON"THEY"THE REAR-GUARDI STOOD WITH THE DEADSUICIDE IN TRENCHESTHE GENERALHOW TO DIEGLORY OF WOMENTHEIR FRAILTYDOES IT MATTER?SURVIVORSEVERYONE SANGTO ANY DEAD OFFICERSICK LEAVEIVOR GURNEYTO HIS LOVETHE SILENT ONEISAAC ROSENBERGBREAK OF DAY IN THE TRENCHESLOUSE HUNTINGON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE WARDEAD MAN'S DUMPRETURNING, WE HEAR THE LARKSWILFRED OWENANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTHAPOLOGIA PRO POEMATE MEODULCE ET DECORUM ESTSTRANGE MEETINGFUTILITYDISABLEDMINERSS.I.W.

Huey: The Story of a Helicopter Assault Pilot in Vietnam


Jay Groen - 1984
    Army's UH-1H "Huey" Iroquois helicopter. He experiences screaming descents into hot landing zones to place military assault troops and rescue wounded soldiers. He has the clarity of mind to survive seven days of horror in a Vietnamese jungle swamp while the psychology of a fellow soldier is severely tested. He's got the guts to buck military orders and battle his own brass to pursue an investigation when a botched operation spells disaster for the men under him. Based on the authors' personal experiences in the Vietnam War, Huey is an authentic, action-filled book of historical fiction. Originally published 30 years ago, this moving novel became a New York Timesbestseller within days of publishing. Now it's available again on Kindle.