An improvised game of cricket was often the circuit-breaker Harry and his team needed after the tension of operations. He began a tradition of organising matches wherever he was sent, whether it was in the mountains of East Timor with a fugitive rebel leader, or on the dusty streets of Baghdad, or in exposed Forward Operating Bases in the hills of Afghanistan. Soldiers, locals and even visiting politicians played in these spontaneous yet often bridge-building games.As part of the tradition, Harry also started to take a cricket bat with him on operational tours, eleven of them in total. They'd often go outside the wire with him and end up signed by those he met or fought alongside. These eleven bats form the basis for Harry's extraordinary memoir. It's a book about combat, and what it takes to serve in one of the world's most elite formations. It's a book about the toll that war takes on soldiers and their loved ones. And it's a book about the healing power of cricket, and how a game can break down borders in even the most desperate of circumstances.

    Soldier, parliamentarian, Prime Minister, orator, painter, writer, husband, and leader all of these facets combine to make Churchill one of the most complex and fascinating personalities in history. In Churchill, Johnson applies a wide lens and an unconventional approach to illuminate the various phases of Churchill s career. From his adventures as a young cavalry officer in the service of the Empire to his role as an elder statesman prophesying the advent of the Cold War, Johnson shows how Churchill s immense adaptability combined with his natural pugnacity to make him a formidable leader for the better part of a century. Johnson s narration of Churchill s many triumphs and setbacks, rich with anecdote and quotation, illustrates the man s humor, resilience, courage, and eccentricity as no other biography before. Winston Churchill s hold on contemporary readers has never slackened, and Paul Johnson s lively, concise biography will appeal to historians and general nonfiction readers alike."

    Millions of people worldwide know of him through Ralph Fiennes’ chilling portrayal in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. Goeth was the brutal commandant of the Plaszów concentration camp—Oskar Schindler’s drinking buddy, and yet his adversary. Responsible for the deaths of thousands, Amon Goeth was hanged in 1946.Goeth’s partner Ruth, Teege’s much-loved grandmother, committed suicide in 1983. Teege is their daughter’s daughter; her father is Nigerian. Raised by foster parents, she grew up with no knowledge of the family secret. Now, it unsettles her profoundly. What can she say to her Jewish friends, or to her own children? Who is she—truly?My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me is Teege’s searing chronicle of grappling with her haunted past. Her research into her family takes her to Poland and to Israel. Award-winning journalist Nikola Sellmair supplies historical context in a separate, interwoven narrative. Step by step, horrified by her family’s dark history, Teege builds the story of her own liberation.

    His rearing on the family estate in the Rhineland had instilled in him a strong Catholic faith, a reverence for the fatherland, and a love of horsemanship and the hunt. And so, like his brother Georg, he accepted a commission when the call came to restore the pride Germany had lost in the humiliating peace of Versailles.Soon, however, beyond the regimented and honor-bound world of the cavalry, von Boeselager would discover what shocking brutality the SS was perpetrating at the behest of the Third Reich s highest authorities. When, in the summer of 1942, he heard that five Roma had been killed in cold blood, von Boeselager s patriotism quickly turned to disgust. Under his commanding officer, Field Marshal von Kluge, Philipp and his brother joined a group of conspirators in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.It was planned that Philipp would shoot both the Fuhrer and Himmler in the officers casino during a camp inspection visit, but when that attempt had to be aborted at the last moment, the plotters resolved to use a bomb to assassinate Hitler alone. Once von Boeselager had delivered the explosives to Claus von Stauffenberg, a leader of the plot, he and Georg led an unauthorized retreat of cavalry units from the eastern front, a surreal night maneuver indelibly described here. The mission: to take control of Berlin and effect the coup d etat.When the bomb failed to kill Hitler, the SS launched a terrifying purge of senior army officers. The von Boeselager brothers barely managed to return with their units to the eastern front in time to escape detection. One by one their fellow plotters were found out, tortured, and executed, but steadfast in their cause, they never gave up the von Boeselagers names. Georg would eventually fall in battle on the Russian front, but Philipp survived the war.In this elegant but unflinching testimony, Philipp von Boeselager, until his death in 2008 the last surviving member of the plot code-named Valkyrie, gives voice to the spirit of the small but determined band of men whose sense of justice and honor could not be dissolved by the diabolical glamour of the Third Reich. Here is an invaluable new perspective on one of the most fascinating near misses of twentieth-century history."

    A graduate of West Point and an inductee in the National College Football Hall of Fame for his All-American performance for Army, Olds was one of the toughest college football players at the time. In WWII, Olds quickly became a top fighter pilot and squadron commander by the age of 22—and an ace with 12 aerial victories.But it was in Vietnam where the man became a legend. He arrived in 1966 to find a dejected group of pilots and motivated them by placing himself on the flight schedule under officers junior to himself, then challenging them to train him properly because he would soon be leading them. Proving he wasn’t a WWII retread, he led the wing with aggressiveness, scoring another four confirmed kills, becoming a rare triple ace.Olds (who retired a brigadier general and died in 2007) was a unique individual whose personal story is one of the most eagerly anticipated military books of the year.

    Army Pathfinders. The vanguard of the Allied forces in World War II Europe. Countless times they preceded invasions and battles vital to bringing the enemy to its knees.Because before the front lines could move forward, the Pathfinders had to move behind enemy lines . . .The first into combat, and the last out, their advance jumps into enemy territory were considered suicide missions by those who sent them into action. World War Two’s special operations commandos, they relied on their stealth, expert prowess, and matchless courage and audacity to set the stage for airborne drops and glider landings throughout Europe.They were born of hard necessity. After the invasion of Sicily almost ended in disaster, General Jim Gavin was determined to form an all-new unit of specialized soldiers who would jump ahead of the airborne forces—including the now legendary Easy Company—without any additional support, stealing across enemy terrain to scout and mark out drop zones with a unique array of homing equipment.Sporting Mohawk haircuts, war paint, and an attitude of brash confidence, they were the best of the best. Their heroic feats behind the lines were critical to nearly all of the Allies’ major victories from Normandy to snowy Bastogne—where they saved the day for thousands of besieged American troops in an operation almost forgotten by history—to the attack on the Ruhr River in Germany.This is the story of the U.S. Army Pathfinders—their training, bonding, and battlefield exploits—told from the perspectives of the daring men who jumped and the equally bold transport crews who risked everything to fly them into action.INCLUDES PHOTOS

    

    Offering a record of one of the pivotal events of World War II, as told through the personal accounts of the German and Soviet soldiers who fought in it, this book features photographs from the Battle of Stalingrad, from both sides of the front.

    Out of thousands, only 138 men were chosen. They were the best, toughest, and fittest men the Army had to offer. They were the Alamo Scouts. Larry Alexander follows the footsteps of the men who made up the elite reconnaissance unit that served as General MacArthur's eyes and ears in the Pacific War. Drawing from personal interviews and testimonies from Scout veterans, Alexander weaves together the tales of the individual Scouts, who often spent weeks behind enemy lines to complete their missions. Now, more than sixty years after the war, the story of the Alamo Scouts will finally be told.

    Carter participated in every major campaign that the 504th was involved with from Sicily in 1943 to the end of the war in Germany in May of 1945.

    During the second world war Eric Lomax was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway and was tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio.Left emotionally scarred and unable to form normal relationships Lomax suffered for years until, with the help of his wife Patti and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, he came to terms with what had happened and, fifty years after the terrible events, was able to meet one of his tormentors.The Railway Man is an incredible story of innocence betrayed, and of survival and courage in the face of horror.

    After hard fighting, American, British, and Canadian troops won a toehold in Nazi-held Europe. But Germany's elite Panzer divisions hadn't been present at the beaches. Due to poor intelligence and a divided command, the tanks with black crosses only came to the invasion area after the first landings. But when the German Panther and Tiger tanks finally arrived, they were seeking a battle of annihilation, presenting the Allied attack inland with a ring of fire and steel.For nearly two months, the Allies hammered the enemy, even as the Germans attempted to throw them back into the sea. Some of the most intense armored battles ever fought in war were fought in Normandy, bringing glory and infamy to hardened and colorful soldiers such as Kurt "Panzer" Meyer, Jochen Peiper, and Max Wunsche, and enhancing their reputations for ferocious, desperate combat. In the end, their actions would decide the outcome of the war.Told in an engaging style and packed full of fascinating details of the 1st SS Panzer Corps, Steel Inferno offers a unique perspective on one of the greatest military engagements in history.

    Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end.In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports--some released only recently--Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill's "Secret Circle," to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

    His story includes conflict in the air over Normandy, Belgium, Holland and Germany, where the Typhoons fought their last actions and where Desmond Scott earned major decorations from Belgium, France and Holland.

    This is the dramatic story of sixty-eight soldiers in the US Army’s 2nd Ranger Battalion, Company D - "Dog Company”— who made that difference, time and again.From D-Day, when German guns atop Pointe du Hoc threatened the Allied landings and the men of Dog Company scaled the sheer ninety-foot cliffs to destroy them; to the slopes of Hill 400, in Germany’s Hürtgen Forest, where the Rangers launched a desperate bayonet charge across an open field; to a “quiet” section of the Ardennes, where Dog Company suddenly found itself on the tip of the spear at the Battle of the Bulge; the men of Dog Company made the difference.America had many heroes in World War II, however, few can say that, but for them, the course of the war would have been very different. The right men, the right place, at the right time—Dog Company.