Although SAS activity has been extensively documented, the SBS has remained in the state it prefers - a shadowy silhouette, with identities protected and missions kept from public view. Formed during the Second World War, when they took part in many daring raids (one of which was filmed as The Cockleshell Heroes), they were active in the jungle campaigns in the Far East, in the Falklands, the Gulf War and Bosnia. Since this seminal book was published in 1997, John Parker has been privy to much more inside information about the SBS's original operations and he brings the book right up to date with accounts of their exploits in East Timor, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and most recently in Iraq.

    Many people know the facts about Nelson's death, but far less of the battle in which he died: a single afternoon's fighting that forever ended Napoleon's hope of invading England. With Napoleon's failure, the British navy reigned supreme on the high seas-a supremacy that lasted until the age of air power. David Howard, who served as a war correspondent during the battle of Dunkirk and won awards for his service as a secret agent during that war, writes with great understanding about fighting amidst the perils of the sea.

    S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey are pale imitations of the deeds of Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane, one of the most daring and successful real-life heroes the naval world has ever seen. In this fascinating account of his life, Donald Thomas fills in the details of Cochrane's winning exploits against the French navy, actions that earned him the title of "Sea Wolf" from Napoleon. Thomas's meticulous scholarship makes this biography a useful reference, and his vivid narrative, particularly the description of the battle of the Basque Roads in 1809 when Cochrane nearly achieved a victory like Napoleon's at the Nile, gives readers a memorable picture of the valiant sea warrior. The author describes with equal attention to detail Cochrane's political battles, including his vigorous campaign against corruption in the Admiralty and the sensational stock exchange fraud case mounted by his enemies that landed him in prison. But Cochrane fought back with his usual intensity, restoring his reputation and returning to sea in 1818 as a mercenary bound for South America. Once again, with nearly total disregard of danger, the admiral helped liberate Brazil and Chile from colonial rule. He died in 1860, just weeks before his eighty-fifth birthday. Thomas, a prizewinning poet and novelist as well as a noted biographer and University of Wales professor, eloquently demonstrates the rationale of Cochrane's burial as a hero in Westminster Abbey.

    For more than five hours, sixty ships fought at close quarters as their occupants struggled under the constant barrage of cannon and musket fire, amid choking fumes and ear-splitting explosions. Nelson's navy was severely outgunned; twenty-seven British battleships carrying 2,150 guns faced thirty-three French and Spanish ships carrying 2,640 guns. Yet the British gunners, quicker and more disciplined, carried the day. While the men maneuvered the ships and kept the cannons firing, the women tended the sick and helped the boys carry gunpowder cartridges to the gun decks. When Nelson died in the midst of the battle, French Vice-Admiral Villeneuve remarked that "to any other nation the loss of a Nelson would have been irreparable, but in the British Fleet off Cadiz, every captain was a Nelson."" Adkins has drawn on a broad range of primary source material to write this powerful, unforgettably vivid history that captures as never before the harsh conditions in which sailors lived and died, the mechanics of nautical combat and the human costs of the conflict.

    He was a kid, eighteen years old. Married, broke, flunking out of college-and about to become a father. The Marines seemed like a good way out. He figured the Nam couldn't be any worse than home. He was wrong.Publishers Weekly says "Chilling...It tells how a youngster from Portland, Oregon matured in the crucible of combat...The reader is given a sense of what it's like to fight an unseen enemy who might appear anytime, anywhere and start shooting from ambush." Karl Marlantes, New York Times best selling author of "Matterhorn" calls "A Field of Innocence", "Powerful ...and riveting."Tim O'Brien, New York Times best selling author of "The Things They Carried" says, "With its raw realism and heartbreaking honesty...one of the finest Vietnam memoirs."Kirkus Review says A Field of Innocence is "Exciting and Impressive."

     Forty years later, in 1908, Page wrote this memoir to dispel the slanders told about Wirz. Page explains how the prison Wirz was in charge of was designed to hold, at most, 10,000 prisoners. The population quickly swelled to 30,000 prisoners, overwhelming the South's ability to feed, clothe and house the Andersonville prisoners. Over 13,000 POWs died out of 45,000 prisoners due to disease and diet, and Page claims that Wirz was made a scapegoat to appease the wrath of the families of those who had died. ‘a good read and very different than what is force fed us’ - Civil War Talk James Madison Page was born on July 22, 1839 in Crawfordville, Pennsylvania. He served in the Union army as 2d Lieutenant of Company A, Sixth Michigan Cavalry. After participating in many skirmishes and battles, including Gettysburg, Page was captured on September 21, 1863 along the Rapidan in Virginia and spent the next thirteen months in Southern military prisons, seven of which were at Camp Sumter near Andersonville, Georgia. After the war, Page was supoenaed for the war crimes trial of Major Henry Wirz, the former commandant of the prison, but after being interviewed, the prosecution decided not to call him as a witness because his testimony undermined the predetermined guilt of the accused. Having been present at the prison in the summer of 1864, when the atrocities were said to have occurred, Page denied that any of the four murders charged to Wirz had happened, which denial was supported by the fact that the alleged deceased were never named. After being dissuaded by his sister from joining the ill-fated Indian foray in the West under the command of General George Custer, Page instead moved to the Montana Territory in 1866, where he worked as a Government surveyor. The town of Pageville in Madison County was named in his honor. Page spent his final years in Long Beach, California, where he died in 1924. The True Story of Andersonville Prison was first published in 1908.

    That was on his first day at the front.Thrown into an open field to face German tanks and artillery fire, with only rifles and machine guns to defend themselves with, almost 2,000 men of his regiment were wiped out in only six days at the Eastern Front. At this rate, Ivan struggled to comprehend how he would survive the hundreds of battles that lay before him, with death seeming to be the only certainty.In his raw and trenchant memoir, Ivan recounts the terror and despair faced by a Red Army soldier on the Eastern Front.He has no sympathy for Stalin and his incompetent commanders, who sought awards and recognition at the expense of their soldiers’ lives. He simply wanted to serve his country.It is rare to find first-hand accounts of the Great Patriotic War from Red Army soldiers, as many did not survive to tell the tale. For the first time, Ivan reveals his gripping recollections of battles, times, places, and people encountered throughout World War II, from when he was drafted in 1941 until their victory in 1945.These recollections he dared not put on paper until 1992.

    Napoleon himself, expiring at 51 after a lifetime of robust health, suspected otherwise and ordered a thorough autopsy. His suspicions were well founded. So clever was the crime, however, that until recent developments in forensic science, it was impossible to prove a case of murder, let alone name the killer. Now, the authors of The Murder of Napoleon assert, it has been done-by a brilliant man whose 20-year inquest, a feat of detection, has produced one of history's greatest surprises. "Sensational...as gripping as a detective novel yet scrupulously observant of historical fact" (Publishers Weekly) Author Biography: David Hapgood was an editor and writer for The New York Times. He is author or co-author of The Murder of Napoleon, The Screwing of the Average Man, Monte Cassino, and Africa from Independence to Tomorrow. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and lives in New York City.

    It also finished the career of the charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte. It ensured the final liberation of Germany and the restoration of the old European monarchies, and it represented one of very few defeats for the glorious French army, most of whose soldiers remained devoted to their Emperor until the very end. Extraordinary though it may seem much about the Battle of Waterloo has remained uncertain, with many major features of the campaign hotly debated. Most histories have depended heavily on the evidence of British officers that were gathered about twenty years after the battle. But the recent publication of an abundance of fresh first-hand accounts from soldiers of all the participating armies has illuminated important episodes and enabled radical reappraisal of the course of the campaign. What emerges is a darker, muddier story, no longer biased by notions of regimental honour, but a tapestry of irony, accident, courage, horror and human frailty.An epic page turner, rich in dramatic human detail and grounded in first-class scholarly research, Waterloo is the real inside story of the greatest land battle in British history, the defining showdown of the age of muskets, bayonets, cavalry and cannon.

    Johnstone delivers an all-new action-packed series torn from today's headlines in which the greatest danger is not posed by those kept out of America-but by those let in.INVASION USALittle Tuscon, Arizona, just twenty miles north of the border, is a small town whose citizens believe in God, country, and hard work. But their peaceful existence is about to be shattered by Mara Salvatrucha-the murderous Central American gang known as M-15.Culled from the scum of the earth, M-15 runs a drug smuggling operation through the ill-protected border, terrorizing defenseless communities into submission through theft, rape, and murder.With Washington turning a blind eye to the crisis in Little Tucson, Vietnam vet Tom Brannon takes the law into his own hands and forms his own volunteer army, which he names The Patriot Project.But now all hell's about to break loose, because M-15 is coming back to take out the Patriots. Outnumbered and outgunned, with the fate of their families, their homes, and their very country at stake, Tom Brannon and his men will meet the enemy. It's high noon in Arizona-and time to take America back once more.

     This is the history of that division and the men and tanks that fought in it. Vic Hillery and Major Emerson Hurley, two veterans of the division, have provided a thorough account of this fascinating division in World War Two, from its inception in 1941 through to the end of the war. Hillery and Hurley fully explain how the Fifth Division, under the tactically brilliant leadership of Jack E. Heard, Sereno E. Brett, Lunsford E. Oliver, were able to revolutionise armored warfare. With detailed analysis the authors reconstruct the battles of the division and explain how they were able to carve a path through Normandy, Northern France, the Ardennes, Alsace, the Rhineland and Central Europe. Paths of Armor is essential reading for anyone interested in the Western Front of World War Two and the development of tank warfare that occurred through that war.

    Hailed as "unsinkable, " the "Kursk" was on maneuvers when mysterious explosions rocked the sub, causing it to sink to the bottom of the sea with its 118-man crew. This in-depth look at the disaster reveals previously unreleased information from family members of the deceased as well as from government officials.

    

     Leutnant Hausser, a young experienced infantry officer with the 76th Infantry Division is assigned with a handful of men to the south of Stalingrad. As the fighting heightens in the city, the officer and his men are sent to bolster the defences of their allies, the Romanians. The front is relatively quiet, most believe the Russian Army is finished. The end of the bitter war in the east may only be days away. Thinking of loved ones and home, they await the conclusion of the battle, comforted by promises that the victorious outcome will decide the war…that it will soon be all over. It may only be a matter of time before they see their families again. Daily life has become more relaxed, in warm bunkers and well dug defences, they write letters and socialise with their allies. It may soon be time to go home. As the German Sixth Army discovers just how vicious the fighting in Stalingrad can become, they take troops from their flanks in final attempts to take the city before the onset of 'another bitter Russian winter.' One last push will finish the Russians once and for all. The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, has virtually driven the Red Air Force from the skies. The Russian high command, STAVKA, are secretly planning to turn the tide of the war in the southern sector of the front as they see the weaker German allies occupy defensive positions either side of the city that holds Stalin's name. As the Russian offensive engulfs the flanks around Stalingrad, the young officer and his men desperately begin a battle for survival against bitter temperatures and time, oblivious to what the overall picture may be…and what their future holds. Not everything is as it seems in the deepest cold of winter as a small group of men combat nature and a vicious and cunning enemy motivated by revenge to survive and escape. With temperatures dropping to minus 25 to 35 degrees Celsius and a vicious struggle for survival against both nature and the cruelties of war, the portrayal of individual human reaction to fate and historical events is a gripping insight into the soldier on the frontline, thousands of miles from the decisions that will forge their individual destinies. Having spent thirty years studying World War 2 and in particular, the Russian Front, these offerings are based on historical fact. The characters are fictitious, attempting to portray a realistic account of what the battle would have been like for individual soldiers. All units and actions are in accordance with actual events, including propaganda, deployment and individual division engagements. Bloody Iced Bullet is available as an E-Book on Kindle, paperback in US book stores and via mail order across the world. The author aims to provide a thoroughly enjoyable and imaginative reading experience at an affordable price for the reader. All three works from the author's World War 2 Series concentrating on Stalingrad have achieved Best Seller status on Amazon in the UK and many more stories are outlined. Imagination is personal, free and to be cherished.