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From Napoleon's invasion of 1812 to the Wars of Liberation and beyond, seen from the common Russian soldier's perspective.

Dave Barr knew from the age of 12 that he wanted to be a marine. Following a series of menial jobs - including working as a shoe shiner in a barber's shop and stints in service stations - at 17 he joined the Marines before shipping out to Vietnam. This was his dream come true - flying as a helicopter gunner - and he ended the war with an impressive

The Budapest Operation (29 October 1944-13 February 1945): An Operational-Strategic Study examines in detail the Red Army's operations on the approaches to Budapest and the city's ultimate capture following a long siege. The first part of the study deals with the Red Army's arrival in central Hungary, following the successful conduct of the Iasi¿Kishinev operation in late August 1944 and the subsequent development of the offensive through Romania, Bulgaria and eastern Yugoslavia. By mid-October the Soviets were poised to continue the offensive into Hungary and its capital of Budapest, the capture of which would clear the path for a subsequent advance into Austria and southern Germany. This study examines the rapid advance to the outskirts of Budapest, where stubborn German-Hungarian resistance forced them to halt, after which the Soviets sought to surround the city, finally closing the ring at the end of December. Also examined are the Germans' repeated attempts to break the siege by launching several counter-offensives to the west and south of the city. However, these were all beaten back in heavy fighting and the enemy garrison was forced to capitulate on 13 February. This study also devotes considerable attention to the combat arms (artillery, tanks and mechanized forces, aviation, and engineering troops) during the operation. The other study is an internal General Staff Academy document dealing with the activities of the Third Ukrainian Front during the Budapest operation. Throughout the greater part of the operation the Third Ukrainian Front played a decidedly secondary role, charged with protecting the flank of the Soviet advance through Yugoslavia and Hungary, with the Second Ukrainian Front slated to receive the accolades for taking Budapest. However, the bitter enemy resistance along the approaches to Budapest gradually forced the Soviet high command to increasingly shift its efforts to the right bank of the Danube River, first to help in isolating the Budapest garrison inside the city, and then to fend off repeated German counter-offensives to relieve the city. It was the Third Ukrainian Front's successful repulse of these efforts that enabled the Soviets to finally bring about the garrison's capitulation and the end of the operation.

The ignominious rout of a British force at the Battle of Majuba on 27 February 1881 - and the death of its commander, Major General Sir George Pomeroy-Colley - was the culminating British disaster in the humiliating Transvaal campaign of 1880-1881 in South Africa. For the victorious Boers, who were rebelling against the British annexation of their

'These are the facts and notes taken by a soldier on campaign, written daily, sometimes in a tent, sometimes in a canoe, today in the presence of the enemy, tomorrow in conference with a tribe of savages'. This succinct description is taken from the original French edition of the journal of Comte Maurès de Malartic. Malartic, major of the Régiment

Dirty War is the first comprehensive look at Rhodesia's top secret use of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) during their long counterinsurgency against native African nationalists. Having declared its Independence from Great Britain in 1965, the government almost immediately faced a growing threat. In the midst of this long, terrible conflict,

The First World War showed the vital importance of oil. The use of oil-fuelled aircraft, tanks, motor vehicles - and especially warships - increased greatly during the war. Britain and its allies found themselves in an oil crisis in 1917, but it was overcome (with difficulty) and the Allies' greater oil resources - mostly supplied by the USA - cont

In this title in the 'Battle for Britain' series, well-known historical illustrator Peter Dennis takes the battle out to sea - supplying all the artwork needed to create the navies which clashed in the English Channel at a moment of supreme danger for the realm. Artwork is also supplied for a printable squared sea surface, coastline and islands. He

The amount of international research on children and war - carried out by academics, governments and non-governmental organisations - has continually increased in recent years. Simultaneously, there has been growing public interest in how children experience military conflicts and how their lives have been affected by war and its aftermath. In ligh

The Iran-Iraq War was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century and accidentally created the current nightmare of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. There have been many books on the conflict, but this is the first detailed military history using materials from both sides, as well as materials obtained from US Intelligence circles and Briti

In this ground-breaking work, James Roberts examines the willingness and ability of British volunteer and conscript infantrymen of the Great War to perform the soldier's fundamental role: to kill or maim the enemy, and accept the attendant chance of being killed or wounded. Literature to date has been, paradoxically, somewhat silent on the soldier'

Soldiers in the trenches were issued with four bullets a day, unless they were either snipers or manned a machine gun. This does not seem like a lot of bullets; however, four bullets a day is 28 per week - therefore, a million soldiers need 28 million bullets per week. Of course, there were a lot more than a million troops at the Western Front, so

William Hay had a varied and exciting military career during the later years of the Napoleonic Wars, which took him to the Peninsula, to Waterloo, and, after 1815, to Canada. Graduating from the Royal Military College at Marlow, of which he begins his memoirs with a rare account, he was first commissioned into the crack 52nd Light Infantry and served with that regiment in the campaigns of 1810 and 1811. Promotion then took him into the 12th Light Dragoons and, after a spell at home due to illness, he joined his new regiment in the field just as Wellington¿s army began its retreat from Burgos. Thereafter, Hay served with the 12th for the remainder of the Peninsular War and again during the Waterloo campaign. A well-connected young man, he spent some of his time away from the regiment on staff duties, serving as an aide to Lord Dalhousie in the Peninsula and later to the same officer again during his tenure as Governor General of British North America. Hay¿s recollections are very much those of a dashing young officer, and, if not quite rivalling Marbot for imagination, there is no denying that he is the hero of his own epic. But these are more than just tales of derring-do, for Hay¿s stories of the lighter side of military life do much to illuminate the character and attitudes of Britain¿s Napoleonic officer corps. There is also no question but that Hay was a competent and effective officer who did good service in a number of important campaigns, and an old soldier¿s tendency to polish his recollections should take nothing from that. However, in order to help the reader better judge when Hay is remembering events with advantage, this edition of his memoirs is introduced and annotated by historian Andrew Bamford and includes additional information to identify places, people, and events and to otherwise add context to the original narrative.

In 1711, Peter the Great - the Tsar of Russia - led a large army of veterans from Poltava and his other Great Northern War victories into the Balkans. He aimed to humble the Ottomans in the same way he had the Swedes a few years before. Victory would secure useful allies in the Balkans, cement Russia's 'Great Power' status and offer Peter the oppor

'Hey For Old Robin!' was the cry of the Earl of Essex's army during the First Civil War as, contrary to modern popular belief, Robert Devereux was well-liked by the men he led. This book fills a gap in the literature of the civil wars - taking up the challenge to write a new history of Essex and his army and examining the often repeated view that h

Generally conceded to be doomed from the outset by the most recent historiography, the Gallipoli campaign still arouses heated controversy. In a new compendium of original research by an impressive array of established and up-and-coming scholars, Gallipoli: The Mediterranean Expeditionary Force 1915-16 explores a wide variety of aspects of the Alli

This book is a study of the importance of community identity to a fighting unit in the First World War. In this case, the unit in question is primarily 7th King's Regiment - and more widely, the 55th West Lancashire Division (1914-1918). The book is based upon the author's own PhD thesis - 'The 1/7th Battalion King's Liverpool Regiment and the Grea

Bandit Mentality captures Lindsay 'Kiwi' O'Brien's Bush War service from 1976-1980 at the coalface of the Rhodesian conflict. Starting in the BSA Police Support Unit - the police professional anti-terrorist battalion - he served across the country as a section leader and a troop commander before joining the UANC political armies as a trainer and ad

September 1914, and the whole of Europe was at war following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914. In France and Belgium, the British Expeditionary Force were struggling to hold back the German hoards as their casualties began to mount. Back in Britain the call went out f

The amount of international research on 'Children and War' carried out by academics, governments and non-governmental organizations has continually increased in recent years. At the same time there has been growing public interest in how children experience military conflicts and how their lives have been affected by war and its aftermath. In light of the many brutal post-colonialist civil wars or 'new wars', especially in Africa and Asia, child soldiers have in particular gained increased attention. Simultaneously, since the 1990s, the history of the Holocaust and World War II has also increasingly been written from the perspective of children; those who speak out now and publish their memoirs experienced the Holocaust as children. A similar generational change has also taken place in the societies of the perpetrators: Germans and Austrians who experienced the war as children took over the role of war witnesses from the soldiers of the German Wehrmacht. Moreover, intensified focus on children's experiences and their strategies for dealing with what they went through is evident in Eastern Europe as well. In Children and War: Past and Present scholars from different academic disciplines, practitioners in the field, and representatives of government and non-governmental institutions approach this sensitive subject from different angles and in various methodological ways. The book shows how children expressed their experiences in letters, memoirs and diaries during and after World War I and World War II and how children remembered those wars. Many of the authors also deal with various long-term psychological effects. Using the example of children's literature in World War I and the representation of child survivors in the postwar cinema, another focus of the book is on the representation of children in different wars. Based on post-colonial and contemporary wars in Africa, images of girl and boy soldiers created by the media, NGOs and governments as well as trends in how they are represented in contemporary research are also discussed. The last section of the book concentrates on various institutions such as welfare organizations and NGOs dealing with children in different wars. How have institutions supported children? And concerning contemporary conflicts, how does the international community face the question of international justice and adapt to children's needs?