+612 9045 4394
Paperback
Published: 20th June 1997
ISBN: 9780712673761
Number Of Pages: 496
"In the 50 years since the end of the Second World War, much has been written about the men at the top, but little attention has been given to what soldiering was like for the 'dog-face' and 'squaddy', the NCO's and junior officers. Redressing the balance, this original and powerful book explores the conditions in which the soldiers of many different countries lived and died, as well as their hopes and fears, and their experience of battle. John Erickson, John Keegan, Theodore Wilson and Omer Bartov are among the distinguished cast of historians whose subjects range from GIs in Europe to Indian troops in North Africa, and from the comic overtones of Dad's Army in Britain to the grim earnest of the war on the eastern front, where Russian woman fought as full combatants."
A splendid group of essays about war as it looked to the fighting man during World War II; most of them written by military historians too young to take part. All the authors are aware of the noise, the stench, the fright, the tiredness that mark out battle from ordinary life; some write also of the intense tedium of life between battles and the ways in which it could be made less dull. The armies of several different nations appear and so do some notable writers in an original and stimulating study. (Kirkus UK)
| Foreword | |
| Preface | |
| Towards a Theory of Combat Motivation | p. 3 |
| Reflections on the 'Sharp End' of War | p. 12 |
| The Scottish Soldier: Reality and the Armchair Experience | p. 21 |
| The Shadow of the Somme: the Influence of the First World War on British Soldiers' Perceptions and Behaviour in the Second World War | p. 29 |
| The British Field Force in France and Belgium, 1939-40 | p. 40 |
| The Real Dad's Army: the British Home Guard, 1940-44 | p. 50 |
| The British Soldier on the Home Front: Army Morale Reports, 1940-45 | p. 60 |
| "Twas England Bade Our Wild Geese Go": Soliders of Ireland in the Second World War | p. 77 |
| 'If I Fight for Them, Maybe Then I Can Go Back to the Village': African Soldiers in the Mediterranean and European Campaigns, 1939-45 | p. 93 |
| 'Matters of Honour': Indian Troops in the North African and Italian Theatres | p. 115 |
| Mr Wu and the Colonials: the British Empire's Evacuation from Crete, 1941 | p. 129 |
| 'If this war isn't over, And pretty damn soon, There'll be nobody left, In this old platoon ...': First Canadian Army, February-March 1945 | p. 147 |
| 'No taste for the fight?': French Combat Performance in 1940 and the Politics of the Fall of France | p. 161 |
| The Italian Soldier in Combat, June 1940-September 1943: Myths, Realities and Explanations | p. 177 |
| The Italian Job: Five Armies in Italy, 1943-45 | p. 206 |
| Peasant Scapegoat to Industrial Slaughter: the Romanian Soldier at the Siege of Odessa | p. 221 |
| Red Army Battlefield Performance, 1941-45: the System and the Soldier | p. 233 |
| Offensive Women: Women in Combat in the Red Army | p. 249 |
| Motivation and Indoctrination in the Wehrmacht, 1933-45 | p. 263 |
| The German Soldier in Occupied Russia | p. 274 |
| Who Fought and Why? The Assignment of American Soldiers to Combat | p. 284 |
| The GI in Europe and the American Military Tradition | p. 304 |
| 'Puir Bluidy Swaddies Are Weary': Sicily, 1943 | p. 319 |
| Infantry Combat: a GI in France, 1944 | p. 331 |
| Trauma and Absence: France and Germany, 1914-45 | p. 347 |
| Oral History and British Soldiers' Experience of Battle in the Second World War | p. 359 |
| The Soldier's Experience in Two World Wars: Some Historiographical Comparisons | p. 369 |
| Notes on Contributors | p. 379 |
| Notes and References | p. 383 |
| Index | p. 458 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780712673761
ISBN-10: 0712673768
Audience:
General
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 496
Published: 20th June 1997
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Country of Publication: GB
Dimensions (cm): 23.3 x 15.4
x 3.5
Weight (kg): 0.65
Edition Number: 1
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