Author: Curt Johnson Publisher: Texas A&M University Press ISBN: 9780890966235 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
Five essays detail the artillery used by both Union and Confederate forces in the Battle of Antietam, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, in September 1862. The core essay was written in 1940 for the National Park Service but first published here. Together they discuss the types and capabilities of the artillery pieces, the problems faced by the commanders, and what can be conjectured about their placement and engagement. Also includes six reports by Union officers just after the battle. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Kelly E. Crager Publisher: Texas A&M University Press ISBN: 9781585446353 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
Late in 1940, the young men of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment stepped off the trucks at Camp Bowie in Brownwood, Texas, ready to complete the training they would need for active duty in World War II. Many of them had grown up together in Jacksboro, Texas, and almost all of them were eager to face any challenge. Just over a year later, these carefree young Texans would be confronted by horrors they could never have imagined. The battalion was en route to bolster the Allied defense of the Philippines when they received news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon, they found themselves ashore on Java, with orders to assist the Dutch, British, and Australian defense of the island against imminent Japanese invasion. When war came to Java in March 1942, the Japanese forces overwhelmed the numerically inferior Allied defenders in little more than a week. For more than three years, the Texans, along with the sailors and marines who survived the sinking of the USS Houston, were prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning in late 1942, these prisoners-of-war were shipped to Burma to accelerate completion of the Burma-Thailand railway. These men labored alongside other Allied prisoners and Asian conscript laborers to build more than 260 miles of railroad for their Japanese taskmasters. They suffered abscessed wounds, near-starvation, daily beatings, and debilitating disease, and 89 of the original 534 Texans taken prisoner died in the infested, malarial jungles. The survivors received a hero’s welcome from Gov. Coke Stevenson, who declared October 29, 1945, as “Lost Battalion Day” when they finally returned to Texas. Kelly E. Crager consulted official documentary sources of the National Archives and the U.S. Army and mined the personal memoirs and oral history interviews of the “Lost Battalion” members. He focuses on the treatment the men received in their captivity and surmises that a main factor in the battalion’s comparatively high survival rate (84 percent of the 2nd Battalion) was the comraderie of the Texans and their commitment to care for each other. This narrative is grueling, yet ultimately inspiring. Hell under the Rising Sun will be a valuable addition to the collections of World War II historians and interested general readers alike.
Author: George Blackburn Publisher: McClelland & Stewart ISBN: 155199464X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 476
Book Description
In Where the Hell Are the Guns?, author George Blackburn returns to the early years of the Second World War. This volume – which completes Blackburn’s award-winning trilogy, extending its coverage to the entire war – brings wartime Canada and England to life in captivating, often comic, detail. With the skill of a novelist and the instincts of a seasoned reporter, this gifted storyteller traces the evolution of Canada’s 4th Field Regiment from a motley assortment of ill-equipped recruits to the cream of the Allied artillery, more than ready to distinguish itself in the maelstrom of the battle for Normandy. The Second World War comes to a generation of Canadians one sunny September weekend in 1939. It is a Canada woefully unprepared for conflict, and 4th Field Regiment is rapidly assembled from a grab-bag of volunteers from all walks of life – many of them mavericks and misfits from a depression-ravaged land. The regiment passes its first year in Canada in makeshift accommodation, including hastily converted stables and pigsties in the exhibition grounds of Ottawa and Toronto. For the first few months the soldiers must wear incomplete and moth-eaten uniforms from the Great War, and their early training is conducted using obsolete equipment or no equipment at all. One year into the war, the regiment arrives in England without weapons or vehicles, and a month later, with Britain moving toward the greatest crisis in her history, the regiment is finally equipped with guns – French ones with wooden wheels, dating from 1898. From these inauspicious beginnings, the regiment slowly evolves – with mishap and occasionally mayhem along the way – into a proud and polished regiment, which in 1942 is declared “the best field regiment in Britain.” By the time the Allied troops land on the beaches in Normandy, the boys of 4th Field are more than ready to go to war. From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Robert J. Trout Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press ISBN: 1572336056 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 394
Book Description
"The "History of Hart's Battery," as told by Maj. James F. Hart, Dr. Levi C. Stephens, Louis Sherfesee, and Charles H. Schwing, is, as Trout puts it, "a cannon of a different caliber." It recounts in broader terms the battery's history from its inception before the war to its surrender as the last horse artillery in the field. The authors offer rare glimpses into the development of tactics learned from the "school of the battlefield.""
Author: L. VanLoan Naisawald Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing ISBN: 1786251329 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 872
Book Description
Includes - 18 maps and 6 illustrations “The role of the field artillery in the Civil War is often overlooked in favor of the more romantic views of great cavalry commanders or infantrymen. But the reality was that without the field artillery, many of the decisive battles won by the Army of the Potomac most likely would have resulted in defeat and/or destruction. Grape and Canister, first published in 1960, has since become a classic and remains the definitive study of the field artillery of the Army of the Potomac.”-Print ed.
Author: William R. Trotter Publisher: Algonquin Books ISBN: 1565126920 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 474
Book Description
In 1939, tiny Finland waged war-the kind of war that spawns legends-against the mighty Soviet Union, and yet their epic struggle has been largely ignored. Guerrillas on skis, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, unfathomable endurance, and the charismatic leadership of one of this century's true military geniuses-these are the elements of both the Finnish victory and a gripping tale of war.
Author: Leonard V. Smith Publisher: Texas A&M University Press ISBN: 1603446753 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
He also comments on the new technology that changed the nature of war: the machine gun, new airplanes, U-boats, improved artillery, barbed wire, and poison gases." "Drama and a sympathetic human voice combine to make this account of a little-reported French front a valuable addition to the literature on World War I."--Jacket.
Author: Curt Johnson
Author: Kelly E. Crager
Author: George Blackburn
Author: 
Author: J. W. Arbuckle
Author: Robert J. Trout
Author: L. VanLoan Naisawald
Author: William R. Trotter
Author: Leonard V. Smith
Author: Daniel Webster