One Soldier's Story 1939-1945 PDF Download

Author: George S. MacDonell
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1550024086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
This story details the fateful adventures of two Canadian army regiments dispatched to the Pacific to face the Japanese.

Author: George S. Macdonell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781038758019
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is the story of a seventeen year old boy who ran away from home to join the Canadian Army at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. It describes the fateful adventures of two regiments dispatched to the Pacific to face the Japanese, and the courage of two thousand young soldiers who, when faced with an impossible task thousands of miles from home, behaved with honour and distinction. Though they lost the battle of Hong Kong, they succeeded in showing the world the mettle of which they were made.

Author: Nigel Thomas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782004815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
On 1 September 1939, when Germany attacked Poland, the Wehrmacht numbered 3,180,000 men. It eventually expanded to 9,500,000, and on 8-9 May 1945, the date of its unconditional surrender on the Western and Eastern Fronts, it still numbered 7,800,000. The Blitzkrieg period, from 1 September 1939 to 25 June 1940, was 10 months of almost total triumph for the Wehrmacht, as it defeated every country, except Great Britain, that took the field against it. In this first of five volumes examining the German Army of World War Two, Nigel Thomas examines the uniforms and insignia of Hitler's Blitzkrieg forces, including an overview of the Blitzkrieg campaign itself. Men-at-Arms 311, 316, 326, 330 and 336 are also available in a single volume special edition titled 'German Army in World War II'.

Author: William Rayner
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1554889936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Things were very different in 1939 — a pivotal year when Canada wavered on the doorstep of a clouded future. Some years are more spectacular than others, and 1939 was no exception. Canada was a different place: steak was twenty-nine cents a pound and a brand-new Ford coupe could be bought for just $856. It was a year when the king and queen toured Canada and wowed to use a showbiz term everyone from Toronto and Vancouver to Gogama and Craigellachie. It was also a year when Canada wavered on the doorstep of a clouded future: isolation and neutrality or the continued embrace of the British Empire? The onset of war and the Royal Visit settled all that as Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King beat back external and internal threats to keep the tapestry of national unity from unraveling. Through Canada on the Doorstep you’ll discover the births, deaths, storms, international intrigue, and politics that made 1939 so memorable.

Author: Kevin Blackburn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134092237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Using archival, oral and literary sources, Blackburn and Hack, along with an impressive team of international contributors, rectify the obscured picture of the Japanese captive by bringing together, for the first time, a collection of essays covering an extremely broad range of forgotten captives.

Author: Franco David Macri
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700621083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Japan's invasion of China in 1937 saw most major campaigns north of the Yangtze River, where Chinese industry was concentrated. The southern theater proved a more difficult challenge for Japan because of its enormous size, diverse terrain, and poor infrastructure, but Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek made a formidable stand that produced a veritable quagmire for a superior opponent--a stalemate much desired by the Allied nations. In the first book to cover this southern theater in detail, David Macri closely examines strategic decisions, campaigns, and operations and shows how they affected Allied grand strategy. Drawing on documents of U.S. and British officials, he reveals for the first time how the Sino-Japanese War served as a "proxy war" for the Allies: by keeping Japan's military resources focused on southern China, they hoped to keep the enemy bogged down in a war of attrition that would prevent them from breaching British and Soviet territory. While the most immediate concern was preserving Siberia and its vast resources from invasion, Macri identifies Hong Kong as the keystone in that proxy war-vital in sustaining Chinese resistance against Japan as it provided the logistical interface between the outside world and battles in Hunan and Kwangtung provinces; a situation that emerged because of its vital rail connection to the city of Changsha. He describes the development of Anglo-Japanese low-intensity conflict at Hong Kong; he then explains the geopolitical significance of Hong Kong and southern China for the period following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Opening a new window on this rarely studied theater, Macri underscores China's symbolic importance for the Allies, depicting them as unequal partners who fought the Japanese for entirely different reasons-China for restoration of its national sovereignty, the Allies to keep the Japanese preoccupied. And by aiding China's wartime efforts, the Allies further hoped to undermine Japanese propaganda designed to expel Western powers from its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As Macri shows, Hong Kong was not just a sleepy British Colonial outpost on the fringes of the empire but an essential logistical component of the war, and to fully understand broader events Hong Kong must be viewed together with southern China as a single military zone. His account of that forgotten fight is a pioneering work that provides new insight into the origins of the Pacific War.

Author: John Boileau
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459411730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
John Boileau and Dan Black tell the stories of some of the 30,000 underage youths -- some as young as fourteen -- who joined the Canadian Armed Forces in the Second World War. This is the companion volume to the authors' popular 2013 book Old Enough to Fight about boy soldiers in the First World War. Like their predecessors a generation before, these boys managed to enlist despite their youth. Most went on to face action overseas in what would become the deadliest military conflict in human history. They enlisted for a myriad of personal reasons -- ranging from the appeal of earning regular pay after the unemployment and poverty of the Depression to the desire to avenge the death of a brother or father killed overseas. Canada's boy soldiers, sailors and airmen saw themselves contributing to the war effort in a visible, meaningful way, even when that meant taking on very adult risks and dangers of combat. Meticulously researched and extensively illustrated with photographs, personal documents and specially commissioned maps, Too Young to Die provides a touching and fascinating perspective on the Canadian experience in the Second World War. Among the individuals whose stories are told: Ken Ewing, at age sixteen taken prisoner at Hong Kong and then a teenager in a Japanese prisoner of war camp Ralph Frayne, so determined to fight that he enlisted in the army, navy and Merchant Navy all before the age of seventeen Robert Boulanger, at age eighteen the youngest Canadian to die on the Dieppe beaches

Author: Dan Bjarnason
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1770707727
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
April 24th, 1951,was a lonely, moon-lit night in Korea. On a godforsaken hill, a few hundred surrounded Canadian soldiers waited for the fight of their lives to begin. Soon, Chinese communist troops in their thousands, swarmed around them, plunging straight towards the Korean capital, Seoul. These Canadians were all that blocked the way. This is the story of the first battle by Canada’s first soldiers in the Korean War: the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. These volunteers were straight from Central Casting: truck drivers, construction workers, kids just out of high school, and bored farm boys. Outnumbered and outgunned, this people’s army of amateurs beat off some of the toughest troops on earth. This battle that’s become a legend takes its name from a nearby peanut-sized village: Kapyong. It’s become a mythic Canadian story, except this is mythology that is true and real.

Author: Robyn Walker
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1770705333
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Sergeant Gander is a fascinating account of the Royal Rifles of Canadas canine mascot, and his devotion to duty demonstrated during the Battle of Hong Kong in the Second World War. Armed only with his formidable size, an intimidating set of teeth, and a protective instinct, Gander rought alongside his fellow Canadian soldiers. As the Royal Rifles’ position become more precarious, the men were forced to retreat into the hills of Hong Kong, and it was here that a group of wounded Canadians, threatened by a live grenade, came to fully appreciate the loyalty of Gander. For his service in battle, Sergeant Gander was awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent to the Victoria Cross for humans. This honour is dedicated to animals displaying gallantry and devotion to duty while under any control of the armed forces. Sergeant Gander is the nineteenth dog to receive this medal and the first Canadian canine to do so.

Author: George S. MacDonell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781525236280
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This is the story of a seventeen year old boy who ran away from home to join the Canadian Army at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. It describes the fateful adventures of two regiments dispatched to the Pacific to face the Japanese, and the courage of two thousand young soldiers who, when faced with an impossible task thousands of miles from home, behaved with honour and distinction. Though they lost the battle of Hong Kong, they succeeded in showing the world the mettle of which they were made.