Military glory - the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood. Abraham Lincoln

Selected Titles:

Psychological Warfare  Charles Roetter B T Batsford 1st 1974 Even today surprisingly little is known about the conduct of psychological warfare in the two World Wars. This book explains in fascinating detail how and with what success the psychological arm was used by the British, the Americans, the Germans and the Japanese. Himself a "psychological warrior" in World War II, Charles Roetter, its author, has the dual qualification of having been both an active participant and so subsequently a close student, of the subject. Valuable as the book is as an analytical study of the principles and techniques of psychological warfare, it is no less engrossing as an account of the specific ways in which these techniques were put into practice. That they were sometimes dramatically successful is proved, for example, by Goebbels' exploitation of the Katyn Massacre as a means of sowing discord between Russia and her allies by the British - but ostensibly German broadcasting station "Soldatensender Calais" (its plausibility increased by an ironically outrageous vilification of Churchill); by the American broadcasts to Japan of Captain Zacharias, and by the beguilingly sexy transmissions of "Tokyo Rose" to American troops. An informed and diverting narrative is illustrated by reproductions of pictorial propaganda used by the participants in both World Wars. 8vo. Fine+ in a VG++ wrapper. 445 gms £7.50

History of the Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert's) 1919 - 1945  George Molesworth (compiled by) Naval & Military Press (no date) FOREWORD This third volume of the History of The Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert's) deals with the period from 1919 to 1945. It covers the years between the two wars when the Regiment played an important part in the mechanisation, re-equipment and reorganisation of the Army for the tasks which lay ahead. It also covers the years of the Second World War in which the Regiment, like so many others, had to throw off new units and spend a long period carrying out essential garrison duties while training itself for the decisive fighting which was to come. Years of waiting and training in time of war are apt to disappoint and discourage men who are anxious to fight for their country, but esprit de corps was proof against this danger. Battalions of the Regiment, both old and new, steadily increased in efficiency, inspired by the spirit of service and comradeship which has ever been a characteristic of the Somerset Light Infantry and, when the chance came, were ready to acquit themselves with honour in bitter fighting in many lands. Regimental esprit de corps has always been the main strength of the British Army and this volume shows that in the late war it again brought us through the dark days to victory. If we continue to cherish that spirit, so that it remains an inspiration in whatever circumstances modern conditions of war may require the Regiment to serve, we need have no fear for the future. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to George Molesworth, whose devotion to his old Regiment has led him voluntarily to devote so much time and skill to the writing of this volume. J. G. DES R. SWAYNE Colonel, The Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert's) 4to paperback 285 pages in F+ condition. Facsimile reprint of 1951 original. 740 gms £30.00

A Quiet Courage - women agents in the French Resistance  Liane Jones Bantam Press 1st 1990 In the Second World War thirty-eight women were recruited, trained and sent into Nazioccupied France as agents of the Special Operations Executive. They took their place beside four hundred male SOE agents, working with local resistance groups, helping to arm and organize them and sending daily clandestine messages back to London on smuggled wireless sets. None of them had known military life before the war; most of them were only in their twenties and were recruited simply because they spoke French. A Quiet Courage is their story, told through the personal testimonies of four of the central characters with contributions from colleagues, friends and fellow resistants. It is about the resistance war as these women fought it day by day: the fears, the dangers, the loyalties, the hardships. It is about carrying an illegal wireless set on a train full of Gestapo officers; it is about bicycling seventy miles over the mountains and through enemy checkpoints. It is about escaping arrest and being arrested. It is about surviving - and about the women who did not survive. Liane Jones has spent two years researching and interviewing the women who worked in France and has drawn together a comprehensive and, above all, atmospheric account of an agent's life under the Nazis. It is a deeply moving and personal story of courage and ideals which cannot fail to strike chords in a younger peacetime generation never tested to the same degree. Large 8vo. Very minor creasing to the dustwrapper, otherwise the book is in Mint condition in a VG++ wrapper. 675 gms £30.00

The Missing of the Somme  Geoff Dyer Hamish Hamilton 2nd imp 1994 'Head bowed, rifle on his back, a soldier is silhouetted against the going down of the sun, looking at the grave of a dead comrade, remembering him. A photograph from the war, it is also a photograph of the way the war will be remembered. It is a photograph of the future, of the future's view of the past. We will remember them.' One hot summer's afternoon Geoff Dyer stood alone before the vast war memorial at Thiepval in France, which commemorates the 73,077 men who lost their lives in the Battle of the Somme and found no known resting place. Inexorably drawn to a site in which so much of the meaning of our century is concentrated, he sought to understand what brought him to Thiepval, and to fathom the spell which the First World War continues to cast now that it is at the furthest edge of living memory. His journey of inquiry takes him from the cemeteries and one-time battlefields of Flanders to the memorials that stand in every town and village in Britain, from the countless poems, memoirs, photographs and documentaries that the Great War spawned to an old family album whose images record how this most farreaching event touched the lives of his own grandparents. Relying more on personal impressions than systematic analysis, Geoff Dyer weaves a network of myth and memory that illuminates our own relation to the past. Through its original insights, eloquent prose and evocative photographs. The Missing of the Somme offers a fresh perspective on the war that so famously failed to end all wars. 8vo. Minor creasing to thedustwrapper, otherwise Mint in a VG+ wrapper. 365 gms £35.00