Military Diaries

For the vast majority of its war, 514 Squadron was stationed at RAF Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, operating Lancaster bombers. Aircrew members were drawn not just from Britain but also Canada, Australia, and New Zealand amongst others. Over 400 members of the squadron were to lose their lives in the two years of the squadron's existence, which saw the loss on operations of 66 aircraft, with another 14 being written off in accidents.

Powerful, haunting, and unforgettable, this remarkable gathering of original documents, including never-before-published letters and papers, creates a day-by-day eyewitness account of the monumental collision at Gettysburg, in the words of the commanders, soldiers, politicians, and civilians from both the North and the South who experienced firsthand the changing course of the Civil War. New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian and author Allen C. Guelzo delivers an invaluable and sobering firsthand perspective of the Civil War’s turning point.

After being captured in Singapore and transported to the infamous Burma railway, Colonel Owtram was appointed the British Camp Commandant at Chungkai, one of the largest POW camps. Many ex-prisoners testified to the mental and physical courage that he showed protecting POWs from the worst excesses of their captors. Of course his account does not admit to this, but what is clear is that in addition to the deprivation and hardship suffered by all POWs, the author bore heavy responsibility for those under his charge and the daily trauma of dealing with the unpredictable Japanese.

In April 1915 Dorothea Crewdson, a newly trained Red Cross nurse, and her best friend, Christie, received instructions to leave for Le Treport in Northern France. Filled with excitement at the prospect of her first paid job, Dorothea began writing a diary. 'Who knows how long we shall really be out here? Seems a good chance from all reports of the campaigns being ended before winter, but all is uncertain.'

From its beginnings, America has acted out much of its history on the battlefront. Yet for the average American, little is known of the Spanish-American War. The reasons for our entry never seemed compelling - at times, yellow fever seemed more the enemy than did Spanish troops - and the United States was ill prepared for the venture. Nevertheless, this conflict served to unify a country that only 30 years before had been hopelessly divided by civil strife.

The Second World War had been under way for a year when Marie and John Williamson welcomed two English brothers to join them and their two children in their small house in north Toronto for the duration of the conflict. Marie wrote over 150 letters to the boys’ mother, Margaret Sharp, imagining that she could make Margaret feel she was still with her children. She shepherded the boys through education decisions and illnesses, eased them into a strange new life, and rejoiced when they embraced unfamiliar winter sports.

The men and women honored in Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation speak in this collection of letters from and about the Depression and World War II.

From a political and military point of view, the Partisan Diary provides firsthand knowledge of how the partisans in Piedmont fought, what obstacles they encountered, and who joined the struggle against the Nazis and the Fascists. The mountainous terrain and long winters of the Alpine regions (the site of many of their battles) and the ever-present threat of reprisals by German occupiers and their fascist partners exacerbated problems of organization among the various partisan groups.

"War Diary: The Diary of Mike Rogers" is a poignant historical record that chronicles the experiences of a young boy, Mike Rogers, during World War II. The diary begins in 1939, capturing the tense atmosphere as Britain enters the war. It provides detailed daily entries that cover the significant and mundane aspects of wartime life, from the fear of air raids and the impact of rationing to personal reflections and observations of everyday occurrences.

In diesem detailliert beschriebenen Tagebuch des Jagdfliegers Rüdiger von Kirchmayr wird der Luftkrieg über Europa in eine neue Dimension gehoben. Wir begleiten den Soldaten durch seine Ausbildung hin zum Jagdflieger, seine ersten Einsätze an der Front und auch die ersten Verluste unter den Kameraden. Die Ritterlichkeit im Luftkampf unter Jagdfliegern wird ebenes beschrieben wie die unschöne Bombardierung von Zielen als Schlachtflieger Ersatz im Erdkampf.

Doug Heywood was a teenager when he discovered, in a shoebox hidden in a wardrobe, hundreds of letters, all written by his father, Scott Heywood. As a POW on the infamous Burma Railway, Scott wrote almost daily to his young wife, Margery, on scraps of paper that had to be hidden from guards. These letters tell of an enduring love – and also, intriguingly, of how Scott dealt with the most brutally testing circumstances.

Dirty Eddie’s War is the true account of the wartime experiences of Harry Andrew March, Jr., captured by way of diary entries addressed to his beloved wife, Elsa. Nicknamed “Dirty Eddie” by his comrades, he served as a member of four squadrons operating in the South Pacific, frequently under difficult and perilous conditions.

Niels Bøgh Andersens "Krigsdagbog" er et enestående historisk dokument over Anden Verdenskrig set fra den tyske side af fronten. Daglige begravelser, forår i Paris, vinter i 45 graders frost i Hviderusland, hjemve af den værste skuffe og alligevel små lysglimt i mørket. Niels Bøgh Andersen var en del af det danske mindretal i Sydslesvig og blev indkaldt til at kæmpe for et land, som han ikke selv så som sit fædreland. Niels Bøgh-Andersen (1908-1991) var en dansk lærer og forfatter, der i en årrække var forstander for Jaruplund Højskole.

Victory and defeat, love and loss are the prevalent realities of Letters from the Greatest Generation, a remarkable and frank collection of World War II letters penned by American men and women serving overseas. Here, the hopes and dreams of the greatest generation fill each minute, and their voices ring loud and clear. "It's all part of the game. But it's bloody and rough," wrote one soldier to his wife. "Wearing two stripes now and proud as an old cat with five kittens," marked another.

At the end of the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 stripped Germany of her overseas colonies and imposed a massive reparations bill for the damage and destruction caused to France and other countries. The people of Germany, hit by hyperinflation in 1923 and by mass unemployment in 1929, desperately looked for a way out of the crisis. In these circumstances, an obscure ex-corporal with a gift for scathing oratory, Adolf Hitler, was able to lead the extremist Nazi Party was to power in 1933.

At the end of the First World War the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 stripped Germany of her overseas colonies and imposed a massive reparations bill for the damage and destruction caused to France and other countries. The people of Germany, hit by hyperinflation in 1923 and by mass unemployment in 1929, desperately looked for a way out of the crisis. In these circumstances an obscure ex-corporal with a gift for scathing oratory, Adolf Hitler, was able to lead the extremist Nazi Party was to power in 1933.

While serving as an assistant to Vice President George H. W. Bush, Chase Untermeyer concluded that the only way to learn how the US government really works was to leave the silken cocoon of the White House and seek a position in one of the departments or agencies. Inside Reagan’s Navy offers an engaging, up-close narrative of Untermeyer’s experiences in the Pentagon, interwoven with descriptions of events and people, humorous anecdotes, and telling quotations.

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native enlisted when he turned 18, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home - all in the same day.

World War II rises in its vastness and complexity over the rest of human history. A number of victims difficult to conceive, never surpassed by any other conflict; the masses of men, women, and resources mobilized in a conflict that shook even the most remote ends of the planet; the ideological battle between totalitarianism and democracy, between fascism and communism, the passions and hatred that it aroused; the unimaginable horror and fanaticism of the Holocaust; geopolitical games; the repetition of World War I, on an even more dire scale.

Published for the first time in the United States, Combat Diary is the war story of Dog Battery, also known US Army Gun Battalion D. Originally only published in Germany in 1945, it tells the tale of 150 US soldiers as they arrive in England in July of 1944. The battalion arrives on the beaches of Normandy, fights through France—and ultimately into Germany—at the time of the fall of the Nazi regime. It is an intimate account of the actions and endurance of the soldiers over those seven months.