Author: Random HousePublisher:
ISBN: 9780099804192
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Brasso, Blanco and Bull
Author: Tony ThornePublisher: Constable
ISBN: 1780334605
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 147
Book Description
When Tony Thorne first turned up for his medical in 1956 he had little idea of the adventures he would face and the people he would encounter over the next two years in service. Brasso, Blanco & Bull is the hilarious account of life in National Service, where 23339788 Thorne faced the horrors of basic training, the boredom of the drill yard as well as the unforgettable camaraderie of the squad. Praise: 'This book took me back more years than I care to remember.' Bernard Cribbins, The Parachute Regiment, 1947-8 'A great reminder for those of us that did it and a great treat for those that didn't.' Windsor Davies, East Surrey Regiment, 1950-2 'More Virgin Soldiers just like the ones I remember. This lot made me laugh a lot.' Leslie Thomas, Royal Army Pay Corps 1949-51 'I thoroughly enjoyed the read.It took me back to my days of national service, most of which I enjoyed!' Freddie Truman, OBE, Royal Air Force 1951-3
Author: Tony ThorneBellboy to Barman
Author: Roger M. RogersPublisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1411670086
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
The story of a sixteen year old boy who joined the British Merchant Navy in the 1950's. From sea training school, first trip on an oil tanker to Eygpt and Middle East. Passenger liner for two years on South American run as Bellboy. Troop ship to the Far East during the Suez crisis. Cape ships to South Africa and two years on Britain's first premier cruise liner as a cocktail barman. Told as it happened sometimes x-rated. The reason for this book I am always being asked to recount my tales at sea. After you have read this would you allow your sixteen year old son to go to sea? I don't think so.
NATIONAL SERVICE, ELVIS and ME!
Author: David FowlerPublisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1409295923
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
National Service, Elvis and Me! is a serious but light-hearted look at the 13 years of peacetime National Service which led to the call-up of around 2.3 million men in their late teenage years. Most men served for 2 years between 1949 and 1961. Every alternate Thursday for 13 years 6,000 men were called-up and allocated to either the Army, the RAF or the Royal Navy. Elvis Presley was on manoeuvres in Germany with the US Forces when he entered the story, and Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Harry Corbett, Brian Clough, Kenny Lynch, Bill Wyman and other personalities also feature.Serious in some parts, and hilariously funny in others, there are tales of training in the UK; square bashing and ’bulling',war games the antics many of the testosterone charged men got up to; humour; and the camaraderie which arose from men being thrown into a massive pond and having to sink or swim. With 425 pages and many photographs this book is a fascinating read for anyone.
Sport and the Military
Author: Tony MasonPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139788973
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
On battleships, behind the trenches of the Western Front and in the midst of the Desert War, British servicemen and women have played sport in the least promising circumstances. When 400 soldiers were asked in Burma in 1946 what they liked about the Army, 108 put sport in first place - well ahead of comradeship and leave - and this book explores the fascinating history of organised sport in the life of officers and other ranks of all three British services from 1880–1960. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book examines how organised sport developed in the Victorian army and navy, became the focus of criticism for Edwardian army reformers, and was officially adopted during the Great War to boost morale and esprit de corps. It shows how service sport adapted to the influx of professional sportsmen, especially footballers, during the Second World War and the National Service years.
The Solitary Spy
Author: Douglas BoydPublisher: The History Press
ISBN: 075098290X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
Of the 2.3 million National Servicemen conscripted during the Cold War, 4,200 attended the secret Joint Services School for Linguists, tasked with supplying much-needed Russian speakers to the three services. The majority were in RAF uniform, as the Warsaw Pact saw air forces become the greatest danger to the West. After training, they were sent to the front lines in Germany and elsewhere to snoop on Russian aircraft in real time. Posted to RAF Gatow in Berlin, ideally placed for signals interception, Douglas Boyd came to know Hitler's devastated former capital, divided as it was into Soviet, French, US and British sectors. Pulling no punches, he describes the SIGINT work, his subsequent arrest by armed Soviet soldiers one night on the border, and how he was locked up without trial in solitary confinement in a Stasi prison. The Solitary Spy is a unique account of the terrifying experience of incarceration and interrogation in an East German political prison, from which Boyd eventually escaped one step ahead of the KGB.
Sexing the Soldier
Author: Rachel WoodwardPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134163622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Sexing the Soldier takes a critical look at how gender - what it means to be a man or a woman - is understood within the contemporary British Army, and the political and practical consequences of this. Drawing on original research, this informaive volume looks at: the history and structure of the British Army as a masculine institution personnel policies which deal with gender issues the construction of ideas about military masculinities and femininities within the Army media representations of the figure of the soldier. Using case studies ranging from the exclusion of women from direct combat posts, to the issues surrounding bullying, this book argues that we need a fuller, more nuanced assessment of gender issues in the military that moves beyond the simplistic ideas about women's and men's 'natural' capacities for soldiering.
Eyewitness Korea
Author: James GoultyPublisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1473870925
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399
Book Description
Today the Korean War of 1950-1953 is overshadowed by later twentieth-century conflicts in Vietnam and the Middle East, yet at the time it was the focus of international attention.It threatened to lead to a third world war, and although fought on a limited scale, it still involved over a million men under UN command and even more on the Communist side. It left the American and British troops who took part with a range of intense recollections that often marked them for the rest of their lives, and it is these experiences that James Goulty draws on in this eyewitness history of the conflict.He uses official documents, letters, diaries, regimental histories, memoirs, oral histories and correspondence to show what the war was like for those who took part. Their accounts vividly contrast the American and British experience as seen through the eyes of individual servicemen, and they throw fresh light on the relations between the UN forces on their different attitudes, tactics, training and equipment, and on the tensions that developed between them.
Armoured Warfare in the British Army, 1914–1939
Author: Richard TaylorPublisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399001191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
This is the first volume in a three-volume illustrated history of the evolution of armored manoeuvre warfare in the British army, covering the period from 1914 until 1939. Author Dick Taylor’s tour de force covers the evolution of the tank and armored cars in response to the specific conditions created by trench warfare, the history of the use of tanks during the war, as well as the critical period between the wars in which the tank was both refined and neglected. He also looks in detail at the amalgamations and mechanization of the horsed cavalry which led to the formation of the Royal armored Corps in 1939. His detailed and absorbing narrative covers the social and human aspects of the story as well as the technology, and explains how the nation that invented and first fielded the tank in 1916 struggled to maintain the lead after the Armistice.
