Military bridging, often impeded by mines and hostile enemy fire, is a vital part of the advance of any modern army. Britain's Royal Engineers have played a leading role in this crucial military operation, from the ravines behind the D-Day beaches to recent operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. The Royal Engineers have displayed incredible ingenuity in developing responses to the increasing amounts of firepower directed at bridging troops. This definitive study has been prepared with the assistance of the Royal Engineers and contains details on 170 pieces of bridging equipment, the history of all Royal Engineer assault squadrons, and accounts of all Victoria Crosses won during bridging actions.

These words may seem to have been written by an advance infantry unit or a combat brigade, carrying out an assault against entrenched enemy troops. Instead, this hair-raising narrative comes from the diary of “B” Company of the 1303rd Engineer General Service Regiment, a “non-combat” unit attached to Patton’s Third Army during his epic pursuit of the retreating German forces across France during August, 1944. Though the 1303rd (called “the thirteen-third” by its soldiers) was supposed to perform its duties outside the zone of armed conflict, these men found themselves acting as the southern flank of Patton’s rapid advance. More than once, they had to re-build bridges the Germans had hastily destroyed in order to permit the continued advance of American troops—often doing so under enemy fire. Twice they were called upon to deploy as infantry in holding back German attacks. Careful editing and annotation by military historian Joseph C. Fitzharris corrects occasional lapses in the diary, clarifies references, and provides important context for following the movements and understanding the importance of Company B, the 1303rd, and its sister regiments. Patton’s Fighting Bridge Builders rewards its readers with a new understanding of both the messiness and the bravery of the Second World War.

This book is a collection of papers presented at the 11th International Conference of Military Geoscience that was held in 2015. The conference included discussion on a diverse range of geosciences, including military history, military geology, teaching geology from a military prospective, geological influence on the battlefield, and environmental and cultural issues related to management of military lands. Geology and geography have played a significant role in military history, from providing the stone for primitive tools and weapons, to the utilization of terrain in offensive and defensive strategies. Specific to this volume, deserts comprise nearly a third of the Earth’s surface and have been the site of numerous battles where the dust, heat, and a lack of food and water have provided challenges to military leaders and warriors. This book examines the role of deserts in past and modern warfare, the problems and challenges in managing military lands in desert regions, and how desert environmental conditions can impact military equipment and personnel. This proceedings volume should be of interest to scholars, professionals, and those interested in military history, warfare, geology, geography, cultural resources, general science, and military operations.

Civilians and military personnel do not have a clear view of each other in the United States today. Conspiring against such understanding are the norms and traditions of the two cultures. On the one hand, the military is considered to like its secrecy and think of itself as morally superior to the civilians it is meant to serve. On the other hand, civilians praise or blame the armed forces based on political exigencies and generally without true comprehension of their culture. And their mutual misperceptions seem greater now than in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the Vietnam War. Yet, as U.S. Naval Academy professor Bruce Fleming points out, the military is linked to the civilian world so fundamentally that all of us pay the price if they do not develop an appreciation of one another--but that is achievable only if each side also strives to see itself clearly. As the military fulfills its mission of protecting Americans and their way of life, civilians must also do their part and support the military through budget allocations, legislation, and enlistment. Without this shared commitment, American interests suffer as a whole. Fleming shows how to close a military-civilian gap that yawns so large in twenty-first-century America that it potentially threatens national security and essential freedoms.

Excerpt from Military Engineering, Vol. 3: Military Bridging-Bridges; General Staff, War Office A boat may be ahead, astern, or abreast of another, or abeam when to one side, or on its quarter when astern to one side, or on its bow when ahead to one side. The rising tide is called the flood, and the falling tide the ebb. A vessel is said to be moored when it is made fast to a floating object secured by two or more anchorages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.