Today the Victoria Cross remains the supreme British award for bravery. It takes precedence over all other awards and decorations. During its 160-year history, since the first medals were given for gallantry during the Crimean War in the 1850s, 1,357 of these medals have been won, and almost fifty of them have gone to the soldiers of Cumbria, Durham and Northumberland . Alan Whitworth, in this carefully researched and revealing account, describes in graphic detail the exploits and the lives of this elite band of heroes. Within this group of Northern VC recipients are a number of outstanding names, including Richard Annand who gained the first VC of the Second World War and Roland Bradford who was one of only four sets of brothers to have secured the VC. He also had the distinction of becoming the youngest general in the British army. But among the roll of the brave whose gallantry and self-sacrifice are celebrated in these pages the reader will find the names and extraordinary deeds of many other men who were either born or bred or lived and died in the North. They will also find the story of the youngest Victoria Cross recipient who won his award aged just nineteen.The stories of these ordinary individuals who have 'performed some signal act of valour or devotion to their country' will be fascinating reading for anyone who is interested in military history in general and in the long military tradition of the North of England.

The thirteenth and final volume of the ‘VCs of the First World War’ series features the lives and careers of forty-six servicemen who won the coveted Victoria Cross in theatres of war – or ‘Sideshows’, as they became known – beyond the Western Front and Gallipoli.Opening with the stories of four VC winners who took part in the prolonged struggle to drive the German Army out of East Africa, VCs of the First World War: The Sideshows goes on to tell the stories of the two Indian Army winners of the VC defending the North-West Frontier. Finally, it covers the campaigns against the Austro–German forces in Italy; securing the oil wells in Mesopotamia (later Iraq); defending the Suez Canal and attacking the Ottoman Army in Palestine and lastly serving in Salonika in the Balkans.Each VC winner’s act of bravery is recorded here in intricate detail, together with the background of the men and their lives after the war – if they survived.

The British Empire at its height stretched around the globe. From Asia to the Americas, scores of countries were conquered or assimilated into the greatest commonwealth of nations in history. Many of these countries were won, and held, at the point of the bayonet, and British soldiers and sailors fought long and hard campaigns in deserts, mountains and jungles to maintain and expand the Empire. Fighting, though, means bloodshed; it also means bravery. Victoria Crosses were awarded in operations against Persia, Abyssinia and China, in New Zealand, Burma and Sudan, in the Perak War, the Andaman Islands Expedition and the Mashona Rebellion to name but a few of the forty-four different campaigns of the colonial era.The Victoria Cross Wars explains Britains involvement in these little-known and forgotten campaigns and details the battles and engagements that resulted in the granting of the most highly regarded award for valor in the face of the enemy. The greater conflicts of the twentieth century receive due treatment as do more recent operations in the troubled parts of the world.A total of 1,358 VCs have been awarded since the cross of valor was first instituted in 1855, the latest of which was announced in February 2015. The stories behind the awarding of these medals have been repeated in countless anthologies but The Victoria Cross Wars explains not just what the men did, but why they were there and what they were fighting for.

On the Western Front during the First World War, 490 men won the British Empire's highest award for gallantry, the Victoria Cross. A companion for any visitor to the First World War battlefields in France and Flanders, this reference book lists every VC recipient from 1914 to 1918 in alphabetical order.

In Liverpool local heroes tend to be drawn from football or the music business or from the period when the city was one of Britains greatest ports. Although it has produced many military heroes, only double VC winner Noel Chavasse has had the recognition he deserves. James Murphy, in this meticulously researched and sympathetically written book, sets the record straight. His biographies of twenty-three Liverpool VC winners show what extraordinary sacrifices the men of the city made when they were called on to fight for their country. He gives graphic accounts of the exploits that won them the VC, and he recalls other actions in which they were involved. His main purpose is to show these men at war, but he also provides an insight into their civilian lives, and he records the times they lived in. And he dispels the myths and corrects the errors of fact that have grown up around them.

At the end of 1917, after three years of trench warfare on the Western Front, the Allied armies of Britain and France, and those of their main opponent, Germany, had reached a point of exhaustion and hibernation.On March 21 1918, the German Army launched a massive assault on the Western Front, hurling fifty-nine divisions into battle against the British Fifth Army, smashing through British lines and advancing 40 miles per week. More offensives were to follow throughout the spring, including at Aisne and Marne, with the aim of ending the war before American forces could reach the Continent and reinforce the Allied lines. Nevertheless, although the German Army left the British Army reeling, the Tommies retreated in good order and fought all the way. It was during these bloody battles, which lasted until July 1918, that fifty-seven men stood out for acts of extraordinary daring and bravery. To these men the highest military honour was awarded – the Victoria Cross. This book reveals the true extent of their bravery, their backgrounds and their lives after the war.

Networks-on-Chip: From Implementations to Programming Paradigms provides a thorough and bottom-up exploration of the whole NoC design space in a coherent and uniform fashion, from low-level router, buffer and topology implementations, to routing and flow control schemes, to co-optimizations of NoC and high-level programming paradigms. This textbook is intended for an advanced course on computer architecture, suitable for graduate students or senior undergrads who want to specialize in the area of computer architecture and Networks-on-Chip. It is also intended for practitioners in the industry in the area of microprocessor design, especially the many-core processor design with a network-on-chip. Graduates can learn many practical and theoretical lessons from this course, and also can be motivated to delve further into the ideas and designs proposed in this book. Industrial engineers can refer to this book to make practical tradeoffs as well. Graduates and engineers who focus on off-chip network design can also refer to this book to achieve deadlock-free routing algorithm designs. Provides thorough and insightful exploration of NoC design space. Description from low-level logic implementations to co-optimizations of high-level program paradigms and NoCs. The coherent and uniform format offers readers a clear, quick and efficient exploration of NoC design space Covers many novel and exciting research ideas, which encourage researchers to further delve into these topics. Presents both engineering and theoretical contributions. The detailed description of the router, buffer and topology implementations, comparisons and analysis are of high engineering value.

Officers led and men followed; all were expected to do their duty without thought of reward. Enlisted men rarely penetrated the officer ranks and promotion owed more to money than merit. Then came the Crimean War.The incompetence and ineffectiveness of the senior officers contrasted sharply with the bravery of the lower ranks. Fuelled by the reports from the first-ever war correspondents which were read by an increasingly literate public, the mumblings of discontent rapidly grew into a national outcry. Questions were asked in Parliament, answers were demanded by the press why were the heroes of the Alma, Inkerman and the Charge of the Light Brigade not being recognised? Something had be done.That something was the introduction of an award that would be of such prestige it would be sought by all men from the private to the Field Marshal. It would be the highest possible award for valour in the face of the enemy and it bore the name of the Queen for whom the men fought.This is the story of how the first Victoria Crosses were attained in the heat of the most deadly conflict of the nineteenth century. It is also an examination of how the definition of courage, as recognised by the awarding of VCs, evolved, from saving the regimental colours at the Alma to saving a comrade in the No Mans Land before Sevastopol.

The dialogue between American Lutherans about foreign policy during the contentious decade provides an interesting perspective on the historiography of the US during the Vietnam era, says Settje, because they have never been a homogeneous or unified group, and represent a broad spectrum of religious, political, and diplomatic views not particularly associated with liberal or conservative positions. While he does look at some Lutherans who took public action, his focus is on debates within the denomination.