The events described in this book come from the pages of the author's own letters and diary, written during the campaign in which he was present throughout. It is a record of his impressions and observations, written at the time without any thought of publication; it was at the request of several friends that the book got published - and a remarkably detailed record it is. The regiment embarked for the Crimea on 4th April 1854, less than two weeks after the declaration of war, with a strength of 32 officers and 879 other ranks "besides women allowed to accompany their husbands!" It did not return home till 21st July 1856 having suffered a total of 769 casualties of whom 350 were dead and of these 184 died of disease, some 52%. The Rangers were in action at the Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol and at the assault on the Redan. Steevens, who embarked as a lieutenant, a company officer, emerged as a captain, awarded Brevet of Major for distinguished conduct in the field, and appointed Companion of the Bath (CB). This really is a fascinating account of one of the most disastrously managed campaigns in which the British Army has ever been involved, and the author pulls no punches, just listen to this catalogue of complaints: severe and constant overwork, want of proper cooking utensils, want of clothing (men in rags for many weeks), insufficiency of tents, want of transport, want of pickaxes and billhooks, faulty system of requisitions, lack of fresh meat and bread, green coffee with no means of roasting it and no vegetables - what a way to run an army on active service. Each chapter covers a specific period and the detail includes all the casualties by name as they occurred and the conditions under which the troops lived and fought. Lists of killed and wounded in various battles, Honours and Awards and casualty statistics are given in the appendix, even down to amputations. With the reinforcements that arrived during the course of the campaign a total of 1,954 officers and men served with the regiment in the Crimea. This is a great book.

“This interesting account of the development of the machine gun takes the reader from the Gatling guns of the Civil War to the eve of WWI....This book provides an important look at the inability of military bureaucracy to rise above inertia and find a place for a demonstrably better weapon. It is highly recommended for all service schools and colleges with a large ROTC program; it will be a useful acquisition for all undergraduate libraries with a military history collection.”–Choice

In this groundbreaking title, A. R. Oppenheimer tells how the Irish Republican Army became the most adept and experienced insurgency group the world has ever seen through their bombing expertise – and how, after generations of conflict, it all came to an end. The book is a comprehensive account of more than 150 years of Irish republican strategic, tactical, and operational details, and an analysis of the IRA’s mission, doctrine, targeting, and acquisition of weapons and explosives. As a leading expert on non-conventional weapons and explosives, Oppenheimer vividly presents the story behind the bombs – those who built and deployed them; those who had to deal with and dismantle them; and those who suffered or died from them. He analyses where, how, and why the IRA’s 19,000 bombs were built, targeted and deployed, and explores what the IRA was hoping to accomplish in its unrivaled campaign of violence and insurgency through covert acquisition, training, intelligence and counter-intelligence. Beginning with the Fenian ‘Dynamiters’ in the second half of the nineteenth century, Oppenheimer fully describes and assesses the impact of the pre-1970s bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and England and the evolution of strategies and tactics during the Troubles. He concludes with the decommissioning of an arsenal big enough to arm several battalions – which included an entire home-crafted missile system, an unsurpassed range of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and enough explosives to blow up several urban centres. The author scrutinises the level of deadly improvisation that became the hallmark of the Provisional IRA’s expertise and the ingenuity in its pioneering IED timing, delay and disguise technologies, and follows the arms race it carried on with the British Army and security services in a long war of mutual assured disruption. He also provides an insight into the bombing equipment and guns in the vast IRA inventory held at Irish Police HQ in Dublin.

Unmasking the Untold Story of World War II Of the thirty million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, eight million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan–as the ordinary Russian soldier was called–remain a mystery. We know something about how the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought. Sourced from previously inaccessible military archives, personal diaries, and intimate veterans' narratives, author Catherine Merridale unveils the untold journey of these soldiers from their first encounter with the German offensive to their hard-earned victory in Stalingrad–a place where survival was measured in mere hours. Accompany these brave hearts into the morose streets of Berlin, as they face their anger, fear, and finally, a bitter homecoming, denied of the new life for which they sacrificed everything. Discover this unique fusion of patriotism, courage, and human spirit that drove these undernourished, poorly led troops to overthrow the Nazi menace. Ivan's War emphatically places these invisible millions at the core of their deserved historical context, accounting for their major role in shaping a new era.