R.C. Sherriff, author of Journeys End, the most famous play of the Great War, saw all his front line service with the 9th Battalion East Surrey Regiment. This intense experience profoundly affected his writing and, through his play, it continues to have a powerful influence on our understanding of the conflict. Yet the story of his battalion has never been told in full until now. In The Journeys End Battalion, Michael Lucas gives a vivid account of its history. Using official and unofficial sources, diaries, letters, and British and German wartime records, he describes the individuals who served in it and the operations they took part in. He identifies the inspiration for Journeys End and considers how Sherriff delved into his experiences and those of his fellow soldiers in order to create his drama. So not only does the book shed new light on the wartime career of R.C. Sherriff, but it is a valuable record of the operation of a British battalion on the Western Front during the Great War.

The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. This play deals with the horror and futility of trench warfare, as Captain Stanhope and his officers await attack in their dugout.

The author of Before the Flames and the son of a member of the ill-fated infantry battalion discusses America's 551st Battalion and their heroic, little-known role during World War II's Battle of the Bulge.

“The definitive account . . . A fascinating combination of grand strategy and personal vignettes” (Max Boot, The Wall Street Journal). Finalist for the 2013 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History Surge is an insider’s view of the most decisive phase of the Iraq War. After exploring the dynamics of the war during its first three years, the book takes the reader on a journey to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where the controversial new US Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency doctrine was developed; to Washington, DC, and the halls of the Pentagon, where the joint chiefs of staff struggled to understand the conflict; to the streets of Baghdad, where soldiers worked to implement the surge and reenergize the flagging war effort before the Iraqi state splintered; and to the halls of Congress, where Amb. Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus testified in some of the most contentious hearings in recent history. Using newly declassified documents, unpublished manuscripts, interviews, author notes, and published sources, Surge explains how President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Ambassador Crocker, General Petraeus, and other US and Iraqi political and military leaders shaped the surge from the center of the maelstrom in Baghdad and Washington. “This is one of the best books to emerge from the Iraq War. I expect it will be remembered as one of the most insightful accounts from an insider of the key ‘surge’ phase of that conflict. The chapter on the Sunni Awakening especially stands out as a terrific overview of that critical development.” —Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco

An Iraq War veteran's riveting journey from suicidal despair to hope After serving in a scout-sniper platoon in Mosul, Tom Voss came home carrying invisible wounds of war — the memory of doing or witnessing things that went against his fundamental beliefs. This was not a physical injury that could heal with medication and time but a "moral injury" — a wound to the soul that eventually urged him toward suicide. Desperate for relief from the pain and guilt that haunted him, Voss embarked on a 2,700-mile journey across America, walking from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to the Pacific Ocean with a fellow veteran. Readers walk with these men as they meet other veterans, Native American healers, and spiritual teachers who appear in the most unexpected forms. At the end of their trek, Voss realizes he is really just beginning his healing. He pursues meditation training and discovers sacred breathing techniques that shatter his understanding of war and himself, and move him from despair to hope. Voss's story will give inspiration to veterans, their friends and family, and survivors of all kinds.

The never-before-told story of one of the most decorated units in the war in Afghanistan and its fifteen-month ordeal that culminated in the 2008 Battle of Wanat, the war's deadliest A single company of US paratroopers--calling themselves the "Chosen Few"--arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides. Month after month, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets, and machine-gun fire poured down on the isolated and exposed paratroopers as America's focus and military resources shifted to Iraq. Just weeks before the paratroopers were to go home, they faced their last--and toughest--fight. Near the village of Wanat in Nuristan province, an estimated three hundred enemy fighters surrounded about fifty of the Chosen Few and others defending a partially finished combat base. Nine died and more than two dozen were wounded that day in July 2008, making it arguably the bloodiest battle of the war in Afghanistan. The Chosen Few would return home tempered by war. Two among them would receive the Medal of Honor. All of them would be forever changed.

DIVCitizen soldiers have played a unique role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and their extended deployment and role in the wars battles have changed the towns, cities, and states they hail from as well. The Devil's Sandbox - a nickname for Iraq - is the story of the 2nd Battalion of Oregon's 162nd Infantry Regiment (2/162), and provides readers an intimate look at the reality of National Guardsmen at war. Follow the 2/162 from their call-up in the summer of 2003 to their return home in the spring of 2005. Witness some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq War and some of the most rewarding and forward-looking civil affairs projects aimed at rebuilding the broken nation of Iraq. Read how the town in Oregon struggles to do without the people - the accountants, lawyers, mechanics, et. al. - who went to serve in the war. The Devil's Sandbox offers a rare insight into what this war means for the citizen-soldier at home and abroad, and chronicles a battalion that earned the respect of the regular Army soldiers who fought alongside them in some of the toughest battles in the Iraq war./div

Previously published in 2007 by AuthorHouse under the title: Arc Light: A Marine's journey through South Vietnam.

The 50th Signal Battalion was activated July 1, 1940, at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, not long before the United States was drawn into World War II. In September of 1941, a portion of the Battalion was sent to Iceland, followed by the rest in January of 1942 in order to build a communications infrastructure for Iceland Base Command on the island. Upon completion of that assignment, the Battalion was sent to England to prepare for the invasion of continental Europe. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Battalion landed on Utah Beach in support of VII Corp and its assigned units, which continued until the end of the war in Europe. Much of the information and many of the photographs contained in this book came from meeting or conversing over the phone with World War II veterans of the 50th Signal Battalion or the surviving members of their families.