The Taste of Battle: Front Line Action 1914-1991 by Bryan Perrett
How did the ordinary 20th-century foot soldier feel in the midst of a major battle, not yet aware that he was making history and lacking the vital information known to his commanders? Mixing fact and fiction, an author of more than a dozen military books takes us into the heart of the action in Mons, the Somme, Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, Vietnam, and more, showing us real events through the eyes of imagined characters. Editorial Reviews Review As close as you can get to the reality of war. Three generations of front line soldiers recount their experiences --Army Journal Bryan Perrett is a good writer, most of his book I have read, however the one writing as encyclopedia are not a good as the book written from the military and Soldiers point of view, overall I will recommend most of his book for an informative and riveting historical reading --By Louis Trujillo The formula is pretty simple - insert a fictional soldier into a factual battle in one of 5 major conflicts of the twentieth century. Make the soldier have a family and friends and live, breathe, and get scared, in most cases without any understanding of the strategic implications of what he is doing or of the big picture he is a part of. The book reads well and a great effort is made to describe the social context and conditions prevailing at the time of each of the wars described. The wars covered are as follow: 4 x WWI, 4 x WWII, 1 x Malaya, 1 x Vietnam and 1 x Desert Storm. Each story is followed by a brief description of the outcome of the engagement and of the sources relied on to create the story, which was important to me in giving the stories credibility, particularly the one in which an armored car sneaks up behind a Tiger I and destroys it using a 37mm cannon!! If the author reads this I for one would love to see more - the possibilities seem endless - an Australian in New Guinea, a Soviet soldier fighting for the tractor factory, a German defending the Reichstag during the final soviet assault, the assault on Omaha Beach, either side in the battles for the Huertgen Forest or the Siegfried line. How about a Russian soldier in WWI, a little-known theatre to most of us. --By Mark Metcalfe About the Author Bryan Perrett left the army as a successful career officer to take up the pen as a full-time writer. Able to write to any brief (he was captioning picture-strips for schoolgirl comics at one point), he found his metier as a military historian and writer of good, fast, episodic, narrative popular histories. His many books, all founded on meticulous research from primary sources, find a wide popular readership. He is the bestselling author in the bestselling Cassell Military Classics series
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Binding: Hardcover
Published by: Cassell: , 2000
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ISBN: 9780304353019 | 0304353019
280 pages.
Book Condition: Good
Ex-library
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