Featured battle : The Battle of the Somme

Part of First World War

Date : 01 July 1916 - 19 November 1916

After the initial 7 day [start 24 June] bombardment of the German lines the battle consisted in the main of a series of attacks, almost on a daily basis, by British, Commonwealth and French forces on established German positions to the north of the river Somme. German counter-attacks often took back all or most of the gains made. The final British gain was a strip of land of an average depth of six miles along twenty miles of the front. Manpower losses on both sides were significant and about even. On the 15th September this battle saw the first use/misuse of tanks.

Yangtze Showdown. China and the ordeal of HMS Amethyst

Brian Izzard
Cover to cover a really good read. This is the story of the Yangtze incident in the round, the military and political machinations prior to, during and after the event. If you know the gung-ho 1957 film with hero Richard Todd then prepared to be shocked by the truth. There are action heroes a plenty but there are also ‘politicos’ who are anything but heroes.
The first sentence of the book is ‘A couple of shells whistled overhead and a group of sailors on board HMS Amethyst came to the same conclusion “They couldn’t hit a barn door”. The story goes on with the same engaging vitality. As for the Chinese hitting barn doors I remember newspaper photographs at the time rechristening HMS Amethyst as HMS Pepperpot.
Supporting the text are two useful maps and an informative set of photographs. Also the set of five appendices complete the information given in the story.
Well researched and beautifully written this book will be informative to military buffs and students of cold war politics. But more than those people we highly recommended it to the much wider audience of anyone who enjoy a good read.

Seaforth Publishing, 2020