Books published by Naval & Military Press Ltd

The fifth and final volume in this magnificent unit history of the King's Royal Rifle Corps describes the regiment's role in the Great War. The Corps' sixteen battalions were continuously in action from 1914, when the first shots were fired at Mons, until November 1918. Most of the fighting was on the western front, but the Corps also saw action in Italy, Greece and Macedonia and at Murmansk in 1919 during the allied intervention in Russia. The Corps took part in the retreat to the Marne and the subsequent 'Race to the Sea' in 1914; and the first battle of Ypres - when, such was the speed and power of the Corps' famous rifle fire, - the Germans were famously deceived into thinking they were up against entrenched machine guns. In the same battle, three companies of the Corps' First Battalion were surrounded and annihilated. The Corps saw action in 1915 at Givenchy, and the battles of 2nd Ypres - when they first experienced gas - Aubers Ridge and Festubert. Reinforced by New Army battalions, they fought at Loos and throughout the 1916 Battle of the Somme. In 1917, Corps battalions saw action at Arras, Monchy, Oppy and Third Ypres (Passchendaele). At the Battle of Cambrai, in November 1917, the Corps' 10th and 11th companies, attacked on three sides, were destroyed. The Corps lost three more battalions, the 7th, 8th and 9th, on the first day of the German Spring offensives on March 21st 1918. The 16th battalion, by contrast, beat off the attacks on it in the battle of the Lys in April, and the Corps took part in the final allied offensive which brought the Armistice in the autumn of 1918. With two appendices on the eight VCs won by the Corps in the war, and listing the 567 K.R.R.C officers killed from its total death roll of 13,000. Illustrated with nine main maps and three sketch maps.

Of the six pre-war regular divisions only two, 2nd and 5th, published a detailed history of their part in the Great War. The 2nd Division landed in France with the original BEF as part of I Corps (Haig) between 11 and 16 August 1914. It was not directly engaged at Mons and such casualties as were sustained (10 killed 80 wounded) were from artillery fire. During the retreat it was engaged at Landrecies (4th Guards Brigade) and Villers Cotterets but its first major battles were at the Marne and the Aisne, and subsequently it fought in all the battles of First Ypres. During the three months September to the end of November 1914 it suffered some 8,500 casualties.At the end of 1914 the division moved south to the Bethune sector where it remained throughout 1915, still in I Corps. It was at Festubert, Loos and the Hohenzollern Redoubt, which in all cost almost 9,000 casualties. In February 1916 it moved down to the Vimy sector in IV Corps where it stayed till July; the next move was to the Somme. Here the division had a protracted spell, till March 1917, during which time it was in action at Delville Wood, Guillemont and the Ancre incurring nearly 8,000 casualties. The 2nd was one of the few divisions not involved Third Ypres (July-November 1917) but it had earlier taken part in the April/May Arras offensive and later, in November/December, in the Battle of Cambrai. Throughout 1918 the division was in the line for much of the time, in the German offensive and in the Advance to Victory; its final action was the Battle of the Selle, 23-25 October. The final casualty figure was around 45,000. Seventeen VCs were won, and two of the commanders went on to greater things - Monro to Commander in Chief India, and Horne to command of First Army. The division took part in the march to the Rhine occupying the area around Cologne. In March 1919 the division ceased to exist as such when it was redesignated ''The Light Division.''The history is a very good one by probably the most prolific of all the authors of formation and regimental histories of the Great War. The detailed account is easy to follow and the Wyrall has taken care to name many individuals in the actions and events he is describing. Casualty details are given in appendices and in the text, and there is a nominal roll of divisional staff with all the changes throughout the war.

This is the official history, compiled by the War Office, of four armed British expeditions, mounted in the Horn of Africa into some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth. The Somali expeditions were launched a century ago in territory which, then as now, is intractable and ungovernable - at least by foreigners. Although described by the War Office as ''Uncivilised and little-known'' - Somaliland was situated in a key position on the western side of the Red Sea, dominating the southern approaches to the Suez Canal and thus sitting astride British communications with India, the Far East and Australasia. All the powers had an interest in Somaliland and three of them - Britain, France and Italy, - had, by the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, established ''protectorates'' - small slices of territory to safeguard their interests there. Periodically the native tribes, known generally to the British as ''Dervishes'', were stirred by their Mullahs to harass these territories, and it was to deter and drive back such hostile demonstrations that the four Somali operations were mounted. These two volumes recount the stories of these punitive expeditions in great detail, and are accompanied by many maps, charts and some fine quality photographs to tell the complete story of an almost forgotten ''small war''.