[FJK]≫ PDF Free The The Western Front Companion Mark Adkin 9781845137106 Books

The The Western Front Companion Mark Adkin 9781845137106 Books

Download As PDF : The The Western Front Companion Mark Adkin 9781845137106 Books

The The Western Front Companion Mark Adkin 9781845137106 Books

At last a book about the First World War that grabs your attention and interest in a most attractive manner, despite the horrendous story to be told within. For the most part the First World War has been written about in drab lumbering tomes, with dreary sepia photographs and in-comprehensible maps. And so be it, after all it was the most terrible of all wars....
But here in this book we now have the means to get through those terrible times effortlessly, as its format allows us to find different aspects of the war which might interest us, at our fingertips.
It starts with the assassination in Sarajevo, and moves through the war year by year quite quickly with super maps to follow major battles and events. These maps are very well presented in colour and easy to follow, I find it strange to praise maps of any description, as I have always found battle maps, confusing and time consuming to say the least. The rest of the book details the various Armies, and much much more, like VC's won, Artillery Units, Machine Gun operations, Commanders, the Air War, Tank Warfare, Trenches, Support Services, and so on.....
One piece of information I found incredible was given at the start of each year of war, and that was the number of various countries going to war with each other across Europe and beyond, right up to the end. It would be laughable if we were not talking about the vast number of young soldiers and civilians losing their lives for nothing much more than the old men ruling these various countries b******g at each other.... (and we're supposed to be living in a crazy world today?)
The book is a modern masterpiece, easy on the eye and waiting to be opened again and again to provide much information on those terrible times.......


Tags : The The Western Front Companion [Mark Adkin] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Fine, THE WESTERN FRONT COMPANION - The Complete Guide to How the Armies Fought for Four Devastating Years,Mark Adkin,The The Western Front Companion,AURUM PRESS LTD,1845137108

The The Western Front Companion Mark Adkin 9781845137106 Books Reviews

The most common image of World War One is thousands of men walking into massed machine gun fire.
Nowhere is that image stronger than the Western Front where Great Britain and France fought Germany.
This image contains a good deal of truth while hiding the complex nature of the fighting.
Technology trumped tactics and communications to create hell.

Much of “modern warfare” comes out of this hell.
Airplanes appear in World War One, tactical bombing, observation and control of air space become critical.
Automatic weapons, grenades, flame throwers become standard issue to soldiers ending the rifle only armies.
Shovels, picks, barbwire and concrete become critical items.
In No Man’s Land, modern infantry small unit tactics are developed.
Artillery dominates battles with indirect fire requiring communications or guesswork.
Rolling barrages, pre-attack bombardment, counter battery fire over long distances change the application of artillery fire.
Tanks and anti-tank weapons appear.
Poison gas and protective gear change the rules of war as gasmask are still issued.

This multi-color oversized book captures all of the above and much more.
Actual photographs, illustrations, coupled with “then & now” pictures are a visual treat that complements the intelligent text.
Year by year, the reader follows the war in thru battles and changes in equipment.
This makes for an enjoyable learning experience.
This book is useful as an introduction and/or a reference to the Western Front in an enjoyable format.
What author Mark Adkin did for the Battles of Trafalgar, Waterloo, and Gettysburg, he now does on a larger scale for World War I's Western Front. In a bit over 500 pages, Adkin describes the origins of the First World War, the armies that fought on the Western Front from1914 to 1918, and their combat and support arms. There are chapters devoted to the new weapons, the tank and the airplane. Another chapter concentrates on the conduct of trench warfare. A final chapter sums up the indelible mark an appalling war left on Europe for a generation or more.

Adkin's narrative manages to be informative for the experienced student of the conflict while remaining accessible to the general reader. The narrative is enhanced by lots of maps, graphics, and photographs. The collection of photographs might justify the book on their own. Explicit diagrams break down some representative and complicated combat actions. There are numerous embedded vignettes on various generals and heroes. All in all, an excellent reading experience, and very highly recommended.
I have had the book for several years. It is basically a large coffee table book and therefore hard to manage except for reading at a desk. When I saw that a ebook was available, I jumped at the chance to get it. While, the ebook will never take the place of the actual book, it is much easier to handle and easy to read. If I have one complaint it is that the legends and notes that accompany the maps in the ebook are usually several pages away from the map itself making it hard to page back and forth as your study the map. The only other complaint is that the title should be The British Army on the Western Front as very little was told about the French and Americans on the front. That why only 4 out of 5 stars.

I own three companion books by Mark Adkin, this one, Gettysburg, and Trafalgar. All are excellent and all worth the cost. It was actually when I was at Gettysburg that I realized what an great help an ebook like this would have been and I have been looking for his Gettysburg book to come out sometime.
At last a book about the First World War that grabs your attention and interest in a most attractive manner, despite the horrendous story to be told within. For the most part the First World War has been written about in drab lumbering tomes, with dreary sepia photographs and in-comprehensible maps. And so be it, after all it was the most terrible of all wars....
But here in this book we now have the means to get through those terrible times effortlessly, as its format allows us to find different aspects of the war which might interest us, at our fingertips.
It starts with the assassination in Sarajevo, and moves through the war year by year quite quickly with super maps to follow major battles and events. These maps are very well presented in colour and easy to follow, I find it strange to praise maps of any description, as I have always found battle maps, confusing and time consuming to say the least. The rest of the book details the various Armies, and much much more, like VC's won, Artillery Units, Machine Gun operations, Commanders, the Air War, Tank Warfare, Trenches, Support Services, and so on.....
One piece of information I found incredible was given at the start of each year of war, and that was the number of various countries going to war with each other across Europe and beyond, right up to the end. It would be laughable if we were not talking about the vast number of young soldiers and civilians losing their lives for nothing much more than the old men ruling these various countries b******g at each other.... (and we're supposed to be living in a crazy world today?)
The book is a modern masterpiece, easy on the eye and waiting to be opened again and again to provide much information on those terrible times.......