John Laffin

Tommy Atkins is the English soldier, who joking broke the cavalry of France at Minden, who singing marched with the Great Duke to the Danube, who grumbling shattered Napoleon's dreams at Waterloo, who sweating in his red coat tramped back and forth across Indis, who kept his six-rounds-to-the-minute at Mons, and who died in the mud at Passchendaele, the sands of the Western Desert, and the jungles of Burma. If his name has been eclipsed by his more illustrious commanders - Cromwell, Marlborough, Moore, Wolfe, Wellington, Allenby, Slim - they at least will accord him his rightful place beside them. They knew his worth. Tommy Atkins is his story - the story of this most versatile, most adaptable, most un-military soldier.

This work is the story of the "ordinary" English soldier, covering the years 1642-1966. Here lie some of the paradoxes of the English soldier. Successive governments misused his talents and his loyalties, and he died without complaint to save them from their follies.

During World War II several daring raids were carried out by Allied and Axis forces against targets carefully selected for their strategic or propaganda values. These raids were as individual in character as the men who carried them out and equally unique in their objectives. John Laffin relates more than 20 such operations mounted by British, German, American, Australian, Italian and Canadian forces. Raiding appealed to British military men's psyche - and on the whole, they were good at it. Therefore, "Raiders" emphasizes attacks mounted by the British because they were involved in more theatres of war than any other combatants. John Laffin examines the qualities of successful raiders as well as their selection and training before looking in detail at individual missions. The exploits recorded here range from a British commando strike against Rommel's supposed HQ in the North African desert in 1941, to the daring surveys of the Normandy beaches in prepartion for Operation "Overlord"; from the German glider-borne assault on the great Belgian fortress of Eben Emael in 1940, to SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny's dramatic mission to snatch Mussolini from imprisonment on an Italian mountaintop in 1943. Here are the Gironde river exploits of the Special Boat Service in 1942 when frogmen commandos caused serious damage to four large enemy ships, and Operation "Jericho" in 1944, when a low-level attack by RAF Mosquito bombers blasted a huge hole in the wall of a Gestapo prison in France to allow imprisoned Resistance leaders to escape.

Sacred ground of lost endeavour' or 'Hell heaped up'? Controversy still rages today about the Gallipoli campaign, inspired by Winston Churchill and designed to knock Turkey out of the First World War, thereby opening a supply route to arms-starved Russia. Was it one of the greatest blunders of the war, misconceived from the start and mishandled by tacticians? Or was it a strategic masterstroke, ruined by incompetence on the spot?Whichever view is accepted, the campaign was of decisive importance, its failure paving the way first to the collapse of the Imperial Russian army and later to socialist revolution. Damn the Dardanelles! is much more than just another account of the action in the field. John Laffin has written a critical and challenging analysis of the whole campaign, assisted by detailed maps and contemporary photographs. He examines the premises on which it was conceived, the way it was executed, the personalities of the generals and the conflicts amongst them.The author's introduction declares that 'the purpose of this book is to explain the defeat, to apportion the blame, and to let the soldiers speak. Here he provides a forthright treatment of a subject which still continues to grip the imaginations of people throughout the world.

This title is about a private soldier of the British Army, Leonard Arlington of the Middlesex Regiment. But it is dedicated, with his approval, to those ordinary men and women of northern France and bordering Belgium who defied the Nazis during the World War II and risked their lives to help British fighting men elude their Nazi pursuers.

On the Western Front

Generally, all great commanders all owe something to Gideon, victor over the Midianties about 1200 BC and to David, conqueror of Goliath, about 1000 BC. This work that the tactical principles of leadership used by Britain to the time of World War II can be traced back to those of the Romans.

For too long, believes John Laffin, the image of the German soldier has been distorted by the atrocities of the Nazis. In Jackboot, the author gives the ordinary German soldier his due, tracing his background and influences from the time of Frederick the Great to the end of World War II.

During World War II a number of daring raids were carried out by Allied and Axis forces against targets carefully selected for their strategic or propaganda values. "Raiders" relates over 20 such operations, with the emphasis on attacks mounted by the British.

Victor's book is the first to show that implementing the Final Solution was actually the root of Hitler's most disastrous military decisions.

Hillingdon Manor existed in Saxon times, and is described in the "Domesday Book" of 1086. It predates the market town of Uxbridge, which eventually became the major settlement. In the past it was a pleasant village in the peaceful countryside of west Middlesex, and an ideal place for wealthy Londoners to live in or retire to. For the past century, the village has become an outer suburb of London, and the sprawling borough of Hillingdon was named after it, recognising its antiquity and important position at the heart of the area. Despite all the changes some of the village atmosphere survives, and Ken Pearce's new book attempts to recapture that charm of bygone days.

The modern wars of the Middle East began in 1947, when the Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Lebanese were unofficially at war with the Jewish settlers of Palestine. On the 15 May, the day afer Israel was declared a sovreign state, the Arab invasion began. Between then and 1973 five wars occurred: those of 1948; the Sinai War; the Six-Day War; the 1968–1970 War of Attrition and the 1973 October War. This book examines the organization, training and equipment of the key Arab armies during these conflicts and the variey of uniforms are illustrated by a number of contemporary photographs and full colour artwork.

The Australians have had a brief military history, by world standards, but they have taken part in nine wars and, British troops apart, they have fought in more countries than the soldiers of any other nation. Friend and foe alike have assessed them as men-at-arms perhaps equalled but never surpassed. This absorbing text by John Laffin examines the history, uniforms and organisation of these colourful and courageous troops, from the Diggers of the First World War to their role in Vietnam.