11 Books to Never Forget – Remembrance Day
Today we remember those servicemen and women who fell in the line of duty. Here at Austin Macauley we have chosen eleven of our favourite titles which pay tribute to their ultimate sacrifices.
In The Patch, the Army family quarters, life is just as draining as it is for the men fighting in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. In The Dependants, Rachel Lynch takes the reader through the emotional and gripping journey endured by the women of 7th Battalion, The Rifles, as their men go through their tour of duty.
Tell It How It Is has taken three years to write. Gritty, graphic, emotional, sympathetic and cathartic, it is a mother's account of her son's experience of war, and Afghanistan.
England 1939 - a momentous year in history and the year that Dacre AJ, a young man of seventeen signs up as a Royal Marine. In J.G. White's Never Surrender fans of historical and military fiction can read Dacre's transition from raw recruit to fully-fledged marine as Hitler's dreams of European domination begin to materialise across the channel.
Conrad Davenport is the hero of the piece, which starts as a routine drama against the backdrop of the last days' of National Service in 1960s Britain. A sickly child, Conrad develops from National Serviceman to Royal Military Policeman to Special Operations Soldier in Paris during the days of terrorist attacks against the West.
5) World War One – The Meakin Diaries – Sheffield in the Trenches
In 1915, the newlywed Frank Meakin signed up to the new Sheffield City Battalion and joined the fight for King and Country in the First World War. Although diaries were forbidden during active service, Frank rebelliously and comprehensively kept one throughout his whole service. This is a prosaic and fascinating insight into the Great War through the eyes of a survivor, brought to life 100 years on.
M. H. Lowe's In Grievous Times takes the reader to the heart of English country village life at a turning point in Britain's history: the era of evacuees and air raids, sudden death from the skies and the expectation for every man and woman to do their patriotic duty.
Walter Bloy, an ex-merchant navy officer, died in 1947 shortly before his son Stephen's second birthday. It was only in 2009, after seeing a television documentary about the role of the Merchant Navy in the North Atlantic convoys of World War 2 that Stephen was inspired to research and write his father's story.
8) A Pilot’s Life In Active Service from 1930 – 1954
In "A Pilot's Life in Active Service from 1930-1954", the story of successful and inspiring pilot Raimund Puda is told. From his dreams of becoming a pilot as a young boy from a small village in Czechoslovakia to achieving this dream and travelling all over the world as a fighter pilot. It is easy for us in the 21st century to be oblivious to the experiences, tough decisions and sacrifices made by those who fought to allow us the freedoms we take for granted.
Summer 1940 - Great Britain is in grave peril. With the ‘phoney' war turning into a very real war on the ground and in the air, Hitler's troops storm across an unprepared Europe towards the English Channel. Invasion looms. But the British have a weapon in their arsenal that may be a game changer and bring victory against all odds: the mighty Spitfire.
The sound of a ghostly Lancaster Bomber, its engines struggling and misfiring, has haunted the old airfield for sixty years. In 1943, Johnnie Sanderson and his crew were seven brave young men who had volunteered to fight the tyranny of Nazi Germany from the air, flying the Lancaster Bomber, they had christened ‘Gloria', with 599 Squadron RAF. Flak, searchlights and night fighters generate the gut-wrenching fear of the nightly bombing sorties over war-torn Europe, and they quickly learn that the scythe of war reaps a deadly harvest amongst bomber crews.
War in 1914 had been widely anticipated, but few on either side were prepared for the fury and carnage that modern weapons could unleash. It was the soldiers of the European armies who had to face the full force of this maelstrom, and none acquitted themselves better than the men of the British Expeditionary Force, both regulars and reservists alike.