At 07:30 on 1 July 1916, the men of the 15th Battalion, The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment), better known as the Leeds Pals, left their positions in a series of copses named after the Gospels and advanced towards the village of Serre, near Bapaume, in the Somme Valley, only to be met by heavy German machine gun fire, suffering over 500 casualties in a few minutes.
'One of the saddest and yet most thrilling sights to me was to see parties of those young fellows who had just volunteered being marched from the recruiting office - perhaps 30, 50 or 100 of them - in all sorts of dress - top hats, caps, soft hats, morning coats, jackets - shabby men and 'nuts', labourers, clerks, partners in great city businesses, hooligans - all mixed up, marching side by side, all having made the great decision, ready to lay down their lives for their country .
Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Guy Burgess, an officer in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, convinced his superiors that a special school be opened to teach sabotage.
Molly's touching account of life in Guernsey during the German Occupation brings events of the Second World War to life through the eyes of a young child.
Here is the story of the part played in the final eleven months of the Second World War in Europe by the 'Poor Bloody Infantry', told in their own words.
IN DECEMBER 1940, as the coldest winter in living memory fastened its grip on war-torn France, the Nazi conquerors rounded up nearly 5,000 people, mostly women and children, and sent them to an internment camp.
Used most famously in December 1942, when a small group of ten men in five canoes were dropped off by submarine 80 miles from the inland port of Bordeaux.
This is the Battle of Britain memoir of Roger Hall, a 152 Squadron Spitfire pilot based in southern England, the heart of the fighting during the epic battle.
Although there were many more Hawker Hurricanes than Supermarine Spitfires engaged in the epic conflict fought over southern England in the summer of 1940, the public's imagination was captured by the shapely and charismatic Spitfire.
The Imperial War Museum site at Duxford is rightly recognised as the premier aviation museum in Europe, hosting exciting air shows and where the evocative sight and sound of an airborne Spitfire can be experienced most days.
Written by 43 Squadron's intelligence officer, Hector Bolitho, Finest of the Few is full of John's first-hand accounts of his combat missions against German Me 109s, Heinkel 111s and Dorniers.
Asked why he was in Britain, a US serviceman, fighting the war in the skies over Germany with the US 8th Air Force quipped, 'We're here to win the war for you'.
A Guide to the Beaches and Battlefields of Normandy provides an accessible background to the momentous events of 6 June 1944 as well as a complete guide to each and every town, village, beach, battery and cemetery that figured in the battle.
HMS Royal Oak was a Revenge-class battleship of the British Royal Navy, infamously torpedoed at anchor by the German submarine U-47 on 14 October 1939.
The Women's Land Army was actually founded in 1917, but it was during the Second World War that it attracted the kind of attention which assured its place in the annals of the British war effort.
Before William Stanley Lambert became a cadet in 1883, he had already sailed 44,890 miles round the world in a childhood voyage that took him two years to complete.
Geoffrey's memoir opens in May 1940, when he was eighteen years old and his grammar school in Kent was being evacuated to Staffordshire, away from the danger of German invasion.
The individual bravery and skill of the Battle of Britain pilots and the fighting qualities of their aircraft would have been in vain if they had not been part of a highly complex and sophisticated air defence system based on radar.
