JonS

I strongly recommend you never go to Sandford, in Cheshire. It's attractive enough, in a cliché olde worlde way, but the crime level there is simply appalling.

There is a saying about the British Army: they tend to lose evey battle, except the last one. Of course, it's only the last one that really matters.

Yeah ... nah. Rolling barrages worked like a treat, as long as the gunners and divisional staff knew their business. Recon was vital, as it was in WWI, as well as retaining a degree of flexibility in execution, which was realised by having batterys 'superimposed' on the firing lines. That way, if a target of opportunity arose then the superimposed battery could be lifted off the barrage and given an immediate neutralisation target on the MG position ... or whatever the holdup was that just appeared. Obviously(?) good comms between the forward observers and the gun line was also crucial.

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I can't recommend Battle (also released as Anatomy of a Battle) by Kenneth Macksey enough, for stuff like this. Macksey fought through the Normandy campaign himself, and this is a thinly fictionalised account of a generic battle in Normandy from multiple perspectives, from soup to nuts, and spends quite a lot of time on the pre-battle preparations; liaison, movement, fire planning, logistic arrangements, along with reconnaissance and planning. It's quite old now - it was released in about 1974 - but a good mil-hist library, or university library should(?) have a copy. Alternately try interloan

Topic is *after* the breakout, so; 1. Cinderella army, by Terry Copp (and other books by Copp) 2. Monty’s Men, by Buckley (and anything else by Buckley) 3. 18 Platoon, by Jary 4. Stout Hearts, by Kite 5. Corps Commanders, by Delaney 6. The 56th Infantry Brigade, by Holborn 7. Air power at the battlefront, by Gooderson 8. South Alberta’s, by Graves 9. The Guns of victory, by Blackburn (best read as the last of his trilogy) 10. For short-form writing, the Canadian Military History journal has their extensive back catalogue freely available on lin

from a physics perspective; I call bull****. But soldiers are a superstitious bunch, so from a behavioural perspective; maybe?

It's also free here as a PDF, meaning you can read it on any device. The rest of the Green Books are there too.

The noise of time, Julian Barnes It's the summer holidays here, some I'm doing a bit of off-reservation reading before varsity starts again.

any mods in play?

That is not, as far as I know, true, and hasn’t been for quite some time. In many (most?) militaries these days the issues created by dumping guys and girls straight out of combat back into their home environments is well know. Policy is now to extract them, do any post tour admin (hand in ammo, clean stuff for customs, etc) then have a deliberate period (at least several days, and often a week) in a closed environment to decompress. Ready access to alcohol, no programme or timetable except a scheduled session with the psych. Fight, get drunk, yell at each other, sing stupid songs loudly out o

The quiet american, by graham greene

Ahem