Churchill in the Trenches
by Peter Apps
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Description
November 1915: disgraced and stripped of high office, Winston Churchill heads to the trenches to fight.A quarter of a century before his "finest hour" in 1940, Britain's future Prime Minister faced a very different kind of crisis. As First Lord of the Admiralty at the start of the First World War, he found himself blamed for the catastrophic military fiasco of the Dardanelles. Thrown for the first time into the political wilderness, he decided to rejoin the British Army and take his place on show more the Western Front.The first standalone account of this period of his life published since the 1920s, CHURCHILL IN THE TRENCHES reconstructs his six months near the Belgian town of Ypres. It reveals he how he gradually won over the troops he commanded -- the tough but traumatised 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. And it tells the largely unknown story of how amid mud and squalor, one of the 20th century's most memorable characters became one of its greatest leaders. show lessTags
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Pretty good short book (Kindle Single) focused on Churchill's time in WW1 -- after the Gallipoli disaster, where he was forced out of government. He went to France and was commander (as a Lt Col) of an understrength battalion (6th Bn of the Royal Scots Fusiliers) while continuing to agitate politically in the UK by letter, by using his wife as proxy, and when on frequent leave. What struck me was just how little effort a unit commander could put into running his unit at the front, and how this was apparently tolerated; I'm happy we have a professional officer corps rather than political appointees in the modern US military. It was apparently really weird even then to have someone as famous and politically powerful as even a disgraced show more Churchill serving as a field grade officer, though, to the extent that his men often assumed he was a General (as he wore civilian clothes, maybe it was more plausible). show less
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13 Works 209 Members
Peter Apps, wildlife author and awardwinning scientist, obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Oxford and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Pretoria. His scientific interests range from animal behaviour to chemistry Richard Du Toit holds a B.Sc. Honours degree in Zoology and Entomology, but his keen interest in wildlife show more photography developed into a professional career. He now works as a freelance wildlife and nature photographer and travels widely in southem Africa. Richard has won numerous awards for his wildlife photographs, and his images have been published in calendars, books and magazines in South Africa and abroad show less
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- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction
- BISAC
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- Reviews
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- Languages
- English
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- Paper, Ebook
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