Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The British Tommy in North West Europe, 1944-1945: Organization, Armament and Vehicles by Jean Bouchery ISBN: 2-908182-74-2 Publisher: Histoire & Collections Pub. Date: June, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: 5 stars for Volume 1; 3-and-a-half stars for Volume 2
Comment: Bouchery's two volume set on the Late War British Army is very useful for wargamers, historians and reenactors.
Volume 1 is especially good, with its mind-boggling number of full colour photographs of artefacts from world war 2. Ever want to know what a British Soldier's cigarette lighter looked like in 1944? - well, you can find that here. Want to know what the cap-badge of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division looked like? You can find a full-colour photograph in here.
Volume 2 is a little disappointing. I wasd expecting modern photographs of surviving British tanks, but the book is instead full of black-and-white photgraphs. Layout is much more haphazard and unprofessional than the previous book, with much of the space wasted. This is unlike the previous volume, which was incredibly compressed and filled with information on every page. Given these flaws, it is still useful, especially the section on British armoured formation markings, which is information that is devilishly hard to get hold of. Also the unit formation guides are quite good, if you can get past the excessive colouring-in.
Bear in mind that these volumes are hastily translated from the French, and contain many errors. Their layout generally is not very professional.
Given all that, these are still valuable books, on a subject that is rarely dealt with. Most such books talk about the German army, never the late-war British.
Rating: 5
Summary: Maybe not to read, but definitely to look at
Comment: Volume 2 of Bouchery's very broad and deep look at the British Army in Europe from the Normandy invasion to the surrender of the Nazis has a typo on every page, and the translation is embarassingly bad. Still, its worth the [PRICE] I laid out for it, because, of its 144 pages, almost every one has a very cool photo, diagram, or chart of some British small arm, vehicle, gun, insignia, organization, or unit, and most have more than one such illustration. If you want to know what regiments were in some particular UK division in 1944 or '45, and want to see detailed photos of the weapons and vehicles those regiments were equipped with and know how many were issued to them, this book is for you.
Rating: 5
Summary: Highly detailed and well illustrated. Excellent!
Comment: I have for some time noticed that a large number of specialist World War Two books are published in France and only in French. I have even purchased some of these and spent hours translating them page by page. It is therefore good to see that this book has been published in English.
From the opening chapter, on headgear, onwards the level of detail is superb. Each page is filled with colour photographs of equipment and detailed diagrams. By way of example four pages are devoted to the different colours of field service cap for almost every regiment in the British Army. Badges, medals, uniforms, food, webbing, even underwear are all illustrated and detailed. A chapter is devoted to Airborne uniform and equipment.
Very occasionally the translation from French can be seen in the text but the detail and otherwise excellent production quality allow the reader to ignore these small foibles.
The book covers all aspects of British army dress, individual equipment and insignia for the period from D-day to the end of the war. It stops short of including the order of battle and detailed organisation of the Army but the author assures us that these will be the subject of Volume Two in a series that I hope continues.
I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the British Army of this period.
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
