Jon Cooksey – författare

‘I saw several fellows fall, one fellow coughing up blood and all the time, bullets were hacking about me. I ran for about 70 yards carrying with me all the Lewis gun things I had brought up and dropped breathless into a shell hole headlong onto a German who had been dead for months.’Harold Drinkwater was not supposed to go to war. He was told he was half an inch too short. But, determined to fight for king and country, he found a battalion that would take him and was soon on his way to the trenches of the Somme. As the war dragged on, Harry saw most of the men he joined up with killed around him. But, somehow, he survived.Soldiers were forbidden from keeping a diary so Harry wrote his in secret, recording the horrendous conditions and constant fear, as well as his pleasure at receiving his officer's commission, the joy of his men when they escaped the trenches for the Italian Front and the trench raid for which he was awarded the Military Cross. Harry writes with such immediacy it is easy to forget that a hundred years have passed. He is by turns wry, exhausted, annoyed, resigned and often amazed to be alive. Never before published, Harry's War is a moving testament to one man's struggle to keep his humanity in the face of unimaginable violence.

From cold war bunkers to Civil War sieges - Britain is littered with sites of military significance. This book shows the amateur enthusiast how to unlock the drama of a battlefield in his or her own area. It explains how to read a military map and apply it to the ground, how to interpret the clues in the landscape and where to find the evidence.

The guide will take the visitor beyond the ferry terminal and hypermarkets to reveal the hidden Calais and the actions of individuals and units in this defence.

Boulogne - 23 May, 1940. A town under siege. A rampant German panzer division hammers at its gates. Panic in the street and chaos on the docks. Air Raids. Frightened refugees and dispirited Allied soldiers scramble to escape. Churchill sends battalions of the Irish and the Welsh Guards, to help the French garrison stem the German tide.

This is the story of the SAS raid on Pebble Island during the Falklands War. In atrocious weather, 48 men of 22 SAS Regiment were landed by Sea King Helicopter on the Island. Their task was to destroy the 11 enemy aircraft located at the Airstrip on the Island and neutralize the Argentinean force posted there to guard it. The raid was successful and all the Aircraft were destroyed but debate still goes on as to whether the raid was a political gesture to give the British Public some action or whether it was to knock out the Airbase that could have made life difficult for the landings at San Carlos Bay later in the War. The book covers sections on: history of the engagement, training and planning involved, equipment used, weapons file, breakdown of forces engaged, consequences and controversies as well as personal accounts of those involved.

The First World War battlefields to the north of Arras - including Vimy Ridge - are among the most famous and most visited sites on the Western Front, rivalled only by those around Ypres and the Somme, and this clearly written, highly illustrated guide is the ideal introduction to them.Visitors can trace for themselves the course of each battle across the modern landscape and gain a fascinating insight into the nature of the fighting in the area - and the wider conflict across the Western Front - throughout the war. The book covers the key battles fought in the northern sector of the Arras front, including the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge and battles at Villers au Bois, Oppy Wood and Gavrelle.Expert guides Jon Cooksey and Jerry Murland have devised a series of routes that can be walked, biked or driven, explaining the fighting that occurred at each place in vivid detail. They record what happened, where it happened and why, and point out the sights that remain for the visitor to see. Their guidebook is essential reading for visitors who wish to enhance their understanding of the war on the Western Front.

When Edgar Mobbs ran on a rugby field, people watched. Eyes were drawn to him. A towering, upright presence - long of stride with knees raised high; elegant and powerful.When opponents came too close, out would shoot the famous Mobbs' hand-off - a carefully aimed piston smacking into the hapless tackler's jaw. If the founders of Rugby Union could have designed their perfect rugger man - a captain of England, the Barbarians and Northampton Saints, a sporting colossus and a true 'Boys Own' sporting icon - it would have been Edgar Mobbs.Mobbs was the epitome of the Edwardian sporting hero: a fearsome competitor on the field and a 'bloody good chap' everywhere else. He played the game and his fans loved him, cheering wildly as he graced the turf from Franklin's Gardens in Northampton to Twickenham and Toulouse.Men would follow him wherever he went and in 1914 they followed him to war; first to Loos, then to the Somme and finally to Ypres. But on 31 July 1917, Edgar Mobbs ran alone.In a Belgian wood, not far from the place they called Passchendaele, his men watched with admiration and horror as their leader ducked, dodged and weaved, not around adversaries on a rugby field but through shell-holes and round tree stumps, the air cracking with bullets and fizzing with shrapnel. Mobbs ran. It was to be his final charge.

When one thinks about the First World War, one doesn’t immediately imagine the soldiers recording the horrors of trench warfare by taking snaps with their pocket cameras. But that is exactly what happened.Launched in April 1912, the Vest Pocket Kodak was one of the world’s first compact cameras. About the height and width of today’s iPhone, it was small enough to fit into the pocket of a waistcoat (the American ‘vest’) and became something of a craze on the eve of the war. It was advertised as the ‘Soldier’s Kodak’ and troops were encouraged to ‘Make your own picture record of the War.’ With the military banning journalists from reporting early setbacks in the war, newspaper editors offered soldiers a prize for their VPK photographs of £1,000 – over ten times a lieutenant’s salary. The images they preserved offer us a remarkably personal viewpoint, and create a fascinating link between the camera and the conflict.The first half of the book sets the technology and timeline of the camera against those of the war. It looks at how the Vest Pocket Kodak was developed and advertised, and tells the story of its significance in creating a unique visual account of the Great War. The second half presents a commemorative album of images taken with the camera, a remarkable record of a lost generation, and a tragic reflection of the manufacturer’s advertising by-line: ‘Kodak pictures never let you forget.’

The seizure of Pegasus Bridge by six glider borne platoons of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry under Major John Howard very early 6th June 1944, is one of the better-known stories of D-Day. Landing just yards from vital bridges over the River Orne and the Caen Canal near Benouville, Howard's men took and held the bridges in a remarkable coup de main operation with minimal casualties. The 7th Parachute Battalion dropped in soon afterwards to relieve Howard's men and the action remains, by any standards, a remarkable feat of arms. But it was only one act in a much grander production put on by 6th Airborne Division that night to secure and protect the eastern flank of the Allied landings inland from Sword, the British landing beach. Key bridges over the Dives had to be blown to foil possible German counter attacks and to north east, at Merville, a battery of guns which the allied planners thought could wreak havoc on the beaches and ships at sea, had to be eliminated. The task fell to the men of the 9th Parachute Battalion, whose actions in assaulting the Merville Battery became another D-Day epic - but for very different reasons.