Publications of the Army Records Society – serie

Key documents relating to Auchinleck's career up to the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942, including his time as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army and of the Middle East Theatre.The outbreak of war in 1939 saw the then Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck recalled to England to take command of the newly formed 4 Corps. Between April and June 1940 he commanded British troops in the ill-fated Norway campaign. He then returned to the UK to take command of 5 Corps in Southern Command during the invasion threat of 1940. In January 1941 Auchinleck returned to India and started some much needed reforms of what was still, very much, a 'colonial army' before becoming C in C Middle East in June 1941. In the Middle East, Auchinleck faced many challenges in commanding a multi-national force, largely composed of 'citizen soldiers' and his problems were complicated by the demands of Winston Churchill, an anxious Prime Minister who desperately wanted to show his allies and the British public a major victory. Auchinleck is open to the charges that he did not fully understand armoured warfare and that he appointed a number of the wrong men to key posts. However, he did manage to fight Axis forces to a standstill at the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942 before being replaced by the team of Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander and General Bernard Montgomery. This volume is based on the Auchinleck papers held in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester and aims to bring these important records to a much wider audience.

The diary of an officer in the 6th Royal Dublin Fusiliers covering 1914-19 and four theatres of war.Noël Drury (1884-1975) was from a middle-class Dublin Protestant family and served most of the First World War as an officer in the 6th Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the 10th (Irish) Division. The division was the first of Ireland's wartime volunteer formations to be posted overseas, arriving at Gallipoli in August 1915 in the Suvla Bay landings. Drury and his battalion experienced several key phases of the Gallipoli campaign before being redeployed to Salonika in October 1915. Drury was away from his battalion for a year in 1916-17 suffering from malaria, but rejoined in Palestine towards the end of 1917. From there his battalion was sent to the Western Front in the summer of 1918 to take part in the Hundred Days Offensive. Drury's diaries describe training, daily life, contrasting theatres of the war, and show what it meant to be an Irish officer in the British army.

Major General Guy Dawnay (1878-1952) was a man of complexity and contradiction. Though passionate about the profession of arms, he set aside a promising military career to pursue business ambitions. Rejoining the British Army on the outbreak of war, he served in several staff appointments across four different military theatres. In 1915, he joined the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force's headquarters, planning the April landings and the ill-fated August offensive. Following the evacuation of Gallipoli, he served on the staff in Egypt and Palestine as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. It was here that he masterminded the plan for the Third Battle of Gaza. In early 1918, he was appointed to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's staff where he oversaw important changes to training and doctrine on the Western Front. Based on the Dawnay papers at the Imperial War Museum and material in private hands, this volume offers important insights on contrasting theatres of war, the challenges of planning operations, and Dawnay's relationships with key politicians and commanders. The volume reveals a passionate, introspective officer who, according to T.E. Lawrence, was 'the least professional of soldiers, a banker who read Greek history, a strategist unashamed, and a burning poet with strength over daily things'.