'Some bright kid's got a gun and 2000 rounds of live ammo. And that gun's no pea-shooter. It'll go through a brick wall at a quarter of a mile.' Chas McGill has the second-best collection of war souvenirs in Garmouth, and he desperately wants it to be the best. When he stumbles across the remains of a German bomber crashed in the woods - its shiny, black machine-gun still intact - he grabs his chance. Soon he's masterminding his own war effort with dangerous and unexpected results . . . The Machine Gunners is Robert Westall's gripping first novel for children set during World War Two and winner of the Carnegie Medal. Now with a brilliant cover look celebrating its fortieth anniversary. Includes a bonus short story - 'The Haunting of Chas McGill' - and an extended biography of the author.

The vivid account of a young machine gunner’s war with the Big Red One, from D-Day through the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, Remagen to the Wehrmacht’s last stand in the mountains of Germany. Ernest “Andy” Andrews began his training as a machine gunner at Fort McClellan in Alabama in July 1943. In early 1944, he arrived in the UK for further training before D-Day. Andy’s company, part of the 1st Infantry Division, departed England on the evening of June 5 on the USS Henrico. Due to a problem with his landing craft, Andy only reached Omaha Beach on the early evening of June 6, but still had a harrowing experience. Fighting in Normandy, Andy was nicked by a bullet and evacuated to England in late July when the wound became infected, before returning to participate in the Normandy breakout. Following the race across France in late August, Andy participated in the rout of several retreating German units near Mons, Belgium, and his outfit approached Aachen in mid-September. For a month, Andy's squad defended a bunker position in the Siegfried Line against repeated German attacks, then after Aachen surrendered, the unit fought its way through the Hurtgen Forest to take Hill 232. Early on the morning of November 19, Andy engaged in his toughest battle of the war as the Germans attempted to retake Hill 232. Andy was wounded in the shoulder. After surgery and a month convalescence he rejoined H Company in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. His unit then participated in the fast-moving Roer to the Rhine campaign, then the battle to expand the Remagen bridgehead. Breaking out from the Remagen bridgehead, Andy's squad stumbled on a German tank unit and Andy narrowly escaped getting killed. Following a rapid advance up to the Paderborn area, Andy's unit races to Germany's Harz Mountains, where the Wehrmacht was trying to organize a last stand. Andy's outfit ends the war fighting in Czechoslovakia, where Andy witnesses the German surrender in early May. Following occupation duty, Andy returned to the States in October 1945. The war shaped Andy's postwar life in countless ways, and in 1994, Andy made the first of three return visits to the European battlefields where he had fought. This vivid firsthand account takes the reader along from Normandy to victory with Andy and his machine-gun crew.

Despite their extensive service in World War I, few members of the Kansas-Missouri 35th Division left lengthy memoirs of their experiences in the American Expeditionary Forces. But Ward Loren Schrantz filled dozens of pages with his recollections of life as a National Guard officer and machine gun company commander in the “Santa Fe” Division. In A Machine-Gunner in France, Schrantz extensively documents his experiences and those of his men, from training at Camp Doniphan to their voyage across the Atlantic, and to their time in the trenches in France’s Vosges Mountains and ultimately to their return home. He devotes much of his memoir to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, in which the 35th Division suffered heavy casualties and made only moderate gains before being replaced by fresh troops. Schrantz provides a valuable “common soldier’s” view of why the division failed to live up to the expectations of the A.E.F. high command. Schrantz also describes the daily life of a soldier, including living conditions, relations between officers and enlisted men, and the horrific experience of combat. He paints literary portraits of the warriors who populated the A.E.F. and the civilians he encountered in France. Schrantz’s small-town newspaper experience allowed him to craft a well-written and entertaining narrative. Because he did not intend his memoir for publication, the Missourian wrote in an honest and unassuming style, with extensive detail, vivid descriptions, and occasional humor. Editor Jeffrey Patrick combines his narrative with excerpts from a detailed history of the unit that Schrantz wrote for his local newspaper, and also provides an editor’s introduction and annotations to document and explain items and sources in the memoir. This is not a romantic account of the war, but a realistic record of how American citizen-soldiers actually fought on the Western Front.

In 1914 there were only two machine guns supporting a British infantry battalion of 800 men, and in the light of the effectiveness of German and French machine guns the Machine Gun Corps was formed in October 1915. This remarkable book, compiled and edited by C E Crutchley, is a collection of the personal accounts of officers and men who served in the front lines with their machine guns in one of the most ghastly wars, spread over three continents. The strength of the book lies in the fact that these are the actual words of the soldiers themselves, complete with characteristic modes of expression and oddities of emphasis and spelling. All theatres of war are covered from the defence of the Suez Canal, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia in the east to France and Flanders, the German offensive of March 1918 and the final act on the Western Front that brought the war to an end. October 2006 is the 90th anniversary of the formation of the Machine Gun Corps.

Includes The Americans in the First World War Illustration Pack - 57 photos/illustrations and 10 maps When the United States entered the First World War in 1917 the size of the army was tiny in comparison to the European Powers. The long-serving officers of the U.S. army faced the daunting task of licking the new recruits of 1917 into shape for service overseas. Among these officers was Charles Dupuy who was charged with getting his men ready for battle utilising the weapon that had inflicted so much damage during the previous three years - the machine gun. Key to offence or defence, the machine gun companies of the U.S. expeditionary force had to be fast and deadly in the offence and staunch and steadfast in defence. Major Dupuy tells of how he whipped his men into shape and led them to hard fought victory against the Germans on the Western front in 1918.

This official history of the NZ Machine Gun Corps during the 1914-18 conflict ... deals briefly with the origins of the unit and the departure from Egypt for France of the main body for service there, while a lesser number of troops remained for campaigning in Sinai and Palestine. Part one deals in depth and detail with the Westen Front, with the second and smaller section covering the Middle East. In both theatres the corps participated with distinction in most notable engagements. The 12 pages of tight lines of fatalities the corps suffered during the war demonstrates eloquently that their successes only came at heavy cost. -- abebooks website.

Summary: Includes UN Service medal ribbons and clasps to the General Service Medal, 1962.