After seven weeks of bitter fighting there was a desperate need to break out of the Normandy bridgehead. In late July 1944 Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey’s Second Army moved two entire corps from the Caen sector to the relatively quiet countryside around Caumont. Here, the British XXX Corps prepared to give battle, with VII Corps advancing in support on the right flank between XXX Corps and the American first Army. The offensive did not go to plan. While the XXX Corps attack stalled, VIII Corps surged ahead. With the experienced 11th Armoured and 15th Scottish Divisions in the lead and Guards Armoured close behind, a deep penetration was made, threatening to take the pivotal city of Vire and unhinge General Hausser’s German Seventh Army. The main narrative of this book will span the initial break-in from Caumont on 30 July, through the armoured battles of the following days, to the desperate German counter-attacks of 4 – 6 August, the no less desperate German defence of Estry up to the middle of the month, and the final withdrawal from Normandy. The book also examines Monty’s refusal to seize Vire, the disputed Anglo-American border and the Operation’s impact on the German Mortain offensive.

What was life in the Red Army like for the ordinary soldier during the Great Patriotic War, the fight between the Soviet Union and Germany on the Eastern Front? How far is the common perception of Red Army heroism and sacrifice borne out by historical reality? And what was the daily experience of the individual soldier caught up in this immense and ruthless conflict? The 160 contemporary photographs from the Russian archives that have been selected for this book give a striking insight into all sides of wartime service for the Soviet soldier. The whole range of military experience is portrayed here, from recruitment and the rigours of training to transport, marching and the ordeal of combat. Artem Drabkin is the creator of the website I Remember which is devoted to recording the oral history of the soldiers and airmen who fought on the Eastern Front. His archive of memoirs and eyewitness accounts is a valuable source for researchers who are studying the Soviet side of the fighting, and it is a fascinating record of the experience of warfare. Among the many publications derived from his work are Tank Rider, Red Road From Stalingrad, T-34 in Action, Red Partisan, Escape From Auschwitz, Barbarossa and the Retreat to Moscow: Recollections of Soviet Fighter Pilots on the Eastern Front, Bomber Pilot on the Eastern Front and Guns Against the Reich.

In three years of war on the Eastern Front - from the desperate defence of Moscow, through the epic struggles at Stalingrad and Kursk to the final offensives in central Europe - artilleryman Petr Mikhin experienced the full horror of battle. In this vivid memoir he recalls distant but deadly duels with German guns, close-quarter hand-to-hand combat, and murderous mortar and tank attacks, and he remembers the pity of defeat and the grief that accompanied victories that cost of thousands of lives. He was wounded and shell-shocked, he saw his comrades killed and was nearly captured, and he was threatened with the disgrace of a court martial. For years he lived with the constant strain of combat and the ever-present possibility of death. And he recalls his experiences with a candour and an immediacy that brings the war on the Eastern Front - a war of immense scale and intensity - dramatically to life. Petr Alexeevich Mikhin trained as a schoolteacher before the Second World War and served as an artillery man throughout the conflict. He fought the German army in the battles for Stalingrad, Kursk, Ukraine, Moldova, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia, and late in the war he was transferred to the Far East to fight the Japanese army in China. He was wounded three times and suffered shell shock, and he finished the war as a highly decorated officer with the rank of a captain. After the war he returned to teaching mathematics in civil and military schools, and he retired as a lieutenant colonel. Petr Mikhin is the author of numerous short stories and three books, all of them based on his extraordinary wartime experiences.