EUCOM Battle Knowledge Centers

The author of this remarkable book, a Gunner officer, served on the Artillery Staff, first as Adjutant to the First Division field artillery and then as ADC to the Commander Royal Artillery throughout the siege of Sevastopol, and as such he was well placed to make this record of the campaign. As he says in the introduction it was not his intention to indulge in fanciful rhetoric but to give a ‘round, unvarnished tale. All was written in camp when he was off duty, in a tent or in a hut, and his descriptions of the fighting and the aftermath paint a grim and often gruesome picture. Disease and sickness ravaged the army; in Dec.1854 and Jan.1855 the sick returns amounted to 14,000. The pictures he paints, in his matter-of-fact narrative, reflect some appalling sights of the dead and dying on the battlefields. He takes us through the Alma, Inkerman, Balaklava to the fall of Sevastopol in Sep.1855 which was the prelude to the peace talks a few months later.

The Crimean War was fought far from its namesake peninsula in Ukraine. Until now, accounts of Britain's and France's naval campaigns against Czarist Russia in the Baltic, White Sea, and Pacific have remained fragmented, minimized, or thinly-referenced. This book considers each campaign from an imperial perspective extending from South America to Finland. Ultimately, this regionally-focused approach reveals that even the smallest Anglo-French naval campaigns in the remote White Sea had significant consequences in fields ranging from medical advances to international maritime law. Considering the perspectives of neutral powers including China, Japan, and Sweden-Norway, allows Rath to examine the Crimean conflict's impact on major historical events ranging from the 'opening' of Tokugawa Japan to Russia's annexation of large swaths of Chinese territory. Complete with customized maps and an extensive reference section, this will become essential reading for a varied audience.

"The Crimea" attracts a great deal of interest. The area is of great emotional value to Moscow. How this came about history teaches us from 1941 up to 1942, when Von Manstein's 11th army invaded the Crimea and began the siege of Sevastopol. It was the start of the heroic defence of the city by the Red Army.

On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union's Red Army invaded the young nation-state of Finland, in the full expectation of routing the small, ill-equipped Finnish army and annexing the former Russian territory by the end of the year. But Finland held out for 105 bitterly cold, fiercely combative days, until March 15, 1940, when a peace agreement ended the short, savage Winter War. At the stirring center of the story lie the resourcefulness and resolve of the Finnish people, who against all military odds--in want of ammunition, food, sleep, and troops--fought a blundering, ineptly commanded Red Army to a standstill. On March 15, they ceded to the Soviet 11 percent of their territory and 30 percent of their economic assets, but none of their national pride.

In 1939, tiny Finland waged war-the kind of war that spawns legends-against the mighty Soviet Union, and yet their epic struggle has been largely ignored. Guerrillas on skis, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, unfathomable endurance, and the charismatic leadership of one of this century's true military geniuses-these are the elements of both the Finnish victory and a gripping tale of war.