The British Soldier, Vol. 2:From D-Day to VE-Day [Hardcover]

Jean Bouchery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2001

The latest Histoire and Collections book depicts the British Army from Normandy to VE Day in unprecedented detail. Because of the extensive coverage of armored vehicles, this volume will prove to be especially useful to modelers and dioramists. Over 600 color illustrations including wartime photos, detail shots of original items and plates covering camouflage and markings.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Histoire and Collections (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 2908182742
• ISBN-13: 978-2908182743
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #971,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly detailed and well illustrated. Excellent!, October 18, 1998

By 

"pete14603" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The British Soldier, Vol. 2:From D-Day to VE-Day (Hardcover)

I have for some time noticed that a large number of specialist World War Two books are published in France and only in French. I have even purchased some of these and spent hours translating them page by page. It is therefore good to see that this book has been published in English.

From the opening chapter, on headgear, onwards the level of detail is superb. Each page is filled with colour photographs of equipment and detailed diagrams. By way of example four pages are devoted to the different colours of field service cap for almost every regiment in the British Army. Badges, medals, uniforms, food, webbing, even underwear are all illustrated and detailed. A chapter is devoted to Airborne uniform and equipment.

Very occasionally the translation from French can be seen in the text but the detail and otherwise excellent production quality allow the reader to ignore these small foibles.

The book covers all aspects of British army dress, individual equipment and insignia for the period from D-day to the end of the war. It stops short of including the order of battle and detailed organisation of the Army but the author assures us that these will be the subject of Volume Two in a series that I hope continues.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the British Army of this period.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars for Volume 1; 3-and-a-half stars for Volume 2, June 7, 2003

By 

H. Lim (Carlingford, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The British Soldier, Vol. 2:From D-Day to VE-Day (Hardcover)

Bouchery's two volume set on the Late War British Army is very useful for wargamers, historians and reenactors.

Volume 1 is especially good, with its mind-boggling number of full colour photographs of artefacts from world war 2. Ever want to know what a British Soldier's cigarette lighter looked like in 1944? - well, you can find that here. Want to know what the cap-badge of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division looked like? You can find a full-colour photograph in here.

Volume 2 is a little disappointing. I wasd expecting modern photographs of surviving British tanks, but the book is instead full of black-and-white photgraphs. Layout is much more haphazard and unprofessional than the previous book, with much of the space wasted. This is unlike the previous volume, which was incredibly compressed and filled with information on every page. Given these flaws, it is still useful, especially the section on British armoured formation markings, which is information that is devilishly hard to get hold of. Also the unit formation guides are quite good, if you can get past the excessive colouring-in.

Bear in mind that these volumes are hastily translated from the French, and contain many errors. Their layout generally is not very professional.

Given all that, these are still valuable books, on a subject that is rarely dealt with. Most such books talk about the German army, never the late-war British.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful series but a strange error?, April 16, 2006

By 

S. O'Brien (Britain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The British Soldier, Vol. 2:From D-Day to VE-Day (Hardcover)

I'm a big fan of these H&C books which manage to cram an enormous amount of useful information between the covers. This one's particularly good for tables of organisation and equipment of the British forces in 1944-45 as well as vehicle markings.

There's one curious (major) apparent error in this book which also appears in the title on Canadian forces in the same series. The book seems to state on page 126 that the predominant colour of British-made vehicles in 1944-45 was Bronze Green. Every other source I've come across (even those mentioned in this book's bibliography - British Military Markings - Hodges and Taylor, British Tank Markings and Names - BT White) states that the colour was SHADE NO.15 OLIVE DRAB. This was similar to U.S. olive drab but slightly greener and was adopted so lend-lease vehicles wouldn't need repainting. Bronze Green was used in the post-war period and possibly in the last month or two of the conflict (vehicles in the VE parade had a shiny coat of bronze green) but not in the Normandy, Holland & Belgium campaigns.