Customer Reviews

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

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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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.

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.

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.

Volume 2 of Bouchery's very broad and deep look at the British Army in Europe from the Normandy invasion to the surrender of the Nazis has a typo on every page, and the translation is embarassingly bad. Still, its worth the [PRICE] I laid out for it, because, of its 144 pages, almost every one has a very cool photo, diagram, or chart of some British small arm, vehicle, gun, insignia, organization, or unit, and most have more than one such illustration. If you want to know what regiments were in some particular UK division in 1944 or '45, and want to see detailed photos of the weapons and vehicles those regiments were equipped with and know how many were issued to them, this book is for you.

An excellent 2 volume set; some typos as pointed out in other reviews, and the numbers on the vehicle marking charts are missing in some cases. Still, so much information between two covers as to make this one an essential part of any library, with the obvious cautions attached as caveats.

Much reseach went into this, and many good period photos along with contemporary reconstructions. Models look a little too French (because they are) but that is a minor quibble. Worth the price and a great reference for formation organization, vehicle markings, and uniform insignia. Used in conjunction with other sources specializing on matters of insignia (Brian L. Davis or MAA 187) and uniforms (TOMMY) you can't go wrong.