Featured battle : Ball's Bluff

Part of American Civil War

Date : 21 October 1861

General Stone, commanding Union forces on the Maryland side of the Potomac sent 2 Massachusetts regiments across the river at Harrison's Island, near Leesburg, to harry Joe Johnson's Confederates, who were thought to be evacuating Leesburg itself. They scaled the high, wooded Virginia bank at Ball's Bluff, but found themselves hemmed in and trapped by four regiments of Mississippians and Virginians under 'Shanks' Evans who allowed them to walk into the trap, then forced them, literally, right back over the bluff and into the Potomac. One of the most prominent casualties was the Union Colonel Edward Baker, Senator for Oregon and personal friend of Pres. Lincoln.

The Eighth Army in North Africa

Simon Forty
This series of Images of War is intended to be all about the pictures and this book is a very good example of that genre. There are photographs taken on both sides of the conflict showing the men and their equipment. Almost every type of armoured vehicle used in the desert campaign is shown some in pristine others in a well battered state. There is sufficient text to give the photographs a context but most usefully the bulk of the writing is as captions to the photographs. A few maps and schematic drawings fill out the story. Particularly informative in an easily understood way are the comparisons between Axis and Allied guns in both range and penetration on pgs. 36 & 37. The further reading list guides the interested reader to fuller explanations of the to and fro of the North African campaign. One tiny criticism is that on page 87 the captions for the two men have switched left to right.
We thoroughly enjoyed looking at this book and recommend it to you.


Pen & Sword Military, 2019