Featured battle : La Rothière

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 01 February 1814

In a battle of attack and counter-attack the result was a close run thing. Napoleon had decided to withdraw from the position but he was attacked before he could pull out. After desperate fighting with losses about equal Napoleon was able to disengage covered by snow, darkness and his artillery. His big losses was the guns he could not extricate, 73 were taken by the Allies, and his reputation for invincibility in the eyes of his own troops..

The Japanese Navy in World War II

Evans, David C (Ed.)
The subtitle for this substantial book (568 pages) is "In the words of former Japanese Naval Officers", and from their seniority in their brief biographies (in an appendix) there is a risk that this book could become either a description of grand strategy, a justification of and blame for ultimate defeat, or both. And the contributions from these professional naval men, written in some cases not long after the events they describe do indeed carry much of that. But they also contain immediate and personal details from the glinting of the sun from the wings of bombers heading for Perl Harbour, to the difficulty of abandoning a burning carrier during Midway, to the mixed emotions of setting sail upon one of the biggest battleships ever built on a one way trip to Okinawa. All this makes it book well worth reading for both the informed and the inquisitive. I found it hard to put down and had to read a whole chapter at a sitting.
Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD., (2nd Edn, paperback) 2017, (original) 1986