Book Review: From D-Day to VE-Day Volume #2
Book Review by Brian Bocchino
From D-Day to VE-Day Volume #2, by Jean Bouchery, Historie & Collections, 1999, ISBN: 2908182742.
While I received this as a gift, RZM Imports lists the book for $34.95. This is a hardbound book containing 144 pages on the organization, armament, tanks, and vehicles of the British army and some of the Common Wealth Forces.
This reference is loaded with color pictures, tables, and plenty of text. Although the title lists 1944-1945 as the period covered, there is actually a fair amount of early war information covered in this volume.
There are seven major chapters in this volume:
Chapter 1 starts out the organization of units, the 21st Army Group, the order of battle of the larger formations, organizational tables, and descriptions of the different Corps and Services. Incidentally a table is included that shows both the English and the American unit of measurement - very handy! The tables are particularly helpful. Ever have trouble trying to figure out what units belong to who? Well let me give you an example from the 6 June-1 September 1944 tables. Let's say your interested in what units composed the 2nd Army, I Corps. From the table, the answer would be: The Inns of Court Regiment (Armor Cars); 62nd Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery; 102nd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery; 9th Survey Regiment, Royal Artillery; I Corps Troops Engineers, Royal Engineers; I Corps Signals, Royal Corps of Signals; 16th Casualty Clearing Station, 32nd Casualty Clearing Station, RMAC. Also included are extensive charts showing all the major units in the Infantry, Armor, Airborne divisions, and the Independent Armor Brigades.
Chapter 2 is the Arms and the Service, which is a fancy title that describes the composition of the units. This is done mostly via graphical vehicle representation of each individual vehicle. Great way to find out who was located in what type of vehicle. Most of this chapter deals with the support units, i.e. Engineer, Artillery, Signal, etc.
Chapter 3 covers Small Arms and Explosives. As the title suggests, this chapter covers the equipment used by the soldiers. Most of the equipment is shown by photographs of the various daggers, knives, anti-tank weapons, etc.
Chapter 4 covers the Armor Vehicles. Again, this chapter is self-explanatory. Lots of photographs of the various armor vehicles including some technical data.
Chapter 5 is identical to chapter 4, but covers the Artillery, both towed and self-propelled.
Chapter 6 is titled Transport. This chapter covers all the way from mundane bicycles to the various trucks and amphibious vehicles.
Chapter 7 is one the most interesting chapters for me. This covers Vehicle and Machine Markings and Camouflage. Included here is a wealth of information that is almost always impossible to dig up when modeling British equipment, unless that is your major area of study.
Three Appendixes are included. Appendix 1 includes Order of Battle, Appendix 2 includes official abbreviations of units, and Appendix 3 is official abbreviations of names/general terms, positions.
For those with an interest in the British Army, this is a very useful resource.