Fought story british agents

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This is a soldier's story about South African soldiers in southern Angola and Namibia and the enemies they fought. It tells of insurgency and counter-insurgency, guerrilla warfare and counter-guerrilla warfare, almost conventional warfare and conventional warfare. It tells of a conflict which the world saw as unpopular and unjust, in which South Africa was perceived as the aggressor. The South African soldiers who fought in it, however, saw it as a conflict fought to stop what is now Namibia falling into the hands of the Soviet and Cuban-backed SWAPO black nationalist political organisation. After Namibia South Africa would be next. They saw the whole conflict as an extension of the Cold War, but while it was on the frontiers in Europe, in Angola they were fighting a very hot war in Angola. Eventually, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the war was resolved by the democratic solution of UN supervised free and fair elections in Namibia. Since then, regrettably, there has been interference by the ruling party with the democratic constitution put in place in Namibia which has eroded much of that hard won democracy. 32 Battalion, of which Colonel Jan Breytenbach was the founding commander, became the most controversial unit in the South African Army because of the secrecy surrounding it. Its story is virtually the story of the Angolan/Namibian war, because its involvement in it was greater than any other South African unit. The regiment primarily consisted of black troops and NCOs originating from virtually every tribe in Angola. They were led by white South African officers and NCOs. Neither apartheid nor any form of racial discrimination was ever practiced in the unit. There was always a sprinkling of whites originating from countries like Great Britain, the old Rhodesia, Portugal and the USA amongst its leadership cadre, although in the latter stages of its existence this shrank to only a few. Such a presence undoubtedly led to stories circulating that the unit was a led by foreign white mercenaries. While it was true that the black Angolan element could have fallen with the mercenary definition, the whites involved were attested soldiers in the South African Army. In any case, they formed a minority and the vast majority of white officers and NCOs were born South Africans. The unit's aggressiveness and the successes it achieved in the field of battle, often against incredible odds, lay in its spirit and its  espirit de corps. In this respect and in many other ways it compared favourably with the French Foreign Legion. Its story parallels with and reminds one of the British and British Commonwealth Chindits of World War-2, operating behind the Japanese lines in Burma in large formations, out-guerrillaing those who only three years earlier had been regarded in awe as the unbeatable jungle warfare experts. Likewise, 32-Battalion consistently outfought both FAPLA, SWAPO and the Cubans in the Angola bush throughout the war years. It created a problem to which neither they nor their Soviet and East German mentors ever found a solution to. After the 1989 Namibian settlement the unit was with withdrawn to South Africa where they were deployed to effectively deal with MK infiltrations into the north of South Africa. From there, after the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, they were redeployed to deal with political troubles, principally between armed ANC self defense units and armed units of the IFP. The intrusion of black foreigners into the townships who were prepared to deal with troubles robustly and without fear or favour, did not suit either the ANC or the IFP, as they could not be subverted to support local causes because they held no local tribal allegiances. In the end it seems they became something of a bargaining chip at the CODESA negotiations, designed to find a new political dispensation for South Africa. Despite it having borne the brunt of South Africa' war in Angola with the blood of its troops, the National Party Government disgracefully ordered its arbitrary disbandment in March 1993 and the unit ceased to exist. Paperback, 360 pages with photos & maps  

After bitter debate, South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire at the time, declared war on Germany five days after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Thrust by the British into the campaign against Erwin Rommels German Afrika Korps in North Africa, the South Africans fought a see-saw war of defeats followed by successes, culminating in the Battle of El Alamein, where South African soldiers made a significant contribution to halting the Desert Foxs advance into Egypt. This is the story of an army committed somewhat reluctantly to a war it didnt fully support, ill-prepared for the battles it was tasked with fighting, and sent into action on the orders of its senior alliance partner. At its heart, however, this is the story of men at war. Paperback, 352 pages

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 7 - 11 working days In the s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo--too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West. Features Summary In "an enthralling story, full of fascinating characters, intense drama, high adventure, deceitful manipulation, courageous truth-telling, and splendid moral fervor" ("Christian Science Monitor")... Author Adam Hochschild Publisher Mariner Books Release date Pages 366 ISBN ISBN

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 6 - 13 working days Published in hardback as THE ART OF BETRAYAL and fully updated for the paperback edition. The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carre. THE ART OF BETRAYAL provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction. It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of World War II and by focusing on the people and the relationships that lie at the heart of espionage, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence. From the defining period of the early Cold War through to the modern day, MI6 has undergone a dramatic transformation from a gung-ho, amateurish organisation to its modern, no less controversial, incarnation. Gordon Corera reveals the triumphs and disasters along the way. The grand dramas of the Cold War and after - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 11 September attacks and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies whose stories form the centrepiece of the narrative. But some of the individuals featured here, in turn, helped shape the course of those events. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. Many of these accounts are based on exclusive interviews and access. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction. Features Summary The secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day. Author Gordon Corera Publisher Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd) Release date Pages 496 ISBN ISBN

  The Elite: the story of the Rhodesian Special Air Service - Barbara Cole - Paperbackin good condition. Barbara Cole's "The Elite" is the the singular cornerstone book on the Rhodesian Special Air Service, one of the most formidable fighting forces in the world. They operated almost exclusively across the Rhodesian border during the long bitter bush war undertaking deep-penetration missions against insurgents being harboured inside neighbouring Mozambique and Zambia. There were missions into Botswana too and at one stage. They were operating without benefit of passport in all three neighbouring black territories at the same time. Long before the war escalated and the whole region became their battlefield, secret clandestine missions across the border were undertaken by Special Air Service operators, Later, when the situation intensified, they were responsible for some of the most audacious and highly sensitive missions of the war. Yet little is known of this highly-professional Special Force unit which had its beginnings in the days of the Malayan Emergency and like its parent unit. the British SAS. boasted the coveted and very apt motto. Who Dares Wins. Fought against the magic and madness of a changing Africa, against almost insuperable odds, against two terrorist armies who were aided and abetted by the armies of their host nations and backed by Russia and China, two of the world's superpowers, the role of the Special Air Service was unique. The Commander of Combined Operations, Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, while reluctant to single out any one unit, was to acknowledge this after the war.      

  The Elite: the story of the Rhodesian Special Air Service - Barbara Cole - Paperback in good condition, few photographs loose. Barbara Cole's "The Elite" is the the singular cornerstone book on the Rhodesian Special Air Service, one of the most formidable fighting forces in the world. They operated almost exclusively across the Rhodesian border during the long bitter bush war undertaking deep-penetration missions against insurgents being harboured inside neighbouring Mozambique and Zambia. There were missions into Botswana too and at one stage. They were operating without benefit of passport in all three neighbouring black territories at the same time. Long before the war escalated and the whole region became their battlefield, secret clandestine missions across the border were undertaken by Special Air Service operators, Later, when the situation intensified, they were responsible for some of the most audacious and highly sensitive missions of the war. Yet little is known of this highly-professional Special Force unit which had its beginnings in the days of the Malayan Emergency and like its parent unit. the British SAS. boasted the coveted and very apt motto. Who Dares Wins. Fought against the magic and madness of a changing Africa, against almost insuperable odds, against two terrorist armies who were aided and abetted by the armies of their host nations and backed by Russia and China, two of the world's superpowers, the role of the Special Air Service was unique. The Commander of Combined Operations, Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, while reluctant to single out any one unit, was to acknowledge this after the war.      

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 7 - 11 working days On capture, British officers and men were routinely told by the Germans 'For you the war is over'. Nothing could be further from the truth. British Prisoners of War merely exchanged one barbed-wire battleground for another. In the camps the war was eternal. There was the war against the German military, fought with everything from taunting humour to outright sabotage, with a literal spanner put in the works of the factories and salt mines prisoners were forced to slave in. British PoWs also fought a valiant war against the conditions in which they were mired. They battled starvation, disease, Prussian cruelties, boredom, and their own inner demons. And, of course, they escaped. Then escaped again. No less than 29 officers at Holzminden camp in burrowed their way out via a tunnel (dug with a chisel and trowel) in the Great Escape of the Great War. It was war with heart-breaking consequences: more than PoWs died, many of them murdered, to be buried in shallow unmarked graves. Using contemporary records - from prisoners' diaries to letters home to poetry - John Lewis-Stempel reveals the death, life and, above all, the glory of Britain's warriors behind the wire. For it was in the PoW camps, far from the blasted trenches, that the true spirit of the Tommy was exemplified. Features Summary The War Behind the Wire is the new book by the acclaimed author of Six Weeks which depicted the extraordinary story of British junior officers in the First World War in such harrowing detail... Author John Lewis-Stempel Publisher Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd) Release date Pages 288 ISBN ISBN

  HarperCollins Publishers. Hardback. Book Condition: Very good, 2009, 1st edition. 388 pp. Alamein, Iain Gale, The superb novelist of men at war moves into the twentieth century and World War Two, telling the story of the eleven days in the sands of North Africa that would change history forever. There are some battles that change the course of history: Alamein is one of those. In October 1942, Britain and its allies were in real difficulties: Germany and its Axis partners seemed to be triumphant everywhere - in Europe, in Russia, in the Atlantic and were now poised to take the Suez Canal. It was in North Africa that the stand was made, that the tide of World War Two began to turn. It was a battle of strong characters: the famous battle commander Rommel and the relatively untested new British commander, Montgomery, leading men who fought through an extraordinary eleven day battle, in an unforgiving terrain, amid the swirling sandstorms and the desert winds. Iain Gale, author of the outstanding historical novel Four Days in June on the battle of Waterloo, tells the dramatic story through seven characters, almost all based on real people. Drawn from both sides of the conflict, they include a major from a Scottish brigade, the young lieutenant in the thick of the tank battle, the Australian sergeant with the infantry, the tank commander of the Panzer Division and the charismatic Italian commander of a parachute battalion. Through them and others we see the flow of battle, the strategies, the individual actions and skirmishes, the fear, the determination, the extraordinary courage on both sides.

In his own words Andre Scheepers describes his childhood on a farm, learning about the bush from his African friends, and becoming a soldier. The family had to leave the farm after being ambushed by terrorists. A quiet, introspective deep thinker, Andre started out as a trooper in the Rhodesian Light Infantry commandos and was hectically engaged in Fire-Force combat operations before leaving for the SAS. Wounded 13 times, his operational record is exceptional even by the high standards that existed at the time and he really emerges as the quintessential SAS officer displaying extraordinary calmness and audacious cunning in the course of a host of extremely dangerous operations. Loved by his men, Andre writes very eruditely about his mental and emotional condition during the war and reflects very candidly on what he learned and how war has shaped his life since. Offered a commission in the British SAS after the conflict, he decided to stop soldiering and entered the seminary whereupon he became a minister. In addition to Andres personal story the book also reveals more about the other men who were distinguished operators in other celebrated SAS operations. This is the story of soldiers, the hardships, the battles they fought and the challenges they faced. Softcover, 320 pages. FIRST PUBLISHED: MAY 2018  

We Dared to Win: The SAS in Rhodesia   In his own words Andre Scheepers describes his childhood on a farm, learning about the bush from his African friends, and becoming a soldier. The family had to leave the farm after being ambushed by terrorists. A quiet, introspective, deep thinker Andre started out as a trooper in the Rhodesian Light Infantry commandos and was hectically engaged in Fire-Force combat operations before leaving for the SAS. Wounded 12 times, his operational record is exceptional even by the high standards that existed at the time and he really emerges as the quintessential SAS officer displaying extraordinary calmness and audacious cunning in the course of a host of extremely dangerous operations. Loved by his men Andre, writes very eruditely about his mental and emotional condition during the war and reflects very candidly on what he learned and how war has shaped his life since. Offered a commission in the British SAS after the conflict he decided to stop soldiering and entered a seminary whereupon he became a minister. In addition to Andre's personal story the book also reveals more about the other men who were distinguished operators in other celebrated SAS operations. This is the story of soldiers, the hardships, the battles they fought and the challenges they faced.   Condition: Good

2018 paperback with 195 pages in good secondhand condition. R60 postage in SA. n his own words Andre Scheepers describes his childhood on a farm, learning about the bush from his African friends, and becoming a soldier. The family had to leave the farm after being ambushed by terrorists. A quiet, introspective, deep thinker Andre started out as a trooper in the Rhodesian Light Infantry commandos and was hectically engaged in Fire-Force combat operations before leaving for the SAS. Wounded 12 times, his operational record is exceptional even by the high standards that existed at the time and he really emerges as the quintessential SAS officer displaying extraordinary calmness and audacious cunning in the course of a host of extremely dangerous operations. Loved by his men Andre, writes very eruditely about his mental and emotional condition during the war and reflects very candidly on what he learned and how war has shaped his life since. Offered a commission in the British SAS after the conflict he decided to stop soldiering and entered a seminary whereupon he became a minister. In addition to Andre's personal story the book also reveals more about the other men who were distinguished operators in other celebrated SAS operations. This is the story of soldiers, the hardships, the battles they fought and the challenges they faced.

This is the story, from New Year's Day to VE Day, 8 May 1945, of the conquest of Nazi Germany in the words of those who were there. It is the follow-up to Robin Neilland's "D-Day 1944: Voices from Normandy". The story is told in the words of ordinary people: American infantry, British paratroopers, Canadian gunners, Australian pilots, New Zealand POWs and German civilians. Neillands paints a broad picture, and tells of events from the participants viewpoint: the men who flew on the Dresden Raid or fought the battles in the Hurtgen Forest, The Bulge, the Reichwald, and at the Rhine Crossing, those who made the horrific discoveries of Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald and Dora. He talks to those who survived the concentration camps, and to Allied POWs who lived through the Death Marches from the East. *Previous owner's stamp on half-title page; covered in clear plastic wrap.*

Subtitle: The Epic Story of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift Author: Ian Knight Publisher: MacMillan () Edition: First Edition ISBN-13: Condition: As New Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket Pages: 697 Dimensions: cm +++ by Ian Knight +++ Zulu Rising by Ian Knight is a gripping and vivid account of one of the British army's most famous battles - Isandlwana - through the eyes of the men who fought on both sides. A 'compelling, wide-ranging and even-handed study that is definitive in the field' - John Laband.   A passion for books and a passion for collecting fine editions was the recipe that created the successful group of bookshops in Johannesburg called Bookdealers. The group started thirty years ago with one store in the quirky suburb of Yeoville and has grown through the years to a total of five shops, plus our online sales. Bookdealers is well-known for its collectable and used books. We also have a large variety of remaindered books sourced from around the world.  If you collect from one of our five branches there is no delivery charge. We also offer postal delivery (when available) and courier delivery, subject to a quote.