Men went

Buy FOUR MEN WENT TO WAR. WWII - US air gunner, British paratrooper, German tank driver, Italian ski com for R70.00

 Three ordinary men met in 1940 when called up - this is their story softcover - 160 pages 

1987. Hard  cover with dust cover, 209 pages. Very good condition. Under 1kg.    

Buy The Men Who Went to Warsaw - African Aviation Series No. 12 - Lawrence Isemonger for R1,500.00

This all new work by accomplished military historian Alexandre Binda, former paymaster to the Greys Scouts, tables the remarkable story of Rhodesias mounted infantry, the Greys Scouts. Working closely with the last commanding officer, squadron commanders and a whole host of regimental personalities, all of whom have given The Equus Men their unequivocal support Binda has enjoyed unparalled access to thousands of pages of archival documents and many hundreds of previously unpublished photographs. Here, he has traced the Greys from their early origins in the Matabele Rebellion of 1896, where an unassuming Englishman, the Honourable George Grey, found himself originating a body of horseman named the Bulawayo Field Force, through to the formation of the Animal Transport Unit (ATU) which went on to become the Mounted Infantry Unit (MIU). With the skill of a practiced narrator, Binda takes the reader through these early days to the establishment of the Greys Scouts in the Rhodesian Army order of battle in 1976. Deployed to great effect during the bitter Rhodesian Bush War of the late 1960s 1970s, the mounted operations conducted by the Greys are succinctly and clearly detailed. Some of the contacts related make for astonishing reads and with the lively, vibrant, text one can almost feel the steaming sweat of rider and mount; sense the pounding adrenaline; hear the thundering hooves as a fearful enemy is pursued to battles inevitable conclusion. Suffice to say, The Equus Men makes for an engaging read. Trained and utilised as mounted infantry as opposed to cavalry, the Greys Scouts saw exceptional success in the field. Lightly equipped, they were able to cover great distances at speed, live off the veldt with minimal support and through shock action, quickly engage and destroy insurgent forces. Originally a regular formation, the Greys Scouts were augmented by Territorial and National Service soldiers as the conflict progressed and by 1980, when hostilities ceased, the Regiment numbered some 600 soldiers, both men and women, black and white. With its informative text and rich profusion of photographs, The Equus Men is a stunning tribute to the equestrian and fighting prowess of the Greys Scouts. It is a remarkable story and one that is ever more relevant, given recent mounted and pack horse operations conducted by British and US special forces in Afghanistan. Hardcover, 288 pages with  approx 300 colour & b/w photos, 4 maps. First published  1 February 2016.

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 7 - 11 working days The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job--with deadly results A quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of black mayonnaise. Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as beach whistles. In the s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel--its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth's deepest ocean trench--to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award-winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved in the tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death. An intimate portrait of the wreckage left in the wake of lives lost, the book--which Dennis Lehane calls extraordinary and compares with The Perfect Storm--is also a morality tale. What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population's rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk--how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred--and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe. Suspenseful yet humane, Trapped Under the Sea reminds us that behind every bridge, tower, and tunnel--behind the infrastructure that makes modern life possible--lies unsung bravery and extraordinary sacrifice. Features Summary The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job--with deadly results A quarter-century ago... Author Neil Swidey Publisher Crown Publishing Group (NY) Release date Pages 418 ISBN ISBN

HOW TO BECOME LIKE CHRISTMarcus Dods shows in simple steps how one can see God in every facet of life. He reveals in plain language how to remove the veil off our faith to see God and thus do the right thing to be like him. Read How to become like Christ and more interestingly, how any average person can put on the character of Christ through simple lessons and practices. CONTENTSHow to Become Like ChristThe TransfigurationIndiscreet ImportunityShame on Account of God's DispleasureNaaman CuredThe Lame Man at the Temple GateBook Excerpts: "But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."--2 COR. iii. 18 (Revised Version).I suppose there is almost no one who would deny, if it were put to him, that the greatest possible attainment a man can make in this world is likeness to The Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly no one would deny that there is nothing but character that we can carry out of life with us, and that our prospect of good in any future life will certainly vary with the resemblance of our character to that of Jesus Christ, which is to rule the whole future. We all admit that; but almost every one of us offers to himself some apology for not being like Christ, and has scarcely any clear reality of aim of becoming like Him. Why, we say to ourselves, or we say in our practice, it is really impossible in a world such as ours is to become perfectly holy. One or two men in a century may become great saints; given a certain natural disposition and given exceptionally favoring circumstances, men may become saintly; but surely the ordinary run of men, men such as we know ourselves to be, with secular disposition and with many strong, vigorous passions--surely we can really not be expected to become like Christ, or, if it is expected of us, we know that it is impossible. On the contrary, Paul says, "We all," "we all." Every Christian has that for a destiny: to be changed into the image of his Lord. And he not only says so, but in this one verse he reveals to us the mode of becoming like Christ, and a mode, as we shall find, so simple and so infallible in its working that a mancannot understand it without renewing his hope that even he may one day become like Christ.In order to understand this simplest mode of sanctification we must look back at the incident that we read in the Book of Exodus (xxxiv. .). Paul had been reading how when Moses came down from the mount where he had been speaking with God his face shone, so as to dazzle and alarm those who were near him.They at once recognised that that was the glory of God reflected from him; and just as it is almost as difficult for us to look at the sun reflected from a mirror as to look directly at the sun, so these men felt it almost as difficult to look straight at the face of Moses as to look straight at the face of God. But Moses was a wise man, and he showed his wisdom in this instance as well as elsewhere. He knew that that glory was only on the skin of his face, and that of course it would pass away. It was a superficial shining. And accordingly he put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel might not see it dying out from minute to minute and from hour to hour, because he knew these Israelites thoroughly, and he knew that when they saw the glory dying out they would say, "God has forsaken Moses. We need not attend to him any more. His authority is gone, and the glory of God's presence has passed from him." So Moses wore the veil that they might not see the glory dying out. But whenever he was called back to the presence of God he took off the veil and received a new access of glory on his face, and thus went "from glory to glory.""That," says Paul, "is precisely the process through which we Christian men become like Christ." We go back to the presence of Christ with unveiled face; and as often as we stand in His presence, as often as we deal in our spirit with the living Christ, so often do we take on a little of His glory. The glory of Christ is His character; and as often as we stand before Christ, and think of Him, and realise what He was, our heart goes out and reflects some of His character. And that reflection, that glory, is not any longer merely on the skin of the face; as Paul wishes us to recognise, it is a spiritual glory, it is wrought by the spirit of Christ upon our spirit, and it is we ourselves that are changed from glory to glory into the very image of the Lord.

It is May 1983. The UMR is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Headquarters, the UMR Hall, in Greytown. A medal parade, civic dinner and a number of other events are on the programme. The members of the Unit are upbeat and enthusiastic and look forward to all the activities. There is an officers meeting in the old UMR Hall. On the agenda the Unit's history going forward from 1975 when the last edition was published. A decision is taken to appoint a senior officer (Maj. L. Palmer) to commence working on the History project. The idea is to begin collecting material, articles and photographs, interviewing the older ex-members and Comrades of the Unit, collecting anecdotes and any other related information. The years passed and the work load increased as time went on. The one man project became a 4 member committee and members came and went. Cmdt. John Allchin took over the project. Under his direction the work continued until in, 2004, there was enough progress to appoint a professional scribe to put it all together. Mark Coghlan of the Pietermaritzburg Museum, a person of great experience and insight into military history in KwaZulu-Natal, was approached and accepted the assignment;  To draft, collate and produce the History of the UMR 1864 to 2004. The rest is history, the culmination of over 20-odd years of hard but fulfilling work. As the reader turns the pagers of this document, the history of the illustrious UMR will unfold before his/her very eyes, and the reader will be taken for the ride of a lifetime. The ride starts with a small band of 45 cavalry volunteers in Greytown and ends with a modern Armoured Car Regiment, a compliment of 254 trained men and women, equipped with Rooikat armoured vehicles and a modern and functional headquarters at Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal. The Umvoti Mounted Rifles is the second oldest Regiment in the South African National Defence Force. It was 150 years old on 16 May 2014. The regiment fought gallantly and with honour in the South African (Zulu) War of 1879; The South Africa (Anglo Boer) War of 1899 -1902; Natal (Bambata) Rebellion of 1906; South West Africa (First world War) 1914-1915 and Gibbon, Western Desert (Second World War) 1941-1943. The Regiment stands proud as the only active Armoured Car Regiment in KwaZulu-Natal, and is ready to serve the South African National Defence Force, The Country and its People, where and whenever called upon to do so. Hardcover, 795 pages. Published October 2012 

  SA Engineers, (worn by 2 Mobile Watch which became 1 Para) beret badge In 1960 fifteen volunteers from the SADF were sent to England at RAF Abington, the majority to train as parachute instructors, some as parachute-packers and one SAAF   pilot in the dropping of paratroopers. These men together with an older unit called 2 Mobile Watch formed the nucleus of 1 Parachute Battalion at Tempe in Bloemfontein   in April 1961.   The Mobile Watch were SA Engineers Corps and the Units were PF and SA's First line defense. They were employed in Engineer tasks. When 2 MW were renamed to 1 Para, only volunteers went over to para, the rest went back to construction. Nice condition but posts shortened as they were Postage SAPO with tracking R70, Postnet R110, will combine Fastway Couriers, anywhere in JHB/PTA or major centres R70 Will post overseas,    Paypal add 10% on total for Paypal fees - Bob Bucks is a better option          

  SA Engineers, (worn by 2 Mobile Watch which became 1 Para) beret badge In 1960 fifteen volunteers from the SADF were sent to England at RAF Abington, the majority to train as parachute instructors, some as parachute-packers and one SAAF   pilot in the dropping of paratroopers. These men together with an older unit called 2 Mobile Watch formed the nucleus of 1 Parachute Battalion at Tempe in Bloemfontein   in April 1961.   The Mobile Watch were SA Engineers Corps and the Units were PF and SA's First line defense. They were employed in Engineer tasks. When 2 MW were renamed to 1 Para, only volunteers went over to para, the rest went back to construction. Nice condition but posts shortened as they were Will combine Will post overseas,    Paypal add 10% on total for Paypal fees - Bob Bucks is a better option          

In 1945, as the Allied forces approached the German border having fought so bravely following the successful Normandy landings, it was decided that an elite unit was needed to work alongside the frontline soldiers as they headed east: they were called Target-Force. Until now their story has never appeared in any histories of the period. Through extensive archival work and after interviewing many of the soldiers who tell their story here for the first time, historian Sean Longden can finally reveal the previously unknown story of the men who were sent into Germany to seize and secure highly developed Nazi military technology, key factories and scientists.T-Force was born out of the chaos of war torn Europe in 1945, and it is no wonder the story reads like a spy thriller: the unit was top secret and originated from a plan belonging to the Naval intelligence officer, Ian Fleming, later the creator of James Bond. The unit was selected from the remnants of the infantry after Normandy and included drivers, sappers, bomb disposal experts, commandos and teams of expert scientists, specialists and engineers. What they discovered would not only shock the allied army but also play a huge role in the opening years of the Cold War. Between March and summer 1945, the unit was constantly at work seizing targets in towns such as Bremen, Celle, Hamburg and Hanover, where they uncovered a secret laboratory hidden beneath a straw covered floor of a barn, vast blast furnaces in Ruhr Valley steel works that were dismantled and shipped back to England, and a fully functioning aircraft factory operating in two miles of underground tunnels. They went in search of codebooks that could decrypt the enemys signals; new technology such as jet propelled engines, and mini submarines. They also hunted down the men behind these extraordinary feats: nearly 1,000 top scientists, some smuggled out of the Soviet Zone in unmarked lorries, including Werner Von Braun, the brains behind the V1 and V2 rockets who was to become a key figure in the American space race, Otto Hahn, Germanys foremost expert in nuclear fission and Helmut Walther, the man who inspired Ian Flemings Moonraker.Sean Longdens riveting history will change the story of how the second World War was won and how the first battles of the Cold War were fought; it reads like the finest espionage thriller of the era.

I was born in the year of the Supersonic, the era of the multistory, multivitamin, multitonic, the highrise time of men with the technology and women who could be bionic, when jump-jets were Harrier, when QE2 was Cunard, when thirty-eight feet tall the Princess Margaret stood stately in her hoverpad, the annlee erotique was only thirty aircushioned minutes away and everything went at twice the speed of sound.  I opened my eyes.  It was all in colour, it didn't look like Kansas anymore.  The students were on the barricades, the mode was maxi, the Beatles were transcendental, they opened a shop.  It was Britain.  It was great." Ali Smith's Hotel World was shortlisted for a Booker Prize in .  In this new novel she goes even further in developing her unique and brilliant literary voice. Soft cover, good condition.  303 pages.

Condition: Good. Name of previous owner on flyleaf. Set in an unnamed African country, the book is narrated by Salim, a young man from an Indian family of traders long resident on the coast. He believes The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. So he has taken the initiative; left the coast; acquired his own shop in a small, growing city in the continent’s remote interior and is selling sundries – little more than this and that, really – to the natives. This spot, this ‘bend in the river’, is a microcosm of post-colonial Africa at the time of Independence: a scene of chaos, violent change, warring tribes, ignorance, isolation and poverty. And from this rich landscape emerges one of the author’s most potent works – a truly moving story of historical upheaval and social breakdown. ‘Brilliant and terrifying’ -- Observer. ‘Naipaul has fashioned a work of intense imaginative force. It is a haunting creation, rich with incident and human bafflement, played out in an immense detail of landscape rendered with a poignant brilliance.’ -- Elizabeth Hardwick. ‘Always a master of fictional landscape, Naipaul here shows, in his variety of human examples and in his search for underlying social causes, a Tolstoyan spirit’ -- John Updike. About the author () V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in . He went to England on a scholarship in . After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River and most recently The Masque of Africa, and a collection of correspondence, Letters Between a Father and Son. In he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ronnie Selley, a South African from rural Natal, joined the RAF on a short-service commission in 1937, considered the Golden Age of aviation. During these glory years of Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart few guessed at the brewing storm and dark days to come. After completing his training on antiquated First World War aircraft, Selley was posted to 220 Squadron Coastal Command, the RAF’s under-staffed and under-equipped poor relation to the more prestigious Fighter and Bomber Commands. Tasked with reconnaissance, convoy patrols and submarine-hunting the pilots of Coastal Command chalked up more flying hours than any other RAF Command. It was not uncommon for pilots to be in the air, searching the waters of the North Atlantic, for up to sixteen hours a day, in aircraft that were neither capable of such ranges nor, initially, adequately armed to defend their charges. From the outbreak of war until after its cessation Coastal Command had aircraft in the air twenty-four hours a day, every single day. The toll this took on the men of Coastal Command was unthinkable. The first RAF pilot to sink a German U-boat, Selley went on the win the DFC for his actions during the Dunkirk evacuation. He won high praise and newspaper headlines such as “Plane fights 13 German warships”, “One RAF man bombs 3 ships, routs Nazis” and “One against eight” were not uncommon. Selley subsequently suffered acute battle fatigue and spent time convalescing at the Dunblane Hydro. Thereafter, he was posted by the Air Ministry as Air Vice-Marshal Breese’s personal pilot. On 5 March 1941 Ronnie Selley, Air Vice-Marshal Breese and the entire crew of the fully armed Lockheed Hudson they was flying experienced engine problems, lost speed, stalled and exploded on impact at Wick in northern Scotland. Paperback, 224 pages.

Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1999. Hard cover with dust cover, 274 pages. Very good condition; tightly bound, neat and clean. Under 1kg. The Boer War (1899-1902) witnessed the professionals of the British Army pitted against the gifted amateurs who led the Boer commandos. For the Boers, it was a struggle for independence; for Britain, an attempt once and for all to assert her political supremacy in South Africa. While sheer weight of numbers and ruthless tactics eventually secured a British military victory, the extraordinary Boer effort won respect worldwide. This is an in-depth study of the principal commanders on both sides, in a conflict that was both "the last of the gentlemen's wars" and the first modern one. The three British Commanders-in-Chief were established regular soldiers who stood high in public esteem when they went out to South Africa. For Roberts, the war was a final triumph, albeit somewhat tainted when it dragged on for another year and a half after his departure; for Kitchener, it was a tedious and exhausting interlude which delayed his appointment as Commander-in-Chief in India; and for Buller, the graveyard of his reputation. The Boer Generals were Louis Botha, Christiaan de Wet, Koos de la Rey and Jan Smuts, of whom the first three were farmers and legislators with little conventional military experience. Smuts, after a brilliant academic career at Cambridge, was a senior but very young state official. In the course of the war, the men proved in different ways to have outstanding natural military ability. For De Wet, this was a time of fulfilment when all his special gifts came into play; for Smuts and Botha, it was a preparation for their future careers as politicians; and for De la Rey, who hated war, it was a heavy but unavoidable duty which he discharged with distinction. Peter Trew's narrative examines each personality separately, highlighting the differences between the command styles of the experienced, professional British generals and the natural ingenuity of the "amateur" Boers.

On the night of February 25, 1969, an inexperienced, 25-year-old lieutenant, Bob Kerrey, led a commando raid on an isolated hamlet called Thanh Phong in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. While witnesses and official records give varying accounts, one thing is certain: around midnight, Kerrey and his men killed nearly two dozen unarmed women and children. What happened that night and why? It's a terrible secret that Kerrey has borne for more than thirty years. Kerrey went on to do heroic things in Vietnam and later as a politician. Since World War II, he is only Medal of Honor winner to sit as a member of Congress. In many ways, Kerrey's life following that tragic mission has been a struggle for redemption. First edition hardcover with dust jacket published 2003. Very good condition. Illustrated. Tracked postage is R50.00.

When freelance journalist Robert du Bois went into the Tsitsikamma forest in search of the famous Knysna elephants, he got considerably more than he had bargained for... With the aid of the tempestuous ranger Cathy Moore, the search took them from the rain forest to the ocean, facing man-eating sharks and the greed of ruthless men... Written thirty years ago by South Africas most famous prisoner-of-war Captain Wynand du Toit while in detention, the story depicts his yearning for freedom and how he escaped the confines of his prison walls. Subjected to the scrutiny of his Cuban captors, he had to steer carefully away from the military to avoid further questions and interrogation. Hence the adventure into the beauty of the Tsitsikamma Forests on the south-eastern coast of South Africa. Fiction, softcover 308 pages.

Jacques Pauw has been an investigative journalist for more than three decades. Before the phenomenal success of  The Presidents Keepers,  he spent years tracking down apartheid death squads.  Into the Heart of Darkness, first released in 1997, was the result of this work. Despite official denials and cover-ups, the rumours of apartheids death squads have now been proved to be all too real. Hundreds of anti-apartheid activists were killed and thousands tortured by a group of bizarre assassins, the foot soldiers of apartheids secret war. Jacques Pauw has been more closely involved with apartheids killers than any other journalist. For more than seven years, he has hunted them down and become a witness to their secret and forbidden world. Into the Heart of Darkness  will take you on a journey into the minds and lives of the men who went out to kill and kill again. What caused these souls to become so dark and guided them to so much evil? First published in 1997. This is  NOT  an updated edition, just a re-release of the original 1997 book. Softcover, 346 pages.

In the late 1970's, at the age of nineteen, Oiva Angula left his home in Windhoek and went into exile in Angola, where he joined SWAPOs military wing, PLAN. After working for the movement as a political instructor, he was wrongly branded an apartheid spy and traitor during a series of purges within the organisation. SWAPO Captive is Angulas terrifying account of betrayal and torture by his comrades, and his imprisonment for four and a half years in the omalambo the hidden pits in Lubango, Angola, into which he, along with many others, was cast and left to die. SWAPO Captive threads together personal narrative and national history, including Angulas childhood in South West Africa, the rising tensions sparked by apartheid rule, his fathers role in early liberation movements, and his own politicisation and decision to join the struggle. He gives fascinating accounts of life in a PLAN training camp, political education in the Eastern Bloc, and a cadres role in the war for independence. Most of all, this is a story about endurance and courage among people who were cruelly imprisoned, about their camaraderie and hope that one day they would face their captors as free men and women. Angula challenges the wall of silence imposed after independence in Namibia with respect to possible war crimes committed by SWAPO, exposing the dark past of a party that claimed to fight for freedom for all. Paperback, 195 pages. Published August 2018.

The Soldiers   Author: Willem Steenkamp Publisher: Don Nelson, Cape Town     Edition: First Edition 1978 ISBN:   0 909238 34 0 Condition: Good. Library copy. Reflects library stamps and tags, Wear & tear to dustcover, otherwise a clean copy with tight binding Binding: Hardcover Pages: 144. Various black & white photographs and maps     Additional Information South Africans are a warlike breed, although not militaristic by nature. therefore it’s hardly surprising that in its troubled history, this country and its territories which became part of it, have produced generation after generation of daring generals. Some of them, like Louis Botha and Jan Christian Smuts, went onto greater fame as statesmen; others were fighting men pure and simple.   The Soldiers presents six of the warriors, two fro each of the great wars vin which South Africans fought between 1899 and 19454. Tro a remarkable degree their stories are intertwined; sometimes they fought against each other; at other times one would be a young soldier serving under a great general, not knowing that in later years he in turn would at the lonely pinnacle of a supreme leadership in the filed   Please note that we refer the right to close our auctions at any time Please refer to all images for condition, as this form an integral part of the description Payment to be processed within 2 days of auction closing Item will be posted on the first Saturday following receipt of payment. We are not responsible for damages to or loss of items once posted The item is second hand and sold as such with no warranty or guarantee implied, expressed or given. Regretfully, no buyers from outside the borders of South Africa