Hold at All Costs!
Helion & Company (Verlag)
978-1-910294-37-6 (ISBN)
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The bone-weary survivors defended the wood through five days and six nights of hell, eventually being forced into a corner of the wood. The orders were to hold on at all costs- and this they did despite appalling casualties. The saga of Delville Wood will never be forgotten by South Africa, yet the story of the battle, told through the eyes of the participants was never fully documented - accounts read like fiction, yet are wholly true.
We learn about youngsters from the plains of Southern Africa who earned the admiration of their enemy. After being shelled for eight hours they stood up from the mud to repel fresh assaults. We read of the Victoria Cross won through rescuing a wounded officer under fire; a man blown up and buried who continued on to deliver his message and earn the DCM; the officer who was captured then knocked out his guard to return to the fighting; the colonel who fought like a private with rifle and mills bombs; and many more.
The Germans'experiences are also chronicled. Extracts from their regimental histories paint a picture of their dogged determination to retake the wood. Their order was that the enemy was not to advance except over corpses! The author interviewed many of the South African survivors, now long gone, and has visited the wood on many occasions during the past thirty-three years. The trilogy of books he wrote on the battle has been combined into a riveting account of 'the bloodiest battle hell of 1916'.
In 1917 The Times of London recounted,'No battlefield on all the Western Front was more bitterly contested than was "Devil's Wood"... [where] South African forces won their imperishable fame - grimly hanging on against overwhelming odds and repulsing counter attacks by troops five and six times their number."
Ian Uys was born in 1942. He volunteered for and served in the SA Air Force Gymnasium in 1960, then attended the University of Cape Town and graduated in B Commerce. Uys captained the UCT Boxing Team and was selected as South Africa's first AIESEC commerce student to work in the USA and Australia. After marrying Barbara Bowers, a former Londoner, he qualified as a chartered accountant then lived in England where he did VC research. In 1973 he wrote and published For Valour, the history of Southern Africa's Victoria Cross Heroes. Uys has been interested in the personal reminiscences of personalities caught up in military history and has written more than 20 books about them. He served in the Heidelberg Commando in the seventies. In 1977 he was a platoon commander in the operational area and was awarded the De Wet Decoration. In 1989 he ran for parliament as a Democratic Party candidate for Germiston District, a strong National Party Ward. Though he lost, he believes that in a small way it contributed to the change in the country the following year. Uys is a practising auditor in Knysna, Southern Cape, and has three children and four grandchildren. He is a former Chairman of the SA Military History Society, has completed ten Comrades' Marathon of 90km and was a private pilot for many years. He has developed his family's Bushman Valley Resort near Prince Albert and is a keen nature conservationist.
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 20.11.2015 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 120 b/w illustrations and maps |
| Verlagsort | Solihull |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918) |
| Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945 | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-910294-37-3 / 1910294373 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-910294-37-6 / 9781910294376 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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