Browned off and bloody-minded : the British soldier goes to war, 1939-1945 / Alan Allport.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts and dangers, was going to be like. This social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country.

Part 1: Regulars -- 1. Colonel Lawrence and Colonel Blimp -- 2. Gentlemen and Old Sweats -- Part 2: Civvies -- 4. Army of Shopkeepers -- 5. Britain Blancoes while Russia Bleeds -- 6. Get Some Service In -- Part 3: Crusaders -- 7. Into the Blue -- 8. Come to Sunny Italy -- 9. Fighting Bloody Nature -- 10. Second Front -- 11. Teeth and Tail -- 12. The Grammar of War -- 13. Categories of Courage -- Part 5: Citizens -- 14. Them and Us -- 15. 'What a Colossal Waste of Time War Is.'

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