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The Second World War was a momentous event in twentieth-century history and it is a fascinating period for family historians to explore. Numerous records are available to researchers whose relatives served in the war, and James Goultys book is an accessible guide on how to locate and understand these sources - and get the most out of them.Using evidence gleaned from a range of sources archives, official records, books, libraries, oral history and the internet he reconstructs the wartime records of a revealing and representative group of ordinary men and women: a signaler, an infantryman, a doctor, an artillery officer, a woman serving with anti aircraft units, a commando, a Royal Navy bomb disposal officer, RAF fighter and bomber pilots, and others. He describes their wartime careers and experiences and demonstrates how they fitted into contemporary military organizations and operations. He looks at their backgrounds, their wartime training and duties, their front line service, and the conditions they endured. In each case he shows how the research was conducted and explains how the lives of such individuals can be explored highlighting methods that can be used and sources that can be consulted. James Goultys informative book will be essential reading and reference for anyone who wants to find out about the Second World War and is keen to understand the part an ancestor played in it.

"Goulty tells the story from the perspective of the ordinary sailor or officer who was there."—The Northern Mariner Although many books have been written about naval actions during the Second World War – histories and memoirs in particular – few books have attempted to encompass the extraordinary variety of the experience of the war at sea. That is why James Goulty’s vivid survey is of such value. Sailors in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy experienced a war fought on a massive scale, on every ocean of the world, in a diverse range of vessels, from battleships, aircraft carriers and submarines to merchant ships and fishing boats. Their recollections are as varied as the ships they served in, and they take the reader through the entire maritime war, as it was perceived at the time by those who had direct, personal knowledge of it. Throughout the book the emphasis is on the experience of individuals – their recruitment and training, their expectations and the reality they encountered on active service in many different offensive and defensive roles including convoy duty and coastal de-fence, amphibious operations, hunting U-boats and surface raiders, mine sweeping and manning landing and rescue craft. A particularly graphic section describes, in the words of the sailors themselves, what action against the enemy felt like and the impact of casualties – seamen who were wounded or killed on board or were lost when their ships sank. A fascinating inside view of the maritime warfare emerges which may be less heroic than the image created by some post-war accounts, but it gives readers today a much more realistic impression of the whole gamut of wartime life at sea.

Today the Korean War of 1950-1953 is overshadowed by later twentieth-century conflicts in Vietnam and the Middle East, yet at the time it was the focus of international attention.It threatened to lead to a third world war, and although fought on a limited scale, it still involved over a million men under UN command and even more on the Communist side. It left the American and British troops who took part with a range of intense recollections that often marked them for the rest of their lives, and it is these experiences that James Goulty draws on in this eyewitness history of the conflict.He uses official documents, letters, diaries, regimental histories, memoirs, oral histories and correspondence to show what the war was like for those who took part. Their accounts vividly contrast the American and British experience as seen through the eyes of individual servicemen, and they throw fresh light on the relations between the UN forces on their different attitudes, tactics, training and equipment, and on the tensions that developed between them.

A detailed, realistic picture of what it was like to serve in the Royal Air Force during WWII, both on the ground and in the air, using firsthand accounts. Much has been written about the Royal Air Force during the Second World War—memoirs, biographies, histories of Fighter and Bomber commands, technical studies of the aircraft, accounts of individual operations and exploits—but few books have attempted to take the reader on a journey through basic training and active service as air or ground crew and eventual demobilization at the end of the war. That is the aim of James Goulty’s Eyewitness RAF. Using a vivid selection of testimony from men and women, he offers a direct insight into every aspect of wartime life in the service. Throughout the book the emphasis is on the individual’s experience of the RAF—the preparations for flying, flying itself, the daily routines of an air base, time on leave, and the issues of discipline, morale, and motivation. A particularly graphic section describes, in the words of the men themselves, what it felt like to go on operations and the impact of casualties—airmen who were killed, injured, or taken prisoner. What emerges is a fascinatingly varied inside view of the RAF that is perhaps less heroic and glamorous than the image created by some postwar accounts—but gives readers today a much more realistic appreciation of the whole gamut of life in the RAF seventy-plus years ago.