After an air raid, a group of English children find a German machine gun and hide it from adults who are looking for it.

'Some bright kid's got a gun and 2000 rounds of live ammo. And that gun's no pea-shooter. It'll go through a brick wall at a quarter of a mile.' Chas McGill has the second-best collection of war souvenirs in Garmouth, and he desperately wants it to be the best. When he stumbles across the remains of a German bomber crashed in the woods - its shiny, black machine-gun still intact - he grabs his chance. Soon he's masterminding his own war effort with dangerous and unexpected results . . . The Machine Gunners is Robert Westall's gripping first novel for children set during World War Two and winner of the Carnegie Medal. Now with a brilliant cover look celebrating its fortieth anniversary. Includes a bonus short story - 'The Haunting of Chas McGill' - and an extended biography of the author.

In the skies of France during the Great War, a red-painted fighter is chasing a British SPAD. The relentless German pilot eventually wounds his opponent mortally, and lands near the downed Briton to watch him die, confessing his delight in war and victory. Ten years earlier, a young Manfred Von Richthofen is attending a military academy in Berlin when, during an incident with classmates, he comes to realise he has an unnatural gift...

A retelling of the life of German WWI ace Manfred Von Richthofen a pilot of almost supernatural skill. In the skies of France during the Great War, a red-painted fighter is chasing a British SPAD. The relentless German pilot eventually wounds his opponent mortally, and lands near the downed British to watch him die, confessing his delight in war and victory. Ten years earlier, a young Manfred Von Richthofen is attending a military academy in Berlin when, during an incident with classmates, he comes to realise he has an unnatural gift "

They were warriors, trained to fight, dedicated to their country, and determined to win. At Guadalcanal, the Marine Corps’ machine gunners took everything the Japanese could throw at them in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II; their position was so hopeless that at one point they were given the go-ahead to surrender. Near the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, as the mercury dropped to twenty below, the 1st Marine Division found itself surrounded and cut off by the enemy. The outlook seemed so bleak that many in Washington had privately written off the men. But surrender is not part of a Marine’s vocabulary. Gunner’s Glory contains true stories of these and other tough battles in the Pacific, in Korea, and in Vietnam, recounted by the machine gunners who fought them. Bloody, wounded, sometimes barely alive, they stayed with their guns, delivering a stream of firepower that often turned defeat into victory–and always made them the enemy’s first target.

"A dramatic narrative of machine guns since the 19th century, with detailed observations of their influence on warfare and continuing role as a force-multiplier with today's elite units."

Machine Gunners in the trenches The First World War was waged on an industrial scale, utilising every conceivable advantage of invention and technology. Fought on land, in the skies and on and beneath the sea it was the first true conflict of the modern age. In the land war infantry soldiers were introduced to efficient artillery, poison gas, the flame thrower, the tank and the devastatingly simple killer that was the barbed wire entanglement. Development in firearms had advanced, by comparison, quite slowly and soldiers were still mostly armed with single round firing weapons. However, the invention of the Maxim gun fundamentally changed the nature of war as infantrymen knew it. First proven by the British army against the Matabele warriors and then decisively against the Mahdists at Omdurman in the 1890s, here was the new monarch of close contact conflict. Men would no longer need to been aimed at to be shot, but would be scythed down in numbers by rapidly fired streams of bullets and every army immediately adopted the machine gun of necessity. This book contains two outstanding accounts of the Canadian army's machine gun corps on the Western Front. Known as the 'Emma Gees' (MG-the initials of machine guns) these men not only dispensed death but due to their tactical importance were the focus of enemy assault. The first book in this special Leonaur two-books-in-one edition is a very personal account by a serving gunner at the sharp end of conflict; the second book, written by another machine gunner, also provides for the reader historical context in the form of an invaluable unit history. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

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In 1914 there were only two machine guns supporting a British infantry battalion of 800 men, and in the light of the effectiveness of German and French machine guns the Machine Gun Corps was formed in October 1915. This remarkable book, compiled and edited by C E Crutchley, is a collection of the personal accounts of officers and men who served in the front lines with their machine guns in one of the most ghastly wars, spread over three continents. The strength of the book lies in the fact that these are the actual words of the soldiers themselves, complete with characteristic modes of expression and oddities of emphasis and spelling. All theatres of war are covered from the defence of the Suez Canal, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia in the east to France and Flanders, the German offensive of March 1918 and the final act on the Western Front that brought the war to an end. October 2006 is the 90th anniversary of the formation of the Machine Gun Corps.