http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IQXOU4/?tag=2022091-20
(The Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 threw her west...)
The Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 threw her western allies into a panic: was the eastern giant about to be overwhelmed by anarchic chaos and drop out of the First World War - leaving the west to fight a resurgent Germany? Or, still worse, had Russia fallen into the hands of ruthless revolutionaries who would export their revolution to a war weary Europe? Such fears led to the despatches of allied military expeditoions to several points on the coasts of north and south RUssia. One such was the Archangel expedition led by the huge general Sir Edmund Tiny Ironside, later chief of the Imperial General Staff. This is Ironsides account of his mission to the snowy northern wastes of Russia, his co-operation with somewhat unreliable White Russian allies; his clashes with the Bolsheviks and his eventual withdrawal.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847347320/?tag=2022091-20
( The Field Marshal was a born commander and, besides bei...)
The Field Marshal was a born commander and, besides being a gifted linguist, was mobilized as a Subaltern for the Boer War to act as a secret agent and to streamline the peace process. With an appetite for battle, in WW1 he became the Allied C-in-C of the Expeditionary Force in North Russia and, being ranked as a knighted Major General at the age of 39, he then modernized the Staff training to deal with armored and aerial warfare. His Generalship was tested out in the Raj and, in 1939, on the day war was declared, the British Army leadership as CIGS was placed in his hands, so that he was able to defend Calais and free-up the BEF escape route to Dunkirk. Back in business as C-in-C Home Forces he was given his baton. Ironside surely had one of the most varied and long military careers of any military leader in the 20th century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0750963794/?tag=2022091-20
(The battle of Tannenberg in 1914 is one of historys grea...)
The battle of Tannenberg in 1914 is one of historys great turning points. Germanys war plans in 1914 were based on the assumption that Russia would only mobilise slowly and that Germany would have time to deal decisively with France via the Schlieffen Plan, before turning east to settle accounts with Russia. East Prussia was therefore left only lightly defended, with the bulk of the German army deployed in France. But when the Russians invaded with the twin armies of Generals Samsonev and Rennenkampf, beating Germanys inept General von Prittwitz at Gumbinnen, the German heartland was in extreme peril. Generals Hindenburg and his brilliant lieutenant Erich Ludendorff were summoned from France with reinforcements to save the situation. They put into effect a plan already devised by General Max Hoffmann to deal with the two Russian armies piecemeal, crushing and virtually annihilating them at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. 'The victories turned the eastern front into a slow slogging match and ruled out a quick end to the war. The author of this history, Major-General Sir Edmund Ironside, later became Chief of the Imperial General Staff and commanded anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia after the war. He therefore knows the area he describes well, and his book provides a clear account of this famous German victory written with an expert military eye.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847340768/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0850520770/?tag=2022091-20
William Edmund Ironside was born on May 6, 1880, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Army Surgeon Major William Ironside of the Royal Horse Artillery and Emma Maria Richards Ironside. His father died shortly after he was born, and his mother raised the family on the small widow's pension.
William Edmund Ironside was educated at schools in St Andrews before being sent to Tonbridge School in Kent for his secondary education. At the age of sixteen he left Tonbridge to attend a crammer, having not shown much academic promise. In January, 1898, he was admitted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in which he flourished at both his studies and sports.
On June 25, 1899, Ironside was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the 44th Battery of the Royal Artillery, and sent to South Africa, where he would fight in the Second Boer War. There he was wounded three times and received promotion to First Lieutenant. Following the end of the war, he disguised himself as an Afrikaans-speaking Boer and took a job as a wagon driver for the German colonial forces in German Southwest Africa to spy on their activities. After being discovered, he was able to avoid capture and escaped back to South Africa, which later he would claim his adventures were used as the source of a spy character in novels by author John Buchan. Before World War I broke out, he served tours in India and South Africa, and attended Staff College in Camberley. On August 5, 1914, he was promoted to Staff Captain and attached to the 6th Division, to be further promoted to Major in October 1914. After working as a GSO3 (General Staff Officer for Operations and Training) and GSO2 (General Staff Officer for Intelligence and Security), he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and made GSO1 (General Staff Officer for Personnel and Manpower) in March 1916 with the 4th Canadian Division. There he participated in the Battle of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and Passchendale, and in January 1918, he was made Commandant of the Small Arms School with the rank of Colonel. Two months later, he became the commanding general of the 99th Infantry Brigade with the temporary rank of Brigadier General. After six months, he was attached to the Allied Expeditionary Force fighting the Bolsheviks in Russia, and eventually became its commander, and with it, the permanent rank of Brigadier General. In November 1919, he turned over his command and returned to Britain where he was promoted to Major General and was made a Knight Commander of the Bath, an act which made him one of the youngest Major Generals in the Army.
Between the World Wars, he commanded a military mission that supervised the withdrawal of Romanian forces from Hungary following the Hungarian-Romanian War of 1919, and served in Persia (Iran). In 1921, he was injured in an aircraft accident and returned home to Britain. Recovered from his injuries, in May 1922, he was appointed the Commandant of the Staff College, spending four years there, where he argued for modernizing the Army with mechanization and rearmament. Critical of the "old men" in the upper ranks of the Army who he believed were clinging to methods of the previous war, he was reprimanded by the Chief of the (British) Imperial General Staff (CIGS), General Sir George Milne. Despite this, he was promoted to Lieutenant General in 1931 and posted to India to keep him from making further trouble for the senior Army staff. In 1936, he was promoted to full General (4 stars), and command of the Eastern Command, where he determined it was not prepared for a coming war with Japan. Losing out to Lord Gort for the position of CIGS, he was posted as Governor of Gibraltar, which many saw as a quiet place to put future soon-to-retire generals. Instead of relaxing in semi-retirement, he actively became involved in defense planning for the island and greatly strengthened the defenses of Gibraltar, making it ready for what many considered an inevitable European War. In July 1939, fact-finding trip to Britains's ally Poland, he recognized that Poland was unable to stop Germany in a war, would fall to German attack within weeks, and warned the Army command. On September 3, 1939, with the outbreak of war with Germany he was appointed CIGS, and he adopted a policy of a strong defense in France, planning to send 20 British divisions there. He also planned to send 3 divisions to strategic Norway, but the German Army arrived first and occupied it before the British divisions were ready. During the May 1940 Battle for France, Ironside visited the BEF and French command several times, observing what he believed to be defeatism in the generals there, and returned to recommend preparing for an evacuation of the British Forces there. Upon his return in late May 1940, he briefed PM Winston Churchill on his findings and requested transfer to command of the Home Army in Britain, a posting he liked better than CIGS, and to which Churchill agreed to do. Ironside then began to build up the Home Army against a future German attack that he was certain would come once France fell. On July 19, 1940, he was relieved by the War Office and retired as a Field Marshal. Later, he was also raised to the peerage as the Baron Ironside of Archangel, although he was never given another military assignment. In his remaining years, he turned to lecturing and writing books, and farming his estate in Norfolk. Injured in a fall in his home, he was taken to the hospital in London, where he died on September 22, 1959, at the age of 79. After full military honors at Westminster Abbey, he was buried in Hingham, England.
Field Marshal William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside, is noted for his important role as commander of British forces in Persia (Iran) in 1920-1921.
His many honors and awards include Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, the Distinguished Service Order, Order of St. Michael and St. George, Knight of the Venerable Order of St. John, French Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, and the French Croix de Guerre with Palm.
(The Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 threw her west...)
( The Field Marshal was a born commander and, besides bei...)
(The battle of Tannenberg in 1914 is one of historys grea...)
On June 26, 1915, William Edmund Ironside married Mariot Ysobel Cheyne, they had two children:Elspeth Mariot Ironside and Edmund Oslac Ironside.
William Ironside was born on May 16, 1836. He was the son of William Ironside and Grizeal Gordon. On November 14, 1869, he married Emma Maria Richards.
Emma Maria Richards was born circa 1845. She was the daughter of William Haggett Richards.
Mariot Ysobel Cheyne was born on June 3, 1890, at Switzerland. She was the daughter of Charles Cheyne and Eva Alice Wheeler.
