The Last Stand: Britain’s Forgotten Battles – Military History Ebook

Five battles. Five desperate defences. One question: how do soldiers keep fighting when the odds say they should lose?

Across nearly a century of warfare, British and Commonwealth soldiers found themselves surrounded, isolated and vastly outnumbered. Sometimes relief was coming. Sometimes there was nowhere left to retreat. And sometimes survival was no longer a realistic possibility.

The Last Stand: Britain’s Forgotten Battles Against Impossible Odds explores five extraordinary engagements in which small forces were pushed to the limits of endurance.

From the besieged Residency at Lucknow in 1857 and the desperate defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, to the twenty-one Sikh soldiers who made their stand at Saragarhi in 1897, these were battles in which preparation, discipline and determination were tested against overwhelming numbers.

The story then moves into the twentieth century, following the British airborne troops trapped at Arnhem in 1944 and the Gloucestershire Regiment’s desperate resistance during the Battle of the Imjin River in Korea in 1951.

But this is more than a collection of heroic last stands.

Martin Swan examines what actually happened: the decisions of commanders, the weapons and tactics employed, the importance of terrain and logistics, the capabilities of the opposing armies, and the mistakes and circumstances that placed these soldiers in such desperate situations.

Inside you will discover:

• The prolonged struggle to survive the Siege of Lucknow
• How a tiny garrison held Rorke’s Drift after the disaster at Isandlwana
• The remarkable defence of Saragarhi by twenty-one Sikh soldiers
• Why the airborne operation at Arnhem ended in isolation and evacuation
• How the Glosters became surrounded during the Battle of the Imjin River
• The tactical and logistical factors that determined whether each last stand survived or fell
• The difference between the legends surrounding these battles and the more complicated historical reality

Spanning colonial warfare, two world wars and the Korean War, The Last Stand examines courage and endurance without losing sight of the wider historical circumstances in which these battles were fought.

They were outnumbered. They were isolated. Retreat was disappearing as an option.

This is the story of what happened when they chose—or were forced—to stand and fight.