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![Stout Hearts: The British and Canadians in Normandy 1944 by [Ben Kite]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51g0pZbx1uL._SY346_.jpg)
Stout Hearts: The British and Canadians in Normandy 1944 Kindle Edition
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Stout Hearts is a book which offers an entirely new perspective on the British Army in Normandy. This fresh study explores the anatomy of war through the Army's operations in the summer of 1944, informing and entertaining the general non-fiction reader as well as students of military history. There have been so many books written on Normandy that the publication of another one might appear superfluous. However most books have focused on narrating the conduct of the battle, describing the factors that influenced its outcome, or debating the relative merits of the armies and their generals. What was missing from the existing body of work on Normandy specifically and the Second World War generally is a book that explains how an army actually operates in war and what it was like for those involved, Stout Hearts fills this gap.
Stout Hearts is essential reading for those who wish to understand the ‘mechanics’ of battle. How does an Army care for its wounded? How do combat engineers cross obstacles? How do tanks fight? How do Air and Naval Forces support the Army? But to understand what makes an Army ‘tick’ you must also understand its people. Therefore explanations of tactics and techniques are not only well illustrated with excellent photographs and high quality maps but also effectively combined with relevant accounts from the combatants themselves. These dramatic stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things are the strength of the book, bringing the campaign to life and entertaining the reader.
Stout Hearts is essential reading for those who wish to understand the ‘mechanics’ of battle. How does an Army care for its wounded? How do combat engineers cross obstacles? How do tanks fight? How do Air and Naval Forces support the Army? But to understand what makes an Army ‘tick’ you must also understand its people. Therefore explanations of tactics and techniques are not only well illustrated with excellent photographs and high quality maps but also effectively combined with relevant accounts from the combatants themselves. These dramatic stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things are the strength of the book, bringing the campaign to life and entertaining the reader.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHelion and Company
- Publication date19 Aug. 2016
- File size39008 KB
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Review
At last a book has been written that forensically examines how the British Armed Forces fought its way through Normandy. Ben Kite compellingly demonstrates that these forces were highly effective, well trained, motivated, and superbly equipped, capable of taking on and beating the Germans. Combining painstaking research with his own practical appreciation as an active soldier, the result is an important and utterly absorbing book that will be read and studied for decades to come. --James Holland, bestselling author
Ben Kite has clearly used his widespread experience of seeing a modern Army in action on operations to think carefully about the anatomy of a military force and how each of component elements can work together to produce victory. He has succeeded in getting beyond the narrative of events and explains clearly how and why units function as they do, using first-hand accounts of participants to bring the text to life wonderfully. --Dr Rob Johnson, Director Changing Character of Warfare programme, University of Oxford
Those with an interest in studying the Normandy campaign in 1944 will certainly devour this splendid heavy-weight book. It is a book packed with facts and details, and carries an impressive wealth of useful appendices and images. It is certainly a must have book if one wishes to study the Normandy campaign in any depth. --Britain at War Shortlisted for the British Army Military Book of the Year 2015.
“Ben Kite has crafted a remarkable study of the experiences of the men and women of British and Commonwealth armed forces in their bitter fight against a dug in and determined Wehrmacht … Ben Kite has provided a much needed corrective to the idea that the British-led armies fought poorly during the campaign.” Source: Michigan War Studies Review
Ben Kite provides the reader with an excellent insight into the details of how each separate part of the British and Canadian Armies in Normandy worked. I have read many books on this campaign, and this really does offer something new to the reader - an excellent combination of first hand accounts and operational details. --Recollections of WWII website
One of the best recent books which explain how a fighting army actually functions and is recommended purely on that, and for much more therein. --Society of Friends of the National Army Museum Book Review Supplement
Ben Kite has clearly used his widespread experience of seeing a modern Army in action on operations to think carefully about the anatomy of a military force and how each of component elements can work together to produce victory. He has succeeded in getting beyond the narrative of events and explains clearly how and why units function as they do, using first-hand accounts of participants to bring the text to life wonderfully. --Dr Rob Johnson, Director Changing Character of Warfare programme, University of Oxford
Those with an interest in studying the Normandy campaign in 1944 will certainly devour this splendid heavy-weight book. It is a book packed with facts and details, and carries an impressive wealth of useful appendices and images. It is certainly a must have book if one wishes to study the Normandy campaign in any depth. --Britain at War Shortlisted for the British Army Military Book of the Year 2015.
“Ben Kite has crafted a remarkable study of the experiences of the men and women of British and Commonwealth armed forces in their bitter fight against a dug in and determined Wehrmacht … Ben Kite has provided a much needed corrective to the idea that the British-led armies fought poorly during the campaign.” Source: Michigan War Studies Review
Ben Kite provides the reader with an excellent insight into the details of how each separate part of the British and Canadian Armies in Normandy worked. I have read many books on this campaign, and this really does offer something new to the reader - an excellent combination of first hand accounts and operational details. --Recollections of WWII website
One of the best recent books which explain how a fighting army actually functions and is recommended purely on that, and for much more therein. --Society of Friends of the National Army Museum Book Review Supplement
“ A remarkable study of the experiences of the men and women of British and Commonwealth armed forces in their bitter fight against a dug in and determined Wehrmacht … a much needed corrective to the idea that the British-led armies fought poorly during the campaign. He cogently establishes that select British combat arms were in fact not just professional or competent but even elite. With Stout Hearts, he has made a salutary addition to the literature of his subject.”
Michigan War Studies Review
--This text refers to the paperback edition.About the Author
Ben Kite is a British Army Officer who commissioned into the Intelligence Corps from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1990. He has conducted operations in Belize, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Africa, Bosnia and Kosovo and served with the RAF, Royal Marines and US Marine Corps as well as his own service. He is a graduate of the Higher Command and Staff Course and was awarded the OBE in 2011. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Review
“ … Ben Kite has crafted a remarkable study of the experiences of the men and women of British and Commonwealth armed forces in their bitter fight against a dug in and determined Wehrmacht … Ben Kite has provided a much needed corrective to the idea that the British-led armies fought poorly during the campaign …” (Ian David Stewart, University of British Columbia Michigan War Studies Review)
“ … an intimate look at British and Canadian forces in the Normandy Campaign, a subject generally neglected on this side of the pond. He does so in an interesting fashion, not only telling us what took place, but also how it took place… This is excellent stuff, well worth a read for anyone interested in World War II, or in how an army functions.” NYMAS Review --This text refers to the paperback edition.
“ … an intimate look at British and Canadian forces in the Normandy Campaign, a subject generally neglected on this side of the pond. He does so in an interesting fashion, not only telling us what took place, but also how it took place… This is excellent stuff, well worth a read for anyone interested in World War II, or in how an army functions.” NYMAS Review --This text refers to the paperback edition.
From the Publisher
Ben Kite is a British Army Officer who commissioned into the Intelligence Corps from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1990. He has conducted operations in Belize, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Africa, Bosnia and Kosovo and served with the RAF, Royal Marines and US Marine Corps as well as his own service. He is a graduate of the Higher Command and Staff Course and was awarded the OBE in 2011. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B01IR0OR3K
- Publisher : Helion and Company; Reprint edition (19 Aug. 2016)
- Language : English
- File size : 39008 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 473 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 243,220 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 308 in World War II D-Day Landings
- 612 in Military History of Land Forces
- 1,007 in Military History of Naval Forces
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 September 2015
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This is a magnificent volume. There are many general histories of the Normandy campaign, and this is not that. It has tight but complete focus on hew the British and Canadian forces, land, sea and air support were organised, equipped and fought. With it are many moving first hand accounts. It is no accident that this level of insight and explanation is provided by a serving British Army officer. That focus provides a compelling perspective on the campaign and a corrective to some of the myths that have built up over the years (yes Max Hastings and Anthony Beevor I'm looking at you); broadly fanboy worship of the Wermacht and the Waffen SS, the poor performance of the Brits, Canucks and Poles as compared to the Americans, Montgomery being a bad general who blamed others for his mistakes. I strongly recommend this to an American readership. I have been on Normandy battlefield tours with Americans who had no idea that 3/5ths (up to the arrival of the US 3rd Army when the Germans were already beaten) of the total land sea and air effort in this the decisive battle of the Western Theatre was from the British Commonwealth. This tells the true story - of how the Second Army, under the professionally surefooted command of Montgomery, with all its problems of poor equipment, battle exhaustion and huge infantry attrition, faced the elite of the Wermacht and Waffen SS Panzer and Panzer Genadier divisions with their superb equipment, the best fighting force ever in the field in Western Europe in WW2, sucked more of them in, and defeated them. Bradley and Patton established those myths (with a little help from some notable Brit Montgomery haters like Tedder) and lsaw fit to derogate from that achievement so as to reflect more glory on them and their armies on the right of the line, but it was 2nd Army that made their breakout possible, and this tells how it did it.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Ben Kite’s excellent work on the Normandy Campaign continues to set the record straight
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2016Verified Purchase
Serving British Army officer Ben Kite has written a deeply engrossing book about how the various components of the British and Canadian forces in the 1944 Normandy campaign (eventually to become 21st Army Group) functioned and worked together as an integrated whole, and exactly how and why they so comprehensively defeated the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS formations ranged against them.
The chapters forensically examine different components of the British and Canadian armies and the other forces (RN & RAF) directly supporting them:
1. Introduction & Campaign Overview
2. Closing with the Enemy – Infantry
3. Neptune’s Trident – Naval Support
4. First in, Last out – Engineers
5. Queen of the Battlefield – Artillery
6. By Air to Battle – Air Power & Air Support
7. Knowledge Gives Strength to Arm – Intelligence & Reconnaisance
8. Penetrating the Fog – Command & Control
9. Faithful in Adversity – Medical Services
10. Grim Summer – Life in Normandy 1944
11. From Mud through Blood to the Green Fields Beyond – Armour
12. Our Greatest Generation (a short, 2-page concluding piece)
Each chapter describes in detail how its subject-force functioned. Chapter 3 examines the different Naval vessels deployed and what role each played in relation to the others; Chapter 5 how the range of artillery pieces of differing calibres were crewed, moved about and sited, co-ordinated and used in conjunction with the other components of the allied forces (with testimonies from several veteran Wehrmmacht officers that in their experience British artillery was the most accurate and effective of any enemy they faced). The story of how the diversity of German sea mine types was dealt with by the minesweepers and the sea lanes cleared is fascinating, likewise how the Royal Engineers executed all manner of complex tasks such as land mine clearance and bridging the Seine under fire. I personally found the chapter on close air support the most hair-raising: how for example forward airstrips were created often under direct enemy fire, all-weather runway surfaces designed & built and how rocket & bomb attacks on German ground forces were planned and executed by Typhoons (51% of all Typhoon pilots operational between 6 June and 1 September were KIA, the highest attrition rate of any allied fighting force).
The narrative is replete with personal accounts from participants made more poignant by their often matter-of-fact descriptions of the death and injury of colleagues around them, and drives home the fact that although the infantry suffered the highest mass casualty rates in the campaign, everyone involved was in continuous danger under fire.
‘Stout Hearts’ joins a growing body of revisionist work which effectively demolishes the myth that the Allied forces were ‘inferior’ to those of the Germans and won in Normandy only by weight of numbers and material. In recent decades writers such as Max Hastings have been responsible for perpetuating this myth. This has puzzled veterans of the campaign, typified by a thoughtful piece from a serving British infantry officer on p80:
“Over the past 20 years it has become the custom for some young military writers to extol the professional ability of the Wehrmacht while decrying that of our own fighting arms, particularly our armour and infantry.
This has perplexed me because it runs contrary to my experience. My 18 Platoon were better soldiers than any we fought. So was D company and the whole 4th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. …These writers are too young to have taken part in the operations about which they write.
Although they lost, the German soldiers and their families are proud of their exploits, many of which were considerable…it is very much in their own interest to encourage the myth that they were beaten only by numerically superior forces & firepower. In my experience this was not so. In many attacks the prisoners we took outnumbered our attacking force and German units who continued to resist at close quarters were few indeed. Unlike us they rarely fought at night, when they were nervous and unsure of themselves. Where we patrolled extensively, they avoided fighting us…if our positions were reversed I doubt they would have performed better than we did”.
The only minor gripe is that the text might have been better edited and proofread by the publisher, as the author overuses commas while underusing more appropriate punctuation, misuses apostrophes and for example confuses ‘affect’ with ‘effect’. But this is a minor issue in an overall excellent work. No doubt ‘Stout Hearts’ will be widely read in the UK and in Canada by anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding how their armies fought in Normandy, but I would also strongly recommend the book to American readers.
The chapters forensically examine different components of the British and Canadian armies and the other forces (RN & RAF) directly supporting them:
1. Introduction & Campaign Overview
2. Closing with the Enemy – Infantry
3. Neptune’s Trident – Naval Support
4. First in, Last out – Engineers
5. Queen of the Battlefield – Artillery
6. By Air to Battle – Air Power & Air Support
7. Knowledge Gives Strength to Arm – Intelligence & Reconnaisance
8. Penetrating the Fog – Command & Control
9. Faithful in Adversity – Medical Services
10. Grim Summer – Life in Normandy 1944
11. From Mud through Blood to the Green Fields Beyond – Armour
12. Our Greatest Generation (a short, 2-page concluding piece)
Each chapter describes in detail how its subject-force functioned. Chapter 3 examines the different Naval vessels deployed and what role each played in relation to the others; Chapter 5 how the range of artillery pieces of differing calibres were crewed, moved about and sited, co-ordinated and used in conjunction with the other components of the allied forces (with testimonies from several veteran Wehrmmacht officers that in their experience British artillery was the most accurate and effective of any enemy they faced). The story of how the diversity of German sea mine types was dealt with by the minesweepers and the sea lanes cleared is fascinating, likewise how the Royal Engineers executed all manner of complex tasks such as land mine clearance and bridging the Seine under fire. I personally found the chapter on close air support the most hair-raising: how for example forward airstrips were created often under direct enemy fire, all-weather runway surfaces designed & built and how rocket & bomb attacks on German ground forces were planned and executed by Typhoons (51% of all Typhoon pilots operational between 6 June and 1 September were KIA, the highest attrition rate of any allied fighting force).
The narrative is replete with personal accounts from participants made more poignant by their often matter-of-fact descriptions of the death and injury of colleagues around them, and drives home the fact that although the infantry suffered the highest mass casualty rates in the campaign, everyone involved was in continuous danger under fire.
‘Stout Hearts’ joins a growing body of revisionist work which effectively demolishes the myth that the Allied forces were ‘inferior’ to those of the Germans and won in Normandy only by weight of numbers and material. In recent decades writers such as Max Hastings have been responsible for perpetuating this myth. This has puzzled veterans of the campaign, typified by a thoughtful piece from a serving British infantry officer on p80:
“Over the past 20 years it has become the custom for some young military writers to extol the professional ability of the Wehrmacht while decrying that of our own fighting arms, particularly our armour and infantry.
This has perplexed me because it runs contrary to my experience. My 18 Platoon were better soldiers than any we fought. So was D company and the whole 4th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. …These writers are too young to have taken part in the operations about which they write.
Although they lost, the German soldiers and their families are proud of their exploits, many of which were considerable…it is very much in their own interest to encourage the myth that they were beaten only by numerically superior forces & firepower. In my experience this was not so. In many attacks the prisoners we took outnumbered our attacking force and German units who continued to resist at close quarters were few indeed. Unlike us they rarely fought at night, when they were nervous and unsure of themselves. Where we patrolled extensively, they avoided fighting us…if our positions were reversed I doubt they would have performed better than we did”.
The only minor gripe is that the text might have been better edited and proofread by the publisher, as the author overuses commas while underusing more appropriate punctuation, misuses apostrophes and for example confuses ‘affect’ with ‘effect’. But this is a minor issue in an overall excellent work. No doubt ‘Stout Hearts’ will be widely read in the UK and in Canada by anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding how their armies fought in Normandy, but I would also strongly recommend the book to American readers.
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According to some Hollywood accounts, the role of British and Commonwealth/Empire forces in the Normandy landings was a supporting one (if there is any mention at all), and according to some British historians was performed by troops whose victories came from having superior numbers rather than better fighting capability. The author of this book exposes both these myths, in a scholarly but readable account that looks at the technical aspects of such a complex operation in conjunction with the all-important human side. For example, how is an army supplied and fed? How does it communicate both within itself and with supporting naval and air forces? What medical provisions need to be made? What arrangements have to be made for prisoners? The answers to all these questions and more can be found here.
So if you thought there was no more to be said about D-Day, think again. And if you are Canadian, you'll be pleased to see a book that gives full credit to that country's important contribution. The only small niggle is the amateurishly designed cover: this book deserves better.
So if you thought there was no more to be said about D-Day, think again. And if you are Canadian, you'll be pleased to see a book that gives full credit to that country's important contribution. The only small niggle is the amateurishly designed cover: this book deserves better.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 May 2018
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Ben Kite describes the activities of British and Canadian troops during 1944, starting with the D-Day invasion. They became part of Montgomery's 21st Army Group.
This is a remarkably detailed account of life on the front line. In various ways it covers training, equipment, strategies, tactics, logistics, communications, and intelligence, etc. and It also covers some broader issues such as the reasons for Montgomery's failure to take Cean early, as planned. It includes very interesting photographs and some good maps. Technical information is very strong, but Kite also addresses the human condition: the dangers and discomforts that troops suffer are described without sentimentality, including combat fatigue and medical services. Naval and air support is also described in considerable detail.
I found this book fascinating. Ben Kite knows his stuff. A recommended long read.
This is a remarkably detailed account of life on the front line. In various ways it covers training, equipment, strategies, tactics, logistics, communications, and intelligence, etc. and It also covers some broader issues such as the reasons for Montgomery's failure to take Cean early, as planned. It includes very interesting photographs and some good maps. Technical information is very strong, but Kite also addresses the human condition: the dangers and discomforts that troops suffer are described without sentimentality, including combat fatigue and medical services. Naval and air support is also described in considerable detail.
I found this book fascinating. Ben Kite knows his stuff. A recommended long read.
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