From the establishment of Gloucester as a Roman colonia, a colony of retired military veterans, the city has held a strategic position, being close to the easiest crossing over the River Severn and into Wales. The Romans began building the city's defences, including the city walls and bastions, which were further enhanced by the great warrior Aethelflaed and which would become invaluable in the Siege of Gloucester during the Civil War in 1643. These walls would be destroyed by Charles II as a punishment for the city's role in the conflict. In the twelfth century, Gloucester's first motte and bailey castle were built and used by a number of kings as a garrison to prepare attacks against the Welsh and the Irish. The formation of what would become known as 'The Glorious Glosters', in 1782, led to a number of notable military campaigns, including the battles of Alexandria, Quatre Bras, the Second Boer War, including the Siege of Ladysmith, both World Wars and the Korean War. Christine's book will take you on an historic journey, uncovering on the way the city's military legacy.

The Battle of Gloucester, New Jersey, was fought on November 25, 1777. It was the first battle commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette. His success in the action led Congress to award him a commission as major general in the Continental Army. Small Battles: Military History as Local History Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Series Editors Small Battles offers a fresh and important new perspective on the story of America's early conflicts. It was the small battles, not the clash of major armies, that truly defined the fighting during the colonial wars, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the hostilities on the frontiers. This is dramatic military history as seen through the prism of local history--history with a depth of detail, a feeling for place, people, and the impact of battle and its consequences that the story of major battles often cannot convey. The Small Battles series focuses on America's military conflicts at their most intimate and revealing level.

American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.