With the Jocks

A Soldier's Struggle for Europe 1944-45

Peter White

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780750930574
• eBook ISBN:
  9780750967075
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

'The book is remarkable.... one of the most striking personal records of the period.' - Max Hastings As a 24-year-old lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, Peter kept an unauthorised journal of his regiment's advance through the Low Countries and into Germany in the closing months of the war in Europe. Forbidden by his commanding officer from doing so for security reasons, Peter's boyhood habit of diary keeping had become an obsession too strong to shake off. In this graphic evocation of a soldier at war, the images he records are not for the faint hearted. There are heroes aplenty within its pages, but there are also disturbing insights into the darker sides of humanity - the men who broke under the strain and who ran away; the binge drinking which occasionally rendered the whole platoon unable to fight; the looting, the rape, and the callous disregard for human life that happens when death is a daily companion. Hidden away for more than 50 years, this is a rare opportunity to read an authentic account of the horrors of war experienced by a British soldier in the greatest conflict of the 20th century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Foreword by Sir John Keegan
• The Jocks
• Publisher’s Introduction
• Preface
• The Attack on Walcheren Island
• Defensive Warfare on the River Maas
• A Queer Christmas
• Holding the Line in Winter: Tripsrath Woods
• Operation ‘Blackcock’: The Preparation and First Phase, Operation ‘Bear’
• Counter-Attack in Kangaroos
• Operation ‘Blackcock’: The Final Phase – ‘Eagle’ – and the attack on Heinsberg
• A Short Rest and Turn in Reserve
• Operation ‘Veritable’: Between the Maas and the Rhine
• Halted in Broederbosch, Typhoon Attacks and Patrols
• Contact Lost
• On the Run
• The Battle for Haus Loo
• Spring and the Build-Up for the Rhine Crossing
• ‘Over the Rhine, Then, Let Us Go’
• ‘Swanning’ on the Other Side
• Stabbed in the Back on the Dortmund-Ems
• ‘Cracking About the Plains’
• The ‘Bottled’ Enemy
• Direct Hit
• Super-Sonic Barrage
• Wandering
• Ambushed
• Hitting Back
• Stalags XIB and 357
• Into the Blue
• Schulern Oasis
• Target Switched
• Ringside Seat on an 800-Bomber Raid
• Up to the Start Line
• Uphusen: an Attack with Flame-Throwers
• Sitting in a Target
• Night Attack on Bremen – First Phase
• Night Attack on Bremen – Second Phase
• Interlude
• No Unnecessary Risks!
• Publisher’s Epilogue
• Plates
• Copyright