- The forgotten campaign in the Middle East and the author’s detailed thoughts as a survivor of the battle of El Alamein
- Detailed descriptions of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry’s armour and weaponry during the Second World War
- Superbly illustrated with many unpublished colour and mono photographs from L. C. Wheeler’s estate
- Of interest to military historians as well as modellers and video game enthusiasts such as War Thunder, Hell Let Loose, Battlefield 5, etc.
Leslie Wheeler was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, in 1909 and in 1927, he enlisted in his local Territorial Army regiment, the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry. Wheeler served throughout the Second World War in the Middle East, North Africa and Italy as a senior non-commissioned officer and was then commissioned as quartermaster into the regiment that he clearly loved.
His honest and revealing memoirs depict the final years of horsed cavalry in the British Army, the wartime transition to mobile but poorly equipped desert columns and finally the transition to a tank regiment.
The often-overlooked 1941 campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Persia as well as El Alamein and the fight north through Italy are described by the author in a typically understated fashion.
What makes this tale unique is the often amusing and sometimes cynical perspective of a senior and experienced soldier working tirelessly in the quartermaster’s department to keep his regiment supplied in peace and war.
| BOOK ISBN |
9781781558652 |
| FORMAT |
234 x 156 mm |
| BINDING |
Hardback |
| PAGES |
224 pages |
| PUBLICATION DATE |
02 December 2021
|
| TERRITORY |
World |
| ILLUSTRATIONS |
77 black-and-white photographs + 2 maps |
Stephen Keoghane joined the Royal Wessex Yeomanry in 1994 and served as the Regimental Medical Officer for 22 years in Royal Gloucestershire Hussar and Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry squadrons. He has soldiered in the UK, Germany and the USA and served in Afghanistan as a trauma surgeon. He represented the RWY in polo and alpine ski racing. The author is a consultant urological surgeon in Colchester and has published extensively in the scientific literature. He has a lifelong passion for regimental history, alpine skiing, art and horse racing.
