Victor Gregg is the most remarkable spokesman for the war generation' Dan Snow 'A classic' Mail on Sunday 'Astonishing' James Holland Born in 1919, Victor Gregg enlisted in the Rifle Brigade aged just eighteen and began a life of adventure. A soldier throughout the Second World War, he saw action across North Africa, was a driver for the Long Range Desert group and fought at the battle of Alamein. Taken into captivity at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944, he was sentenced to death for sabotaging a Dresden factory; he escaped only when the Allies' infamous air raid blew apart his prison and very soon encountered the advancing Red Army. Revised and expanded with exclusive new material in time for Gregg's 100th birthday, Rifleman is the extraordinary story of an independent-minded and quick-witted survivor.
After sweeping through France and Belgium in the summer of 1944, the Allies were poised to enter the Netherlands to secure key bridges and towns along the Allied axis of advance. Victor Gregg and his fellow riflemen are asked to volunteer for the Parachute Regiment in an operation called Market Garden. The staunchly held maxim, 'once a rifleman always a rifleman', was overruled by a promise of extra leave. The British airborne forces landed some distance from their objective in Arnhem and were quickly hampered by unexpected resistance. Only a small force was able to reach the Arnhem road bridge, and reinforcements were unable to advance north as quickly as anticipated, therefore failing to relieve the Parachute Regiment. The troops had been up against unimaginable odds and after nine days of fighting, Gregg is captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Dresden, where the infamous and tragic bombings were about to begin.
Victor Gregg is the most remarkable spokesman for the war generation' Dan Snow In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut fictionalised his time as a prisoner of war in Dresden in 1945. Vonnegut was imprisoned in a cellar while the firestorm raged through the city, wiping out generations of innocent lives. Victor Gregg remained above ground throughout the firebombing. This is his true eyewitness account of that week in February 1945. Already a seasoned soldier with the Rifle Brigade, Gregg joined the 10th Parachute Regiment in 1944. He was captured at Arnhem where he volunteered to be sent to a work camp rather than become another faceless number in the huge POW camps. With two failed escape attempts under his belt, Gregg was eventually caught sabotaging a factory and sent to Dresden for execution. Before Gregg could be executed, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden in four air raids over two days in February 1945. The resulting firestorm destroyed six square miles of the city centre. 25,000 people, mostly civilians, were estimated to have been killed. Post-war discussion of whether or not the attacks were justified has led to the bombing becoming one of the moral questions of the Second World War. In Gregg's first-hand narrative, personal and punchy, he describes the trauma and carnage of the Dresden bombing. After the raid, he spent five days helping to recover a city of innocent civilians, thousands of whom had died in the fire storm, trapped underground in human ovens. As order was restored, his life was once more in danger and he escaped to the east, spending the last weeks of the war with the Russians.
Soldier, Spy is the astonishing memoir of one ordinary man and soldier, Victor Gregg, as he resumes civilian life after the Second World War. As for so many others, picking up where he had left off proved far from simple for Gregg; he had fought many battles, lost many friends and been deeply damaged psychologically by his experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden.To escape the memories and the emotional trauma, he moved from one job and distraction to the next: from immersing himself in the adrenaline-fuelled competitive cycling to working as a long distance lorry driver, from becoming a Communist Party member to becoming a spy and, by his seventieth birthday, helping bring about the fall of the Berlin Wall.This honest and gritty account is the third book in a remarkable trilogy that both explores the permanent and damaging consequences of a life at war and tells the story of one ordinary man who went on to lead the most extraordinary life.
Victor Gregg, born in 1919, has had a rich and fascinating life. King's Cross Kid follows his London childhood from the age of five, when life was so hard that the Salvation Army arranged for young Vic to be taken to the Shaftesbury Home for Destitute Children. Home again a year later, the scallywag years of late childhood began. Then, after the years of street gangs and run-ins with the law, Vic leaves school at fourteen and his real adventures start, and with them a working-class apprenticeship in survival. Ending with his enlistment in the army on the day of his eighteenth birthday, this prequel to the bestselling Rifleman will appeal to the many readers who were charmed by Victor Gregg's engaging, honest and warm voice.
Beginning in 1946, when Victor Gregg was demobbed after the end of the Second World War and deposited in London Paddington, Soldier, Spy is the story of a soldier returning to civilian life and all the challenges it entails. Facing a new and ever-changing London, a shifting political landscape and plenty of opportunities to make a few bob, repairing the bomb damage and doing construction work on the Festival of Britain site, Vic moves from one job and pastime to the next, becoming by turns cyclist, builder, decorator, trade union official, Communist Party member and long-distance lorry driver. Finally he is offered 'a nice clean job' as chauffeur to the chairman of the Moscow Narodny Bank in which he will be able to return home to his wife and children every night. However, there is more to his new employers than meets the eye, and it is not long before his wartime work with the Long Range Desert group catches up with him in the form of an approach from the security services. Lured by the excitement his postwar life has lacked, Vic adds spy to his roster of employments, risking everything in the process.
Victor Gregg has had a rich and fascinating life. 'King's Cross Kid' follows his London childhood from the age of five, when life was so hard that the Salvation Army arranged for young Vic to be taken to the Shaftesbury Home for Destitute Children.
An eye witness account of the second battle of El Alamein by World War II veteran rifleman Victor Gregg. The Second Battle of El Alamein, Egypt (23 October–11 November 1942) was a decisive battle in the Second World War. With the Allies victorious, it marked the watershed of the Western Desert Campaign, prompting Winston Churchill to proclaim 'Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.' The British victory turned the tide in the North African Campaign and ended the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields via North Africa. Victor Gregg, after an absence of eight months of service, is offered a promotion which he promptly turns down, saying, 'I just wish to fight out this war in the company of the lads who I call my mates, and they are all in the carriers.' In this first-hand account, Gregg bravely unpicks not only the action of war, but the reaction of the normal men in extraordinary circumstances, trying to cling to sanity amongst the debris of corpses - many of which were friends and comrades.
Operation Compass was the first large Allied military operation of the Western Desert Campaign (1940–1943) during the Second World War. The Western Desert Force, composed of around 30,000 men from British and other Commonwealth forces, advanced from Mersa Matruh on a five-day raid against the Italian positions of the 10th Army. Operation Compass continued long beyond its original limitations in order to exploit British success. Victor Gregg takes us behind the scenes of this unforgiving terrain, to the sangars rather than the trenches, in an astonishing first-hand account of warfare. Through tender friendships and tea runs, devastating news from home and visible enemies on the horizon, Gregg goes beyond the graphic descriptions of injuries and front-line action to show the psychological impact of daily life both on and off the battlefield.
This is an ethnographic collection of 12 edited talks and conversations from a conference on violence, conflict, and the world order held at Eastern Kentucky University. The conference was organized by Carole Garrison, Chair of Criminal Justice and Police Studies at EKU, who arranged for video recording and transcription of the talks and conversations. The collection is divided into two parts: domestic and global issues. Some of the topics examined include violence against women, restrictions on women's reproduction, culture and ideology, homeland security, terrorism and invasion, empire, and human rights. The talks themselves are framed by an insightful and exciting prologue and an intriguing epilogue by the editor.
Soon to be a show on Hulu! Rights to develop Wild Cards for TV have been acquired by Universal Cable Productions, the team that brought you The Magicians and Mr. Robot, with the co-editor of Wild Cards, Melinda Snodgrass as executive producer. Since a strange alien virus created the superhuman beings known as Aces and Jokers four decades ago, they have struggled for respect and recognition. Now they are key players in a presidential convention torn by hatred and dissent. Assassins stalk the halls of the convention and one of the candidates plans to use his secret Wild Card power for evil. Travel on a journey of intrigue and adventure in this collaborative novel edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and written by five of science fiction's most imaginative talents: Stephen Leigh, Victor Milan, Walton Simons, Melinda M. Snodgrass, and Walter Jon Williams. "Delicious. Everything I hoped for. The character interactions and plot twists have exactly the complexity, surprise, and unsentimental realism I'd expect out of a George R. R. Martin project." —Austin Grossman, author of Soon I Will be Invincible on Inside Straight The Wild Cards Universe The Original Triad #1 Wild Cards #2 Aces High #3 Jokers Wild The Puppetman Quartet #4: Aces Abroad #5: Down and Dirty #6: Ace in the Hole #7: Dead Man’s Hand The Rox Triad #8: One-Eyed Jacks #9: Jokertown Shuffle #10: Dealer’s Choice #11: Double Solitaire #12: Turn of the Cards The Card Sharks Triad #13: Card Sharks #14: Marked Cards #15: Black Trump #16: Deuces Down #17: Death Draws Five The Committee Triad #18: Inside Straight #19: Busted Flush #20: Suicide Kings The Fort Freak Triad #21: Fort Freak #22: Lowball #23: High Stakes The American Triad #24: Mississippi Roll #25: Low Chicago #26: Texas Hold 'Em At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
In this study of Pennsylvania and the War of 1812, the author sees the political ambitions of the Republicans, rather than economic, diplomatic or expansionist motives as the primary impetus for the outbreak of the war. Fearful of the Federalists' growing strength, the Republicans exploited the friction with England to maintain their power and to secure the reelection of Madison to the presidency. In this strategy, Victor A. Sapio shows, Pennsylvania played a crucial but hitherto unrecognized part. The strongest Republican state, its politicians influential in their party's stance, Pennsylvania provided the largest number of votes for war, and willingly and consistently supported its prosecution.
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