Englishman at War: The Wartime Diaries of Stanley Christopherson DSO, MC, TD, 1939-1945

From the outbreak of war in September, 1939, all the way to the smoldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Palestine, Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day, Nijmegen, and the crossing of the Rhine, this is a unique first-person account of World War II. The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, Stanley Christopher’s regiment, went to war as amateurs, equipped with courage but very little else, and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained, and most valued armored units in the British Army. Their journey through the war, learning through mistakes and tragedy as well as from a determined desire to improve, can, in many ways, be seen to reflect the experience of the British Army as a whole. From Alamein onwards, the Sherwood Rangers were in the vanguard of almost every action in which they took part, and over the course of the conflict, they amassed an astonishing 30 battle honors. Christopherson himself was to rise from a junior subaltern to become the commanding officer of the regiment soon after the D-Day landings. He took part in all 30 battle honors, and collected a Distinguished Service Order, two Military Crosses and an American Silver Star, as well as being Mentioned in Despatches four times. His is an extraordinary story.