English Summary/英文概要： Many of us have at least one ancestor who served in the British Army during the Second World War. We probably know where they served and what regiment they served with but we are not aware of exactly how they became soldiers.

The British Soldier: Training for War focuses on those who became infantry soldiers, commandos and paratroopers and the training they received in the British Isles to fight ’at the sharp end’ of combat all over the world during the years 1939 to 1945.

Drawing on contemporary training manuals, battalion histories, magazines and newspaper articles, personal memoirs, regimental museum archives, declassified military files and interviews with those who experienced wartime military training first-hand, a vivid and authentic account is presented of training from ’square bashing’ and skill at arms to the evolution of battle schools, assault courses, battle drill and significant training exercises.

All infantrymen were trained hard but it gave them the skills, fighting spirit, endurance and confidence they needed in themselves, their comrades and their unit when in battle. By the end of the Second World War, nearly three million men had served in the British Army. Every one of them had to be trained to become soldiers. This is their story.

NEIL R STOREY is an award-winning historian and author who specialises in the impact of war on British society in the first half of the 20th Century. A graduate of the University of East Anglia, he lectures across the UK and has assembled a fine collection of original First and Second World War images to illustrate his works. Neil has published over forty books, has written for national magazines and journals and appears on television documentaries and factual programmes as a guest historian including Who Do You Think You Are? and The Buildings That Fought Hitler. Neil’s other books published by Pen and Sword Books Ltd include: The King’s Men: The Sandringham Company and Norfolk Regiment Territorial Battalions 1914 – 1918, Beating the Nazi Invader and Britain’s Coast at War.