[.ca] 1944-45 British Soldier (ISBN 2908182742)

5 stars for Volume 1; 3-and-a-half stars for Volume 2:
Bouchery's two volume set on the Late War British Army is very useful for wargamers, historians and reenactors. Volume 1 is especially good, with its mind-boggling number of full colour photographs of artefacts from world war 2. Ever want to know what a British Soldier's cigarette lighter looked like in 1944? - well, you can find that here. Want to know what the cap-badge of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division looked like? You can find a full-colour photograph in here. Volume 2 is a little disappointing. I wasd expecting modern photographs of surviving British tanks, but the book is instead full of black-and-white photgraphs. Layout is much more haphazard and unprofessional than the previous book, with much of the space wasted. This is unlike the previous volume, which was incredibly compressed and filled with information on every page. Given these flaws, it is still useful, especially the section on British armoured formation markings, which is information that is devilishly hard to get hold of. Also the unit formation guides are quite good, if you can get past the excessive colouring-in. Bear in mind that these volumes are hastily translated from the French, and contain many errors. Their layout generally is not very professional. Given all that, these are still valuable books, on a subject that is rarely dealt with. Most such books talk about the German army, never the late-war British.