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A Victorian/Edwardian Guards officer with, for the period, a remarkable amount of extra-regimental active service, Major-General Sir Cecil Edward Pereira KCB, CMG (1869-1942) was educated at the Oratory School, Edgbaston and commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in 1890. He served with the Niger Company (1897) and saw action with the MacDonald Expedition and Uganda Mutiny (1897-98), Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and the First World War during which he was successively appointed CO 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards in 1914, GOC 85th Brigade (which he led prior to being wounded during the Battle of Loos) in 1915 and GOC 1st Guards Brigade in January 1916. Promoted GOC 2nd (Regular) Division in December 1916, he commanded this premier Regular Army formation during the battles of Arras and Cambrai (1917), the German Spring Offensive and Advance to Victory (1918). Following the war he took command of 56th (London) Division from 1919 until retirement in 1923. During the Second World War he commanded the London Local Defence Volunteers. Ably edited by grandson Edward Pereira and military historians Spencer Jones and Michael LoCicero, this detailed and fascinating mid-level BEF commander's private correspondence has been made available for the specialist and general reader for the first time. 4 b/w maps, 4 illustrations

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9781912866144

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Educated at Downside near Radstock, Somerset, Edward Pereira was born in London in August of 1938, after which, in the company of his mother, he joined his father, George Pereira, who was serving with the British army in Palestine. When war broke out in September 1939, George was serving with 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards in North Africa whilst Edward and his mother resided in Alexandria. Eith Egypt under threat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the summer of 1941, Edward and his mother were amongst the women and children evacuated to South Africa. Reunited with his wounded father there 18 months later, the family sailed from Capetown for Liverpool in late September 1943. Edward was commissioned in 1957, after which he served in Germany, with the Guard's Training Battalion at Pirbright, Surrey and the 2nd Coldstream Guards in Kenya and Zanzibar during 1958-59. It was during this time that he travelled to Salisbury in Rhodesia and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro amongst other African excursions. On returning to Great Britain, his company was assigned to the 1st Coldstream Guards in 1962 in order to increase battalion numbers prior to a nine-month deployment to British Guyana. Thus the Coldstream Guards were the first Household battalion to serve on the South American mainland. Having left the army in October 1964, Edward worked as an IBM and Rank Xerox executive respectively prior to retirement in 1994. Dr Spencer Jones is Senior Lecturer in Armed Forces and War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. He serves as the Regimental Historian of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. His previous publications include From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army 1902 – 1914, Stemming the Tide: Officers and Leadership in the British Expeditionary Force 1914, Courage without Glory: The British Army on the Western Front 1915 and At All Costs: The British Army on the Western Front 1916. Dr Michael LoCicero is an independent scholar and Helion & Company commissioning editor. Having earned a PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2011, he was previously employed as a contracted researcher at the National Archives, Kew and the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Trust. His publications include a contributory chapter on Brigadier-General Edward Bulfin in the highly regarded Spencer Jones (ed.) Stemming the Tide: Officers and Leadership of the British Expeditionary Force 1914 (2013), A Moonlight Massacre: The Night Operation on the Passchendaele Ridge, 2 December 1917 (2014), a contributory chapter chronicling the forgotten battle of International Trench in Spencer Jones (ed.), Courage Without Glory: The British Army on the Western Front 1915 (2015) and a contributory chapter analysis of a large-scale German trench raid at La Boisselle in Spencer Jones (ed.), At All Costs: The British Army on the Western Front 1916 (2018).

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