The History Network

In this our first video / audio recording Jasper, Michael, Lindsay and Josho look at Pyrrhus.

Pyrrhus was the second cousin to Alexander the Great, and at only two years he began his career as a penniless exile after his father was dethroned. Pyrrhus would rise to become King of Epirus, King of Macedon and King of Sicily...

In the early morning of 18th July 1972 nine British SAS soldiers stationed at a fort outside the coastal town of Mirbat in Southern Oman saw approaching in the distance what they believed to be the local troops returning from night watch. That was until they opened fire - they were in fact up to 300 Adoo Communist rebels...For six hours the SAS and a handful of local soldiers held out. Dur: 17mins File: .mp3

In David Thomas's The importance of Commando Operations in Modern Warfare 1939-82 he states: "Commando operations in the sense of self-contained acts of war mounted by forces operating within enemy territory are as old as warfare itself. However, before the second world war, the types of missions that later would become known as 'commando operations', were regarded in western military thought as belonging to the separate phenomenon of irregular warfare, that is, to partisan and guerrilla activity. Therefore, the several [British Commando] forces which came into existence between 1940 and 1942 owed their formation not to British army strategy and doctrine, nor to any far-reaching conception of commando warfare, but to the fertile imagination of Prime Minister Churchill and a number of gifted officers." Dur: 32mins File: .mp3

By 1840 Harry Smith was a veteran soldier of the British Empire, he had joined the Army in 1805 and had seen active service in South America, the Peninsular Campaign where under the Duke of Wellington, he witnessed the burning of the Capitol in Washington, was a Brigade Major at Waterloo and in South Africa had commanded a division in the Xhosa wars before being appointed Governor of the Province of Queen Adelaide. Dur: 37mins File: .mp3

By mid 1940 of the European powers and Britain and her Empire stood alone against Germany. The situation looked dire. Though the miracle of Dunkirk had managed to save thousands of British troops much of their equipment had been lost, Britain needed to replace this and her own industry was not up to providing in numbers the goods required. Though the United States was officially neutral it would supply goods on a "cash and carry" basis, and millions of pounds was flowing out of Britain to the US, in the form of gold, to pay for vital war materiel. But this could not go on, Britain had only so many assets it could liquidate. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

When Neville Chamberlain delivered his speech on September 3rd 1939 to declare that Britain was at War with Germany, western focus was fixed on that and the hearts and minds of Britain's population braced themselves for another World War as did the hearts and minds of much of Europe. Many events would shape the outcome of World War II, but one set of battles even before it began - some three months earlier, The Battle of Khalkhin Gol between Russia and the Japanese on the Mongolian Border - might have played their own big part in the eventual outcome of the second world war. Dur: 23mins File: .mp3