Featuring for the first time in one reference volume the structure and equipment of the Allied terrestrial combat units in World War II. The hardcover reference book examines the organization of each army, its rank structure and numerical groupings as a prerequisite to examining each soldier’s equipment in detail: his clothing- boots, trousers, helmet, tunic, greatcoat, camouflage, his weapons, his support items like medical kit, mess kit and rations.
Each section will feature archive pictures of the soldier in the field and specially photographed artefacts, showing preserved examples of the items that he carried with him. There will be badges, medals, pennants and flags as well as other popular personal items carried by many troops like cigarette lighters, razors and postcards of loved ones, which were not standard issue but of extreme importance to each man.
The book will evaluate that equipment and how it compared to that of other soldiers in other armies both on the same side and among the opposing forces and will provide a complete picture of the day-to-day lives and conditions of the fighting men of the American, Russian, British and Commonwealth armies as well as Polish, Free French, and other nations thought fought albeit briefly on the side of the allies making it an essential reference work for all military historians, collectors, modellers and interested general readers.