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In a century when land warfare has become increasingly mechanized and weapons have acquired greater accuracy and range, infantry have still used bayonet charges to win an attack or beat off assaults. Bayonet Battle is a history of the greatest of such actions, where raw courage and cold steel have often won the day over technology and numbers.
Bayonet Battle starts with an account of the bayonet actions during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, when Japanese infantry carried positions at bayonet point in the face of determined Russian resistance. Then the book moves ten years forward to the outbreak of World War I and the horrors of trench warfare. Despite the defences on the Western Front, there were still heroic bayonet actions, such as the Australian attacks at Pozieres in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. For each of these and other actions in Bayonet Battle, the strategic and tactical situation is covered in full to set the
scene of the action. The fighting itself is, where possible, told through the words of those who took part or who witnessed it. In this way Bayonet Battle conveys the full horror, excitement and atmosphere of a type of close-quarter fighting that has changed little since ancient times.
World War II was a conflict of manoeuvre and technology, but Bayonet Battle shows that hand-to-hand fighting was still often the deciding factor in battles. This was especially true away from the European battlefields. Thus Bayonet Battle includes accounts of the Japanese bayonet charges which instilled fear in their opponents in the Pacific. Japanese troops were encouraged to use the bayonet, as their manual stated: 'Hand-to-hand combat is the deciding factor in an engagement and is most feared by the American and Australian forces.' Moving into the more modern period, Bayonet Battle includes
bayonet actions during the Korean War, Vietnam War and the British recapture of the Falklands in 1982, when 3 Para stormed Mount Longdon at bayonet point and the Scots Guards took Mount Tumbledown with cold steel. Bayonet Battle is a thorough yet exciting examination of a little-known aspect of warfare in the twentieth century, which will appeal to both military historians and the general reader alike.

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