Why do the combat capabilities of individual soldiers vary so much? This book seeks to provide an answer to this and other questions about variability in combat performance. Some soldiers flee quickly from the battlefield, while others endure all hardships until the bitter end. Some combat units can perform numerous types of missions, while others cannot keep themselves organized during peacetime. Some militaries armed with obsolete weapons have out fought enemies with the latest weapons, just as some massively outnumbered armies have beaten back much larger opponents. In this first social...

The Valentine was Britain's most produced and most widely used tank of the Second World War. Having the strange distinction of falling somewhere between an infantry tank and a cruiser tank, the Valentine first saw combat during Operation Compass in November 1941 and remained one of the main medium-size tanks in British service into 1943. As the Churchill tank became more prevalent, the Valentine was relegated to specialist variants like amphibious and bridge-layer tanks, which would remain in service in the Far East up until the end of the war.
This book describes the evolution...