A Twilight of Centaurs

The American, his motor car and the cavalry in its last great conflictThis essential Leonaur Original, combines two works by American author Frederic Coleman, and has been published to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Coleman, an American member of the Royal Automobile Club, together with a number of like minded volunteers, offered his own motor vehicle and services as a driver to the war effort. In 1914 they and their collection of superior cars arrived at the Western Front to be used as chauffeurs and couriers by staff and regimental officers of division and brigade. For many the Great War means massive armies locked in a war of attrition fought over a ’ No Man’s Land ’ fringed with barbed wire behind which helmeted soldiers cowered in squalid trenches. For much of the war that image is accurate, but it was not always so. In the early stages infantry marched, cavalry charged and artillery was pulled into action by horsepower, just as it had been for hundreds of years. The invading Imperial German Army, superior in numbers and equipment of every kind, swept through Belgium and France as the allied armies fought and retired before its might. Coleman was allocated to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of De Lisle as part of Allenby’s First Cavalry Division. He kept a meticulous diary that enabled him to write these well crafted and detailed books full of anecdote, narrative and action. ’President’ Coleman (as he was christened by the cavalry) was an eyewitness in the very heart of the conflict and in the company of the officers and men of the British Army’s cavalry regiments he takes the reader from the campaigns of 1914 and the retreat from Mons to the war of stalemate of 1915. His descriptions of cavalry in action on the field of battle are riveting. Aside from his fascinating insights into some of the last campaigns of mounted soldiers, Coleman also provides the reader with a thrilling account of his own adventures with his trusty and almost indestructible motor car.Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.