As Lieutenant George might have said to Blackadder, "Well, hurray and hurrah!". A published history of a regular army unit, that most neglected of species, long overdue and thanks to John Sheen, past author of a number of splendid works on units raised in the North east of England.

2nd DLI was a typical pre-war infantry battalion of the British Army, although it had not seen service in the South African War and had returned home from India as long ago as 1902. It was placed under orders of 18th Infantry Brigade of 6th Division and remained in that formation throughout the war.

Sheen's history has all of the insight and detail we have come to expect of modern scholarship, drawing deeply on official, regimental and private records. With many excellent photographs, most of which will not have been seen before, and lacing the battalion's history with the stories of individual officers and men, he takes us through the whole war from the battalion's first searing experiences on the Aisne, right through to the honour of advancing into Germany as part of the army of occupation. In between, the 1915 nightmares of Hooge, the latter stages of the Somme, Hill 70, Cambrai and ceaseless engagement in 1918. The story also brings out how the nature of the battalion inevitably changed, from wholly regular through mostly volunteer to conscript, yet managed to maintain an ethos and professional air throughout. The battalion also coped with the rapid and manifold developments in armaments, tactical doctrines and training - a testament to the efforts of officers, NCOs and men alike.

As battalion histories go this would be hard to better; the fact that it records the endeavours of an unglamorous and unsung yet vital component of the army makes it very special.

Once you step back from the trenches and the exploits of the infantry which are in many places covered in minute detail, large parts of the British Army remain unresearched and unexplained. It is perhaps not surprising. The work of the Army Service Corps, for example, was vital but not likely to set the pulses racing as far as written work is concerned. The Ordnance Services, Veterinary Corps, Medical Corps and even the Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery have pretty thin coverage considering their vital roles. One area that has remained resolutely vague is that of the Labour Corps and the various other units and functions that provided manual labour. Until No labour, no battle, which I consider to be a fine piece of military history and a significant addition to our understanding of the army and the war.

My appreciation for John Starling and Ivor Lee's achievement is underpinned by my own knowledge of Labour Corps official records, which are patchy in existence and often uninformative when they can be found. To compile this detailed analysis of how the labour units formed, where they went and what they did is clearly a work of considerable effort. The book's title reminds us that no war - but WW1 in particular - can be fought without a tremendous amount of unglamorous 'behind the scenes' work. Endless digging, road mending, carrying, construction works and so on can be guessed at; it is not so easy to recall the salvage work, battlefield clearance, burial of the dead and reconstruction work in which the Labour Corps was involved.

No labour, no battle is unlikely to be bedtime reading (although the opening chapters on the development and work of the labour element are very readable) but a work of reference that will take an important place on many a military bookshelf.

Steven John's book joins the long line of fine works examining the war of those locally-raised units of Kitchener's Army known as "pals", that helped build the volunteer army of 1914 and its esprit de corps. We have here another dedicated if not fanatic researcher-author, who has tracked down the fine details of the raising, training, fighting and fate of a pals infantry battalion, in this case the 15th Welsh. The "Carmarthen Pals" certainly came in part from the town, but also from across the smaller towns, villages and farms of that rural county in West Wales. Strangely, as the author explains, it also went on a recruiting jaunt to industrial Bolton in Lancashire.

We have grown used to the high standard of research behind these books, and "Carmarthen Pals" is no exception. The book mentions many individuals by name and is full of photographs, having pulled on official and regimental sources as well as the local press and the memoirs of individuals. A selection of maps helps the reader understand the battalion's role and location when it went into action, and the book concludes with a useful roll of honour, short bibliographies of battalion officers, and list of awards and decorations. The only black mark is the absence of an index.

A good read and valuable work of reference, that might be seen as a companion volume to Bernard Lewis' earlier "Swansea Pals" as the two units were under command of the same infantry brigade.

An extraordinary, detailed and reliable work of reference, Regiments of the British Army delivers up to date information about the history and affiliations of regiments. With the regiments of the army now being barely recognisable from those described on the Long, Long Trail due to a series of mergers and developments since 1918, such an update is most valuable. The author provides for each regiment a summary of its history all the way from original formation, through the name and structural changes of the various army reforms, to the present day. Regimental badges (no pictures), nicknames, mottoes and other useful and fascinating information is also given. Perhaps most valuable of all is a wonderful bibliography, outlining published histories of each regiment. A really tremendous piece of work. The book is beautifully produced in two volumes. I could find no way to buy it online except through the publisher (see link right), which states that Volume 1 is £24.95 and Volume 2 £18.50. A third volume, covering artillery, engineers, signals and other services is slated for publication in 2010.