There is a photograph in In the Face of the Enemy (Pen and Sword, £19.99) of the bemedalled author celebrating the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Looking suitably dashing and versatile, Didcot author Ernest Powdrill can provide all the memories of this wartime crucible, in which he served as a battery sergeant major, leading to the award of the Military Cross.

Powdrill, now 91, served in two major campaigns — as a soldier in the British Expeditionary Force, whose members were depleted in fierce fighting prior to the evacuation at Dunkirk, and in the European invasion which provided vast experience in armoured track action. Rarely is this front-line drama recorded on such a scale, as in Powdrill’s book. It quickly becomes apparent that he is no drill sergeant.

His was a war of attrition, using great gunnery skill nurtured as far back as 1935 when he joined the Territorial Army. His survival, unlike that of many of his colleagues, was time and again a miracle. “We fought like devils day and night,” he recalls.

Pen and Sword have an ever-expanding list of military history titles and is also a first-class source of Empire. Here is Kipling’s favourite general Lord Roberts pounding the familiar terrain of Afghanistan in The March to Kandahar (£19.99) by Rodney Atwood. The march of 10,000 British and Indian soldiers from Kabul to avenge a defeated garrison in Kandahar in 1880 is one of the most celebrated in history yet seldom given the vivid appraisal shown here by Atwood.

Roberts, of course, went on to command British forces in South Africa in the Boer War, tragically after his son had been killed in action at Colenso. This is about British prestige — Roberts placing a ruler of its choice on the Afghan throne — and many books on the Victorian era reflected this.

The Crimean War was the first campaign since Waterloo, and Pen and Sword have published two books on the blood-stained cauldron of 1854-55. The Battle of the Alma (£19,99), by Ian Fletcher and Natalia Ishenko, is a beautifully researched study of the first clash between Redcoats and Russians, using the sources of every nation involved, and Messenger of Death (£19.99) by David Buttery highlights the Charge of the Light Brigade and Captain Nolan, the officer who launched the cavalry assault on the Russian guns. Considered one of the most dramatic blunders in British military history, the rafts of books on the subject, have tended to neglect the ill-fated role of Nolan. With great understanding, Buttery explores his credentials as hero or villain in the Valley of Death.

The other epic 19th-century conflict in which British soldiers were embroiled was the Zulu War, followed 20 years later by the Anglo-Boer War. Major C.G. Dennison tells of his life as a soldier in both campaigns in Zulu Frontiersman (Frontline, £19.99). According to the editors, Ron Lock and Peter Quantrill (authors in their own right), Dennison had seen more active service in southern Africa than any “living man”. Kitchener and Wolseley, the great generals of the time, sought his advice. Frontiersman is not only a colonial adventure but a military survey of two of the most crucial wars of Empire with the personal view of what it was like to fight Zulu and Boer, Basuto and Voortrekker.