What are you reading at the moment?

Timely finish of this book about a Battle of Britain pilot who also survived the Great Escape. I’m not normally one for biographies but this is written by his son and is largely based on diaries and letters, plus plenty of first hand accounts that are not the more common ones. The BoB section is very detailed and the highlight, while the POW section is very brief barring his experiences in the immediate aftermath of the escape. The story is rounded out by his future wife’s experiences in the RCAF which provides some interesting details on the blitz. As with all fighting high publications the standard is very high, so this is very much recommended.

 

Another book from my Dad's collection. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute:

 

My Dad has read every Nevil Shute book and that’s it. I’ve never known him pick any other book up. I’ll take a look at this as I’ve not thought about Mr Shute in years!

 

Funnily enough was looking at something on Mr Norway only recently. When he was working on flame thrower development he and some colleagues decided to go on a pub crawl. To get home they "borrowed" a vehicle belonging to the local Home Guard - to wit a WW1 Mk V tank that had been restored to running order. One of the features of the British WW1 heavies was that the doors could only be locked from inside so that if left unguarded were easy to get into. Unlike the Mks 1 - IV the Mk V only needed a driver in the cab and a very pissed Nevil reckoned he could manage it on his own. On the journey a number of cars were flattened.He came withing a gnats crotch of being dismissed and jailed for this episode!

 

I am currently reading Worm’s Eye View as recommended by Markyboy back in April. It’s a gem!

I’ve yet to reach the combat entries but so far it’s everything you said it is, Marky. The author’s honesty and frank views are eye openingly informative and engaging and, yes, it is really absorbing to read about living alongside the French, both civilian and military, during the phoney war period.

Whilst I am yet to reach the combat descriptions, and the book is already an outstanding read thus far anyway, out of curiosity I have taken it upon myself to have a look on the CWGC site at some of the Squadron names he mentions in the diary. Very sad to have already seen so many of them on there and I presume he will mention some of them by name once the fighting starts in earnest.

I unhesitatingly echo Marky’s sentiments and highly recommend this book.

 

My dad has read a lot of other things but also has a very big Shute collection.

 

I'm about two-thirds of the way through and it is very good. Twists catch you out all the time. I wish we had read something like this for O'Level or A' Level back in the day.

 

The first Shute I read was Most Secret taken off my dad's bookshelves - I must have been about 7 at the time.

 

Soooo... I finished this a while ago and have been meaning to post.

Galloway was one of the Canadian officers and NCOs sent out to Tunisia to gain experience in British regiments. He kept a diary, and the book presents the diary text plus additional commentary from when this was published in 1984. Galloway served with the London Irish Regiment from mid-February to the beginning of April and was involved in fighting at "Stuka Farm".

I don't actually have any problems with the main narrative, as it were. However, the (apparently small press) publisher didn't do the author any great service. For instance there is a chapter at the end about "lessons learned" which then goes back to the START of the campaign in Tunisia by British First Army which seems questionably placed. I also personally could have done without reading the author's bordello stories or knowing which racist terms he would use for the local population. Maybe those would have been better left out. Your mileage may very.

As a side note, I have no idea why the front cover shows a Light Tank Mk VI and another photo in the book shows a column of Light Tanks which is presumably from 1940. The latter is a nice photo and one I'd like to find the digital version thereof - it shows them in Caunter camouflage with names on the back, apparently approaching another element of their regiment which was equipped with cruiser tanks. But this has nothing to do with Tunisia!

 

Have just bought the Kindle version of James Holland's "Sicily '43"

Al I now have to do is summon up the energy to read it !

Ron

 

If technology develops the way in which Phillip K Dick predicted one day it will be possible to purchase the memory of having read it it so absolutely no energy will be required!

 

Reading this new book from Michael Claringbould. Avonmore continue to impress with their productions and quality. Claringbould uses Allied and Japaneses sources to produce very detailed and balanced books on the air war in the SWPA. Essential reading if you have any interest in the topic.

 

I’ve just raced through Gordon Mellor’s memoir, who was a navigator on Wellingtons and Halifaxes, being shot down over Belgium in ‘42 and making his way to Spain eventually through the Comete line. Gordon was a regular at signing events and a trustee for the Bomber Command memorial so I’m glad to finally read his full story. The only slight negative is the list of names of people he served with who he lost contact with and in the case of some he was unaware if they’d even survived the war. As the book was published in 2016 I’ve come to expect at least some footnotes that would have provided a bit of info on those people considering today’s available resources. In particular Mellor mentions several times that he was suspicious of one of his fellow escapees credentials, but it’s left unresolved. Overall though this is a cracking evasion story told with great clarity and very well written.

 

An outstanding book in two regards.

First: The perspective is quite different from many other war memoirs. What Aylett sees on his operating table are the terrible results inflicted on young men by the battles fought at the front. He is a surgeon in an FSU (Field Surgical Unit). But he does not talk about his work in a detached or technical way but rather as a feeling human being, he is both professional and highly sympathetic. His observations and reflections are at the same time touching and uplifting - he vividly describes the dedication and the spirit that helped him and many others to cope with war and suffering.

The second reason why this is an outstanding story: he starts his war service by volunteering in September 1939 and takes us through all stages of WW2: France in 1939/40, Dunkirk, then Alexandria, the deserts of Egypt and Libya, D-Day, Germany in 1945, the liberation of Sandbostel, then on to Denmark in the summer 1945. Everywhere he takes the reader, he allows him to immerse into the atmosphere of those days - you smell the stink of gas gangrene, you visualize the horrible wounds, you sweat and freeze in the desert, you learn about the practical challenges and how to handle them, you travel around the world in overcrowded troop transport ships, you enjoy the wonders of Alexandria when on leave, you learn about the atmosphere in Middle East Base Hospitals, Casualty Clearing Stations in France, you learn about the colourful types in the ranks of the RAMC. And you’re always „right there in the middle of it all“ with him!

 

Just finished reading The Battle of the Peaks and Longstop Hill by Ian Mitchell.

This is an extremely good book. It goes into great detail about the actions of 78 Division leading up to Longstop Hill, its capture, and some subsequent operations. Thus the reader understands how to recapture of Longstop was really only part of a larger campaign and a rather long series of actions.

It is written in a large number of sub-chapters and occasionally there is a little bit of repetition between them. I can understand how difficult it would be to write a book of this length and avoid that. An example is how Sidi Ali Ben Aoune (an objective after Longstop) was identified as Point 160 on both pages 302 and 303 in separate subchapters. This does however make it easier to pick up the narrative at any point.

One thing I did not expect when I started to read the book was how frustrated I would feel reading about ultimately futile attacks repeated one after another, particularly before (at Djbel Tanngoucha) and after Longstop. And these were generally orders given to units already understrength from previous attacks. This is something I started to despise when I read about pointless repeated attacks ordered by a Canadian general at Ortona. It was just... a senseless waste of human life.

 

Just received my copy of this book!

 

Are you referring to Vokes?

 

I think he is. Vokes didn't show much imagination fighting the Germans in Ortona but I don't believe he had many other options.

Attritional warfare became the order of the day in the Italian theatre.

 

Vokes came under considerable criticism for his conduct of the Ortona battle and those that immediately preceded it. It was the first action for Vokes as a divisional commander and he made many errors. The attrition at Ortona was more likely caused by the previous mistakes at the Moro. There were many nuances to the events of that period, which are well covered in this article:

https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1459&context=cmh

Not the least of which is Vokes offering Hoffmeister, at day four or five of the action, the opportunity to break off the battle. Hoffmeister declined and was quoted as saying, “absolutely not, to quit at this time would be letting the brigade down and the effect on the morale of the brigade would be such that it would be just shocking."