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Helmet for my Pillow by Robert Leckie was pretty good. It formed the basis of the series 'The Pacific' (never seen it, so I don't know how it translates to screen). Interesting for depictions of run-ins with military justice, a pacific theatre psychiatric ward, and shore leave as well as the usual battle and training descriptions. bonus stupidity: taking dozens of casualties from falling trees after occupying a recently-shelled area overnight. The Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny runs through the Berlin Airlift and the events leading up to it, including lots on the early days of US/USSR postwar relations, so it would be good background reading for your communisism quest, Christoff. I completely agree with the editorial reviews here, IIRC most of the purple prose is in the introductions and first chapter or two so you could probably just about skip those and start on the one on Berlin in the final days of the war. In all, not the most brilliant writing, but very easy to read and says most of what you would want to know about the airlift, as well as the begining of the cold war. Good to read with a critical eye. I read a book on the corvettes in the Atlantic a long time ago. As far as I can find out, I think it might have been Three Corvettes by Nicholas Monsarrat. Written in that jaunty style that many 40's/50's books have, good depiction of life onboard and lots of black humor from the battle of the Atlantic.
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May 20, 2013 00:22
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So I got the Library to get some books in from across town: Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall by Spike Milligan and Achtung Panzer! by Heinz Guderian. Both are books that were mentioned by people elsewhere on the forums. When I went to get them the Librarian says to me ' He's got a big ego, that Guderian, Von Manstein was the real genius. And they first used the word 'Blitzkreig' in 1942... '  Nice to know, I guess.
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Jul 31, 2013 09:52
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Review: Adolf Hitler - My Part in his Downfall by Spike Milligan More Accurate title: Comedian Recounts Best jokes and Lays of his war years.  Many of you may not know of Spike Milligan, at one time a major figure in British comedy. He was a comedan known for his 1950s radio series 'The goon show' and later the TV show "Q", and generally being the immediate predecessor of the Monty Python brand of absurdist comedy. Oddly enough, in my country these days his largest legacy is probably childrens book "Badjelly the Witch" Anyway, on to the book. Milligan published his memoirs in five parts, of which this was the first. It covered the period from the outbreak of war until shortly before his first combat in North Africa in early 1943. At 146 pages it makes for a pretty slim volume and a short read. Milligan was conscripted shortly after the outbreak of the war and ended up in the 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery. This volume mostly consists of his training and impressions of the personnel and general hosed-up organisation that I think all serviceman would recognise. Milligan is not exactly the most reliable narrator; The preface states that 'All the salient facts are true, I have garnished some of them in my own manner, but the basic facts are, as I say, true.' and while often veering into absurdity, sometimes it's hard to tell where the truth begins. It's a bit like listening to your mate recounting how he got laid at a party last weekend; you have to take it all with a grain of salt. Also stated in the preface, Milligan said 'I never thought that an organisation like ours could ever go to war, let alone win it.' The unit is billetted in a requisitioned Girls school. It has no AA defence until a Spandau is appropriated from a crashed Dorner. They use 9.2" Howitzers left over from the first war but they have no ammo, so they shout bang in unison instead. The Cook keeps a pig (Painted as a dog because pigs are not allowed in barracks) and they have to retreive it after it gets loose in a retirement home. They listen the guns at Dunkirk and see the first raids on London are are able to do absolutely nothing about either. A piss bucket gradually rots out a floor and one night falls through onto the officer sleeping below. The weird thing is that despite being in the largest war the world has ever seen they effectively were in garrison for 3 years.  They had to order it in specially... Gradually the unit becomes effective. They recieve working howitzers. 'Leather Suitcase', his first CO is one of many hopeless leftovers relieved when Montgomery takes over the area. Milligan becomes a signaller, patching officer's private phonecalls through to friends in far flung OPs. He forms a jazz band (having worked as a musician before the war) and plays in the local halls. A large part of the book is recounting drunken or bored shennanagans, as well as what is probably every snarky comment or neat riposte that he heard during the war. He also recalls the various girls he seduces (And a few strikeouts); "It was all sex in those days - It was that or the 'flicks' and the flicks cost money. There was a lovely busty girl called Beryl..."   Lots of cartoons throughout, he was well known for silly drawings like these To Military-type readers a lot of the routine will be familiar - I still have FSMO (Field service marching order) and have visited a NAAFI(Don't even know what this means, in my experience it's a Q-store shop.) Training stupidities, getting lost on exercise, selling gear, labour for superior officers and other small corruptions. I had a few strange moments of recognition reaching out from nearly 80 years ago. Those used to the image of the pre-sixties world as prim and proper will be surprised by the amount of swearing, ("This is the latest style from America, Cab Calloway wears it" "He must be a oval office") sex, and a barracks showman forming 'The last turkey in the shop', 'Sack of Flour' and 'The Roaring of the Lions' after lights-out using his genitals.   Milligan writes in a clear, concise manner, his post-war career was based on sending up authority and thus his writing has no pretensions at all. It's lighthearted with some poignant touches and he is constantly plays around with writing and speech conventions; I found this book a pleasure to read. Score: 8/10, Interesting picture of the phony war period and in non-combat WWII life. 10/10 if you're a fan of cheesy old britcomedy. Militaryness of Author: 3.4 Kilogrovers out of 10, Strongly anti-authoritarian streak, ran out of Heart on a five mile run. E: various 
Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 21, 2013 08:09
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Just ordered With the Old Breed and a lonely kind of war from the library for holiday reading. I was also wandering around doing Christmas shopping when I found a 2nd hand bookshop. Found a book called Unexploded Bomb by Maj A.B. Hartley for my dad, which is a first-hand account of UXB disposal in WWII, looks pretty interesting. Achtung Panzer was a cool book. The first half of it is case studies of almost every Tank battle from the first world war, lots of maps, very clearly written. The effect of the tanks was striking - by the time they made contact half the tanks would have broken down or been hit by artillery, so a couple of tanks would drive along the lines at walking pace shooting everything up. It would be like if a M113 with a stuck first gear driving around was enough to rout hundreds of men. The rest of the book outlines interwar tank building and how a Guderian's view on how a panzer corps should be organized and how it would fight - we saw how that worked out in 1940, didn't we. The chapter where he rants about the treaty of versailles taking away all his toys away is also pretty funny. So what's everyone else reading over Christmas?
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Dec 20, 2013 09:55
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