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I'm civvy scum, but I'm fairly surprised you guys didn't mention A Lonely Kind of War http://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Kind-War-Forward-Controller/dp/0891416382 It's told by one of those guys who flew ultra-light air craft in Vietnam acting as a forward controller, you get a good amount of the nitty-gritty of how air/artillery support worked. I was surprised at how complicated it was, as I was often under the assumption it was "find bad guy, press button, kill bad guy" or something to that effect. As for World War One sort of stuff, I assign my students selections from the following for Western Civ 2: Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Steel-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141186917/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368764621&sr=1-2 Think of this guy as the anti-All Quiet on the Western Front. Rather than your typical "oh god, war is terrible" stuff that came out of that generation, Ernst Junger fully embraced it, and has been variously described as psychotically brave, a pseudo-fascist, and at the same time an anti-nazi that Hitler couldn't just get rid of because he had too much street cred with the Prussian officer corps. It's written largely from an edited diary, just as a heads up. And for the other end of the spectrum, Under Fire by Henri Barbusse http://www.amazon.com/Under-Penguin...er+fire+penguin This is an at-times other-worldly novel, perhaps one of the first "soldiers' stories" published during WWI (I think it came out in 1917) by veteran Henri Barbusse. Much like Junger, he joined up in August 1914 with the whole "shower of roses and blood" atmosphere, but instead is utterly horrified by the war, especially the effects of industrialized warfare on human beings. He becomes a die-hard communist after the war, and actually dies in Moscow in... 1933 I think writing a biography on Stalin, but his writing gives you an idea of the overwhelming nature of industrialized warfare on a level that had never before been seen.
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May 17, 2013 05:30
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Seconding Guns of August, when your tactical thinking consists of "Get over there, stab the boche in the gut with your bayonet and save the Republic!" bad poo poo is about to go down. Grandmaison was a shitlord, and that French troops went into battle in 1914 wearing bright loving red pants gives you an idea as to how much the higher-ups were chugging down Napoleonic dick without actually understanding the implications of fast-firing breech loaded artillery or machine guns that can shoot 600 rounds a minute. One of my favorite bits to make that last part clear to students to to lay two cartridges down on a table and say "this is the average rate of fire per minute for a member of the British Army in 1814", then I put down a box of fifteen, "this is the average rate of fire per minute of the member of the BEF in 1914" and then I dump 600 rounds of ammo out on the table and say "this is what a complete idiot behind a maxim gun can put out in a minute". My students basically go all  at the realization of all that lead coming at them when they're snagged on a barbed wire fence.
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May 18, 2013 01:54
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Elendil004 posted:Updated to this point. Can someone post a better review of House to House? Right now it's kinda disjointed. I don't mean to be a turd-lord, but "A Lonely Kind of War" belongs in the Vietnam section, my fault for not making that clear when I was listing them. As for other recommendations: Street Without Joy: http://www.amazon.com/Street-Without-Joy-Indochina-Stackpole/dp/0811732363 Pretty much a classic investigation of the French efforts in Indochina, leading up to direct American intervention. American soldiers in Vietnam had a tendency to make references to this book when seeing what the higher-ups were doing wrong. And from the other end, an overall investigation of the Vietnam conflict, in some cases going as far back as the Mongol invasions of Vietnam, to (assuming you have the 1997 edition) the curious modernization of Vietnam. It's a brick of a book, but I strongly recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Histo...etnam+a+history And for WW2, and this will be good for you navy pukes, Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible. http://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Cruci...acific+Crucible Essentially, it looks at the first year of the Pacific War, and for me it serves as a reminder of why I should never ever be on a ship at war, because holy God this guy gives you an idea what it's like to be on the damage-control teams.
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May 23, 2013 04:01
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suboptimal posted:In case you're looking for a good WWII book, Rick Atkinson's "The Guns at Last Light" is a great account of Operation Overlord and the Allied campaign through the end of the war. Be warned- the author has a very ostentatious vocabulary, and the profligate verbosity through which he dispenses the narrative is occasionally akin to fighting the dreaded Hun through the bocage. It's masturbatory horseshit if you ask me, and stuff that's largely ganked from better writers. Max Hastings' treatment of 1944-1945 in Armageddon: The Battle for Germany and Retribution: The Battle for Japan are infinitely better. I mean, who the gently caress describes an infantry assault as "gutful" except for Atkinson? I bought it only out of habit after reading the first two in the trilogy (not knowing much about the North African and Italian campaigns), but honestly, the third just feels like a re-tread that he knew he could make easy cash on. I haven't had a chance to read Hastings' book on D-Day, but I'm assuming it does more justice to it than Atkinson's "and then some French/British/Canadian/Polish soldiers did something, BACK TO 'MERKA  " treatment of the war in Western Europe.(Relevant Links) http://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-Germany-1944-1945-Max-Hastings/dp/0375714227/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373596986&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.com/Retribution-Battle-Japan-1944-45-Vintage/dp/0307275361/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
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Jul 12, 2013 03:51
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