Tag archives for British Army - Page 2
A Child At Arms by Patrick Davis Book Review
A Child at Arms by Patrick A. Davis My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Child At Arms should be on reading lists for junior officers and anyone involved in military policy. It compares well to Sydney Jary's 18 Platoon, which was held up as an excellent example of a platoon commander's war by the British Army. A Child At Arms - review Gurkhas advancing with tanks to clear the Japanese from Imphal-Kohima road India (Photo credit: Wikipedia) In A Child At Arms Patrick Davis gives a his imperfect memory of his time in the army. Davis came straight out of school into officer training, and volunteered to join the Gurkhas in the Far East. At the age of 19 he joined 4/8th Gurkhas at Kohima just as they were withdrawn to rest. Davis is very honest in his account.…
The Nazi Hunters by Damien Lewis [Book Review]
The Nazi Hunters by Damien Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very well researched account, with a lot of detail on the SAS operations in the Vosges. While it does cover the post-war war crimes investigations most of the book is actually about the period leading to the war crimes. This is very interesting, and shows how they were operating and why so many SAS soldiers ended up in enemy hands. It also sort of explains the personal nature of the SAS War Crimes Unit's all consuming involvement in hunting down the perpetrators. The Nazi Hunters The defendants at the Nuremberg War Crime Trial in Nuremberg, Germany (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The Nazi Hunters is well researched, but it's wrapped in a little hyperbole about it being a previously untold and largely unknown story. During WW2 Hitler issued an…
Battle of the Somme 1916
Today is the centenary of the first infantry attacks in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Zero Hour was 07:30, and at that point the whistles blew and the infantry began their advance across no-man's land towards the German trenches. The infantry attack was preceded by over a week's artillery bombardment of one and a half million shells. A couple of minutes before H-hour several mines were detonated under the main German positions. Public Perceptions of the Battle of the Somme The Badly Shelled Road to Bapaume (21 Sept 1916) By Lt Ernest Brooks, via Wikimedia Commons This image gives the general public perception of WW1 in general, and the Battle of the Somme in particular. It is from the Battle of the Somme, but from 20th September 1916 rather than 1st July. The Somme battle was what churned…
Chieftans by Bob Forrest-Webb [Book Review]
Chieftains by Bob Forrest-Webb My rating: 3 of 5 stars Chieftans is a speculative fiction piece on the Cold War going hot in 1985. It was written in the early 1980s and hasn't dated well. Like Game of Thrones everyone dies, but in less interesting and more predictable ways. Chieftans - review There are good points to Chieftans. For the most part the characters are believable and likeable. Bob Forrest-Webb clearly has done his research, and understands British Army soldiers and officers. That aspect of the book was excellent. One of things that didn't quite work for me though was that the book was clearly researched/written about four or five years before it was set (it was first published in 1982). This means that some of the kit wasn't deployed, or had its name/designation changed on deployment. There was also…
Fight Another Day by J.M. Langley [Book Review]
Fight Another Day. Langley by J M Langley My rating: 5 of 5 stars Fight Another Day has been sitting on my shelf for years, right next to MI9 (which I only realised was co-authored by J M Langley). I'm not sure why it took me so long to get round to reading it. It fits my usual preferences in a number of ways. It's a first hand accout by an infantry officer, it's about escaping from a POW camp, it's about organising secret agents to work in nazi-occupied Europe. Any one of those would have got Fight Another Day onto my to-read list. Fight Another Day Fight Another Day tells the story of Jimmy Langley from his enlistment in the special reserve of the Coldstream Guards. He gets mobilised in August 1939 and goes to France, and we are…