What are you reading at the moment?

Discussion in 'Books, Films, TV, Radio' started by Gage, Mar 12, 2006.

  1. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    That looks interesting, Harry Ree. I've noted it and will order it ( if it's not too expensive.)
    One day I'll get the courage up to speak to some of the oldies around here about their memories of the Occupation. There are many of them, the Gers has almost the longest life expectancy in France! I've asked one or two, and they're very cagey, want to forget perhaps.
    I've just bought Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifices by Susan Ottaway . 2 sisters in the SOE. I haven't started it yet.
     
  2. Orwell1984

    Orwell1984 Senior Member

    [​IMG]

    KANGZHAN: GUIDE TO CHINESE GROUND FORCES 1937–45

    book description:

    This book is currently the best resource in English for the Chinese Army of the period. Its breadth of material is impressive, covering all types of weapons (imported and locally produced from small arms to armour and artillery), organization and training for all the various forces fighting on the Chinese side (including the communists).
    One improvement over Ness' previous two volume work on the Japanese army, Rikugun, is the use of a heavier glossier stock for the pages which means the photo reproductions (and there are a lot of images in this book) are much crisper and easier to make out.
    If you have any interest in the Sino-Japanese conflict of the period this book is essential for your library
     
  3. Clint_NZ

    Clint_NZ Member

    Just picked up 'Somme' by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. I really enjoyed his book 'Dunkirk' so hoping for more of the same.

    upload_2016-8-29_12-21-4.jpeg
     
  4. A-58

    A-58 Not so senior Member

    [​IMG]

    I'm working on this now. Major Russell Volckmann (USMA '34) escaped from Bataan and made his way into the interior of Luzon to carry on the fight against the Japanese after Mac bugged out. It's amazing what guys like this accomplished, starting with little more than what they were wearing and scrounged up from the countryside.
     
    Harry Ree and canuck like this.
  5. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    The Soldiers' General: Burt Hoffmeister at War

    I'm halfway through this book as of 09/21 and it is nothing short of phenomenal. Highly recommended. Written in 2005, I don't know how this stayed off my radar for so long.

    bert9.jpg

    Oct. 11th
    Now completed and perhaps the best book I've read in several years. I will defer to a professional historian for the review;


    Reviewed by
    Marc Milner
    The Soldier’s General: Bert Hoffmeister at War. By Douglas E. Delaney. Vancouver/Ottawa: UBC Press/Canadian War Museum, 2005. ISBN 0-7748-1149-8. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 299. $85.00.
    Allied generals of the Second World War are often dismissed as a pretty uninspired bunch. At best they are dilettantes, dithering amateurs fumbling their way through problems of command, or poorly trained regular officers from cash-starved democratic countries who are quickly out of their depth trying to fight a modern war. Either way, this cadre of erstwhile shop keepers and lounge lizards is generally seen as all but incapable of beating the Teutonic Gods of War at their own game. And those who seem inspired—Montgomery and Patton come readily to mind—were all seriously flawed people, with as many detractors as supporters. Fortunately, Canada's best combat general of the Second World War, Bert Hoffmeister—arguably one of the best generals on any side—fits none of these molds, and his military career is finally the subject of a major, eminently readable, biography.

    Hoffmeister was one of those Allied generals the German professional officers could never figure out: a lumber salesman turned soldier who beat them at soldiering. According to the author, Major Doug Delaney (infantry officer and Professor of History at the Royal Military College of Canada), Hoffmeister's success as a battlefield commander derived from at least three things: his own personal (but not overweening) ambition to succeed at whatever he took on; the basic skills of management and personnel handling he learned in the British Columbia lumber business; and the fact that he served—and survived—every level of command from company to division. In December 1939 he marched off to war as a company commander in the Seaforth Highlanders of Victoria, British Columbia, en route to join the 1st Canadian Infantry Division for passage to Britain. By his own admission he was untrained and callow in the ways of war, something which years of training in England did little to rectify. Hoffmeister and the Seaforths, which he then commanded, learned by doing, starting on the beaches of Paccino in July 1944. By September Hoffmeister had command of the 2nd Brigade, which he fought through the dreary Adriatic campaign of late 1943, including the grim battle for Ortona in December 1943. When a divisional command opened up in January 1944, Hoffmeister was selected—although as an infantryman he was perhaps not the logical choice to command an armoured division. Nonetheless, the faith of his superiors was not misplaced. In five months Hoffmeister went from commanding a battalion to the rank of major general in command of the 5th Canadian Armoured Division. He led that division for the balance of the war, training, guiding, and fighting it with distinction. Unquestionably his greatest moment was when the 5th CAD bounced the Gothic Line defences near Rimini in September 1944. His infantry and tanks out-fought the Germans on all levels, often attacking positions in which the defenders outnumbered them, driving deep into the enemy position, pushing tanks up hills the Germans thought were impassable and destroying their savage counter attacks. In one instance in early 1945 5th CAD defeated two German divisions in a single action at the Valle di Comacchio on the way to Venice. As 5th CAD attacked through one division it was counterattacked by another: the reserves saw off the counterattack and the division never missed a beat in its advance. In the end, Hoffmeister was so highly regarded that he was selected—over all the regular force generals—to command Canada's Pacific force which, in the event, was never deployed.

    Doug Delaney has written a compelling and scholarly military biography of Bert Hoffmeister, the soldier's general. The book, essentially Delaney's RMC Ph.D. dissertation, is based on extensive archival research in Canada and abroad, interviews and field study in Italy.

    The interpretive framework here is drawn from Major Delaney's own experience as an infantry officer in Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, using extensive research on Hoffmeister's life and his unit's actions...
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2016
  6. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

    Resting from WW2, with Ian Dury, by Will Birch. Most interesting and entertaining, there ain't half been some clever b******s you know.
     
  7. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

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  8. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Tricia

    Missed your post but I think the book should be available from quite a few sources.I think I bought mine from Postscript Books,Newton Abbot who sell books at decent prices as bought from publishers.....I have looked at their site but cannot locate the book..perhaps out of stock.

    A little information on the background to the author,W D Halls.

    WD Halls obituary
     
  9. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    Harry Ree - As a ps to my last post :
    There was a funeral in the village last week of a man in his 90s from one of main families in the commune. Although there was a good crowd there, they were mainly 'outsiders'. Most of the other main families of the village were conspicuous by their absence.
    Then I remembered that I had once asked an old lady about life during the Occupation, and she had pointed to the deceased's house, saying 'ils aimient les allemagnes.'
    People have long memories.
     
    Harry Ree likes this.
  10. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    I agree those who lived in those times have memories of those who sold their soul to the invader and as you say were friends of the Germans.

    These people were dangerous from the point of denouncing any Allied escaper who happened to knock on their door asking for help but were also likely to be the eyes and ears of the Germans which often led the tragic results to their fellow French...such enchantment with the new order and the lauding of Petain led to young French joining such organisations as the LVF in the German propaganda of preventing the overrunning of Europe by the communist USSR.

    Interesting. with regard to the young French evading the STO, apparently, in the rural areas of Finistere,90% of the young French evaded the STO with the help of the Church and the locals.Overall the Church has been blamed for not pulling their weight against Petain and the invaders but there were notable exceptions in the clergy,some at a high level who paid the supreme penalty at places like Dachau.(I remember a roadside memorial to a priest in the Cote d'Armor who taken into German captivity was beheaded in Cologne.)

    A few years ago while in Denmark at a friends, we had a visit to to the local cemetery and he pointed out a grave to me.He said this bastard died in his bed and was a member of the SS Wiking Division which fought in Russia.....memories are not likely to fade...his father on the liberation was immediately called up and was involved in the guarding of the big wheel Nazi Dr Werner Best who swiftly became a shadow of his previous self.....his father used to joke that Best could clean the floors better than his daughters could clean the kitchen floor of their farmhouse.
     
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  11. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Scroll back to see my last posting about CSM Charlie Martin .

    Just finished his book ........

    This just has to be the finest book ever written about the life of an infantryman and I urge you all to read it.

    Ron
     
  12. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Having organised myself a week's break some time next year that includes a day at the Normandy beaches, I thought it would be helpful to read up a bit on that part of the world .

    With that in mind, I now have the Kindle version of Forum member Paul Reed's fascinating book "Walking D-Day (Battleground Europe)

    Apart from a week in Deauville in 1949 and a similar time at La Panne during the '70s I have not been to this area for years and am looking forward to the experience, helped, I trust, by Paul's guide book.

    Ron
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
  13. tron333

    tron333 Member

    Ron Goldstein said this was a good book from amazon Battle Dairy: from d-day and normandy to the zuider zee and ve.
    I must say its readling like a log with commentary but good.
    About Canadians QOR . The story about the officer who would not yeild to a guard guarding a IED was amusing.
     
  14. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Member

    I'm in the middle of The Cause of Japan by Togo Shigenori. He was Japan's Foreign Minister at the time of Pearl Harbor (and before) and again at war's end. This is a 1956 translation of his writings while in prison at the end of the war. From what I have read so far, he places much of the blame for starting the war on the US because of its intransigence, especially on the issue of Japan's expansion and the US support of China. It was recommended to me by Opana Pointer.
     
  15. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Well, maybe the US and other countries were just a little aware that after seeing what went on in Manchuria from the late 20's with the Kwantung Army, and the assassinations by the Army and Navy of Japanese moderates in their own government and then also assassinating Manchurian leaders who wanted to join with China, it was plain to see that the Militarists in Japan were pulling the strings. Manchuria first, then Northern China were the initial aims however it was feared from this that their expansionism was not going to be limited to these two neighbours. The events of 1937 in China enhanced the view that they were going to be a further threat to other countries in South East Asia.

    Yes, there were export markets closed off to Japan during the depression and some fault lay with these measures however the Japanese Militarists had plans going back much earlier to increase their domination in neighbouring lands. Their huge population increases from the start of the 20th century to the 30's led them to this decision of expansionism, firstly protecting their interests in Manchuria from which they later became the blood thirsty and cruelest of invaders.
     
  16. colinhotham

    colinhotham Senior Member

    I'm reading Ernie Pyle's BRAVE MEN. Ernie was a WWII, US war correspondent who lived with various US Military units and recorded the day to day life of those fighting in Europe. He moved on to Japan where he was killed by a sniper. His style was unique in that he recorded the home address, often right down to the street and house number, of all the men he interviewed.

    Colin.
     
  17. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Colin

    Through the wonder of the internet I have just bought the Kindle version of Ernie Pyle's book for the vast sum of £1.99, delivered free to my i-Pad !

    We shall read it together and then compare notes :)

    Ron

    ps
    In an effort to cut down on the size of my library, with the odd exception, I now buy no reading material whatsoever that can't be bought in a Kindle version
     
  18. Oldman

    Oldman Very Senior Member

    Reading Armoured Guardsman, picked it up on Amazon Kindle Books for £0.99
     
  19. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    Shadow Warriors - Gordon Thomas & Greg Lewis.
    Daring Missions of WWII by Women of OSS & SOE.
     
  20. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

    Finally managed to pick up a copy of War Bush by John Hamilton, for less than £10.
    This covers the invaluable, but barely recognised contribution from African soldiers during the Burma Campaign.

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