What are you reading at the moment?

I have been given the following book as a birthday present since I was a member for three years in the late 1950s.

Royal Observer Corps.
The eyes and ears of the RAF in WW2.
An Official History.
Published by Pen and Sword. Barnsley.

A slightly edited version of AIR 41/11 at Kew. Rather 'dry' reading but packed with detail of course. A chapter on the Seaborne Royal Observer Corps is interesting. Perhaps I will post some snippets.

Also a beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated book on Napoleons Household. Very big and heavy. Originally produced as an accompaniment to an Exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and distributed by Yale University Press. Whose a lucky boy then?

Mike

 

I have Taylor's two books, "The Men Inside the Metal" which are very good. They take a different approach than the Osprey title with some overlap. Taylor's books deal with the equipment and insignia of the British tanker, so indepth coverage of overalls, badges, goggles, communciaton devices etc. The Osprey title touches on this too but also looks at training, conditions of service, how everything worked in action (with first person accounts). a tank crew's day, morale and crew cohesion etc. Given the page length it doesn't go into too much depth but is worthwhile for what it does do, provide a decent overview and starting point.
Hope this helps.

 

Johnston is one of the best historians on the Australian Army in WW2. This book is up to his usal excellent standards and looks up close at the experiences of the men of one small unit that fought in the desert and the Far East.

 

Discovered this book by accident when searching for another title. Great collection of personal accounts from NGVR members.

 

Re-reading short stories by I.B. Singer.
Connection to WW2 - many of the stories are about Jewish refugees to the USA prewar, during and after the war.

 

Finished: Ken Ford, The Assault on Germany: The Battle for Geilenkirchen

Ugh what a debacle.

Mind you I am now reading the official history of the DCLI and I just read about how 1DCLI was shoved into battle without proper equipment or training in that equipment at Gazala...

 

Off on tangents as ever:



The first is a brilliant monograph that brushes on a number of the subjects I'm interested in with reference to The Canal Zone and Cyprus (1951-53)--where my grandfather was with 3 Inf Div.

The second was bought after I'd read a long (old) review of the book and watched a fascinating interview with the man. Although it's undeniable that Brearley has dined out somewhat on that miraculous Ashes series (books, interviews, articles and speeches), it didn't take too long before I've come to agree that there is something special about the man; perhaps it was just the vagaries of fate that brought him and Botham together, but the result was magic.

 

Traditional Enemies, Britain's war with Vichy France 1940-1942

 

The Battle of the Narrow Seas, by Lt Cdr Peter Scott (later Sir Peter Scott and a founder of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Wildfowl Trust)



Interesting book with some nice colour paintings by the Author.
I'd a vague recollection he'd had war time service in the Navy but hadn't realised he'd seen so much action, including taking part in the Dieppe raid

 

I've dipped into extracts from this book so many times that when a 20% of voucher cropped up I decided to buy it. I'm glad I did, because it's superlatively good. The author states that it is the product of twelve years of research that began with a PhD thesis and it shows--he has seemingly read and digested the entire contents of the National Archives for the seven years covered. I've rarely seen so much information: the notes, references and bibliography alone are seventy pages.

Anybody with interest in Malaya, Greece, Palestine and the Middle East as well as the S.A.S. the commandos and SOE will find much to enjoy--structural, political and tactical issues are covered well in just 157 pages, and the picture he paints is both convincing and exceedingly well-documented. His mission is to dispense with the notion that the British bumbled through the period, learning little from their own history or that of other groups and nations--lots of cross-theatre pollination and strategic planning is presented.

 

Author was in the Queen's Bays and was wounded at Gazala. Another good look at the life of tank crew in the Western Desert.

 

Memories of a Perpetual 2nd Lieutenant, by Charles Coubrough.

Author was captured during the retreat from Burma in 1942 and survived over three years as a POW in Rangoon Jail.

 

Recently read:

Armoured Guardsmen, by Robert Boscowen (Stackpole books edition)

This is definitely a good account of Boscowen's experience through France and Germany. He was left out of battle in some key actions, such as Operation Garden, but there he was in a rear echelon and I got a bit of a better appreciation of the effect of the Germans cutting the British route to Arnhem. One reviewer on Amazon complained about the amount of space devoted to hunting (shooting birds) but evidently this was a hobby of Boscowen's and when they weren't in action he did manage to find a shotgun and went shooting numerous times.

Armoured Odyssey, by Stuart Hamilton

I stumbled on this at a used book sale at the Tank Museum and immediately snatched it up. It is a very good account of the war in the desert and Italy, unusual in giving the perspective of a Valentine tank commander. Highly recommended.

(Note, doesn't include the chase after Rommel or Tunisia, because 8RTR was stuck in Syria)

 

Peace is Not at Hand, by Robert Thompson. A good appraisal of the politics around the Viet Nam War. Thompson was a Longcloth Chindit in 1943, having previously escaped the Japanese from Hong Kong the year before. He went on to have an expert career in advising on counter-insurgency to such people as President Nixon.

 

Currently struggling through this one. Nothing but admiration for the crews that took part, but it makes for pretty mundane reading apart from the occasional bit of tension when they were bogged down on landing. Plenty of lists of French agents and field codenames. It's not an area of the air war that i'm at all familiar with, my main surprise being that twin engined Hudsons also made clandestine landings in small fields.

 

Anthony Beevor
Arnhem The Battle For The Bridges 1944

A good read

 

A couple of tank books


Lots of amazing information here. The French were in many ways ahead of the British in developing armour tactics and techniques but their accomplishments are little covered in English literature. This well researched book more than makes up for that shortage. Highly recommended for anyone interested in early tank warfare.


Red Army Shermans ... lots of pics and some good but brief text.

 

Like, given because you said Lovely shiny book smell