• Memoire/Battlefield Memoire

      Happy Odyssey by Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC 

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      sirbhp
       Number of Views: 415 
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      4. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
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      Sir Adrian’s autobiography has not been out of print since 1950 so it will not require too much of an introduction. Especially as there is a thread on the book in the ARRSE forums. He gave up reading law at Oxford to pay his own way to fight as a trooper in the Second Boer War where he collected the first of his eight wounds. Later on in the First World War he received more wounds, including loosing an arm and taking his own fingers off a badly wounded hand, as well as collecting the Victoria Cross, which he surprisingly fails to provide an account of in his book.

      He was a soldier’s soldier receiving awards and promotions all along his service. The VC was won for taking over three battalions at once rushing around stiffening their resolve often exposing himself directly to enemy fire. Can you believe that he also commanded the Camel Corps in Somaliland for a time? He served in a number of active theatres in World War 2 by which time he has also lost an eye to wounds and spent a couple of years as an Italian prisoner of war . At the end of the war he was still in an interesting theatre as the British representative to Chang Kai-Shek also managing to meet Mao Se Dung on the tour. Later on after breaking his spine in three places whilst at a friend’s house he settled down to write this book.

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      Journey to Peace - Adam Joe Lawton 

      by
      udipur
       Number of Views: 638 
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      Colonel Stuart Tootal DSO OBE gave a talk at the Royal Geographical Society a couple of years ago where spoke of the ‘tsunami of PTSD’ likely to emerge from Afghanistan. We are on the nursery slopes of understanding the potentially horrific impact this condition can take and the devastation it can wreak. Some men and women carry the pain for years before it becomes too much. It also can take hold from brief exposure to extreme trauma but the effects can be equally damaging.

      Adam Joe Lawton was the third youngest sailor on HMS Sheffield when she was hit by an Exocet missile in May 1982. The run up to the Falklands War had been frenetic, the involvement almost fleeting, but that day was to haunt him for the following two decades. Twenty of his shipmates were killed in awful circumstances and he trod a tortuous path to recovery. Upon return from the South Atlantic, drinking and aggression increased in his life which threatened to unhinge what was a promising start to his career.

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      Machine Gunner on the Somme 

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      Boldnotold
       Number of Views: 1696 
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      2. Non-Fiction,
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      4. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
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      Subtitled 'Reflections on the development and employment of the Machine Gun during the Great War', this slim paperback is a reissue, having been written by Captain Bird in the 1920s. As well as telling the story of his career 1915-1918 and the actions and inactions of his daily life, his purpose is to show how use of the Machine Gun developed during the Great War. Proceeds from the sale of the book support the Western Front Association.
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      The Liberator - One World War II Soldier's 500-day Odyssey by Alex Kershaw 

      by
      AlienFTM
       Number of Views: 432 
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      2. Non-Fiction,
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      This is a hardback book, newly-published, running to over 430 pages (though some 85 pages are notes, index and acknowledgements), subtitled From the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau. The back cover tells us:

      "No World War II infantry unit in Europe saw more action or endured worse than the
      one commanded by Felix Sparks. A maverick officer - and the only man to survive his
      company's wartime odyssey from bitter beginning to victorious end - Sparks's remarkable
      story has never before been told."

      I have to point out this the story is of an American officer and I have not bothered to check whether the claims made in the previous paragraph hold true for all allies (somehow when we include Germany and Russia, I doubt it). For a start, the mathematicians will have noticed that 500 days is well short of two years. However this does not detract from the book as it stands once allowances are made.

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      Viscount Down by Keith Nell 

      by
      untallguy
       Number of Views: 568 
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      2. Non-Fiction,
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      This is a top book and I loved it. It is a very personal view of a very particular part of the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1970s. For those not familiar with the era or the region, this war was between the incumbent (and politically isolated) Rhodesian government and Robert Mugabe’s and Joshua Nkomo’s forces.

      Keith Nell’s book deals with the shooting down of two Air Rhodesia Viscount airliners in 1978 and his involvement in subsequent operations against the SAM-armed insurgents. The loss of the two airliners did not create any noticeable response from other nations’ governments and are, arguably, the most shocking killings of the war. This is due to the fact that ten of the eighteen survivors of the first shoot down were massacred shortly after the crash by members of Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA forces (there were no survivors from the second crash). The Rhodesian response to these events was vigorous to say the least and involved numerous cross-border raids against terrorist camps and a number of in-country operations.

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      'Raiders' by Ross Kemp 

      by
      old_fat_and_hairy
       Number of Views: 753 
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      Six raids that changed the course of history. A bold claim, but one that is probably justified in modern history. Some of the stories in this book will be more familiar than others, but I suspect we all will have a passing awareness of them all.

      The book opens with 'Operation Judgement' the account of the attack by obsolete British biplanes - surely a total anachronism in that period - on the Italian Fleet in Taranto. It's a tale of courage, of daring and of perseverance against the odds and an operation that with hindsight would probably never have taken place, and yet; it was a success, against all the odds and contrary to common sense.

      That last sentiment could equally be applied to all the raids related in this book. Every single one was hazardous in the extreme, and incurred what could be construed as disproportionate loss of life or serious injury, seemingly planned haphazardly yet instrumental in causing damage, inconvenience ( not as trivial as that sounds) and helping to affect the course of the war.

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      A TALENT FOR ADVENTURE Lt Col Pat Spooner MBE (Mil) 

      by
      granny
       Number of Views: 340 
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      4. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
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      Pat Spooner joined Sandhurst in September 1938. Within 12 months, having gained a Kings Indian Cadetship he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, and in October 1939 was on his way to India.
      His account of his arrival in India and the way the lives of the Indian Army personnel were so different to the training he had received at Sandhurst, makes amusing reading. He applies to join the 7th And the 8th Gurkha Rifles and was successful in his application and was accepted into the 8th Gurkha Rifles on 4th April 1940.

      All I can say is that he lives up to the title of his book. He seems to advance from one adventure to another. His style of writing is rather diaristic and he seems to remember just about every person he ever met or came across in his journeys. That in itself takes some getting used to. If you persevere though and just follow the story you realise that he had, what I would term, an interesting war.
      Service in Iraq was quickly followed by a job in the Brigade Intelligence Branch in Cairo.

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      Tougher than Bullets: the Heroic Tale of a Black Watch Survivor by Harold Davis 

      by
      metellus cimber
       Number of Views: 801 
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      3. History,
      4. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
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      For Scots schoolboys in the 1950s and early1960s, Harold Davis was, and remains, a hero. This is not for any military reason, but because he played for Glasgow Rangers between 1956 and 1964, during which time he made 261 appearances in the first team. He was also a good all-round sportsman; running and swimming as well as playing football. These days, aged 78, he mainly plays golf, which he has enjoyed for many years. His name recalls a vanished era when professional footballers were first and foremost sportsmen, and above all men, not fashion models or attention-seeking celebrities. Happy days. ...
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