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Red Zone by Oliver Poole
BAGHDAD’S Red Zone, in which Daily Telegraph correspondent Poole spent “five bloody years”, was effectively all of the city beyond the fortified walls of the Green Zone in which the Iraqi government and its international sponsors went about their well-protected business. As frightening as Baghdad was, his observations on Basra, once the prosperous “Venice of the East”, make the most depressing reading. He found it riven by rival militias and corrupt officials, despite the British presence.
Reportage Press, 336pp, £12.99 (s), £18.99 (h)
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Four Weeks in May by David Hart Dyke
CAPTAIN Hart Dyke’s anti-aircraft destroyer was one of a thin grey “screen” deliberately placed in harm’s way to intercept enemy bombers intent on stopping the British landings on the Falkland Islands in May 1982. His ship, HMS Coventry, was sunk, but not before it had done its job. While the task force disembarked its land elements relatively unscathed, the Navy was fighting a desperate battle over the horizon.
Atlantic Books, 272pp, £8.99 |
NINE titles have been short-listed for the British Army’s first Military Book of the Year 2008 award.
They are:
Swords and Ploughshares by Paddy Ashdown
Absolute War by Chris Bellamy
3 Para, Afghanistan, Summer 2006 by Patrick Bishop
Four Weeks in May by David Hart Dyke
Eight Lives Down by Chris Hunter
Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-41 by Ian Kershaw
Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa by Edward Paice
Napoleon as a General by Jonathon Riley
Washington’s War: From Independence to Iraq by Michael Rose
The award, run by the Army Library and Information Service, celebrates the best in military writing and is open to British non-fiction on any military subject published in the last year.
All Army personnel can vote on the nine contenders via the Army Library and Information Service’s ALIX website on ArmyNet, by text or by filling in voting papers available from any of the 66 Army library centres worldwide (from which you can also loan the books or request them on ALIX).
Voting opens on June 2 and closes on September 5, and the winner will be announced the following month. A presentation ceremony will be held in the Prince Consort’s Library in Aldershot.
www.armylibraries.mod.uk |
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The War with Indonesia 1962-1966 by Nick van der Biji
BORNEO’S vast and challenging terrain ensured that the war against Indonesia remained a footnote in news coverage of the time. Yet tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth troops were involved in preventing communist-led Indonesian forces from seizing Sarawak, Sabah and oil-rich Brunei. Maj Gen Walter Walker’s clear direction ensured the campaign did not turn into a British Vietnam.
Pen & Sword, 246pp,
£19.99 |
The Greatest Day in History by Nicholas Best
HENRY Gunther was the last US soldier to die in the First World War. He was killed charging a machine-gun post a minute before the Armistice. Best’s research, woven into a book subtitled “How The Great War Really Ended”, could surely fill a dozen volumes. While Australian troops were going wild in Paris, George Bernard Shaw wanted no part in his village celebrations because, as he put it, “every promising young man I know has been blown to bits”. Fascinating.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 304pp, £20 |
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Early days: From the pages of Territorials, Devon Royal Garrison Artillery Militia ham it up with a Nordenfelds three-barrel machine gun in Plymouth.
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Territorials by Ian F W Beckett (DRA Publishing, 288pp, £30). See reader offer at foot of review.
Review: John Elliott
IN April we reported that Luke Cole, a 22-year-old Wolverhampton forklift truck driver, had been awarded the Military Cross for quite remarkable gallantry when a Taliban ambush erupted in southern Afghanistan.
Ignoring a broken leg and stomach wounds sustained when his patrol of Mercians was attacked in Helmand province, he declined morphine so that he could crawl across open ground to help injured colleagues and suppress the enemy with his rifle during a two-hour firefight. The young private’s actions were gobsmackingly heroic, but what makes them extra special is that Luke Cole is a part-time soldier, a member of the Territorial Army.
His richly deserved MC is the third to be won by a TA member in recent years.
Too late for a mention in Ian Beckett’s wide-ranging history of the Territorial Army, published to mark its 100th anniversary, the stark facts of Cole’s dedication to duty in the line of fire are a reminder, should we need one, of the wonderful achievements of the civilian soldiers who volunteer enthusiastically to support and reinforce the Regular Army in war and peace.
Did you know that TA soldiers have won 88 Victoria Crosses? Or that the only one awarded on D-Day went to a Territorial, CSM Stan Hollis of The Green Howards? Neither did I until I read this richly illustrated, large format book. In fact, the photographs and artwork are worth the cover price by themselves. Beckett’s text draws together a fascinating collection of images that reward even a quick flick through the pages.
Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have given fresh direction to the role of the Territorial Army (more than 9,000 deployed in 2003 during the first Gulf War), but as this narrative suggests, its fortunes and standing have dipped and soared in the 100 years since Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane created the modern force. He did so as Britain’s military leaders reflected on the lessons of the Boer War, during which “a handful of farmers” severely embarrassed Queen Victoria’s mighty Empire army.
The TA made a huge contribution, and sacrifice, during the Great War, to be rewarded with political neglect and indifference in the years that followed. In 1940 the Army Council decreed that 55 per cent of Territorial COs should be replaced by Regulars because they were too “inexperienced or unfit to hold their commands”. It is surprising, perhaps, that in the closing stages of the Second World War there were only 36 TA officers, out of 15,067, in the rank of brigadier or above.
Barely 25 years ago a Lionheart exercise in Germany involved 35,000 TA soldiers in manoeuvres designed to deter the Soviet bear. Today the organisation has, discounting non-deployable members, about 31,000 officers and soldiers.
Perhaps this is how it will always be for a force which, when it matters most, routinely disproves the jibes about it being a Dad’s army of weekend warriors. Even today the letters pages of this magazine occasionally hint at lingering tensions on this score, particularly in terms of allowances and rewards.
But as Professor Beckett makes very clear, when our nation calls on them, men such as Luke Cole – and Yorkshire lorry driver Stanley Hollis before him – are more than willing, and able, to step forward.
Save £5. To mark the TA’s centenary, copies of Territorials: A Century of Service are available to Soldier readers at £25 from DRA Publishing, 14 Mary Seacole Road, Plymouth PL1 3JY or by calling DRA direct sales on 01752 671297.
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| book briefs |
“I suppose you realise you’re driving on the wrong side of the road.”
 THE Russell Brockbank drawing (above) first published in Punch on July 22, 1944, is taken from World War II in Cartoons by Mark Bryant (Grub Street, 160pp hardback, £15.99).
The fascinating collection, first published in 1989, is making its third appearance in time to join its brand new large-format companion volume, World War I in Cartoons (same author, publisher and price), on the bookshelves.
In common with Bryant’s earlier book, his Great War collection appears in chronological order, so that with even a basic understanding of the history of the great conflict it is possible to follow its major swings and shifts through the cartoons that appeared in newspapers and magazines in Britain, France, Germany, America and the Soviet Union. All is explained, anyway, in a lucid commentary on the drawings.
MODERN HISTORY
Life in the French Foreign Legion by Evan McGorman. First published in hardback in 2002, this is the author’s account of his five years in the Legion’s 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment. He had previously served as a gunner in the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery but enlisted in the 2ème REP on a whim. He left in 1994 after serving as a radio operator on operations from Chad to Sarajevo at the height of the war in the Balkans. (Robert Hale, 254pp paperback, £9.99.)
SECOND WORLD WAR
Exercise Tiger by Richard T Bass. Holidaymakers enjoying the lovely beaches of Devon’s Lyme Bay would have to search hard for evidence of terrible night of destruction which took place in these waters 64 years ago. The Sherman tank memorial at Slapton Sands stands in tribute to 946 US infantrymen who were drowned when their D-Day landing craft rehearsal was destroyed by torpedo-spewing German e-boats and “friendly fire”. This is a comprehensive account of an “incident” long buried in secrecy, and official obfuscation. (Tommies Guides, 251pp paperback, £11.75.)
Home Run: Escape from Nazi Europe by John Nichol and Tony Rennell. Paperback edition of last year’s hardback. True stories of British Service personnel on the run in German-held Europe. (Penguin, 514pp paperback, £8.99.)
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SECOND WORLD WAR CONTINUED
Called Up Sent Down: The Bevan Boys’ War by Tom Hickman. With coal stocks running dangerously low in 1943, the British Government “mobilised” 20,000 18-year-olds down the mines. Instead of fighting for their country on the battlefields of Europe and beyond, they found themselves working, for the main part unwillingly, in deep, dark and dangerous seams around the UK. They were even expected to pay, out of their meagre wages, for their own shovels. A fascinating collection of their memories. (The History Press, 249pp hardback, £20.)
FIRST WORLD WAR
The German Army Handbook of 1918 introduced by James Beach. Reissued by the War Office in April 1918, this revised handbook drew on British Intelligence gathered throughout the war. It was intended as a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the enemy’s methods, from recruiting to training, command and organisation, uniforms and weapons, signals and transportation, and medical and veterinary services. (Frontline Books, 186pp hardback, £19.99.)
The Daily Telegraph Dictionary of Tommies’ Songs and Slang, 1914-18 by John Brophy and Eric Partridge. Your “Lord Lovel” was your shovel and “pass the Maggie Ann” meant you wanted the margarine. Also useful if you want to know the words to Inky-pinky parley-vous and other classic refrains sung on the Western Front. (Frontline Books, 238pp hardback, £19.99.)
The Zeebrugge Raid by Philip Warner. New edition of the story of one of the most heroic operations of the First World War – the attempt by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines to blockade the Zeebrugge Canal and so deny U-boat access. First published in 1978, it paints a vivid picture of the daring raid that earned nine Victoria Crosses for its participants. (Pen & Sword, 160pp hardback, £19.99.)
HISTORICAL
A Commanding Presence: Wellington in the Peninsula 1808-1814 by Ian Robertson. Detailed analysis of the nitty-gritty logistics of this long campaign. The Iron Duke’s commanding presence was critical in ensuring that his army was provisioned and sustained in the testing environment of the Peninsula. (Spellmount, 448pp hardback, £30.)
By Sword and Fire: Cruelty and Atrocity in Medieval Warfare by Sean McGlynn. The laws of war and codes of chivalry had little meaning for non-combatants and soldiers who suffered appallingly in medieval warfare. But the author contends that the hideous cruelty was not random and uncontrolled but calculated to achieve specific ends. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 296pp hardback, £25.) |
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Soldier ordering service.
All books mentioned on these pages are available from Helion & Company, who can also supply 14,500 in-print military books and operate a free book search; p&p is extra. All major credit/switch cards taken. Please allow up to 28 days for delivery. Helion & Company, 26 Willow Road, Solihull, West Midlands B91 1UE, England (tel 0121 705 3393; fax 0121 711 4075).
E-mail : books @ helion.co.uk
Website: http:// www.helion.co.uk
Soldier magazine is not responsible for the content of external internet sites |
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