What Are You Reading?

Currently reading Michael Smith's The Emperor's Codes. A look at British efforts to break the Japanese codes in WW2.

 

I was laboring through Beetle, The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith. by D.K.R. Crosswell, 2010. Five hundred pages into it and finally had enough and put it down. It is not that it was a bad book; I just didn't need to continue to wade through the excruciating details of every meeting, gathering, discussion, briefing, or planning session Smith was involved in, either as a member or that he might have heard about. The specter of hacking my way through another 500 pages was just more than I could bear. It would probably serve well as a source or research collection for a dissertation or similar work.

4/10 Will probably never finish it and will try to pawn it off onto some other rube.

I then picked up Hell From the Heavens, by John Wukovits, 2015. It is story of USS Laffey and its fight in April,1944, when it survived being dived on by 22 Japanese kamikazes off of Okinawa. It is an excellent book and you guys out there that enjoy stories of the naval war in the PTO should thoroughly enjoy it.

10/10 Will read it again sometime.

I am now reading The Battle of Leyte Gulf 23-26 October 1944 by Thomas J. Cutter. 1994. It is too early in the book to have an opinion of it other than to say that, while it is not necessarily directed to the WWII novice, it is not too many steps above that. In that is only about 300 pages, I'm not sure how much depth it can delve into in that number of pages, while still explaining elementary concepts.

X/10 too early to evaluate.

 

I read Hell From the Heavens. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read Code Girls by Liza Munday. It's a history of the women in the US involed in breaking Enigma and the Japanese Purple cipher. An interesting look at an important development. Currently reading Philbrick's three volume set on the American Revolution. Abour 1/2 way through the first volume Bunker Hill.

 

Beetle was arranged oddly to me. The book started off with his life after the war to this death, which took maybe a hundred pages. It then circled back to his birth, childhood, early army career, mid-army career, then WWII. Best I can figure from what I read is that he was an a$$hole, but he was Ike's a$$hole who could get things done.

 

I finished The Battle of Leyte Gulf 23-26 October 1944 by Thomas J. Cutter. 1994 a few nights ago.
It was a good read and i enjoyed the book. Cutter used several good sources, such as US and Japanese diaries and postbellum memoirs that were interesting to me.

8/10 Recommend

I am now reading Victory at Mortain, Mark J. Reardon, 2002.

 

I did not finish Victory at Mortain, Mark J. Reardon, 2002. for reason explained in another thread (stupid me).
I read Japanese Destroyer Captain, by by Hara and also talked about it in another thread (again, stupid me) Great book, BTW. Highly recommend it.

I am now reading Soldier, Sailor, Frogman, Spy, Airman, Gangster, Kill or Die by Giles Milton, Picador 2019.
I really don't like the title at all, but the book is quite good. It is scheduled to be released next month and I am reading an advanced copy from January I got through Librarything.com.

The book is a series of vignettes starting a few days prior to June 6, 1944 and ending late that day and tells the story of the Normandy landings through stories about individuals and the parts they played. I reads sorta like first person account but I am not sure if the author actually talked each person or used primary documents to construct and tell their story.

Regardless, the book is good and I am enjoying it greatly. There is a moderate amount of repetition for the knowledgeable reader, but by in large, it adds a lot of new content that I have no found before in other books.

No maps or photos, but that could because it is an advanced copy. There are still edits visible in it and I have found an error with paragraph construction that I suspect has probably been found and fixed.

As I said above, the books is supposed to be released next month in the US.

Overall, I give it a 8/10, deducting one point because of the ridiculous title.

 

Oh, I forgot. In between the above books, I read Escape from Davao, John D. Lukacs, Caliber, 2010.

Great book, highly engaging and held my attention throughout most of the book, even when going through the end of the Bataan Campaign and the horrors suffered by the American and Filipino prisoners at hands of those animals of the IJA 14th Area Army. I don't like reading about their suffering' it grieves me so.

I knew little to nothing about the escape and its effect on US policy concerning the atrocities inflicted by the Japanese.I must admit the book got a bit slow when later when discussing the political wranglings, but I guess it needed to be told how Roosevelt squelched the stories of the torture and murder inflicted on captives of the Japanese.

If you served at Dyess AFB, Texas, you will want to read this book to learn about the man for whom the air base was named - Medal of Honor recipient, Maj (later Lt Col) William Dyess.

9.5/10 Outstanding.

 

After finding some, uh, errors, I may have spoken too soon.

He spent part of a paragraph describing the HItlersage, then called it an "M42" and saying it was water cooled.

Later he describes several Sexton being knocked out by "mortars." These were Sexton's off of Gold beach commanded by Ronald Palmer. In the course of the discussion, he calls the vehicles "halftracks." I figured it was highly possible that the Sexton could be knocked out by mortars, being open topped. But when he describes how Palmer and his crew knocked out the weapon that hit the other Sextons, it was obvious from the narrative they were not attacking a mortar but a anti-tank gun.

Then on the next page he quotes Palmer instructing the gunner to "Put it in the upstairs right window. He stated Palmer was telling the loader this as "another mortar was loaded into the gun." Is this a term used in the UK for projectiles in a gun?

The last issue is just a pet peeve of mine. He talks about a British soldier reloading his Sten by putting another "clip" in. I thought a Sten was loaded by inserting a magazine.

7/10