What Are You Reading?

Finished Jack Higgins's The Khufra Run.

Loved his earlier work, but this one just seems lazy to me. The characters seem stock, and as each chapter ended on a cliffhanger, I knew what was coming next. Pleasent enough for a mild diversion, but not the edge of your seat stuff of his better works.

 

Just started "A Special Valor" by Richard Wheeler, another overview of Marine combat in the Pacific. Its actually a really good read, not dry or text-book-like at all. If you're interested in a specific battle, its in here, but this wouldn't be the book for you, there are books that go into hour-by-hour detail of each island campaign. This is a more broad overview, but excellent for what it is.

 

Has anyone read the novel that inspired the Rambo franchise, "First Blood," by David Morrell?

I recently caught the movie, hadn't seen it for years, and noticed it was based on this book. While it is fiction, I read that Morrell based it on accounts he heard from his students' experiences when they returned from Vietnam, and he was influenced by Geoffrey Household's "Rogue Male" - and that he named the character after the Rambo apple...

Just curious if it is worth the read.

 

..my copy of Colin Heaton's " Me 262 Stormbird " arrived - 'an interesting and informative account of the significance and development of the Me 262', it says in the blurb. Love the dust-jacket - it has a marvelous velvety feel to it..as for the contents, it is mostly of interest for the numerous first-person accounts but I get the impression that Heaton's real focus is on the high-ranking and highly decorated pilots - the relative unknowns like Czypionka (10./ NJG 11) get only brief - and not terribly insightful - passages.." the Me 262 was not a great night fighter as high speeds made accuracy an issue.." The author also fills his text with cringe-worthy 'americanisms' too - I don't how sentences such as "the Me 262 was a potential game-changer for the Germans" sound to you but they make me wince every time..

 

The Secrets of Inchon: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Covert Mission of the Korean War.
With DoD clearance it was published in 2002. Well written. Good flow to the narrative.
The Secrets of Inchon: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Covert Mission of ... - Eugene Franklin Clark, Thomas J. Fleming - Google Books

 

Right now I'm reading "Andrew Jackson Higgens and the Boats That Won WW2". So far it's a very interesting read. Seems that the USN bureaucrats worked against the US effort early on in the war. If I didn't already know how the war turned out, I'd figure that we were going to lose by what I was reading!

 

I'm taking a break from WWII at the moment:

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past, Present and Future by Victor Cha.

This one just came out a few months ago and is a pretty good case study of the country. I agree with most of his conclusions (I had already came up with my own before I started reading, and they are very similar to those in the book -- so its a good way to "validate" them!)

Last month I read quite a few WWII books:

-Hell Above Earth by Stephan Frater: The story of Goering's nephew, a USAAF bomber pilot during the war. I have mixed thoughts about this book -- see the review forum if you're interested in more.
-Neptune's Inferno by James Hornfischer: The story of the naval battles of Guadalcanal -- packed with detail, but still very easy to follow. Like "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors", this book is excellent. I highly recommend it.
-Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre: As the name implies, the story behind Operation Mincemeat. Lots of detail, and it is very well-written. It has a good amount of humor (lots of Ian Fleming references, references to eccentric agents on both sides), but still conveys the story very well without making a mockery of it.

 

Just finished "Shifty's War" by Marcus Brotherton. Dang. THIS is the guy I'd like to grow up to be, not only on the battlefield (which was impressive), but also in normal, everyday life. This was a man I would have been honored to meet and know, the kind of man that every other man needs for a mentor. Bring a Kleenex, you'll need it by the time the book's over.

 

Just purcahsed these in the net:

Busch Fritz-Otto: The Drama of the Scharnhorst - A Factual Account from the German Viewpoint.

Doenitz Karl: Memoirs - Ten Years and Twenty Days.

I guess I´ll start with the Busch´s book on Scharnhorst. Doenitz´s book is some 500+ pages long.

 

This also not a WW2 focused book, but it does extend from 1493 up until modern times looking at the strange and influential things that came about when the "new world" was opened up to European settlement.

I just got started on a new book, and even so far it has opened my eyes to some of the lesser thought of things that happened post Columbus opening up the west to the Europeans. One thing I had never thought of is the introduction of earthworms to the Americas. They didn’t exist in this hemisphere until the Jamestown settlement came into being. These little worms altered the forest floor composition, drove some native species of floor dwelling bugs and birds to extinction, and forever altered the composition of forests east of the Mississippi.

Also, while smallpox is widely recognized as an introduced “killer” of those not resistant to the disease, I was unaware that until the Europeans appeared malaria and yellow fever were also unknown while the Anopheles mosquito species which carry them from human to human existed in the “new world”, the parasite (malaria), and the virus (yellow fever) didn’t. There is zero evidence that Native Americans, north and south suffered from malaria or yellow fever prior to the arrival of the Europeans. There are two types of malaria prevalent in the Americas now, the one most common in the Northern areas is vivax (sp?), and while it can be fatal to the very young, it can be survived by healthy adults. It does however lower the resistance to other infections, which might kill while the person is in the throes of a malaria attack.

The division between the malaria area, and the non-malarial areas which developed in North America is profound. The lower temperatures of the area north of Manhattan Island kept the malaria carrying type of mosquito out of New England, while they proliferated south of the Chesapeake Bay area. Here is where this is important in American Revolutionary History. When Cornwallis launched his “southern strategy”, malaria started to devolve his troop strength and effectiveness from the start.

His troops weren’t “seasoned” to malaria, and in response he had one in four out of service from the second month on to the end. By the time he had withdrawn to the Yorktown area, two thirds of his force was either bed-ridden or unable to fight. Not only was he cut off from escape by sea with the arrival of the French fleet, and being under siege from the landward side by General Washington, he was fighting an enemy in his camp as well. Malaria.

The book is, 1493: Uncovering the New World by Charles C. Mann, and just so far the implications are astounding when extrapolated from the first “white” settlements forward in just the USA alone.

 

Mark Yerger: Knights of Steel 2 -Das Reich
Motorcycle Battalion, Assault Gun Detachment, Battle Group "Das Reich", Engineer Battalion, 1994

 

Canadian Air Gunners Websites:

AirGunner

Short Bursts E-Zine 1983 - 2007: Ex Air Gunners SHORT BURSTS ARCHIVE

The Canadian Air Gunner and Fighter Pilots Museum www flyingforyourlife . com

 

No Easy Day by Mark Owen

"Mark Owen" is the pseudonym for one of the SEALs who participated in the raid that killed bin Ladin. Great insight into the life of a SEAL, and a blow-by-blow account of the raid.

 

Just finished Tesla: Man Out of Time: Margaret Cheney: 9780743215367: Amazon.com: Books, not a bad book about a regrettably mostly-forgotten genius and father of modern technology (can you imagine the world run on DC power? or without radio, wifi, lasers?). Kinda slow and dry at times, but has a lot of good information.

Currently reading Alone on Guadalcanal: A Coastwatcher's Story (Bluejacket Books): Martin Clemens: 9781591141242: Amazon.com: Books, the story of Guadalcanal coastwatcher Martin Clemens. Just now getting up to where the Japanese are starting to work on Henderson Field. I always envisioned these guys as having been placed there specifically for the purpose of providing an air-cover warning net...I honestly had absolutely no clue what all they had to do, especially Mr. Clemens, who was something like the Solomon Islands District Governor at the same time as being a coastwatcher and evading Japanese patrols. My respect goes up by an order of magnitude for every chapter I read.

 

'Operation Barbarossa And Germany's Defeat In The East' by David Stahel.

I'm thoroughly enjoying reading this book and am actually rushing back to it every time, rather like a good novel. Although the book is based on the author's Doctoral dissertation ( ! ) it is refreshingly clearly-written so that even a non-academic dummy like me can follow it with ease. I'm not getting bogged-down ; both the decision-making section and the combat parts are equally absorbing. It has everything I like, full notes, a great bibliography, plenty of first-hand accounts and it starts with a very fair overview of Eastern Front historiography.

It's a good one......

 

Just finished reading Seal of Honor: Operation Red Wings and the Life of Lt Michael P. Murphy,Usn: Gary Williams: 9781591149651: Amazon.com: Books. I thought the book was poorly put-together at first, since it starts out with Lt. Murphy's family hearing about some SEAL's being killed in Afghanistan, then finding out their son was one of them, his return home, funeral, etc....about ten pages in, I was nearly in tears. Then the author does a flashback and gives us highlights of Lt. Murphy's life, training for SEALs, and some background info on the SEAL teams themselves. Some of it is dry, and while it may feel like filler, its all relevant to the story. There were quite a few times I wish the author had been able to expound upon a fact or give more details about something, but as he states several times, most of what the SEALs do is classified. I can respect that. He tells us what he can, doesn't rant or make excuses about his inability to go further into detail, apologizes politely and moves the story along. And while this was not a WW2 history book, I do think it is one that's going to find a place on my shelves amongst a very small selection of "modern" histories. And I've already got http://www.amazon.com/Lone-Survivor...id=1351135030&sr=1-3&keywords=marcus+luttrell on my Amazon list...Mr. Luttrell (besides sharing a last name with my wife's grandparents, which I thought was awesome) was, as the title states, the only surviving SEAL from Operation Red Wing. Mr. Williams refers the reader to Mr. Luttrell's book on multiple occasions, stating that, quite simply, he wasn't there at the time, so its not his place to offer judgement or give details, those are Mr. Luttrell's by right. Again...I can respect that. But it does leave one wanting to know more! All in all, a great book, quick read, and I learned a lot about the SEAL teams that I never knew.

I've met some of the guys from the SDVT in Hawaii, my second sub did a couple of ops with them. Unfortunately, that was before Mr. Murphy's time with the Team, so he wouldn't have been one I would have met.

 

Can someone recommend a good book about Audie Murphy? I have had a busy summer with my new son and my wild child 4yr old but with winter just around the corner (or maybe already here, finally had some snow) I hope to curl up by the fireplace with a good book once the kids are in bed. Thanks