Reviews and Competitions
Each month readers of Soldier Magazine review their favourite books to share with army.mod.uk visitors.
From gripping yarn to factual events-based tome, our reviewed books cover a diverse range of subjects within the context of the military.
The tasty selection this month includes first-hand accounts, archive material and a dash of imagination carefully combined to create some edge-of-your-seat reading.
Books reviewed in May
Boesinghe
by Stephen McGreal
BOESINGHE is a Belgian village at the northern apex of what was the Ypres salient, the scene of almost continuous fighting during the First World War.
This book is one of an expanding number of Pen & Sword battlefield guides and serves its purpose admirably, from useful information about continental driving laws in the introduction to the six tours on foot at the end.
Helpful maps and pertinent photographs both contemporary and modern complement the clearly written text. Letters and diaries quoted testify to the ever-present mud and selfless courage.
Sources are overwhelmingly British. What did Fritz think?
Dr Rodney Atwood
Getting It Wrong: Fragments from a Cyprus Diary 1964
by Martin Packard
MARTIN Packard provides a unique and critical report of events in Cyprus in 1964. The majority of Greek and Turkish Cypriots were quite capable of living together in peace but radical elements, aided and encouraged by external powers in pursuit of their own agendas, made this impossible.
Consequently, a great opportunity was missed by the two communities to become a united island. The power games over Cyprus by the United Kingdom, Greece and Turkey would not allow a peaceful solution.
This book provides independent evidence of much that has been asserted but denied by official sources. Responsibility is mainly directed at the British Government and its divisive policies.
Lt Col (Retd) Dawson Pratt, R Signals
Killing Time: Archaeology and the First World War
by Nicholas J Saunders
MANY books have been written on the First World War but, until recently, few have looked beneath the soil. Nicholas Saunders' book is unique in that it is dedicated to the war’s archaeology and trench art.
Digs in Flanders have unearthed the poignant remains of British soldiers buried during battle and then forgotten, the debris of trenches, dugouts and shelters with graffiti and cartoons on the walls and littered with blankets, books and newspapers.
Underground field hospitals have been found near the Somme. Most digs have found unexploded bombs and gas canisters. This book is a comprehensive history of Western Front archaeology.
Lt Col (Retd) Dawson Pratt, R Signals
Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You
by Leonard M. Scruggs
DID the Vietnam War witness the defeat of an industrial superpower by a resilient peasant army, or a self-inflicted failure by a deeply divided democracy? The author, an American air force and intelligence veteran, makes a strong case for the latter, criticising President Lyndon Johnson’s obsessive control of operations and the misrepresentations presented by a liberal East Coast press.
North Vietnamese General Giap’s 1968 “Tet Offensive” was a military defeat, but a media success. The lessons are still relevant.
One would like to know more, however, about the apparently endless North Vietnamese manpower, attacking repeatedly. How did they do it?
Dr Rodney Atwood
Escape from Arnhem: A Glider Pilot’s Story
by Godfrey Freeman
A PERSONAL account penned by a glider pilot who, along with the bulk of his flight, was attached to 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment during the Battle of Arnhem.
The author describes his part in the fierce fighting around the highway bridge and his experiences after the battered defenders were forced to surrender.
It is the narrative of the aftermath of the battle that makes this book such a remarkable read. Feigning shell shock to his SS captors, the pilot was taken to hospital before beginning a month-long break for freedom that culminated in his escape across the Rhine.
Maj Mike Peters, AAC
