Book Review: Duel Under The Stars, Johnen

NB - My shortest ever book review on this blog, by miles!

Great easy to read and gripping autobiographical account of an Me-110 night-fighter pilot's WWII experiences. A Luftwaffe equivalent in many ways - albeit on the nocturnal side of the equation - of Geoff Wellum's First Light, in its simple but compelling nature. Vivid, exciting, occasionally moving. A very enjoyable read.

Book Review: The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer

Guy Sajer was a nom du plum of Guy Mouminoux. Interestingly and confusingly Sajer/Mouminoux also worked under the name Dimitri. In the decades after WWII Mouminoux/Sajer/Dimitri was chiefly a bandes dessinées artist, what we'd call a comic book illustrator or cartoonist, whose Rififi character appeared in the Tintin Journal for about a decade, winning its creator a prize

Rififi, the 'turbulent sparrow'.

My researches thus far find no mention of his passing. And his most recent work, as far as I know, was the 2000 Kursk, Tourment D'Acier - roughly Kursk, Storm of Steel - which you can read more about (in French) here. I also found a fascinating interview with him, also in French, here, in which he mentions having been in discussion with Paul Verhoeven about filming The Forgotten Soldier. I do hope that film does eventually get made!*

Anyway, as I suspect most folks who might wind up reading this would probably already know, there's been a lot of long-running debate as to whether Sajer's accounts are true, with people coming down on both sides. As already noted, Sajer was in fact a nom de plum, and possibly even nom de guerre as well, for Guy Mouminoux, Sajer being his mother's maiden name; Sajer's father was French, his mother of German origins. 

All I can really say is that it all seemed very genuine and convincing to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Forgotten Soldier. As military history nuts many of us read a lot of non-fiction accounts of war, and this book is like being dropped into the midst of the horrors that such books worst passages describe. Only where they often give us more of an overview, Sajer tells the horror story of his own decade fighting for the Nazi war-machine from within, a minor player embedded in a world of pain and brutality that seems like it will never end.

Gripping visceral stuff, it's also relentless. Sajer, who as mentioned above became a cartoonist after the war, says in numerous places how far short words are doomed to fall from capturing the starkly brutal inhumanity he witnessed and was part of. But, all things considered, and giving him the benefit of the doubt on the veracity front, he does a pretty convincing job of evoking hell on earth on the Eastern front.

An intriguing footnote to all this is that in several interviews in his later years he has said - and more than once - that, despite the horrors and hardships, it was actually a great time in many ways, and a period of his life that he was glad to have lived through and didn't regret. Interesting!

* I discovered during my researches for this post that, sadly, this potential film project was canned.

Book Review: With Napoleon in Russia, 1812, Lt. Vossler

I bought this book at Partizan, on Sunday, and began reading it the very next day. It's Wednesday lunchtime, and I've just finished it. Hopefully that conveys how much I've enjoyed it? Whilst it's not quite as exciting or colourful as the very best Napoleonic/1812 memoirs, it is nevertheless a solidly readable account.

Vossler was an officer in the Duke Louis Chasseurs, a Würtemberg cavalry unit. Separated from his compatriots, under the command of Montbrun he served alongside French and other 'allied' troops. Although he got as far as Borodino, taking part in the southern portion of the battle, he didn't get to Moscow itself.

I believe this image depicts Vossler's regt.

His account is very down to earth, and mixes observations of the lands he moved through, their towns and peoples, with his own wartime experiences, a great deal of which are concerned with movement and billeting. Wounded at Borodino, his part in the retreat cannot have been much fun, as he also had typhus/dysentery and the accompanying diarrhoea, conditions which would contribute directly to the deaths of many on the advance as well as the retreat.

I like this memoir because it doesn't end once he gets home, one of the few lucky survivors of the Russia 1812 debacle, but continues as he returns to service in the 1813 campaign. However, not yet fully recovered, he's captured when a reconnaissance mission goes wrong, and spends the rest of the hostilities being shepherded around Poland and Russia along with other prisoners of war.

This isn't amazing if you want great detail on any of the battles, even those he took part in. He was at Smolensk, for example, as well as a Borodino. But he doesn't even attempt the grand overview - and I'm thankful, frankly, as plenty of others do (and not always very well) - instead sticking to the localised stuff he was involved in. But it's great for conveying day to day life as a Napoleonic soldier.

Of the officer class, he seems as concerned with food and lodgings, and the usually deploarable state (or indeed absence) of both, as he is with war and soldiering. I love these sorts of books, as they really bring the era and the conflicts to life very vividly. His writing style has been very well rendered in Walter Wallich's translation, avoiding the stodgy style that mires some similar accounts of the same vintage.

Book Review: First Light, Geoffrey Wellum

I bought the attractive Penguin 'Centenary Collection' edition of this, from a favourite local bookshop Topping Books, Ely), as something to read during a recent short holiday. I wound up reading it before we went away, in the end. Seduced by the nicely retro cover, I started earlier than intended. And once started, I was utterly hooked.

Brian Kingcome, left, and 'Boy' Wellum, 92 Squadron, RAF, Biggin Hill, '41.

As Geoff Wellum himself says repeatedly, in his very engaging memoir, these were amazing, momentous times, and he had a particularly privileged part to play, albeit a privilege that came with awful risks and costs. Wellum's journey, from idyllic sounding school days, to aerial war in the skies over England and Europe, and all whilst incredibly young (his nickname was 'Boy'), is a fascinating, captivating and even awe inspiring story.

To be one of the 'few', and then one of the few of the few who made it through (phew!), and to then be able to put down the experience in words, as eloquently and as straightforwardly as Wellum does, all these things make this a very special and powerful book. And it all has a wonderful quintessentially English quality, in the best of ways.

Wellum's story has been dramatised.

Wellum himself observes on a number of occasions that having lived a life so full of high drama, adventure, and historical significance, all by the time he turned 21, was both incredible in itself, and also possibly an issue in later life: how can you follow experiences like these? Whilst I don't wish the world to find itself at war again, we do seem, by comparison, to live dull lives in dull times.

Wellum passed away, aged 96, in July, 2018

Wellum in his later years.

Book Review: With The Old Breed - Eugene Sledge

'To me the war was insanity.' Eugene Sledge

I wouldnt be at all surprised if many of those who come to read this book these days, like me, got here via HBO's incredibly powerful and very moving Pacific mini-series.

Eugene 'Sledgehammer' Sledge served with K platoon of the 3rd battalion, 5th Regt. in the U.S.M.C*,  or K/3/5 for short. As a pfc (private first class) he was, as he says himself, 'cannon fodder', and as a member of a 60mm mortar team he saw action as rifleman, gunner, stretcher bearer and runner/carrier. Serving in two extremely ferocious and bloody campaigns, the lesser-known Peleliu and the more famous Okinawa, Sledge sees a lot of action on the front line, and relates what he saw and lived through in a humble and matter of fact manner.

Sledge in the Pacific, during WWII.

The Pacific TV series gets over the visceral impact and constant nervous stress incredibly well, something that books about the same kinds of events rarely manage. This does as good a job as any, but still falls short of the shock and adrenaline the TV production frequently arouses. I guess the differences just reflect the different strengths or propensities of these media. Nevertheless, this is still harrowing stuff.

Sledge went on to become a biology professor, cultivating a love of nature that very occasionally makes itself felt in small observations of his environment even amidst the hell of war. And Sledge, to his enormous credit, is unequivocal in his condemnation of the brutality and inhumanity of war, as when he says, on p. 261, that 'to me the war was insanity.' Shortly after this he reflects on the contrast between war and peacetime civilian life poignantly (p. 268): 'We just wished that people back home could understand how lucky they were and stop complaining about trivial inconveniences.' A recurrent theme.

Post-war. Sledge's wife persuaded him to write about his experiences in the Pacific as a form of therapy, for his  'combat fatigue', or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Further reinforcing the anti-war element of his writing are such passages as the following (p. 311), where, having narrated a grim episode concerning the dispatch of two Japanese officers, Sledge says 'Replete with violence, shock, blood, gore, and suffering, this was the type of incident that should be witnessed by anyone who has any delusions about the glory of war. It was as savage and brutal as though the enemy and we were primitive barbarians rather than civilised men.'

In his 'End Of The Agony' summation Sledge remarks that 'War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste. Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it.' He does go on to say that bravery, loyalty and esprit de corps were also factors, and that until 'countries cease trying to enslave others' war will be necessary. But overall one senses that he hopes for a day when we might stop the senseless brutal waste.

Science and the study of nature also helped Sledge stay sane.

I really enjoyed reading both Leckie's and Sledge's accounts of this mind-numbingly ferocious and wasteful conflict, but the more overtly anti-war note and the quiet dignity of Sledge's account give it the edge for me.

Born in 1923, Sledge died in 2001, aged 77, from stomach cancer. After the war he had come to terms with the trauma of killing and seeing his buddies (and enemies) killed by studying nature, both professionally and as a hobby. Ultimately this lead to his becoming a scientist with a doctorate, whose specialist area was helminthology... the study of parasitic worms! At least his hobby of ornithology wasn't quit as grim!

* United States Marine Corps... but I guess most folks reading this will probably already know this!?

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NOTES:

In both this edition of Sledge's story, and the equivalent one by Robert Leckie (Helmet For My Pillow), I find it somewhat odd that swearing is taboo: sh*t becomes 'stuff' ('when the stuff hits the fan'), and SNAFU is rendered as 'situation normal all fouled up'! Considering the horror and squalor so vividly described, this nicety seems a little jarring, even bordering on the hypocritical, perhaps? I suspect this was an editorial decision, and doesn't necessarily represent the author's own decisions.

Book Review: Helmet For My Pillow - Robert Leckie

Part of the source material for the superb Pacific, this also makes a great companion to HBO's landmark series.

If you liked HBO's Pacific mini-series, built for the most part around the memoirs of marine corps privates Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie, you'll almost certainly enjoy this book. Sledge's book is almost dry in its clarity, and his language spare. Leckie, a professional writer both before and after his WWII service, is more self-consciously 'literary'. Both are, a slightly strange thing, to my mind, assiduously polite: so much horror and suffering but, please, no cuss-words!

Leckie in wartime.

Despite his training, Leckie is a wilful and even sometimes rebellious character, and where Sledge always uses full rank and proper name, Leckie favours nicknames. Such small differences give the two memoirs very different flavours. There are moments where Leckie's self-consciously prosey style seems overdone - to me, at any rate - but sometimes it really works, as when he evokes the paranoid flesh-crawling fears of sitting in a jungle foxhole in the dark of night, his floridly evocative description contrasting with the bald conclusion: 'I know now why men light fires.'

Where Sledge's detached coolness might be said to foreshadow his later vocation of biology professor, Leckie's wilful nature and flighty language might be also said to have the zest and poetry properly becoming a sports writer turned author. It's certainly interesting to see the differing nature of their responses. In the end these differences make the two books excellent complimentary companions: they cover much the same ground but feel different. Leckie took part in Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester and Pelelieu, whereas Sledge saw action at Pelelieu and Okinawa, so their stories overlap, together building a fuller picture of the Pacific theatre.

On TV in 2001, the year of his death.

Whilst I think it should be noted that the visceral impact of the audio-visual experience is very different from reading about the conflict, nevertheless, as with the HBO series, one marvels at the sheer unrelenting horror of it all. It seems to me good that we have such writings from the 'common soldier'. Both Leckie and Sledge profess horror at the waste of war, and shock at the nature of their Japanese foe. Quarter is never asked for nor given, the Japanese cult of Emperor worship combining with what was, at that time, an insular and deeply ingrained patriotism, along with a cult of 'death before dishonour' that makes Europe's medieval knights look positively lily-livered.

Leckie says some interesting things about irrationality and courage: 'How much less forbidding might have been that avenue of death that I was about to cross had there been some wholly irrational shout - like 'Vive l'Empereur,' or 'The Marine Corps Forever!'' And several times throughout the book he laments a lack of contemporary American songs or music that would generate courage and esprit d' corps, all of which makes for an interesting reflection on the workings of the human mind in extremis.

After the war Leckie resumed his journalistic career, embarking on these memoirs in 1951. According to his wife Vera he did so in response to seeing the film adaptation of the Broadway musical South Pacific, saying 'I have to tell the story of how it really was. I have to let people know the war wasn't a musical.' [1] Definitely a good companion to the Pacific series, and nothing if not interesting!

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NOTES:

[1] Source of quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Leckie_(author)