BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

This weekend I finished Quartered Safe Out Here George MacDonald Fraser’s memoir of his service as an enlisted man in the “Black Cat Division” in the Burma Campaign. Written forty years after the fact in the 80s Fraser vividly describes the experience of fighting “the Jap” in Burma, by all accounts the worst theater in WWII. The book as everything, in places it is laugh out loud funny, and in others you might have trouble seeing the print because of the dampness of your eyes. Keegan described Quartered Safe Out Here as “one of the great personal memoirs of the Second World War”, all I’ve got to say is “One of?”, ha, it is the best, at least the best I’ve read.

21 for the year.

Well, that’s it for G.M. Fraser’s McAuslan. I finished both McAuslan in the Rough and The Sheikh and the Dustbin this weekend. Both of these were simply outstanding! They continue the semi-autobiographical adventures of McAuslan and his long suffering Platoon Commander Lt Dand McNeill with absolutely no let down in quality. These two books are perhaps a little bit more serious than the first one, although no less funny for it.

I was especially lucky to have the omnibus edition, printed in the UK, The Complete McAuslan which also includes a new postscript which describes GMF meeting his old battalion commander at a book signing. The two went out for a drink where the colonel objected to GMF labeling the stories “fiction” when both he and the Colonel knew they were actually fairly accurately reported. In fact, this edition of the stories is dedicated to the Colonel.

Anyway, an outstanding book, highly recommended and it just may force me to put off finishing the books I’m in the middle of to re-read Quartered Safe Out Here and The Light’s On at Signpost.

20 for the year.

The Long Pursuit by Richard Hough. This book is an account of von Spee’s Asiatic Squadron and the battles of Coronel and the Falklands in WWI. Actually I’m not sure it should have been a book, its more like a decent sized S&T article crammed into 160 pages of flabby purple prose. The book does give the basic facts of the situation, but it was very poorly written. There is little or no technical exposition on the issue of WWI Naval warfare, and the descriptions of the battles are rather short and vague. There was much more info on these battles in one chapter of Massey’s Castles of Steel than is contained in this entire book. Definitely not recommended.

18 for the year.

Finished The General Danced at Dawn last night. This is the first collection of George MacDonald Fraser’s “McAuslan” short stories. Fraser was a 19 year old infantryman with Slim in Burma when he was selected for the British version of OCS. Graduating shortly after VJ Day, he was commissioned in the Gordon Highlanders and served the next couple of years with the Gordons in the Middle East and the UK. These short stories are very slightly fictionalized accounts of Fraser’s days as a platoon leader.

The stories are hilarious and most of them revolve around one soldier in Lt MacNeill’s (Fraser’s alter-ego) platoon, McAuslan, who is by all accounts the “dirtiest soldier in the world”. I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed this book. I’m extremely happy that I have the other two books in the series, McAuslan in the Rough and The Sheikh and the Dustbin, ready to be read. In fact, I read the first story in McAuslin in the Rough last night.

One note of caution, Fraser served in a Highland regiment and he has written the speech of his characters very dialectically, some of them have such thick accents that American readers might find it helpful to read aloud (or at least sound it out in their heads) some of the more obscure bits to help them make sense of it. YMMV. Americans might also find a glossary or lexicon of some use as Fraser makes extensive use of 1940’s British Military slang. The omnibus edition of the three books I have The Complete McAuslan begins with just such a glossary.

All in all an outstanding book, easily the most entertaining thing I’ve read so far this year. By the way, I strongly recommend not only the McAuslan books, but everything else Fraser ever wrote, especially Quartered Safe Out Here, Fraser’s memoirs of his service in the CBI, which John Keegan described as “one of the great personal memoirs of the Second World War.”.

17 for the year.