BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

This has been the toughest semester at school in quite a while so I’ve been behind in not only the reading but the blogging about the reading as well. In  an effort toward getting caught up I’ll briefly describe the stuff I’ve read since my last post.

First off was A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight by Robert J. Mrazek. I’m afraid this was just “ok”. It attempted to cover the entire history of the unit from its formation before the Pearl Harbor attack until it was dissolved in November of 1942 after serving a rotation as part of Guadalcanal’s “Cactus Airforce”. The problem is that the book really doesn’t do anything particularly well. It is a sort of mish-mash with a kind of half-assed broad overview of both the Midway and Solomon’s campaigns, interspersed with some pretty uneven oral history type anecdotes from Torpedo 8 vets. There really isn’t enough of the anecdotes nor or they organized in such a way as to make the book a good “oral history” nor is there enough narrative thread for a book on the Solomons Campaign. For the former, Mrazek could look at Ambrose’s (whatever his failings in plagiarism) Band of Brothers, while Gandt’s Twilight Warriors is an excellent example of the later.

Although it was interesting to find out that Torpedo 8 wasn’t entirely destroyed at Midway (half of them stayed behind at Pearl) and later served at Henderson Field, I’m afraid this book was a bit of a waste of time, neither coherent enough to give novices an overview of the Solomons Campaign nor detailed enough to appeal to the serious history buff, . Not really recommended.

Next up was Goodbye to All That, Robert Grave’s memoir primarily concerned with life as a junior officer in the trenches during WWI. This is an outstanding book. Graves does an excellent job of recounting his adventures during the war as well as giving us glimpses of how the war affected his friends and relatives. Surprisingly, although Graves was an accomplished poet, having published several volumes of poetry before and during the war, there is very little about poetry in the book. Particularly interesting was the difficulties that Graves had re-integrating with civilian society after the war at Oxford.

While this book was not at the level of Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, or Masters’ Road Past Mandalay I still recommend it highly.

The last two are kind of related. I recently finished both of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard books; Exploits of Brigadier Gerard and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard. For those of you who are not aware, these books are the serio-comic “memoirs” of one of Napoleon’s Hussars Etienne Gerard, a ficticious character who is kind of an “anti-Flashman”. Gerard is absolutely unquestioning in his belief that he is the bravest, handsomest, most honorable and most charming soldier in the service of his Emperor and his assurance exudes from every page of each of these stories. In each of them Gerard is cast into some seemingly insurmountable peril only to have his dash, persistence and luck see him safely through. They are a delight to read, and one can easily see some flashes of Fraser’s Flashman stories in these book. I recommend them highly!

With these four books, I’m up to 12 for the year.

I just finished James Hornfischer’s outstanding Neptune’s Inferno which tells the story of the naval battles around Guadalcanal between August and November of 1942. Hornfischer has done an excellent job of covering these battles albeit almost exclusively from and American POV. He has a very good blend of operational overview and micro-tactical detail. Hornfischer weaves the stories of the survivors and detailed accounts of the damage to the ships (in some cases hit by hit!) to create a very compelling narrative, you can almost smell the cordite and see the blood on the decks.  Despite this detail, attentive readers always have a sense of how these actions fit into the larger battle. Hornfischer is also very good at providing context within the larger Solomons campaign for each of the battles .

There are a few caveats potential readers should be aware of. This is really a celebration of the WWII American surface navy. This is not a comprehensive history of the campaign. Very short shrift is given to the land battle. And there’s very little on the airbattle, either carrier based or the land based “Cactus Air Force”. Additionally, as I mentioned above, there is very little from the Japanese POV here. Despite these issues, I enjoyed the book immensely and recommend it highly, especially if it is read in tandem with Frank’s excellent Guadalcanal which does a much better job of covering the land battles.

Eight for the year.

Over Here!: New York City During World War II by Lorraine B. Diehl is an excellent little guide to New York City during World War II. Diehl has painstakingly researched and lucidly written about life in NY during the war using a variety of first person sources. I guess because she uses the stories of ordinary people she really succeeds in evoking the impression of what life was actually like in New York at that time. I enjoyed the book immensely and recommend it to anyone, especially young people who don’t have access to the stories of their grandparents or great grandparents who actually lived it!

Note, by labeling this book as a “pop history” was wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but to give the reader an idea of what to expect.  I bought the book on-line believing that it was a detailed assessment of the contributions of NYC to the American war effort. I was looking for details, statistics and tables, none of which are here. That isn’t to say that this is a bad book, it’s not, I’m giving it five stars, its just not the book I was looking for. But if you’re looking for what life was like during the War, this is your book!

7 for the year.

This time it was The Maps of First Bull Run: An Atlas of the First Bull Run (Manassas) Campaign, including the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, June-October 1861 by Bradley M. Gottfried. This is another in the series of map studies of Civil War battles published by Savas Beatie, and like the previous two (Gottfried’s previous volume on Gettysburg and Dave Powell’s Chickamauga) is simply outstanding. The book starts with the initial position of forces at the beginning of the campaign and shows their subsequent movements son a day to day basis, with detailed descriptions on the pages facing the maps.

When the forces reach the battlefield, the scale of maps increases and the time frames decrease to show the tactical movements of the various units on an hourly or even half hourly basis. This is quite simply an excellent way to follow the narrative of a battle and understand just what happened and why it happened.

The book is crisply written and beautifully mapped, as a bonus we get a detailed exposition of the Union expedition to Ball’s Bluff which happened a couple of months after the Bull Run Battle. I can’t recommend this book highly enough for providing an excellent overview of the battle.

6 for the year