The Battlefield Walkers Handbook by Donald Featherstone, published by Airlife Publishing Ltd., 101, Longden Road, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY3 9EB, ISBN 1.85310.881.2. RRP £ 19.95 Hardback. 352 pages. Donald Featherstone is well known to anyone with pretensions of calling themselves a wargamer. In America, he is regarded as the doyen of wargames authors. This work is not, as twenty seven of his others are, about wargames. This book is about walking battlefields of the past.
It is clearly set out in chronological order after an introductory part on why do it(?) and what one gets out of the pastime. The book then proceeds through The Hundred Years War 1337 - 1453, Waterloo, then back tracks a bit to the Peninsular War 1808 - 1814. Part 5 deals with the Zulu War of 1879, excellently overenthused about in the Victorian Military Society's journal. Then, the Boer Wars. America is treated next, part 8 dealing with the American War of Independence 1775 - 83. Part 9 is the War of 1812, and finally part 10 is the War Between the States - progressing through sections on The Course of the War, The Battle of Gettysburg July 1-3 1863, Gettysburg Today, Mini Memories of Walking the Battlefields of the ACW, and The ACW Remembered. Recommended reading and an index follow.
The forward is a reprint of David Chandler's "Haunted Acres," originally printed in "History Today," November 1976, which sets the scene of the whole book in a masterly way. Donald has an easy chatty style and one can easily imagine him talking directly to the reader. He wears his erudition lightly. A fine book. Maps are by DS - Derek Stone, I think - and up to his usual high standard, but I cannot find him credited for his excellent work.
If you cannot buy this yourself, get your club to put it in the club library or (and!) demand it from the local library. It really is that good.
The Hebrides at War by Mike Hughes, Cannongate Books, Ltd., Edinburgh. ISBN 0,86241.771.6. £ 9.99, paperback. This, and the two following books, popped up from Santa's sack for me. My bewildered relatives trying to keep up with my varied military interests. This is basically a book about the battle of the Atlantic and how it was fought by the RAF from bases such as Oban, Tobermory, Tiree, Benbecula, and Stomaway. From such bases they protected vital Atlantic convoys from the U-boat threat of Nazi Germany. This book is full of photographs, many taken by veterans, and is a real labor of love over many years of research. The Luftwaffe air photo of Oban "See flugplatz" is so good it's a wonder flying boats managed to go on operating from there. Maybe it was something to do with N. Connel airstrip? There's no index but the writing is clear and uncomplicated. Recommended.
The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson. Allen Lane, the Penguin Press. ISBN 0.713.99426-8. £ 18.99, hardback.
- For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity of war distilled
--Wilfred Owen
This is not just another book about the Great War. The author is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford, and brings some bright lights to bear on "The War to End All Wars." It didn't. It wasn't inevitable and, turning a continental conflict into a world war, Britain wasted her economic power and superiority. The Germans and Allies killed more men than they lost - but lost the war. Russia was condemned to seventy years of Communism. Why did hundreds of thousands of young men go on killing each other over several years when they'd had enough in the first three months?
This is a book of over 600 pages and not one is wasted - one of the most percipient questions in the book must be, Who won the peace? In other words, who paid for the war and how? This is a book about the social, economic, and psychological aspects of WWI and may change the way you look at the conflict, or even the aftermath which continues today.
The Regenrration Trilogy by Pat Barker, Penguin fiction, ISBN 0.14.025768-3. E9.99, paperback. This is a collection of three books about WWI, "Regeneration," "The Eye in the Door," and "The Ghost Road." The first centers on a real life encounter in 1917 between W.H.R. Rivers, and army psychologist, and Siefried Sassoon - a decorated young officer who had "had enough." I remember my English teacher at school, J.V. Parry, saying "Luckily for him his father was a millionaire, so they didn't shoot him!"
Sassoon became a famous war poet and conscientious objector. This is "faction" with both real and fictitious characters. "The Eye in the Door" (sounds painful) is about the terrible traumas suffered by young First World War veterans and it's also about class, truth, survival and love. It's also funny in parts - dark humor. The eye in the door refers to a prison spyhole. "The Ghost Road" won the Booker Prize. The Times literary supplement called it "tender, horrifying and funny, it lives on in the imagination like the war it so imaginatively and so intelligently explores." These three novels seem to capture the effects of the War on men and women and the mores of the time.
Now a magazine - The Age of Napoleon, NO. 28 Published by Partizan Press. E3.25 UK, $7.00 USA, $8.95 Canada. This magazine goes from strength to strength. An added bonus to interest the wife or girlfriend is an 8 page pullout supplement on "Sharpe's Weapons" with lots of color photographs of Sean Bean. This "explores the historical facts behind the weaponry of the character created by Bernard Cornwell." Photographs supplied by the Royal Armouries, Leeds.
A rundown of contents: The Combat of Peschiera, Quatre Bras - the Unexpected Battle (was Wellington honest with his Prussian Allies?), The Storming of BadaJoz, Peninsula Sources - extracts from "Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon" by Rory Muir, The Weapons of Richard Sharpe, The Dusty Archive (what's going go happen of interest to Napoleonic buffs), the Liberation of Malta (Stuart Reid writes about the events re-enacted that really took place in 1798-1800 in Malta with lots of re-enactors photographs), 1798 - the Last Invasion of the British Isles, Part II (more shenanigans in Ireland), and finally, Book Reviews. 48 pages, many in color, A4 of the right stuff.
The Age of Napoleon, NO. 29. E3.50 UK, $7.00 USA, $8.95 CA. Published by Caliver books, 816818, London Road, Leigh on Sea, Essex, SS9 3NH, England. Editor Richard Partridge. This number has a spurious "Christmas" tinge: "Eylau - slaughter in the snow, pp 20 - 30. Apart from that bit of bad taste, the magazine is, as usual, very good. There's an interview with Peter Hofschroer by the Editor about the former's book " 1815 - The Waterloo Campaign: Wellington, his German Allies and the battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras," pub. Greenhill Books. It seems Peter is giving some of the Establishment's "Colonel Blimps" apoplexy daring to suggest the Duke tricked his Prussian allies into fighting at Ligny on 16 June 1815. Actually if one reads even "faction" books about the period (like "An Infamous Army" by Georgette Heyer) one gets the idea that various senior German generals did not trust the Duke anyway and it took some persuasion by Blucher and the German liaison officers to get the German army to Waterloo at all. I don't think Gneisenau. thought much of Wellington's veracity. Good stuff. Other articles are Field Artillery, Life in the Russian Infantry (short, brutish, uncomfortable!), Maida Revisited, Columns vs. Lines, Almeida, Pitt - The Unholy Terror (that's the Younger), and all the usual Notes and Queries, reviews, etc. etc. A must for the Napoleonic "buff' I should have thought. Watch it! The telephone no. for Caliver should read 01702 473986 and it don't.
Practical Wargamer Published by Nexus Special Interests Ltd. Edited by the one and only Stuart Asquith. Bimonthly, £ 2.95 UK, $6.95 USA. I always find "Pracwarg" interesting and thought provoking and the latest is no exception. Also it covers actions and eras that are of particular interest to me. The Italian Wars of Independence 1848 onwards. "The Continental Wars Society" is mentioned and Ralph Weaver, editor of "The Foreign Correspondent," the journal of the CWS, provides a couple of articles and some excellent art work. Regular readers will know how catholic the appeal of this magazine is, without being bitty. Regular themes appear for special areas of interest.
Lastly - Slingshot, The official Journal of the Society of Ancients. November '98, Issue 200. ISSN 1335-2880. Published every 2 months by NLWG Publications, 20, the Briars, Cheshunt, Herts, EN8 8SW, UK. For the USA add: Slingshot, Royal Mail International c/o Yellowstone International, 2375 Pratt Boulevard, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007-5937. A nice fat 62 pages full of interesting stuff for Ancients. Some writers still seem to be taking themselves a bit seriously but there's a fund of information there for the reading, for instance one "Ancient" has ten thousand Ancient figures on his data base! The variety of writing is very cheering - articles on Medieval Portuguese, Meso Americans, Feeding the Roman Army, Solo campaigning the Angevin Empire, Quin faces, a report on Historicon '98, Quick and Simple 15mm campaign rules, Reviews, Letters, and a great deal more.
I hope you find something to interest you in this little lot.
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© Copyright 1999 Hal Thinglum
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