Bill Thurbon on Books

Book Review

by Don Featherstone

Have you noticed how many well-known first war books have been re-issued in the last year or so - not only in paperbacks. For instance McCudden's "Flyin$ Fury" and I have just found in our local library Eddie Rickenbackers "Fighting the Flying Circus" first published in 1919). This edition is edited by Arch Whitehouse.

Have you read "Crimsoned Prairies" by Brig. General S.L.A.Marshall (U.S.A. Rtd)? This takes a very balance view of the Indian Wars, neither whitewashing the Americans or following the "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" school. His judgements are interesting, and he makes a number of interesting comparisons between the Indian Wars and later campaigns World War I and II, Korea and Vietnam -- he is especially interesting in pointing out how often in Vietnam the mistakes of the Indian Wars were repeated. He also makes an interesting reference to Chivington and Sand Creek and to My Lai.

Ernle Bradford's "The Shield and the - Sword - The Knights of Malta" and Corelli Barnett's "Britain and Her Army, 1509-1970" are now published in paperback.

"Types of the Mountain Gunners" by C.H.T.MacFetridge and J.P.Warren. This is a really lovely anthology of tales of the mountain gunners, previously in India, but also in Gallipoli in 1915 and in the Burma campaign in the last war. The jacket and frontispiece is from "Snaffles" painting of the "Mountain Gunner" and the first team is, as it had to be, Kipling's famous "Screw Guns".

Guns, gunners, mules and motor transport, all have their part, as also does transport by air in the World War II. There are also stories in lighter vein, and delightful accounts of some wonderful characters among the officers.

A curious quirk of memory reminded me that when I was about 9 years old I had a toy mountain gun, complete with mules and gunners -- what a pity it did not survive -- it would have been an interesting item now.

But this is a delightful book for all Colonial wargamers and a fit tribute to "only the pick of the army that handles the dear little pets."

"The Citizen Armies" by Jack Haswell. The author defines a citizen army as one that comes into being as the result of a supreme national crisis arising from an actual or threatened attack on a country's territory and/or freedom; it must have the support and approval of the recognised local government within the country concerned; it must develop into a recognised field force, and the majority of its officers and soldiers must be volunteers, whose lives and interests, at least for several years before hostilities began were not associated with soldiering and when the war was over returned to Civil Life.

After a prelimimary study of early warfare, from Sumeria to the English Civil War, the author provides studies of the American War of Independence and Civil War, the early French Revolutionary Armies, the South African War, the Great War, the Chinese Armies, Spanish Civil War and the Irish troubles. A thoughtt-provoking "background" book.

"The Catalan Vengeance" by Alfonso Lowe. I saw this reviewed in "History" and found it an interesting study of a period of which I know nothing. It is an account of the career in the 14th century of a band of Catalan Mercenaries, led by Roger de Flor a "brilliant and unscrupulous adventurer" campaigning in Asia Minor, during which they cleared the country of Turks. Byzantine treachery was followed by Catalan revenge, and then the foundation of the dutchies of Athens and Neopatras which remained in Spanish hands for eighty years. An interesting study of a little known historical period.

"Air War over Korea" by Robert Jackson. An interesting study of the air war above Korea in the 1950. Full of detail of the fighting and the planes.

Book Review

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© Copyright 1975 by Donald Featherstone.
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