What are you reading? December 2016

Finished a fascinating Januarius Macgahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent by Dale L. Walker. I had no knowledge at all of this remarkable man.

Finished Target London: Under Attack from the V-Weapons During WWII by Christy Campbell. Decent book, although rather tedious due to the inclusion of all the politics surrounding who in the British government was in charge of what aspect of the hunt for the weapons.

Knocked off Death of the Wehrmacht (A) the other day.

Started TSR2: Britain's Lost Bomber. Am into the preliminary design competition that led to the British aircraft company mergers.

Reading another great book by Nick Lipscombe;
Wellington's Eastern Front: The Campaign on the East Coast of Spain 1810-1814.
NIck fills a Peninsular War niche with this work covering battles in Aragon & Valencia
and operations of the Anglo-Sicilian forces.

Coincidentally, I had just finished "With the Spanish Against Napoleon: the Peninsular War experiences of a British Officer"
by Samuel Ford Whittingham. The author was present at Buenos Ayres, Medellin, Talavera, Barrosa, and Castalla (where he commanded a Spanish division.
ANother handy Leonaur reprint.

(Touchstones not working again)

A Bridge Too Far, by Cornelius Ryan.

Yesterday, 72 years ago, the German Armies in the West launched their final offensive of the war, (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945)

"The Germans officially referred to the offensive as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein ("Operation Watch on the Rhine"). The Allies called it the Ardennes Counteroffensive. The phrase "Battle of the Bulge" was coined by contemporary press to describe the bulge in Allied front lines on wartime news maps(15)(c)(16) and became the most widely used name for the battle."

"The Germans' initial attack involved 406,000 men, 1,214 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns, and 4,224 artillery pieces. These were reinforced a couple of weeks later, bringing the offensive's total strength to around 450,000 troops and 1,500 tanks and assault guns. Between 67,200 and 125,000 of their men were killed, missing or wounded. For the Americans, with 610,000 involved in the battle,(19) 89,000 were casualties.(5) While some sources report that up to 19,000 were killed,(5)(20) Eisenhower's personnel chief put the number at about 8,600.(21) British historian Antony Beevor reports the number killed as 8,407.(22) It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II."

WikipediA ®
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge


American infantrymen of the 290th Regiment fight in fresh snowfall near Amonines, Belgium

I'm now finishing up Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam.

Phil Sabin, Lost Battles. About analyzing ancient battles with the help of wargaming.

Finished up 5th Infantry Brigade in the Falklands War (B+), a very nuts-and-bolts examination of why the unit became something of an afterthought in the campaign; much of it had to do with logistical constraints preventing it from getting into action with alacrity (no thanks to the "Atlantic Conveyor" debacle), particularly as compared to the favored 3rd Commando Brigade.

I finished Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, which I highly recommend.

I'm now reading Winston Churchill: the Valiant Years by Jack Le Vien and John Lord. Le Vien was an American documentary maker who produced a 36-hour documentary series for the BBC about Churchill and World War Two. This book was published soon after as a follow up. The book is basically a survey of the events of the war through British, and specifically Churchill's, point of view. In fact the author's make liberal use of quotations from Churchill's own memoirs (with permission, obviously, and clearly demarcated with italics). There's more than a little hero worship going on here, but certainly the fellow was in fact a hero, and given the era (early 60s) when there was still plenty of hero worship to go around regarding WW2, I'm fine giving some slack in that regard. At any rate, the writing is snappy if a bit breathless, and, about halfway through, I've had a few gaps in my knowledge filled in, as well.

>9 Shrike58: Your mention of that book inspired me to go through Amazon and see if there was something interesting to add to my collection of Falklands War books. I came across Logistics in the Falklands War by Kenneth L. Privratsky and ordered it since I have a nephew who sent me an Amazon gift card. Smart nephew!

I have this weird interest in logistics but it's a subject that gets little attention, so the book seemed like an obvious choice. I'll post impressions when I get around to reading it sometime next year.

Recently received Hitler's First War I have read a fair bit on Hitler yet there is very little about his WWI experiences and I'm not sure how much I would trust.
I expect it will be a slow read.

Because nothing says Christmas like reading about the Holocaust I finished up The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (A) over the weekend. This is a very good book where you wish that someone conversant with nuts-and-bolts military history had saved the author from some goofy mistakes.

Finished Spies In The Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during World War II by Taylor Downing, my last book of 2016. A pretty interesting read, although more of a popular narrative history than a definitive account.