Current Reading December 2021

Finished The Young Nelson in the Americas by Tom Pocock. A good deal of the book focused on the San Juan Expedition of 1780 which "took place between March and November 1780 during the American War of Independence when a British force under the command of John Polson and Captain Horatio Nelson landed on the coast of the present-day Nicaragua, with the aim of sailing up the San Juan River to capture the strategically crucial towns of Granada and León, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Nicaragua" (quoted from Wikipedia). Part of the rest of the book rather skimmed over his service in North American waters and also, oddly, included his service in the North Sea. And a good part of the book actually focused on a fellow participant on the expedition, Edward Despard, who was at the time a friend of Nelson. Later on Despard faced financial and other difficulties and ended up being part of a plot to kill the king and overthrow the government. The plot was discovered and Despard was tried, found guilty and executed. While a somewhat interesting story in itself, it was rather an odd choice of material to use in the book as Nelson had not seen nor apparently had any communication with Despard for twenty years before his trial. Overall however a quite readable book.

Knocked off Winning Armageddon, an examination of Curtis LeMay's war-fighting concepts that I simply didn't find very convincing.

The Campaigns of Sargon II by Sarah C. Melville is a great narrative history of this period of Assyrian Military History. Part of the Campaigns and Commanders series.

Cheers

War Graves Digger by Jack Leemon ... a narrative of the authors service with 26 Australian Graves Registration Unit in the Second World War, first in New Guinea recovering Australian and US dead at Buna, later at Lae and in the Markham Valley. Back in Australia his unit was tasked with dealing with casualties and mass suicides from the Cowra Breakout, then deployed to the Thai-Burma Railway to identify and recover remains of Allied POW's. A tough job, but essential for morale on the home front, as well as for the troops in the field.

Postscript 12/12... having finished the book a have posted a more thorough review to the books main page. All up, and interesting read.

Finally gotten started on Scheina’s Latin America’s Wars, which has languished on my wishlist for a decade or so. Promising this far (and man was the Haitian Revolution a bloody mess).

Have just started Barbarossa by Jonathan Dimbleby, recently published, which essentially appears to cover the first 6 months on the Eastern Front in the Second World War.

Update - 20/12 - I'm now a bit over a third of the way through this and it's turned out to be a more interesting read than and I thought it would be.

Finished Battle for Empire: The Very First World War, 1756-63 by Tom Pocock. A look at the Seven Years War through narratives of the far flung campaigns of that war, including India, Havana, Manila and Canada. Not a heavy duty look but fairly comprehensive never the less.

Forgot to list Jameson's Raid: The Prelude to the Boer War by Elizabeth Longford. The first third of the book is a very good look at the background to Jameson's Raid, what happened and the outcome. The last two thirds is a detective story of who knew what when, specifically focused on Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies. It got rather bogged down in the details and I gave up after giving it a gallant try. That first third is worth reading the book for however.

Knocked off Valcour, a pretty good account of the inland naval action that staunched the British counter-offensive after the American patriots were thrown out of Canada.

>8 Shrike58: I've read other books by the author, glad to hear that this one is good as well.

I am now about halfway through War and Society in Imperial Rome by Brian Campbell after a big splurge on ABE books to track down a number of the Routledge Warfare and History series. Generally not cheap but they are good reads.

Cheers

I finished Now We Are Enemies: The Story of Bunker Hill by Thomas J. Fleming. First published in 1960, this history of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first major battle of the American Revolution, was evidently hailed as a major success at the time, and I can see why. Fleming did a great job of laying out the contributing factors to the growing points of contention between England and the American colonies, both political and economic, as well as giving thumbnail sketches of the major players on both the English and American sides. The conditions the combatants fought under, the weapons they carried and their motivations for fighting are all clearly described as well, as are the tactics of the officers and the ways in which those tactics either worked or didn't. The battle itself is described in detail, with a flowing narrative style that puts the reader directly into the horrific, bloody action.

At times Fleming took some liberties, creating conversations between the participants that are, he explains in his afterward, recreations from the many diaries and journals he consulted. On the American side, most of the soldiers who actually took part fought bravely indeed, but many of those assembled, intimidated by the British artillery, actually stayed well away from the battle. Fleming gives a lot of credit, also, to the courage of the British soldiers, who three times charged the American emplacements in the face of point-blank musket fire. The British after that third charge, managed to get the Colonials out of their emplacements and off the hill (actually Breed's Hill, not Bunker Hill itself, as Fleming explains), but at a cost so high that they the British generals had to abandon their plans to try to break the American siege of Boston, the reason they attacked the stronghold in the first place. The British lost half their army, killed or wounded, on that day, and the question of whether American volunteer soldiers would stand and fight against the British regulars, an army considered at that time the best in the world, was settled emphatically.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the history of the American Revolution. I don't know how much additional scholarship on the battle has taken place in the intervening 60 years since Now We Are Enemies was published. I know, for example, that Nathaniel Philbrick has written a history: Bunker Hill: a City, a Siege, a Revolution. I don't know how much new material was included in that book. It is in my LT library but is not on my shelf. I vaguely remember loaning it to someone, but can't remember who. It will come back eventually, I guess!

Book note: My copy of the book seems to be a first edition. At least, there's no mention of any edition other than the 1960 publishing date with the book's publishing info. The LT entry date for this book is in 2008, the year I first posted my library here, so there's no telling how long it's been on my shelf awaiting my attention. I do know that my copy at one time resided in the sailors' library aboard the USS General William Mitchell (AP-114), as per the stamp on the book's rear inside cover. There is also a pocket at the back in which the book's withdrawal card resides, though it is blank. Either nobody ever took this book out, or one or more previous cards had been filled up.

Finished another couple of books, although I did skim the second one through several chapters.

The Fighting Tenth: The Tenth Submarine Flotilla and the Siege of Malta by John Wingate - Very good narrative history of the submarines based at Malta during the time when the Italians and the Germans were desperately trying to destroy the fighting capability of the islands. The book covers the submarine missions and also their trying to survive through endless air attacks. A remarkable story.

The Anglo-Saxons at War, 800–1066 by Paul Hill - A scholarly look at Anglo-Saxon warfare from just before the Viking invasions until William the Conqueror. Covers recruitment, organization, tactics, equipment and the like. Unfortunately because of the paucity of historic records the author spends a significant amount of text discussing what we don't know as well as what we do know. Not the easiest read, but would likely appeal to someone with an interest in the era.

Finished Barbarossa by Jonathan Dimbleby. The author deftly weaves between politics and diplomacy, the strategy of the generals, the frontline experiences of the ordinary soldier on both sides, and the civilians caught up in the maelstrom, as well as exploring the genocidal megalomania of Hitler and paranoid psychopathy of Stalin. Well written and thought provoking, even if you think you already know something of this period of history.

A Game of Birds and Wolves is the last book of the year, and it's a pretty good one, but just pretty good.