This has been a very strange year. We have spent many months in lockdown, unable to travel, sometimes unable to leave our homes, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. One thing it has done is allow me more time to read. I have read more books this past year than I have in the previous decade!
This is what I have been reading.
Un Hombre Fascinante – Juan
Fernandez
Here’s one from my Spanish classes with Peterborough U3A. We
did this one with the intermediate class.
Juan Fernandez is a Spanish teacher in London and his books
are pretty good. Quite repetitive, which is helpful for students, but there’s
always a decent narrative and he does cover some adult themes – they’re not for
kids.
Hola Lola – Juan Fernandez
Another Spanish language book by Juan Fernandez. We did this
with the U3A Basic Spanish class and it’s a good starter book with simple
language, very repetitive but with some characterisation and a sensible
narrative.
The Big Show – Pierre Clostermann
I have read quite a few books on the Second World War this
year. I discovered a podcast by Al Murray and James Holland called We Have Ways
of Making You Talk. It’s all about WW2 and it’s very interesting, entertaining
and easy listening – ideal for lockdown.
This is one book which was referred to in the podcast. Pierre
Clostermann was a French pilot who volunteered to fight in the RAF and this is
his story of the war.
It’s grim reading at times (he lost lots of good friends and
his nerves were shot by the late stages of the war) but his experiences are
gripping. I particularly liked it because he seems to have a very good
mechanical understanding of aircraft and aero engines, which comes through in
his writing.
He starts out flying Spitfires, then moves onto the Typhoon in
a ground-attack role and, finally, the Hawker Tempest (a beast of an aircraft
which sounded terrifying to fly).
The Places In Between – Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart may have been the last decent Tory politician. He
was against Brexit, but pragmatic enough to agree that the Leave campaign had
won the referendum and that we should leave the EU.
He stood for the leadership of the party after the resignation
of Theresa May and we’d surely be in a much better place now had he won.
His career has included the military, diplomatic roles, working
with NGOs and charity organisations. He probably also had some kind of role in
intelligence. He was a Tory MP (briefly) and was planning to run for London
mayor as an independent, but Covid caused the election to be postponed and he
has dropped out.
The Places In Between is an account of a journey across
Afghanistan in 2002 just as the US were getting involved. Stewart had already
trekked across Turkey and Iran and wanted to walk across northern Afghanistan
following a mountain route taken by the Mogul emperor Babur The Great.
Travel books and modern history are my two books of choice and
Stewart is a great travel writer. The journey, however, is unremittingly grim.
The weather is cold, the people are poor, distrustful and sometimes unwelcoming
and the country has been absolutely wrecked by warlords, religious fanatics and
interfering outside powers – from Tamburlain and Babur, through to the British,
Russians, Taliban and Americans – have basically wrecked the country. No-one
properly understands Afghanistan, but everyone seems to think they can sort it
out. Read Rory’s book and leave the place well alone.
Big Week – James Holland
I read three books by James Holland and this was my first. Big
Week refers to one week in 1944 when the USAF and the RAF undertook a massive
bombing campaign against Germany in the Second World War. The aim was to
destroy the Luftwaffe by targeting aircraft factories, ball-bearing factories,
oil plants and (by the employment of long-range fighters such as the Mustang
and Thunderbolt) shooting them out of the sky.
Both American and British bomber forces suffered massive
losses, unsustainable losses at various points, but the Germans were suffering
equally. Big Week didn’t destroy German resistance, but it was a step towards
gaining air supremacy and paving the way for the invasion and liberation of
France.
Big Week follows (I now realise) the James Holland formula of
choosing a battle or campaign, looking for some established opinions he can
knock down and also using lots of eyewitness accounts to add colour and drama.
It does make for easy-to-consume history, very readable and a serious study in
spite of its popularist target.
The Fens - Francis Prior
Francis Prior is the only author that I’ve met among the
collection of books read this year. I met him a couple of times when I was
working on newspapers in Peterborough and he was excavating the Flag Fen
prehistoric site.
This book covers his life’s work as an archaeologist in the Cambridgeshire
Fens and it is amazing what a rich history this part of the world has had.
You’d think the Fens were waterlogged bog until the drainage campaigns from the
17th Century onwards, but not so. Neolithic farmers would have
enjoyed firm ground under their feet across much of the land even as sea levels
started to rise and, as the land began to suffer flooding, amazing structures
like the log causeway across the fen from Peterborough to Whittlesey were
built.
It’s staggering what lies under our feet.
And No Birds Sang – Farley Mowat
Farley Mowat was a Canadian who volunteered to fight in the
Second World War. This is his account of his wartime experiences.
He signed up for his father’s old outfit, the Hastings and
Prince Edward Regiment (known as the Hasty Ps) and found himself entering the
war at the invasion of Sicily. The book covers his experiences during the
conquest of Sicily and, later, in Italy.
Two things make this personal account of the Second World War
stand out. There are many such books, and all offer a personal insight, but few
are written as well as this and few have such astonishing feats in battle.
One section includes an assault on a German strongpoint in
Sicily which is sited in an old Norman castle which has never been captured in
all its history. The Hasty Ps climb a cliff in darkness carrying all their kit
and take the garrison by surprise. They manage to capture the place and hold it
until advancing, supporting troops arrive.
During the battle, Mowat witnesses a German sniper shooting a
donkey. Sadistically shooting the animal in each leg for no good reason, the
animal is then left to die a slow death until one of the Canadians puts it out
of its misery. The incident clearly horrified Mowat and, in Normandy, my dad
seemed more horrified (or more able to talk about his horror) when seeing
hundreds of dead horses and cattle. He never talked about dead bodies.
One Man’s Window – Denis Barnham
This book was also published under the title Malta Spitfire Pilot. The author, Denis Barnham was an artist pre-war, who found himself in the
RAF flying Spitfires. This book is an account of the time he spent in Malta as
a part of one of the first Spitfire squadrons to be sent to the besieged
island. Malta, which had great strategic importance to both Axis and Allied
powers, was being attacked by Italian and German aircraft and was the most
bombed piece of land anywhere during the Second World War.
It was defended by outclassed Hurricanes, which couldn’t climb
quickly enough to be above bombers and fighters and so were ineffective in
defence and suffering undue losses. Finally, Spitfires were sent – taken to the
Mediterranean by aircraft carrier and then flown hundreds of miles across the
sea to reach Malta.
Barnham is a sensitive man (he really only wants to be back
with his new, and very pretty, wife and to paint and draw), he’s a
self-confessed lousy shot, but a brave and tenacious pilot. Apart from bombs,
bullets and no letters from his wife, the worse thing about his experience is the
“Malta dog” … dysentery – which everyone suffers from.
This isn’t a glorious tale of tough battle and eventual
triumph; it’s a carefully observed window in amazing detail of a horrific
battle that went on and on. Barnham is eventually invalided out, which probably
saves his life. He’s wracked by dysentery and his nerve has gone. If you think
flying Spitfires would have been a glamorous thing, this book will set the
record straight. Barnham doesn’t complain about his lot, he gets on with it and
he tells it like it was.
The Good Shepherd – C S Forester
This is fiction, not fact, but Forester’s book might be better
classed as a docu-drama in today’s media-speak. It has also recently been made
into a film, starring Tom Hanks (who else?) as the captain of a US destroyer
escorting an Atlantic convoy.
I read the book before I watched the film and the book, in my
opinion, is much better. It captures the massive tension of being on a ship
hunted by an invisible enemy and suffering from intense fatigue. And the book
is set at a time of the war when the Allies had the benefit of improved radar
and sonar to help alert them of the presence of submarines and to become the
hunters.
It must have been absolute hell in the early days of the war,
when escort ships were held back to guard against a possible invasion and when
technology hadn’t swung against the submarines.
Quartered Safe out Here – George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser is a well-known author, famous for
writing the Flashman books (Flashman being the bully from Tom Brown’s
Schooldays, re-imagined in adult life as a cad and cowardly army officer). He
also wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film Octopussy.
Quartered Safe Out Here is a different kettle of fish, it’s
MacDonald Fraser’s account of his time in Burma fighting with the Border
Regiment, a group of Cumbrians from the Carlisle area.
They are an experienced group of men and George is the new
man. He joins the war when the tide has turned against the Japanese in Burma
and, perhaps, his war experience is not as terrible as those of his comrades.
There is a battle narrative to the book, but the most
interesting aspect is the relationships between the different soldiers (an odd
mix) and how they get along. Sometimes they don’t and this leads to some
extremely sad and angry recollections, even tragedy. MacDonald Fraser is
different from the others, he’s middle class, and is promoted to corporal (a
job he does well) and eventually lifted out of the war for officer training.
Burma and the Far East campaign was essentially a colonial
battle. Britain had colonised India, Burma and Malaya and the Japanese wanted
to run them instead. The people of those countries being fought over were
perhaps the real victims of this conflict (and they are mentioned with sympathy).
Having fought to keep our colonies and won, the UK had to grant them all
independence within a few years.
In Burma’s case it was 1948. Various elements of the
population, divided by ethnicity and religion, fought for the British and
Japanese, so it was no surprise that, after the war, factional fighting and
assassination preceded independence. This year (2021) there has been yet
another military coup and that after a decade of “ethnic cleansing” carried out
against Muslim Rohingya people. It’s yet another post-colonial mess we’ve left
behind.
By Tank D to VE Day – Ken Tout
Once lockdown is over and if we ever get on top of Covid-19, I
want to properly research the wartime experiences of my mother and father, also
Margaret’s dad. Both fathers were involved in the Battle for Normandy and
fought in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. I can’t undertake any research
right now, so I’ve been reading quite a lot of history around the latter phases
of the Second World War in order to gain a better understanding of what it was
like and also to put other people’s experiences against place names and
battles.
Ken Tout, as the name of his wartime memoir suggests, fought
in a tank regiment – the Northamptonshire Yeomanry as a gunner. His job was to
aim, fire and maintain the main gun. The Northamptonshire Yeomanry, as the name
suggests, were a territorial group and called into the army as soon as war was
declared. Like several other similar regiments (notably the Sherwood Rangers)
they were converted to tanks and Tout fought (mainly in Shermans) from D-Day to
October 1944 when he was invalided home due to bursitis in his left knee,
possibly caused by repetitive-strain injury from stamping on the gun’s firing
mechanism.
Tout was unlucky, but also lucky, as his injury took him out
from the war and back to the UK. His book continues in his absence, chronicling
the Yeomanry’s war until VE Day. It has a detailed account of the Rhine
crossing using Buffalo amphibious tank and infantry carriers. My dad’s Rhine
crossing was in a Buffalo. He told me about it when I was making an Airfix
model of one. Like many other war memories from dad – bren carriers, 25lb field
guns, Churchill and Sherman tanks - they were prompted by Airfix modelling.
When (and if) I ever get around to writing an account of Eric Rayner’s war,
I’ll certainly draw on the account of the Rhine crossing by Ken Tout’s former
comrades.
Burma ’44 – James Holland
After reading Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald
Fraser, I was tempted to read a little more about the war in the Arakan and
James Holland wrote this book about the Japanese offensive of 1944 and the
Allied response. It takes a broad view of the Burma campaign to date and enters
the battle at a time when the Allies were planning to go on the offensive. The
Japanese have the same idea and launch their attack just before ours. It
prompts a number of strategically important desperate stands by Allied army
units, but also marks the turning point of the war in Burma and India.
Holland’s book centres on the Battle of the Admin Box in
February 1944, just before the desperate battles of Imphal and Kohima when the
Japanese were turned back just within India. It was significant as the first
time the Japanese army had been defeated and also helped develop and test new
tactics involving supply by air and holding ground rather than retreating to
avoid being cut off.
The defence of the Admin Box, admin centre of the Indian
Army’s 7th Division, was desperate and close-run. The Japanese
successfully infiltrated the area on a number of occasions, including one where
the hospital was captured and doctors and patients murdered. This war crime
stiffened the resolve of the defenders, and the Japanese, who had gambled on a
quick victory, began to run out of food and ammunition.
Critical to the successful defence of the position were a
number of Lee tanks and the use of Spitfires, which were able to gain air
superiority over the area and allow the defenders to be resupplied by
air-drops. I’ve enjoyed a number of James Holland books this year. This was a
hard read due to my lack of background knowledge, also a string of
hard-to-pronounce names such as the Ngakyedauk Pass. The temptation is to “bleep
over” them all, but then you soon lose track of what’s what.
Serenade to the Big Bird – Bert Stiles
Bert Stiles flew Flying Fortress bombers from English
air-bases during the great bombing offensive on Germany during 1943 and 1944.
They suffered horrendous losses in the early stages before
long-ranger fighter escorts could be provided. The book gives an insight into
the physical difficulties of flying one of these large bombers in close
formation (something Stiles found very taxing), but also the massive
psychological strain of mission after mission when the losses were so high.
Perhaps some people could adopt an if-it-happens-it-happens attitude, but most
would have taken off in the knowledge that, statistically, there was a chance
that they would not be returning.
Stiles completed his tour but chose to convert to fighters and
was killed later in the war.
Stalin’s Nose – Rory MacLean
I do like a good travel book. This one was a little left field
in its construct. The author has a great aunt of semi-aristocratic Austrian
descent, who lived with her husband (a Soviet espionage officer) in East
Berlin. The Berlin Wall former part of the boundary to their garden and when it
was pulled down, all their livestock escaped.
The aunt is widowed and persuades her nephew to take her with
him on a journey into eastern Europe (only recently freed from Soviet control).
Travelling in a two-stroke Trabant and taking his aunt’s pet pig with them,
they journey across Austria, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Poland
and Russia. They meet people scarred by the Second World War and by Soviet
rule.
One wouldn’t have wanted to be caught between Stalin and
Hitler but, of course, millions were. MacLean finds small cameos of lives
destroyed, people surviving, scars still healing … It would be a very hard
read, except for the comedy elements of the pig and his aunt, but it’s clear
that, in eastern Europe, there are a lot of historical issues to resolve.
The Ship – C S Forester
After reading the Good Shepherd, about a destroyer escorting
an Atlantic convoy, I decided to read The Ship, which is about a cruiser
escorting a Malta convoy.
The Good Shepherd’s charges are threatened by U-boats, but in
the Mediterranean, the threat comes from Italian aircraft and surface vessels.
The Royal Navy was an exceptionally well-trained and
professional outfit during the Second World War. Sure, they had their setbacks
and cock-ups, but compared to the Army, they were streets ahead. There might
still have been an old-boys network thwarting promotion purely on merit, but at
least the navy’s “old boys” had been trained and blooded.
Forester paints a propaganda-like image of the skill and
daring, but it’s entirely believable and quite gripping.
The escort cruisers and destroyers have just beaten off an
Italian air-raid, but now face the threat of attack by more powerful Italian
battleships planning to intercept the convoy. Their defensive strategy and
battle tactics are fascinating. It’s a great read and, in spite of its glowing
admiration for the Royal Navy, it’s certainly highly accurate.
Normandy 44 - James Holland
This was the modern history book I most wanted to read in the
context of understanding my father’s war.
Like other books by James Holland, it is a mixture of
historical facts, a re-examination of events and commonly held views, with a
large number of personal stories (from both sides).
It has added massively to my knowledge of the Battle of
Normandy and has increased my desire to properly research the wartime
experiences of my father and father-in-law. I just need life to return to some
normality.
Crimen en Barcleona – Paco Ardit
I’m some way short of being able to call myself a polyglot,
but I have read a number of Spanish-language books.
This is the latest – a B1-level novel about murder,
investigation and family intrigue, set within an airline business in Barcelona.
The language is fairly simple (being lower intermediate level),
but the story and plot twists are quite complex and adult.
