What are you reading at the moment?

[Antipodean Andy]

I've just started "From North Africa to Arakan" by Alan McGregor Peart DFC.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this one please, Owen.

Have just started Wings of Destiny - Wing Commander Charles Learmonth, DFC and Bar and the Air War in New Guinea by Charles Page. Initial impressions are of excellent illustrations throughout and a comprehensive biography with excellent contextual research. Forty-two pages in and have found it well-written and detailed.

Btw, picked up Lex McAulay's We Who Are About to Die in mint condition for $6 yesterday! Add Behind Bamboo by Rohan Rivett and The Twenty Thousand Thieves by Eric Lambert in similar condition for another $14 and it was a good trip to the markets (first time I've come up trumps there)!

Lambert is an interesting character:
Lambert, Eric Frank (1918 - 1966) Biographical Entry - Australian Dictionary of Biography Online

[Brian S]

Some years ago I had a book recommended to me by a veteran of the North African Campaign and made a note. Going through some old references the note fell out so the book was found on Amazon.
Don't Fence Me In was written by the Rev.Ray Davey in 1946 and a second edition was published in 1954. Although only the book is only 118 pages in length,being written while everything was fresh in his mind makes it a great read.

[CTNana]

I have just finished "The Next Moon" by Andre Hue and Ewen Southby-Tailyour. Andre Hue was an Anglo-Frenchman who survived a shipwreck, joined the French Resistance, returned to Britain and was subsequently dropped behind enemy lines in June 1944 to unite local resistance forces in Brittany and harry the retreating German forces after the invasion.
Possibly not in the league of the books that you all read but I enjoyed it.

[Kyt]

Sounds very interesting Nana. Have seen it on Amazon but always get distracted.

I am still reading the RFC history I started a week or so ago.

[Antipodean Andy]

Not reading anything at the mo, think it'll be something "light" next so maybe some non-war related fiction. LOL, most likely Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian...so, not war-related...World War II anyway...sigh. Perhaps a Clive Cussler will suffice.

Picked up another two Ramage books yesterday for $10 - not that I have time to read them as I'm only up to book 2 (of 20...as I find them) in Patrick O'Brian's series. Bloody authors and their talent!

[Antipodean Andy]

Treasure of Khan by Clive Cussler. Rollicking good read so far.

[Antipodean Andy]

Against All Odds - RAAF Pilots in the Battle for Malta 1942 by Lex McAulay. A full on read, jumps straight into the action while providing context. So far, a good account of just how frenetic things were. Madness.

[Antipodean Andy]

Desert Flyer - The Log and Journal of Flying Officer William Marsh by Martyn R. Ford-Jones.

A good read so far although Marsh has only just completed Harvard training in Canada and I'm only up to page 37 having already covered his early life - the reading is a little disjointed due to the lack of early records by Marsh. It's during his initial training in England that Marsh began to record his thoughts etc in a journal, the use of which seems to get very extensive as he goes operational. He also had a camera handy on most occasions and the pics featured so far are gems.

The use of "airplane" riled me a little but then it is an American-published book. The fact that it's been published is more important.

[Antipodean Andy]

Am halfway through the book mentioned above and while I stand by my assessment of it being good to publish this story, I am not at all impressed with the research and writing. The bibliography just contains five sources, one of which I can't see being of any relevance so far and another two being official squadron ops books/records. The grammar is average with regular errors (not that mine is perfect) and I have encountered several incomplete sentences which make no sense (not to mention the repeat of an inomplete sentence in a paragraph about a combat - took the "rush" away!). There is also the apparent need to insert extra words using square brackets into the log excerpts so they make more sense. This lessens the feel of Marsh's writing at the time. Over-clarification also prevails. When "Spits" are mentioned by Marsh, for example, the author or publisher felt the need to put "Spitfires" in brackets...

I have a severe feeling this book was written for the American market so was simplified so RAF ops in North Africa could be easily understood - I don't think American enthusiasts were given enough credit here.

It's not often I write a review of sorts before I finish a book but, as Kyt will attest, I have come across that many things that have annoyed me in this book that it takes some of the enjoyment away from reading about the lilfe of a relatively unknown Hurricane pilot. Having said that, this book is full of more than 200 of Marsh's photos and these are an excellent record of life and death in the desert.

I'll post a fuller review later upon completion and then may have to read Russell Brown's Desert Warriors to lose the frustration!

[Kyt]

I am currently reading a couple of books:

Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers' Letters, 1914-18

Indian soldiers served in France from 1914 to 1918. This book is a selection of their letters. By turns poignant, funny, and almost unbearably moving, these documents vividly evoke the world of the Western Front as seen through "subaltern" Indian eyes. The letters also bear eloquent witness to the sepoys' often unsettling encounter with Europe, and with European culture. This book helps to map the imaginative landscape of South Asia's warrior peasant communities.

The letters are very poignent, and the Introduction is excellent in contextualising both the history of the Indian forces and the nature of the letters themselves. Well worth the small fortune I paid for the hardback!! Having read the Intro, I am now reading a few letters everyday.

The other book is Man Is Not Lost: The Log of a Pioneer RAF Pilot/Navigator 1933-1946 by G/C Dickie Richardson, which was sent to me by Andy. I am about half way through it and am thoroughly enjoying. Dickie writes in a very accessible way, and is one of the best that I have read about the pre-war experiences of an RAF Officer. He did his flight training, and most of his early flying in Egypt, and paints a fantastic picture of the on and off duy antics of himself and his fellow flyers. His descriptions of the local populace are also sympathetic, though colourful. As are his descriptions of the aircraft. But as someone who went to write THE text for navigators he is scathing in his views of prewar navigation training. Am looking forward to the rest of the book.