Currently Reading: December 2023

I just finished The Long Grey Line, which was excellent. Not as much focused on the Vietnam War years as I expected, but still very good.

I then did a quick read of American in the Air War, another of the Time-Life history books.

Finished Liberation: The First to be Freed about the British campaign to free Ethiopia from Italy in WW2. This is the only book I have found about that campaign, though I did spot a somewhat more recent book on it on Amazon. While it could have used a good editor, it does provide a decent overview along with a short description of the Italian conquest and the aftermath of the Liberation. The author, who arrived near the end of the action to assist the Ethiopia government, has a great deal of admiration for both the Ethiopian fighters and the British colonial troops who made up the bulk of the British forces. Today one can see the irony of using African colonial subjects to free Ethiopia from Italy.
Also read The Greatest Beer Run Ever which exceeded my expectations, not only being a good story, but also giving insight into the culture of places in the US that sent their boys to fight the war, a good snapshot of the life of those soldiers in Vietnam, and a frightening snapshot of being trapped in Saigon during Tet.

>2 wbf2nd: Hmm, that's interesting about only finding that one book about the liberation of Ethiopia. I looked through my collection and only found Haile Salassie's War: The Ethiopian-Italian Campaign, 1935-1941 by Anthony Mockler. I thought I had more, but the only others I have cover just the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy: Rape of Ethiopia 1936 by A. J Barker and Days of Emperor and Clown: The Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1936 by James Dugan.

What's the more recent book you spotted? Is it The First Victory: The Second World War and the East Africa Campaign by Andrew Stewart? I just found that one myself.

Regarding being trapped in Saigon during Tet, one of the engineers who worked for me was with the 101st Airborne in Saigon. He worked his entire year in Vietnam in the personnel department, processing soldiers in and out. He said that when Tet happened it was the first and last time he'd actually carried his M-16 around. They guarded their offices but didn't see any action.

Knocked off Finnish Aces, more a reference book than a narrative history, this is likely to be the best accounting we're going to get of these men in the aggregate.

>3 jztemple: It was An Improvised War . Digging deeper I spotted a few more books on the subject including the one you found. Not many though. Until I read Liberation, my knowledge of the campaign consisted of no more than that the British crushed the Italians.

Personally hearing stories like your engineer's always adds something that reading can't quite deiver.

About forty years ago I met an elderly man in a remote part of southern Sudan who had been a member of the Sudan Defence Force which, along with other British Empire troops, was involved in the liberation of Ethiopia. On meeting a Briton (or probably any white person) he would immediately recite in broken English the names of his British officers and the serial number of his Bren gun, mime the action of firing the Bren with the explanation "Killing Italians with fire!", and then stand to attention and sing "God Save the King".

As an aside, it was the Italian invasion and occupation of Ethiopia which brought British Catholic missionaries (and thus ultimately myself) to Sudan. Formerly the Catholic missionaries in southern Sudan were Italians, but the British authorities did not want potentially hostile* enemy aliens on the sensitive border between Ethiopia and Sudan so they expelled them all, and in 1938 they were replaced by British, Dutch and Irish missionaries. Missionaries were again expelled in 1964 during Sudan's first civil war which began in 1955, this time by a Sudanese regime intent on Arabising and Islamising the people of southern Sudan, but were allowed to return by a new regime in Khartoum following the 1972 peace agreement which ended that war, mediated by the churches who were then trusted as an honest broker by both the southern liberation movement and the Khartoum government, and signed in Addis Ababa. I joined them in 1983, a month before the start of Sudan's second civil war (!983-2005).

* Which reminds me of an elderly Italian priest whom I met in the 1980s who would still complain about being interned by the British in Palestine during World War II. "I don't know why they interned me. I wasn't a fascisti, I was a socialist!"

>6 John5918: John, From the tidbits you’ve dropped over the years I think you should write your autobiography. 😌

>3 jztemple: I read The First Victory early in the year. While Scott is writing more about the campaign in Italian Somaliland than the liberation of Ethiopia, he does make a good argument for it being a valuable campaign in terms of rationalizing the logistical demands on the British war machine, and a trial run for the sort of all-empire armies that London would be assembling for the rest of the war.

Many of the Italian PoWs captured in Ethiopia were taken to Kenya, where the small church that they built at the foot of the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley still stands today, as does the road that they built up the escarpment. Unfortunately this article entitled "The tiny Maai Mahiu built by Italian prisoners of war" is behind a paywall, but anyone interested might be able to google it and find details. I've passed it often while using that road, and have been in a couple of times. Nice little chapel.

Mentioning Italian POWs in Kenya reminded me of No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb by Felice Benuzzi, a true story of an Italian POW who escaped from a camp and climbed Mount Kenya, then returned to the camp.

>9 John5918: Italian POWs seemed to have liked making chapels. There is one on Orkney made from a quonset hut. Very nicely decorated on the inside and made to look like a much more substantial building. One prisoner even made a sculpture of St. George slaying a dragon that stands outside the chapel.

>11 wbf2nd:

Indeed. The parish where I grew up in east London began as a tin hut in a POW camp, served by priests from a parish a couple of miles away. Local people living nearby started going to this makeshift chapel for Sunday mass, and this arrangement continued after the war until the mid-1960s when a new church was built nearby to replace "the camp", as the original chapel was known.

Currently reading A Good Dusting: The Sudan Campaigns 1883-1899 by Henry Keown-Boyd. This is a very good overview look at the campaigns in the Sudan from the Hicks disaster to the final Omdurman campaign. While I've read a number of books that address more specific subjects within this time period, I've finding this book very good as it ties together the various actions. It also looks at the origin of and composition of the British led Egyptian army in detail which is quite interesting. And since the author is one of those great British story tellers, there are excellent anecdotes and glimpses into the personalities of the times and place. Highly recommended.

Finished With Their Bare Hands, which takes the service of the US 79th Division in World War I and uses it as a case study for motivation and the conduct of the war. I thought it was pretty damn good, but the general reader might find themselves floundering a bit, particularly with the running examination of the professional foibles of "Black Jack" Pershing, and how they played out in practice.

Read The Battle of the Komandorski Islands, which covers the last purely surface action by fleets in World War 2. The battle was almost a dress rehearsal for the Battle off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, with an outnumbered and outgunned American fleet engaging the superior Japanese force, making a desperate destroyer attack on the Japanese, and then at the darkest moment the Japanese break off the engagement. An engaging read, with multiple vignettes from the crews in the American ships. While Japanese command decisions are covered, personal stories from the crew are lacking, probably because all the Japanese ships involved were lost later in the war, leaving few, if any survivors of the action.

>15 wbf2nd: My cousin's father-in-law served in "Salt Lake City" in that battle; they expected to be going swimming at any given moment once the action commenced, and it dawned on everyone that they were out-numbered two-to-one by the Japanese.

>16 Shrike58: That expectation of impending doom was mentioned several times in the book. Have to respect those who stood up to their fear and kept on going.

Gave up on Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia. I thought it would be a more interesting story, how what is now West Virginia split from Virginia, how the President and Congress approved adding a state in what was possibly a violation of the Constitution, and finally the 1871 lawsuit that was decided by the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, as the introduction notes, the book was written by three lawyers and for some reason they decided that every proclamation, government act, speech, etc needed to be quoted in full. It was just too dull a read to finish.

>18 jztemple: Unfortunate, that could have been an interesting story. Back in the 1990s then Gov. George Allen of Virginia was making noises about revisiting that event.

Finished a short but fairly interesting The Secret History of RDX: The Super-Explosive that Helped Win World War II by Colin F. Baxter.

Wrapped up The Battle of Jutland, a very data-heavy book that gives one probably as good a sense of why Admiral Jellicoe made the decisions he did, with the information he had at the time. Brooks' account of the night-time fighting was particularly impressive, particularly since I never appreciated previously how decimated the British destroyer screen was by the time dawn came.

Finished Warfare in Inner Asian History the other day, a collection of essays about various aspects of what it says on the tin. I liked some contributions better than others, but the average is decent enough.

>21 Shrike58: I found another book that has an interesting view of the Battle of Jutland, The Electron and Sea Power by Arthur Hezlet. There is a chapter on the battle focusing on the use of wireless for command and control. I was surprised to find that Jellicoe's flagship actually used a number of wireless sets for communication with different squadrons.

>23 jztemple: The problem in that regard is that the Grand Fleet was practicing a high degree of radio discipline, in terms of keeping channels open, so ships that should have been reporting in with contacts didn't.

Finishing up Jarhead by Anthony Swofford. See my review. I’ll have to watch the movie next which I believe starred Jake Gyllenhaal. It will curl your hair. If your hair is already curly it will be straight from standing on end.

>25 varielle: I've seen Jarhead appear on several Xmas movie lists ... seasonally appropriate? (just kidding)

And with a few hours to kill I knocked off a slim volume, The Fringes of History: The Life and Times of Edward Stuart Wortley by Robert Franklin. It's a shame that this is such a slim volume as Edward Stuart Wortley was a soldier in the late Victorian era and in WW1 who was so often at such momentous events, although, as the title notes, sometimes at the fringes. He served as a Transport officer in the Second Anglo–Afghan War but saw no action. He missed the First Boer War (the Wikipedia article is in error about this), but was part of Wolseley's army that invaded Egypt after the Urabi uprising and fought at the Battle of Tel El Kebir. Later he was part of the Nile Expedition to relieve General Gordon and fought in the major actions of the Camel Column.

All this would have been noteworthy, but he also took part in the second Nile Campaign led by Lord Kitchener and was present at the Battle of Omdurman. He also saw action in the Second Boer War. He had a number of diplomatic and training assignments and then eventually led the first Territorial Army division to be sent to France during WW1. He commanded the division on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and was relieved from command for not providing proper leadership, a charge that has been dismissed by many historians who attribute the removal as being instigated by Haig as Stuart Wortley was a favorite of Haig's predecessor.

All of this would make an interesting story, but in addition Stuart Wortley was a friend of Edward VII who asked ESW to write him personally every week after his division was sent to France. He was also close to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who at one time stayed with Stuart Wortley and his family for three weeks and later invited ESW to help leak a letter from the Kaiser to the British people. Nellie Melba was a family friend as was Winston Churchill. All in all a fascinating individual.

Finished 2023 with Twelve Desperate Miles. The exploits of the SS Contessa in the US invasion of Morocco as part of Operation Torch is the thread that unites a fairly wide ranging book (the 12 miles bit is at the very end). Not just the invasion, but luxury banana boats, convoys, resistance by French colonists against the Vichy state, thrilling escapes, spies, General Patton and so on. Quite interesting, with many details of the invasion and its lead up that are not generally covered in standard histories.