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Text of the page (random words):
e and he was by the sounds of it admittedly his own self portrait a pretty good egg as we brits might say the book itself was written at the urging of friends and family and they also helped bring it completion in its current form how much it owes its interesting back and forth structure it jumps around from youth to adulthood in a very engaging way to eager and how much to later editorial interventions i m not sure it s a clever way to make the book more compelling and works a treat we learn about what seems to have been a pretty idyllic all american childhood with trips to a cottage in the mountains built by his father and others and then how he managed to get himself enrolled on a unique flying course before the war brought america into the fight we learn about his family and early romances there s even a very funny bit about a teacher he s fond of and a fart in her classroom that she mis attributes to poor young dick and then there s a really touching and moving bit about his dog judge all of this is woven into the more officially significant story of how he wound up becoming monty s pilot flying the victor of el alamein around in a u s b 17 bomber converted into an airborne office cum taxi but richard ernest earnest and eager evans life is ultimately fascinating for both his civilian and military experiences it s supplemented by lots of pertinent photos some very personal to eager some stock wwii ref but still very relevant to the story this book tells there s also detailed chronology lots of his correspondence and a very useful glossary this truly excellent book tells the story of a very interesting and seemingly very decent man living through extraordinary times i m not a military man myself although i love military history but nevertheless richard evans i salute you i m writing this review as i near the end of the book the vast majority of which is given over to childhood and young adulthood i haven t yet read the epilogue which i suspect summarises some of the rest of his life i ve really enjoyed the read and would definitely recommend it he often refers to the various form of national linguistic peculiarities he encounters serving in wwii alongside canadians australian brits and his own fellow americans posted by seb palmer at 22 30 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday 31 august 2022 book review the hitler assassination attempts john grehan 1 2 i thoroughly enjoyed this pithy account of the many attempts made on hitler s life in all about 60 or so are covered some of these were carried through elser stauffenberg many were attempted only to be aborted and a great many were never put into action for a whole host of reasons grehan s writing style is solid in fact he covers a great deal in a very succinct manner and he seems suitably circumspect where evidence is scant concluding that some of these alleged plots are most likely false the many attempts on hitler s life span almost his whole political career 1921 to 1945 meaning that this book not only tells the fascinating stories of the many plans to be rid of him but also the broader history of his rise to power international brinksmanship with initial success both in peace and war and finally his eventual apocalyptic downfall if like me you re fascinated with this era of recent history i d recommend this i really enjoyed it posted by seb palmer at 19 45 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday 22 august 2022 book review napoleon s infantry gabrielle esposito 1 2 this follows the form and style of esposito s very similar book on wellington s infantry i enjoyed both books and learned a good deal from them so that s good but there are some less good things the plentiful uniform plates as they used to be called bear too little relation in terms of placement in the book to the text are all public domain and are sometimes effectively speaking repeated the same unit being depicted by differing artists for example also some of the information would ve been better conveyed via tables or lists rather than long form text e g enumerating all the minutiae of uniform and or equipment details esp as in long form the frequent repetition of certain stuff gets a bit monotonous but overall the information conveyed is pretty comprehensive wide ranging and thorough the evolution of the french infantry from royal via revolutionary to full blown napoleonic is to a nerdy buff like me fascinating and esposito covers everything from internal auxiliary type french troops to the many foreign so divers that france employed not perfect but an attractive informative and enjoyable addition to the nappy buff s uniformology library posted by seb palmer at 20 03 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday 12 august 2022 book review hill 112 tim saunders another very enjoyable book by tim saunders on the post d day normandy campaign i ve read a couple of others by him on similar territory i m always worried esp at the outset of that the sheer detail in a book such as this is going to overwhelm me and in all honesty i think i retain very little of the densely packed info presented but in the end i m very often carried along such is the case here so saunders must be doing something right hill 112 is a piece of high ground monty s forces battled the germans many of the latter being ss units for both sides ranting and needing the commanding position it gave so it became a hotly contested and bloody battleground we have tiger phobia massed artillery air superiority allied of course naval bombardments all sorts i feel like i ve read about this hill 112 action before poss in another book by saunders or perhaps in a book by another author either way the story of the back and forth action seems quite familiar but i don t mind reading about the same thing multiple times in fact i like it that way one can gradually accrue knowledge on a subject this account is detailed well written and liberally illustrated with both wartime photos some more recent images of the terrain as it is now and quite a few maps there s also a glossary of acronyms and initialisms despite this latter feature there are still instances of abbreviated terms used in the body of the text that are missing from the glossary i enjoy the use saunders makes of primary sources they help make the action more vivid but i also enjoyed the higher level command and control aspects reading this has made me want to learn more about monty s d day and normandy campaign he s often criticised perhaps mostly because of arnhem but his plan of pinning german forces in place so the americans could break out was very successfully and effective anyway if you have a strong interest in the normandy campaign as i certainly do then this is definitely worth reading posted by seb palmer at 23 38 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday 19 june 2022 misc acw in nat geog again i recently got a nother whole bunch of national geographic magazines 150 issues something i occasionally do we have tons more boxed up in our attic and i posted on here back in i think 2014 ish about a quest to find several specific issues those particular editions dealt with the acw around the centenary so mid 1960s and featured artwork that had haunted me for decades but in researching and tracking down those issues and finding out who that elusive artiste was david greenspan i became fascinated by the other forms of artwork as well in particular that of the specials or special correspondents what we would now call war artists frank vizetelly became a particular fascination partly because articles about him and even a book were available but anyway i mention all this because amongst all the nat geog s in this latest haul there s a may 2012 one with a couple of acw themed pieces one of these concerns re enactors and that s interesting in its own right but the one that really caught my eye was about the specials it s kind of funny to think that around the same time i was obsessively searching for the old 60s issues ng themselves were also fondly remembering similar aspects of the history of that conflict there a kind of pleasing low level synchronicity to it all posted by seb palmer at 08 01 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday 24 may 2022 kit build review 1 72 ho 229 pt 1 wow my first model build in absolutely aeons and this is actually already old news as i did this several months ago now just didn t get round to posting it one might ve thought with covid and lockdowns and all that that i might be doing more mini military stuff but the opposite has been the case what came to pass instead was mostly either home diy type stuff or pure r n r and then work as things slowly returned to normal it s all been kind of weird frankly most of my more recent if infrequent posts have been book reviews but even the reading has tailed off somewhat and i really do want to get back into building models and painting and basing wargaming armies i recently made a pilgrimage i actually forget when this happened now to a newly opened model shop in hinckley leicestershire it was a pretty major disappointment to be honest 1 72 wwii is my thing and land warfare more than planes the shop mcc had an incredibly small selection of 1 72 and what little wwii stuff they had i have already bought built but i didn t want the nigh on four hours travelling esp with the hyper inflated cost of the fuel to be a total waste so i wound up buying some pm 1 72 aeroplane kits pm are turkish i m not sure i ve seen never mind built a pm kit afore they re cheap and rather basic like many interested in wwii from a military history buff type perspective i find the horten brothers jet projects utterly fascinating so it was great having wanted to buy but not feeling i could afford the super detailed houkai morai kit see this post to find two pm variants i could afford i was a bit confused initially by the misnomer of the packaging which names these airframes gotha go 229 it s a bit anoraky but the proper designation is horten ho 229 gotha we re simply a firm with a bigger manufacturing capacity than the cottage industry of the hortens and their crew anyway i ve been building this model and as mentioned above it s super basic i was tempted to leave it as is but after looking into it i realised that this particular kit a v7 variant is a type that was never even actually built a two seater trainer as i looked into it and thought about getting some reference material valiant wings do what looks to be an excellent title on it i reckon i ll get that i decided i had to detail the cockpit interior i ll do one or two other very minor things as well such as holes on the nose cones of the rocket and possibly turbine fans or slats or whatever they are not sure if i ll do the landing gear up or down but one of the chief attractions of these flying machines is their sleek looks so whichever i choose i m looking forward to doing the painting and decals etc a pretty minimal kit the decals getting started as you can see super basic as these pics attest this is a very basic kit hence deciding to jazz up the cockpit interior the instructions i ll leave this post here for now as a part one of a little series i ve already done enough to do a part two post and then the build stalled partly due to other stuff taking over partly due to a bout of illness posted by seb palmer at 10 03 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday 23 may 2022 book review pz iv normandy campaign summer 1944 dennis oliver tank craft 35 yet another excellent entry into dennis oliver s growing library of works for the tank craft series in wwii german armour this time it s that workhorse the pz iv all too often overshadowed by it s more glam brothers the panthers and tigers specifically we have here the pz iv normandy 44 which as oliver enlightens us mostly means the ausf h interestingly the tank craft series did previously publish a title on the pz iv covering the whole 1939 45 conflict i haven t seen that title but it gets a few pretty critical reviews online however back to this more specialist offering as usual with oliver we get a comprehensive and thorough treatment starting with a brief intro we get the familiar maps and timelines then we get the unit histories followed by the colour profiles 10 pages with 20 profiles plus lots of other little pics details and model showcase then info on models and after market stuff wrapping up with technical details and modifications the unit composition diagrams are given in a slightly different manner from other oliver books right at the end after two pages of tables detailing the production and allocation of these afvs i m always somewhat dumbfounded by the degree of detail oliver goes into it s all a bit much for my ageing noggin to really take in but i do find it fascinating so far panzers iii and iv are very under represented un the tank craft series compared to the panthers and tigers so not only is this a great addition to this series but i hope it s the first in a series that redresses that imbalance great stuff posted by seb palmer at 21 09 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest book review panther eastern front summer 1943 dennis oliver tank craft 34 i m extremely lucky inasmuch as i ve got this as a free review copy i mention this mainly because if i had to buy all these books their sheer quantity would most likely exclude me from being able to do so this is as oliver himself says the fifth title on panther tanks in the ever growing tank craft series for me in dennis oliver p s have found a very capable and impressive contributor he s very thorough and systematic which gives his titles a kind of consistency lacking in some of the books in these series by other authors experts anyway to the particular book in hand after a brief introduction to his subject oliver presents the overall situation in a chapter titled the eastern front 1943 via a map and a four page timeline style synopsis then there s a larger chunk devoted to the units 12 in all issued with panthers on the ostfront as well as giving concise unit histories for the period this section includes a two page diagram giving a visual representation of panzer abteilungs 51 and 52 then we have the colour profiles aka camouflage and markings and a selection of beautifully built models in the model showcase section 24 panthers are profiled in the camouflage and markings section 16 in full side views and eight via turret only views there are three 1 35 and one 1 48 models in the showcase chapter i always want to see a 1 72 example as that s my favoured scale these are the two most colourful and visually beguiling chapters modelling products gives a pretty thorough ove...