Martin Windrow (1944–2025)
Author of The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam
About the Author
Martin Windrow is an Associate of the Royal Historical Society and of the Foreign Legion Association of Great Britain.
Series
Works by Martin Windrow
Our Friends Beneath the Sands: The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests 1870-1935 (2010) 56 copies, 1 review
A Concise Dictionary of Military Biography: The Careers and Campaigns of 200 of the Most Important Military Leaders (1975) 29 copies
Luftwaffe colour schemes and markings 1935-45 (Arco-Aircam aviation series, no. 25 and 26) (1971) — Author — 28 copies
Aircraft profiles 169-204 1 copy
Aircraft in Profile Volume 6 1 copy
Aircraft Profiles 3 1 copy
Aircraft profiles 223-240 1 copy
Aircraft profiles 205-222 1 copy
Aircraft Profiles 7 1 copy
Waffen SS 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Windrow, Martin Clive
- Birthdate
- 1944
- Date of death
- 2025
- Gender
- male
- Short biography
- Martin Windrow is a military historian, author,and the long-time military editor of Osprey Publishing. He is an Associate of the Royal Historical Society and of the Foreign Legion Association of Great Britain. He lives in East Sussex.
He is the author of the very successful "Men-at-Arms 300: French Foreign Legion since 1945," "Men-at-Arms 322: The French War Indochina War 1946-54" and the critically acclaimed "The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam."
Martin Windrow was born in 1944 and educated at Wellington College. Since the 1970s he has worked in book publishing as a commissioning and art editor specializing in military and aviation history.
https://speakerpedia.com/speakers/mart... - Nationality
- UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- UK
Members
Reviews
Delightful memoir in breezy, casual style. The author, a military historian, has fashioned a narrative about his adopting an owl as a pet. He fails to raise Wellington, a Little Owl, but is very successful in raising Mumble, a female Tawny Owl. She comes to him as a weeks'-old fledgling and they bond from the first. Her life with the author is described and she has a definite personality. Her favorite perches are the lintel of a door and a bust of Germanicus, NOT Julius. She's a really show more intelligent bird and a "quick study". Losing then recovering her leads the author to give us facts on Tawnies: life in the wild, sharp senses, life cycle.
Some humorous and poignant episodes are related, e.g. Mumble in the author's den and her reaction to his typewriter WHILE he's typing. This made me chuckle. She reacts to guests, an "owl-sitter", a visit to farm of author's brother in Kent, other owls and pigeons she sees through the glass of his apartment window. The anatomy of a generic Tawny switching to Mumble then how she spends her day. The drawing of an owl skeleton is given on page 167: it's quite different from the fluffy, rotund bird that we see!
Their move to Sussex in the country stimulates Mumble more because of her outdoor aviary. The author describes her typical year from notes in his journal. The summertime moulting is the big event each year, also mood and psychological changes. Finally Mumble dies, after fifteen years--lifetime in the wild is maybe five. The author to this day has wonderful memories of their life together.
Fascinating book between this fun memoir and the frequent nuggets of information on the Tawny Owl. Line drawings and photos added another dimension. Highly recommended. show less
Some humorous and poignant episodes are related, e.g. Mumble in the author's den and her reaction to his typewriter WHILE he's typing. This made me chuckle. She reacts to guests, an "owl-sitter", a visit to farm of author's brother in Kent, other owls and pigeons she sees through the glass of his apartment window. The anatomy of a generic Tawny switching to Mumble then how she spends her day. The drawing of an owl skeleton is given on page 167: it's quite different from the fluffy, rotund bird that we see!
Their move to Sussex in the country stimulates Mumble more because of her outdoor aviary. The author describes her typical year from notes in his journal. The summertime moulting is the big event each year, also mood and psychological changes. Finally Mumble dies, after fifteen years--lifetime in the wild is maybe five. The author to this day has wonderful memories of their life together.
Fascinating book between this fun memoir and the frequent nuggets of information on the Tawny Owl. Line drawings and photos added another dimension. Highly recommended. show less
I found this to be a really excellent account of the climax of the French effort to retain their empire in Southeast Asia. The key attraction for those who have already read the classic accounts of the battle, but who don't read French, being the inclusion of the French secondary literature that has grown over time. As it is, about half the work is devoted to the campaign proper, with the remainder spent examining the path to Dien Bien Phu and the denouement.
Be that as it may, Windrow's show more examination of the larger situation makes clear the battle's intended purpose as only a part of the last great effort to regain some initiative in a deteriorating situation. However, as much as theater commander Henri Navarre may have seen Operation Castor as an ultimately expendable roll of the die, the real damning criticism has to be that there was no practical 'Plan B' when it rapidly became obvious that the assumptions behind the plan were largely invalid. This is particularly after the battle caught the imagination of the French public, making the defeat a moral failure, not just an operational setback.
In the end you can call Dien Bien Phu another victim of the disease of air power, as the French never really had the aviation assets to make the concept work; Windrow's close examination of how the performance of French aviation played out in practice is another key attraction here. The mediocre-to-bad show put up by the French bomber force (with numbers to back it up) is a particular revelation. On that note, Windrow is also dubious about whether the eleventh-hour application of American air power (whether conventional or nuclear) would have done anything for the actual garrison, apart from putting it out of its misery.
There is very little that I find at fault with in this account, but it should be noted that Windrow is a great admirer of the French colonial army (particularly the Foreign Legion) that fought to collapse, and some might find that he gives these men too much benefit of the doubt in a cause that was of ambiguous value at best. Would that the French government of 1945 have been more hard-headed about the real prospects of their empire. show less
Be that as it may, Windrow's show more examination of the larger situation makes clear the battle's intended purpose as only a part of the last great effort to regain some initiative in a deteriorating situation. However, as much as theater commander Henri Navarre may have seen Operation Castor as an ultimately expendable roll of the die, the real damning criticism has to be that there was no practical 'Plan B' when it rapidly became obvious that the assumptions behind the plan were largely invalid. This is particularly after the battle caught the imagination of the French public, making the defeat a moral failure, not just an operational setback.
In the end you can call Dien Bien Phu another victim of the disease of air power, as the French never really had the aviation assets to make the concept work; Windrow's close examination of how the performance of French aviation played out in practice is another key attraction here. The mediocre-to-bad show put up by the French bomber force (with numbers to back it up) is a particular revelation. On that note, Windrow is also dubious about whether the eleventh-hour application of American air power (whether conventional or nuclear) would have done anything for the actual garrison, apart from putting it out of its misery.
There is very little that I find at fault with in this account, but it should be noted that Windrow is a great admirer of the French colonial army (particularly the Foreign Legion) that fought to collapse, and some might find that he gives these men too much benefit of the doubt in a cause that was of ambiguous value at best. Would that the French government of 1945 have been more hard-headed about the real prospects of their empire. show less
Our Friends Beneath the Sands: The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests 1870 - 1935 by Martin Windrow
Very, very in depth history, but perhaps surprisingly, not really focused on the French Foreign Legion. It's more about the history of French colonial military operations, with an emphasis on those in which the Legion were involved. Unfortunately, it's a bit dull at times, especially when dealing with the political aspects. Also it maintains a "50,000 foot" view of many of the operations which makes it dry as well. Not as well written and balanced as his "The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and show more the French Defeat in Vietnam". Still, overall it's a pretty good book, but really aimed at the more serious reader. show less
The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cassell Military Paperbacks) by Martin Windrow
Martin Windrow has written a tedious, one-sided battle history of Dien Bien Phu, the engagement that marked the defeat of France in the First Indochina War. Worse, he has spent some 750 plus pages in composing a book without a central thesis. You sort of get the idea that, yes, the French did a little better than the popular view of history presents. And you get an idea of the failure of French air support to carry through their mission. (They were ill equipped, understaffed, and poorly show more trained.) Too, there is much information about the composition of French forces at Dien Bien Phu, which largely included colonial troops and legionnaires. But in the end, it reads like one giant footnote, with lists about lists about lists. Names pop up by the score and then disappear entirely from the narrative. At the end, it is as if the reader has already conducted his own death march.
The most severe fault with The Last Valley, however, lies with its one-sided view of the battle. There is nothing wrong and in fact it can be quite informative to take a sympathetic perspective from the French point of view. But when discussing the battle, then, it becomes like a description of one side of a chess match. Only in the broadest terms is the other side discussed, which leaves the French movements in isolation and often without meaning. Very few of the Viet Minh are introduced and discussed--and those who are mentioned are primarily written up at the book's beginning. And the source material for the Viet Minh side also seems sparse.
But the worst fault I found was with the one-sided view of things within the French camp. After doing a fairly good job of describing the order of battle, which includes Vietnamese and West African colonial troops, Moroccans, Algerians, and legionnaires from Europe, Windrow then omits their individual stories. Those are mainly reserved for French officers, NCOs, and rankers. Along with the poor layout of the maps in the book (they are all collected at the beginning), the paucity of photographs, and the lack of a timeline, the failure to construct a meaningful thesis and storyline leaves this a dry read.
Overall, the result is disappointing. But there is information of worth. It's just a slog to get to it. It is no excuse to claim that this type history is intrinsically tedious. Compare The Last Valley, for example, with Mark Bowden's Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. Bowden and Windrom both deal with the major battles and turning points of the respective Indochinese wars under their discussion. And neither are professional historians. And both books were written just about fifty years after their battles took place. But Bowden knows how to construct a narrative and he is at pains to give as much of a voice to both sides as possible. You come away from Hue 1968 with a clear image of what happened, compared to the dull gray confusion that still surrounds The Last Valley at its conclusion.
The definitive work on Dien Bien Phu, I think, is yet to be written. show less
The most severe fault with The Last Valley, however, lies with its one-sided view of the battle. There is nothing wrong and in fact it can be quite informative to take a sympathetic perspective from the French point of view. But when discussing the battle, then, it becomes like a description of one side of a chess match. Only in the broadest terms is the other side discussed, which leaves the French movements in isolation and often without meaning. Very few of the Viet Minh are introduced and discussed--and those who are mentioned are primarily written up at the book's beginning. And the source material for the Viet Minh side also seems sparse.
But the worst fault I found was with the one-sided view of things within the French camp. After doing a fairly good job of describing the order of battle, which includes Vietnamese and West African colonial troops, Moroccans, Algerians, and legionnaires from Europe, Windrow then omits their individual stories. Those are mainly reserved for French officers, NCOs, and rankers. Along with the poor layout of the maps in the book (they are all collected at the beginning), the paucity of photographs, and the lack of a timeline, the failure to construct a meaningful thesis and storyline leaves this a dry read.
Overall, the result is disappointing. But there is information of worth. It's just a slog to get to it. It is no excuse to claim that this type history is intrinsically tedious. Compare The Last Valley, for example, with Mark Bowden's Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. Bowden and Windrom both deal with the major battles and turning points of the respective Indochinese wars under their discussion. And neither are professional historians. And both books were written just about fifty years after their battles took place. But Bowden knows how to construct a narrative and he is at pains to give as much of a voice to both sides as possible. You come away from Hue 1968 with a clear image of what happened, compared to the dull gray confusion that still surrounds The Last Valley at its conclusion.
The definitive work on Dien Bien Phu, I think, is yet to be written. show less
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