War Fiction

I assume that many people who enjoy reading military history may enjoy reading war novels, too. Of course, there is a wide range of these, from paperback adventure series to the most literary type of novels. My lean is towards the latter, although “middlebrow” war novels also command my respect, and there were MANY of those that emanated from World War II in particular.

Two World War II novels that I think are exceptional are Harry Brown’s A Walk in the Sun, which was adapted into a well-known film, and Peter Bowman’s Beach Red, which is written in verse form, quite original in technique.

I have just finished Alan Furst's Dark Voyage. It is the story of a - nominally neutral - Dutch tramp steamer in the early years of WW2 that finds itself enlisted into Allied special ops.

I have read, and enjoyed, one or two of his before but this struck me as particularly good.

>2 abbottthomas: This is not the first time I have seen Furst mentioned admiringly, so I must give his work a try sometime. I notice that Dark Shadow, which would appeal to me for its nautical aspect, is part of a 15-volume sequence!

I've greatly enjoyed reading the fictional Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, a total of 22 novels set in the Napoleonic Wars. Cornwell also wrote a non-fiction account of the Battle of Waterloo, Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles, which is one of the clearest and most readable accounts of that battle that I have ever read. He is a historian, and his novels reflect a great deal of real history.

>4 John5918: Another author I have heard good things about, but have yet to read.

It only took me a couple of days to rip through A Walk in the Sun by Harry Brown, a short but very well-written novel about a company of American soldiers taking part in the invasion of Italy during World War Two. Most of the folks here have probably already read this novel, or at least seen the movie of the same name based on it. I gave it 4 1/2 stars with a half-star knocked off only by what I sometimes found to be Brown's over-reliance on banter between the soldiers. A small quibble, though.

I recommend anything by Alan Furst. His WW2 fiction is outstanding.

On a more lighthearted note "Biggles" ... some of the language is hilarious from a 21st century perspective! Currently on a nostalgia trip after stumbling across copies of Biggles fails to return and Biggles follows on.

Staying lighthearted, George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman series frequently has the "hero" smack dab in the middle of wars. Funny and historically accurate, including the appalling opinions, language and behavior of Flashman ( who gleefully and its he is a coward and a bounder).

>8 Bushwhacked:

That takes me back to my childhood, when I probably read every Biggles book that there was! I reread a few recently. Dated, but still fun, and definitely nostalgic. W E Johns, who was himself a World War I pilot, also wrote a parallel series for girls, about "Worrals", a fictitious WAAF officer.

>9 wbf2nd:

And Flashman is brilliant. Fraser also wrote an excellent non-fiction account of his own World War II experience in Burma, Quartered Safe Out Here.

>9 wbf2nd: I was going to also mention Flashman... I have read the whole series and some of the individual books multiple times!

>10 John5918: Also by George McDonald Fraser are his "McAuslan" books, a fictionalised account of McDonald Fraser's service in the immediate post war British army as a young subaltern in the Gordon Highlanders. There are three volumes The General Danced at Dawn, McAuslan in the Rough and The Sheikh and the Dustbin. You can get all three together in The Complete McAuslan which is the volume I have. Absolutely hilarious and highly recommended. Up there with Quartered Safe Out Here which is on my shortlist of best Second Word War memoirs.

>12 Bushwhacked:

Thanks for the McAuslan recommendation. I have now received The Complete McAuslan on my Kindle and look forward to reading it.

>13 John5918: I really hope you enjoy it!

Just finished Exocet, Jack Higgins 1983 novel whereby his publishers instruct him to cash in on the recently concluded Falklands War.

The plot centres on Argentina’s attempt to obtain more Exocet missiles during the height of the Falklands War. Throughout the novel, this plotline routinely plays second fiddle to a bizarre love triangle between bad boy Major Anthony Villiers SAS, his ex-wife poor little rich girl Gabrielle Legrand, and dashing aristocratic Argentine fighter pilot Colonel Raul Montera.

The easily led Argentinians are manipulated at every turn by the Soviets for their own ends, and the story climaxes at a secret missile test facility off the coast of France with our SAS hero leading a motley collection of missile technicians against the foe, once again proving the value of one’s schoolboy French lessons. Naturally the Gallic intelligence services remain completely oblivious to the drama unfolding under their noses in their own country and play little part in the story, British intelligence, personified by the affable yet omniscient Brigadier Ferguson, having declined to involve them until it is too late.

During the course of the novel between the moments of action and emotional angst, the protagonists manage to light so many cigarettes and imbibe so many top-shelf drinks it is amazing the Reader doesn’t come away with emphysema and a bad liver. For good measure, the novel includes separate cameo appearances by both Her Majesty The Queen and the Iron Lady herself. ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ indeed!

Finally, I am sure my impulse purchase of this novel at a second-hand bookstall in Tyabb for $8 was in no way connected to the dust jacket photo of a gold necklace Exocet missile seductively draped over a well-tanned bosom…

>15 Bushwhacked: Yours is possibly the most enjoyable review I've read in many a month ...

>16 PocheFamily: Thanks, I couldn't help myself, it was so full of cliches to the point of hilarity... I just couldn't take it seriously!

I can remember being gifted The Berkut by Joseph Heywood back in the 80s and it was one of the most engaging chase novels I ever read, set in the dying days of WWII with a German special operations team trying to smuggle Hitler out of Europe, being pursued by an NKVD team.

Not sure why the author felt the need to add in an American SOE operative who stumbles across the whole thing at the end, except that had it been made into a film the role would have been perfect for Joe Don Baker (who was at his best at the time of reading in the British Drama 'Edge of Darkness'

Cheers

Just finished re-reading El Sid by Chris Haslam. It's an excellent novel about Sidney, an elderly Englishman who served in the International Brigades and who knows where a hoard of stolen gold is stashed, who recruits a pair of clueless ex-cons to help him recover it. It's not strictly "war fiction", but it has frequent flashbacks to the horrors of the Spanish civil war.

What Ho Chaps?

Old Bushwhacked has just gone and found himself a brace of secondhand 1950’s edition hardcover Biggles novels for only $5 apiece, that’s what! A bargain when the inside covers still have an original pencil price of 7 shillings!

First "cab off the rank"- where’s a Tiffy when you need one? - Biggles Sweeps the Desert.

It’s 1942, and on the Allied air route between West Africa and Egypt, our machines are going missing deep in the desert. Could it be those cunning Nazis are goose-stepping about the sandy wastelands? I smell a Messerschmitt!

Biggles, along with a handpicked team of the right chaps from his squadron, flying a brace of Spits, deploy to a distant desert Oasis base to solve the mystery and restore order to our lines of communication across the shimmering sands and choking dust!

Tally Ho!

>20 Bushwhacked:

I remember that one!

Right Lads! Down to stores to pick up tropical kit then over to the MO to collect some Atabrine… we’re off to tangle with Tojo in the tropics in Biggles in the Orient. Our ‘planes are going missing between India and China, and Biggles and the members of 666 Squadron must solve the mystery! Hmmm… this plotline seems familiar!

I wish I could continue this Review in a lighthearted manner, however this is one of Biggles wartime novels, and it is very dark in places. Many men die, pointlessly, before Biggles and his team triumph over the enemy… and there is deep contemplation over needless death, for example:

'Biggles lifted the limp body out, laid it out on the ground and removed the identification disc. THOMAS GRAFTON MOORVEN, R.A.F., it read. He then took everything from the pockets – cigarette case, wallet, personal letters, some snapshots and some loose coins – and having made a little bundle of them in the handkerchief, put it to one side. This done, he paused to mop his face, for the heat was stifling. It may have been anger that surged through him, causing his fingers to tremble, that made the heat seem worse that it really was. Accustomed though he was to war, and death, there was something poignant about this particular tragedy that moved him strangely, making his eyes moist and bringing a lump to his throat. After months of training and eager anticipation the boy had travelled thousands of miles without firing a shot. He had not even seen the weapon that killed him, the weapon that had struck him down. Fully aware of the risks he was taking he had gone out willingly to seek the thing that had killed his comrades, only to meet the same fate, to die alone in the eternal solitude of a tropic forest. There would be no reward, no decoration for valour. Those at home would not even know how he died. This, thought Biggles, as he stood looking down at the waxen features, was not war. It was murder – and murder called for vengeance. His hand, he decided, would exact retribution, if the power were granted him. He drew a deep breath and set about the task for which he descended…'

I doubt it’s the sort of thing they would serve up to adolescent boys these days. Then again, apart from what their 'smart' phone slops out to them they don’t appear to read much anyway, which is a shame. 'Swipe Right...'

'As the momentous words 'England is, now therefore, in a state of war with Germany' came sombrely over the radio, Major James Bigglesworth, DSO, better known as Biggles, switched off the instrument turned as faced his friends, Captain the Honourable Algernon Lacy, MC, and 'Ginger' Hebblethwaite. There was a peculiar smile on his face'. Thus begins Biggles in the Baltic...

From there, boys and girls, we are thrust headlong into Biggles first book set in the Second World War... and a rather odd book it is as well. Our flying heroes appear not to be in the RAF at this point and report to military intelligence. They are immediately dispatched to a secret island base in the Baltic from which they fly a series of barely believable missions in high performance floatplanes against the Germans, in which they destroy a train tunnel, ammunition depots, sink two destroyers, one submarine and an ocean liner, as well as steal secret German codes and also the latest German flying boat!

First published in 1940, the realities of war were clearly yet to set in!

>23 Bushwhacked: Too much fun! I have heard of Biggle, but never managed to actually encounter any Biggles books.

>24 wbf2nd: I don't know how popular Biggles was in the 'States, but postwar Australia he was a boy's staple. I was given a batch of miscellaneous secondhand Biggles back in the '70's when I was a kid. I no longer have those, but in recent times I have begun to pick them again up fairly cheaply second hand. Biggles started out in the Great War, however most of the books span the interwar, Second World War and Postwar. Be warned - they vary greatly in quality and readability. My two all-time favourites are Biggles Fails to Return and Biggles Follows On.

>25 Bushwhacked:

Very popular in UK in my younger days. As boys I don't think we really noticed that Biggles barely appeared to age between World War I and relatively recent post-World War II days!

>26 John5918: Funny you should say that... I was having a similar discussion the other day with a mate of mine who's also a Biggles fan. We figured if Biggles was born in the late 1890's he could have served in the Great War and still would only have been in his '40's in the Second World War, but perhaps a bit long in the tooth to be flying Spitfires!

I have come across the occasional biography or memoir of aviators who started out in bi-planes and kept flying to the early days of jets.

Just finished The Complete McAuslan, an excellent trilogy about the life of a young subaltern in the immediate post-war army, and the Scottish soldiers under his command. Fiction, but closely based on George MacDonald Fraser's own experience.

>28 John5918: The McAuslan books severely tested my understanding of the English language in places when I first read them many years ago, but they are among my favourite books!