What Are You Currently Reading? 2016

[davidbfpo]

Four books read on a beach recently.

1) The newly published 'The First Victory: the Second World War and The East Africa Campaign' by Andrew Stewart. A good, well written book on a forgotten campaign to end Italian occupation of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), Eritrea and Somaliland (a British colony held for a short time). The victory, with Italian surrender was over-shadowed by the defeats in Greece and Crete. 'Bill' Slim was an Indian Infantry Brigadier, who was to learn about being forgotten again in Burma.

The immense logistical aspects are included and the strategic to operational issues. The lack of theatre maps is annoying, unless you are familiar with the regional geography. For example 18k trucks came overland from Broken Hill, now Kabwe in Zambia; the half-way point from the factory in South Africa, in the 2,900 mile journey to Nairobi.

It was not an easy victory, notably with the bitter fighting @ Keren, a mountainous fortified position. Enigma helped, but the Italians consistently located Allied formations using SIGINT.

No reviews yet on Amazon:https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Victo...frica+campaign