+1. D'Este's book is fantastic.Originally Posted by Granite_State
+1. D'Este's book is fantastic.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
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A Soldier's Tale: The Bloody Road to Jerusalem by Uri Avnery.
This book unites two classic works on the War of 1948, first published in 1949 and 1950 and adds an introduction and some commentary.
The first book, 'In the Fields of the Philistines' was a huge success. Still today it feels fresh and captive, pulling you sometimes right into the actions and giving you the impression of looking out of the eyes of somebody else. The style is powerful and able to paint memorable and fitting pictures for the mind. The author later explained how the book was crafted.
He was involved in many important battles during the war, first around the road to Jeruslam and later in the South and becomes a member of the famous Samson's foxes. Mounted on Jeeps, perhaps influenced by the SAS experience in North Africa, the small unit is highly influential because it is a rare combination of mobility and firepower. Some themes become a bit repetitive, like the conflict between front line troops and the 'shirkers' back home and his view about politicians. He sounds indeed like the radical voice of the 'youth'.I wrote before the action, during the action, and after the action. When an exhausting battle was over, my comrades would lie down and snore. I picked up my pencil and paper and wrote. I wrote on the ground, in the trenches, and on the hood of a jeep. I wrote in the canteen surrounded by hundreds of noisy comrades and I wrote in bed at night.
I wasn’t writing a diary. A diary is a dialogue with yourself, a record of your most intimate thoughts. But my articles were meant to be published. I knew they would appear the next day in black and white in the newspaper. All these reports appeared in the paper Yom Yom (Day by Day), the evening edition of the great Israeli daily paper Haaretz (The Land).
'The other side of the coin' was written in one go after the war and offers sometimes a stark contrast to the first book. It combines the story of his recovery at a hospital with intermitting memories, handling themes which didn't make it into the field reports. To avoid the military censorship it was tagged as literature, and it does certainly contain actions and orders which show dark sides. For example civilians get shot following orders from higher up with the intention to get others to flee and to stay away.*
All in all it offers a multifaceted view of the conflict from a soldiers eyes and ears, with acts heroic, good, curious, strange, bad or ugly.
*As Ariel Sharon died I took a look at his life and his controversial role as leader of unit 101. Having read the book the Qibya massacre does no longer stand out that much as it is put into a bloody and murky context of other war crimes inflicted by people on both sides.
Last edited by Firn; 01-15-2014 at 07:15 PM.
... "We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates"
General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944);
Speech at the Kriegsakademie, 1935
Just finished Lawrence in Arabia. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...ence-in-arabia
My review:
The author has collected a lot of information (some of it new, a lot of it not well known) and it would have been a 5 star book if he had stuck to telling great stories; but he also wants to right historical wrongs and sell the book as some sort of "explanation" of how and why the modern Middle East became what it did. In this respect, he rarely rises above the "Guardian" level of fashionable BS; it would have been so much better if he had tried to just calmly tell us the stories without attempting to justify the sub-title (War, deceit, imperial folly and the making of the modern middle east) since this is actually NOT a book written at that level and shouldn't pretend to be one.
And dont expect this to be a good description of the long and confused war fought in that region from 1914 to 1918. Several major events are mentioned and some British defeats are described in greater detail, but almost always without any systematic description of the fronts, the opposing armies, or the bigger economic or military picture in the region (touched upon, but not systematically described, analyzed, etc.).
Still, worth reading if you want to know more about some very interesting characters (first and foremost Lawrence, but also Kurt Prufer, William Wales, Aaron Aaronson, etc) and their adventures in the region. But unless you are willing to blindly trust the author's ability to pick and choose what to highlight and what to ignore (and I would not), you cannot take this anecdote-heavy account as a balanced and accurate account of the forces at play, much less a good analysis of why things turned out the way they did.
Updated a bit to clarify a couple of things: The author has collected a lot of information (some of it new, a lot of it not well known) and it would have been a 5 star book if he had stuck to telling great stories; but he also wants to right historical wrongs and sell the book as some sort of “explanation” of how and why the modern Middle East became what it did. In this respect, he rarely rises above the “Guardian” level of fashionable BS; it would have been so much better if he had tried to just tell us the stories without attempting to justify the sub-title (War, deceit, imperial folly and the making of the modern Middle East) since this is actually NOT a book written at that level and shouldn’t pretend to be one.
And don’t expect this to be a good description of the long and confused war fought in that region from 1914 to 1918. Several major events are mentioned and some British defeats are described in greater detail, but almost always without any systematic description of the fronts, the opposing armies, or the bigger economic or military picture in the region (touched upon, but not systematically described, analyzed, etc.).
Still, worth reading if you want to know more about some very interesting characters (first and foremost Lawrence, but also Kurt Prufer, William Yale, Aaron Aaronson, etc) and their adventures in the region. But unless you are willing to blindly trust the author’s judgement in picking and choosing what to highlight and what to ignore (and I would not), you cannot take this anecdote-heavy account as a balanced and accurate account of the forces at play, much less a good analysis of why things turned out the way they did.
Some old-fashioned readers may also find his “postmodern” mean-spiritedness a bit jarring. A lot of “heroes” need to be taken down a peg, but there is an air of smug moral superiority about this author that some may find a bit off-putting.
Still, worth reading for the detailed stories alone.http://www.brownpundits.com/2014/01/...nce-in-arabia/
and my comments about Empires of the Silk Road http://www.brownpundits.com/2014/01/...the-silk-road/
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-22-2014 at 04:39 PM. Reason: correction at authors request
Correction request above - done by Moderator.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-22-2014 at 04:39 PM.
I have a book on my reading list (for class) titled Hanoi's War by Lien-Hang T. Nguyen that I will get to in a couple of weeks. I'm excited about reading this one.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
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