by RNS | Jun 18, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Gerry Van Tonder, Korean War Chinese Invasion October 1950 – March 1951 (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In October 1950, the CIA reported to President Truman that there was little likelihood of a Chinese invasion of North Korea. They were very wrong. A month later, a tsunami of Chinese soldiers had poured across the border with the aim of extinguishing the United Nations forces, and they nearly succeeded. In his continuing series on the Korean War, Gerry Van Tonder brings us that story.
Van Tonder begins with a survey of the newly constituted Chinese army. This was a massive organization, full of veterans from the Chinese Civil War, though logistically deficient. And far from their tactics being mindless human waves, the Chinese used the Korean terrain to their tactical advantage to infiltrate and undermine their enemy. The Chinese presence was soon felt by the geographically divided UN forces as they advanced north. The Americans quickly took to the defensive backed by British and Commonwealth forces; the Republic of Korea forces meanwhile melted away under the initial onslaught. Van Tonder places significant weight on the air war that initially favoured the Americans but became more equal with the arrival of Soviet MIG-15s into the infamous Mig Alley. It would be well into 1951, however, before the Chinese found their feet in this new age of jet warfare. Back on the ground, the vainglorious MacArthur seemed to ignore the Chinese threat and pushed towards the Yalu river in his ‘home-by-Christmas’ campaign. But the Chinese lured them forward and hit hard, sending the UN forces back in what would become a full retreat, the most famous part of which was the incredible escape of the US 1st Marine Division at the Chosin Reservoir aided in no small part by American air superiority. Van Tonder describes the subsequent evacuation of UN forces as ‘MacArthur’s Dunkirk’. Despite suffering enormous casualties, the Chinese pressed on with a new offensive into the New Year with Seoul falling on 4 January, but the UN held their lines, just. A UN counterattack recovered Seoul and solidified along the 38th Parallel, and that is where Van Tonder leaves this book to begin his final volume in the series.
Like the other volumes in this series, Chinese Invasion is mainly concerned with operational matters peppered with lower level experiential stories to enliven the narrative. The latter is Van Tonder’s strength while for the larger history it is sometimes confusing when Van Tonder skips back and forward across the chronology to highlight different aspects of the fighting. I also found the inclusion of snippets from British newspapers an odd source when discussing American operations. Nevertheless, readers attracted to the Korean War will no doubt find this book interesting and a useful addition to their collection.
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by RNS | Jun 15, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Geoffrey Pimm, The Violent Abuse of Women in 17th and 18th Century Britain (Pen & Sword, 2019)
In The Violent Abuse of Women in 17th and 18th Century Britain, Pimm argues that the two centuries he covers were periods of profound change between the mediaeval and modern worlds. For women, however, that transition into an ‘enlightened’ future barely made a dent in their standing and treatment at the hands of the patriarchy: women were the ‘weaker vessel’ and easily influenced by the devil; they had few rights under a misogynistic law and little recourse to a gentler society. That sets the tone for Pimm’s catalogue of abuse directed against women at all levels of British society. It is a sometimes distressing read, but also fascinating.
Violence began at home where the man ruled over his wife and household almost without limits. That extended to children and servants. Sexual violence was a pronounced component of that abuse at one end of the spectrum, while libel and slander caused damage at the other end. Violence also underpinned many clandestine marriages and abductions. All of this was conducted under a lax legal system for perpetrators. But the legal system itself sanctioned extreme cruelty. Women sentenced to prison for even the most minor misdemeanours, including cross-dressing, were held in disgusting conditions, but they were also routinely whipped, often publicly in front of a crowd, some of whom attended for erotic satisfaction, and not just men. Branding and maiming also occurred as did the scold, a bracket placed round the head of female gossips and blasphemers. The latter might also be subject to ducking in the village pond or a river, or a whipping, and sometimes worse – Quakers had a particularly bad time at the hands of legally sanctioned religious fanaticism. The worst legal punishment for women was execution by burning, which was replaced by hanging under the notorious Bloody Code. Others were transported to the colonies where if anything conditions were worse than prisons. Women convicted of lesser offences might suffer the public pillory where they might endure anything from indignity to life-threatening violence. Being exposed in a cage was, however, on the way out in the 18th Century, though it was still used. Pimm concludes with the growing reform movement in the 19th Century that led to the end of these sustained levels of violence against women. Four appendices follow, providing more detail on some specific cases and a list of whipping offences in Jamaica from 1858, long after the Mother Country had stopped.
Pimm’s absorbing survey contains twenty chapters, which is disappointing in that there were so many facets to violent abuse against women. That might explain Pimm’s short chapter on the almost exclusively female crime of witchcraft, however, while I am not sure the Whipping Tom stories of obviously criminal behaviour quite fit into this book; they could have been excised to make more room elsewhere for deeper analysis. Pimm also derives many accounts directly from the sources, including some surprising perpetrators such as James Boswell, Jonathan Swift, and especially Samuel Pepys. Moreover, Pimm brings out the obvious patriarchal side to this story, but also the hypocritical class aspects, and he mentions race where applicable, all of which points to violence as an instrument of planned social control, though Pimm swerves round that conclusion. Nevertheless, Pimm has added to our knowledge of women during that transitional era in an enlightening but often uncomfortable read. 8/10
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by RNS | Jun 14, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Ian Baxter, The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad (Pen & Sword, 2020)
Pen & Sword’s Images of War series continues to expand in interesting directions. Ian Baxter’s The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad returns us to the Eastern Front during World War II in a volume that is somewhat problematic but still valuable.
After a brief survey of the background that brought Paulus and his 6th Army into the 1942 campaign on the Eastern Front, Baxter begins his narrative with the operations leading to the disaster at Stalingrad. The 6th Army started east of Kharkov and advanced steadily, pushing the Soviets back across the steppes from the Don to the Volga. There the smooth progress ended in attritional street warfare that cost both sides dearly, but the Germans could not afford their losses. The Soviet offensive around the city in November, coincided with the onset of Winter, and the 6th Army was soon surrounded. A relief force in December failed to get through. Paulus fought on until the Soviets literally fought their way to his door. A useful appendix outlining the Orders of Battle concludes Baxter’s book.
To make these books work, the accompanying photographs have to add to the narrative as well as telling stories in themselves. Baxter gets that aspect right for the most part with an excellent selection of photographs depicting German soldiers, with his captions highlighting details we otherwise might miss. The images begin with the Germans advancing in high spirits and well-resourced. Then we see more smoke on the horizon, and more Soviet POWs. The problem is that it takes a long time for Baxter to get his 6th Army into Stalingrad – the first snow photograph is on page 114 out of 150 – and the army’s destruction is narrated with photographs for only eleven pages at the end; for an army that had endured 199 days of ‘brutal combat’ that coverage seems very condensed. It is as if Baxter has baulked at the final fence, and it is not clear why he did so given the title of this book. For well-annotated images of the German advance into the Soviet Union, this is a very good book; but those interested in the plight of the 6th Army at Stalingrad could be very disappointed. 6/10
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by RNS | Jun 12, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
The Hardest Slog
Simon Forty, Allied Armies in Sicily and Italy 1943-1945 (Pen & Sword, 2019)
In Allied Armies in Sicily and Italy 1943-1945, Simon Forty reminds us that mountainous Italy with its fickle environment is no place to fight a war. But the polyglot Allied forces did so anyway, slogging up the peninsula for nearly two years most of it against a redoubtable and nimble German army and the elements. Forty takes us on that journey in this welcome addition to Pen & Sword’s Images of War series.
After an overview of the Italian campaign, Forty begins his narrative with the invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky, in July 1943. The successful campaign lasted six weeks and taught the Allies many lessons, but the German army mostly slipped away to fight on the mainland. The Allies barely paused for breath before invading the peninsula in a three-pronged attack that almost ended in disaster. They pushed inexorably on, however, as the Germans withdrew behind carefully established defensive lines. Forty pauses at the infamous Battle of Monte Cassino and the German Gustav Line, which held up the Allied advance at great cost. Then came the flawed flanking landings at Anzio and the unnecessary progress to Rome. The advance north began again, tying down German troops, although the Allies did not have the strength to strike the decisive blow. In the end, both sides ran out of war to fight with the German surrender in May 1945.
The Images of War books rely heavily on photographs accompanying the text to tell a more complete story. Forty gets the balance right in this edition, particularly in showing the nature of the terrain and the conditions under which the campaign was fought. The photos also make it clear the Allies did not have it all their own way. Both the photos and the text give due weight to the multinational force on the Allied side with not just the British Commonwealth forces and Americans, but Poles, Greeks, Brazilians, and other contingents playing their part. The Italian partisans too are given their credit for weakening the Germans behind the lines at such high risk to the civilian population. There is a bit of an imbalance in Forty’s account with Sicily receiving a bit too much emphasis, but that is a minor quibble in what is a very useful book from the Images of War stable. 8/10
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by RNS | May 30, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Michael Green, United States Marine Corps in Vietnam (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In the latest of Pen & Sword’s Images of War series, Michael Green surveys the actions of the United States Marine Corps through the Vietnam War. He does this in four chapters, creating a narrative arc familiar to most readers of the war: the USMC were the first American forces to arrive as a fighting force in 1965; their numbers increased as the war escalated; they were a pivotal force in the defining year of 1968; and the Marines fought through to the end in 1975 but large-scale operations ended much earlier. Along the way, Green describes the major actions involving the Marines, how they were organized, and the problems they faced, of which there were too many to list here, but not the least of which was a determined and elusive enemy that held most of the cards except supporting firepower. He concludes his chapters with brief assessments of that phase of the war, and for the most part it is not pretty reading for Americans.
The backbone of the Images of War books are the photographs, which in United States Marine Corps in Vietnam include colour plates. There are, as you might expect, many pictures of Marines in action in all their different roles with the combat photos, particularly from Hue and Khe Sanh, being the most impactful. Marine artillery and support weapons are fully described, and USMC warplanes are given due prominence. Green also includes photos of the enemy and their equipment, highlighting the disparities in resources available to the VC. Every photo tells a story, but so too does comparing photos. For example, compare the photographs of exhausted marines with the determined faces of their native enemies. For all the potent firepower available to the Marines, how much did all that matter when face to face with their enemies in their environment? Overall, the photos left me with the impression that the USMC was not designed for the Vietnam War, and the text confirms how they struggled to adapt to those unfamiliar conditions.
Green makes no great claims for this book, which is refreshingly honest, but the survey he has produced is illuminating while achieving what all introductory books should do: satisfy those who just need to know enough but prompt questions that demand further reading for those who want to know more. Green’s text is structured in short well-defined passages with sub-headings to help guide the reader along. There is perhaps an unavoidable emphasis on numbers and statistics, especially the body counts that American commanders during Vietnam took as a sign of winning, but crucially their enemy did not. Setting that aside, United States Marine Corps in Vietnam is a solid addition to the series and well worth a read. 8/10.
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by RNS | May 29, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Bernard Edwards, From Hunter to Hunted The U-Boat War in the Atlantic 1939-1943 (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In August 1939, Kommodore Karl Dönitz dispatched his U-boats out into the Atlantic in anticipation of a war just over the horizon. The U-38 sank the British merchant ship Manmar on 6 September with gunfire and torpedoes. Already, however, U-48, the most successful U-boat of the war, had opened her account, sinking the Royal Sceptre. Thus begins Bernard Edwards’ narrative of U-boat encounters from 1939 to May 1943 told from both sides as separate but connected case studies.
Combat in the early days of the war was very much cat-and-mouse between submarine and ship, as with the U-48 and the Heronspool. Heronspool lost that one, but her sister ship Stonepool became a mouse that roared, helping take out U-42 – Stonepool would later fall victim to a U-boat torpedo. In those opening engagements, ships were challenged with gunfire from the U-boat’ deck-gun then raked if they failed to stop. The crews were then allowed to abandon ship before a torpedo sent it to the bottom. Hitler’s directive to take the shackles off the U-boats in October 1939, however, ended any notions of further chivalry. As the fighting intensified, the convoy system evolved for merchant ships, but that was met with the ‘wolf pack’ tactics of the U-boats.
By the end of 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic was reaching its zenith, argues Edwards, with the Germans ascendant. In March 1943, U-boats straddled the shipping lanes like spiders waiting for sluggish flies. Convoy SC 122 with two other convoys sailed that month into the teeth of two storms, one from the weather, the other caused by U-boats: twenty-two ships were lost. The tide began to turn in April 1943, however, with the battle for convoy ONS5 that rolled across the Atlantic in a desperate struggle of ships, warships, warplanes, and U-boats. The Germans came off much worse in the long run, so that when ONS5 docked in Halifax on 12 May, the Germans had lost six U-boats and another seven severely damaged, 345 valuable crewmen had also been killed. The Germans never recovered from what they called Black May.
From Hunter to Hunted is an illuminating read for a theatre of World War II that is too often described in statistics and technical jargon. Edwards has the story-telling flourishes of a man well used to being at sea. He describes the actions in detail, while adding just enough background information to humanize the conflict without disrupting the narrative, though a final polish might have removed some unfortunate repetition. This book works well as a gateway book into the world of the U-boats for those with a passing interest or are daunted by bigger and more technical works. Those already familiar with U-boats will enjoy the stories in From Hunter to Hunted, and sometimes that is all you need from a book.
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