Greenhill Books, 1994, 264 (+ xiv) p

Despite its title this book is not about the German aeroplanes of the First World War but rather the pilots who flew them. When originally published in 1931 it was the first book in English to deal with the German airmen of the time. Many of those names were familiar to me from other books on the war in the air (Quentin Reynolds’s They Fought For The Sky, Alexander McKee’s The Friendless Sky) but these mainly dealt with the Western Front. Here, as well as names such as Max Immelman, Oswald Boelcke, the Richthofen brothers, Werner Voss, Ernst Udet and Herman Göring, coverage is also given to other war theatres: Gunther Plüschow’s exploits in the far East, flying out of Tsingtao till it fell to the Japanese, Leutnant v Eschwege – dubbed “The Eagle of the Ægean Sea” by his Bulgarian Allies – whose base was Drama in Macedonia, “odd jobs” on the Eastern Front blowing up Russian supply railway lines, and in the Sinai doing the same to railways and aqueducts. These latter adventures at times read almost like Biggles stories, though not fiction and told from the opposite side.

The book is prefaced by an introduction (from 1994) by Norman Franks giving some historical context and two lists; pilots who achieved a “score” of 30 or more and all who were awarded the “Pour le Mérite” (“the Blue Max.”) It also has an odd typographical quirk where every semi-colon is preceded by a space ; as here. Was this a 1930s standard?

Since 1931 some of the incidents have been illuminated by more recent research. For instance, the famous “Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen, is now thought to have been killed by a bullet fired by an infantryman rather than Captain Roy Brown.

‘Vigilant’ (Claud W Sykes) when dealing with the Western Front has an irritating habit of referring to “English” aeroplanes or pilots when “British” would be more accurate but this is probably the term the Germans used and he is telling the tales from the German viewpoint. He is clearly much taken with the valour and chivalry of fliers on both sides and takes pains to point out that the German air force kept flying and fighting up to the armistice but the last sentence of his final paragraph, “Im Kreig geboren, im Kreig gestorben.* Germany has no flying Corps and we all look forward to the day when no country will need one. But a few months before we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the armistice, two Germans, setting forth from a Dominion of the British Empire, flew the Atlantic from east to west. The third member of the crew was a British subject. Germany has still a future in the air!” reads somewhat chillingly now.

*Born in the war, died in the war. This refers to the fact that the German Flying Corps did not exist as such before the war and was forced by the armistice to hand over its aeroplanes and so did not outlive it.

An article by Tom Holland in Saturday’s guardian review about the aftermath of the Roman Empire argued that there was no sudden change from classical to mediæval times, no instant forgetting, but rather a long interregnum in which the rise of Islam was an important feature.

Holland points out that the transition was all a messy business, triggering the evolution of legends of various sorts, which in Britain involved the King Arthur stories plus the evocation of elves and orcs to account for the gigantic ruins of Roman buildings. He sees Tolkien’s endeavours as an attempt to restore these myths to the culture.

The article surprisingly, to my mind, mentions Science Fiction favourably in that Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Herbert’s Dune sequence both recognised what Holland sees as the salient aspect of the transformation somewhat before it gained foothold in academe.

When I read the books it was easy to recognise that Asimov’s trilogy was modelled on the fall of the Roman Empire but it is the character of the Mule that Holland finds interesting – a Muhammad like figure with unusual powers. (That the Mule upset the apple cart of the Foundation’s “psychohistory” suggests to me a reflection of Asimov’s world-view.)

The parallels of the Dune sequence with Arab culture were of course unmistakeable even as a very young teenager. Paul Atreides (Muad’Dib) as Muhammad was at that time a step beyond me but is unmissable now. Herbert did seem to be in sympathy with Arab culture if not necessarily the religion it spawned. At the time I took his critique to be of the phenomenon of religion as a whole rather than Islam per se and I see no reason to alter it.

(The article further ponders the historical evidence surrounding the life of Muhammad, a matter on which I am not in a position to judge.)

Historically, the Roman Empire’s fall cannot be seen as anything other than significant. That authors still continue to see it as a template within which to set their stories – Holland mentions Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica as other not so rigorous examples – is testament to the endurance of its legacy.

Take a look at these historical league tables (top four only) which show when Cowdenbeath FC has won the Scottish Second Division.

Scottish League Division Two 1913-14

1 Cowdenbeath P 22 pts 31
2 Albion Rovers P 22 pts 27
3 Dundee Hibernian P 22 pts 26
4 Dunfermline Ath P 22 pts 26

In those days promotion wasn’t automatic so Cowdenbeath were in Division Two the next year. Cowdenbeath were one of three teams on equal points at the top.

Scottish League Division Two 1914-15

1 Leith Athletic P 26 pts 37
2 St Bernards P 26 pts 37
3 Cowdenbeath P 26 pts 37
4 East Stirlingshire P 26 pts 31

A three-way play-off decided the league winners. Cowdenbeath defeated Leith Athletic at East End Park and St. Bernards at Easter Road to take the title.

Scottish League Division Two 1938-39

1 Cowdenbeath P 34 pts 60
2 Alloa Athletic P 34 pts 48
3 East Fife P 34 pts 48
4 Airdrieonians P 34 pts 47

Cowdenbeath’s only other Championship was in Div 3 in 2006. Their other promotions came as runners-up, through play-offs or as a result of another club’s financial problems leading to a readjustment in the leagues.

So does anyone spot something here?

Well, I notice that every time Cowdenbeath have been Champions of a Division 2 in Scotland the UK has been involved in a major (world) war the next September.

Now take a gander at the present position in the SFL Div 2 (as of 7/2/12) :-

1 Cowdenbeath P 20 pts 41
2 Arbroath P 20 pts 39
3 Stenhousemuir P 20 pts 31
4 Dumbarton P 19 pts 28

Gulp!

Come on Arbroath!!! (And the Sons, obviously.)

Grafton, 1987, 272 p including Source Notes and Index.

*

To counteract the German surge during the famous Battle of the Bulge in the Belgian Ardennes, Allied Supreme Commander, Eisenhower, was forced to move General Patton’s troops away from a more southerly front in Alsace and along the Rhine on the border of France and Germany. This dangerously thinned the Allied forces in that area – so much so that Eisenhower ordered General Devers (in whom he apparently had little confidence) to withdraw to the Vosges in the event of being attacked. This was contrary to all US military convention which is against the giving up of ground hard won by US blood. Moreover it meant that Alsace would once more be under German control and that Alsatian city beloved by the French, Strasbourg, would for the third time in 70 years have fallen to Germany.

The Germans had foreseen most of this and, hoping to drive a wedge between the Allies, attacked here also in Unternehmen Nordwind, Operation Northwind. The resulting crisis caused a major rift between the French and US commands and poisoned French attitudes to the US for decades after. At the hint of withdrawal De Gaulle told Eisenhower that even if US troops would not defend Strasbourg French ones would. Eisenhower then threatened to withhold supplies from the French army and De Gaulle, de facto leader of France, then counter-threatened to deny the Allies transport rights across France! Partly as a result, but also because General Devers wanted to fight his ground, thousands of US troops – not to mention the French and the Germans – became casualties, in atrocious winter conditions. One of the troops involved was the most decorated US soldier of WW2 and later Hollywood film star, Audie Murphy, who won the Medal of Honor in these actions.

The author occasionally displays an animus against the French. He lays at their door the lack of withdrawal and hence the responsibility for subsequent US casualties – though the French attitude to Strasbourg in particular and Alsace in general is perfectly understandable, especially since their fall might have led to De Gaulle’s government being replaced by the communist elements of the Resistance. In the epilogue we find Whiting also blames General Leclerc’s determination to restore French military pride for the French attempt to retain their colonies in Indo-China hence the subsequent US embroilment in Vietnam, and thousands more US deaths.

As is usual with military history the text sometimes resembles an alphabet soup of Divisional nomenclature. A serious lack here is of maps. There is at the beginning of the book one map of the general area of operations but the place names are tiny. More detailed maps of parts of the overall battle would have aided comprehension of the ebb and flow.

In the end the Allied troops held out (but not without retreats, surrenders, self–inflicted wounds and even desertions along the way) and the Germans exhausted themselves against the defence, failed to hold off the counterattack and broke off, partly to send troops back to the Eastern Front.

*This is not the cover of the Grafton edition that I read. Neither was/is the cover shown on my Library Thing pages.

I suppose a seventieth anniversary is something special but perhaps it is more so when it involves an almost iconic event.

7/12/2011 marks seventy years since the Pearl Harbor attack, the event which turned relatively localised war into World War. “7^th December 1941: a date which will live in Infamy,” – FDR.

It is sobering to realise that the Second World War lasted less than four years after that. The US and UK have now had troops dying in Afghanistan for much longer than that; and in Iraq for not much less time. Not so many troops dying admittedly, but dying nonetheless.

I vaguely remember Gore Vidal saying something to the effect that the difference between Pearl Harbor and the September 11^th attack was that no-one saw the latter one coming. He had a personal reason to blame the US authorities for the war with Japan, though. His lover died in the Pacific fighting.

Pan, British Battles Series, Illustrated, 1972, 239p

My knowledge of the Spanish Armada was hazy till I read this – Drake’s (un)interrupted game of bowls, fireships at Calais, wrecks on the Irish coast. In some respects it still is hazy as Lewis makes the point that very few reliable accounts exist and a high degree of interpretation, even guesswork, is required to make sense of the several running battles that took place over the days that the Armada spent hauling up the English Channel.

The book underlines the unwieldy, and unlikely, enterprise that the Armada represented. It was compromised from the outset by financial considerations which led to the watering down of the original concept of carrying all the necessary invasion troops itself, burdened by the concomitant necessity to link up with Parma’s army in Flanders and saddled with a commander, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who did not want the job as he thought he wasn’t up to it. Yet had the Spanish landed on and taken the Isle of Wight it might have been game over. The smaller, more nimble English fleet harried them all the way up the Channel and successfully prevented this.

Lewis is excellent on the gunnery aspects of the conflict. I had not realised before that the battles took place at one of those turning points in military history, in this case when oar-propelled galleys were being overtaken by full sail and the principal naval tactic since ancient times, ramming, by gunnery. The English had smaller guns, firing lighter shot with greater range than the generally larger Spanish weapons and took great care not to close with their opponents and so run the risk of damage or, worse, boarding. The Spanish thought this standing off ungentlemanly at best and unwarlike, even cowardly, at worst. Yet the damage the English could inflict was minimal. Only when the Spanish had begun to run out of shot and after the fireships at Calais had finally broken the Armada’s formation did closer encounters occur, at Gravelines. The fireships were, though, crucial in the Armada’s final demise as, to escape them, most Spanish ships cut their anchor cables and consequently had reduced means by which to secure themselves when later facing Atlantic storms. That the Armada declined to sail back the way they had come – favourable winds allowed the English ships to do so – speaks volumes for their reluctance to engage the English again, though.

Aside:
At one point Lewis refers in passing to the matter of Mary Queen of Scots, and praises Francis Walsingham’s “brilliant” detective work. Now, while that poor deluded woman certainly did not help herself, it is possible, even likely, that the final conspiracy may have been more a case of agent provocateurship or, in modern terms, entrapment, by Walsingham’s operatives.

Mention is made of the foul, insanitary conditions aboard ships in those days. Disease, particularly typhus, was rife. The privations the sailors endured are also touched on. That many Spanish ships did make it back to Spain reflects well on their commanders, specifically Medina Sidonia and his (unnamed) navigator. Others, of course, ended up on the shores of Ireland or Scotland. One was even blown back all the way to Fair Isle. Surviving the wrecks in Ireland did not guarantee safety. Unless they were highly ransomable most captives were executed out of hand. Such was the way of the late Tudor age.

Lincoln’s most striking architectural feature is of course its cathedral.

The cathedral can be widely seen from miles off. When we got to the city it was obvious why. It’s at the top of a very steep hill up from the main street. Once through the gateway it’s too close to get the full facade in one shot. This is a stitch of two photos.

Also on the hill’s summit is Lincoln Castle. The picture below was taken by turning 180 degrees from the first shot of the cathedral.

On the way up the hill we stopped into an antique shop. From its window I noticed the building across the street. More particularly its name.

It’s now host to a second-hand book shop. You can just about see the steps up to the main floor level through the doorway. On the fronts of two treads it says BOOKS, NEW & SECONDHAND.

The next house down has a similar startling title (to modern eyes.)

This is no doubt a true reflection of mediæval Lincoln. In those times, Jews were not present in England to a great extent and were restricted by law to a very few occupations – specifically money lending (which was forbidden to non-Jews.) They would also have been required to live close together to avoid mixing too much with their Christian neighbours.

Thank goodness we’re more enlightened, open and friendly nowadays to people who may be different from us. Or even just foreign. (Oh! Hang on.)

Stalin’s War With Germany Volume 1
Grafton, 1985, 814p (including 144p of sources and references and a 26p index.)

I remember seeing a newspaper review of this and thinking, “That sounds interesting, I’ll maybe get it in paperback.” Then I realised it was the paperback. (£7.99 was a lot of money for a book in 1985. And there was the second volume to consider). It was a few years later before I bought both, I believe. They are weighty tomes and I didn’t feel able to give them the necessary time till now.

Originally published in 1975, firmly during the cold War era, The Road To Stalingrad filled a gap by being the first UK history of the Russian Front to focus primarily on Soviet sources.

Its starting point is the disruption to the Soviet armed forces caused by the purges of the 1930s, the rearrangements and lack of preparedness which that caused, all of which was exacerbated by the strange purblindness of Stalin with regard to German intentions in the run up to war. Thereafter it considers the frontier battles, the deep German advance, touches briefly on events behind the German lines, deals with the Moscow counterstroke and the following abortive Soviet offensive in early 1942 with which Stalin thought he might win the war that year, up to the German drive to the Volga and the Caucasus.

The book is strongest on the deliberations within the stavka, the Soviet high command, but really that means the decisions reached by Stalin. Marshal Shaposhnikov, the main military voice within the stavka – even though Zhukov was made Stalin’s deputy in 1942 – seems to have learned early to go with that flow.

Unfortunately it is not till page 538 and the start of the Battle of Stalingrad that the narration comes to life. Here Erickson begins to leaven his account with details of the battle. Up till then he is more concerned with the general sweep of events and is peculiarly fixated on enumerating the switching of multifarious Divisions between the various Soviet Armies, Groups and Fronts. Along the way there is a daunting array of Russian General’s names to deal with.

While the book does have maps, they are very few and only depict large areas. Some showing the smaller movements involved would have provided clarification of the somewhat dense prose.

What, for me, it all illuminated was the unlikelihood of any attack to liberate Europe by the Western Allies being likely to succeed had Hitler’s armies not already been embroiled and macerated in the East. The sheer numbers of troops involved, the scales of the operations, are stunning. As it was, Stalin’s pressing of Britain and the US to initiate a Second Front quickly was deflected as they were as yet not adequately prepared for any such endeavour.

At the end of the 642 pages of narrative we have reached only the encirclement of von Paulus’s Sixth Army, trapped in the city. The second volume of Erickson’s history, The Road To Berlin, awaits. It may be some time.

The History of Football Tactics, Orion, 2008, 356p.

This book does exactly what it sets out to, describing the evolution of football tactics from their formless beginnings when everybody on the pitch, apart from the goalkeeper, dribbled towards the opponents’ goal with team mates “backing up” in case the ball was lost, through the invention of passing (or, as it was delightfully phrased, combination play; I like that, let’s bring it back) in Scotland, the first real formation of 2-3-5 – one of whose pioneers was my beloved Dumbarton – mentioned on page 23 but not, alas, in the index – in winning their sole Scottish Cup in 1800 and long time ago, 1883 to be precise: its gradual stalemating till the offside law was changed in the 1920s to allow only two defenders between ball and goal line which in turn led to the withdrawal of the centre half into the back line of a 3-2-5 and the “classic” three defender, two half back, two inside forward, plus centre forward line-up of the W-M or W-W. The later adaptations of this formation (in some cases, as in Great Britain, very much later) via the diagonal, through the deep lying centre forward, 4-2-4, 4-4-2, 4-3-3 and 3-5-2, by which time the pyramid of the book’s title had been inverted, leading on to 4-5-1, even 4-6-0, plus the variations of all of these and the pressing game, are given their place and their innovators due recognition.

In particular the histories of football in various countries, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the USSR, the Netherlands, England, even a foray into the Scandinavian experience, and the life histories of the various coaches concerned, are admirably laid out as is the tension between attack and defence, creativity and negativity, craft and effort. Through it all the importance of system is a given. A well-organised and drilled side will always beat a disorganised one, or one following too rigid a previous template, provided the system is understood and adhered to.

The tendency for any innovations to be imitated at first mainly in a defensive sense is noted and in passing the notions of Charles Reep and Charles Hughes of direct football being particularly effective is knocked on the head, even on statistical grounds. In some cases it can be, as can any system, but against good players who can keep possession directness will fall down.

Whether football’s evolution has ended is a moot point but in the modern world with global TV coverage and worldwide scouting it is unlikely any team will be able to spring a truly revolutionary tactical surprise. But then again before that offside law alteration there had been little or no tactical change for around thirty years. In Britain, the W-M then held sway for another forty or so.

But the centre half disappeared as a half back, wingers disappeared, full backs became wing backs, wing halves and inside forwards turned into central defenders or midfielders, who evolved into holding players or playmakers; and the playmaker has all but disappeared. The centre forward may go the same way. (I would say that, arguably, with Barcelona, he already has. Messi is not a centre forward, Villa and Pedro tend not to play up the middle.)

In modern football flexibility within a system is a key ingredient, and fluidity. Modern players at the top level are no longer specialists in the way they were. Everyone is an attacker and defender at the same time. (However some will always remain more gifted and more general than others. At the level I watch football the demarcation of roles is still pronounced. I doubt that will change soon.) Football is actually a game played with space – or denying it – and not really with the ball. But, as Barcelona demonstrate, possession, keeping it and regaining it, certainly helps.

The book has occasional infelicities of the sprung for sprang type and a few typos but for all those interested in football and how it came to be the way it is this is a wonderful, informative and illuminating read. I thank my younger son for lending it to me.

If you travel down (or up) the B824 between the roundabout at the northern end of the M9 (where it turns into the A9 for further travel north) and the small town of Doune in Stirlingshire you can see off the road the statue of a lone figure. The signpost names it as the David Stirling Memorial.

Who was David Stirling?

Well, he was the man who started up the Special Air Services Regiment, otherwise known as the SAS.

This is the statue:-

One of the plaques on the statue’s base names Stirling, the other is a memorial to those SAS men who died on active service.

Two more photos of this statue are on my flickr site.

It’s in a lovely location on a rural hillside with views of rolling hills. And a wind farm. (I don’t think wind farms are eyesores, by the way. People who moan about them probably wax lyrical about windmills to which they are the modern equivalent.)

Why site the statue in such an out of the way spot?

Well; Stirling was a local. The Parish of Lecropt, where he was born, lies between Bridge of Allan (over the M9 near the town – now city – of Stirling) and Doune. There is a Carse of Lecropt and a Lecropt Kirk signposted as you leave Bridge of Allan heading towards the M9.

David Striling’s Wikipedia entry shows a family connection with the Lord Lovat who led a brigade on to Sword Beach during the D-Day landings. Lovat famously ordered his personal bagpiper to pipe the commandos ashore. The defending Germans reputedly didn’t shoot him (the piper) because they thought he was mad.

That last bit about the Germans may be an urban myth but makes a great story.