Deadly Speed Boats: The War for England's Shores S-Boats and the Fight Against British Coastal Convoys

 Its been a while, I am not going to get into it. I just finished The War For England's Shores: S-Boats and Fight against British Coastal Convoys by G.H. Bennett and I want to write about it. Unlike a lot of the other books I have talked about I have not owned this book for a while. Instead I picked it up fairly recently on a sale from the Naval Institute Press, and I want to thank the guys at the YouTube channel Military Aviation History for getting those sales codes. Those codes go a long way to making higher quality and more specialized history books accessible. 

This book explores a little studied aspect of the Second World War, the attack of Nazi Schnell-Boats on the British convoys carrying goods from one part of Britain to another. It gives a strong overall coverage of the war, looking at how the campaign developed over time, and devoting an entire chapter to the human dimension of the conflict. The narrative is well written, and had a good pace to it, and I am glad it addressed the human dimension. However I feel the book would have been well served by further examination of the technical dimension. If a chapter was set out to go over how S-Boats and their British enemies were equipped that would help give a clear understanding of what conditions these peoples were operating on. The narrative goes over encounters between the superior S-Boats and the plucky and aggressive British MTB, but I could never internalize what that looks like. One of my favorite books is Black May by Michael Gannon about the convoy battles in May 1943, and that book details the tactics and equipment of escorts and U-boats alike early in the book so that when the convoy battles are detailed latter in the book you have internalized the details. It makes it easier to understand what is happening. When the narrative gets more details towards the end of the book as the S-boats try to interrupt the Normandy invasion it is misses that deeper understanding that would make it truly clear.

The book is still a good read just because so little is talked about this fighting. Every few years I would be reminded that S-Boats are a thing, or hear about British MTB, and do a little mental "huh, so like PT boats, I should learn more about," then not being able to find out anything about it. It is good to finally have a greater understanding of it. I don't think I would recommend it to a person reading about World War 2 naval history for the first time, but I would recommend someone look up the Naval Institute Press and take a look at their catalog. It has a lot of interesting books covering a variety of subjects. 

It is a good thing Father's not home: The Father of Us All by Victor Davis Hansen

Victor Davis Hanson is an expert in the Peloponnesian war. In high school I remember reading his book the difficulty of damaging Greek agriculture in a local college library. The library had a tower with this perfect academia aesthetic for reading books of ancient history. I sat in that library happy as a clam reading that book, and it shows the deep knowledge that VDH has on the subjects of agriculture and the Peloponnesian war. The Father of Us All: War and History Ancient and Modern is proof that expertise in one subject does not translate to expertise in others, even related subjects.

This collection of edited articles was released in 2010, and it shows in almost every page. The takes are so wrong they are sad. There is a lot of praise for the surge in Iraq, the status of Afghan democracy, and other things that time has proven to be embarrassing failure. It was entirely possible to foresee this as the time, as many who where paying attention, and who were not blinded by their views. 

That would be enough to throw his conclusions into question if it wasn't for another glaring issue with all these issues. Hanson keeps coming back to the Peloponnesian war again and again for examples no mater how tenuous the connection. Either he is using it because the Peloponnesian war has the recognizable name or because that is his only area of expertise, and he is genuinely ignorant of the other wars that we know less about. Now I don't want to cast any aspersions, but that cuts out a lot of potential lessons. 

All in all this book was not fun. Reading and writing about it have been like pulling teeth. This has taken forever to write, and I am not sure I said anything worthwhile. I think that is the final statement I want to make about this book. There is nothing worthwhile in this book. 

A slow burn: Wood Heat by John Vivian

Wood Heat by John Vivian is a book I came close to dropping many times. I know this may be shocking, but a book about heating your house with a wooden stove can be a bit boring. There were a couple of things that kept me coming back, and now that I have finished I am satisfied. It's unlikly that I will ever need the information. My place has a fireplace, but I have been here for two winters and I have never started a fire in it. But I kept at it, and now I will tell you about it. 

I earlier mentioned the couple of things that kept bringing me back. The first the origin of the book. I acquired this book from the estate of my Grandfather. He didn't have very many books. Many of them were either things he had inherited from his father, mostly chess books. This one is practical, and I can actually imagine him consulting this book. His house in rural Wyoming was in poor condition by the end, and I can imagine him looking to get some repairs done and consulting this book for ideas. It is a little point of connection to him, one that I did not have much of when he was alive. That idea is probably just a pleasant fantasy, but it is sweat to have. Family can be very funny. 

The second thing that kept me coming back was that it was occasionally very interesting. The book was written in 1976, so the energy crisis is prominent. John Vivian loves wood heat, and he confidently predicts the downfall of other forms of heating. The cost comparison he runs is very amusing. Inflation really hits hard. His passion really shows through. It is not enough to make flue repair interesting. There are occasionally some really interesting tidbits, but it is not enough to make the book worth reading. Unless you are homesteading, or the apocalypses has happened I would not recommend this book. Occasionally interesting is one of the worst things for a piece of media to be. The repeated promise of something good in the next chapter or episode is one of the worst as it robs you of time. I should have dropped this book long ago.

So lets move on. This time, I think I will go back to the old ways. Fully random, all the way. There has been a few more book shelves added since last time. We are up to 25 bookshelves. I rolled up shelf 17 and book 23. That happens to be The Father of us all: War and History Ancient and Modern. by Victor Davis Hanson. This is a collection of Victor's writing on the topic of war and history. This will be an interesting read because Victor has transitioned from being a serious historian to a conservative pundit, and this book is from after that transition happened. I expect to find plenty to disagree with. 

The Heft and the Anticipation: The End and the Death volume 1 by Dan Abnett

The End and the Death volume 1 by Dan Abnett is a big book, both physically, and for its place in Warhammer fiction. As you can see in the photo I posted last week, the book is quite large, larger than my copy of Don Quixote. That puts it in the company of the collected works of Alister Mclean, The History of the Russian Revolution by Trotsky, and a history of the scramble for Africa. Books that big are actually a problem for me. I have big hands, and despite that, the book feels like it is too much book. Thicker paper and denser material for the hardcover.  It reduces the enjoyment of reading the book when as I read it I can feel the balance changing. I like books that I can sink into and let all distractions fade away, and it is a little hard with The End and the Death volume 1. 

It is not like this book couldn't have been shorter. I am writing this before even the release date for the second volume has been revealed, so I have no idea if all of the story beats will be incredibly relevant, but many of them feel superfluous. This is supposed to be the culmination of the epic tragedy that is the background to Warhammer 40,000, and for most of the book it focuses on that, and when it has that focus it is great, but the sections focused on Fafnir Rann, and the Dark Angels can just be edited out, and I think this story would be improved. The audience is here not for the fighting on the surface between Space Marines but on the understanding that this book sets up the duel between the Emperor and Horus for the fate of the galaxy. There is enough here for a good volume 1, you can just trim it down a bit.

Up until this point I have been really negative, and the book has its problems, but I really enjoyed reading it. Dan Abnett has proven again that he is an excellent author, and he really delivers. The author takes the problem that hopefully everyone reading this book knows what the outcome is, and uses it to build to something bigger. Language is repeated effectively because of how he describes the world. Characters use the same language again and again because reality is breaking down, and in this new reality, those words are the most natural thing. It is a very striking use of repetition, and it helps build and build and build until the revelation that what it is building towards in the next novel is bigger than I expected. 

It is a good part 1, and a good example of what talented authors can do in tie-in fiction. The Warhammer 40k setting is not something that any of these authors made, but the Black Libary's best authors have shown that they can make great fiction out of it. The ratio of excellent fiction to action schlock is not as great as I would like, but a number of great books recently have me very excited for news about new releases. 

I am worried about what people new to the setting should read. My first Warhammer novel was also by Dan Abnett, and it was a much better introduction than this one. Reading this as your first Warhammer 40k novel is like watching Avengers Infinity War as your first experience with superheroes. It makes it difficult to recommend without the reader first undergoing a course in Warhammer 40k history and metaphysics. I don't exactly have a reading list prepared for the class, as a lot of it comes from some very well-researched and decently-cited Reddit posts. Black Library is cranking out books and I don't have the time or money to read them all. If you are deep into Warhammer 40k I would recommend it, but if not I would not pick it up. You would be so lost your experience would be terrible. 

Next time on the blog we look forward to the exciting world of wood heat. I don't want to give too much away, but I think it is going to be FIRE!

Not revolutionary : The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel & Keith Jennison

The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel and Keith Jennison has gotten me to consider why I have always been disinterested in US history outside of the World Wars and the Civil War, but it has not changed my mind on the subject. It effectively covers the Indian Wars, and in an impressively even-handed manner. Presented in its complexity and depth this area of history holds a passing interest, but after reading this I am satisfied, and it will likely be a long time before I pick up a history like this again. 

Cover is a little bland, I wish they had chosen something that pops.

Before I go into that I need to address a concern I had when I started this book. I read the front inside of the dust cover and the publication date and was concerned. I should have read the inside of the back cover as well, then I would be concerned about different things. One of the authors is part American Indian, but none of the authors are historians, being a journalist and an editor. As for its coverage of the tragedy of war, it is impressively even-handed. Massacres and brutality abound in frontier battles like this, and I have the impression that the reason more of the white massacres of Indians are described is because the whites won, and being on the winning side means you can massacre your enemies, not the other way around. The Carthaginians got destroyed rather than the Romans because the Romans won. 

It's a decent piece of artwork, but I like some works on back covers.

The American Indian Wars covers the subject chronologically and makes some interesting choices in its focus. Around half of the narrative takes place before the founding of the United States, and only 1/8th of the book covers the period after the Civil War. Marginalizing the main period people think of when they think of American Indians is a bold choice, but the authors present it persuasively. The period of initial contact was the period when the conflict was most equal. By the time the United States was an independent country its resources vastly outweighed any single tribe and was even able to overpower the larger groups of tribes assembled by charismatic leaders without too many difficulties. By 1865 the disparity was too great, and the flood of settlers could not be stopped. The whole book then takes the air of a great tragedy, as culture after culture is overwhelmed, and mistreated from sea to shining sea. It is hard to present the past accurately and not have a sense of tragedy about it. Nostalgia is a trap.

What The American Indian Wars did not do well is make me reconsider my disinterest in American history. I have been thinking about it, and I think it is because it feels so small. I know that is a weird thing to say about one of the largest counties in the world, bear with me. The tendency for isolationism is strong even in this history. Spain appears only to sell Florida, and there is no real mention of Mexico. How did the Mexican border affect the wars with the Apaches? The only powers of long-term interest in this book are France and Britain, and they still feel like sideshows. History has a greater impact when it can keep the wider causes and effects in mind, and address them in a memorable if cursory manner. Maybe I subconsciously connect the dots in areas I am more familiar with, but usually, the feeling is of smallness. 

Would I recommend The American Indian Wars? No, not for a moment. While a decent read, I am not satisfied it was a good history. I don't know much about the subject so I cannot state definitive facts, but it feels like it is not enough. If American Indians interest you there has to be a more modern book on the subject written by an actual historian rather than a journalist. I don't think journalists make good historians.

Now that, that is dramatic colors, I like it.

This has been delayed a bit because I ordered a book and I wanted to review it when I got it. I have not talked about it yet on the blog, but I am a big Warhammer 40k book fan and the Black Library has just released a book I have been really looking forward to has been released. The End and the Death Volume 1 by Dan Abnett is going to be the next book I review. I am looking forward to tearing into this brick of a book. 

The End and the Death is a huge book. Don Quixote for scale. 

Eight favorite books as of February 2022

Recently my mother asked me about what my eight favorite books were. At first, my reaction was "That's a weird number" but then I got down to thinking about it. Rarely do I think about what my favorite books are, and it was a bit of a challenge to come up with the number. But I persevered and was able to deliver a list to my mother that I feel stands up. I still do not know why she wanted it. I wanted to express my reasoning to myself, so this blog post exists. 

Before I get to the list section of this listicle, I wanted to give an honorable mention. That goes to Catch-22  by Joseph Heller. Catch-22  is the funniest book I have ever read, and that is its problem. It is laugh-out-loud funny from page 1, and I don't remember it ever really stopping except when it went to a dark place, and then it was straight back to comedy. But when I set down to read a book, I am not looking to bust a rib, I want a quiet moment to sit and engage with the ideas in the book and I cannot do that when I am constantly laughing. I first read the book in middle school, I had that problem then, and the last time I picked it up I still had the problem, so the humor holds up. The problem is that I am not really interested in comedy in my books beyond a brief chuckle, and Catch-22 is a dangerous book to drink hot chocolate while reading. So it ends up an honorable mention.

1.

Black May by Michael Gannon

Black May probably wins the award for the book I most often reach for absentmindedly when I am looking for a good read. When I find it on my shelves I always reach for it. A history of the Battle of the Atlantic centering around May 1943, Black May combines technical history with an excellent narrative. It covers the developments in technology, air patrols, and even interrogation and propaganda, and balances it with an excellent narrative that covers the battle of convoy ONS-5. Neither part seems like an afterthought, and every time I read it I feel I have a greater appreciation of what was needed to win the war with U-boats. It also makes me want a convoy commander video game. There are too many U-boat simulators. 

2.

The Face of Battle by John Keegan

The Face of Battle is a great read and an influential piece of history. John Keegan gives a view from the ground level of three great English battles, Agincourt, Waterloo, and the first day of the Battle of Albert, the first battle of the Somme offensive. There is a narrative section to give you the basic geography of the battle, but the focus is on the "face of battle", and what it was like to fight there. This covers not only the mechanics of battle, like how much smoke muskets made, or how armored knights were killed by groups of bowmen, but also the emotions of battle. How religious the armies were, how were the wounded cared for, and what kept men from running away all come up in this piece, and they all get the attention they deserve. It is not perfect, John Keegan was a professor at the leading British military college and it shows, but it is excellent. Well worth your time.

3.

The Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

The Storm of Steel is a strange one. I have never owned a physical copy, but instead, I have an audiobook. Some might say that audiobooks are not real books, but they can get bent. Get your books in whatever format works for you. I like The Storm of Steel for its content, and not just for the excellent narrator Audible has. It is one of the great memoirs of the First World War, and the German-to-English translation has an excellent usage of language that makes the war very vivid. There is also a sense of authenticity that is nice to find in a memoir. Junger is proud of some of the things he is done, but unlike Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel, another German captain, there is not this sense of self-aggrandizement. Junger does some really stupid things, and even recounts a time when he broke down and cried in front of the unit he was leading. It is part of the complexity of Junger's character revealed by the book. Junger has a romantic side but also has romantic feelings about the least romantic war in human history. It is a strange combination that makes for a great read. 

4.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings is a classic that needs little introduction. I still manage to get a little more out of it every time I read it, and that is only helped by the wealth of secondary literature that surrounds a classic work. It is really rewarding to read something that suggests a different way to view a novel, and then to go back to the novel and be able to see that perspective and have it heighten your appreciation of both the novel and the author. The Lord of the Rings is much more rewarding to read this way than any other book I have come across.

5.

World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z is an exciting experiment in fiction. Max Brooks manages to write a fictional oral history of a zombie apocalypse that delivers on the horror and humanity of that concept. I am not normally one for horror, but this book manages to deliver good horror in a very human way. There is also a great flow to the book. Brooks manages to make the book have very distinctive phases that each have a different feel. The mounting awareness of the pre-apocalypse, the desperate and confusing early days, a period of adaptation and consolidation, the triumph of humanity working together, and then some closing povs to dampen that triumphal spirit with a sense that the world will never be the same again. It has been a while since I read it, but I am sure it holds up. There is also a great fanfiction you should check out called "The way is shut" which explores what happened to North Korea fantastically. The fanfictions writer nailed the authors style perfectly.

6.

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

Mossflower is probably my most-read book. I was obsessed with it around third grade, and I read it on loop for a while. The story is Lord of the Rings lite. A small party quests for a mountain, and then there is a great battle at the end. I have reread it as an adult, and while it still holds up pretty well it is a children's story, simple and straightforward. I got a lot out of it as a kid because I was reading so fast. So fast that I remember on one of my rereads I started reading a fight scene I had no memory of. Therefore Mossflower, more than any other book on this list, is a nostalgia pick. A reminder of simpler days when I had the free time to read a book repeatedly.

7.

Three Armies on the Somme by William J. Philpott

Another book I have only experienced as an audiobook, Three Armies on the Somme is 26-and-a-half hours well spent. What makes it an excellent book is its narrow focus but broad coverage. That may sound like a contradiction, but what I am really trying to say is that it takes a holistic view of a very narrow topic. The book is about the fighting around the Somme River between 1914 and 1918, and its narrative can at points describe the fighting day by day, especially during the period we think of as the Battle of the Somme, but it also takes time to pull back from the fighting front and address how the fighting in this narrow geographic area affected the cultures and strategic situation of the nations involved. There is much more depth here than you would find in other history books, even other detail-obsessed books like The Road to Stalingrad, or Stalingrad (It is interesting that a lot of these kinds of books cover the Great Patriotic War, and date from the brief period that the soviet archives were opened up.). It is not for everyone, but it is a book for me.

8.

Tip and Run by Edward Paice

I stumbled onto Tip and Run while researching the German East Africa campaign for my honors thesis in college. In most of the books I had read about it focused on the German commander, Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck, and his skill in avoiding defeat despite the very long odds against him, holding out with minimal resupply and support for the whole war. What Tip and Run showed me is the consequences of that, and by doing that changed my perspective on war forever. In Tip and Run the war is anything but glorious, especially for the Africans caught between the British and German Colonial powers. This war was not a glorious struggle where a chivalrous and great man held off the British with only his wits, but a war where two uncaring armies created forced labor systems with no regard for the lives of the laborers to keep the fighting going in the worst theater of the war. Men who fought both in East Africa and in the trenches preferred the trenches because at least then they got a break from the marching. It is important that history reminds us that the past was not a better place and that nostalgia is a trap. Many want to go back to a time they feel was better, and it is important to remember that is a lie. Tip and Run destroys any feeling of nostalgia that so many other authors have tried to build up. 

So there you have it, my eight favorite books at this moment. I don't know when I would ever go back and revisit this. Hopefully, this is not my final list. I can think of nothing sadder then never finding a new favorite book for the rest of my life.

A logistics narrative: Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army by Donald W. Engels

Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army is a fairly recent addition to my collection. I picked it up after it was cited on my favorite blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, the blog by Prof. Bret Devereaux. The book comes up fairly regularly in ACOUP (I love that initialism) when talking about how much armies eat, and how fast they can move. After seeing, it comes up a bunch (at least 5 times) I decided to pick it up, and I did not regret it.

Great color choice here, and very nice image selection.

I have to applaud Donald Engels for doing something I have never seen done before. Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army is a logistic narrative. It tells the history of Alexander's campaign in the Persian empire entirely based on how the army was supplied and moved. This approach is deeply fascinating because it covers the parts other narratives would brush over, and skips over what others would narrate. That means it deals with the day-to-day experience of the army much more than a focus on the battles would. It is important to remember that until the First World War battles would be a rare experience for the soldier. How they got their food, how they marched, and what effect this had on the local population, are the majority of soldiers' experiences. The battle is not going to be fought if the army cannot get there in order to fight it. 

I love the reversal of the colors on the back cover too. Great graphics design.

Indeed Engels makes a point that Macedonian logistics were at least as revolutionary as anything they did on the battlefield. No greek army could have done what Alexander did, and because its logistics could support the rapid conquest of a disintegrating Persian empire the Macedonian king created the Hellenistic world. The hidden secret of greatness, do the basics really well. It is important to be reminded of, even if Putin's war is also serving that point with comparisons of the Americans and the Russians. American technology is not so much different from Russian technology, but the American army has fought three successful lightning campaigns in thirty years halfway across the globe while the Russians failed to do one against their neighbor because the Americans can do the logistics, and the Russians can not. 

While the book was an interesting read it also left me wanting more. There are so many histories that go over the fighting again and again. It would be a nice change of pace to read a history that covers the logistics of say, the allied advance across Europe after D-Day, or the epic campaign across the Pacific. The two-ton truck might not seem impressive compared to a Tiger tank, but it certainly got the job done. I think that is a good review to leave on a book that was written very academically. I found most of the books written like this to be much less inspiring. 

So I would have to recommend Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. Not only is it a welcome difference from most military histories, but it also contains important information about how armies worked before the internal combustion engine. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to understand how armies of the past worked. It helps that it is on the short side, so it is not a big ask to read. 

Now on to the next book. I didn't get any books for Christmas this year, same as most every year, but I am still working through a number of recent real-world book acquisitions. Of course, it goes without saying that my ebook collection cannot stop growing, especially with the large number of interesting books available on Kindle for quite cheap, but this section of the blog is focused on books I can smell. Maybe Ill cover ebooks on this blog as well in the future. 

That's a nice painting. The painting as cover is a bit lazy but effective.

I rolled up The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel & Keith Jennison. The subtitle on the front cover reads "The conquest of America by the white man revealed in all its drama, cruelty, and heroism." Oof. Copywrite MCMLX or 1960 in useful numbers. Hopefully, it is more even-handed than the year and that subtitle would lead me to expect. I am cautiously hopeful. Though I am an American I have not really engaged with much of my own country's history because I found it so boring. I blame the fact that between first and third grade we covered the period between 1776 and 1900 at least three times.