EBME Forums Forums Free discussion Out of Hours What Are You Reading?

There is a (long, and continuing) thread with the same title on another site that I check in on most days, and it often kicks up some interesting (and sometimes off-topic) "debates" ... so here goes:-

Last night I finished off Ron Kent's "First In"! - the wartime history of the 21st Independent Parachute Company (the original Pathfinders) 1942-1946.

Ron served as a Sergeant throughout almost all of that period, and ended up as Company Sergeant Major not long before the unit was disbanded. He was lucky to emerge unscathed.

I found his book (published in 1979) very absorbing ... and an interesting contrast to David Blakeley's "Pathfinder" - a more recent account of the modern day Pathfinders' adventures in Iraq in 2003, which I'm also wading through.

I'll give Ron's book 9/10 ... mainly because it's the only one I've come across that covers the early Pathfinders in such detail; and also as Ron gives a long eye-witness account of being at the sharp end at Arnhem!

OK ... so what are y'all reading these days?

Flashman at the charge, not read it in 20 years but loved all the Flashman novels.

Ah ha! Fiction!

.. by George MacDonald Fraser. It must be forty years since I read any of those; but they might be worth a re-visit (you often see them in charity shops and at car-boot sales). Hazzah! Hazzah!

But how about the "Sharpe" series (by Bernard Cornwell)?

And surely every ex-army guy "of a certain age" must remember Sven Hassel* ... "The Legion of the Damned" etc., etc.? I remember them being very popular and shared (swapped) amongst the lads in Germany.

Meanwhile, does anyone (else) enjoy the "Jack Reacher" books? I like to take them in the order they were published (although they have all seemed pretty much "stand alone"), but have only got as far as the third in the series ("Tripwire") so far. What do you reckon on them? Lee Child has now written so many that surely they must have become increasingly far-fetched!

* He was Danish, you know.

I've read all the Reacher books - Love them, yes they do get far fetched but then it's fiction....

For me, one of the interesting things about the All-American Hero, Jack Reacher, is that "Lee Child"* is an Englishman, from Coventry!

It reminds me of J.T. Edson, writer of the famous (?) "Dusty Fog" Westerns (simple pulp-fiction also much loved by young squaddies forty or fifty years ago).

Edson lived in Melton Mobray (rather than Dodge City, or wherever), and had served in the army as a Dog Handler (Royal Army Veterinary Corps).

* A Pen Name (unlike J.T. Edson, who used his own).

Looking forward to reading a press release in then next few days ......... will make my year if it goes the way I think it will 🤣🤣🤣

... "Overseas Aid Budget Cancelled" (and "Transferred to Defence")?

Or "collapse" of the G-20 "Summit"?

Meanwhile the UK National Debt currently grows at £ 5,170 a second.

Overseas aid budget cancelled would be nice, £141 million a year on staff pay alone in that government department. Still no confirmation on what I am waiting for .... will be so funny if it goes the way I think it will. You should never lose a contract if you are already providing the support .........

... and yet, many have. Usually due to complacency, under-performing, taking the customer for granted ... and (or) otherwise generally taking the ****!

Meanwhile, I have finished "Paddy Mayne" by Hamish Ross (2004) ... in which I learned a few details about Mayne that I had not known before (or had maybe forgotten).

Another 9/10; and useful to contrast with (and cross-refer to) Virginia Cowles' "The Phantom Major" which (probably because it was first published in 1958) omits - or glosses over - some of the later "perceived wisdom" about David Stirling and the early days of the SAS. Enjoyable, but only 7/10 I'm afraid.

Of the (many) books covering those times, I would also recommend "One of the Originals" by Johnny Cooper (published in 1991). Although he ended up as a Lt.Col., back in the days in question (escapades in the Western Desert), Cooper was of non-commissioned rank and so relates the stories about Stirling and Mayne (and Lewes et al) from that perspective. 9/10 for that one.

Paddy Maine, what a man.