While musing over the bookshelf of our good friends The Insouciant Wargamer, AWB had a change to flick through briefly a copy of Erich von Falkenhayn's 'General Headquarters 1914-1916 and It's Critical Decisions'. (English language translation)
Now Falkenhayen, as any good player of GMT Games' Paths of Glory will know, was the man behind the 'Place of Execution' attacks on Verdun. What they may then not realise, and AWB is guilty of this, is once he disappears from the game in PoG, he gets sent off to the Transylvania to command the Ninth Army, capture Bucharest and slay vampires (citation needed), before later commanding forces in Turkish Palestine.
However, we digress as we are here to talk about his book. Now, AWB only had a chance to skim a few pages as this was a gaming night and there were figures to move not books to read, but AWB is pretty sure that somewhere in those pages is the chapter where Erich rescues the kittens from a burning building. The few pages AWB managed to read were literally littered with the word 'brilliant' closely followed by the phrase 'German forces'. Yes, well, Herr Falkenhayn, one knows this is your book and you are entitled to write what you like, but you do remember that Verdun was the campaign that managed to get you sacked as Chief of the General Staff?
There were tit bits of interest in the few pages. Falkenhayen claims that the entry of Italy into the war was treated more or less with apathy by the German public which is an interesting insight, however like all memoirs, the reader needs to be careful to separate the analysis of the situation with the grandstanding of the author.
This is not to say that readers should avoid memoirs. AWB was recently reading James Hamilton-Paterson's 'Empire of the Clouds' (the abridged illustrated version with reduced text but bonus pictures). Here Hamilton-Paterson is describing the glory days of English aviation in the 1950s. He opens with the 1952 crash of the DH .110 at the Farnborough Airshow where the aircraft broke up mid air killing both aircraft and 27 spectators. AWB also had a copy of 'Test Pilot' by Neville Duke; the man who flew the Hawker Hunter on that day immediately after the fatal crash, and it was with interest AWB skipped ahead in that book to see what Mr Duke had to say.
To paraphrase, 'There was a horrible crash and then I got up and put the Hunter through it's paces'.
A best two pages from the entire memoir involved the crash and deaths of 29 people and some of that was covered by mentioning the wonderful flying weather. This is not to imply that Neville Duke was in anyway heartless, but reflects that his is a man who has just come through 6 years of hard warfare and was then currently involved in very risky bleeding edge development, and not a 21st Century Boy concerned about his twitter feed. It was the 1950s. You were a professional. You did what was expected. To cancel the rest of the day's flying was completely unthinkable for all involved. Keep Calm and Carry On wasn't an over flogged cliche poster, it was the public mindset.
And that is why we should never knock back a chance to read a memoir; not for what they might claim, but to understand how they were thinking and why they were claiming it.
(Another Wargame Blog will now go off and do some more brave and manly things to reflect just how brave, manly and fault free they are...)
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