No comments about Waist Gunner.

5 comments about Berlin Dance of Death.

1. These are the experiences of a 17 year-old conscripted in the last couple months of the war where training was "on the job". Unbelievable accounts of fighting in Berlin where chaos reigns. Very detailed, very graphic. Every male from 14 to 60 gets pressed into service, or shot by the SS. Many don't have useable weapons, very little food and no rest from the hell of war. Civilians carry their few remaining possessions as they flee before the Russians. The flight of the remaining military and civilians as they try to break out of the Russian encirclement of the city and reach the western front is described graphically. The author is one of only a few survivors of a company of 150 17 year-olds. Probably the most enthralling first-person account of the many I've read, if only because it was written by a youth and covers only the last few months of the war when there was no longer any glory left to fight for--only survival.



2. Altner was a seventeen year old German when he was inducted into the German Army and fought for five weeks in the defense of Berlin. This book is the story of those five weeks. As a previous reviewer has noted, Altner is not very careful in his descriptions of arms, tanks, aircraft, etc. Footnotes are provided that fill in much of this information. What is a seventeen year old interested in....food and sex, and so some of the story focuses on these two items at the expense of others. Altner also focuses on the traumatization of war, seeing a friend without his nose and eyes, walking past a wounded soldier without stopping, watching wounded soldiers be run over by tanks.
   One gets a pretty vivid portrait from this seventeen year old kid of what war is like.
   Although an interesting read, there are better stories out there such as Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier. Altner's experience was only five weeks, so perhaps it was not a complete picture of the war on the Eastern Front.



3. Many of stories like this never got told, surviving the last days of the Soviet steamroller on the Oder line and then again in Berlin surely was a chancy bet. A studied and thorough military history, Berlin Dance of Death is not. It is a stunning personal account of a young soldier in the desperate last days of the Third Reich. Altner's story reflects the crushing of the East Front, the harrowing retreat, Soviet encirclement, retreat into Berlin, the battle for the city, his escape, and final capture. He brings all this to the reader on a very immediate level.



4. As a career soldier, one must first remember that soldiers are people, mostly young people that may or may not be students of history or burning with a passion for all things military. Soldiers join the colors for many reasons. Anybody who knows what "Bismarks" are, understands what "pacific" means, or gone searching for squelch oil understands this. So, if a young soldier is basically confused and clueless over grand strategy and small details that some affcionados desire, that is the way it is in all armies at all times. It is the experience of being a soldier. While to some it may seem distracting that young men are more in tuned with details of meals and sex, well, we have to remember that they are young men. Furthermore, this is something they know unlike the confusing world of soldiering and combat. This is a great story about the experience of war in Berlin in 1945. It is a microcosm. To understand the larger pitcure try Tieke or Ryan.



5. It is not hyperbole to suggest that Helmut Altner's Berlin Dance of Death may be one of the most interesting first-person narratives of combat ever written. That it is the story of a German teenager who was called to active duty on March 29th, 1945--to fight in a war that had less than two weeks left to it--makes this book often compelling. It is raw and sometimes clumsy in its prose, but it is genuine.
   
   Altner reconstructs the events of his fighting in the streets of Berlin from a diary that somehow, miraculously, survived his eighteen months in Soviet captivity. He uses straightforward, declarative sentences and, with little adornment, allows the drama of moments to present itself: "We take up position in the dining room. The Reichs War Flag and the Party Flag with the swastika are hung on the paneled walls, symbols of the unity of the armed forces and the Party? Opposite there is a poor oil painting of Hitler and two machine guns on the floor with their barrels pointed towards us. An officer enters and the staff sergeant makes his report. The young second lieutenant speaks about the flag, the Führer and obedience until death. I am not with it; to me it is all like the stage of a theatre, myself a stand-in in a sad scene. He reads out the form of the oath in a dull voice and we repeat it slowly after him, `With God's help!'
   
   This book is essential to those who study the psychology of combat experience and to those who study the loss of innocence on youth. It is translated and wonderfully annotated by Tony Le Tissier. This is a first-rate book that deserves a wide audience.

1 comments about Have Gun Will Travel.

1. After buying this book in a cooky crime book store in Melbourne, I found myself unable to do anything but read it for the following few days. 'Karel' tells an amzaing, simply-written tale about his time in Surinam during the mid-80's where he lead an army destined to break the back of the country's dictatorial government. If you like a good, factual action story that is engaging and fast moving, then I highly recommend this. The only downfall is that it wasn't long enough!

No comments about Ganbatte: A Nisei's Story.

5 comments about My River Home: A Journey from the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico.

1. MY RIVER HOME: A JOURNEY FROM THE GULF WAR TO THE GULF OF MEXICO tells of the author's five-month, 2000-mile voyage down the length of the Mississippi on a homemade raft. It was while on this journey that Ericksen found the courage and ability to understand his war experiences, and here tells of his many military changes from new recruit to self-destructive veteran to a critic of the Iraq War. While MY RIVER HOME could easily have been reviewed as a travelogue or true adventure, what makes it so much more is its insights on military transitions - and so it reviews feature here.



2. This is one of those rare books that comes along once every decade or so that everyone should read. The true story deals with the realities of war, which are sharply contrasted with tales of a raft trip from the source of the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. This book had me laughing out loud on one page and gripping the book in suspense the next.
   
   Through the book, from his time in the First Gulf War to his 2003 trek down the Mississippi, the author is candid and open about his surroundings and the people he encounters along the way, and objectively articulates his own thoughts and feelings, both at the time of the events and retrospectively. The book is an amazing tale of reflection and self-discovery, and the realization that no matter how far your travels may take you, the greatest journey is always the path that leads to yourself.



3. This review is short because I found the vulgar language in this book to detract from the story and I stopped reading it. Don't get this book unless you don't mind reading this type of language.



4. Eriksen's cultivated writing style transported me from the Gulf War to an adventurous raft ride down the Mississippi. Eriksen's ability to interweave the two life-changing experiences in a struggle to find himself will make you laugh and cry.



5. Marcus Eriksen writes a wonderful book. I don't usually read from this genre, but I am so glad that I did. The book is littered with humor, agony, truth and healing.

1 comments about Barker, VC: The Classic Story of a Legendary First World War Hero.

1. Many times great heroes are forgotten in favour of more popular ones; however, in this book, Wayne Ralph presents not only an excellent account of Barker's war career, but also his life before and after the war. The reader is aquainted also with the facts that for years after the war deeply hurt most air force pilots. This book is the best I have read about William Barker.

No comments about Nelson and His Captains (Penguin Classic Military History).

No comments about The Last Conquistador: Mansio Serra De Leguizamon and the Conquest of the Incas.

No comments about Hard Marching Every Day: The Civil War Letters of Private Wilbur Fisk, 1861-1865 (Modern War Studies).

1 comments about Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary And Memoirs.

1. Edited by University of Tennessee-Knoxville teacher John B. Romeiser, Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary and Memoirs is the true story of two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Don Whitehead, who served the Associated Press in 1942 by covering the Allied drive against Erwin Rommel's tanks in North Africa, in Whitehead's own words. Collecting and organizing Whitehead's personal journal and unfinished memoir with the rare editor's note in brackets for clarity, Combat Reporter covers events that Whitehead witnessed from 1942-1943 in Cairo, Libya, Tunisia, and Sicily. Combat Reporter offers an evenhanded, front-lines view of the European Theater and an unforgettable self-portrait of a one-of-a-kind reporter. A foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Atkinson and an afterword by Whitehead's colleague Command Sergeant Major Benjamin Franklin (U.S. Army, Ret.) round out this highly recommended memoir.