No comments about Valor: A Gathering of Eagles.

5 comments about Saving Babylon: The Heart of an Army Interrogator in Iraq.

1. There are very few books that capture the whole essence of the war going on in Iraq--with all the tribal, religious, historical and cultural divisions that plague the country. "Saving Babylon" is a whole new and most refreshing look at that war and the people who serve there. It will not only open your eyes and your mind but it will also open your heart. The author found a purpose much higher than just conducting war; he tried to make a difference in the lives of those he met there. To that end he was successful!
   
   Author Paul Holton (Better known by many around the world as "Chief Wiggles") writes a memoir of his tour of duty in Iraq, as an interrogator for the U.S. Army, which gives the reader a real inside look at what was and is going on there. He writes about the captured generals that he personally spent months interrogating. More importantly, is the way he does it. As a former soldier, I was pleased to read how Chief Warrant Officer Holton, made it a point to uphold the principles of "The Geneva Conventions of War." He used his personality--not torture or cruel punishments (as we have read so much about in the media) to extract information from POWs. He approached his job as a professional with a humanitarian heart and not just with the POWs but with the children of the country.
   
   The book is a wonderful read for men, women and even for mature children. It is on the MWSA "Top Ten Recommended Reading List" for 2005.
   
   "Chief Wiggles" created a non-profit foundation to bring toys and supplies to those in need inside Iraq. This operation almost cost him his career but in the end, he was even recognized by the President of the United States in a speech at a prayer breakfast. The author writes a great story about his personal experiences; but his example as a humanitarian soldier will be his legacy. I am forever grateful for men like Paul Holton who served and gave so much from their heart. His foundation is called "Operation Give" and can be found on the web at: [...]
   
   The Military Writer's Society of America recognizes Paul Holton's efforts with their "Humanitarian Award for 2005".



2. My husband and I read this book together and really enjoyed hearing what the news doesn't cover--all the good we are doing in Iraq. There's hope. What we're doing over there is not all in vain.



3. Paul Holton's book SAVING BABYLON cuts through the typically negative media reporting about Operation Iraqi Freedom and puts a unique human spin on a one year deployment to Iraq. Rather than dwelling on operations and investigations, he speaks about the bond he developed not only with his fellow soldiers, but with his Iraqi contacts and the Iraqi people in general as well.
   
   Better known to the Iraqi's as "Chief Wiggles," Holton started Operation Give, which is a program that takes toy donations from the states and distributes them to needy Iraqi children. His description of the first time he gave a toy to a poor Iraqi girl is one of the high emotional moments of the book.
   
   Interspersed with his accounts of dealing with the Iraqi people, Holton places accounts of interrogating senior Iraqi military officers. Even in these accounts, Holton's detailed descriptions of his personal connection with the captives are both surprising and refreshing. He makes special effort to emphasize how so many of these former officers of Saddam really and truly want to work to make Iraq a better nation for its people.
   
   A key element in Holton's ability to find the human element of the conflict is his strong faith. Never far from any of the stories relayed in the book are Holton's praying and talking with God to help him through the more difficult times of his deployment, including when he ran afoul of Army policy while following his strong moral compass.
   
   SAVING BABYLON is a well written, easy reading book which deals with the best and worst parts of the human spirit, set against one of the most controversial conflicts of recent history. It is less about war and more about human emotion and human faith, and its message is heartwarming, especially when measured against the mostly negative media reports about the war in Iraq that we read/see/hear almost daily.



4. Reviewed by William Phenn for Reader Views (11/06)
   
   Paul Holton, more commonly known as Chief Wiggles, has set up many humanitarian assistance and help organizations. He offers an insider view and humanistic portrayal of life in Iraq. He is adamant in his quest to inform the general public of the good in the people of Iraq. While serving the US Army as an Interrogator, he discovers the similarities among men and their families, rather than the brutal terrorists our media has reported them to be. Paul expands his mission to bring joy and goodwill to this impoverished country through Operation Give. Through his choice of giving he says he has received so much more in return. Through the sight of a small girl's tears, an idea to bring smiles to a people who have known few was born.
   
   As an officer and Interrogator during the Iraqi War, this guardsman also wishes to educate the public of the American's humane treatment of their prisoners of war. He further expresses the goodness within the Iraqi military leaders he had the opportunity to extract information from. They parted as friends from the unlikely place of a prisoner of war camp with plans to reunite and maintain contact. After their release from camp, their word was honored with dinner at their homes with their families.
   
   Mr. Holton has, through his kindness, befriended many individuals who will lead Iraq to a new order of government. The youth of Iraq have seen a different human soul than their previous leader has led them to believe. "Saving Babylon" describes how one soldier's goodwill may give many, hope for a brighter future. The poverty and brainwashing they have received during their lifetime is slowly replaced with hope by a stranger. Beginning with a small gift of a toy to a child, and ending with an international gift program, the author expresses how one man can make a monumental difference in world peace and understanding. He has been overjoyed to discover his program has expanded and continues its quest.
   
   This book is easily read, with the general public as its target audience. Although this book was written during war time, the military terminology and acronyms are described so that civilians will easily understand the terms. It would be an excellent book for students to read concerning the Iraqi war.
   
   "Saving Babylon" is a book to be read by any American citizen. It dispels the sensationalism the media seeks and reports upon. Instead, it tells a story of how our Higher Power works in the hearts of mankind throughout our world. We are more similar than different. Whether through our beliefs in a higher power, or hope for a kinder world, one man's mission has brought together families across the globe in a common bond of friendship. This fast moving 240-page novel was a gem to read and enjoy. I give it my most outstanding rating of A+, well done Mr. Holton.



5. Here we have the personal memoir of Chief Warrant Officer Paul Holton, (a/k/a "Chief Wiggles") the "morale officer" in a Utah National Guard Unit. When not in uniform, Holton works as an account manager for Federal Express Corporation and travels as a missionary with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Holton's National Guard unit reported for mobilization in February 2003. Initially stationed at a holding camp in Kuwait, Holton provided intelligence support to a battalion-level commander, whose unit participated in the southern ground invasion of Iraq. After the U.S. started the war that March, Holton conducted the extended interrogation of some fourteen Iraqi Generals who had surrendered during the early days of the invasion. Once the so called "coalition forces" pursued the war into Baghdad, Holton's role morphed slightly from interrogating high ranking prisoners to gathering information from willing Iraqi citizens. Living in the "Green Zone," Holton was one of the first American military representatives whom an Iraqi citizen with information to share, would encounter.
   
   Apparently working with little supervision, Holton's team in Baghdad interviewed Iraqi citizens and helped to funnel seed money to individuals deemed deserving of coalition favoritism (thereby stimulating the local economy.) As a part of these public relations efforts, Holton maintained a blog website that helped to insure that awareness, donated items, and funds, were raised back home for Iraqi children. This effort to get candy, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and toys delivered from U.S. donors into the hands of needy Iraqi children, was dubbed Operation "Give."
   
   Most of Saving Babylon's 239 pages do not relate to Operation "Give," but detail Holton's retrospective of his own experience in Iraq. As an ex-intelligence analyst in the Army, this reviewer is easily convinced that Holton's subordinates benefited from his constant optimism, his unquestioning faith in the mission of the U.S. military in Iraq, and his enthusiasm for a plan that he asserted was "divinely developed, one that had something to do with blessing the Iraqi people." After all, a soldier's job is not to question his/her legal orders but to carry them out with enthusiastic professionalism.
   
   Chief Holton might be excused for his enthusiastic support of a war that Americans were being told pre-empted an immediate WMD danger, "we're talking mushroom clouds." Holton explains "Saddam Hussein had killed thousands of his own people, and would not hesitate to give his weapons of mass destruction to a terrorist organization or to use them himself, which he had done in the past."
   
   Most readers will appreciate Holton's enthusiasm and his willingness to forgo the comforts of home while fighting his nation's distant battles. And perhaps they can overlook his stubborn belief that the war in Iraq was a divinely inspired conflict between "good guys" and "bad guys." But the United States and the Iraqi people are paying dearly for the absurd notion that Almighty God is using the U.S. military to root out evil from the world. This reviewer, these days a teacher of history and philosophy, will appreciate Holton's memoir for a much different reason from most readers. Saving Babylon will provide undergraduate students with a contemporary comparison between a primary source's retrospective account, and subsequent scholarship, once the rest of the story becomes de-classified and then critiqued by future historians.

5 comments about Unsung Valor: A GI's Story of World War II.

1. Upon reading Unsung valor I discovered that Cleveland Harrison and I had been inducted into the army the same day at Little Rock, Arkansas,we went through the same sweltering day of probings,punchings,bendings,spreadings, and at last were sworn into the Army of the United States.our serial numbers were just a few numbers apart,yet I never met Professor Harrison. Upon reading Unsung valor this fall I was immediately taken back in time to 1943, and to the years following throughout WWII of which our president Franklin Roosevelt said" This is the generation which has a rendezvous with destiny"I relived that traumatic,hectic day of gathering together the eighteen year olds of our state predominately ,recent high school graduates ,to perform the miracle of making us into soldiers and sailors to free a world in chains. That group of newly inducted soldiers went to all parts of the globe.Prof. Harrison went as a rifleman;I went into the Army Air Corp as an aerial gunner with the Eighth Air force and was shot down over Germany and spent the last months of the war as a P.O.W..Our generation kept that rendezvous and fully met the responsibility placed upon our young shoulders to the satisfaction of a grateful nation and world. Professor Harrison's book tells about all this through the eyes and heart of a young Arkansas lad who as we said in those day "took up arms as a boy,became a man overnight,and a hero in a twinkling of an eye,some to come home,some to remain. Since reading Unsung Valor I have met Cleveland Harrison via E-mail and have discovered that we have much in common. it took took 63 years and one most touching,moving literary epic to do this.For Professor Harrison's time,effort,and no doubt many shed tears,I am truly thankful to him. Hand Salute <><



2. After posting a message on the 94th Infantry Division's website looking for information on the attack on Orsholz, Germany January 20-21, 1945 I was contacted by Cleveland Harrison. Mr. Harrison put me in contact with other members of the 301st Regiment of the 94th Division who were with a family friend when he was captured outside of Orsholz. Mr. Harrison mentioned his book and suggested it might provide more detail about the battle. After reading his book I was amazed at the clarity and detail of his recollections. I have corresponded several times with Mr. Harrison, and he was gracious enough to sign my copy of his book with a dedication to my friend. His story is wonderfully expressed as the memories and journey of one man in a time of fear and uncertainty. It is written in a way that will touch the average person, and make them understand, if only for a moment, what it was like to see the world through his eyes.
   To all the 94th Division veterans, and to you Cleveland, thank you for your service.
   Welcome Home.



3. "Unsung Valor" by A. Cleveland Harrison. Subtitled: "A GI's Story Of World War II". University Press of Mississippi, Jackson. 2000.
   
   This is a very complete and detailed book, tracing the experiences of a skinny Southern boy, (in 1943), drafted into the United States Army, deciding on the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), trained at the University of Mississippi, transferred into a regular Army unit (the 94th Division) and then sent to the European Theater of Operations, ETO, just when things were becoming really hot. General George Marshall had shut down the Army Specialized Training Program so as to supply warm bodies as replacements for all the causalities in the ETO. The author, A. Cleveland Harrison, recounts being wounded (88 artillery fire,) as his Division advanced on the town of Orscholz, his treatment, infection, his stint in hospital and, finally, his recovery. Then, he remained in England until his reassignment, April 1945, to the hostilities in Europe. Happily, the war in Europe ended in May 1945, and the author became a "Clerk-Typist" in Versailles, France and later, a "Mail Clerk-Draftsman" in Frankfurt am Main.
   
   If you have had the opportunity to study the history of World War II, you probably have been exposed to the grand strategies of different battles, the movement of this numbered unit on one side against another number on the other side. You might even have become impatient with the stories of how one American general (or two) could not get along with a certain British field marshal, and begin to wonder how many people were killed by the egoistical personalities of such high ranking individuals. So, this present work, by A. Cleveland Harrison, is a refreshing relief in its detailed examination of the feelings and daily experiences of an ordinary Americana solider in the ETO
   
   I became the fiftieth reviewer of this book because of the correspondence form Dr. Harrison prodding me to add his book to my Amazon Listmania list on the Army Specialized Training Program, ASTP. The first two chapters of Dr. Harrison's book deal extensively with the Army Specialized Training Program. certainly merit a place on any list on the ASTP. Thos chapters speak about an ASTP experience at a Southern university, which, from what I read, quite different than the ASTP experience at Manhattan College, my alma mater. I do not believe that an ASTPer at Manhattan College had to be concerned with how to wear a saber without getting the weapon caught between his legs. On the other hand, the Manhattan College ASTPer had to be concerned with living in an apartment on 7th Avenue.
   
   I am happy to join some 45 other Amazon reviewers in assigning five stars to this book.



4. Unsung Valor is truly an extraordinary book. I am 44 years old and have studied World War II rather extensively in the past. However, this book has revealed this war (and all wars) to me in a way that is completely surprising and unique. I now have a different frame of reference for studying all wars, especially World War II. For someone like me who has never served in the military, this book provides an invaluable insight to truly understanding the realities of war. The common, mundane, everyday details, which are made so interesting, provide a setting which only heightens the intensity of the actual battle scenes in an unusually enriching and exciting way. This book reads so easily you literally feel as if you are going through the experiences with Dr. Harrison. Unsung Valor brings the reality of war to the reader in a unique way and succeeds where most other narrowly focused books fail. Dr. Harrison should be commended for educating a younger public on the extraordinary sacrifices made by ordinary men who answered when their nation called. It is well worth the read and the time invested.



5. This is the book I've always wanted to read! I had just turned 6 when Pearl Harbor was bombed and my uncle and most of the other men in our family and neighborhood disappeared to that thing called "WAR"! I prayed for all of them and wondered, "Where did they go, what happened to them, what was it like?" My uncle was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, spent time in a German prison camp and came home very different - now I know and understand better why! Reading Prof. Harrison's book I finally know what happened to the young men who were suddenly jerked from their families, schools, futures, through no fault or desire of their own, and were trained and sent to see and do things they could not have previously imagined. They were pushed to and beyond limits they did not know they had, degraded, treated like cattle at times by our own army, and thus molded into a great and loyal fighting unit.
   
   How any of our men experienced this and stayed sane, that they were able to return home to slip back into the lives they had expected, is incredible. I have read every book I find on World War II and studied military history in college trying to understand and know what happened, what war is REALLY like for our men. I've always known it wasn't what we saw on the movie screen. Now I know. Thanks to Prof. Harrison's detail and honesty, it is possible to get a sense of what it was like for the draftee. UNSUNG VALOR is very properly named - to go when called, to perform with the best of your abilities, to respond to the unknown and unbelievable with fear and courage, that is valor at its best - and it was unsung.
   
   To survive, to return home, to teach hundreds of teenagers to speak properly in public, to act and produce plays, to put up with all the campus nonsense that young people in their late teens and early twenties produce, and to never lose your cool, never tell them what he saw and experienced at their age - that was also UNSUNG VALOR! A. Cleveland Harrison is an unusual man and has written a book that should be required reading of all Americans!

No comments about Abraham Lincoln Comes Home.

No comments about My Life in the Old Army: The Reminiscences of Abner Doubleday from the Collections of the New-York Historical Society.

5 comments about Robert E. Lee (Penguin Lives).

1. I like the Penquin series of short biographies but this one was too much of a strange psychohistory. As other reviewers have pointed out, author Roy Blount seems to have a need to go into details 9at fairly great legnth) such as Lee's small feet and that he liked to play games with his children where they tickled his feet. First of all, I knew this because as a Civil way buff, I have read a lot about Lee so I come across such material. However, someone who knows less about Lee who is reading a very short biography would want to know more substance and less psycho nonsense in those few pages.
   
   There is not a lot of military history but, then again, this is a short book. Still, military history is basic to an initial understanding of Lee, therefore, perhaps Blount should have been more carefully in allocating scarce page space in this short book. In general, I have enjoyed reading short biographies of historical figures I am familiar with. I have read several biographies of Grant, for example, and I found two short biographies to be worthwhile in that in the few pages, they added insights. I suppose this book is OK for someone who knows nothing about Lee but it would be better to include more of the military and political facts. However, I found that it didn't really add much to my personal understanding of Lee.



2. In the pantheon of American history, few figures are as elusive and unknowable as Robert E. Lee, the commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia and the principal Confederate military leader in the Civil War. To try and encapsulate his life into one small, concise little book is pretty much impossible, but Roy Blount Jr. tries his best. And for that, he is to be applauded.
   
   Over the course of less than 200 pages, Blount examines Lee's life from his troubled past (Light-Horse Harry Lee, his Revolutionary War hero of a father, abandons the family and leaves his mother to raise their children), to his early military career (including brave missions for Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War), up through his Civil War generalship and subsequent retirement to a small college to live out his last years. And Blount does it with the charm and wit that make him one of America's (and the South's) most treasured writers.
   
   Robert E. Lee, more a marble giant than a man in most other biographers' attempts, is fleshed out by Blount as a stoic, almost Calvinist man with some unusual attributes that make him more attractive than before. Blount does not try to apologize for Lee's decision to side with his state over the Federal Government, he also tries to illuminate Lee's human side with interactions with his children and various ladies other than his wife over the course of his life. The Robert E. Lee that emerges is a man who had a hard life, with little hope for more than a passing whiff of happiness, who saw his duty to his state and his class overreaching that of the nation he served so gallantly before. And he paid the price for that in the end.
   
   Blount is at his best when describing Lee's human side (such as his flirtations with other women, his relationships with his children, his care of pupils while in charge of West Point), and also in showing that Lee's military record during the Civil War was less than perfect. Indeed, the book focuses on what Blount calls Lee's "instinctive" generalship and how his inability to communicate with his subordinates cost him victory at Gettysburg. Lee's war is not a success in the end, but his image as a fatherly leader of his men helps to cement the postwar elevation to Godlike status among the defeated Southerners who clung to the ideals of the Confederacy.
   
   Robert E. Lee is too complex a figure to be summed up in the space of 200 pages, but what Blount does is provide a quick survey of his life and infuse it with enough detail to make for a great brief appreciation. In appendices to the main book, Blount also discusses Lee's humor (his fondness for a certain, almost obscene phrase a highlight) and his attitudes to slavery (Lee was sadly a product of his times, no matter how "kind" he may have been to his own slaves). Blount, a southerner himself, takes pains to show Lee in real terms, not as the demigod he has been promoted to in the wake of postwar nostalgia. Robert E. Lee was not an easy man to know, and Blount makes no attempt to act as if his is the "definitive" study. But through clever and interesting sidetracks into Lee's personality, Blount comes as close as anyone yet to getting a handle on the man behind the curtain, the real Robert E. Lee and not the myth.
   
   Roy Blount Jr., through the auspices of Penguin's Brief Lives series, gives us a portrait of Robert E. Lee than transcends the myth and looks at the facts behind the myth. The result is a man that emerges as a troubled and complicated leader of men whose failings had as much to do with his legend as his successes. Blount makes Lee human, something that other more esteemed historians seem to miss. For that, he should be commended. The Marble Giant comes alive, however briefly, and fans and detractors alike can find something to treasure in Roy Blount's honest appraisal of his life and times.



3. I came away from this biography of Robert E. Lee feeling that the author didn't like his subject very much. It was almost like he wanted to prove that General Lee was just another man with more than his share of faults. He kept trying to pick Lee's personality apart and gave meaning to every gesture and casual comment that Lee had ever made. I felt that the historic facts in this book seemed accurate as far as I could remember from other things that I had read, but I also felt that there was not enough information given to substantiate some of the negative comments. He painted Lee as somewhat of a flirt, ignoring his wife, and being a cold and indifferent father to his children.
   
   If you want to read about General Lee, there are better biographies available.
   
   



4. This book fails Gen. Robert E. Lee.
   
   It's noble in intent and confused in reality; like the Confederate army, half of which deserted, it greatly misses its full potential; like Lee's ability to overawe Northern generals, the topic seems to have overawed Blount; and like the Confederacy itself, it's a sadly flawed effort in defence of a doomed cause. In other words, it's a fitting portrayal of the Slave-ocracy itself, all smoke and mirrors and little substance. People who live off the labour of others are rarely noble, decent, competent or useful; that is why the Confederacy failed, not due to the shortcomings of General Lee or any of his soldiers.
   
   Again and again, Blount approaches fatal flaws in Lee's character and comes away uninspired; he writes "Lee was a great defensive general but on offense he got away with murder." It's an astute assessment. But he doesn't suggest the outcome had Lee fought a solely defensive war instead of wasting his best troops in futile attacks.
   
   Even his assessment of Lee as a "great defensive general" can be questioned. At the start of his long retreat to Appomattox Courthouse, Lee had 64,000 troops. He inflicted 63,000 casualties on Union forces; but, at Appomattox, his army was less than 10,000. Lee lost 53,000 men, or 83 percent of his army. Had the Germans lost the same proportion in Normandy in 1944, World War II would have ended by Thanksgiving.
   
   Blount touches major issues again and again, then retreats without a single thought. He spends more time psychobabbling about Lee's shoe size, a 4 1/2 C, than discussing Gettysburg. Surely, in a 206-page book about one of the great flawed figures of American history, there is more intellectual depth than to report, "We have no evidence that Lee and his wife, Mary, ever massaged each other's feet."
   
   "No one has ascribed any psychological significance to this socks fixation," Blount writes later about Lee's complaint that his wife sent only 64 pairs of socks, instead of 67 pairs. Although his soldiers often subsisted on mule meat and green corn, Blount can't find any psychobabble to explain Lee's order to have a soldier at Antietam shot for carrying a "stolen" pig. But he explains in great detail Lee's murder of a Canadian "snake" early in his career.
   
   When it comes to pure babble, Blount says Lee's joining the Confederacy "is one of the most famous American decisions." So, he compares it to the purely fictional decision by Huck Finn to help Jim, a runaway slave, to escape. Such insight is surely equivalent to saying Roosevelt's action after Pearl Harbour was inspired by Superman's decision to save Gotham. This is history? Or is it Blount's sense of humour, testing the acumen of readers hoping for anything more serious.
   
   Having wrapped up Lee's life in 163 pages, perhaps the strangest element is three Appendix afterthoughts that fill up the otherwise blank space from page 165 to the end. Maybe those pages should have been left blank for readers to fill in their own notes, observations and ideas. Or he could have psychobabbled about 'General Lee', the Dukes of Hazard car.
   
   Regardless of anyone's opinion of him, Lee deserves better.



5. Obviously, to get a REALLY good idea of who someone was, one must read more than one biography, but Roy Blount, Jr.'s "Robert E. Lee: A Life" is a pretty good start for anyone who has slight trouble wading through the heavy stuff. It keeps a lighthearted air while still managing to be extremely informative. I learned some little things about Lee, which I hadn't heard anywhere else before, and it was presented in such an enjoyable fashion. I already have two people asking to borrow this book, and I'm confident that they will come out of it with no complaints, just as I have. Enjoy. There's no way you can regret this purchase.

2 comments about Hans's Story.

1. This is an important and wonderful book. Hans Loeser tells the story of his upper middle class youth is Germany in the early twenties until they were emigrated in the late thirties. His parents owned and lived in a department store in Kassel Germany. Hans had a happy childhood which he describes in wonderful detail almost entirely from memory. His early happy years begin to fade in 1933 when the Nazi's anti semitism begins to seriously take hold. Hans tell his story without sentimentality, self pity or hate. He describes his parent's denial, their final escape first to Holland, but only after his father was sent to Dacha. They eventually made it to Palestine and finally to the United States. Hans and his Sister were sent to school in England and then to United States where they joined with their parents. He continues his story which finds him in the United States Army eventually becoming a very successful lawyer in Boston. It is a rare story of a family that survived the Holocaust due in part to courage, wealth and some good fortune. seldom does one hear such a stories and although I can't say it was a completely happy ending, it certainly is inspiring.
   It a a must read for young people today. by Margaret Myer



2. I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Hans during which he spoke about this book. I could have listened to him for hours since I found his story so very fascinating. I bought the book the same night and read it within days.
   I really enjoyed reading it; it gives a very personal and therefore very involving account of those turbulent and terrible times. It's like reading a non-fiction novel... A great way to make people of all ages relate to the experiences.I highly recommend it! P.S. I grew up in Germany during the 1970ies and 1980ies (52 years after Hans grew up there) and found many of his descriptions of everyday life in Germany (pre Nazi time) to be still very up-to-date.

5 comments about War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission.

1. A sad reminder that history is written by the victors. I wonder how Americans would feel if Al Qaeda would write a similar book glorifying the 9-11 attacks. Disgusting.



2. Paul Tibbet should have been tried as a war criminal. I don't see anything to celebrate about on this 60th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
   Perhaps the Japanese are rethinking about these events today and can write their own versions of what they think of these two genicides.
   Whether it saved lives or not is speculation, just that speculation. We all know how speculation is viewed in a court of law.



3. Neither of the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan (not to forget the earlier fire bombing of Tokyo) were necessary to conclude the war. Japan was a thoroughly defeated country and had been seeking peace terms for over half a year. The terms ultimately granted by the US were those which Japan had been seeking all along!
   
   Irrespective of this, by the self proclaimed standards of the United States, Major (later Major General) Charles Sweeney was clearly a war criminal of the worst kind. It is one thing to attack enemy troops and fortifications; quite another to burn the eyeballs out of the heads of 100,000 *civilian* non-combatants -- most of whom were women, children and the elderly; and 10-12,000 of whom were Sweeney's fellow Catholics. Germans and Japanese swung for much, much less. Sweeney got promoted! But, what goes around comes around.



4. My my my. The hot and cold reviews that this book attracts are a reflection of why Sweeney claims to have written the book, I think. For those who "support" the manner by which the U.S. ended the war that Japan started, Sweeney wanted to provide the record from one of the key players as the pilot of "Bock's Car," the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. For those who oppose this bombing, he wanted to provide his perspective and argument. My review of the book is from the perspective of someone who wanted to just understand the facts of the bombing missions, and who is interested in reading the firsthand account of such a moment in modern history. I doubt that anyone's position on the bombings will be changed one bit by this book; it does, however, provide that eyewitness perspective of the missions, and it gives the reader some understanding of what it took for these controversial measures to have even been executed. I found the book fascinating from that angle. If you are interested in the big pro or con moral questions, I am not sure that this book is going to feed your desires.



5. Sweeney writes a compelling story about his role in the use of the atomic bomb. From an initial interest in flying, thru his early years as a pilot, to the secret preparations to train pilots and mission support to deliver an atomic bomb, and finally the actual missions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
   
   This book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how and why we "dropped the bomb".

No comments about Six Who Dared: The Lives of Six Great Soldiers of Fortune (A Fireship CONTEMPORIZED CLASSIC).

5 comments about Patton And Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century.

1. Showalter is to be commended first for attempting to write a history that he claims as "reader-friendly, by eschewing the academic apparatus that so often gets in the way of the story." On the other hand, to anyone with a bit of knowledge of the era and the personalities, Showalter may have a greater desire to obscure the origin of much of his work. Large parts of Showalter's history are literal quotes of earlier works. He does provide proper attribution once or twice, but for the most part the works he borrows from are unattributed.
   
   His declared goal is to depict "two complex personalities in the contexts of their military cultures and the countries that sustained them. Focusing on the generals, it compares the U.S. Army and the Wehrmacht as military instruments, and American and German ways of war." Showalter never acheives this objective.
   
   Instead he has written summary biographies of Patton and Rommel, occasionally inserting his own opinions of what made each man tick. There is nothing new in his observations, nothing that hasn't been previously opined.
   
   Showalter writes in a disconcertingly colloquial way. Happily there is little of the academic style, which is a plus. But occasionally he throws in a little-used archaic word or, worse, slings jargon that many will not be familiar. He particularly uses a tired baseball cliche that I haven't heard in several decades.
   
   The editing and proofreading are amazingly poor. Take this sentence that appears on page 409: "The other was in Paris, where another more group of officers . . ." Yeah, "another more." Huh?
   
   There are no maps or photographs in the book. Military history without even simple diagrams? It doesn't work.
   
   Ultimately this history doesn't really illuminate either Patton or Rommel beyond what is available elsewhere in more vivid detail. As to providing a comparison between the two men, it never even begins the task. Neither general could be said to embody the warrior's ethos of the age. Both men were unique and had strong personalties and favored what were considered unorthodox ways. Showalter could have done a much better job of examining how the men's individual idiosyncracies played out, but it still would not have fulfilled his original objective.
   
   Overall, I can't recommend this history to the serious student of military history. It is, as I noted above, dully repetitious of earlier works. It brings no revelatory insights to bear on either general or on warmaking in general. Except for the awful editing and proofreading and the occasional lapses of the author into slang and archaic language, it is readable, but it is not overly interesting.
   
   Jerry



2. This is not a bad book if you realize what it really is: a nice light-reading history. This is not for those who already have dozens of books about these two men. It is a book for those who haven't read much history, but would like to get a nice introduction to these two great generals. For that, it's a really good book.
   
   I found that the author of this book seems to favor Rommel over Patton. Whereas Rommel is depicted as a competent professional soldier, Patton is often depicted as someone who is more concerned with his career and rank rather than military issues. The author paints Patton as a man on the verge of mental breakdown, and as a bit of a whiner. If you're a Patton fan, you might want to avoid this book.



3. I bought this book at an airport bookstore, and really enjoyed it. For those that don't have the time to read full biographies of Patton and Rommell, this is the book for you. If you've already read separate biographies of the two, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book.



4. Several others have already commented on the curious and total lack of maps and photos. How can you have a book on battles and omit maps? Plus, the textual descriptions of key battles, like El Alamein, Tobruk, Kasserine Pass and the Allied invasion of Sicily are good but abbreviated. You can find far more detailed accounts elsewhere. For example, there are numerous books devoted to El Alamein or the Battle of the Bulge. Still, Showalter must be clearly aware that his book adds little new to the existing accounts of the battles it describes. Perhaps this was the reason for the omission of maps?
   
   The purported value of the book is in its comparison of the experiences and, to some extent, the personalities and motivations of Patton and Rommel. Here, other reviewers have also remarked that this is quite a hard task. But Showalter seems to have done a reasonable job, including, I presume, interviews with Manfred Rommel, the general's son.
   
   But at least for me, there were a few new snippets that I have not found in other texts. First was the deliberate decision by the US to restrict the size of the army to 90 divisions. In part because the navy and marines have to be built up to fight the Pacific war. But also, this let the US arm as heavily as possible those army divisions. So the US took advantage of its industrial prowess, to minimise its casualties. Fair enough. But in many other accounts of the war, I've never run into mention of this 90 division limit. I'm not saying it's a secret. Undoubtedly, there must be books mentioning it; perhaps even the official histories of the US army. Still it's surprising to know. Especially because Showalter asserts that one consequence was that after Normandy, Eisenhower was restricted in how aggressively he could march across Europe. Whereas with more troops, he might have been able to attack earlier into Germany.
   
   Another useful insight was about how Patton and Rommel were regarded after the war, by the militaries of the US and West Germany. Books on World War 2 tend to end their accounts shortly after the end of the war, naturally. So it was interesting to read that ironically, Patton was more highly regarded than Rommel by the Bundeswehr. While the reverse tended to be true in the US. Typically, it is not easy to get any detailed accounts of the Bundeswehr, written in English. Partly because peacetime militaries generate less interest than wartime. But perhaps also because the Bundeswehr deliberately kept a low profile after the war, to discourage militarism. So Showalter's descriptions of Bundeswehr assessments, if accurate, are quite interesting and fill a gap in the general knowledge.



5. You can see in these 420 pages the author deep knowledge of the history of World War II and a book that provide the right level of information in narrating the lives of two great generals of this war. Both these generals, as you will see, had very different backgrounds, different ways of commands and personalities and it is inevitable to have more sympathy with one them after reading the book. To be a General is a huge responsability which requires several characteristics depending on the job or task, that general will execute. What I admire about Rommel was his previous experience in World War I and for Patton, his knowledge of history and his sense of humor. Patton was an old fashioned soldier, a romantic warrior, with an undoubtedly very peculiar personality. Rommel was an exceptional leader and Feldmarschall that could not flank Hitler's lunatic ideas, finally paying with his life.
   I just have one complain with the book, and it is the absolutely lack of maps or bibliography, at least in the paperback. Despite the later, this is a book to recommend.