Book Review: Comrades of War

Comrades of War by Sven Hassel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I picked this up from a book exchange at a B&B I was staying in. Judging from the cover (someone one should do with caution) I thought I was getting a mindless action tale to flip through while on vacation. I was wrong.

Comrades of War is a gritty look at the life of a unit of Wehrmacht soldiers as the Third Reich begins to collapse. There are few battle scenes. Most of the action takes place while they are in a hospital recovering from grievous wounds and drinking themselves to oblivion. There's plenty of fistfights, the guys solve a murder, and one of them even falls in love. then they go back to the front, a place they psychologically never left.

I'd never heard of Sven Hassel before I read this novel. Judging from his other titles, Comrades of War appears to be typical of his work. Many of the characters reappear in his other novels. I looked Hassel up and found him to be as intriguing as the books he wrote. He was Danish and claimed to have fought in the German army on the Eastern Front. Another Danish writer researched his past and said Hassel was in fact a Nazi informer in occupied Denmark. Claims and counterclaims shot back and forth and I am not sure who is right, although I'm leaning towards the "Hassel was a fake" theory.

Whatever he was, Hassel was a great writer who understood the madness of war and the mindset of soldiers. You end up sympathizing with these guys despite their being on the wrong side. They never commit atrocities (at least not in this book) and they hate the officer corps and the Nazi party members, who are invariably shown to be corrupt, brutal, and weak. Well worth a read.

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New research collection on Quantrill and his bushwhacker band

I've mentioned William Clarke Quantrill several times on this blog. This dangerous bushwhacker blazed his way to fame during the Civil War and even makes a cameo appearance in my Civil War novel.

Now a new collection is forming at the Public Library in Gentry, Arkansas, devoted to Quantrill, his men, his opponents, and the Border Wars in general. The plan is to bring together all the primary and secondary sources on Quantrill to build a definitive collection for scholars, educators, and the general public.

There's also a blog devoted to the collection with lots of information on individual members of Quantrill's band. It's called Josephine.

Who's Josephine? A certain young bushwhacker named Jimmy asks this same question of Jesse James. Read my book for the answer (or just go to that blog)!

The print edition of my Civil War novel now 25% off!

The print edition of A Fine Likeness, my Civil War novel, has now been reduced from $12.99 to $9.35. This is your chance to grab this exciting and meticulously researched historical novel at a significant discount!

If the recession is pinching your home especially hard, read it for free by asking your library to carry it. Just give them the title, author, and ISBN, provided in the link above.

And if you've already read my novel, thank you! Please help out  a struggling writer by reviewing it on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever else you feel like. Constructive criticism, whether in the review or via email, is always appreciated. I had one reader, a complete stranger, even send me a list of typos in the electronic edition that I corrected before A Fine Likeness went to press. Now that's the kind of reader I love!

Book Review: Seize and Hold, Master Strokes on the Battlefield

Seize And Hold: Master Strokes On The Battlefield by Bryan Perrett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book focuses one military tactic, the coup de main, by giving eleven examples of how it has been done well. Perrett writes in a clear, detailed, and exciting style that makes this volume a great read as well as a great resource.

As those familiar with my writings know, I'm more interested in the American Civil War and Colonial Wars. My interest drops off quickly after World War One. Despite the fact that the majority of chapters are devoted to World War Two, Korean, or Vietnam battles, I still found this book very interesting. The two chapters on the First World War, covering the Romanian Campaign of 1916 and Rommel's adventures on the Italian front in 1917, were of course my favorite!

One good aspect of this book is that many of its examples are of lesser-known engagements. Not only do we get the Romanian Campaign (the first truly motorized offensive) we also get a battle from the Russo-Polish War, the quick German conquest of Belgium and Holland in 1940, and the British victory over the Italian in North Africa.

The chapters are rather short and not definitive studies, so specialists may end up skipping some parts. Still, this book will please any reader interested in military history.

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University of Missouri Press to close

While Friday is usually reserved for my Civil War photo series, I just received some bad news I must share. The University of Missouri Press will be shut down, according to an article by the Columbia Tribune.

The press was founded in 1958 and in more than half a century has published hundreds of books on Missouri-related subjects.

UM System President Tim Wolfe announced yesterday that the press will begin to be phased out beginning in July. The press has been running at a $400,000 annual deficit despite recent staff cuts.

While that sounds like a lot, academic presses aren't designed to be money earners. They exist to publish books that aren't financially viable yet are important for the dissemination of knowledge, like the Collected Works of Langston Hughes and fiction by regional authors.

The University of Missouri Press also has an active Civil War line that I've used extensively in my own research. One recent book is Mark Lause's study of the 1864 Confederate invasion, the same campaign that provides the backdrop to my Civil War novel. Lause's book only covered the first half of the campaign and I had heard there was another volume in the works. I hope he can find another publisher.

Four hundred grand. Missouri can't spare that much to keep from being the first state without an academic press? None of the local millionaires with their giant plantation-style homes would cough up the money? The Walton family, owners of Walmart, live just a short drive away. Why didn't they write a check?

Because they don't care.

This is a bad day for Missouri writers and readers.

Our upcoming photo exhibition on Ethiopia

My brother-in-law Andrès, the same talented guy who designed the cover to my Civil War novel, has made a poster for my wife's and my upcoming photo exhibition. The photos are from our travels around Ethiopia and feature the people and places of Africa's oldest nation. All proceeds go to A Glimmer of Hope, which specializes in rural education. You can read more about them in an article I wrote here.

We're opening on June 1 at one of our favorite bars here in Santander, Spain. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, come to the grand opening! If you can't make it, check out two series I wrote for Gadling about this fascinating African nation. One was a tour around Ethiopia, and the other was about my two months living in Harar, a medieval walled city near the Somali border.

Civil War Missouri enters a new phase

In 1861, things looked good for the Confederate cause in Missouri. The victories at Wilson's Creek and Lexington were heralded as a sign of things to come. The optimism didn't last. Soon the Confederate forces were pushed into the southwestern part of the state, where they stayed for the rest of the year. At the battle of Pea Ridge in March, 1862, the rebels were solidly defeated in northwest Arkansas and hopes of conquering Missouri for the South began to fade.

With attention shifted to New Orleans, which had just fallen to the Union, and the slow Union creep up the Mississippi River, those rebels still in Missouri must have felt somewhat forgotten. That didn't stop them from fighting, however. Guerrillas and small units of regular troops skirmished with Union troops regularly.

In the first three weeks of May, there were skirmishes at Bloomfield (twice), French Point (several times), Center Creek (several times), Big Creek, Carthage, Hog Island, Richfield, and Santa Fe Road. And these are only the skirmishes that made it into the Official Records! Several smaller ones were probably not reported, plus the numerous cases of individual violence would not have been reported except in local newspapers.

The war was far from over.

The above drawing is by Alfred Waud and is captioned "On skirmish line Officer turning to look at a dying soldier". This hasty sketch immediately gripped me when I was looking through the Library of Congress collection. It looks like it was drawn from life and is more expressive than many more polished works of art.