Page 125 - Mercian Eagle 2014

It Puts Muscles on Your Eyebrows Mick Power
This is an interesting book describing the life
times of man who served five years from 1950
– 55 in 1st Battalion, The South Staffordshire
Regiment and 1st Battalion, the North
Staffordshire Regiment. His service included
postings to Hong Kong, Northern Ireland,
Germany, Trieste, Korea and Hong Kong
again. We have yet to read it right through,
(we are suffering from literary & Great War
Commemoration overload); but we have browsed through it and found that he was not shy of naming the personalities at the time. This is not stocked at The Staffordshire Regiment at the moment, but we are hoping to address that, as Mick Power’s book appears to be a valuable history of life in the 1950s.
ISBN 978-1-909220-11-9
IThe History of The British Army Since 2000 by James Tanner
This book – furnished with revealing
photographs and specially prepared
illustrations – traces the development of the
Army’s organisation, structures, units, uniforms,
and equipment from the end of the Cold War in
the early 1990s up to the present day. Brigadier
Jim Tanner is well known in the Mercian
Regiment and although the illustrations are
Army wide, it would be fair to say that we do
feature slightly more than the other regiments.
As you would expect from this author, this is well written and covers much ground succinctly.
This is an Osprey Book and can be ordered from them at:-www. ospreypublishing.com
ISBN 978-1-78200-593-3
1914: FIRST BLOOD
A Tommy Gunn Adventure by John Hughes-Wilson
Written by a leading military historian, the
first volume in this new series of World War I
novels takes us from the outbreak of the war to
the horror of the trenches and the extraordinary
truce on Christmas Day 1914. Historian and
journalist Andrew Roberts describes this first
book in the series as “gripping ... superbly
written, true to life ... and very exciting.” Just
as Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels vividly
portray The Napoleonic Wars to readers,
Hughes-Wilson’s Tommy Gunn powerfully expresses the horrific events of WW1 and the heart-rending courage of the young soldiers. His writing is founded in meticulous research and historical accuracy and his powerful words bridge the gap of the intervening century
so that we too can begin to appreciate the anguish, frustration and sorrows of the young soldiers of the “War to End All Wars” – the generation of own grandfathers and great-grandfathers.
‘Volunteers, Sir. Begging to join up. Bloody hundreds of them. Mainly civvies who want to do their bit.’ He shook his head. ‘Waste of time, if you ask me. It’ll all be over by Christmas. Then what?’ They could not know on 4th August 1914 just how long this war would last – or how many lives it would cost.
Meet T.O.M. Gunn. He’s a young infantry Lieutenant in The Sherwood Foresters, back on leave from India just as Europe catches fire in the chaotic summer of 1914. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) is off to France and Gunn is determined to join the
war before it’s over. He joins a hastily-formed mixed battalion of reservists, regular and territorial soldiers to find himself pitchforked into the mayhem of the battles of the Marne, the Aisne and then the long-drawn-out agony of Ypres as the high hopes of summer sink into the frozen trenches of the winter of 1914. By the time of the Christmas Truce with the Germans, Thaddeus Gunn and his men begin to realise that this is going to be a long war – and they will
be lucky if they survive. ‘I never want to live through this again. We had no spades to dig and had to use our mess tins to dig trenches ... We took food and ammo from the dead. And it was so cold and wet. The shells are the worst. I saw young Cpl Simpson’s body after he was killed. It was like chunks of meat. Sickening ... I can’t see this war being over by Christmas. And I can’t see us keeping going with all these casualties.’
John Hughes-Wilson was commissioned into The Sherwood Foresters, serving for twenty-five years before transferring to The Intelligence Corps and subsequently serving as a Special Forces Operations Officer. He saw active service in the Falkland Islands, Cyprus, Arabia and Northern Ireland as well as in the dangerous jungles of Whitehall and NATO. He retired as an Intelligence adviser to NATO’s Political Staff. He now lives in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.
ISBN: 978 1 86151 277 2. Paperback. 210 pages. RRP: £12.99. 3rd November 2014. An imprint of Memoirs Publishing (www. memoirspublishing.com), Mereo Books are available through Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobel, Waterstones, W H Smith and Google Books and as an e-book.
Novels
IIn the Shadow of the Bayonet & Out of the Shadow by Chris Boult
We cannot let the opportunity pass without
adding that Chris Boult, who served with
The Mercian Volunteers in the 1970s and 1
STAFFORDS in South Armagh in 1984, has
recently written two novels. Chris has drawn on
his knowledge of both the Army and Probation
Service to produce two contemporary stories;
involving soldiers, justice system professionals,
crime and the justice system itself. I have read
the first and am half way through the second
and apart from being entertaining, they explain a great deal about the realities of courts and prison life. They are highly recommended and Chris is already writing a third novel.
In the Shadow of the Bayonet (£7-99) & Out of the Shadow (£8- 99) both can be ordered from The Staffordshire Regiment Museum
To Order:
Cheques should be made payable to:WFR Museum – P&P £2
Send to: Foresters House, Chetwynd Barracks, Chilwell, Nottingham, NG9 5HA
Cheques should be made payable to: Staffordshire Regiment Museum – P&P £4.
Send to: Staffordshire Regiment Museum, Whittington Barracks, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS14 9PE.
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