blogging authors

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Thank you to Gerrie Hugo, author of the autobiographical book Africa Will Always Break Your Heart for taking the time to sit down with Blogging Authors for this interview. (E-book version is also available here)

1.  What prompted you to write this book? How did you come up with the idea?

Africa Will Always Break Your Heart saw the light purely as an exercise in therapy. I suffer from Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and needed an escape valve to let off steam in an effort to put the demons of the past to rest.

It is also my confession and apology for living a large part of my life as a racist.

I wrote the first draft in six weeks. It just bubbled over. During the editing process numerous other agendas came to the fore i.e. setting the record straight. Illuminating to some people just how backward their opinions are. To anger my enemies and bring the heart failure they so justly deserve on a bit sooner. Continue reading »

Today, June 25, marks the 131st anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and Custeriana is still going strong. At a recent auction, George Armstrong Custer’s frayed battle flag sold for more than $896,000. 

The flag was left at Custer’s headquarters at Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory, in 1876, when Custer and his men were wiped out at Little Big Horn by Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors.

Custer books are also in hot demand, including first edition copies of the three books his wife, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, wrote following his death: “Boots and Saddles” Or, Life in Dakota With General Custer, Tenting on the Plains or General Custer in Kansas and Texas, and Following the Guidon .

In the early morning hours of June 25, 1876, Custer’s Indian scouts told him of a huge village encamped on the banks of the Little Big Horn (Greasy Grass).  Custer dismissed their claims, divided his forces, and attacked the village. Historians believe his hasty ride into battle was prompted by his fear that the village would scatter and the Indians would get away.

The rest, of course, is history. The men under Custer’s own command were wiped out, and those under Benteen and Reno managed to hold out until help arrived.

Want to learn more about the Boy General?  My favorite books include:

Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors 

Custer: Cavalier in Buckskin 

The Custer Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the Life of George Armstrong Custer and the Plains Indian Wars 

In his new book, Africa Will Always Break Your Heart, author Gerrie Hugo shares his first-hand story of racism, corruption and hate during the period before the first ever South African democratic elections.

This book is about paying the ultimate price when speaking out against crimes against humanity committed in the name of Apartheid. And who better to tell the story than someone who was part of the system?

Hugo’s military career began during the Apartheid era. The Government’s propaganda led the white South African to believe that the “Red Peril” wanted to take control over the country. Hugo and many, many others believed that the Communists using the country’s black population as pawns, was the real enemy.

The author joined the army at the age of 17, one of the first to invade Angola.

Hugo tells of the violent hell he survived as a young soldier. For more than 16 years, he fought for Apartheid to save his beloved country from the Communistic onslaught.

In 1991 the negotiations leading up to a democratic South Africa was well under way. Hugo had by then advanced to Colonel. When realizing that the Generals were planning to sabotage the reform-process Hugo lost his blinkers. The real enemy was not some abstract “Red Peril”, but found within the very system he served; the military.

Knowing the consequences would be grave, he took his story to international media. His former brothers-in-arms retaliated swiftly and relentlessly. A price was put out on his head and Hugo was forced to live on the run for many years.

“In Africa, controversy can get you killed,” he says. Continue reading »

Meet Peter Davies, author of Scatterlings of Africa. Born and raised in Africa, Peter Davies served as a territorial soldier in Rhodesia from 1963 to 1975. He saw action, and took part in captures and interrogation.

This gave him insight into terrorist minds, many of which were successfully encouraged to ‘turn’ and fight alongside Rhodesia’s soldiers against their former comrades.  Davies wrote his novel, “Scatterlings of Africa,” using his own recollections of how the war was fought, and how it affected Rhodesia and its people.

Interview posted with permission of ReaderViews.

Juanita:  Welcome to Reader Views Peter, and thanks for the opportunity to talk with you today about your new novel “Scatterlings of Africa.”  Your story takes place in 60’s-70’s Rhodesia.  Would you paint a picture of this area for readers, and tell us what was happening politically in the region?

Peter:  Well, thank you for inviting me, Juanita.  As you know; after almost fifteen years of war, Rhodesia fell under the grip of Marxist dictator Mugabe who changed its name to Zimbabwe in 1980.  But Scatterlings of Africa takes you back to December 1972 in Rhodesia’s Zambezi Valley.  At that time, the Valley was full of animals that were wild and free – it was what was known as a ‘protected hunting area’, not one of the relatively tame ‘game reserves’ that most people see.  I had many encounters with lions, elephants, buffalo and other big game in addition to all the usual smaller stuff like wart hogs, antelope, etc. in this beautiful but wild part of the Valley.  Scorpions, tsetse fly and other nasty insects abounded and there was abundant bird life. Continue reading »

Paper War: Nazi Propaganda In One Battle, On A Single Day Cassino, Italy, May 11, 1944, from Mark Batty Publisher is a stunning graphical look at the Nazi war machine’s most powerful weapon: Propaganda.

On May 11, 1944, as the 8th Indian Division of 13 British Corps prepared for the Battle of Monte Cassino, the waiting soldiers were bombarded with Nazi propaganda leaflets from a mortar battery on the Cassino side of the Rapido River. As the Germans identified various ethnic divisions, soldiers were targeted with leaflets in English, Polish, and for the Indian Division, Urdu and Hindi.

In retaliation, the Allies barraged the German soldiers with a safe conduct leaflet, and a “contemptuous ‘Wo ist Hitler?’ (Where is Hitler)” leaflet.

As Peter Batty, an Indian soldier who collected the leaflets wrote “In spite of the volume of propaganda material fired at us on that Thursday in May, the effects that it had on us was considerably less dramatic than those minutes of total silence that we had experienced earlier in the afternoon of the 11th” when a standstill in artillery fire created “an unnatural quiet.” Continue reading »

The Last Full Measure
by Jeff Shaara

After reveling in Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, I doubted that his son, Jeff, could even come close to attaining the emotional connection to the historical figures that Michael achieved in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the battle of Gettysburg. I was wrong.

The Last Full Measure begins after the three-day Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, and follows the events leading up to Lee’s surrender in April 1865, and ultimately–to the deaths of Lee, Grant, and Joshua Chamberlain. Shaara captures the emotional and physical toil of war , taking readers deep into the psyche of the war’s greatest generals and experentially through the perils of its most disastrous moments.

As Shaara chronicles Lee’s efforts to defend northern Virginia from Grant’s well-supplied forces, I was struck with the Southern general’s heartbreaking decisions about sending his men out against a far better equipped enemy, knowing that certain death awaited them.

Too, the reader can’t help but feel Lee’s crushing disappointments every time one of his generals’ actions or inactions resulted in one more defeat–knowing that each defeat catapaulting the the Army of Northern Virginia into an inescapable corner.  

And although I knew the outcome, each time Lee strategized a brilliant plan to snatch victory from the unstoppable Grant, one of the lesser Gods on his staff managed to bumble his way to defeat. I could almost feel Lee’s heartache.

But the story isn’t all about Lee.  The readers get a private peek into the personal lives of two other major players, General Ulysses S. Grant, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. In fact, the book is told through the eyes of all three men, giving us a chance to learn about their personal struggles and soul-searching challenges.

There’s a sadness, too, in knowing that all of the pain and death would, in the end, not bring a nation back together again, but instead would take it to the brink of another civil war because of the harshness of reconstruction.  As Shaara wrote “The last casualty of the war was not the tragic soldier, the man who fought for honor and a cuase, who faced his enemy across the deadly space. It was instead Lincoln’s optimism, a belief in a future made glorious by the rights of the individual, that everything planned for this nation by the men who founded it could now go forward, leading the way for the rest of the world.”

Highly recommended.

Through the Eyes of a Survivor
by Colette Waddell 

“I have told this story to Colette for many reasons.  I want people to understand what happened during World War II, to know what was done to us Jews for no reason at all, other than that we happened to be Jewish.  I also want young people to learn from the things I did in my life that allowed me to survive.  But my greatest hope in sharing this story is so that my parents and other family members did not die in vain.  I truly believe that telling others about their murders and speaking out against genocide, racism, and hatred can and will make a difference.”

Nina Grutz’s family was successful in business in Poland.  The community respected them.  Nina’s life was one of wealth.  “The Grutz family was part of a Jewish population that thrived at a time when almost three-quarter of the Jews in Europe called Poland home.”  “It seems to me now that my life before the war was so very happy and full.  Continue reading »

Scatterlings of Africa
by Peter Davies

This review was written by Andrew Lubin “author of Charlie Battery; A Marine Artillery Unit in Iraq” (Bucks County, Pa), and posted with his permission.
    
“This is Peter Davies ‘break-out’ book, and a good one indeed!

Davies, a former soldier in the Rhodesian Army, has written a realistic historical fiction novel based on that ugly and misunderstood civil war. His book combines the excitement and adrenaline of a citizen-soldier defending his family and home from the burtality of the ‘terrs,” with the stresses and knoweldge of what will happen to his loved ones if he fails.

Not for the poltically correct or faint-of-heart, Davies book simply tells it like it was in Rhodesia in the mid 70’s. Well written & well done !!

Purchase Scatterlings of Africa from Amazon.

Promises Made, Promises Not Kept
by Ron Standerfer, Author of The Eagles Last Flight

It was chilly that morning at Yucca Flat, Nevada. As I stood on the platform with the others, I stomped my feet to keep warm and gazed anxiously at the seven hundred foot tower before me. Suspended below was a nuclear device capable of a detonation more than two times the size of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The tower was eight miles away, but it looked much closer. The device was set to go off in ten minutes. When the final countdown began, I placed my hands over my eyes and stood facing it as instructed.

What happened next, was a flash of light so bright and  blinding that the bones of my hands were visible as  if by X-ray. I uncovered my eyes and saw a dark, dirty mushroom cloud ascending skyward, followed by a shock wave rolling across the desert, passing through me with a resounding thump. When it was over, they collected the dosimeter I was wearing, brushed me off with brooms to remove any radioactive fallout that might have clung to my uniform, and sent me back to my squadron.

To this day, I have no idea why I was sent to witness that atomic test. But back then, it didn’t matter. I was a first lieutenant in the United States Air Force and that’s what I was ordered to do. Besides, I was certain the government knew what it was doing, and would never put me in harm’s way. That’s the way it was in 1957.

Twenty years after the test, I received a letter from the Center of Disease Control in Atlanta. “Our records show that in 1957 you observed a highly classified nuclear test code named, Smokey,” it began. “It seems in that particular test, an exceptionally large amount of radiation had been released into the air, and in later years, a significant number of deaths from leukemia had occurred among the participants.”  After medical tests proved that I did not have leukemia, I put the letter away and went on with my life. I was one of the lucky ones. Others were not so lucky. Continue reading »

The Eagle’s Last Flight
by Col. Ron Standerfer (USAF, Ret)

As a work of fiction Colonel Standerfer has produced a book that places his readers well within the realm of reality. It is the story of a decorated combat pilot who is dying of leukemia. The story takes us through his training (which he nearly fails to complete) to his association with veteran World War II and Korean War fighter pilots.

These friends take him under their wing and teach him the realities of combat flying. He is assigned to combat operations in Vietnam and proves himself and capable and heroic pilot. Colonel Standerfer’s writing skill puts you in the cockpit with pilot Skip O’Neill as he maneuvers and engages in aerial combat. The fact that the author himself flew 237 combat missions in Vietnam provides the background and real knowledge and skills to take the reader with him back into the fight. Continue reading »