books, art, music

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

It’s war on the Finnish front for Porta, Tiny, Barcelona and The Legionnaire - and it’s hellish, with ice, blood, cold and wolves (in addition to the enemy)! At this point in the war, it hardly matters who wins - as long as you survive.

But even survival can be dangerous in this army where Hitler’s fanatics are running wild. To endure the Russian tanks, the machine guns and flame throwers could mean getting shipped to the infamous and brutal Torgau Prison where conditions are even more savage than the battlefield.

To stay alive now means arrest, court martial, and in the end - - a cold grey day facing the execution squad!

The winter of 1944 was the most dangerous time to be a combant airman in the RAF Bomber Command.  The chances of surviving a tour were as low as one in five. Morale was rock bottom.

The daily heroism of those fighters come to life in this comprehensive and compelling history of that year, encompassing the most dangerous periods of the Battle of Berlin and the unparalleled losses over Magdeburg, Leipzig, and Nuremberg.

Men of Air includes personal accounts of how ordinary men coped with the constant pressure of flying, the loss of their buddies, and the constant threat of death or capture. By exploring famous events such as the Great Escape and D-Day, the reader finally learns how the Men of Air turned the tide against the Germans.

Highly recommended.

The seasoned killers of Hitler’s 27th Panzer Regiment fight their most savage battles yet, in bestselling author Sven Hassell’s continuation of his wartime saga, The Bloody Road to Death (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

Hassell’s novels have already sold 52 million copies worldwide . . . and his fans are eager to discover what happens with this band of misfit soldiers.

Now veterans of the trenches and seasoned front liners, the soldiers of the regimen find themselves in a deadly cactus forest crawling with snakes, scorpions and giant ants! This place definitely reeks of danger and death, and when their water rations run out, they come close to madness and murder!

Jane Mersky Leder hit one out of the ballpark with her well-researched, fascinating look at how World War II changed the way Americans viewed sex. You’ll find Thanks for the Memories: Love, Sex, and World War II an eye-opening read.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, young Americans knew instinctively that their lives would never be the same. The “normal” sequence of events – education or work, marriage, children – had been blown to bits and, as they would soon discover, so had long held attitudes toward love and sex. Continue reading »

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 »

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 »