Category: Review

True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz, by Jack Fairweather, WH Allen, 2019. Review by Nick Fox OBE, Deputy Col Comdt At the outbreak of World War II, Witold Pilecki was a gentleman farmer and junior officer ina reserve cavalry unit of the Polish Army. At the end of September 1939 Poland was a defeatednation, occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; Pilecki joined the Polishunderground. In November, he helped to form the Tajna Armia Polska (Secret Polish Army) acting as itschief recruiter. The SS started mass arrests of Poles and by January 1940, 150,000 had beendeported;…

Lt Col George Lowther Steer By Harry Fecitt MBE TD George Steer In north-eastern India on 25 December 1944, an overloaded jeep on its way to a Christmas party overturned, killing the driver, 35-year-old Lt Colonel George Steer, Intelligence Corps, attached to Special Operations Executive (SOE). Three of his soldier passengers later died of their injuries and four others were injured but survived after hospitalisation. George was buried nearby in the James Finlay’s Rungamuttee Tea Estate Cemetery; he is commemorated on Face 19 of the immense and impressive Rangoon Memorial located in the Taukkyan War Cemetery, Myanmar. George was a…

by Nick van der Bijl Pen & Sword, 2013, 420 pp. Reviewing this book was never going to be easy. It is a book that most of us would shy away from even contemplating writing. This is not the published in 1993 and in my view failed: a near miss would describe it. Obviously, as Nick’s book so vividly illustrates, a lot has gone on since the opportunity to read this book (there is a copy in the archives) will – after finding the index – immediately look to see how their unit or their contribution to the Corps has…

Author: Frank Clark This will be probably the last eye witness account of the post-Normandy battles as the Allies struggled for eleven months to advance from the Seine to the Rhine and beyond. These battles were complex and controversial. Nijmegen, Arnhem, the Huertgen Forest, the River Scheidt, all had their difficulties, and even after nearly seventy years questions remain. The battle for Hells Highway, the Battle of the Bulge and why XXX Corps failed to reach Arnhem,? In his profoundly modest style, Frank describes his part as “the thread of my personal experience” from which hang the many reminiscences of…

Author: Paddy Ashdown The Autumn Press, 2012 420pp. Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon GCMG, KBE, PC, known to most of us as Paddy Ashdown has shown in this book that there is another, newly discovered, side to him not previously recognised. This is after being an MP and becoming the leader of the Liberal Democrats and being the high representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2002–2007, not to mention the UNICEF UK president. Before that he, himself, was a member of the Royal Marines elite Special Boat Squadron formed as a consequence of Frankton, followed by a stint with the…

My Early life, and The John Reddisson Saga: My Later Years Author: Freddy Johnson, Grosvenor House Publishing, 2013. Welcome to the world of what is unkindly known as vanity publishing. Before knocking it, may I remind you that one of a series of books produced this way, Fifty Shades of Grey, has topped bestseller lists around the world, selling over 125 million copies worldwide by June 2015. It has been translated into 52 languages, and set a record in the United Kingdom as the fastest-selling paperback of all time. Using the services of a publisher well versed in this art,…