Blenheim - Charles Spencer

'Go, my children. Plunder, murder, destroy - and if it be possible to commit yet greater cruelties, be not negligent.'

If there's one thing that we Brits and the French have been historically good at, it's beating the crap out of each other. After all, we've been doing it off and on for damn near the last 1000 years...

At Agincourt, Crecy, Poitiers, Calais, all along the Somme river, Spain, Portugal, India, the Far East, Canada, Waterloo and half a hundred other places throughout the world we've turned our grudges into rather large piles of corpses. And with an astounding regularity. Such that any outside observer would be forgiven for wondering whether our 2 countries actually have anybody left in them....

304 years ago we faced off once more, this time infront of 3 little villages in the Bavarian countryside; Oberglau, Hochstadt and Blindheim, and the confrontation which has gone into history as the Battle of Blenheim began. We didn't fancy scrapping by ourselves though, so we invited Bavaria, Denmark, Holland, Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire out to play as well.
On balance it's rather surprising that we actually won; after all, the armies were about the same numbers, had comparable arms and equipment, used similar formations and the Franco-Bavarian force held a hideously strong position (anchored by the Danube, the Hurtingen forest and the 3 aforementioned villages). But we did, and a greater portion of the plaudits go to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy. Ironically, both of whom the French King indirectly helped to their success. He must have been mortified when he realised that later.

Charles Spencer is uniquely suited to a book of this type - he's Marlborough's direct descendant, after all - and since this is his first stab at a work like this it's impressive how well he's managed it.
Marlborough's career up to the start of the 1704 campaign is looked at in some detail (including his commission in the Guards and a £1000 gift for, ahem, services rendered to a courtesan of King Charles II) and takes up the first 85 pages. Now, usually I tend to spit and curse at this kind of slow introduction but this time it's rather valuable; we see how Churchill was formed, moulded and tested into the youngest Captain-General of his times, and the way he ruthlessly whipped the previously ill thought-of British Army into shape. And how the Dutch States-General didn't like it when he suggested going on the attack inside of sheltering behind the border fortresses.
Churchill pulled off a magnificent coup, essentially the 18th century version of Blitzkrieg. He fooled everyone, allies included, into thinking that he was going to strike into France. Instead he moved 40,000 men, with some speed and in enviable condition, into Bavaria and determined on a pitched battle against the nation and the army which had stomped all over Europe for the past 60 years.

Spencer does a superlative job in giving you all the detail you'd want (and some intriguing pictures) about the Rhineland campaign, making a weighty book of close on 400 pages. He's done his research, alright, and at quite painstaking levels of detail, singling out a few characters of note for 'colour commentary' and sticking with them throughout. The success is that he's managed to collect a fair number of reactions and accounts from the Franco-Bavarian as well as the Allied side, thus turning what could have been a one sided piece of ancestor worship into a very worthy way to spend a day or two. Napoleon himself thought highly of 'Malbrouk' and this book explains why.

8 out of 10.

Carrier - Tom Clancy

So, what do you call something that's just about a kilometre long, weighs anything from 95 to 102 thousand metric tonnes, is built at Newport News Shipbuilding, has a service life of 50 years and costs $4.5 Billion to build?.

Well, if you're one of the more than 3,000 sailors onboard you call it home, to any of the 2,800 aircrew (especially the pilots) it's the barn and if you happen to be a submariner it's the biggest damn target you will ever see in your whole career. To the rest of us however, it's a Nimitz-class nuclear propelled aircraft carrier. Big, isn't it? Oh yes; and the U.S. Navy has 10 of them.

Clancy is known for his fiction, indeed is celebrated for it, but this book (which is part of a series) goes to some lengths to show the amount of research that he puts into one. Now, you also get the feeling that this is also a bit of unconscious bragging on Clancy's part, or that he's rather popular with the military (I mean come on. Just what are the chances of a civvie like me getting aboard an aircraft carrier as a guest?) but if so it's for a decent cause and you can't dislike the man too much for being a lucky sod (well, I can, but that's another matter).

The best way to describe this book is that it's a university textbook - lotsa statistics, all of them impressive, lots of exploded diagrams and patient explanations like you might see and hear in a lecture hall (now we know why Jack Ryan started as a teacher). To call it dry in places would be an insult to dry and yet the greater majority of the time I felt myself pulled into the reams and reams of facts and figures somewhat against my will but at least I went in with open eyes. Ever wondered how they test the steam catapults? Well, there's a bunch of remarkable photos that will help you visualize it accompanied by enough text to leave you in no doubt at all that they can each fire a 50 ton sled at 120mph, 300 feet into the Chesapeake within 5 seconds of hitting the trigger. See what Imean about being overwhelmed with numbers?

It's not just the ship though, Clancy delves into everything onboard apart from the engines and the performance ("Sorry sir, restricted area - now, just turn around and walk away before the nice Marine shoots you"). So, we get detailed and exhaustive descriptions of the aircraft from the ageing but impressive Tomcat to the latest variant of the Seahawk helicopter (the naval version of the Army's Blackhawk) and their specifications; weapons load, sensor capability, rated engine power, specific role, what and how many from each production run, when they were built, lifespan of the airframe, yadda, yadda, yadda.

"Look. I'm a bloke, right? I don't like dry stats, I like big bangs. Lots of them. Preferably somewhere other than where I am right now."

"Okay, let's have a look in the bomb locker, shall we?"

Yep, it's weapon time kiddies. And a Nimitz carries some pretty hefty firepower - every conceivable type of bomb is onboard save for nuclear ordnance (now, anyway, they used to carry a few of them, too - or so rumours go) and for any eventuality you care to imagine; M16 rifle, 50 cal and 30mm cannon rounds, air to air missiles, torpedoes, depth charges, gravity bombs, smart bombs, you name it and a carrier probably hauls it around the ocean - along with about 10million gallons of jet fuel. Now that'd make a pretty big bang.

Clancy sadly bores the arse off me at times and the interview with the then Chief of the Navy is just one of those moments; although things start to perk up a bit when they discuss options and plans for the next generation, or "Carrier XX" as it's known. Then he delves briefly into his more entertaining craft and sets up some futuristic scenarios and slices of fiction where the carrier and crew are pitched in at the deep end.

A worthy book, if heavy going, should you want to know every minuscule little thing about a ship you'll never get to board (unless you're in the USN). I can't help thinking that it could have been a deal more interesting though. It'd be nice if there wasn't so much damn flag-waving, as well.

5 out of 10.

Sloop of War - Alexander Kent

Hi-ho Hi-ho, it's off to sea we go.....
The year is 1778 and the setting is Antigua during the American Revolution. Richard Bolitho is about to get his greedy little mitts on his first command - HMS Sparrow - the aforementioned sloop. How he does, what he does and how he handles what he does, will be another matter entirely. Isolated from the main fleet because of his duties and virtually on his own, this is going to be a serious test for the newly promoted captain. He used to be one amongst many in the wardroom of a big two-decker. Now he's completely alone.

It's made clear right from the start that Bolitho is a very small cog in a huge great wheel; alongside the larger frigates, sloops and brigs were the smallest warships ever used by the Royal Navy and were vital for patrols, scouting, relaying messages and general poking about places where they weren't really meant to go. Kent, like C.S Forrester before him and Patrick O'Brien after, knows his ships and knows how they sail and perform - there are plenty of intricacies in terms of rigs, lines, wind direction, weather and so on and this is only right and proper for a book about sailing ships - but never does he allow it to get in the way of what you might term the exciting stuff; the crashing broadsides, desperate boarding actions and sneaky little raids that small vessels are so good at.

Bolitho is helped by Sparrow itself, which has the advantage of carrying some seriously big fire-power for such a small ship; historically, normal sloops of the period(those converted from merchantmen) carried nine-pounders as the norm. Sparrow carries twelve pounders which are a load heavier and grants Boltiho's command the ability to out-range and out shoot anything that he can't run away from. Whilst this seems a clear case of what might be termed "super ship syndrome" it's actually not; yes, Sparrow is heavy in the guns department, but the explanation for it is entirely plausible and fits with the character of the Navy at the time. This is fortunate because he's going to need them....

319 pages is what this book weighs in at, which is just perfect for an hour or two of a Sunday afternoon. But despite this, to use a phrase, the book is rammed; petty politicking amongst the ships' officers is mirrored with rather more large-scale politicking ashore with an end result that you're not quite sure of. In the meantime there are Redcoats to rescue, French frigates and American privateers to sink, friends to be made and lost and even the time for a burgeoning love-affair in the middle of it. And the constant question of how a ships' company mostly pressed into service against their will is to be kept from mutiny.

I tell you, Royal Navy captains were a busy lot back then!

8 out of 10

Hero of the Imperium - Sandy Mitchell

Ciaphas Cain is a Commissar. One of the hard-boiled, flint-eyed, no-mercy watchdogs of the armed forces. A man who will take on the enemy with a sharpened chair leg to save his comrades, his brother officers and his charges of the 597th Valhallan regiment of the Imperial Guard and so rightly be judged a living Hero of the Imperium. Or so the propaganda would have you believe.

The problem is that this is not what Cain wants at all. He’d much prefer a very, very deep hole (preferably well armoured) that he can duck into and cower in comfortably abject terror until all the loud noises stop. Either that or a fast starship for somewhere a long way away. But this is the 41st Millennium, mankind teeters on the brink of extinction with enemies on all sides; some mortal, others not. A quiet life for this front-line soldier is most decidedly NOT on the cards. No matter how much he wants one.
I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually review a book from the Black Library before too much longer. I have after all been a collector and painter of Games Workshop’s models for a long time now and always admired the lengths that they went to to create a realistic, believable, above all intricately detailed universe. I know it’s not strictly military history in the conventional sense; it’s firmly in the sci-fi leagues, but it’s still military fiction and written in retrospect, so it is a history – see? So it gets a place in the blog. And if you disagree…. Well, who’s Blog is this anyway? :)

‘Hero of the Imperium’ is first off fantastic value. You get three 200-plus page novels and 3 more 20 page short stories for a tenner. Not bad, not bad at all really. Moreover, Sandy Mitchell is a as good a writer as one would expect – he’s written books, screenplays, magazine articles and other stuff for nigh on 20 years.

Cain is a scoundrel – he might be perched triumphantly on a pile of enemy corpses, but if you nipped around the back you’d find the ladder and note that he hadn’t fired a shot. He wheels, he deals, he bribes and he threatens in an eternal effort to either be somewhere safer or, failing all else, that there’s someone closer to the foe than he is. He is in all truth a bit of a bastard. But he’s funny with it. A futuristic Flashman if ever there was one.
But it’s not all cowardice, duty-dodging and dryly ironic put-downs, there’s some honest-to-God war-fighting in the middle of it, and Goddamn it’s well written. It may be futuristic in terms of some weapons and equipment but you’ve still got rifles, pistols, chemical explosives and swords – albeit two foot long with a chainsaw for a blade. The emotions are the same as well; working on the fundamental view that soldiers will always look, act, talk and fight like soldiers no matter which century they’re in. Same as a rifleman in Afghanistan or Iraq is going to be just as shit scared on his first patrol as a longbowman was at Crecy or Agincourt.

Cain might be a reluctant hero, very reluctant in fact, but when he has no choice he is a superlative soldier and very skilled with it. His is also a dry commentary on his own life – these are supposed to be his memoirs after all and they’re written so well, and it’s so humanly obvious that he is who he is, that you’d be forgiven for believing that when the chips are down this man is you. You don’t want to fight, but if you have to then you’ll get through it as best you can. There’s a bit of the everyman in Ciaphas Cain and that’s why the character is so good.

Maybe he’s not as well-regarded as some who might be termed his peers – Allan Malinson, Mark Bowden, Tom Clancy and Alexander Kent amongst them – but if you want to be entertained and have a laugh to go with your action and sympathy, Sandy Mitchell is hard to beat.

9 out of 10.