I've become very fond of books about English officers in the first half of the 20th century, playing polo and shooting tigers while the British Empire flourished under Victoria only to die in the Second World War and its aftermath. The Man Who Took the Rap is no disappointment. The title refers to the fact that Sir Robert Brooke-Popham KCB (meaning that he was a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath!) is best remembered as the officer responsible for the fall of Singapore in 1942. This is a bit unfair, given that the commander on the ground was quite a different man, Arthur Percival CB (a mere Companion of the Order of the Bath), whom my Irish father remembered as “Buckshot Percival” for using shotguns against West Cork rebels in 1920.
Brooke-Popham loved horses but was commissioned in the infantry, from which he escaped in 1911 by soloing in the aptly named Bristol Boxkite, not quite nine years after Orville Wright's first powered flight. He was thus a founding member of the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, but it doesn't seem he saw combat. Instead, he earned his first star as a quartermaster, one of those essential but scorned "remfs" as we knew them in Vietnam. His interwar service took him as far east as Iraq and four-star rank, and he retired in 1937 as air chief marshal and governor of Kenya. All this is interesting enough (I found it rather comical!), but we are mostly interested in "Brookham," as he was called by friends, because he returned to active service and in 1941 was photographed with Olga and Harvey Greenlaw and other AVG worthies at their training base in Toungoo, Burma. That event of course is memorialized in the book's excellent photo section. It's rather pricey at Amazon but $9.79 plus shipping at the publisher's website.
And a tip of the virtual hat to Richard Dunn, who has contributed many and important pages to this website, and who now is the author of South Pacific Air War and the combat over New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in 1943-44. Go here for an interview on Youtube.
And a salute to Ilia Ponomarenko, formerly on the staff of the Kyiv Independent, the first thing I read every morning. His account of the Russian assault on Ukraine two years ago is about to be published and has already garnered rave reviews: I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv in hardcover and digital editions.
Friday night at the movies
Cross of Iron was a career best for James Coburn, for Sam Peckinpah, and indeed for the whole genre of war movies. I read Willi Heinrich's novel in translation many years ago, and it still occasionally haunts my dreams. The movie was of course Americanized, with James Coburn not quite so brutal as in the book. Indeed, and his interlude with the nurse is so lyrical that it might have been borrowed from Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. And unlike Lieutenant Henry -- "in the fall, the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore" -- Sergeant Steiner returns to the front. James Mason portrays an improbably noble regimental commander, and Maximilian Schell a sly Nazi captain who'll betray anyone to advance himself. In the end, the tough sergeant and the evil captain go off together to the place where "the Iron Croses grow." A truly great flick.
Blue skies! -- Daniel Ford. You can send humanitarian aid through Razom for Ukraine (a tax-exempt US-based charity). Or donate to the military through the National Bank of Ukraine.
Daniel Ford's books:
Cowboy: Interpreter, Soldier, Warlord, and One More Casualty of Our War in Vietnam
The Only War We've Got: Early Days in South Vietnam
Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault & His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
Tales of the Flying Tigers (think of it as a lengthy appendix to the history)
The Lady and the Tigers (Olga Greenlaw)
Poland's Daughter: How I Learned About Love, War, and Exile
Glen Edwards: Diary of a Bomber Pilot
A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America's War on Terror
The Country Northward: A Hiker's Journal
The Greater America: An Epic Journey Through a Vibrant New Country (Ralph Paine)
Remains: A Story of the Flying Tigers
Incident at Muc Wa: A Story of the Vietnam War
The High Country Illuminator: A Tale of Light and Darkness and the Ski Bums of Avalon
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Posted May 2024. Websites © 1997-2024 Daniel Ford; all rights reserved. This site sets no cookies, but Mailchimp and Amazon do, if you click through to their websites.