As the nights draw in (or out, if you're Down Under) you might want some fireside reading. Well, good news: the Imperial War Museum has just reissued some out of print WW2 novels -- and some of them are amazing.
I'm working my way through them but can recommend the following:
"Patrol" by Fred Majdalany -- the story of a single nighttime recce in the North African desert, up to and behind enemy lines. A short novel, haunting and troubling.
"From The City From The Plough" by Alexander Baron -- follows an infantry company through France after D-Day.
"Warriors For The Working Day" by Peter Elstob -- follows a tank commander through France after D-Day.
(These two make great companion pieces: the footsloggers and the armoured boys pressing on towards Germany. Great army banter and real verisimilitude backed up with lots of detail. Sitting in a cramped tank knowing an unseen 88 could destroy you in a moment and at any moment is unnerving to say the least.)
"Squadron Airborne" by Elleston Trevor -- a fighter squadron arrive on a base in the South East of England; the author was groundcrew and captures their side of the story very well: fitters, riggers, armourers, NAAFI, WAAFS and intelligence officers swarming around the pilots and planes to get, and keep, the Squadron Airborne.
"Pathfinders" by Cecil Lewis -- follows the crew of P for Peter, a Pathfinder Wellington, on a single fateful raid. Different to the others in that it majors on each man's backstory in turn: the navigator is a Kiwi boatbuilder who learned charts and stars and compasses while sailing; the wireless operator is middle class Jewish journalist from London, and so on.
As one would expect from a series like this, it's a bit of a mixed bag: I struggled with "Green Hands" and "Eight Hours From England" although I can appreciate their historic value as eyewitness accounts and period documents.
On the whole, though, these are fascinating contemporaneous accounts, often from personnel serving on the front line. War is never glamourised; there is fear and pain and death and uncertainty. Some romance, lots of humour and a genuine sense that this is like it was -- the events might be fictionalised but one gets the impression that in many places only the names have been changed.
Equally interesting are the stories about the authors: many went on to have interesting careers and varied lives. The forewords, too, are great and last but not least the cover art makes them into a lovely set of books to display together.
Enjoy!
https://shop.iwm.org.uk/wartime-classics
