Book Review: The Americans On D-Day & in Normandy - Brooke S. Blades

Another excellent title from the very useful Images of War series. The pictures are terrific, as one would hope they would/should be in a series with such a title. The text is pretty good. At first I wasn't too sure, re the latter, as in places it's very dense with unit numbers and movements. But overall the text is actually pretty good.

Blades treats the subject to a mixture of chronological and themed chapters, starting with preparations in England, and then moving via airborne troop drops to the beach landings. So far so chronological, but then comes a chapter titled Soldiers, Prisoners and Civilians. The action then moves further inland, before we're given chapters on the wounded, the dead, and the battlefields then and now.

There are some minor issues with the text, like references to characters (usually the photographers) by one single name, with no other contextualising info. And at times the density of unit/movement info can get near headache inducingly opaque. With so much to cover this could've been a mess. But it works pretty well overall. And the pictures are fab.

The best of these Images of War books are really great resources for wargamers, modellers and military history buffs when, as here, they're packed with great photos, accompanied by illuminating text. The pictures are admittedly all black and white - and the US was one of the few participants, alongside Germany - to make frequent use of colour film in WWII. But it's really nice, as well as useful, to have such rich visual material as this to hand in print form, as opposed to trawling the web for it.

I'd definitely recommend this to anyone with more than a passing interest in the U.S. role in D-Day and beyond.

Kit Review: 1/76 Revell M7 Priest, standard build

I actually started this kit before I began the second one, which I converted into the T32 prototype. But I got majorly sidetracked by the latter! So, this evening, having finished the build of the T32 type, I went back to the standard out of the box build, and finished constructing that.

This gives me an opportunity to review the Revell kit in a slightly more standard manner. The first thing is that it's 1/76. I prefer 1/72 simply because that's what the vast bulk of my mini-materiél is. Still, at least 1/76 is close enough one can mix them together with little cause for concern.

Another thing to remark upon is the quite swanky colour booklet of instructions. This seems a bit odd and overdone given that the kit itself feels quite vintage. Nevertheless, it's a nice touch. I suspect the kit is an old one. Poss' a rebadged kit from a line that was formerly part of the Matchbox catalogue, or some other similar series? I do remember Matchbox kits, and poss some Esci as well, having little diorama type bases, such as this comes with.

Here are all the sprues, together with rubber-band tracks and decals. I won't be using the diorama base, or the figures, which aren't all that good. The ammo for this vehicle is something that, being too small (short, length-wise), along with the figures, detracts from the quality of this kit, as are the moulded on low-relief tools and other parts, such as the frame for a tarpaulin.

Assembly begins. I like to gather the parts for several steps, clean them up, and go to it. The result is a slightly quicker build (unless you get waylaid by conversion fever!). With the lower hull assembled, I prep the upper hull, etc.

And that's how I then left this model, whilst working on its elder cousin. Then as pictured below, I gathered all the remaining parts, and set to it with a will. This allowed me to jump from part-built to finished, construction wise, in one fairly short sesh.

And to finish this post, for the time being at least, here's a comparison of the two vehicles. In olive drab, the T32 prototype. And in grey styrene, the 'standard' M7 Priest, with machine-gun pulpit, and angled front glacis plate meeting the sides at (kind of) right angles.

Book Review - Images of War: M7 Priest, David Doyle

I'm beginning to gather a reasonable collection of these Images of War titles. When I bought Sherman Tank, by Gavin Birch, to support my concurrent 1/72 kit builds, I was a bit disappointed , as it was mostly Shermans in British service (which the title didn't make clear), and whilst the images were okay, the text was less so.

This time around I got the book first and, loving it, then went out and bought a couple of kits. First off, this is a better put together book anyway, being better written, very clearly, simply and well structured, and appropriately (not to mention copiously/richly!) illustrated. As befits a title from a series called Images of War, the pictures are fabulous.

M7 firing on German positions near Ribeauville, on the Rhine, France, Dec' '44.

Carentan, France, 1944.

The text and images start with a written introduction to the subject, followed by pictures and history of the first trial type (a model of which I intend to build, based on the superb visual ref contained herein). Words and imagery then move through the various production models/variants, based around the various orders placed by the US military with several contractors, before moving to descriptions, written and photographic, of the M7 in the field.

The M7 saw service in North Africa, Italy, the Invasion of Europe and the Pacific, and there is excellent material here from all theatres. There's one rear-view pic of a British mortar carrying variant, and mention of the Kangaroo personnel-carrier type, but no. pics of the latter. The Priest's development and deployment by the US continued into the Korean War, in the early '50s, which Doyle covers. 

An M7 in Luzon, The Phillipines, June, '45.

A nice colour pic from '43, showing a Priest firing during training.

As well as a few WWII colour pics there are a generous selection of crisp full colour photos of surviving examples, adding to the already rich arsenal of visual reference. The evolution of this vehicle is superbly and compellingly communicated. This has, quite unexpectedly (as I generally favour German WWII stuff) become my favourite title, thus far, in the Images of War series.

I liked it so much I immediately went out and bought a couple of Revell 1/76 kits of the M7 Priest, from a friendly local model seller. 

Okinawa, May, 1945. Note the spare track used as armour.

M7 Priest dug in, to achieve higher gun elevation, Kleinblittersdorf, Germany, Dec. '44.

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 More Pics!

This is not David Doyle's first book on this subject. Pictured below is the cover of a Squadron Signal publication he did on the same subject.

A previous publication by Doyle on the same topic.

As mentioned above, I enjoyed this so much I went out and bought some models, and during research for my model and this review, I came upon a load more pics not used in the books, some of which come from the same series of pics used here.

Preparing artillery rounds for firing.

Inside the fighting compartment.

Disembarking a Priest from a landing craft.

Hosing down the vehicle.

Nice view of the manned machine gun.

Bogged down in mud.

What are these doodads?

This appears to be a still from a colour film of an M7 Priest.

A nice view of a Priest's driver.

The Priest featured in Life magazine.

Contemporary photo of a surviving M7 Priest's interior.

Amphibious training in California.

An M7 Priest alongside a recovery vehicle.

A Priest being serviced during firing.

In Action in Italy.

Film Review: Hamburger Hill, 1987

May '69, the 101st Airborne, or 'Screaming Eagles', are ordered to take Hill 937, a heavily fortified North Vietnamese strongpoint. Repeated assaults ensue and, due to heavy U.S. losses, the battle acquires the nickname Hamburger Hill.

This portrayal of those events is, like most American 'Nam movies, told pretty much entirely from the U.S. perspective. The disparity of means at the disposal of the engaging forces is depicted accurately, in that the Americans, if they don't always outnumber, certainly outgun their adversaries, calling in artillery and air support their foe simply don't have.

Dylan McDermott as Sgt. Frantz.

In some ways this is just another typical 'Nam movie; just like the Asian cookery of the region, certain key ingredients are esssential: most of the actors are perhaps rather too good looking to be entirely plausible, there's the ubiquitous war-weary male combat banter, and the movie as a whole straddles that paradoxical divide between a homage to 'our brave boys', and a condemnation of the wasteful brutality of war.

The core of the film shares a common theme with many contemporary war films, and real combat (from what I've read), in which soldiers ultimately fight for themselves and the men close to them - stay alive, stay together - rather than for any ideology. The themes of bonding and loss under extreme conditions are certainly major components of this film.

Courtney Vance as 'Doc' Johnson (right). [1]

Other prominent and interesting sub-themes are: ongoing issues of racial tension, a growing awareness of the anti-war movement 'back home', and doubt in the soldiers minds over why the battle/war is being fought at all. Where Hamburger Hill differentiates itself most noticeably from some other similar genre pieces is in its tight focus on a small ensemble of soldiers - 3rd Squad, 1st Platoon - fighting one particular ten day battle.

Ultimately it's the characters and the actors portraying them that make or break a film like this. The film's central character, Sgt. Frantz (Dylan McDermott), is good in this respect, as is Sgt. Worcester (Steve Weber), his war-weary immediate superior. The cast of largely less than familiar faces acquit themselves well; underneath all the macho army banter lurk real human beings. Courtney Vance deserves special mention for his charismatic portrayal of medic 'Doc' Johnson. These guys are believable enough that one really does feel engaged in their story.

The ensemble cast.

A second viewing confirms that it's this ensemble quality, and the above average quality of the dialogue, that lift this film above the purely workmanlike. Yes, a lot of the macho banter sounds clichéd - and in many ways it is - but that's a part of the reality of the tribalism that develops amongst fiercely competing all male groups. But there's also some subtler stuff in there to. The other thing that struck me powerfully on second viewing is the insane sacrifices demanded of the 'grunts'.

An impressive CGI-free production, in which terrain and weather play notable roles, Hamburger Hill sits between the old school epics, in which the violence of war is suggested more than depicted, and the more recent trend towards splat-fests. Whilst there's a lot of mud and blood, it's only occasionally punctuated with a smattering - or should that be a splattering? - of more shockingly visceral moments.

Enjoying behind the lines comforts.

Less self-consciously aestheticised or (pseudo?) philosophical than The Thin Red Line, and completely eschewing the over-hyped psychedelic rock-opera stylings of Apocalypse Now, Hamburger Hill is correspondingly that much more realistic. Not an instant classic, but a powerful grower, and more than just good solid fare for the war movie junkie.

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NOTES:

[1] I sometimes wondered if the racial elements might have contributed to some of the ideas in Tropic Thunder.

Book Review: Sherman Tank, Gavin Birch (Images of War)

Culled from the Imperial War Museum's extensive archives, collected during the war by the AFPU (Armed Forces Photographic Unit), what we have here is a black and white only pictorial record of Sherman tanks during WWII. The Germans and Americans often managed colour photography. But for us Brits, colour was on hold 'for the duration'.

A lot of the pics in this book are akin to this: a Sherman in British service. [1]*

Breaking for food, near Caen, 1944.*

I bought this book to help me detail a small collection of 1/72 Sherman models I recently acquired. I have to admit, I was somewhat disappointed to find that the pics in this book are predominantly of Shermans in British/Commonwealth service, with only a brief chunk given over to Shermans in American service, as I'm intending my models to be U.S. versions.

'Somewhere in Germany', a Firefly camouflaged for the country... in the city.*

Another disappointment is the very limited nature of the sourcing of images. A trawl around the web is much better for diversity. And this book has very little on the 'funnies', or on captured Shermans, lend-lease tanks, of the use of the Sherman outside of WWII.

Despite these issues, the book remains an excellent and useful pictorial resource. All the pictures are captioned, and there's a text that gives light/brief coverage of the history of these tanks and the theatres/operations they took part in. However, the text is really quite poor in some respects. I've noticed this with some other Pen & Sword titles; clumsy prose littered with errors, and the general air of a distinct lack of editorial finesse.

One of my favourite U.S. Shermans in action pics not featured in this book.

This was the sort of thing I was after: Shermans in U.S. service in Europe, WWII

The pictures included herein cover North Africa, Europe, and the Far East. Some of Hobart's Funnies are covered, but mostly it's your ordinary tanks, as opposed to the many variants. I paid £5 each for two 'Images of War' titles. And at that price, I'm happy. 

The text only merits two stars, whilst the pics warrant five. In the end I've opted for three and a half balkenkreuz, which seems apt/fair to me, as - despite the issues with the text - I do like the book overall, and it is a handy reference resource.

Canadian Shermans, deployed during the Korean War.

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NOTES:

* Images that appear in both this review and the book under review are marked with an asterisk.

[1] Tow-bars being fitted to a British Sherman about to be towed by a Grant ARV.

A Russian lend-lease Sherman.

It's a pity there's nothing on Sherman's in Russian service, or when captured by the Germans or their allies. Of course there's plenty of stuff to be found on the web, as the pics above and below illustrate.

Herman... a German Sherman.