Ummagumma

A page from the kindle edition of my book. Here are some choice passages from The Last Valley that reflect how the book addresses general military history while telling the story of fighting in the First Indochina War.   The first extended quote deals with the technical and existential nature of artillery on the battlefield at  Điện Biên Phủ.   “Depending on their distance, speed and angle, shells tunnelling through the air make slightly different noises, so a heavy barrage weaves itself into a bewildering cacophony of sounds; but the rushing always ends the same way, with a thunderclap detonation – sscchhiiiii... boom!   Hollywood’s microphones fail to convey either the sharpness or the loudness of battlefield explosions; and the visual effects normally used to simulate shellfire – with plastic bags of petrol and aluminum silicate –are equally misleading. In reality the eye usually registers a shellburst as an instantaneous orange-yellow flash inside a dark, l...

I bought The Last Valley for my kindle app. Shortly after I posted " Concerning  Điện Biên Phủ " last year I purchased a book from 2004 of which I was previously unaware.  The Last Valley by Martin Windrow completely absorbed me and only now have I had time to reflect and review it.  Simply put, this is the best military history book I have read in several years.  Although its 700-plus pages mainly deal with the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, there are a lot of details about the First Indochina War included, especially in the first 300 or so pages.   The book casts this broader scope in order to contextualize the events surrounding the French debacle at  Điện Biên Phủ .  It succeeds brilliantly in allowing me to understand why the French took up their position there in late 1953, other significant events in the war prior to this and as the battle took place, along with insights into the battle itself. Windrow begins by pointing out that what the Vietminh ...

Obviously, I'm going through a bit of a Dostoevsky obsession (see here , here and here , as examples).  Over 2,000 pages of him gives me plenty to chew on.  Nevertheless, I have read several other books on various topics simultaneously during the first half of the year.  I started Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy by Max Hastings on my kindle app.  Hastings is one of several British military historians that I really admire.  Keegan , Beevor , Kershaw , all of these Brits have written wonderful military histories.  I have a couple other books by Hasting, as well as each of the others. About one-third of the way through Hastings I paused to read another new kindle acquisition specifically on the First Indochina War and the subsequent French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ .  Throughout the later part of the last century this defeat became a cliché for military incompetence as Little Bighorn was in the late 19th century.  Now we can add Biden's disastrous withdra...

  Proof of purchase.   I am not a “grunt” military history enthusiast.  That is, I have only an abstract interest in tactics.  I am interested in strategy and operations far more than I am about the detailed stories of soldiers.  War is terrible everywhere it is fought.  It is not difficult to find heroic and horrifying grunt stories to tell but that is not the perspective of military history that I prefer.   The work of authors like Keith William Nolan and Mark Bowden are exceptions.  The former wrote many interesting accounts soldiers fighting in campaigns of the Vietnam War.  The latter has most famously written Black Hawk Down , which is a fine read (and was later made into a good movie ). I bought a first edition of Bowden's Hue 1968 when it was published back in 2017.  But it has sat on my book shelves until recently.  I bought it because I figured I would get around to reading it sometime.  That time turned out to be ...