komet2020's reviews
1711 reviews

WOODEN CRATES & GALLANT PILOTS is a World War I memoir (published in 1974) that is slightly offbeat and somewhat philosophical. I came across it purely by accident a few weeks ago via another book I had bought [i.e., The Soft Mud of France] whose author was endeavoring to uncover the combat record of his father, who had been gravely wounded in a one-sided air battle over the front a few days before the Armistice that ended World War I. It just so happened that "Wooden Crates & Gallant Pilots" was mentioned as a resource in that book. That spurred me to find Elliott's book, which I did via one of the online booksellers for a reasonable price. It's a find rarer than hens' teeth because few surviving veterans of the U.S. Army Air Service (USAS) wrote memoirs.

Elliott was a Harvard graduate (Class of 1914) who forsook his graduate studies at MIT to enlist in what was then the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in May 1917. He first attended ground school at MIT and then went on to receive his initial flight training at an army air base at Mineola, NY (Long Island). It was interesting to see as I read this book how haphazard some of Elliott's training was, as the Army struggled to develop and expand its aviation component. Frankly, the U.S. was caught flatfooted after entering World War I, for its military was woefully ill-prepared to adapt itself to the demands of what was then modern, mechanized warfare.

Towards the end of October 1917, Elliott and a contingent of pilot trainees sailed on a troopship out of New York City, arriving in France (following a brief stopover in England) where he received advanced training at the U.S. Army's massive complex of airfields known as the Third Aviation Instruction Center (3rd AIC) at Issodun, a village roughly 100 miles southeast of Paris. (At the time the flight training program at Issodun was in full flow, the 3rd AIC was then the largest airbase in the world.)

After surviving a number of close calls in training at Issodun and completing a gunnery course, Elliott was assigned to Orly Air Field near Paris, where he spent a few months ferrying aircraft of various types to frontline units.

The payoff for Elliott finally came on July 1, 1918 when he was ordered to "... proceed at once from 1st Air Depot to 2nd Pursuit Group, ... reporting on arriving to the Commanding Officer thereof, for assignment to duty with the 13th Squadron." The 13th Aero Squadron was a USAS fighter unit flying the tough and redoubtable SPAD XIII, a French fighter plane widely regarded as one of the best fighters to see combat on the Western Front. He saw considerable action over the remaining 4 months of the war, taking part in the Battles of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. Indeed, Elliott shares with readers snippets of what frontline service in a fighter squadron was like, bouts of tedium punctuated with excitement, danger, tragedy, and at times hilarity. 

While I enjoyed reading this book, I wish Elliott would have added photos from his training and service with the 13th Aero Squadron, along with the few sketches in the book he had made during his Army service. I think that the addition of photos (I like to think that Elliott had a photo album he had assembled during the war) would have given "Wooden Crates & Gallant Pilots" a greater immediacy. Hence, I'm giving this book a 3-star rating. 

TRAITOR KING: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor is one of the best, most thoroughly researched, and highly readable books about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Edward and Wallis Simpson) it has been my pleasure to read.

The book takes the reader from the day of Edward VIII's abdication of the throne (December 11, 1936) to the deaths of both Edward (May 1972) and Wallis Simpson (April 1986). It is also richly laden with photos (both B&W and color) of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as well as some of their friends, attendants, and associates. What became clear to me as I read this book is how utterly unfit Edward was to be King (while he loved the trappings of the role, he hated the work and responsibilities that came with being King and avoided them whenever he could), coupled with his pro-Nazi sentiments, which Wallis Simpson also shared. By his own admission, Edward eschewed reading books and had zero interest in the arts, preferring to engage in gossip (he liked to dominate conversations with his take on the world), gardening, and golf. Wallis Simpson was a spendthrift, a social snob, and like her husband, a freeloader whenever she could get away with it.

What particularly struck me was the following remarks from Edward Metcalf, who had been one of Edward's closest friends and aides from the 1920s (when Edward was the young and dashing Prince of Wales, celebrated and emulated for his smart fashion sense -- he was a very snazzy dresser) concerning his abrupt abandonment by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in May 1940, when both of them fled their French estate in the wake of the German advances during the Battle of France. Following the abdication, Metcalf had worked for the Windsors for months without pay, sacrificing his own needs in the process:

"He [the Duke of Windsor] never made one single mention of what was to happen to me, or his paid Comptroller Phillips. He has taken all cars and left not even a bicycle!! ... He had denuded the Suchet house of all articles of value and all his clothes, etc. After twenty years I am through --- utterly I despise him, I've fought and backed him up (knowing what a swine he was for 20 years), but now it is finished ... The man is not worth doing anything for. He deserted his job in 1936. Well, he deserted his country now, at a time when every office boy and cripple is trying to do what he can. It is the end."

TRAITOR KING is an absolute keeper. This is a book that I will return to in times to come.  Highly recommended.  

Dusty's War: Diary of a Cowardly Pilot is an account of Chauncey Stiles Stevens Miller, Jr's experiences as a pioneer aviator, as transcribed by his daughter Ardis, with whom he shared his story, scrapbooks, and daily journals that he faithfully kept between 1917 and 1980.

Miller aka "Dusty" had joined the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in June 1917 with the intention of becoming a pilot. He was then 22 and had already attended military school for a couple of years (where he had brushes with horseback riding and marching - neither of which he cared for, thus all the more reason he wanted to be an aviator following the U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917) and worked for an insurance company in Chicago. Miller had also become proficient in driving and maintaining automobiles, skills which helped facilitate his entry into the Aviation Service (which in May 1918 was renamed the United States Army Air Service [USAS]).

The book conveys much of what Miller's experiences were in learning to fly, coping with the vagaries of Army life, and his later service in Texas as a flight instructor. Eventually, he would get to France towards the end of the war, where, at the Air Service's large complex of airfields at Issodun, pilot trainees and established officer pilots like Miller, would learn to fly and fight in the latest pursuit planes (fighters) before being assigned to a frontline squadron.

As a longtime aviation enthusiast, I very much enjoyed learning about the flight experiences of someone from the early years of powered flight. Besides, it was fascinating to get a glimpse into what the World War I generation lived through from someone who was there. 

This book is not your conventional wartime memoir, but rather of collection of vignettes from the author's stint as a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) during World War II.

Philpotts hailed from St. John, New Brunswick, where he enlisted in the RCAF in 1940. Within a year, he successfully passed his flight training and was shipped over to the UK, where he flew combat with one of the most famous fighter wings in the Royal Air Force (RAF), commanded by the famous legless ace, Douglas Bader. Philpotts flew the famous Supermarine Spitfire on numerous fighter sweeps over Occupied France during 1941, being credited with shooting down 2 Messerschmitt 109s in aerial combat.

Later after completing his combat tour, Phlipotts was assigned to an Operational Training Unit (OTU) as a flight instructor. An OTU was a kind of "finishing school" in the RAF for any neophyte fighter pilot who would then be posted to his first combat unit. He shares with the reader a lot of what his life with an OTU in Wales was like, which included serving as an instructor for a pilot who would go on to become Canada's top World War II fighter ace, George Beurling.

Once completing his stint as an instructor, Philpotts volunteered to be a reconnaissance-intelligence pilot with a Spitfire PR (photo reconnaissance) unit on the Mediterranean island of Malta in late 1942. He flew numerous deep penetration missions (mostly high altitude) over enemy territory in Sicily and Italy. Later, Philpotts would be posted back to Canada, where he completed his RCAF service engaged in aerial photographic surveying of various parts of Canada, as well as flying different types of military aircraft (fighters, bombers, and transport planes).

All in all, it's a nice book with a scattering of photographs from Philpott's personal photograph collection.

Memoirs of World War II was begun by Philpotts, but completed by his wife Edna after his death.

Acceptance: A Memoir was a book I was made aware of a few weeks ago, courtesy of the widespread praise it had received in The New York Times Book Review. My curiosity was piqued and so, I borrowed the book from my local library. 

This is the story of a young woman (Emi Nietfeld) who came from a very dysfunctional family (her mother was an inveterate hoarder, who while being at turns convinced of her daughter's intelligence, showed an inability to provide Emi with a healthy and secure home and unconditional love and full emotional support; Emi's father had largely absented himself from her life after divorcing her mother and coming out as trans), went through foster care, and mental health challenges. All the while what sustained Emi was her determination to gain admittance into a Ivy League school, which she believed would wholly transform her life for the better and liberate her from her past.

This is a book that everyone should read because it offers lessons on the importance of facing up to the negative impacts our upbringings may place upon each of us and overcoming their effects on ourselves as we go through life. 

MASTERS OF THE AIR: The Great War Pilots McLeod, McKeever, and MacLaren is the story of 3 Canadians who distinguished themselves as combat pilots over the Western Front during World War I. In contrast to Billy Bishop, who emerged from the war as Canada's most famous and highly decorated airman, having shot down 72 German planes in aerial combat, making him one of the war's top ranking fighter aces, the 3 men whose lives are chronicled here have long languished in Bishop's shadow. 

Alan McLeod joined the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), age 18, and within a year was serving in France as a pilot with a reconnaissance/artillery support squadron. There he acquired a reputation as a pilot who would take on any mission asked of him, no matter what the odds. McLeod showed himself to be a smart, sensible pilot with exceptional flying ability. In the course of one of these missions, on March 27, 1918, McLeod and his observer/gunner came under attack by several German fighters. McLeod's observer/gunner quickly dispatched one enemy fighter. Then 8 more of the enemy converged on the duo, intent on shooting them down. 

During the fight that ensued,"both McLeod and [his observer/gunner] were wounded by machine gun bullets, the petrol tank was punctured and the aircraft set on fire. McLeod instantly pushed her over into a very steep side-slip, but the flames were scorching him, and so he jumped out of his cockpit on to the left wing and crouched low, with the joystick pulled hard over in his right hand. Then he smashed a hole through the fabric in the fuselage so that he could reach the rudder-wire with his left hand, and so he guided her towards the lines. In this way he kept the flames away from his wounded [observer/gunner] and prevented the aircraft from burning up. When the machine finally crashed in No Man's Land, the young pilot, not minding his own injuries, dragged his comrade from the burning wreckage and under heavy fire carried him to comparative safety, before collapsing from exhaustion and loss of blood." For his actions that day, McLeod was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for valor in combat. Unfortunately, his wounds were so severe that he never returned to front-line service. 

Andrew McKeever was also a pilot of exceptional skill, serving at the Front through most of 1917 with an RFC reconnaissance/fighter squadron equipped with the 2-seater Bristol Brisfit airplane. McKeever was among those RFC pilots instrumental in developing tactics for the Brisfit in which it was successfully flown in combat as a fighter with the advantage of "an extra gun in its tail."

By late November 1917, McKeever and the observer/gunners who flew with him were credited with shooting down 31 German planes. This made McKeever one of the top 2-seater aces of the war. McKeever would survive the war only to die in Canada in December 1919 from injuries received in an auto accident. He was 25 years old. 

Donald MacLaren would be the longest lived of the 3 men, dying at age 95 in July 1988. During the war, he flew with an RFC (later the Royal Air Force) fighter squadron during 1917-1918, scoring 54 victories in aerial combat with the Sopwith Camel, one of the war's best fighter planes. In the postwar years, MacLaren would go on to play a key role in both the development of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Canadian airline industry. 

This book is also studded with photos and comes highly recommended 

For close to 3 months, I've lived in close proximity to 'Chips' Channon, the people and places of his time and social milieu. Indeed, it has been a far-ranging journey that I have enjoyed. This rich and weighty final volume of his Diaries encapsulates the last 15 years of Channon's life through which he --- no longer likely to secure any ministerial preference or power in his capacity as a Conservative Member of Parliament for having been a supporter of Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement --- becomes deeply immersed in describing "events in and around Westminster", in addition to "gossiping about individual MPs' ambitions and indiscretions." He shares with the reader much of what his social life developed into via his relationships with many of the notable figures of the era (e.g. the popularly acclaimed playwright Terance Rattigan with whom he once formed a close, intimate relationship whilst remaining contentedly linked with his beloved "Bunny" --- Peter Coats, a man 13 years his junior whom he had met in the summer of 1939 --- despite the prolonged separation imposed on both of them by the war in which Coats served as an aide to General Archibald "Archie" Wavell who later became the next to last Viceroy of India).

This volume comes in at 1,092 pp., aside from a very comprehensive index, and has several photos of 'Chips' Channon and some of the people with whom he had longstanding relationships. Furthermore, like the previous 2 volumes, this one has ample footnotes which are helpful in further illuminating the events and personalities who fell within Channon's private, social, and political circles. At times, it also reads like a novel, some of whose passages either unsettled me to some extent or made me laugh or smile. Whatever can be said about Channon is that he pulls no punches. His love for his only child Paul is one of the constants in his life.

In one of the numerous reviews I've read about HENRY 'CHIPS' CHANNON: The Diaries 1943-57, Channon is described as "the Samuel Pepys of his time." I would fully concur with that. As a reader, one becomes absorbed in the life of a man who prematurely ages and goes into a slow and steady decline (from the early 1950s) that ends with Channon's death at 61 in October 1958. 

Christmas at Claridge's is a very well-crafted novel with a panoply of characters who are at turns endearing and maddeningly complex.    The scenes vary between London and Portofino in Italy. Anyone in search of a colorful novel need look no further.    Christmas at Claridge's is it!

THE SIEGE OF WASHINGTON: The Untold Story of the Twelve Days that Shook the Union is a very cleverly constructed book (chock full of photos) centered on the 12 days in the early phase of the Civil War in which, the nation's capital, Washington DC, was open to a possible seizure by the Confederacy. 

Between the surrender of Fort Sumter in South Carolina to Confederate forces under the command of General Pierre G.T. Beauregard on April 13, 1861 and April 25, 1861, the fate of Washington DC hung on a very slender thread. On the former date, the city was lightly defended by a small force numbering less than a thousand men, of soldiers and a local militia whose loyalty was highly questionable. For Washington DC, sandwiched as it was between Maryland and Virginia (both slave states with pro-secessionists), was very much a Southern city. President Lincoln would issue a call to the states for 75,000 troops for 90 days' service to help defend the Union. Virginia would soon cast its lot with the Confederacy while Maryland's hold to the Union became shaky. Lincoln knew he had to keep Maryland in the Union if Washington was to kept secure. Maryland was also necessary because if Washington's military force were to be reinforced, troops from the North would have to pass through Baltimore in order to reach the city. (Baltimore was a vital link on the railway connecting Washington DC with the North and West.)

This was a thoroughly delightful book to read from which I learned so much about an aspect of the Civil War that has been seldom told. So it was that "[b]y April 26, the siege was lifted , and defenders were flooding into Washington. 'The whole North is on the move,' was how Lucius Chittenden described the scene. The threat of Southern attack had ebbed, and would subside further as each new regiment disembarked at Annapolis, rode the repaired feeder line to Annapolis Junction, and caught the train from there to the capital. The Eighth Massachusetts arrived by that route that day, and the off-duty Seventh New Yorkers 'rushed out and cheered them' as their train pull into the B&O [Baltimore & Ohio] Depot.' " 

In his book, BLOOD, MONEY, & POWER: How LBJ Killed JFK, Barr McClellan (a lawyer who was once affiliated with a Texas law firm that represented LBJ's interests between 1966 and 1971) sets out to show that Lyndon Baines Johnson -- a man of gargantuan appetites and ambitions who arose from humble origins in Texas hill country to the heights of political power in Washington --- was part of the impetus behind the hatching of the plot and conspiracy that led to the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He points out that the man who was the leader and organizer of this plot and conspiracy -- with the support of Texas Big Oil interests (whose interests LBJ had faithfully supported and promoted throughout his political career, in the process becoming a very wealthy man and a force in Texas not to be ignored) - was Edward Clark, a lawyer and white supremacist who had so thoroughly insinuated himself into the fabric and power base of Texas politics and its judicial and legal systems, that he could be considered as the de facto overlord in Texas.

McClellan had spent years carrying out research to support his claim. He comes across as credible, having once worked for Clark and knowing many of the power lawyers who served the interests of both Clark and LBJ. He painstakingly provides the reader with a background into Texas itself from its founding as a republic (1836-45), statehood, and its socio-political history that is suffused with violence and political corruption that helps to explain why the development of a political culture (along with Big Oil) in Texas gave it its unique, hard-nose conservatism and stridently pro-business character.

What became clear to me from reading this book was a Lyndon Baines Johnson who was a much darker character than I had hitherto believed. Certainly, there was goodness in him as evidenced by his support as President for civil rights (the Civil Rights Act of 1964), voting rights (the Voting Rights Act of 1965), education, Medicare and Medicaid, and fair housing --- all part of his Great Society programs. Frankly, it's hard for me to square that LBJ with the one as shown by Barr McClellan. But the evidence he provides is overwhelming. LBJ paid a heavy price for his ambitions, leaving the Presidency as a broken, deeply tormented man who would be dead at 64, less than 5 years after leaving the White House.

While I firmly believe that President Kennedy was assassinated as part of a conspiracy, I'm not sure if the Texas angle in the conspiracy occupies center stage in that conspiracy. After all, there were elements in the U.S. military industrial-economic-political complex who wanted Kennedy dead because they stoutly disagreed with the direction in which he was taking the country. I leave it to the reader of this review, if he/she is so inclined, to read Blood, Money, & Power and its "Exhibits, Pictures and Documents" section, which supports much of what McClellan talks about in his book.