Wednesday, December 4, 2019

War Book Club Minutes: 5th of November version*


WAR BOOK CLUB MINUTES: NOVEMBER 5TH, 2019

Items discussed: * indicates available thru Regina Public Library:



*And No Birds Sang/Farley Mowat:




*Death in the Baltic: the World War II sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff/Cathryn J Prince:




*Fatal Decisions: six decisive battles of WWII from the viewpoint of the vanquished:




The French-Indian War 1754-1760/Daniel Marston:




*Overlord: D-Day and the battle for Normandy/Max Hastings:




*Reluctant Warriors: Canadian conscripts in the Great War/Patrick Dennis:




*Salt to the Sea: a novel/Ruta Sepetys:




*The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: the Library Edition:




*The Zookeeper’s Wife/Diane Ackerman:


Other items of interest (based on post meeting discussion):



*Other Losses: an investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II/James Bacque:




Crimes and Mercies: the fate of German civilians under Allied occupation 1944-1950/James Bacque:


*Remember, remember,
The Fifth of November,
Gunpowder Treason
And Plot

I see
No reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot

-30- 

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Other Losses: James Bacque -- true or false?

Ralph writes- I noted recently that James Bacque passed away in Toronto; he didn't write much about the war directly, but rather its aftermath, namely the alleged Allied treatment of captured German prisoners. His books were controversial; I read them when they first came out. What do you and club members think of him and his works - true, false, exaggeration, in between...?

Comments for Ralph?

Here are a list of books by James Bacque available thru Regina Public Library:

James Bacque Books at RPL:

Thursday, October 31, 2019

War Book Club Minutes, October 1st, 2019


Item discussed: * indicates book is available thru the Regina Public Library.

*Battleground Prussia: the assault on Germany’s Eastern Front 1944-45/Prit Buttar:


*The Battle of Arnhem: the deadliest airborne operation of World War II/Antony Beevor:


*Churchill’s Wizards: the British genius for deception, 1914-1945/Nicholas Rankin:


*Cold Warriors: writers who waged the literary Cold War/Duncan White:


*Fifteen Days: stories of bravery, friendship, life and death from inside the new Canadian Army/Christie Blatchford:


*The Forgotten Soldier/Guy Sajer:


*The Ghost Ships of Archangel: The Arctic voyage that defied the Nazis/William Geroux:


*Infantry Aces/Franz Kurowski:


*One Lucky Devil: the First World War memoirs of Sampson J. Goodfellow/Sampson J. Goodfellow  (Edward Willett, ed.):


Out of Nowhere: a history of the military sniper/Martin Pegler:


Two Sides of the Beach: the invasion and defense of Europe in 1944/Edmund L. Blandford:


*Where the Hell are the Guns: a soldiers’ eye view of the anxious years, 1930-44/George G. Blackburn:

Next meeting: Tuesday, November 5th, 7:00 pm – bring whatever you are reading.
Hope to see you all then, Warren.

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Special Presentation on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, November 7th

There will be a special presentation on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day at 1730 Thursday 7 November in conjunction with the TGIT in the Senior Ranks Mess.

LCol Stacy Grubb, CO RRR and CWO Shane Zess, RSM RRR will be presenting a 20 min slide show on unit  D-Day activities in France followed by 10 mins of Q and A. 

All RUSI members are encouraged to attend. Guests are welcome.

Food and refreshments will be available.

Regimental support weapons will also be on display.

Please note: The Armouries elevator to the second floor is currently out of service. Those attending must be able to walk up the stairs to the second floor.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Upcoming Events: Aviation History

The following Aviation History events may be of interest to some readers:
 
THURSDAY, Oct. 17
October 17: monthly meeting of the Regina chapter of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society. Program: Doug Chisholm on last winter's poignant recovery of a Saskatchewan Government Airways Cessna that crashed in 1959 into Peter Pond lake, killing two. This meeting will be held in the banquet area of the Eagles Club, 1600 Halifax St.
Supper with our speaker: 6 p.m.
Presentation: 7:30 p.m.

FRIDAY, Oct. 18
The guest speaker for Oct. 18 monthly supper of the RCAF Association’s 600 Wing will be Debra Needham Moshurchak, daughter of the late F/L William "Barry" Needham.
F/L Needham served with 412 Squadron RCAF, flying Mk V and IX Supermarine Spitfires. He was shot down shortly after D-Day, became a prisoner of war, was liberated and decorated by the French government.

This event takes place at the Serbian Club. Supper 1800 for 1830.

Come out and hear Barry's numerous adventures with the RCAF and his amazing life!

Meal is:
Serbian Schnitzel
Caesar Salad
Roast Potatoes
Steamed Vegetables
Buns
Dessert
Coffee

Members/Guests must notify Bill Peake no later than 1700 hrs on October 13. Call 306-789-4455 (you can leave a message) or email peake@accesscomm.ca to register your attendance at the meal.


In both cases, if you have trouble finding the venue or getting into it, text Will Chabun at 306-533-6103.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Churchill's Wizards/Nicolas Rankin -- book review by Will Chabun

Sefton Delmer and Dudley Clarke are the two main characters of the book Churchill’s wizards — the British Genius for Deception 1914-1945. This the idea that the British, and particularly their armed forces, are strangely obsessed with the idea of deception.
This book begins with the introduction of camouflage uniforms to European armies, including Britain just in time for the First World War, then the role of camouflage of British battlefield installations and observation posts, with diversions about the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign and Lawrence of Arabia’s campaign against the Turkish army in the Sinai Desert.
One of the young British staff officers who worked with Lawrence was Clarke, who surfaced 20 years later as a mid-rank officer with the British forces in Palestine, assigned to hunt down the most dangerous activists on the Arab and Jewish size.

The Middle East and the Mediterranean was where Clarke did most important work, helping to throw the Germans off their game at 1942 and, not incidentally, creating the Special Air Service
to fool the Italian army into believing it was an important part of several (nonexistent) British airborne brigades supposedly poised for raids against the Italians in 1941.

Some of his other “diversions” were spectacularly successful, like Operation Mincemeat, which attached a briefcase of important-looking (fake) documents to the arm of a dead British civilian whose body was put into the Atlantic off Spain (officially neutral, but very friendly toward the German side) in the knowledge the Spanish, and then the Germans, would read the documents inside. This had the desired effect of convincing the Germans that the British and Americans would land next in Greece, perhaps Sardinia.

The other key figure in this book is Sefton Delmer, whose father was a British teacher working in Berlin before the First World War. He grew up speaking German like a local and went into journalism, returning to Germany and interviewing Adolf Hitler. He returned to Britain before the Second World War and was much in demand for his political insights and his ability to write fast and well. He was put into a senior position in Britain’s Ministry of Economic Warfare, overseeing propaganda. (There was a broad line of demarcation between “white” and “black” information. “White” information was honestly reported news, even bad news, in the belief this was an investment in getting and keeping the trust of people in Britain and other countries. “Black” information, on the other hand, was designed to confuse and demoralize enemy soldiers and civilians. Under Delmer, the British created a family  radio stations that passed themselves off as something close to underground German radio stations, German to be sure, but with a healthy degree of cynicism in rumours and comments. One of them with a sarcastic announcer finally went off the air to the sound of (fake) gunfire, planting the idea that the “German” station had finally attracted the attention of the Gestapo --when it was actually broadcasting from the British heartland!

British propagandists and intelligence officers became so proficient that they would collect gossip from German prisoners that was fed back into the “black” radio stations that made the next batch of prisoners even more likely to talk.

The highest point of British deception during the war revolved around Garbo -- the codename for a eccentric Spanish agent who wanted nothing more than to be a player in world events. To do this, he convinced German intelligence in Spain that he could be a valuable source reporting from London. With this done, he went to the British and convinced them he could feed duff information to the Germans – was not as difficult as British counterintelligence was so efficient during the war that it had “rolled up in every German agent sent to Britain – there was nobody to deny the authenticity of Garbo’s reports. With Garbo’s help, a story was concocted: that the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, was a huge diversion to lure German forces out of the Pas de Calais, where the real invasion supposedly would take place later. The Germans never caught on to this trick, which grew to include the use of fake army camps, airfields and landing craft, all plenty of fake radio communication supporting the scam. 

Word of all of these deceptions were deliberately kept secret for between 10 and 15 years after the work because the British government was painfully aware what it happened in the 1920s. There had taken root in Germany an unshakeable belief that the German army had not been defeated on the battlefields, but instead had been undermined by a weak and confused civilian sector that fell for Allied lies.In the 1950s, the British shrewdly decided to wait and make sure that democracy indeed had taken firm root in Germany before autobiographies and books were permitted under the Official Secrets Act. I think we have to seriously consider the possibility that the Russians read all these books and are now throwing these tactics of confusion and demoralization back at us on Facebook and Twitter

-       By Will Chabun