T. Fowler > Recent Status Updates

I've read many books about Churchill but the positive reviews led me to borrow it from the library. It was therefore a bit of shock when I picked it up to find it's 1105 pages long (123 pages of references) & small font - lots of words & heavy! Too long to read from page 1, I started on page 517 (the Fall of France) & got to p. 677 before I had to return it (57 people waiting!). I'll borrow it again

The military histories - which tell little of war's reality - crowd out the wrenching tales by the emotionally maimed..... Each generation discovers its own disillusionment.... The myth of war and the drug of war wait to be taslted."

"War never creates the security or the harmony we desire, especially the harmony we briefly attain during wartime.

"the myth of war rarely endures for those who experience combat. War is messy, confusing, sullied by raw brutality and an elephantine fear...

"War never creates the security or the harmony we desire, especially the harmony we briefly attain during wartime.

A successful battle group operation has fought through to relieve the Pathfinder Platoon which had been beseiged in Musa Qaleh for 52 days. Private Barrie Cutts had been killed. LCol Stuart Tootal: "It was only right that as the commanding officer I should form part of the burial party."

The collapse of government following the 1911 Revolution issued in decades of warlords with huge armies fightin for regional control. What suffering must have been inflicted on the ordinary Chinese civilian. The victory of the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek in 1928 seemed to promise an end to this. But it was not to be. No wonder China's government continues to fear breakdown and revolt.

"In the 21st century, the West and its Islamist enemies had reverted to the tribal mentality of combat. Everyone knew each other in a tribe like the 3rd Platoon or the Taliban warrior band.... [The Taliban] were like the Apaches in the 1870s, cruel, brave and not foolish.

At the end of the section on "The Hinge of Fate," Reynolds continues to show how Churchill has moulded his history to show the story he wants. With access to the drafts, he shows how Churchill omited facts & even added texts written by his researchers. His presentation of the Battle of Alamein is an example, leading historians Liddell Hart & Corelli Barnett to write rebuttals.

"Churchill the warlord is the main theme of Their Finest Hour...Churchill recognized the bleakness of Brtain's predicament - whatever his public bravado, there were moments of private doubt ... Much of this does not appear in the war memoirs, though it can sometimes be discerned by a careful reading."

"Churchill the warlord is the main theme of Their Finest Hour...Churchill recognized the bleakness of Brtain's predicament - whatever his public bravado, there were moments of private doubt ... Much of this does not appear in the war memoirs, though it can sometimes be discerned by a careful reading."

"Churchill the warlord is the main theme of Their Finest Hour...Churchill recognized the bleakness of Brtain's predicament - whatever his public bravado, there were moments of private doubt ... Much of this does not appear in the war memoirs, though it can sometimes be discerned by a careful reading."

A female member of the Spanish parliament 1n 1936: "We want a revolution ... we must have huge flames which can be seen all over the world ..."
March 31, 1937, the Condor Legion bombs the Basque town of Durango killing 127 civilians.

I have just finished the opening section of the book - 12 chapters on the origin of the war. It is a page-turning epic story of powerful emotions, great ideals and horrifying cruelty. Ending quote by a female member of the Spanish parliament: "We want a revolution ... we must have huge flames which can be seen all over the world ..."

Frederick Hayek's speech on winning the Nobel Prize, "The Pretence of KNowledge," questioned the practice of treating complex phenomena as if they were simple.

Old Herr von Trotta, the District Captain, has travelled travelled to the eastern edge of the Empire to visit his son, a lieutenant in the infantry in a border garrison town. There, Count Chojnicki has shocked him by declaring that the Fatherland no longer exists: "the monarchy is disintegrating while still alive; it is doomed! ... This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nation states!"

Needed fitness level to serve in Combat Outpost Keating, Nuristan mountains: "Everyone should be able to run 12 miles in full gear in less than 4 hours. And 5 miles without gear in 40 minutes."

Needed fitness level to serve in Combat Outpost Keating, Nuristan mountains: "Everyone should be able to run 12 miles in full gear in less than 4 hours. And 5 miles without gear in 40 minutes."

Captain Tom Bostick, CO of Bulldog Troop, 1-91 Cav, 173 Airborne, is about to enter the village of Saret Koleh where he hopes to hold a shura with villagers who have probably never met an American. A brief look ahead shows that a viscious battle ensues and Bostick, among other American soldiers, is killed.

Pashtuns have "a self-regulating social system for governance without government."

"The Obama administration [in 2009] appeared to be slipping back into the pattern of strategic incoherence that had characterized the intervention from its inception."

My first book on this intriguing period of military history, when the Spanish Empire, the Habsburgs, the Vatican, Venice and the Ottoman Empire, amongs others, all vied for control of the Mediterranean.

"The Taliban leaders were from the poorest, most conservative and least literate southern Pashtun provinces of Afghanistan... The rest of Afghanistan was not even remotely like the south."

Sad story of screw-ups by USAID who failed to help Helmand farmers & fuelled the insurgency.

Karzai is pushing for TF Helmand to send a force north to Musa Qala to help a local Talbian leader who claims to be defecting. However, all signs point to a significant increase in Taliban strength around that Taliban stronghold. Throughout Helmand, the British are taking casualties and they are stretched thinly already. How will Brigadier Mackay react to the political pressure?