Tag archives for 1940
Dunkirk – A different sort of war movie [movie review]
I went to see Dunkirk with my 11 year old son last week. I'd read some reviews beforehand and chose the IMAX version. It's an amazing movie that I think will bear watching again. I'll try to avoid spoilers. Dunkirk English: Royal Navy gunner covering the troops retreat at Dunkirk (France, 1940). Screenhot taken from the 1943 United States Army propaganda film Divide and Conquer (Why We Fight #3) directed by Frank Capra and partially based on, news archives, animations, restaged scenes and captured propaganda material from both sides. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The movie focuses on three stories, one on Land (over a week), one on the Sea (a day) and in the Air (an hour). The three stories are very personal perspectives and are interwoven, coming together near the end of the movie. There's no overview, or explanation of…
Since I Bore Arms by Robert Holding [book review]
Since I Bore Arms by Robert Holding My rating: 5 of 5 stars Since I Bore Arms is an anonymised personal account of the France 1940 campaign by an infantry private soldier. The author was a private in an infantry battalion sent to France in late April 1940. The account is unusual in that very few ordinary soldiers wrote about their experiences. Since I Bore Arms The narrative is a day by day account from getting orders to embark for France until his return to the depot in the UK after being evacuated from the beach at Dunkirk. Holding doesn't name his battalion, and he has changed the names of all those mentioned. As an ordinary soldier he didn't know much of the big picture, and usually didn't know where his unit was. What he does cover is how far…
Fight Another Day by J.M. Langley [Book Review]
Fight Another Day. Langley by J M Langley My rating: 5 of 5 stars Fight Another Day has been sitting on my shelf for years, right next to MI9 (which I only realised was co-authored by J M Langley). I'm not sure why it took me so long to get round to reading it. It fits my usual preferences in a number of ways. It's a first hand accout by an infantry officer, it's about escaping from a POW camp, it's about organising secret agents to work in nazi-occupied Europe. Any one of those would have got Fight Another Day onto my to-read list. Fight Another Day Fight Another Day tells the story of Jimmy Langley from his enlistment in the special reserve of the Coldstream Guards. He gets mobilised in August 1939 and goes to France, and we are…
Book Review – Blitzkrieg Legend
"In the West (Western campaign).- Panzer II and Panzer I in the woods; KBK Lw Kompanie Luftwaffe, "Luftwaffe war-reporting company" 4" (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The Blitzkrieg Legend: The Campaign in the West, 1940 by Karl-Heinz Frieser My rating: 5 of 5 stars As part of the planning for the megagame War in the West I bought myself a copy of Blitzkrieg Legend because it is the German Army’s official history (although it didn't get written until the 1990s). From reading the first couple of chapters and looking through the maps you can see the evolution of the German plan. You can see why the directive was written the way that it was in October 1939. The most interesting thing for me is that there is no concept of a lightning war, the general staffs & high command all believe that…
Preparing For War – Onside Report
British evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I had a design session titled 'Preparing for War' at the CLWG November meeting. Preparing for War was about training an infantry company in the UK after Dunkirk. Rather than a conversational design session I decided to try and do something that was playable. I'd been somewhat frustrated at the conference with discussions of games that looked like they could have been played. I'd felt that perhaps by playing it we could have tested whether or not the perceived problems were actually real. Preparing for War I ran a sort of role-playing game about re-constructing an infantry company after the evacuation from Dunkirk. John Rutherford was the first person to arrive (after me). So I cast him as the first officer to report to the village in Devon I'd decided to put the company in. Chosen only because the OS map…