I put The Upside of Down down to read this:

Put the above down to read Armin Bottger's To the Gate of Hell: The Memoir of a Panzer Crewman. Bottger started out as a driver and then became a radio operator in the 24th Pz Division.  Bottger enlists into the army to avoid taking the high school exit exam.  He becomes a member of the depot company of the 24th Panzer and along with other members of the company, drive replacement tanks to the RR yard for transport to the division.  At the end of the ride, he drives the tanks off the RR flat car where the front line tankers picks up the tank.  

When his division is destroyed in Stalingrad, it is rebuilt in France so Bottger is sent there as part of its cadre. Short of tanks, they were iniially issued SPGs (methinks the 150 mm mounted on the Pzkw I chassis), then the Stug III and finally the Pzkw IV G.  The need to secure the supply line to units in Italy sees the 24th Pz sent to Italy where they are present when the Italian govt surrenders.  Their next stop is Russia where Bottger receives 2nd degree burns on his face and arms while escaping his burning tank.  After recovering in Germany, he is reclassified as unfit for the front and becomes a courier.  As a courier he doesn't have to attend roll call and needs only to report to his CO at 0900 to pick up his packets.

One day he is assigned the onerous task of standing guard duty at some distant post.  Resentful of it, he learns it was his good fortune as a medical inspection team sweeps through his barracks to reassign men to the front as infantry!  When East Prussia is threatened by the Soviet advance, Bottger is among the 500 of the 3000 permitted to move West.  While e/r he and other men are stopped at a bridge where he is sent to one barrack.  It turns out that barrack is for men to be sent to the infantry. Learning this, Bottger moves into a panzer barracks instead.

The panzer men are later reassigned to serve under Schorner.  Bottger remembers serving under him and the executions Schorner frequently ordered.  Instead of obeying orders, he decides to rejoin the 24th Pz in Prague.  Shortly after rejoining his unit, the war ends and they are in the Soviet zone.  Bottger flees west where his surrender is accepted by the American army.  Post-war he studies dentistry and later teaches it.

Recently reread "Moby Dick".  A good book - good story that was told well.  I had forgotten some of the details about the whaling trade that Melville included.

I just finished reading this book.  It was made into a TV movie in 1982.  I also caught the Readers Digest condensed version.  It was written in 1979 so it needs a bit of updating.  But it was a  fantastic movie and even a better read:

Finishing up Naylor's "Relentless Strike". Tons of research and information, but I expected more of the individual firefight analysis which is prevalent during the second half of "Not A Good Day To Die".

Memories of Ice- Steven Erikson

Book 3 in a fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen. Getting through the first book was a chore, but since then the pace has sped up, has been worth it

Be sure to pick up the Ian Esslemont books set in the Malazan universe...

Night of Knives
Return of the Crimson Guard
Stonewielder
Orb Scepter Throne
Blood and Bone
Assail

The Bauchelain/Korbal Broach short stories are well worth reading too.

 
I'm reading the 7th book in the series, Reaper's Gale. I agree about the first book, stick with the series, you're in for some great reads.


 

Can you do a book report on it GiggleSmith?

Texian Iliad by Stephen Hardin. A military history of the Texas revolution, battle by battle, or in some cases, skirmish by skirmish.

Almost finished with The Upside of Down but I had to put it down to peruse the NumNuts (Nurmich) catalog.  It's like being a kid again.  

Just started 3 RTR Bill Close's Tank Commander.  Close saw action from France 1940 to the Western Desert and finally the liberation of Europe.

ETA:  if you enjoyed Bob Crisp's Brazen Chariots you will enjoy Tank Commander. Close served in the 3 RTR with Crisp and once rescued Crisp off the battlefield when the latter was injured.

Just finished Crush Depth by Joe Buff. Interesting take on WWIII.

For those into old sci-fi, volumes of IF magazine from 1952 to 1974 are now available for free online.













 
 

Ave Cesare! (Hail Cesar, pronounced Che-sah-ray).  Just opened SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard.

Great book.  Have read it twice.

Currently reading Red Thunder Tropic Lightning, Just started it but it looks to be a really great read.

Troop Commander by Bill Bellamy who commanded a troop of Cromwell tanks in the King's Hussars.

"The Crucible" by Arthur Miller. It's a historical semi-fictional play based on the Salem witch trials of the 1690s and was written during the "Commie Scare" of the 1950s.  It's timely today based on what the media driven society continues to practice.

Steel My Solders' Hearts.  RCA tank battalion in WW II>

The Atlantis Plague.

R. L. Dinardo's Germany's Panzer Arm in WW II.

Somehow, my Kindle got left out of my laptop bag, so I picked up 13 Hours at the Vegas airport.  Burned through 3/4 of it.  I am sure there is much that can be picked apart, but I am enjoying it.  Still have not seen the flick, and I may not after this.

Lock, Stock and Barrel.  It's a small technical book about repair work.

Leakey's Luck: A Tank Commander With Nine Lives by Rea Leakey with George Forty. Kenyan Rea Leakey, a cousin to Dr. Richard Leakey, was commissioned into the 1 RTR and provides a first hand account of the early war in the Western Desert before the DAK and Rommel appeared on the scene. He became a squadron commander in a squadron composed of those unreliable Mk I cruisers and MK VI machine gun armed light tanks Bad as they were, they were good enough to take on anything the Italians had and Leakey served in Wavell's and O'Connor's attacks that drove the Egyptians back to Libya.

Tanks Across the Desert: The War Diary of Jake Wardrop, George Forty, ed.  Wardrop as well as Bill Close (Tank Commander) were known to Leakey.

Disclosure:  Col Jimmy Blackmon is a close friend.  

http://jimmyfblackmon.com/

Pale Horse

Rev. 6:8   And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.


"Pale Horse is the remarkable never-before-told true story of an army aviation task force during combat in the Afghan War, told by the commanding officer who was there."

Just finished Ted Koppel's Lights Out.

Stumbling on Happiness - dumb, do not read

Branson's The Virgin Way - pretty good.

Re-read Von Mises' Human Action. Recommend.

Currently reading the Hadiths, in the Book of Menstration. I'm surviving, barely.

Yes. When telling people about that book, the part they like the best is that pimps are worth it.



 

Re reading The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain for the nth time. Also the Philip K. Dick Mega Pack of short stories. If you are not familiar he wrote the stories that were made into Blade Runner, The Minority Report, and The Man In the high Castle. A brilliant but troubled man who often wrote of conspiracy and a tyrannical government. Also The Spad Driver by John Britt about Skyraider operations in Vietnam.

Ken Tout's By Tank: D to VE Day.

Charlie Rangers, pretty good so far

Just finished The Art of Intelligence by Henry Crumpton and Starship Troopers.

Innovator's Dilemma (short read, highly recommended)

What If by the xkcd guy (meh)

Outliers by Gladwell (pretty good)



I'm trying to find a pdf package of Walter Scott's Waverley novels in a single convenient download, but no luck so far.

Only a quarter of the way through Ken Trout's bookwhen I started and finished Gruntz's A Tank Gunner's Story. Gruntz jr. accompanies his father who served in the Independent 712th Tank Battalion (assigned to the 90th Infantry as it goes from Normandy to Czechoslovakia.  He recorded his father's words and wove it in with research to tell the story of his his father's experience as a gunner aboard a Sherman tank.  Excellent book if you're into the perils of tank combat.

The Yompers: With 45 Commando in the Falklands War by Ian Gardiner.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. A science-fiction with crime novel.

I just finished reading 14 and The Fold by Peter Clines.  Bought both and read both in about 4 days.  Clines is the same guy who wrote the Ex-Heroes series and I really liked his work on those so I gave these a chance.  Of the two, The Fold is better and even though the books are in the same "universe" with each other and 14 came out first, I'd recommend reading The Fold first because the twist is spoiled if you read 14 first.

Starship Troopers.

Finished, House of Apache Fires today.

Very good book.

Starting, Hammer of the Gods

Again..

Haven't read it in years.

James Rickards' The New Case for Gold.

Street Without Joy

Finished To War With the Bays and Forging the Thunderbolt.  

Will start von Senger und Etterlin's memoir, Neither Fear Nor Hope.  He was the defender of Cassino.  His earlier book, German Tanks of.WW.II is a classic (but has been superceded by more modern works on the subject.

Overwatch by Matthew Betley.  About a couple Marines who are back in the US from Iraq being pulled into
a conspiracy to bring the US into a new war in the Middle East.  About 1/3 of the way through, and

pretty good so far.

Just finished Slade House:
Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

and Station Eleven:
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Both were easy, good reads. My wife had read them and passed them along. Station Eleven is a different look at SHTF. Kind of interesting.