Last night I finished Christopher E. Loperfido's Death, Disease, and Life at War: The Civil War Letters of Surgeon James D. Benton, 111th and 98th New York Infantry Regiments, 1862-1865.  Unlike other books that I've read, I was unaware that surgeons could be assigned to the picket line to ensure the health of the pickets.  Other times Benton was detached from his regiment and worked at division hospitals.

Just started Scott Weidensaul's The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery & Endurance in Early Americas.

Finished this one, it was a really good look from another perspective.

The First Frontier was an outstanding read and puts into context the various individuals involved in the development of pre-Revolutionary War America.

I started reading The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov which I bought at the Animal Shelter thrift store for only twenty-five cents!  The beatings administered within the Russian Army has a tradition dating back to the Tsar!  Zhukov mentions how one mean NCO was given a blanket party and knocked unconscious by his privates.  He was transferred to another company.

Russian Lesson: durakov means fool (p37).

In one chapter Zhukov wrote about how the Soviet and Manchurian Armed forces defeated the Japanese Kwangtung Army.  Not a single map.

Link to discussion here on this book: https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Joseph-Stalin-on-the-Hurricane-fighter-and-other-Soviet-views/5-2104974/?page=1

One of the more revelational thing in that book was the sloppy score keeping method of the Luftwaffe in Afrika.  Then when you consider Marseilles' fantastic claim of shooting down numerous Hurricanes or Kittyhawks and compare it to RAF losses, he clearly inflated his kill ratio.

The First South Pacific Campaign
Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941-June 1942
by John Lundstrom

Just finished Johann Weisskopf’s book on wolves and now on Stephen Hunter’s book on the plot to kill Truman, American Gunfight.

The book mentions that President Truman used to go for daily walks and since being in the army (he was an artillery captain), walked at two steps per second.  He covered 4 miles an hour.  My inseam is 30" and I average 3 mph.  Truman at 5'9" had longer legs and hence the longer stride.  Who here can do 4 mph at two steps a second?  What inseam?  I'm thinking (without doing the math) that Truman must have had a 33-34" inseam.  This would put him half a foot to 8" further than I if we were to walk together.  Then I'd have to break into a jog just to catch up.  Learned this when I went fishing with a classmate and he outpaced me and complained about me being so slow.

The book also mentions the Treasury Department had an indoor range and the Secret Service Agents would use the tunnel to get to the range.  The range was operated by a Coast Guardsman (petty officer).  I bet that range is still working.  We had the Customs House in San Francisco that had a two lane range for los federales.  I never got to see it.  The Old Mint in San Francisco also had an indoor range for the Mint Police (formerly Mint Guards).

ETA (on Saturday) Read a little this morning.  The author describes the would be assassins' firearms, a P-38 and a P-08 and how they function (slide goes back, ejects the cartridge to the right for the P-38, slide moves forward and chambers another round).  He also described how the (decocking) safety works on the P-38.  He actually did a credible job of explaining the double action and then single action trigger of the P-38, the toggle action of the P-08 and its unergonomic safety, the ease of reloading either compared to the 38 revolvers carried then by the Secret Service Special Agents and White House Police.  I'm impressed so far and the reader will actually understand how they work.  One of the assassin was not familiar with firearms and had only one hour to learn how to use the P-38.  He went in with a round in the chamber and the safety off.

ETA (Monday).  A Whitehouse Police Officer, Les Coffelt, was killed by the assassins.  At his funeral, his stepdaughter found a space in the front seat pew and sat down.  Someone leaned over her shoulder and told her, "I'm sorry, you have to leave, you can't sit here.  This is for the President."  A Secret Service agent noticed it and went over to the interloper, "This is Officer's Coffelt's daughter and she can sit anyplace she wants!"

The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1943.   It is vol 1 of Samuel Eliot Morrison's History of the United States Navy in World War II
FDR was secreted away on the cruiser Augusta to Argentia where he would meet for a few days with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  At Argentia was the British Battleship Prince of Wales.

"President Roosevelt was transported from the Augusta to the Prince of Wales in U. S. destroyer McDougal, whose bow was level with the Augusta's main deck and the British battleship's stern.  It was a ticklish performance.  When the destroyer made a Chinese landing (bow to stern) on the Prince, the British crew was drawn up at attention along the rail, Mr. Churchill alone being on the fantail to receive the President.  A chief boatswain's mate of McDougal hailed the Premier with "Hey!  Will you take a line?"  Mr. Churchill replied, "Certainly" and not only caught the line but hauled it most of the way in before British tars came to his assistant."

Page 70.

Nomi Prins' Collusion.

A Walk Against the Stream by Tony Ballinger

Blossoming Silk Against The Rising Sun :
U.S. and Japanese Paratroopers at War in the Pacific in WWII
by Gene Eric Salecker

Three Months in the Southern States.

Arthur Fremantle's diary from his trip through the South in 1863. If you don't recognize the name, he's the British guy observing the Southern army in the movie Gettysburg. Though in the movie they incorrectly identify him as being there in an official capacity as a representative of the British government. In reality he was literally just a tourist that wanted to check out the war.

About 3/4 of the way through and it's very interesting seeing the perspective of an outsider when it comes to things like frontier justice, slavery, and the apparently novel way in which Americans imployed cavalry.

12 Rules for Life - Jordan peterson

Coffin Corner Boys: One Bomber, Ten Men, and Their Harrowing Escape from Nazi-Occupied France

"Quartered Safe Out Here" by George MacDonald Fraser

Autobiography of his time in WW2 (Burma)

Mountain Mafia.  It's about that non-existent criminal organization in Colorado.

BTW, recently finished Sam Kleiner's Flying Tigers.

Last night I finished, The American Sharpe. It's the diary and letters of an American who was an officer in the 1/95.  It did not add substantially to my knowledge of the 95th but does add corroboration to others (Leach, Costello).

Yankee Samurai by Joseph Harrington.   Bought a used library copy that has a protective sleeve over the dust jacket.  It’s autographed too.

"The Big Lie"
By Dinesh D'Souza

Citizen Soldiers - Stephen Ambrose

and drinking, and multitasking

Red Army Tank Commanders.  It's about the Soviet tank armies/corps commanders of the Red Army

Reading Huckleberry Finn for the first time.

Lots of interesting historical tidbits in this book about the pre-civil war culture in America. I particularly found it amusing that an old folktale made many believe that mercury inside a load of bread can help to locate a drowned person in a body of water.

About to start Biohazard by Ken Alibek.

Also reading Bandit Mentality by Lindsay O'Brien.

Braddock's Defeat.  It's about the Battle of Monongahela (near modern day Pittsburg)

Rereading Hammering Harry Kaufman's classic, The Pennsylvania Long Rifle.

Interrupted my reading to read Roger Ford and Chris Matthews’ T-34 Russian Battle Tank and then Alexander Jefferson’s Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free by a pilot from the 332 nd Fighter Group.

ETA: Here's a U-Tube talk featuring Alexander Jefferson:

I have no problem walking 5 mph. When I was racing averaged 6 mph. I used a HIIT counter and actually shortened my stride to increase my speed. But I have a 36" inseam.

The Grove of Eagles, by Winston Graham.

Bound for Africa by Douglas L. Hubbard

Just read T-34 Medium Tank by Mikhail Baryatinskiy.  The best book I've found on the T-34 tank (76 mm gun).  Best write up on development, design, layout and use in combat.

Panzerkampfwagen T-34-747 (r) by Jochen Vollert.  Book covers the use of captured T-34 in German service.   Some were used for anti-tank training, others were converted into armored rail cars, mobile AA platforms, tractors.   There is an interesting chapter on wooden dummy T-34s used for training infantry in anti-tank tactics as well as Reichwehr’s dummy tanks.   Very interesting book.

John Bremerton & Uwe Feist’s Russian Tanks: Evolution and Development, 1915-1968.   Simple book which is a good primer.   I dunno if it’s Soviet propaganda and anyone who grew up in the ‘50’s - ‘60’s knows the Russians invented everything , but the Russians claim to have a one man machine gun tankette, the Vezdekhod, that was built as a prototype in 1915 but rejected by the tsar.  The authors are dubious but include a drawing from Antonev’s book, “The Tank.”

DBL tap

Alexander Poliakov's White Mammoths.

The first and the last, Adolf Galland

Finished, and strongly recommend.

Right know I'm reading Herodotus' History.  Yeah, I'm weird.

Judging from the rest of the titles mentioned, you fit right in.

Just started Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll.

The blonde knight of Germany

Read that decades ago in the '70s when I worked the graveyard shift.  You should also pick up Thucydides' The Peloponnesian Wars.

Reading about Russian Light Tanks T-27, T-38, BT, T-26, T-40, T-50, T-60, T-70 by Mikhail Beryatinskiy.   I didn't know some early junk T18 (updated Renault FT-17) was still in use in 1941.  Geez, those poor tankers didn't have a chance.

Dbl tap

Lt. Col. William Lewis:  Duty, Honor and Country by Ann Oldham.  Lewis led the company down the hill to destroy the Confederate wagon train at Apache Pass near Glorietta.  While the Confederates had won the battle, with their supply column destroyed, they were forced to abandon the campaign.  Lewis went on to fight the Indians and was killed by them.  Fort Lewis was named in his honor.

Only a couple of chapters into it, but the book gives the best account of the four year course of study at West Point circa pre-Civil War.

Blood Red Snow

Russian Tanks of World War II: Stalin's Armoured Might by Joseph Page

Right now I'm reading the original "Go Girl!" book, Lady Death.  Intro by Martin Pegler.

Mikhail Baryatinskiy's The IS Tanks (IS-1, IS-2, IS-3).  I put down Lady Death to read this booklet today.  The author is Russian and has access to information not readily accessible to us in the West.  It's got the most technical and descriptive discussion on the IS-I, IS-II and the IS-III.  The Germans ate up the IS-I with it thinner, less sloped armor.  Only a handful were made before being replaced with the IS-II.  The IS-II were more vulnerable than I thought.  Three different noses and the early, bent nose was the most vulnerable.  Even the lower glacis of the later third model of the IS-II needed additional armor (generally in the form of spare tracks).  Both were vulnerable to infantry panzerfaust/shreck weapons.  There is one account of a small hole in a JS-II and all four crew men dead because of of a hollow charge weapon.

Back to Lady Death.

Laura Tohe's Code Talker Stories.  Navajo woman Laura Tohe speaks the language and uses it to interview some surviving Code Talkers.  Each man tells his own experience about the war.

First Light