Reading and Rereading

Less gaming and more reading this past week. In the coming week I am taking off work for a staycation, mostly self-care. I had been thinking of taking a week's journey somewhere, but left the planning too late. There is enough to deal with at home, but a little gaming and gaming-adjacent activity won't go amiss. I also have time off for Hurricon at the end of this month, though I've left getting tickets and a room late as well. In the meantime, here's what I've been reading:

The original 1978 version, so goofily out of date almost as soon as it was published. Ascribes far more effectiveness (and speed) to the Soviet Union in the Third World than I suspect was warranted even at the time. There is significantly more than one "turning point" to the timeline here.

• Communist Jamaica?
• Communist southern Africa ganging up on white South Africa? Including Botswana?
• Iran, of course, on the side of the "good guys" still.
• A China-Japan alliance?
• And a limited nuclear exchange that doesn't turn into MAD, even though this was the doctrine on both sides at the time.

While the political intent of the writers is overwhelmingly obvious and breaks the suspension of disbelief, the Seven Days to the River Rhine plan is well and grippingly described. I read this with intent to read Team Yankee next, and that part certainly prepares me for it. The rest of the book I can take or leave. I won't return it to the club library; the copy is badly damaged enough that I will discard it and use the cover as a cutting board.

A compulsively readable account of the Huon-Finschhafen campaign, which otherwise sees short shrift in depictions of the WWII Australian Army - even in Australia, I suspect. The story of Australia in the Pacific tends to stop at the Kokoda Track.

Back when I first read this, I was still playing a lot of 40K, with my Australian/14th Army inspired Imperial Guard:

I used metal Cadians and got Eureka Miniatures to make me
custom bush-hats. Then, ten years later, Victoria Miniatures
came along with the Van Diemen's World Devils... too late.

I ran a small campaign with these guys based on the campaign in the book, with a willing opponent's Chaos Marines as the enemy.

Opposed river crossing - advance towards Lae

Beach landing - Scarlet Beach

Beach defense - Japanese counterattack

Jungle crossing - Road to Sattelberg

Taking the hill - Sattelberg

Another poorly-known campaign and battle. Even though I've read Bill Slim's classic account of the war in Burma, and the Japanese invasion of India is better-known these days, this early battle - four months before Imphal-Kohima - is one I hadn't learned much about before. It is where the British first tested the concept of the "defended box," resupplied by air, to stop Japanese advances cold. It leans toward oral history, focusing on one or two dozen of the British individuals involved; the author apologizes for having no Indian perspectives, though the lack of a Japanese perspective is far more understandable! Jungle warfare is one of my particular interests, so a new book on it (new to me, anyway) is always welcome.

Next up: