New & Notable - 15th April

Penalty Strike The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander 1943-45
by Alexander Pyl'cyn (Stackpole Books)
The focus of this book are the author's vivid memories of service as a company commander in a Red Army officers' penal battalion on the Eastern Front 1944-45. During this time, he and his unit participated in the 1944 Soviet summer offensive Operation 'Bagration', the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the final assault on Berlin.

Alexander Pyl'cyn was a platoon commander and later a commander of an officers' penal company. He was a senior lieutenant having a degraded regiment commander as a second-in-command. He and his company had to carry out the most difficult and dangerous operations in order to break through the enemy defenses. With more than 80% of the men lost his company succeeded in completing their missions. The horrors of war, the hand-to-hand fights with a desperately struggling enemy are described in this book along with a story of a strong feeling between the young officer and a hospital nurse Rita. Thanks to Alexander Rita was appointed a nurse in the penal battalion. She saved dozens of soldiers, carrying them from the battlefield under enemy fire. It was Rita who saved Alexander Pyl'cyn from death, when he was badly wounded near Berlin. She became his wife in the last months of the war.
Available from:
Amazon.com

Hurricane Pilot: The Wartime Letters of W.O. Harry L. Gill, DFM
Edited by Brent Wilson with Barbara J. Gill (Goose Lane Editions)
Harry L. Gill was born in Devon and attended Fredericton High School. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in Moncton in 1940 at the age of 18 and was among the first to pass through the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. . After flying training he was posted to 607 Fighter Squadron of the Royal Air Force.
In February 1942, Mr. Gill’s squadron of Hurricane Fighters attacked the German warships Scharnhorst and Gniesenau during the infamous “Channel Dash”. Mr. Gill’s bravery and flying skill in that action won him a Distinguished Flying Medal. In June of 1942, he traveled with his squadron to India to shore up Commonwealth defences against the Japanese. On Jan. 17 1943, at age 20, Harry Gill was shot down and killed in action. He lies buried in Maynamati Commonwealth War Cemetery in Bangladesh.

Drawing extensively on Gill's correspondence with his parents and his siblings, this very personal account of war shows how Gill was transformed from a small-town boy to a mature fighter pilot serving in a global war on another continent. His letters depict the enthusiasm of youth, a strong sense of humour, his plans for the future, and this continuing attachment to home.
Available from:
Goose Lane Editions

New and Forthcoming - 25th March

The new and forthcoming titles this week include School of the Sea - the story of a Merchant Navy sailor, The Russian Patriot - a unique recollection of a Russian soldier who fought with Vlasov's Russian Army of Liberation alongside German forces, and Escape from St. Valery-en-Caux - the escapades of a British Army officer during the Battle of France in 1940 and his subsequent escapes from German and Vichy imprisonment.


School of the Sea
by Stephen Richardson (Whittles Publishing)

Based on his daily diary entries, Stephen Richardson recounts his development as a merchant mariner starting with his apprenticeship from 1937-41 on Elysia, a passenger ship on the India run. For the remainder of the Second World War, he served as an officer on cargo ships, where he experienced episodes such as seeing ships sunk in convoy, hearing bombs drop beside the ship when in port during heavy air raids and the horrific experience of being torpedoed. The extremes of nature - winter storms on the North Atlantic; navigating in convoy through floe ice and avoiding icebergs; fog and the ever-present danger of collision; the extreme heat experienced in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, without air conditioning are all accurately described. He also relates the problems encountered when sailing on worn-out ships that would normally have been scrapped had it not been for the war.

Available from:
Whittles Publishing


The Russian Patriot
-->A Red Army soldier’s service for his Motherland and against Bolshevism
by Sigismund Diczbalis (The History Press)

The only personal memoir of a rank and file Russian-born veteran of the Russian Army of Liberation to be published in English, this looks like an intriguing title.

Sigismund Diczbalis, a committed young communist, was originally a member of the Red Army. Captured and imprisoned by the Germans, he was offered a way out from almost certain death by being ordered to infiltrate an anti-partisan unit. Soon he became an anti-Bolshevik, joining General Vlasov’s Russian Army of Liberation that was devoted to toppling Stalin and restoring social democracy in Russia. The following year Sigismund was re-captured by Soviet spy-hunters, SMERSH, which meant an automatic death sentence but somehow managed to escape.

Sigismund Diczbalis was born in Saratov, Central Russia in 1922. He now lives in Australia.

Update February 2011:
Sadly Sigismund Diczbalis died this month in Brisbane, aged 89.
Source: Nick Holdsworth (Co-Author, The Russian Patriot)

Available from:
The History Press


Escape from St. Valery-en-Caux
The Adventures of Captain Bradford
by Andrew Bradford (The History Press)

The dramatic story of Captain Berenger Colborne Bradford, Adjutant of the 1st Battalion Black Watch, compiled by his son using diaries and letters, coded messages and correspondence between his family and the War Office in their desperate effort to hear news of his safety. This book tells of Captain Bradford's experiences between 1939 and 1941, during which time he was in the thick of the action in France, leading up to the surrender of the Highland Division at Saint Valery-en-Caux in June 1940. While being marched into captivity Capt. Bradford managed to escape once from the Germans and then seven further times from the Vichy French. This account details his journey to safety in Gibraltar, spanning France, Spain and North Africa, including a night crossing of the Pyrenees and an astonishing 700-mile voyage in a 17ft sailing boat.

Available from:
The History Press

New & Forthcoming - 16th March

I've received some information on a few recent and forthcoming books from The History Press and Stackpole books:

Red Star Under the Baltic: A Soviet Submariner in World War II by Viktor Korzh (Stackpole Books).

The author served on a Soviet submarine during the war, and this memoir describes his experiences hunting German shipping in the shallow waters of the Baltic. Originally published in Russian in 1966, this is a rare book that covers the war from the angle of a Soviet submariner. The author died in 1993.

Available from:
Amazon
Pen & Sword (UK Edition)



Burma 1942: Memories of a Retreat
The Diary of Ralph Tanner, 2nd Battalion The Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry

by Ralph Tanner and David Tanner (The History Press)

Burma 1942 is taken in part from the diary and maps kept by Ralph Tanner, who served as a Second Lieutenant with 2nd Battalion The Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry during the fighting retreat to the Indian border, and from the official Battalion war diary by Major Chadwick. It includes information on the Battalion in 1941, who they were, their equipment and what they were trained for, and considers the series of disasters at Moulmein, Sittang, Toksan and Yenangyaung which left them increasingly unable to fight as a unit. It serves as a tribute to the strength of the men of the battalion - most of whom were conscripts - and of whom a fifth were killed and have no known grave.

Available from:
The History Press


Armoured Guardsmen: A War Diary from Normandy to the Rhineby Robert Boscawen (Stackpole Books)

Shortly after D-Day, Robert Boscawen, fresh from Cambridge and Sandhurst, found himself in Normandy with his Coldstream Guards tank unit. During the months that followed, he kept a diary recording the Guards Armoured Division's almost constant activity in France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany until, having already had three tanks shot from under him, he suffered severe burns and had to be evacuated, one of only two survivors of his crew. Following a lengthy convalescence after the war and a career in business, he served in Parliament from 1970 to 1992.

Available from:
Amazon