More Italian reading, with some help

Briefly, back to the 'D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy': I am trying to soak up some of the atmosphere, through reading, of the Italian campaign of 1943-45.  Recently the  Naval and Military Press had one of its periodic and very tempting sales - and I was indeed  tempted.  I acquired the four books you see below for about £20, which I count as a bargain for a total of 800 pages and perhaps nearly as many 'rare photographs from wartime archives'.   

All from the 'Images of War' series by Pen and Sword, we have three by Jon Diamond (  'a kidney specialist in the USA with a deep interest in the Second World War' ) and one - 'Monte Cassino' -  by Jeffrey Plowman ( 'a research biochemist by profession, and he has had a keen interest in military history for over thirty-five years' ).  as many will know, the USP of this series is the numerous contemporary photographs, and in that respect I think they are really interesting, the pictures give a  great panorama of the troops, the  equipment and vehicles they used, and the terrain they fought in. Admittedly this is very largely from the Allied point of view, but plenty of German kit appears, albeit often when wrecked or captured.  It's good to see the polyglot range of gear that was in use, the multi-national nature of the Allied forces,  and especially to see the landscapes that they operated in. 

Is the text only secondary? Well, maybe slightly, but so far ( I am almost at the end of the first book - Salerno to the Gustav Line ) it gives a reasonably clear and brisk narrative of the campaigns, without excessive detail, and I'm grateful for that at this stage.  A typical chapter starts with about 10 pages of text outlining the progress of the armies, followed by perhaps 30 pages of photographs, the latter having quite large captions which tend to reinforce the main text.

I've always struggled with campaign narratives, due to all the place names - there are never enough maps with enough detail in such books to be able to 'follow the action'.  The maps in this first volume aren't bad at all, with usually one at the start of a chapter ( so we have a couple for the Gulf of Salerno area, and one covering the whole width of the peninsular and the advances October 1943 to January 1944 ) but  there are always names in the text that are not on the maps. So, I have invested in visual aids.   

The W.H. Smith stationery and bookshop chain is a bit overlooked these days, but maybe unjustly - I went to my local ( not large ) branch in Sudbury, and found a pretty good selection of maps of other  countries - plus impressively, a full set of Ordnance Survey Landranger maps of the UK.   

Amongst all those, I found 1:400,000 ( 1cm to 4km ) scale Michelin series maps ( 'carta stradale e turistica' )  of South and Central Italy - just the thing. Maybe they had plenty in stock because  not many people are planning driving tours this summer.  Just the right sort of scale, most of the places named in the book are indeed shown on the maps.

So, equipped with these, I can read the books and (mostly) keep up with the locations on the maps. This I find much better - I think without a decent map, the narrative tends to just become a bit of a blur when you don't have an idea of the places mentioned. I really don't know  why I didn't think of this before - Michael Howard's history of the Franco-Prussian War is still a painful memory.   I'm not quite at the stage of making little flags on pins to stick in the map and indicate the different formations - but can it be far away? 

I rather look forward to some summer weekend afternoons sat in the garden with books and maps - if we actually get a decent summer here, which at the moment seems a bit doubtful.        

Salerno - where the story starts

This is a bit of an interim posting, sadly not a lot of hobby activity has been possible recently owing to various real life stuff,  but I hope to get back to the 7YW Campaign quite soon, that cavalry raid scenario needs to be played out. Hopefully I can report on that soon; in the meantime, keep well, and safe, everyone.