Reading List?

I've always been a reader, far more than a TV watcher. I find that I've been reading much more since the pandemic started. I saw the screening room section, but nothing similar for book reviews. Here is a first one - I just finished it.

Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight’s Cross
It is what the title says...but be warned. It is not the usual historical nonfiction where a modern author gives a rough timeline then pages of prose about how you should think about it. No, it is a raw and unfiltered look at daily life through the very narrow lens of a single soldier during the German retreat from the Soviet Union, and how he survived. I'm speechless to write more about it without giving it a way. The shock and bewilderment at what occurred in Sepp's experience is what makes this an eye opening read - and I'm afraid that if I give away any of that surprise I will ruin the soul-searching astonishment effect for you.

Next up...Forty Thieves of Saipan...

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Originally Posted by ssgross

I've always been a reader, far more than a TV watcher. I find that I've been reading much more since the pandemic started. I saw the screening room section, but nothing similar for book reviews. Here is a first one - I just finished it.

Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight’s Cross
It is what the title says...but be warned. It is not the usual historical nonfiction where a modern author gives a rough timeline then pages of prose about how you should think about it. No, it is a raw and unfiltered look at daily life through the very narrow lens of a single soldier during the German retreat from the Soviet Union, and how he survived. I'm speechless to write more about it without giving it a way. The shock and bewilderment at what occurred in Sepp's experience is what makes this an eye opening read - and I'm afraid that if I give away any of that surprise I will ruin the soul-searching astonishment effect for you.

Next up...Forty Thieves of Saipan...

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Your review made me think of THE FORGOTTEN SOLDIER by Guy Sajer. It too is is a memoir of a German soldier's experience on the Eastern Front. The privations beggar one's imagination, nonetheless it is an easy read.

I recently finished reading "Wings on my sleeve"; the biography of Eric "Winkle" Brown. The most experienced test pilot of all time.
It is an excellent book. I won't spoil it for you; but just say that he seems to have more lives than a cat! A truly amazing life.

At present I"m nearing the end of a history of the 1942 Commando raid on St Nazaire. If anyone needs an explanation of the word "courage"; read about this raid!

I started reading "Long Shot", by Azad Cudi. It's an autobiography of a Kurdish marksman in the fight against ISIS. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but some of the combat descriptions have left me confused. For example, in the opening battle he states he was using an M16, with a thermal scope - doesn't indicate the model but I assume the US furnished his rifle and optics, so maybe something like the ATN PVS14-4, which is 1x. He writes he was making precision shots at 550m, at night - head shots, and one shot on a leg sticking out. Hmmm. the AN/PAS-13 would be more believable at 5x or 10x I think. I have no personal experience with either.
After a few shots, he says the rifle jammed requiring him to get out a cleaning rod and he "pushed the bullet out". Then it jams again, "closed my eyes and exhaled. Keeping my eyes closed, as we had been trained, I picked up the gun, removed the magazine, detached the stock ,..." and describes how he completely disassembled, reassembled, and decided there was nothing wrong with the rifle - in a reported 2 minutes and with his eyes closed...in combat.
Jams a third time, only this time he hears "the faint twang of a loose wire coil" and decides that the magazine spring and follower are loose, broken, or otherwise faulty. Swaps magazine and all is well. Hmm. He was very precise in recording his round count - 16 rounds fired before the first jam, with the last 3 trigger pulls on burst, and using 30 rd magazines. (16 rounds assuming failure to feed. If the last round on burst jammed - then the 16th round was pushed out with his cleaning rod."
So far, my impression is it reads a lot like a Tristan Jones book - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...356-story.html. Maybe he had a ghost writer that should have been fired. I will say that the prose surrounding the combat description is quite good, well written and vivid.
I'll keep reading, hoping my first impression is wrong. Maybe I'm too harsh, relying on my own experiences too much for comparison.

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Originally Posted by ssgross

I've always been a reader, far more than a TV watcher. I find that I've been reading much more since the pandemic started. I saw the screening room section, but nothing similar for book reviews. Here is a first one - I just finished it.

Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight’s Cross
It is what the title says...but be warned. It is not the usual historical nonfiction where a modern author gives a rough timeline then pages of prose about how you should think about it. No, it is a raw and unfiltered look at daily life through the very narrow lens of a single soldier during the German retreat from the Soviet Union, and how he survived. I'm speechless to write more about it without giving it a way. The shock and bewilderment at what occurred in Sepp's experience is what makes this an eye opening read - and I'm afraid that if I give away any of that surprise I will ruin the soul-searching astonishment effect for you.

Next up...Forty Thieves of Saipan...

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I read it a few years ago.
Liked it, especially the description of how savage and brutal the fight on the eastern front was...

---------- Post added at 07:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:01 PM ----------

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Originally Posted by greggordon52

Your review made me think of THE FORGOTTEN SOLDIER by Guy Sajer. It too is is a memoir of a German soldier's experience on the Eastern Front. The privations beggar one's imagination, nonetheless it is an easy read.

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Another must!

I'm also neck deep in Shots Fired in Anger: A Rifleman's Eye View of the Activities on the Island of Guadalcanal. I can especially appreciate the constant "griping" about the negative effects of garrison type leadership in war time. Most people that have been deployed would know exactly what I'm talking about. The author - and eye witness - writes at length about the deficiencies of training and planning, and focus on the menial things like painting fences around the headquarters. He clearly tells the story of how we were the farthest thing from "ready", and all the growing pains of trying to become "ready" in so short a period. For what it's worth, there is a difference between "griping" and "complaining" - or at least I quickly learned the difference in my own experience, the former is routine and expected, the latter would be abominable. Fondest memories of often of the most miserable things which at the time consisted of the most fervent gripes. He captures this type of griping perfectly - and funny how it hasn't changed.

back to Long Shot...it got better, explained the nature of the conflict of the local Kurds against ISIS, then devolved into a socialist/communist political manifesto for a chapter, then back to to the combat scene, which then culminated in the author shooting a clothesline wire on purpose on his first attempt...at ~300 meters with a Dragunov. The clothesline was being used to hang sheets which hid ISIS fighters as they crossed the street. I was along for the ride and it was OK - some clever shooting positions etc - right until the shot on the closthesline. What stuff. I think he or his ghostwriter watched one too many westerns. I was disappointed that the next paragraph was not a tutorial for shooting from the hip and making those shots. I suppose I have to keep reading to see I the next event is more unbelievable than the previous.
Internet homework on the Dragunov - which I've handled but never fired - says ~1MOA optimistically with good ammo, but the PSO-1 scope is 4x. If I'm crazy and that is a believable shot, please let me know.

I shoot the Dragunov every now and then, since one of my pals has it. but I really don’t like it. I can shoot as good with my K31 without optics... Also the ergonomics are weird to me. Just can’t get comfortable behind that thing. But it looks good!!!

...and how confident are you that you are your friend can part a clothesline at 300 meters?

0%...

Got both of those reads good books plus Anzac Sniper, Ed Klugers book Dead Center, Dear Mom, Silent Warrior, 13 cent Killers, Shooters, Sniper One, Marine Sniper, The Last Wolf, SAS Sniper, With Snipers To The Reich, Sniper One on One, Stalk and Kill, A Sniper In The Arizona 2nd Batt 5th Marines 1967. And the usual books by Skennerton & Senich.

Another good aerial book is Fate Is The Hunter By Ernest Gann puts a whole new perspective on being an airline pilot pre WWII and then a transport pilot over the hump in WWII nearly had a close encounter with the Taj Mahal building then how he beat un-porting by being fat (carries enough fuel) and dumb when a particular type of air liners were inexplicably crashing, an interlude to mexico! Shooting rats in thin walled hotel rooms with a 45ACP, the front few pages are pretty sobering with a good many names of his friends their wings forever folded.

I've always gravitated towards the intel stuff. After watching Midway again, I had to pull out and reread "And I Was There" by Edwin Layton. Layton was a master crypto-analyst who fervently studied the Japanese before and during the war.


Russ

Selkirk if you are interested in the scientific side of that story, I have several good mathematical reads on the topic - illustrating the evolution of what we borrowed from those early US analyists' discoveries in the creation of modern algorithms.

I finished the Azad book. In the end it was and enjoyable read and interesting perspective, but reading on did nothing to change my opinions on what I perceived as embelishments.

I also finished "Shots fired in anger". I have read several other first-person-eye-witness accounts before, as well as had the privilege to talk in person with veterans when I was much younger, but only from the Marine side. That supply depot in and around lungs point was regularly raided by Marines. As the author of Shots Fired points out, sneaking in and trading for a new-in-box Garand was the ultimate achievement.
It was enlightening to have a similar ground level story from the Army perspective in contrast - very different to say the least. It's also interesting to contrast the officer's perspective with similar enlisted accounts. I've done this on the Marine side, but so far only read the army officer's account from this book. The differences in these accounts, marine vs. army or officer vs. enlisted tend to be stark.

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Originally Posted by ssgross

Selkirk if you are interested in the scientific side of that story, I have several good mathematical reads on the topic - illustrating the evolution of what we borrowed from those early US analyists' discoveries in the creation of modern algorithms.

I finished the Azad book. In the end it was and enjoyable read and interesting perspective, but reading on did nothing to change my opinions on what I perceived as embelishments.

I also finished "Shots fired in anger". I have read several other first-person-eye-witness accounts before, as well as had the privilege to talk in person with veterans when I was much younger, but only from the Marine side. That supply depot in and around lungs point was regularly raided by Marines. As the author of Shots Fired points out, sneaking in and trading for a new-in-box Garand was the ultimate achievement.
It was enlightening to have a similar ground level story from the Army perspective in contrast - very different to say the least. It's also interesting to contrast the officer's perspective with similar enlisted accounts. I've done this on the Marine side, but so far only read the army officer's account from this book. The differences in these accounts, marine vs. army or officer vs. enlisted tend to be stark.

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Are you selling books or advising titles, do tell! Yes, I'm interested in American/British code breaking. That and any stories on the "great American torpedo fail" or the coast watchers of WWII.

Russ

An eye opener for me professionally was when I accidentally read Katz and Lindell's Introduction to Modern Cryptography and a rigorous text on the reverse engineering of the Enigma at the same time. I don't remember the title/author of the latter, but I remember I was reading it for pleasure, and I was also digging for something in the former for work. Some googling for you turned up a nice expository Master's Thesis
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144149789.pdf
I've always been a romantic when it comes to math, and by then I had tired of the usual high-level spy drama. I wanted to know the science of how it works. Any thorough academic text on cryptography will quickly show you that our ideas today aren't as new and exciting as we think. For example, all of the mathematics for the most popular public key algorithms had all been laid down by Gauss and Euler long before Diffie and Hellman, or those RSA guys wrote down their algorithms. The only part missing was the modern computational need to drive the application.

And poor old G.H. Hardy thought he wasted his life with "silly" math only good for solving puzzles in the back pages of whatever magazine he was reading.
https://www.math.ualberta.ca/mss/mis...%20Apology.pdf
The essay above really illustrates the backwards nature of the cryptography story...oh I won't ruin it for you. I would recommend starting with this essay, then the masters' thesis, then...at least that would be my "wax on...wax off" baby step approach for any student who inquired.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ssgross

An eye opener for me professionally was when I accidentally read Katz and Lindell's Introduction to Modern Cryptography and a rigorous text on the reverse engineering of the Enigma at the same time. I don't remember the title/author of the latter, but I remember I was reading it for pleasure, and I was also digging for something in the former for work. Some googling for you turned up a nice expository Master's Thesis
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144149789.pdf
I've always been a romantic when it comes to math, and by then I had tired of the usual high-level spy drama. I wanted to know the science of how it works. Any thorough academic text on cryptography will quickly show you that our ideas today aren't as new and exciting as we think. For example, all of the mathematics for the most popular public key algorithms had all been laid down by Gauss and Euler long before Diffie and Hellman, or those RSA guys wrote down their algorithms. The only part missing was the modern computational need to drive the application.

And poor old G.H. Hardy thought he wasted his life with "silly" math only good for solving puzzles in the back pages of whatever magazine he was reading.
https://www.math.ualberta.ca/mss/mis...%20Apology.pdf
The essay above really illustrates the backwards nature of the cryptography story...oh I won't ruin it for you. I would recommend starting with this essay, then the masters' thesis, then...at least that would be my "wax on...wax off" baby step approach for any student who inquired.

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Thanks, even though I could not DL either file. Attempting to save showed "network error". But I finally got them by letting the PDF load in Brave and saving them as...a PDF. Go figure!

Russ

Another good read harrowing......one for the secret stuff........another of a rather hilarious endeavour if it were not so serious

I just put down "Alone at Dawn", about John Chapman's Medal of Honor action in Afganistan in 2002. There is a predator drone video of the entire battle in another post, that prompted getting the book to fill in the details. Very sad, but moving story.
https://www.milsurps.com/showthread.php?t=73575