Arms and the men

Press, 9 May 1981, Page 17

Arms and the men

Germany’s Spanish Volunteers 1941-5. By John Scurr. The Conquistadors. By Terence Wise. The Wild Geese. By Mark G. McLaughlin. Armies of the Vietnam War 1962-75. By Philip Katcher. The Sherman Tank in British Service 1942-45. By John Sanders. The Panzerkampfwagen 111. By Bryan Perrett. All published by Osprey. 48 pp. each. $9.95 each. (Reviewed by David Gunby) The six volumes under review, the first four in the larger, well-established Osprey Men at Arms Series, which deals with armies and fighting men from the Greeks and Persians to the present, and the last two part of the smaller but equally popular Vanguard Series, dealing with key units and weapon systems of the Second World War, are produced to a standard format, involving 40 pages of texts and photographs, and a centre section of 8 pages of coloured plates. Written by acknowledged experts and packed with information, the monographs are manifestly designed for the enthusiast, whether war-gamer or model-maker, but with their attractive format and lucid style of presentation they are capable of a more general appeal, and volumes such as that on the Conquistadores or the Wild Geese might well find it, were the series more widely known. The volumes in the Vanguard Series deal with two of the most widely used tanks of the Second World War, the Sherman and the Panzerkampfwagen (or TzKpfw) 111. Each holds something of interest for New Zealand readers, since the PzKpfw 111 was Rommel’s principal tank weapon in North Africa and the Sherman, whose British service is the subject of the current monograph, was one of the most potent of its opponents. As the monograph on the Sherman points out, the association between the New Zealanders and the Shermans was at times very close indeed. At El Alamein, for instance, the New Zealand-led break

through was made in company with the Sherman-equipped 9th Armoured Brigade, while later, at the Tebaga Gap, the outflanking of the Mareth Line was again made in company with Shermans, this time of the Sth Armoured Brigade. Among the four volumes of the Men at Arms Series, only the volume devoted to the armies of the Vietnam War has any New Zealand frame of reference, and even here it is tenuous. Not surprisingly,' given New Zealand’s comparatively minute contribution to the allied forces, and the merging of our contingent with the far larger Australian Task Force, there is neither a separate section devoted to our troops, nor a coloured plate. There is a photograph of a gun crew of the 161st Battery, Royal New Zealand Artillery, rolling a howitzer into a helicopter, but in no way is it distinctively Kiwi, since the gun crew is dressed in a mixture of United States and Australian gear. All in all, New Zealand’s miniscule contribution to the Vietnam conflict is set very much in perspective by its treatment in Mr Katcher's monograph. The three remaining volumes are just as thorough as “Armies of the Vietnam War,” but by their nature much more colourful. In “The Conquistadores” Terence Wise gives us more than the title or the cover illustration suggest, since the Indian armies, Aztec, Inca, Maya and Tlaxcalan, are as expertly covered as the invading Spaniards. “The Wild Geese,” which deals with the Irish Brigades in the service of France and Spain between 1585 and 1818, is equally proficient in its account of every Irish mercenary unit during that busy era in European military history.. The plates are, as might be expected in this period, most colourful, and the text lucid and succinct,: as it has to be with so many units to cover. For John Scurr, on the other hand, space is less of a problem. His subject, Germany’s Spanish Volunteers 1941-45, covers one unit, the Blue Division, in one area, Russia. Consequently Mr Scurr can include details of battles, or even skirmishes, in considerable detail, and his monograph is as much a unit history as a survey of men, weapons and uniforms. All in’all, these six monographs are well-written, attractively presented and obviously authoritative. They will be enthusiastically welcomed bty aficionados.