Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma

Rating:
Summary: Should be required reading at every military college
Review: A few years ago my thesis advisor suggested I read this book. I thought it a bit odd as I was doing my research on tactical air power in the Normandy campaign, but I decided I'd have a go. My advisor knew what he was doing. So many reviews have already praised the book that I feel a bit redundant offering my two cents at this stage, so I'll simply say Keegan, in blurbing the book, didn't go far enough. This isn't simply one of the best military memoirs written of the war in the CBI, it's one of the best military memoirs written, ever.

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable personal account
Review: A very interesting, harrowing, brutally honest, vivid, account of the author's experience as a light infantryman in Burma. Extremely well written, and totally admirable. It is a shame that this author is mostly known for the "Flashman" stories, although I hope that he made lots of money from them.He makes the same point that Wellington made, that you can no more write the history of a battle than you could write the history of a ball (fancy party). In both cases, the experience is so totally personal that each partipant has a different experience. The author makes this point by comparing his memories with the official accounts. HIghly recomended

Rating:
Summary: Campaigning through Burma with the Black Cat
Review: As a young man, George MacDonald Fraser was a "ranker" (enlistedman) assigned to the 17th (Black Cat) Division of the British 14thIndian Army as it pursued the Japanese south through Burma after thelatter's resounding defeat at the gates of India, at Imphal. Fraser'snarrative history of his personal contribution to this campaign isQUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE.

Written decades after the fact, this bookdoes not pretend to be a comprehensive history of the Burma Theater inthe last months of World War II. Rather, it's the war from theperspective of Nine Section in which Fraser fought, first as aPrivate, then Lance Corporal. (A "section" is the smallestoperating unit of an infantry platoon, i.e. 8-10 men.) Besides being avivid retelling of the author's recollections to the extent that heremembers, it's also an intimate portrait of the organization,weapons, tactics and camaraderie of the British Army at section levelat that time, place, and conflict. It's a story told with the humor,intelligence and introspection that comes with maturity andhindsight. And, though some of Fraser's bitterness towards his old foeoccasionally shows, age does dull the sharp edges.

"I rememberwatching, a year or two ago, televised interviews with old Japanesesoldiers who had fought in the war ... sitting in their gardens intheir sports shirts, blinking cheerfully in the sunlight, reminiscingin throat-clearing croaks about battles long ago. It crossed my mind:were any of you on the Pyawbwe slope, and lived to tell the tale?Well, if they did, at this time of day I don't mind."

Fraser is atruly gifted writer. After VJ Day, he applied for, and was awarded, acommission as a subaltern (2nd Lieutenant) in a Scottish Highlanddivision posted to the Middle East. In this capacity, his experiencesserved as the basis for his quite wonderful and comedic McAuslanseries of fictional stories (collected and available from Amazon.co.uk in THE COMPLETE MCAUSLAN). I unreservedly recommend both ofthese two books to anyone who has ever served in any branch of thearmed forces, no matter what country. I myself was in the U.S. Navy,and Fraser's works are in the "can't put down" category.

Rating:
Summary: Sobering, relevant, and important
Review: Fraser's is one of the finest war memoirs I've ever read, and for so many reasons. He has a gift for illustrating the life of the combat soldier in ways that are at once terrifying, hilarious, and sometimes just plain bizarre. His discovery in the field that he had a gift for brewing tea is unforgettable, as is his account of falling down a well in the middle of a battle, his comrades cracking jokes about it as the chaos and noise of battle rages all around them. Among the most remarkable things about Fraser's book are his comparisons between the official histories of what happened with what he actually experienced; the official history of one engagement, for example, records only that a tank was destroyed and so many men killed or wounded on each side, but Fraser describes what that burning tank SMELLED like and how it attracted the attention of Japanese soldiers throughout the night. These are the things we rarely get from ordinary histories of battles and wars. His book does not reduce the soldiers to a list of statistics. One learns to care about them or loathe them almost as much as Fraser did.

The final few chapters are particularly sobering. Anyone who questions the necessity of the atomic bomb attacks on Japan would do well to read this book (and E.B. Sledge's "With the Old Breed"). We owe so much to the men and women who fought and served in this war, and we have failed them in so many ways. Our world of psychological gibberish and moral ineptitude is not what they fought for. Fraser's book has many important and enduring lessons for all of us, but particularly for those of us born in the postwar boom. Highly, highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Should have six stars at least
Review: George Macdonald Fraser has written an utterly gripping and unforgettable memoir of the war in Burma, where he served with a company of men mainly from Cumberland. His comrades are vividly described so that you feel you have known them yourself, and it is a terrible shock when nearly halfway through the book one of them is killed during a bloody nighttime battle. There are richly comic passages too, like the time the section is given the job of gathering up provisions from an air drop, and return laden with stolen booty, or the time they are terrorised by a giant centipede, or the time Fraser falls down a well. Every time I read this book I find myself wishing that I had been one of those young men fighting my way through the jungle, which is completely crazy, as the closest I've ever come to combat is seperating two squabbling toddlers. By the end of the book, when Fraser leaves to become an officer, I feel as sad as if I was saying goodbye to my own friends, and I can never hear the tune "bye-bye blackbird" without substituting the Burma version "you've been out with Sun-Yat-Sen, you won't go out with him again, Shanghai bye-bye!" The most astonishing thing is that he was only nineteen when he was performing incredible acts of courage in the jungle, eventually even having to lead the section himself. An extraordinary story, told bu a superb writer. Read it and laugh. Read it and weep. Read it and wish you were there too. Oh, just read it!

Rating:
Summary: Should have six stars at least
Review: George Macdonald Fraser has written an utterly gripping and unforgettable memoir of the war in Burma, where he served with a company of men mainly from Cumberland. His comrades are vividly described so that you feel you have known them yourself, and it is a terrible shock when nearly halfway through the book one of them is killed during a bloody nighttime battle. There are richly comic passages too, like the time the section is given the job of gathering up provisions from an air drop, and return laden with stolen booty, or the time they are terrorised by a giant centipede, or the time Fraser falls down a well. Every time I read this book I find myself wishing that I had been one of those young men fighting my way through the jungle, which is completely crazy, as the closest I've ever come to combat is seperating two squabbling toddlers. By the end of the book, when Fraser leaves to become an officer, I feel as sad as if I was saying goodbye to my own friends, and I can never hear the tune "bye-bye blackbird" without substituting the Burma version "you've been out with Sun-Yat-Sen, you won't go out with him again, Shanghai bye-bye!" The most astonishing thing is that he was only nineteen when he was performing incredible acts of courage in the jungle, eventually even having to lead the section himself. An extraordinary story, told bu a superb writer. Read it and laugh. Read it and weep. Read it and wish you were there too. Oh, just read it!

Rating:
Summary: With sincere thanks
Review: How to give a clear picture without saying "evocative"? Fraser took me back to 1945. I shared the bloody-minded company of some ordinary blokes who actually helped save civilisation and I'm thankful for the experience.

Those guys are old men now. They believe they were (unwillingly) just doing their job. But thanks to Fraser, our generation can re-live their grumbling yet heroic young lives and feel truly humble. I will make sure my children read this book

ps Many, many thanks for Flashman and McAuslan aswell.

Rating:
Summary: By turns, raucous, sobering, tense, and hilarious
Review: I can't add to the superlatives below. His short adventure with Captain Grief alone, is worth the price of this book. After reading all the "Flashman" epics this is a revealing look at the author as a young man at war. Swims upstream against the current PC versions of the last days of WWII, and is a moving tribute to the men of a forgotten theater of that war. Shabash! GMF

Rating:
Summary: A soldier looks at war
Review: I got this book to read about Burma. Frankly, there is not much here distinctive to that country. Instead, I came away with an answer to something that has puzzled me for years.

Post Battle Traumatic Stress gets a lot of press. Men I have known who fought in the front lines of some of the most savage battles in Asia in the 20th century seem to have escaped this problem. (I recall a tribesman from Java who was drafted to become a Japanese paratrooper: he told me with a bit too much relish about chopping up Allied soldiers with his sword.) Even those who were bombed and starved into capitulation, or were chased out of their homeland, are at peace with themselves, having done their duty.

Fraser, who has certainly done his duty, points out the responsibility the press must bear for creating PBTS. Tell someone often enough that he is wounded, and he will feel pain.

The social climate can also wound a soldier. When the Asian soldiers I mentioned returned to their societies, they were honored and respected. Note the scene in Quiet Flows the Don where the young man go once again to listen to an elder tell his story about battles long past. Several of my Atayal neighbors were put in the front lines of the Japanese army; the Tribe still holds them in honor, not that they fought for Hirohito, but that they did their duty honorably.

America has not always been so. Read the Red Badge of Courage, where the young soldier is so eager to test himself in battle. Even a wound, horrible to contemplate in the days surgeons were aptly called Sawbones, was not the end of the world if it were honorable and entitled the old veteran to hold court sitting on a cracker barrel.

Has Western society civilized itself to the point where our psyches can no longer bear the taking of lives? Well, look at the popular TV shows and movies, or the best-selling video games where you go out and hack as many players as possible to death. Not that killing is good, but that a compassionate society can salve wounds. Wounds are salved with compassion, not by voyeuristic probing.

Rating:
Summary: Fraser's best book, bar none
Review: Most of you know GMF from his Flashman series. A few will have ventured into the McAuslan triology and from those tales gathered that Mr. Fraser is a WWII vet. Well, this is his war memoir and a more sobering tale of battle, sacrifice, and stone-willed perseverance you will not find. I could go on at length about the plethora of merits this book contains, but I'll pause to mention just one. Quartered Safe dares to talk about the racism of war in politically incorrect terms and explain why so many veterans of the Pacific War came away with a hatred of the Japanese that was not easily quenched. This is rough stuff and it should be required reading for all Baby Boomers through Gen X'ers.

<< 1 2 3 >>