GUERILLA

Rating:
Summary: The best WWI military campaign no one knows about
Review: After reading this book, I have strong cause to wonder why no one ever made this story into a miniseries. It's the story of one man, a very Prussian colonel, and his odds and sods conglomeration force in a backwater country. That Odd Squad of never more than 14,000 total kept half a million British troops and support personnel tied up and tripping over themselves for over four years.

Despite the total nonexistence of support from home, Von Lettow-Vorbeck kept his troops in the field and the enemy running around in circles. The odd part is that this whole story was forgotten after the Versailles treaty except by the men who served there. Then again, since it's the winners who write history, maybe it's not so odd. This was the one part of the War that the Germans actually won.

The book itself does a decent job of telling the story. There are some cultural references and terms that grate, but political correctness was not even a gleam in someone's eye back in 1914. It has a good bibliography with it, of source materials that [except for one, a book by Von Lettow himself] are hard to find. The writing style is academic competent, not wonderful, but not bad.

It is definitely worth a read, especially if you are into guerilla warfare, World War One, or just plain good yarns.

Rating:
Summary: The best WWI military campaign no one knows about
Review: After reading this book, I have strong cause to wonder why no one ever made this story into a miniseries. It's the story of one man, a very Prussian colonel, and his odds and sods conglomeration force in a backwater country. That Odd Squad of never more than 14,000 total kept half a million British troops and support personnel tied up and tripping over themselves for over four years.

Despite the total nonexistence of support from home, Von Lettow-Vorbeck kept his troops in the field and the enemy running around in circles. The odd part is that this whole story was forgotten after the Versailles treaty except by the men who served there. Then again, since it's the winners who write history, maybe it's not so odd. This was the one part of the War that the Germans actually won.

The book itself does a decent job of telling the story. There are some cultural references and terms that grate, but political correctness was not even a gleam in someone's eye back in 1914. It has a good bibliography with it, of source materials that [except for one, a book by Von Lettow himself] are hard to find. The writing style is academic competent, not wonderful, but not bad.

It is definitely worth a read, especially if you are into guerilla warfare, World War One, or just plain good yarns.