A Good Clean Fight

Rating:
Summary: Robinson's GOOD CLEAN FIGHT is a fantastic piece of work!
Review: Derek Robinson scores a great hit with his A GOOD CLEAN FIGHT. Set amidst the shifting "ping-pong" war of 1942 North Africa, this story jumps between two groups of English soldiers. Robinson's econimical style is subtle and very stylish. His humor is dry and very real. His characters are beautfully done, and the action is both facinating and horrific. This is THE BEST World War II novel I have read.

Rating:
Summary: Almost a Really Great War Novel
Review: Derek Robinson's novel, A Good Clean Fight, follows the remaining characters from his earlier Piece of Cake to the North African Desert in May 1942. As in previous Robinson novels, much of the focus is upon the fictional "Hornet Squadron," now led by "Fanny" Barton and equipped with P-40 "Tomahawks." The pilot "Pip" Patterson, the squadron adjutant "Uncle" Kellaway and the intelligence officer "Skull" Skelton are also on hand. However unlike other Robinson novels that focus mainly on life within the squadron, A Good Clean Fight has substantial roles for the Germans and for a British ground unit. Captain Jack Lampard is a British Special Air Service (SAS) officer who leads daring behind-the-lines raids on German airfields and Major Paul Schramm is a German intelligence officer tasked with finding and defeating the SAS raiders. There are also a number of other SAS and German supporting characters that add depth to Lampard's and Schramm's roles. A Good Clean Fight also has considerably more combat action than any other Robinson novels and the book crackles along at a very good pace. Indeed, the novel starts off very well and could have been a truly great war novel if Robinson had not allowed himself to get distracted with several unnecessary sub-plots in the middle of his work. Nevertheless, A Good Clean Fight is very good and probably one of Robinson's finest efforts to date.

The main plot with "Hornet Squadron" in A Good Clean Fight focuses on efforts to entice the Luftwaffe fighters to come up and fight in the quiet period that preceded the Gazala Campaign. Barton, afraid that his hard-luck unit might be broken up, offers to conduct a systematic ground attack program in order to get the German fighters to commit to action (the Germans preferred to hold their fighters back in order to prepare for the main battle coming). In effect, Barton commits his unit to an attritional campaign that can have but one end for the squadron - whittling down pilots and aircraft in the hope that something will "break loose" before the unit is combat ineffective. Barton has changed somewhat since A Piece of Cake and is no longer very sympathetic; many readers might feel that he is sacrificing his unit for his own sake, but that is unfair. "Fanny's" efforts to "outfox" the enemy as he says, and "Skull's" pointed explanations of why this is unlikely are quite interesting. In the midst of this growing tension in the unit, Robinson delivers several excellent and exciting descriptions of air-ground attacks on assorted targets.

Lampard begins the novel with an exciting raid on a German airfield and even briefly captures the intelligence officer, Schramm. Robinson's depiction of these raids gives great insight not only into SAS tactics of the period, but the type of men who excelled in this type of work. Lampard in many respects is the SAS leader par excellence - aggressive, physically impressive, cunning and ultra-competent. Unfortunately, Lampard has some flaws which may not be uncommon in the special operations community: he is a "risk junkie" who doesn't know when to quit and he lies to superiors and subordinates in order to cover up his mistakes. Like Barton's attrition tactics, Lampard's "risk tactics" seem preordained to eventual catastrophe, of course, with much bravery along the way.

Schramm starts out as a very interesting, witty character but gradually withers into a sour, introverted, pathetic sort. While Schramm and his peers do provide some tension in the novel with their "cat and mouse" game with Lampard, one feels that the SAS are never seriously threatened by Luftwaffe intelligence. Indeed, the one German effort to send a large patrol out into the desert to ambush the in-coming SAS patrols ends up in total and ridiculous disaster. The worst parts of the novel involve Schraam's involvement with an Italian female doctor - this goes nowhere and means nothing. On the Allied side, the antics of two reporters is also quite distracting and useless. Were it not for these distracting minor characters - who somehow elbow out the main characters in midstream - A Good Clean Fight would have been nearly perfect.

As usual, Robinson's humor is very dry and very dark, and is certainly the most compelling aspect of his novels. Robinson is able to show both the bravery and the stupidity in war, as well as just the sheer misery of trying to fight in blast-furnace heat, covered with flies. In a historical sense, Robinson also delivers insight into neglected facets of the desert war, such as the "Takoradi" trail the Allies used to ferry planes across Africa and the German air raid on Chad to interdict the trail.

Rating:
Summary: Almost a Really Great War Novel
Review: Derek Robinson's novel, A Good Clean Fight, follows the remaining characters from his earlier Piece of Cake to the North African Desert in May 1942. As in previous Robinson novels, much of the focus is upon the fictional "Hornet Squadron," now led by "Fanny" Barton and equipped with P-40 "Tomahawks." The pilot "Pip" Patterson, the squadron adjutant "Uncle" Kellaway and the intelligence officer "Skull" Skelton are also on hand. However unlike other Robinson novels that focus mainly on life within the squadron, A Good Clean Fight has substantial roles for the Germans and for a British ground unit. Captain Jack Lampard is a British Special Air Service (SAS) officer who leads daring behind-the-lines raids on German airfields and Major Paul Schramm is a German intelligence officer tasked with finding and defeating the SAS raiders. There are also a number of other SAS and German supporting characters that add depth to Lampard's and Schramm's roles. A Good Clean Fight also has considerably more combat action than any other Robinson novels and the book crackles along at a very good pace. Indeed, the novel starts off very well and could have been a truly great war novel if Robinson had not allowed himself to get distracted with several unnecessary sub-plots in the middle of his work. Nevertheless, A Good Clean Fight is very good and probably one of Robinson's finest efforts to date.

The main plot with "Hornet Squadron" in A Good Clean Fight focuses on efforts to entice the Luftwaffe fighters to come up and fight in the quiet period that preceded the Gazala Campaign. Barton, afraid that his hard-luck unit might be broken up, offers to conduct a systematic ground attack program in order to get the German fighters to commit to action (the Germans preferred to hold their fighters back in order to prepare for the main battle coming). In effect, Barton commits his unit to an attritional campaign that can have but one end for the squadron - whittling down pilots and aircraft in the hope that something will "break loose" before the unit is combat ineffective. Barton has changed somewhat since A Piece of Cake and is no longer very sympathetic; many readers might feel that he is sacrificing his unit for his own sake, but that is unfair. "Fanny's" efforts to "outfox" the enemy as he says, and "Skull's" pointed explanations of why this is unlikely are quite interesting. In the midst of this growing tension in the unit, Robinson delivers several excellent and exciting descriptions of air-ground attacks on assorted targets.

Lampard begins the novel with an exciting raid on a German airfield and even briefly captures the intelligence officer, Schramm. Robinson's depiction of these raids gives great insight not only into SAS tactics of the period, but the type of men who excelled in this type of work. Lampard in many respects is the SAS leader par excellence - aggressive, physically impressive, cunning and ultra-competent. Unfortunately, Lampard has some flaws which may not be uncommon in the special operations community: he is a "risk junkie" who doesn't know when to quit and he lies to superiors and subordinates in order to cover up his mistakes. Like Barton's attrition tactics, Lampard's "risk tactics" seem preordained to eventual catastrophe, of course, with much bravery along the way.

Schramm starts out as a very interesting, witty character but gradually withers into a sour, introverted, pathetic sort. While Schramm and his peers do provide some tension in the novel with their "cat and mouse" game with Lampard, one feels that the SAS are never seriously threatened by Luftwaffe intelligence. Indeed, the one German effort to send a large patrol out into the desert to ambush the in-coming SAS patrols ends up in total and ridiculous disaster. The worst parts of the novel involve Schraam's involvement with an Italian female doctor - this goes nowhere and means nothing. On the Allied side, the antics of two reporters is also quite distracting and useless. Were it not for these distracting minor characters - who somehow elbow out the main characters in midstream - A Good Clean Fight would have been nearly perfect.

As usual, Robinson's humor is very dry and very dark, and is certainly the most compelling aspect of his novels. Robinson is able to show both the bravery and the stupidity in war, as well as just the sheer misery of trying to fight in blast-furnace heat, covered with flies. In a historical sense, Robinson also delivers insight into neglected facets of the desert war, such as the "Takoradi" trail the Allies used to ferry planes across Africa and the German air raid on Chad to interdict the trail.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: When I read this novel for the first time six years ago, I didn't really get much of the humor or irony, but then I read it last summer, and couldn't put it down. It's a thick book, but it didn't take me long (I usually read very slowly).
The characters are entirely believable: not all are likeable, but they're all realistic. By the end, it's actually quite disturbing what happens to them all.
Some of these characters are pilots in Hornet Squadron, which also featured in Robinson's book "Piece of Cake". There is a rookie American pilot, the Aussie CO, and the nitpicking intelligence officer, along with a dozen other pilots who are all uniquely entertaining. There is also a team of SAS commandos and their egomaniacal Captain, who make guerilla raids on German airfields, and a German officer who vainly attempts to mount an operation to defend against them. The last - and maybe the funniest - subplot is about an American journalist, who is searching for a Lawrence of Arabia-style hero to sell to American newspapers.
The density of imagery regarding the desert itself is astounding. At some points while reading this book I felt like I needed to go swimming, drink a tall glass of cold water, or at least stick my head up for some fresh air. You can feel the heat and blistering sunlight seeping out of the pages.
It's the sort of book that you really don't want to end, because in some ways it's a very conclusive ending (death, etc) and in other ways it gives you the feeling that things are just going to continue without change. It was uncomfortable to leave the book knowing that many of its characters were dead, and that those who survived might only be killed a day or a year later. The sense that the war would continue and take more lives was intense.
One problem is the Hornet Squadron pilot Fido Doggart. Robinson manages to detail the deaths of everyone else very graphically, but he forgot about Doggart. I don't know if he was killed, or if the author just lost track.