It is a touching portrayal of life in the army, but it is also an affectionate memoir of the Gurkhas, because he was an officer in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Prince of Wales’s Own Gurkha rifles. If you have not read it, I heartily recommend it – not for its precise historical accuracy, but because it gives such a perfect feel for how soldiers lived, fought and died in those hideous battles against the Japanese.įirst of all, BUGLES AND A TIGER is the story of Masters’s early life, his training at Sandhurst, and his departure to the Indian army, and his career as a soldier on the Afghanistan frontier.
In my opinion, it was one of the best books explaining the reality of life for an infantryman in, as he described it, one of the last great Edwardian armies. I was utterly gripped by that book when I first picked it up, and was unable to put it down until I had finished it. Fraser was the brilliantly inventive creator of the FLASHMAN series, and wrote his own war memoir as a way of honouring the men with whom he fought in the Burma campaign. It is vanishingly rare for me to find books that really compare with the superb war memoirs of George MacDonald Fraser, QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE. I am indebted today to “English Sailor”, who watched my YouTube video about John Masters (it’s here – – if you want to see it), and suggested these two books. Review BUGLES AND A TIGER and THE ROAD PAST MANDALAY by John Masters, both published by Phoenix, part of Orion Books
0 kommentar(er)
