PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Gaining An R.A.F Pilots Brevet In WW II
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Old 21st Sep 2016, 18:59
  #9328 (permalink)  
MPN11
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Often in Jersey, but mainly in the past.
Age: 79
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The 'off-piste' material is often more valuable than the "Official History" stuff.

Slightly OT, but I think relevant in context, I've just finished a couple of US Civil War books [one of my favourite Military topics] on Kindle.

One was a diary [effectively the Operational Record Book] of the 13th New Hampshire Regt, detailing all the little things that went on when they weren't fighting for the Union side. "Regt in Camp, felling trees to make a log road", that sort of thing. https://www.amazon.com/Three-Years-D...ears+and+a+day

The other is the diary of a Confederate, original a Georgia Militia private but with serious family connections, who when the War started rode up to Virginia to seek employment as an Aide to [then] Brig-Gen Longstreet. Honorary commission as Capt, later proper commission, and rose to Col on Longstreet's Staff in what was then called their Assistant Adjutant General's Department, before being promoted Brig-Gen himself and given a Brigade - and shortly after wounded in battle. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Recollectio...+Staff+Officer.

They don't tell 'History' but instead penned sketches which show, as no formal record does, what it's actually like 'out there'. My long reading of the War Between The States, as the South prefers to call it, has been illuminated hugely over the last few weeks [from both sides]. i knew about the BIG things, but absolutely nothing about the daily 'existence' of those involved.

So does this Thread of Threads. The little details expounded by several posters give those of us who were NOT there a much better feeling of what it was like.

Keep going!
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