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21 October 2015
Zulu Dawn - well worth the price
1 of 1 found this helpful A good film of a disastrous British defeat at the start of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. The battle at Isandlhwana was the first action of the war, followed the same day by the defense of Rorke's Drift as depicted in the 1964 film 'Zulu'. Widescreen, a good print transfer, good South African scenery, and of course a cast of thousands in period uniforms on both sides. Good action sequences and several character actors give a personal side to the large-scale history presented. Burt Lancaster and Denholm Elliot play the two commanders in charge of the British camp while Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole) scouts ahead. Their threefold incompetence leads to the disaster later that day, one for failure to properly defend his camp, the other for failure to use his cavalry as scouts, and lastly for command failure by Chelmsford to see that defensive measures were part of the daily regime in enemy territory. The film is far too soft at relegating blame among all three of the senior officers on the scene, but this can be readily overlooked in a well-made epic film of this type.
16 February 2016
Outstanding WWII Memoir
The original hardback is a bit pricey now, but this is available in several paperback editions, and is well worth adding to anyone's library. Without question this is one of the best personal memoirs of the Second World War, written by a professional writer, with great insight, compassion, and clear vision, both of the events he experienced and the emotions he and his compatriots possessed.
Mr. Fraser is free of revisionist tendencies, moral guilt, or any of the accepted fashions of the present day in his telling of his story, and this alone is something to recommend his memoir. However, it is the telling of the story of himself, and his section of nine Cumbrian mates, one small bit of the great Anglo-Indian army that, in Fraser's words, 'kicked the living daylights out of Jap' in the little-known war for Burma, that makes this required reading.
Only a few war memoirs have qualified as literature, this is one of them.