Alastair Borthwick (1913–2003)

This was originally published in 1946 as Sans peur: The history of the 5th (Caithness and Sutherland) battalion, the Seaforth Highlanders, 1942-1945. It was written by the battalion intelligence officer immediately following the conclusion of the war while the battalion was in quarters preparing to be demobilized. The CO realized that once the troops were demobilized the opportunity to gather and write the definitive history of the unit would be lost. So he asked Borthwick, who had written a travel book before the war, to write one while he had a captive audience and access to the battalion papers. The result is a very readable account of the poor bloody infantry through most of the major actions in the European Theater. Unlike other books, you don't get a lot of the bigger picture and grand strategy. These things were not known to the average soldier and the author tries to keep the reader to things that were known at the time by the soldiers in the battalion. The book includes a nice collection of original photographs and a few maps. My pet peave for military books is the usual lack or maps or very poor maps. The author included about a dozen and they were pretty good although a few higher level maps would have been handy to locate the battalion's actions is the greater scheme of things. But, as I noted, this wasn't the author's intent. All in all a good read if you can find it. I picked up my copy from the Imperial War Museum in London, so....… (mehr)