Review of Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” 2023

I had high hopes for the “Napoleon” movie. There has in my mind been a lack of historical epics (not necessarily historical movies), the “Epic” genre seems to have faded a bit into the background.

It is understandable with the current climate of war in Europe again that it could not be glorifying Napoleon to any big extent but I was hoping for a character study into the complex character of Napoleon. However this movie is not a character study, instead it seems more like a parody on Napoleon and a likely commentary on present-day dictators and that power corrupts.

The movie had the “short” run time of 2 hours and 37 minutes and it is clear that compressing Napoleon’s entire life into that would be impossible. Even if cutting it down to the Siege of Toulon (1793) to Waterloo (1815) would mean a mere 7 minutes screen time per year if his life, so the movie would need a focus. In this case it is the romance between Napoleon and his first wife Josephine.

The underlying narrative of the movie is therefore that Josephine was Napoleon’s muse and source of inspiration. After the divorce his decision-making and luck went down hill dooming him to exile. That is an interesting take but ultimately did not work for me. The movie is rife with historical inaccuracies but that is the least of the issues with the movie. The movie never dares to present a balanced view on Napoleon and cannot be said to be close to an accurate biopic.

Call of Duty: WWII Single Player History Impressions

I really wanted to give you a full review of the history on which the latest Call of Duty: WWII but I was delayed a couple of weeks as my computer died. I have covered the multiplayer in my beta impression post but the developers have always insisted the singleplayer is where the history focus is, where as multiplayer is for competitive fun and less consistent with history, does that actually hold?

Cinco de Mayo: The Battle – Mexican Movie 2013

The Battle of Pueblo (1862) is a battle between the French and Mexican armies and is a battle I had barely heard about so when I found a Mexican movie about it, I had to watch it hoping learn something. As I do not know enough details of the French Intervention in Mexico, I will not comment on historical accuracy in this review but focus on the movie itself.

Hacksaw Ridge – 2016 Movie

I waited a long time with watching the movie, after all it was a Mel Gibson movie and Mel Gibson does not have a great track record when it comes to historical movies. Do not get me wrong, Mel Gibson makes good movies but from a historical perspective, they are riddled with inaccuracies. But with Hacksaw Ridge I was pleasantly surprised. Read on as I explore the movie and a bit about history of the main protagonist medal of honor winner Desmond Doss.

Freedom: The Underground Railroad – Board Game

Freedom: The Underground Railroad is a board game from Academy Games it deals with a very dark topic in history, slavery in the US in the period 1800-1865. I can understand why some people will be very uncomfortable about combining board games which are typically about fun with topics like slavery. But have a look as I examine the game and the history it is based on.

Dunkirk – Movie – 2017

I came out of the cinema wanting so much more of that, the movie is so intense. 106 minutes is short for many movies of these days, but the way the movie deliver the story, it is works. It is short but you are never out of the battle so it feels much more intense and longer.

But when I sat down with a beer afterwards and thought about it, I could not really be sure why I liked it. This movie is very different from most war movies. It is not a horrifying gore fest or patriotic flag waving to celebrate and glorify the deeds of great men in history, Actually this movie is not really about the history of the evacuation or war. It is more about the experience, about invoking feelings, this movie drops you right in the war and with minimum dialog instead try to show you the horror and let you react to it. It is fast paced but sometimes very subtle become very quiet to let in sink in only to break it up again by screaming dive bombers.

 

It is well made and beautiful and with a bold artistic angle, but it is probably the angle that does not work for me, and prevents me from thinking it is an instant classic.

 

———————————————-Very Minor Spoiler  Alert—————————————————-

I realized from a narrative perspective does not work for me. I totally understand that this is a history movie and thus we all know approximately how it is going to go. There may be variations on who survives and who does not, but is maybe the only thing for us to find out, we already know the broad lines. It is a bit like Titanic, we know we are heading to disaster. I therefore understand it is more interesting to not tell it as a linear story but instead use multiple perspectives.

The movie has three perspectives: the soldier, the civilian sailor and the pilot. The movie try to tell each of their stories while slowly intertwining them, but it also uses different pacing. The soldier story is supposed to have a span of a week, the sea man a day and the pilot an hour which means bringing stories together with different pacing also mean seeing the same event multiple times from different angles. It makes the movie unneccessary hard to follow. Especially because if you blink at the beginning you will miss the text stating it at start of each story arch.

Another weird thing is, that I do not even remember a single name of any of the characters. it is not because they do not have names, it is because the movie wants to show rather than tell. There is very little conversation and very little connection with the characters. Because they are complete no-names with few revealed traits or character development, it makes it easier to feel it could be you and the movie therefore drops you in their boots. But if we do not care about the stories of the characters, we can better see the event as it unfolds.

In a way, it feels a bit like what I expect shell shock or traumatic experiences would feel like. I have never been at war and hope never to have to do so, but when I was a boy, I was caught up in a fire exercise that got out of hand and none had told us it was an exercise. In the stampede of panic, I with a small group 9-10 year olds got separated from the teacher and trapped in the end of a corridor, while the thick black smoke slowly advanced on us from the other end. We all thought we were going to die and I had one of these weird feelings, that I was kind of viewing everything from a 3rd person view. I can still recall me yelling to the others to drop to the floor below the smoke and I can see myself completely from the outside trying to bash in an armoured glass window until we gave up as the smoke was getting to near to us and simply put ourselves on the floor. I can hear myself thinking in my head: “this is it”. It was a strange out-of-body experience.

I kind of had the same feeling with this movie at times, I could have been any of those soldiers desperately trying to survive. The action seems real, the air attacks are sudden and sound effects make them terrifying but the amount of near-death experiences our soldier has seems get a bit repetitive. It is feels more like a horror movie, we lock all these soldiers in a location and ask: “who will survive?” At it seems like more people died than lived during the course of the movie. It did not sit well with my interpretation of history but of course our memory would also play tricks on us in stressful situations. The carnage and death could well be how some veterans, who were there, would remember it. It may be the closest some of us will come to a brief feeling of shell shock.

From the sea perspective we follow mr. Dawson who, when the call goes out for volunteers, steps forward and takes his son and his son’s best friend with him on his pleasure boat to go and help. I think from a narrative perspective this is the weakest of the three in the sense of immersion. Even though I really want it to be the strongest. As a civilian, I would have loved if the movie had explored their motivation more; would I have volunteered to go and help or simply handed over my vessel to the navy? Would I have risked my livelihood had I been a fisherman and tied to my vessel or would I have tried to protest it? But the movie has opted for minimum background for the characters because it is not about their stories but the event itself and that is cool, I am unsure who I am supposed to identify with. Mr. Dawson is duty bound and way too cool, so I guess I am supposed to identify with his son, but it never worked that well. The most touching but also totally out-of-place scene in the movie is the arrival of the small crafts, that is a total contrast to the bombing and strafing, the movie slows down, the music swells, and everyone stops to cheer. It is such a break from the pace of the rest of the movie that it feels clunky.

The air element although representing only about 1 hour over Dunkirk given the limited amounts of fuel is intense. That is about the best arial dogfighting ever put on-screen. It is beautifully shot and I really wanted to see more of it. Following the battle there was a lot of complaints about the lack of fighter cover over the beaches but actually RAF operated two patrols per squadron each day during day light hours (night fighting was not very well-developed).

The story telling this feels like a spiral where everyone ends up in the same place in the end. I did not like it but I can understand how that makes it more interesting to watch as it will keep surprises coming.

 

What I did not like about it

Even if it is a well crafted movie, it does have some annoyances and dashes some of my hopes for when I first heard about it. First of all that ticking clock and loud music on the sound track were getting on my nerves, no Germans are shown and the movie is depicted as a race against time and for survival but that ticking felt like trying to hammer it in with a sledge-hammer. Also there are a few such moments such as the arrival of the little ships which is over the top. The little ships are depicted to be the saviours of the day which hardly is true, only 5-10% of troops were evacuated by the small vessels, the mole at which the larger ships could come in was the main escape route.

I never liked the commander Bolton character. Many say it is a stirling acting performance, but I have very mixed feelings about creating composite or completely new characters to replace actual people. While I can understand the need for artistic freedom and it works well for Tommy, the soldier we follow, as he represents a lot of soldiers in the real event. I feel it is hard to do so with so pivotal roles as the land and sea commanders. Commander Bolton seems to be just standing at the mole as a captain on the helm offering stern advice and encouragement and showing the soldiers if officers can take it, so can they. But Bill Tennant whom the character is mostly based on, did so much more than being an immovable object in a sea of chaos. He and this team worked tirelessly to keep some kind of order while optimizing the lifting operation. I actually think the movie does not do him and his staff enough credit.

There was a lot of chaos, for all the death and destruction the movie dwells on, it is suprising to me it does not pick up on a lot of the things that actually happened. The town had been bombed to pieces, a thick black smoke from a burning oil tanks hung over the city almost like a beacon for friend and foe. the town actually looks way too neat. I was actually missing a lot on screen which could have added to the drama, for instance, the troops that came back into Dunkirk had no drinking water as the water supply had been cut off and so many of them took to looting wine cellars and so on, there was such a carnage, that it took quite some time to get things back in order. There are heart breaking stories of the tough decision not to evacuate the wounded as stretchers would take up too much space compared to fit people. In the movie it looks like wounded people are evacuated but in reality many were left behind with just about enough medical staff to them them, one per 10 or 20 wounded men. The staff had to draw lots on who got to stay behind and go into captivity with the wounded and who would get a chance to go on a boat. There are the heart breaking stories of troops fleeing into Dunkirk only to be swept up into units being sent back to hold the ever shrinking perimeter, some only holding out forced at gun point and a few stories of officers who had to shoot their own men to restore the fighting spirit. These are dilemmas and stories I would have loved to see be explored a bit.

 

What About the French?

I understand the survival perspective but I also miss a mentioning of the defence of the bridgehead. The bridgehead was continously defended and on a much larger perimeter than what is shown in the movie where we almost walk from the sandbag fortifications to the beach by turning a corner. The bridgehead was well defended and the French troops played an important role as more than 40.000 were left behind to cover the rear and casualties ran at 60.000. These are hardly mentioned in the movie and I therefore feel they are given great injustice. Even though the movie has a clear British perspective the evacuation of so many would not have been possible without the French army. I also feel the movie fails to mention the massacres of allied POWs but that would have failed and have vilified the Germans and taken focus away from the main narrative.

 

Do I like it?

Dunkirk is more of an experience than a movie. Nolan wants to put you there on the beach in 1940 with the men, the fear, carnage and shell shock. For 90 minutes you endure not really knowing what is next. I can understand if some people will not like it, I myself have a bit mixed feelings but the movie is crafted with such care, that it does shine.

For instance when the soldiers come home, embarrassed they have lost, they get served a cup of tea and there is an old man standing there saying: “well done, well done”. As they get on the train one says something like that old man did not even look us in the eyes. But in the movie he is shown to be blind and I cannot help to think perhaps it was the poison gas in the trenches of his generation. This is never explained but it is this attention to detail that makes me like it.

This movie is well crafted and has an interesting artistic direction, while it is generally true to the history behind it, I did not like the narrative and I feel a lot of history is left untold. It was not what I had expected but it is intense.

7/10

April 9th – Danish Movie – 2015

“Never again a April 9th”, the saying very much gripped by grand parents generation and referred to April 9th 1940. In the early hours of April 9th Denmark was attacked and occupied in a German blitzkrieg move. The sudden attack combined only with a token defence left the Danish people with a feeling that they had been betrayed by their politicians and let down by the army. Furthermore in the days following the 9th of April the Germans never disbanded the Danish army and left in place politicians and bewildered government willing to collaborate and Denmark was to some extent left to take care of itself but under German overall control. This was done because the Germans had no real interesting in Denmark. It was merely a stepping stone for a much larger prize, Norway.

The defence of Denmark has often been ridiculed and is subject to a number of myths both in Denmark and abroad where any fighting is often not even acknowledged at all. The Germans tried to put it up as a great propaganda piece that they were in fact invited to protect Denmark from British aggression. Denmark was a small country of little significance, an agricultural country with limited industrial capacity (weapons manufacturing capacity was mainly small arms). While it did control the straits to the Baltic sea Denmark’s size had meant that she relied on declared neutrality and a balanced diplomatic approach between the great powers to keep out of WWI. The same politics were pursued in the interwar period as it was believed that the same neutrality could be achieved again. With economic depression the defence budgets were slashed and slashed knowing that diplomacy was the better defence. A non-aggression pact was negotiated with Germany which further relaxed the focus on the armed forces until the Munich crisis. Following the Munich crisis Britain was approached and asked about their position should Denmark be invaded. The answer was negative, Britain did not believe in the practically of landing and supplying an oversea expeditionary force than close to German naval and air bases. Suddenly the armed forces were important again and Denmark rushed to expand the army and secure modern weapons. But it was too little, too late to discourage a German invasion.

It may be that the troops put up only brief resistance for a couple of hours and I totally understand this is best described as a sideshow to a sideshow. I know international viewers will ask what is two hours of fighting or a couple of dozen lives in a war of 6 years and millions of dead, it all seems very negligible. But with their lives on the line, they were no different from most other soldiers of WWII. They were let down by the politicians who had refused to modernize the army in the 1930s and furthermore refused to fully mobilize the army even in the face of invasion. The soldiers who found themselves defending Denmark on the 9th of April 1940 generally fought as well as could be expected but had no real chance. This movie tells their story which may be niche but no less of a tragedy for those who did not come home.

 

So It Begins

The movie opens with the proclamation by the Danish king given on the 9th of April to the Danish population following the invasion and a brief description of the Danish situation. We cut to April 8th and meet our main protagonist 2nd lieutenant Sand, who serves as second in command of a bicycle infantry platoon. All leave from the army has been cancelled and the troops are returning to garrisons. The air is thick with rumours of a potential German invasion and that is why all the conscripts are ordered back but they are told is merely an exercise. There are plenty of banter and the soldiers from the different regions of the country have their petty rivalry over cultural differences, differences there still exists to this day but will be completely hidden to the international viewer for whom it will seem simply boyish. It must be noted that the Danish army was mostly a training organisation with only a small core of professionals while the rest of it was made up of conscripts serving for up to a year. The tension mounts as the troops are handed live ammunition and ordered to bed fully dressed, they are still unaware and believe it is part of the training while their officers discuss what to do but ultimately have their hands tied by the politicians. The troops were denied to deploy forward to the prepared defensive positions as it was feared the Germans would take it as a provocation.

Suddenly the suspense is broken, the Germans cross the border and Denmark is at war. The movie follows the bicycle infantry platoon as they get on their heavy military bikes and go against their instincts by paddling towards the danger not away from it.

On the way down towards the border, they encounter the first troops falling back from the German forces and they decide to take up positions. This is probably the one of best moment of the movie, they can hear the German mechanized column approaching long before they can se it. Outnumbered and outgunned they have to put their faith in their outdated machine guns to halt the mechanized forces until the rest of the army can be mobilized. There are little heroism here, there are a scared group of young soldiers trying to do their duty.

 

The Movie

The rest of the movie follows the “fictive” platoon as they go through their first day in battle. When I say fictive it is because the platoon is not real but represents a number of different kinds of soldiers and people. The movie is relatively short at only 1½ hour but I think it works very well. It may at times feel more like a docudrama as there is not much in the way of character development.

Combat scenes are well crafted and feels very real, for instance the main protagonist never fires his gun but focuses on commanding as a lieutenant should do. It is clear that it is a very low-budget, in fact the budget about one-third of a game of Thrones episode but I think it does well with what it has to work with. It feels very authentic (except a small annoyance where the price of milk seems to be hugely inflated compared to actual 1940 prices).

The movie never falls for exaggerated heroism, nor for the ubiquitous pacifism one finds in most war movies. It tries to truthfully convey the day and the fight as it happened more or less and for that I think it does have its place.

 

Historical Comment – bicycle infantry

A lot of Danish movie critics saw the use of bicycles as the ultimate futility and while the Danish army was ill-equipped for fighting a modern war lacking both armour and anti-tank weapons, the bicyles I believe is not the main issue. mobility was a main concern of most armies of WWII and all armies experimented with bicycle infantry as a cheap way of adding extra mobility to the infantry especially recon. I have attached a picture below of the British commandos, a state-of-the-art unit landing on D-Day with their military issue bikes.

British Commandos landing on D-Day with bicycles for added mobility in order to reach Pegasus Bridge and the Paras faster

Bicycle infantry was a much cheaper alternative to traditional horse mounted infantry, see e.g. German use of horses in WWII: https://playinghistory.wordpress.com/2015/11/01/horse-powered-wwii-german-army-and-horses/

 

The Big Question

Ultimately the movie never really answers the big question, could Denmark have gained anything by resisting more fiercely. I honestly do not think so. Denmark would never have been able to resist a German invasion without foreign aid, its population and land was simply too small. The only possible source of aid would be Britain or France but for them to open a front in Denmark where everything would have to be transported across the North Sea while the Germans to drive up everything directly from their military depots seems to be a losing prospect. I therefore do not believe a longer fight would have gained much for Denmark. On the other hand a drawn out resistance would likely have resulted in a much more brutal occupation. Denmark in the end got off light of WWII, it may seem unfair to other warring nations and cowardice to try to avoid picking sides even after being occupied but I guess that is politics.

 

7/10 this movie is not about the politics or the big picture, it is about a group of conscript soldiers thrown into a war they never wanted. As a representation of Danish history, I think despite a few liberties, it is truthful enough to make for an interesting portrayal of a group of forgotten men in a sideshow of WWII. I recommend watching it.

Kongens Nei – The King’s Choice – 2016

The movie title of the latest Norwegian WWII movie “Kongens Nei”. It is a title that gives it all away, but the movie is much more appropriately titled “The king’s Choice” in English.

Find the trailer here:

I think it from the start is important to stress this is historic drama not a war movie. It is definitely not just another WWII movie about choosing difficult good over easy evil, it is much more than that. I admit I do not know the history of Norway during WWII too well, and it may at times be a slight problem in understanding what is happening, but in general the movie can be viewed without prior knowledge.

It takes place during the opening days of WWII in Norway. Norway had hoped that a neutral stance would keep the country out of the war. British naval control and no clear British interests in Norway would keep the country out of a war with Germany. However there were several factors that made Germany interested in better control with the country and it has primarily to do with iron ore. The Swedish iron ore which was mined in the Kiruna region, while technically in Sweden, because of the railroad systems it was faster to ship it via the Norwegian port of Narvik. This was a safe route through Norwegian and Danish neutral waters, it could therefore not be interrupted by the British navy. In December 1939 the Finnish Winter War broke out between the Soviet Union and Finland and the British had proposed to send an expeditionary corps to help the Finnish however this would have to travel through Sweden and would be able to interrupt ore supplies. Furthermore on February 16 British forces boarded the German supply ship Altmark in Norwegian territorial waters. While the Altmark was technically a warship as it was used for supplying warships at sea, it was still a breach of Norwegian neutrality by both sides. After that the Germans were afraid it could happen again and the allies might disrupt the ore trade and ignore the neutrality, so plans were drafted up for seizure of Norway to protect shipping.

This is where the movie opens with an explanation of the recent history related to the royal family of Norway. The king of Norway is special even among other kings in that when Norway because independent from Sweden in 1905 the people chose to become a constitutional monarchy and voted to invite prince Carl of Denmark to take the Norwegian throne. He took the name of Haakon VII to honour his new country. The monarchy in Norway is therefore special in that it was chosen by the people and has only a representative role. The king can appoint and dismiss governments and is in theory above the law but has very little real power. This is important background information and one theme that will follow on through the movie. Because the king was above politics, he has always been a unifying icon of the Norwegian people especially after his actions in April of 1940. The movie now cuts of out its stock footage and fast forwards to the 8^th of April 1940. Norway is peaceful and we get the first look at an aging king with severe back problems. He is clearly more preoccupied with this grand children than politics (which he wants to stay clear of). While it is reported that British warships have again breached Norwegian territorial waters to mine the shipping lanes for iron ore, at the same time intelligence reports come in that some 50-100 ships  have left German for parts unknown but likely Norway, no one takes it too seriously. The government is still debating believing there is a chance to keep Norway out of the war but refuse to fully mobilize the army as that could be seen as a provocation. The German invasion puts the government and royal family on a wild run, they are chased by the Germans and form the core of the movie.

The movie itself is very straight forward, while it is good and reasonably paced, it can drag a bit at times. It is very enjoyable and well done even if a bit in the low end of the budget. Danish actor Jesper Christensen is very believable is king Haakon VII. The king and the crown prince Olav have an interesting collaboration/conflict throughout the movie with the king being what appears to be a timid idealist and the crown prince the passionate fighter but in the end comes to an interesting solution in solving the king’s choice as to either surrender Norway or resist the invaders.

One of the true highlights of the movie is the tense waiting when unknown enemy warships are moving up the Oslo fjord and the conscript soldiers on the coastal fort anxiously wait to see if the order to fire will come through or who the enemy even is. War had not been declared but no orders came from the government and thus it was on the battery commandant’s order that fire was given.

The battle scenes seem realistic and well done. An interesting side note, being a neutral country the Norwegian army did not possess offensive weapons like hand grenades and submachine guns which could be used for assaulting enemy trenches. The Norwegian army focused only on defense with rifles and machine guns and even then most of the equipment was outdated.

On the slightly negative side one of small problems with the movie is understanding why the king is so important, the reasons for fleeing is never fully explained as the king holds little decision power. The movie really tries to give a good overview of the early days of the invasion of Norway by following the king but it never really gives us his full perspective and thoughts which would have been very interesting.

I think the movie suffers from trying to tell too many things and too many perspectives, for instance covering also the German diplomat to Norway, doctor Bräuer. Th Bräuer side story is actually a bit annoying as I feel it adds very little to the overall story. It feels like an attempt to legitimize that not all Germans were bloodthirsty maniacs but still it does not seem necessary. As the movie have a quite some of side stories and locations, it is cut with clear black screens with text explaining location and time of day, this is somewhat emersion breaking.  It feels like the movie does not trust the viewer to be able to follow. All I really wanted to have is a map to understand the route they took or the choices they made. As a non-Norwegian I do not know the locations of towns like Hamar or Elverum by heart. Another Norwegian thing that is not very well explained is Quisling, never in the movie does it say he is the party boss of the Norwegian version of the Nazi party and thus it does appear a little strange that he stages a coup in the wake of the invasion unless you have prior knowledge.

The only real problem with the movie I have, is that the very question of the movie is not really answered nor do we get much material to work with. Of course I do not understand particular Norwegian sensitivities but was there a real choice? Even more interesting, did it make any sense to continue throwing in lives in what appears to be a desperate struggle? The king’s no as the original title is called in Norwegian never feels like a definitive NO! Still it is a decent movie about a little known event in history and I shall give it:

6/10 I was entertained but tempted enough to look at my phone from time to time to see how much longer it would last.

A question for my readers:

I believe in the first shot with the German paratroopers hoisting the flag, are they still wearing their jump smocks? Would that be historically accurate to still wear the jump smock? I would have thought the cloth cover, that went over the webbing to prevent it from flapping around, and thus it would be removed after completing the jump for easy pouch access. It looks to me like the two guys walking across the yard is still wearing them.

Betuws Oorlogmuseum

This unassuming house in the Netherlands is actually home to an awesome museum.

I was going on a road trip through the Netherlands in 2015 to reach to reenactment of the battle of Waterloo but made a stop in the Arnhem area to learn more about Operation Market-Garden. The operation was the combined air-land attack devised by field marshal Montgomery in a bid to end the WWII in Europe by Christmas of 1944. The plan was to drop airborne forces in to seize a number of bridges over major water ways in the Netherlands over which the British ground forces would blitz before turning East into the heart of Germany and force an end to the war by eliminating the major industrial areas in the Ruhr. The battle took place between September 17 and September 25, 1944 and ended in the failure of the allied ground forces to reach the bridge at Arnhem and the beleaguered British airborne forces there and this is often where the story ends. But there is a lot more to the story than the broad lines of an allied failure due to overconfidence and poor intelligence. For months after the operation the allies held a long salient into the German lines in the Netherlands and this long extended front line came under a lot of pressure as local counter attacks mounted.

 

Betuwe is the area between Nijmegen and Arnhem and is known as “the island” as it is enclosed by the Waal and Lower Rhine rivers and the Rhine canal. The island was therefore the very tip of the salient and thus saw plenty of combat even in the time after Operation Market-Garden officially had ended.

Interestingly enough defending the sailent because a sideshow but one that the allies could not give up in a gracious manner and thus many different smaller national contigents in the British army served here along American forces and a total of 16 different nationalities have been known to fight here including Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourgian.

Trooper of the Belgian Brigade “Piron” within the British army

The museum, Betuws Oorlogsmuseum, in the town of Heteren is dedicated to telling the story of the brave men and women who fought here. It is a small private collection but it is pure gold. We came upon the house and checked the address a few times and could not believe it was it, but we rang the door bell and was welcomed by the owner himself and send into the backyard to a shed which is the main museum room and while small the amount of items on display is staggering.

What is the most cool part is that every item on display has a story, which is gladly retold by the owner. His stories truly make the museum great and gives it life. We stayed there for 1 hour in a small shed but it did not feel like an hour. This is such a unique museum and I fear that a lot of it will be lost if the owner himself one day will not document it all. I also managed to buy a few surplus items from his collection, a British Grenadier Guard badge cap, for my own collection.

I really, really recommend you to go and check it out in you find yourself in Arnhem with a few hours to spare.

Museum webpage: http://www.betuwsoorlogsmuseum.nl/

Bernard Cornwell – The Fort

I spent most of my December offshore, so while that meant I did not get much time to do posts for my blog, I at least got to do some reading. I like to do light reading when working 12 hours a day to relax my brain, so instead of history books, I settled on historical fiction.

 

Bernard Cornwell is one of my go-to authors for light but well written historical fiction. I first came across his works not from any books but from the TV movie series  “Sharpe” from the 1990s and features Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe an officer in the British army of the Napoleonic period, a role that for once does not get Sean Bean’s character killed. More recent fame has been gained with the adaptation of “The Last Kingdom” into a BBC TV series. What I really like about Cornwell’s books are that they take fictional characters and put in real events in order to show us how things happened. Of course there are some artistic liberties and some speculation as we of course cannot know what people thought and said exactly, but I do feel the writing is believable and refuse to fall prey to trying to create a hero by applying a modern morale filter.

 

The fort takes place during the American Revolution, for a British author living in USA, but cannot be an easy book to write, but the beauty of it is that it follows both sides. It follows a number of characters through the events of the Penobscot Expedition which until I read the book was completely unknown to me. The expedition has often been brushed off as a sideshow and thus largely forgotten.

In summer of 1779 the British were preoccupied with more important operations in the South but American privateers were posing a major problem towards Nova Scotia trade. It was therefore decided to launch an expedition to set up a number of forts along the coast to deter privateers. “The Fort” is the story about the first fort “Fort George” establised on the Majabigwaduce peninsula and the American attempts to drive the away the Briitsh.

The British hoped by establishing these forts that Indians and loyalists in the region would join their cause and thus these would act as a force multiplier. The response the Massachusetts were to send a large fleet and rally the militia to drive them out. Part of the militia saw Paul Revere in charge of the artillery, while on the British side John Moore (see my other post, Napoleonic Light Infantry Tactics) saw his first combat, and while minor characters, it is interesting to know that these later so famous personalities had some encounters.

Without giving too much away, I highly recommend this book as entertaining and informative. I really like that Cornwell has taken the time to name all his invented characters names with F to cause the attention that these have been added for dramatic effect rather than being real.