Thank God for Harry Pearson.
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Before we start this review,I will confess I am a wargamer,no I am not a warmonger,neither do I sit in some dark bedroom watching re-runs of Sky tv's latest offering of the blitzkrieg.
I first came across Harry Pearson's work when I was given a copy of the Far Corner,which was a far superior book than that b*****s about being an Arsenal fan.
That book summed up what football used to be about,crap beer and violent football tackles,and a damn good laugh at ourselves.
But I digress,Harrys latest offering is probably only meaningful to a small percentage of the British population,ie. males,but the book is a gem,encapsulating a lot of what makes the British so interesting.
In the' precious' protected world that we now have to inhabit,it is refreshing to read,and laugh at ourselves,as a not so small group of grown men wax lyrical over badly cast lead figures,and poorly painted scenery,meant to resemble some far flung battlefield.
Whenever the news becomes depressing,I reach for this book and re-live some memory that this book always seems to trigger.
well done,Hary Pearson.
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Not what you'd think from the cover
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It seems the reviewers are split into two camps on this book. I was looking forward to something Boys' Own-ish, a bit silly, a bit nostalgic, a bit fun: rather what the cover suggests.
What I got was something that started out that way, but which quickly mutated into chapter after chapter of lists about model/toy soldiers, their fans, and little bits of their history.
I gave up in disgust about half way through - a thing I hardly ever do. If you are a keen wargamer, this might be just the thing for you. If you aren't, I wouldn't touch it with a twenty-foot battle lance.
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Inductive Entertainment
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We Yanks and you Brits approach popular entertainment from opposite sides.
In the US, we boil all of our culture down to the lowest common denominator. Our cuisine is nothing but different levels of salt and sugar. Our movies are sex and violence held together by the thinnest thread of plot. And don't get me started on our popular music. The result is that we create totally forgettable products which nevertheless appeal to people around the world.
In the UK, your expertise is your ability to puzzle out universal truths out of the individual and even eccentric. The result is that your culture creates more "popular culture" classics - think Sherlock Holmes or the Rolling Stones - than the US ever will.
Achtung Schweinehund is a perfect example. Mr. Pearson delivers a nostalgic and very funny discourse on an extremely narrow segment of society: wargamers, people who have never served in the military (and indeed, in many cases, are horrified by the thought) but who live and breath the military strategist's atmosphere. In enlightening chapters, he covers every segment of that hobby, including models, reenactments, board games, novels, toy soldiers and a host of others.
You needn't be much of an afficianado to enjoy this book. Mr. Pearson's ability to capture the humor, fanaticism, good nature, profiteering, in other words the pure humanity of the people who indulge in the hobby, teachs the reader larger truths about human nature. The American military hobbyist (except, perhaps for the most fanatical) will find large areas of the book to cover terra incognita, revealing the somewhat nationalistic aspect of the products and culture of this hobby.
There are no doubt a number of errors in a book which is based more on memory than on research, but I found only one. Frank Sinatra did not play a German general in the movie Von Ryan's Express. He played an American colonel who was a prisoner of war and who masqueraded as a German train guard in order to seize the train and escape to Switzerland.
I half suspect that Mr. Pearson knew that and slipped that error and some others into the text as a sort of test to determine just how much of a military hobbyist one is: the more errors you spot, the more fanatical you are. If so, I guess I flunked the test, but that didn't prevent me, and wouldn't prevent anyone, from enjoying this book.
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How we worked out our identities.
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This is somewhat of an apologia for the whole area of male interest in war, toy soldiers, wargames, you name it. The author seems to be addressing this in his own life, objectively, self-deprecatingly, somewhat sardonically, and hilariously. He genially adumbrates the characteristics of the adult miniature militarist, but how can he stop himself, and why should he? As Pearsons friend remarks, what harm are they doing anybody else? What indeed. A serious point is the centrality of games playing in personal and social development, right up to the use of wargames and scenarios at the highest political and military levels throughout modern history. Bismarck, for instance, played chess with all the monarchs of Europe, to gain psychological insights as a tool for future diplomatic dealings, a striking illustration of his cunning. It is part of what we became as adults, that phase when our childhoods coincided with the reinvention of World War Two. It is amazing, in retrospect, to realise the unconscious roles into which we slipped in our games. A boy would always be assigned the same role, with very little question, either as British (seldom American) soldiers, or German and Japanese (and never Italian). When a certain kid was playing with us the action always took place in the Pacific theatre, because, with his buck teeth and round NHS specs, he was the inscrutable Japanese officer ("Ah, so, honourable flend of Nippon" etc), a niche he perfected and made his own, becoming part of his persona. In such ways did we negotiate our group relationships. If, however, unlike me, you have grown out of that sort of thing, I think you will find Part 1 of the book by far the most entertaining, with the joy of half-remembered familiarity. The rest is more the province of we traduced in the eyes of society!
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Boys own memories
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If you have had an action man,coveted a johnny seven,really wanted the airfix foreign legion rather than the wagon train or farm set you'll know what this is all about-gets a bit deep when the fanatic wargaming bits come into play but hey this is plastic fun and memories of childhood all the way
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