One of the best war books I have read
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Tank battles have always fascinated me, mainly what it would have been like to be there. If you share my interest, this book delivers in spades. It opens as British Sherman tanks advance on German positions in Normandy in August 1944, part of an attempt to close the Falaise Gap. It is told entirely from the point-of-view of one tank crew so while you get a sense of what went on in their visual field you know as little as they did of the fate of their regiment, their brigade and the attack as a whole.
It is written in the style of diary entries, ranging from a few minutes apart to up to an hour apart depending on the pace of events. Without spoiling the plot, they attack at night and have to defend against German counter-attacks the next day, which makes for an account that is full of incident. The writing is fast-paced with just enough description to let you imagine the scene. Here's the description of a German infantry attack, for instance:
"Germans in the cornfield. Our own Browning thudding away. Stan reloading and slapping my leg. Stamping on the fire buttons. Adjusting crosswire sights. Our own flame and smoke. Alien flame and smoke. Enemy barrage rocking our tank. Bookie firing away downstairs. Keith reporting. Frantic radio traffic."
The sentences are short, almost glimpses or sensations as they flick through the author's consciousness.
There's long periods of waiting and watching as well, and the book is excellent at building the tension. Obviously there are limits: while the author wonders whether in the next second a German shell will turn the tank into a funeral pyre we know he survives to write his memoirs. Not everyone is so lucky and the soldiers' shock at the loss of friends and officers is very moving.
At times, nothing much happens but the author keeps the pace up by describing what goes through his mind as he scans the ground around (he is the gunner and later commands a tank), or the way he folds toffee papers to see how many creases he can fit on it. The emotion is very honest and believable: there are no heroics, just young men doing what they were trained to do and desperately hoping they are lucky.
One of the other Amazon reviewers says he found the dialogue unbelievable but I disagree: it is a great counterpoint to what is going on all around as men are maimed, mangled shot and burnt. The tank crew themselves are the main characters and while the author says these are fictional they are based on different people he served with and they certainly ring true to me.
How could the book have been any better? There are three maps, but they are very small and some of the events would have been easier to follow with a slightly larger version. The most difficult bit for me, though, was that the author often describes the crew listening to radio traffic from elsewhere in the battle (including crews reporting they are hit) but I wasn't always clears about the code-words they used or who was in command of which tank, so a glossary of some type would have been really helpful. Finally I would have loved to have some modern pictures of the area.
So, if you want to know what happened in Operation Totalise, what other brigades attacked, even what happened to the other squadrons in the regiment, look for an official history. If you want to know about a young man fighting sleep deprivation, hunger and fear in the company of four others shut up in a Sherman tank, this is the book for you. A quote on the front cover says "one of the best books ever written by a tank soldier". Make that THE best.
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Worth reading
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I bought Ken Tout's 'Tank!' to provide context for The Patrick Wright 'Tank' book which I had seen reviewed. I confess to being surprised at how good it was. It suffers slightly from Tout not being a professional writer but he does write well. His compelling story is sometimes let down by his attempts to write 'properly'. Despite this the book stands out to me as an honest record of how it must have felt to have lived through a tank skirmish.
Low points - fictionalised characters in Tout's tank. Well written but hard to believe dialogue with his tank crew.
High point - the pages describing how the author is ordered to scout the broken tanks of his comrades looking for survivors is vivid and moving. Ir reminded me (ahem) of WG Sebald.
Anyway, I commend it to you. It reads well and I felt emotionally involved with Tout and his experience of the battle.
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Brilliant!
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An excellent personal account of a british tanker right at the very front in Normandy. although it focusses on a single battle this gives the author time to focus on many of the smaller personal details and emotions that could otherwise be overlooked. The writing is occasionally overly 'wordy' but it's always honest and your always there in the thick of it. I've read it three times now and can't reccomend it highly enough. PLEASE REPRINT THE OTHER BOOKS BY KEN TOUT SOMEONE!
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