I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
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I Am Pilgrim is an amazing book. A sequel is thankfully next up for Terry Hayes. His Year of the Locust is a good read as well.
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Ian Fleming’s Commandos - The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII by Nicholas Rankin.
This is one of several interesting books that popped up in the wake of Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday. But unlike the works of Macintyre, Chancellor and Sellers, it took a few years longer (published in 2011) and concerned itself in detail with one of the lesser known aspects of Fleming’s wartime exploits: that subset of the British Commando forces that Naval Intelligence cut off the main body and forged into an intelligence gathering specialist outfit under the responsibility and auspices of Fleming.
Nicholas Rankin does a splendid job in unearthing a vast treasure trove of sources and wartime recollections, combing not only through archives and published tomes but also talking to the few remaining witnesses.
The genre of the WW2 chronicle/memoir/history is a popular staple with British publishers, so competition is fierce. Rankin easily stands out with his work, weaving information, anecdotes and facts into a broad tapestry of events and decisions that shaped our past - and sometimes do so to this day.
After war broke out in September ‘39 things did not go well for Hitler’s adversaries. German Wehrmacht moved swiftly first through Poland, then consolidated its conquest with the iron fist of military and Gestapo rule. After which they set out to move westward with the known results.
In the first six chapters, Rankin paints the picture of a desperate British war effort dealing with setbacks and disasters - not few of them resulting from lack of intelligence and solid data. DNI Admiral Godfrey and his assistant Fleming found themselves in the politicking crossfire between various organisations and factions, trying their best to improve intelligence gathering and get a grip on things - while Wehrmacht occupied France and threatened to move further into Spain and capture Gibraltar.
Rankin tells the story of these months, infighting between SIS and SOE, organising a possible guerilla front from Gibraltar in case Hitler’s Wehrmacht should try to take Spain. At the same time Britain had to prepare defences against ‘Operation Seelöwe’ (Sea Lion) with their freshly formed Commando special forces whose exact operative philosophy was still in flow.
Around 1941 the British received reports about ‘the Brandenburger’*, special Wehrmacht forces that supposedly concerned themselves with intelligence gathering ops close to the advancing German forces. In April ‘41 these were essential in capturing the Yugoslav 4th Army HQ as well as the Greek Naval HQ wholly intact.
These reports didn’t resonate with SIS or SOE - but they were more successful in giving Godfrey the idea for ‘intelligence commandos’ and pushing for NID’s own version with the powers that be when the time was right.
A number of training installations and commando bases had been established across the UK; volunteers had been interviewed and given the task to pick others. Britain was still badly behind on the wireless deciphering, Enigma machines had just gotten extra wheels and plugs that made the task for Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park much more difficult.
NID’s answer to this predicament was to propose a special commando force whose sole aim was to target intelligence objectives that promised to yield highly sensitive data, codes and ciphers. In short, everything that might possibly enable the British to
read German wireless signals with minimum delay and analyse the product as fast as possible for their own manoeuvres.
By 1942, the proposal for a Naval Intelligence Commando Unit was given the green light and NID provided the list of targets and which material the unit would try to secure from these.
Interestingly, while the book is titled ‘Ian Fleming’s Commandos’, Fleming himself turns more into a background character the further events move from initial operations in North Africa and Italy, then D-Day, the liberation of Paris and finally into the smouldering ruins, the rotting evil carcass of the Third Reich itself.
The protagonists on this journey into the darkness of Nazi-Germany are Patrick Dalzel-Job, ‘Sancho’ Glanville, Tony Hugill, Ralph Izzard and Charles Wheeler amongst many others. On their trip they saw the worst of war, the worst of mankind - but at times also the best of their fellow human beings.
Rankin doesn’t spare us the ugly parts, the pointless deaths and the barbarous violence of war. And its crimes. Thankfully, he also doesn’t spare us the horrors of Buchenwald, Dachau, Dora-Mittelbau, the SS regime of destroying people through slave labour, reducing them to creatures barely clinging to their lives. Thousands and thousands died after the concentration camps were liberated.
We must never forget where the rule of Nazis ends.
Also noteworthy, Rankin points out how influential the commando concept was and how much weight modern military theory puts on ‘special forces/special ops’. But the actual import of 30AU’s successes grew the nearer they came to VE-Day, victory in Europe on 8. May 1945. The vast majority of their ‘pinches’ in terms of importance were the Tambach Archives, German Naval archives dating back to the mid-19th century. And the plans to then modern peroxide turbines working in rockets and submarines.
Some of the intelligence helped nailing war criminals with the Nuremberg processes. But most of the pinches seemed to have little actual import on the war effort - and a lot of it was what we would call today industrial espionage.
However, Rankin’s account of 30AU and its men is most informative, readable and provides us with a glimpse behind the 007 facade. Recommended.
*Actually, Division Brandenburg, while originally devised as a small special purpose force, initially even staffed to some extent by civilian volunteers with knowledge of local customs and dialects, quickly moved away from their intelligence tasks and became an ever more ordinary gap stopper for Wehrmacht demands. Real military impact in the greater scheme seems to have been minimal. The German admirals 30AU conversed with at Tambach while waiting to move the archives held much the same opinion of the British commando forces. They considered their true military impact slim - but the boost to morale enormous.
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Addendum: There’s a baffling claim by Nigel West to the effect that Fleming was supposedly never ‘indoctrinated’ into the ULTRA source. Rankin rightfully finds this hardly credible since Fleming‘s tasks as liaison between NID and SIS as well as his frequent visits to Bletchley not just suggest ULTRA clearance; his role in choosing intelligence targets and shopping lists for 30AU made him crucial in filling gaps in that particular source. How would he have been able to do this without being inside the ULTRA circle?
Rankin doesn’t outright refute this claim, but it’s evident he doesn’t buy it. Rightfully so.
Then there’s the Tambach affair of Fleming calling on Glanville to execute the German admirals. Rankin notes that this story only surfaced in 1978, when Fleming was already long dead. Also, that Glanville - like others in the 30AU outfit - didn’t like Fleming. In summary, Rankin suggests that this was perhaps an early example of Fleming flexing his imagination, like he has done several times over the years, telling some tall tales while reality didn’t support his version of events.
Rankin left out several of the wartime stories Fleming came to allude to over the years, rightfully keeping to the known and confirmed facts. Perhaps he’s a bit too dismissive of the story - a serious allegation by any standard - but he’s also right to point out how it wasn’t made earlier and that Glanville had no high opinion of Ian Fleming.
Be that as it may, the exchange happened under four eyes, and probably with no official record to support or dismiss it either way.
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The Secret History by Donna Tartt
This is now an over 30 year old classic that even spawned its own little sub genre of intellectual/‘dark academia’ thrillers. I daresay I should perhaps have read this earlier. At its core there’s the aspiration of the young to become the people they strive to be - and their failure to do so because the people they are just won’t allow them to.
Tartt plays with an ensemble of mysterious characters, at once much more sophisticated than her Ripley-like hero, yet also a big step more ruthless. Her alter-ego adores these enigmatic elitist outsiders, aspires to run with that crowd and become one of them. That constant desire to belong, Tom Ripley would have understood it.
Without spoiling too much I can reveal that not everything is as it seems - and some things are a lot darker. These young kids - which would now be middle aged and possibly have grandchildren - went way beyond their Greek studies and committed acts that changed their lives. Not for the better.
Despite this, The Secret History is not really a thriller, nor a mystery in the classic sense. It’s more roman à clef, a deconstruction of the life and times of the young and foolhardy at some small New England college. Some of it is quite entertaining, some rather banal. I might have liked it much more had I read it 30 years ago.
But The Secret History does have a strange charm, in spite of its inconsequential nature. From a certain point it starts to fascinate and one wants to witness this like a slo-mo crash test. One can’t help wondering where the different dummies will fly.
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Batman Arkham Knight: The Ridder’s Gambit. By Alex Irvine. A tie-in novel set between Arkham City and Arkham Knight, it follows the Riddler trying to take over Gotham after certain happenings in Arkham City. I like the use of the ensemble cast, no villains are wasted. Ironically, Irvine said he let his kids help pick out what villains to use. They have great taste, and Irvine knew how to write them well. I like the switching between Batman and Robin, it was great to see how the events of Arkham City affected both of them. The police force and the media play an enjoyable role. Vicki Vale isn’t the screaming dismal she was as Kim Basinger was! So an enjoyable Batman and Robin story, properly of their best stories together of the last 20 years.
Home and Alone by Daniel Stern. One of the better autobiographies I’ve read in a while. Funny, with a bit of drama and ego clashing. Stern of course talks about Marv and Home Alone 1 & 2. Some interesting viewpoints, but I’d recommend just reading as a lot of things are surprising in his life. Who can’t relate to that? Also, he must still hang around Joe Pesci, as he swears as much as Pesci does!
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Thanks Max. Can it be read and understood without playing the games or knowing the timeline or the comics?
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It should be. There are spoilers for the games, but as a standalone story, it should be fairly understandable. The Riddler is at his most chilling here. Also, this is a regular novel, not a graphic novel.
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Thanks Max. It being a regular novel is what intrigued me. For all my love of film, I do not do well with graphic novels.
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Always happy to help another fan of stuff I like!
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