Promoting Lee Goldberg's THE WALK

Lee Goldberg has been very good to me lately. I've been privileged with receiving review copies of some of his works, particularly the JURY series of action-revenge novels and his new periodical pulp project, THE DEAD MAN. In return, he's been sure to post snippets of my reviews on his own web page, and as a result the traffic to PMP has always spiked around these review releases.

So to give Lee a hand, I'm passing along to my readers this promotion for Lee's book THE WALK:

"It was two years ago today that, at Joe Konrath's urging, I began my "Kindle Experiment" by making my out-of-print book THE WALK available as an ebook. I've sold close to 20,000 copies of THE WALK since then...and to celebrate, and in a blatant to attempt to propel THE WALK into the top 100 on Amazon for the first time, I am selling the book for just 99 cents for the next week.

But to make the offer even sweeter, and to promote my original ebook series THE DEAD MAN, anyone who emails me proof of purchase (at lee@leegoldberg.com) will get a free copy of FACE OF EVIL. That's two books for just 99 cents.

To pull this promotion off, though, I am going to need your help. I would really appreciate if it you would spread the word about this sale and, if you are really feeling generous, say a few kinds words about THE WALK and/or THE DEAD MAN series, too.

Here's a link to the eBook version on Amazon's web site.

Summer Action Adventure Movie: ZULU (1964)

Work has slowed down around here, and the weather has heated up. I actually had quite a good day at work yesterday, and managed to get out an hour early. After picking up dinner makings and some cold beer (Dos Equis is common here at Chez Badelaire in the summer months) I found myself flipping through my Netflix instant queue, and I found the perfect movie to kick off a good summer:


If you're too lazy to look up the Battle of Rorke's Drift, I'm not going to do it for you, and if you've never heard of it, then you're simply rubbish. So off you go then, lads and lasses, and no coming back until you've schooled yourself right proper. I'll be enjoying a pint over here until you finish.

Returned, have you? Brilliant.

To me, this is one of the great classic war movies. It deals with a relatively small, unimportant British military action, but it is really the stuff legends are made of, as attested to the 11 Victoria Crosses and other medals handed out to the survivors of the battle. The British killed or wounded close to a thousand Zulus, while taking around three dozen casualties of their own. And let's not forget they are fighting in some pretty snappy duds.

And for those of you who might be cringing at the idea of a war movie that may boil down into "white guys killing black guys", ZULU treats the antagonists very well. Yes, many of them die in droves, but the British are very respectful of their enemies, and the Zulus as a people and a culture are handled with a good deal of honor and respect. No stupid, bloodthirsty savages here; just proud warriors looking to prove themselves against a worthy enemy.

There are a number of clips out there, but some are of pretty poor quality. Here's a very good looking synopsis of the film:

Russian Filmmaker's COMMANDO Remake

One of these things is, well, EXACTLY like the other.

Apparently a Russian filmmaker has made a remake of Commando, almost shot-for-shot, as an homage to the original film.

Amusing that this was done when, apparently, someone else is looking to remake this action classic. But here's a bit more chatter about the Russian remake, also known as "D-Day" for some reason.

Whatever - I'll watch it when I can get my hands on it. I loved the original, and Russian filmmakers are a buncha nutjobs, so this can only end well...

Age of Heroes Film Portrays Ian Flemings 30 Commando

Apparently this movie landed in UK theaters (or is it "theatres"?) this week. It's a (very) fictionalized account of the formation and operation of 30 Commando. Although the junket for the movie keeps talking about how it is the "model for all modern special operations", we should keep in mind that Durnford-Slater's 3 Commando was created only weeks after the Dunkirk invasion, a year before 30 Commando.

What 30 Commando did during the war is to advance ahead of conventional units and gather intelligence, particularly maps, codes, ciphers, enemy intelligence documents and dossiers, the sorts of things that conventional troops might ignore or, worse, simply destroy. In this respect they are a lot like modern small unit special operations teams, such as the teams sent into Iraq during the first and second wars to pinpoint targets, observe and report troop movements, and so forth. Intelligence operations, rather than combat operations.

This is 30 Commando's connection to writer Ian Fleming; as a Naval Intelligence Officer, he would pick targets likely to possess valuable intelligence assets, and have elements of 30 Commando attached to conventional units that would then strike (or be striking regardless) those targets, allowing 30 Commando (at this point known as "30 Assault Unit") to snatch up all the valuable intelligence and send it back for analysis. The movie trailer seems to make it out as if Fleming is the creator or leader of the unit, which is wrong; he was merely the man (or rather, one of the men) who picked their targets and planned out their operations.

One of the more pondered and notorious activities attributed to units like 30 Commando (it is not unique in its operations by 1944, with the creation of the even more notorious "T-Force") is the seizing of German technology secrets; many conspiracy theorists and speculators think units like 30 Commando and the Target Force procured top-secret Nazi "Super-Weapons" and other advanced technologies before the Russians could get to them, or before the Germans could hide or destroy them. Apparently, Fleming wrote his character James Bond into such a unit during World War 2; a suitable unit for a spy who would go on to deal with all manner of technologically advanced villains over the course of his career as an agent.

In any event, here is the trailer for Age of Heroes (2011):

What WW2 Allied Weapon Is Right For You?

Over the last month or so I've been reading and watching a lot of World War Two material; The Sergeant series of action novels, plus HBO's The Pacific and I'm re-watching Band of Brothers, as well as watching The Longest Day and other WW2 movies. In addition, I've been working on and off on a pen-and-paper role-playing game focusing on WW2 Commando operations.

This has gotten me thinking about WW2 personal arms, everything from pistols and knives up to light machine guns, bazookas, mortars, and the like, and what I would want to carry with me were I to find myself suddenly fighting in Europe or the Pacific theater. Would I want to be a rifleman, a machine gunner, a mortar man, a sniper, or some other kind of combat trooper, and what would I want to carry with me?

Considering all the Allied weapons, what would probably suit me the most is the M1 Carbine. It's compact, light weight, fires a reasonably powerful cartridge that has good range and accuracy within "combat distances" (~200 meters), it's semi-automatic and has a fifteen round magazine capacity, and you can carry a lot of ammunition without a lot of weight or bulk. I don't see myself as a "in the teeth of it" sort of soldier, so a weapon that provides me with a lot of defensive and modest offensive firepower with minimal encumbrance appeals to me.

So, what WW2 Allied weapon is right for you? Do you see yourself as an SMG-toting commando or hard-bitten NCO, or the sort who carries an M1 Garand on the front lines? Are you lurking about in a sniper's nest with a scoped SMLE or 1903 Springfield, or are you laying down some firepower with a BAR or Bren Gun? Or perhaps you'd like something a little more exotic, like a 12-gauge combat shotgun or the DeLisle Commando Carbine? Let's hear your choices and the reasons why.

Book Review: The Sergeant #9 Hammerhead by Gordon Davis

Just a quick Monday morning book review here, folks. I read Hammerhead in about two days, very fast, lots of action, and a fitting wrap-up for the series, although it's a shame that the books don't see us through to the end of the European battlefront.

In this book, Master Sergeant C.J. Mahoney makes it back to his division after taking a detour to Bastogne for a while (of course), to discover that he's got a new Platoon leader, the stiff-necked Second Lieutenant Woodward. Woodward is your classic "all theory, no practice" West Point graduate, the sort of guy who'd get himself fragged in the middle of the night were he in 'Nam around 1969. He's a jerk, he's all about the chickenshit details, and as soon as he runs into Mahoney and his reputation for being a total badass, Woodward decides he needs to break him like some sort of wild stallion, only without the obvious homoerotic overtones that phrase might imply.

While Woodward is no coward, he and Mahoney come into conflict time and time again, and eventually Mahoney does something that earns Woodward's decision to see him court-martialed. Unfortunately for Woodward, about five minutes after that, Mahoney performs a company-saving act of bravery that earns him a Silver Star, making the chickenshit court-martial almost impossible, especially since Woodward is about the only officer in the Division who doesn't think Mahoney is the son of Ares himself. Even so, Woodward tries to get the drop on Mahoney and tace care of business mano-y-mano, with hilarious results.

All the while we've got a sexually depraved nurse, an equally sexually depraved Nazi officer, the sexually depraved Mahoney up to his old skirt-chasing ways (are we noticing a pattern here?), and some good old fashioned people-getting-blown-away World War 2 combat action. And if you thought the use of bayonets in the first Sergeant book I reviewed (No. 6) was nuts, it's even more ridiculous here; practically every firefight boils down to both sides shooting off their loads (no pun intended) in the first few seconds of the engagement, then charging in and battling it out with fixed bayonets and rifle butts, no one ever bothering to hunker down for a moment and reload. Nor do we see the guys with Thompsons or M3s just cutting down Germans with empty rifles and fixed bayonets; such folks aren't to be seen at all. Still, the overuse of bayonet combat does make for some grisly and varied death scenes, for both the bad guys and the good guys.

The interplay between Mahoney, a seasoned and skillful combatant who carries rank but is often challenged and stymied by less experienced, but higher ranking officers, along with the mention of how Mahoney "just happened" to get stuck in Bastogne last book (one I need to find now), makes this series even more of a favorable comparison to the Sharpe novels written by Bernard Cornwell. In fact, the idea that the main character has these running enemies on both sides of the lines who he much constantly deal with and defeat is very much in the spirit of the Sharpe novels, where the main character was always in the shithouse with some peacock of a senior officer who tries to get Sharpe killed or disgraced, only to find himself defeated in the end. In addition, the way Cornwell would "write in" the arrival of Sharpe and some of his men into a historical engagement in order for the author to write about it, seems to be a common theme in the Sergeant novels as well.

I have acquired the first of the Rat Bastards series recently, and I hope to give it a read in the next month or two. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the Sergeant series, especially since they were supposedly written by the same author under different pen names.

Gettin' My Commando On

Colonel John Durnford-Slater was the commander of No. 3 Commando, the first fully established British Commando unit (No.s 1 and 2 were formed slightly later, I believe because of their training regimens). 3 Commando saw a lot of action, from the first raids against German occupied Norway and France right through to the Normandy invasion and the end of the war.

Because of its long service record and the number of engagements it took part in, I've decided to use it as the mother unit for the characters in my forthcoming World War II action stories. There's a decent amount of information out there for the unit, and the British Commandos themselves are very well documented, but I was especially pleased to discover that Durnford-Slater had written a memoir of his experiences and the battles and adventures of 3 Commando.


Although I've got a few other books on deck at the moment, I hope to get into this one as soon as possible. It looks like a quick read, with some good maps and photos, and it will really help flesh out my research on the unit as I prepare to begin my first Commando adventure.