Colin Baker. A Fine Chest of Medals: The Life of Jack Archer. Cardiff: Mpemba Books, 2003. xvi + 273 pp. Photographs. Maps. £11.99. Paper. - Colin Baker. Wild Goose: The Life and Death of Hugh van Oppen. Cardiff: Mpemba Books, 2002. xviii + 256 pp. Photographs. Maps. £10.50. Paper.

Abstract

MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY Colin Baker. A Fine Chest of Medals: The Life of Jack Archer. Cardiff: Mpemba Books, 2003. xvi + 273 pp. Photographs. Maps. £11.99. Paper. Colin Baker. Wild Goose: The Life and Death of Hugh van Oppen. Cardiff: Mpemba Books, 2002. xviii + 256 pp. Photographs. Maps. £10.50. Paper. These two military biographies, like most good studies of their type, are as much travelogues as accounts of the subjects themselves. Colin Baker has a wonderful gift for descriptive writing, and he keeps the chronological narratives moving at a brisk pace. he also possesses the rare ability to penetrate the minds of his protagonists, two very different men from very different worlds. No mean achievement. The detailed descriptions of various famous military engagements are riveting. From the words and thoughts of Jack Archer we get not only absorbing accounts of the battles themselves-as at Mashonaland (1896), Omdurman (1898), Ladysmith, (1899-1900), and Cambrai in the First World War (wounded and captured in August 1914, Archer remained a POW for the rest of the war)-but also eye-catching details of the various terrains. Hugh van Oppen, a young soldier in the post-World War II world, provides horrific, surreal perspectives on the Korean conflict (1952-53), which, he stresses, took on many of the attributes of World War I trench warfare. The sections on his role in the tragic Nkata Bay affair (1959) in Nyasaland, where twenty Africans were killed and another forty wounded in a tense riot-dispersion exercise led by van Oppen, along with his later activities in the Congo (1965-66) as a mercenary, take us inside actions that were both traumatic-indeed much more so for the British government than for van Oppen himself!-and totally challenging. Or just plain terrifying. Quite apart from recounting the lives and experiences of these two extraordinary soldiers, these books cause us to reflect on the nature of the British Army as it was in the 189Os during the height of Britain's imperial engagements, during World War I, during the 1950s, and indeed, now. What strikes one most forcefully is the brute, stubborn ignorance of those in highest command, their failure to recognize, use, promote, and reward those who possessed the rare combined qualities of natural warrior and natural leader, the vital bedrock of any army. Clearly, the British Army had two exceptional warrior-leaders in its ranks. It drove out one early in his career, and it drove out the other later. Of course, the army might take the view that it got what it wanted from Jack Archer, a superlative NCO who did what was needed, filling the traditional role of the experienced professional and able to provide guidance, assistance, and leadership to both men and, under pressing combat conditions, officers, too. As for van Oppen, the Army might well respond that in this modern day there is no place for the high-spirited individualist. The discipline of line-of-command is imperative in all circumstances. Certainly these are issues to which this reviewer was moved to give some thought, as others may well be. The deduction to be taken from the tale of van Oppen is that if a soldier is naturally gifted as a warrior-leader, then the regular army, where often the most deadly opponent is prolonged periods of enforced inactivity (A Fine Chest of Medals, 154), is to be avoided. Archer endured more than twenty-five of his thirty soldiering years in this limbo. The path that will guide the enterprising warrior-leader most swiftly toward his goals of combat, promotion, and rewards is that of the mercenary. …