New Zealand Soldier
Infantry Brigadier. By Major-General Sir Howard Kippenberger. (Oxford University Press. 21s.1 Jr ordinary English soldiers in an ordinary English unit during Cie war were asked which of their allies they would most like to have fighting beside them, some would choose the Poles, some the Ameri- cans, some the French, some the South Africans, and so on. Probably few would have named the New Zealanders, and that for a very simple reason. The New Zealanders were not thought of as our allies ; they were " us." Hence there is no need for special justifica- tion on introducing this beautifully produced book to English readers.
It is not a history of the New Zealand war effort, nor even of the znd New Zealand Division, which Sir Howard Kippenberger rose to command. Both those superb stories deserve their historians, but Sir Howard would be the last to claim that this is the task he has attempted. The title-page of the book gives notice not to look for more than the personal story of a New Zealand infantry brigadier ; a story that does not extend to other theatres of war, other troops or arms or nationalities than his own. The book presents the war in the context of one man's experience, which means that, although it is immensely exciting, it is necessarily episodic. Scenes and characters pass rapidly into view and out again just when one wants to know more of them, to see them rounded off and completed. There is Charlie Upham, for instance, the legendary hero of two V.C.s, who is here too lightly sketched for complete satisfaction.
Events, too, pass kaleidoscopically through Sir Howard's view-
finder. He covers the campaigns in Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy as an eye-witness, though without explicitly accounting for the K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O. and bar which hitched themselves on to his name on the way. He writes a soldier's economical prose, enlivened by such phrases as this of a route march: " The general opinion was that it was a lot farther on foot than by the Brigadier's car." But he attempts to give no more than he saw. His account of the Greek campaign, for instance, sympathetic though it is, says little of the Greeks, and nothing of the idolatry which the New Zealanders earned from them and never lost. Perhaps General Kippenberger did not know how fanatically the Greek guerrillas in 1941-44 adored the New Zealanders, once the disappointment that they were " not black " had been overcome ; or how proudly the leading general of the Resistance, Napoleon Zervas, took delight in the compliment that they wore his initials in their caps.
It may seem captious to ask for more than General Kippenberger gives, but his mirror is so faithful that this is inevitable. His own story, personal though it is, is an epitome of the general progress of the Mediterranean war, from the first fumbling blunders in Greece and Libya, where no strategic principle whatever seemed to be applied (unless sauter pour mieux reculer be a principle), to the triumphant seizure of the initiative in Tunis and Italy. Parallel to this transition he contrasts vividly the total confusion and chaos which make up most battles from the junior participant's view- point with the mature grasp of the principles of Allied strategy which clarified in his own mind as he rose to high command. This entitles the book to be regarded, not merely as a soldier's re- miniscences, but as a reproduction in miniature of the total war.
C. M. WOODHOUSE.
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