In this episode I'm looking at Douglas MacArthur with Walter Borneman.
MacArthur is one of those personalities that war throws up which I find hard to pin down. They have a big personalities and seemingly a huge confidence within themselves that overrides everything else (another two examples for me would be Monty and Patton).
The media generated about them at the time seems to put them on a pedestal, its hard to see through that hype to figure out how good they actually were.
Since I started the podcast MacArthur was in my top ten of topics to cover, so I was thrilled to see a new book on him “MacArthur at War: WWII in the Pacific” by Walter Borneman. I highly recommend you give it a read, its a balance look which at times has you disbelieving he was allowed to continue in command, at other times you see his ability shine through. He undoubtedly was a very complex man.
I’ve a bit of a different episode for you.
In our look at the Stug I talked to Jon Phillips who was close to completing his two year restoration of his Stug III. The deadline for getting the engine in and running was the Yorkshire Wartime Experience where he’d committed to bringing the Stug along.
Knowing Jon was going to be there I took myself down to see how he’d got on.
After speaking to Jon I bumped into an old friend Paul Fricker. Paul re-enacts the Russian 13th Guards Rifle Division, Poltavaskaya.
On the Facebook page recently a question had been asked about what the blanket/canvas sausage you see Russian troops wearing draped over their shoulder was? So I took the opportunity to ask him.
Its a bit of a short episode as I messed up recording a piece of Russian transport, I will revisit that. But in the process I was introduced to a chap who owns a Russian T34, so expect an episode on that in the near future.