Attack on the Redan: Sergeant Jack Crossman and the Battle for Sebastopol [Hardcover]

Garry Douglas Kilworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2003

In the sequel to The Winter Soldiers, "Fancy Jack" concludes his Crimean tour of duty amid the brutal clash of the British and Russian empires. The year is 1855, the port of Sebastopol is still under siege by the Allies, and the czar's troops are putting up a vigorous defense. Sergeant Jack Crossman and his hardy band of brothers make forays to harass the enemy in the hills and valleys around the troubled city. Russian sharpshooters disappear mysteriously as Crossman and his men chip away at the enemy's morale. But these foxhunts serve as a mere prelude to the British attack on the Redan, the massive fortification guarding Sebastopol itself. The British assault is as ill planned as it is ill advised, and it ends in a disaster as severe as the Charge of the Light Brigade. Crossman must witness the wholesale massacre of his fellow soldiers. And then-two months after this devastating failure, French and Sardinian forces foil a massive Russian counterattack to relieve their fortress. The Allies' final attack on the Redan will determine Sebastopol's fate, and the outcome of the first truly modern war.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sequel to Kilworth's military historical The Winter Soldiers, Sgt. Jack Crossman is on the outskirts of 1855 Sebastopol, serving with the British forces ringing the city near the close of the Crimean War. He leads an irregular peloton, something of a 19th-century special forces prototype, tasked with harrying the czar's troops behind the Russian lines and wreaking havoc within their ranks. Crossman's soldiers are almost anachronistic freethinkers when it comes to military matters. They pinpoint Russian sharpshooters by providing them with honey and firing into the concentrations of fireflies that seek out the honey at night. When the peloton's own sharpshooter is captured on a nighttime foray into no-man's-land, Crossman handily avoids ambush and uses his command of Russian and his extensive knowledge of enemy culture to rescue her (sharpshooter Peterson is actually a woman masquerading as a man a documented occurrence in 19th-century warfare). The peloton next takes to the field with a new weapon put together with off-the-shelf technology, so to speak: a camel-mounted swivel cannon. Soon after the camel-gun action, Crossman is demoted to the status of a private when it's discovered he impersonated an officer to win back his luckless brother's fortunes from a notorious gambler, but soon he distinguishes himself in the final attack on the fortifications of Sebastopol. We're never in doubt that Crossman and company will win their way to glory in the end, and the episodic nature of the plot further diminishes the drama. But Kilworth is particularly good at evoking the pointlessness of the Crimean slaughter while keeping individual skirmishes exciting.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Garry Douglas Kilworth served fifteen years in the RAF, as well as the British Army in Hong Kong, where he wrote for the South China Morning Post. He now divides his time between Suffolk and Spain and has written three previous “Fancy Jack” Crossman novels, most recently The Winter Soldiers.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (August 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786712600
• ISBN-13: 978-0786712601
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,235,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Back to the Crimean War, February 5, 2008

By 

Jeffrey S. Barrett "Gray Marine" (Morganton,NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Attack on the Redan: Sergeant Jack Crossman and the Battle for Sebastopol (Hardcover)

I read the Winter Soldiers and throughly enjoyed the characters so I thought that I would give this book a try.I liked the character of Fancy Jack Crossman (who is the Bastard son of a nobleman/Major in the British Army) and his band of 19th Century SF types who play merry hell with the Russians during the siege of Sebastopol.This group has a wide range of characters from a Turkish irregular to a female sniper.All in all if you like adventure and action then I would recommend this book to you.The reason for the four star rating is that the book does drag at times.But all in all a good read.