Customer Reviews

Light Cavalry Action

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the dark days of 1939, just before the start of World War II, Willie Potter, a middle aged Englishman, publishes a letter in a newspaper criticizing Lieutenant General Sir Henry Prideaux, a very high ranking officer who is in consideration for command of any British Expeditionary Force that might land in France if and when the war begins.

The fictional Prideaux made his reputation leading the last British cavalry charge by a company of British soldiers in southern Russia, in 1919, against a Red Army unit that was driving the Whites south in the Russian Civil War. Treated as a brave hero on his return to England, he rose rapidly in the officer corps to his present very high position. Incensed that anyone would question his record or his honor, Prideaux enters a libel suit against Potter and the novel is about the trial.

A variety of witnesses come forward. Potter was second in command in Prideaux's cavalry unit. Other officers and men testify, as do some Russians now living in England. The story of Prideaux's famous charge turns out to very different from what the newspapers made of it.

The narrative proceeds in chapters that focus largely on the testimony of the different witnesses. A witness begins to tell the story of those days 20 years before, and soon the author transports us into the events - the snow, the cold, the White Russian soldiers near mutiny, the panicked civilians, the precarious condition of the small unit under Prideaux's command.

I found the story quite compelling. Harris was not just spinning a yarn for publication. He was writing with some passion about tendencies in the army, about the politics of popular heroism and military promotion, about the harm that arrogance and self-serving can do and the courage and sacrifice of people who struggle against it. I like other books by Harris, but this is the best of his that I have read. I recommend it.