Goshawk Squadron by Derek Robinson
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Book Reviews of Goshawk Squadron
Book Review: The RFC without the glamour
Summary: 5 Stars
Like most others I know of who have read Derek Robinson's novels of British fliers in WWI and WWII, I think him far and away the best writer on the subject. With relentless humor and realism he gets us to imagine what it was like to be pretty certain you were going to die there, just unsure when.
And he is unsparing of staff leadership that didn't have a clue. In Robinson's war, you fly to kill people--neither more nor less--or die yourself.
I like this novel of the 1918 campaigns a bit less well than the hard-to-find Hornet's Sting about the early war, 1915, in which the humor, suitable to the absurd reality really works. But I like it better than his best known and very good WWII book about the RAF in the Battle of Britain stripped of myth, A Piece of Cake. It is a shame that his books aren't more easily available.
Book Review: War is hell.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book ranks with "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Das Boot" and many others as an illustration of the fact that war is humankind's worst activity. You are led to empathy with most of the characters, yet their lives are ultimately wasted in the meatgrinder. Commanding officer Woolley tries to teach his pilots the lesson that chivalry is dead, there's no reason at all to fight fair, and would agree with General Pattton that "No [...]ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb [...]die for his country." Not even civilians on the Goshawk Squadron's own side escape the brutality.
Depressing, but real.
Book Review: Good Gosh
Summary: 5 Stars
Second time through I was more aware of the subtle humor. First time through I was caught up in the action, bizarre and rational. It held my attention until the end, and what an end, quite in keeping with the author's view of war and the sacrifices it demands of those involved. Third time through, I'll probably get more of the characters, although even in the beginning, they were usually detailed, except for those who came and went before anyone even caught their names.Book Review: goshawk squadron
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent book with truly dramatic descriptions of WW1 flying and ground wars and their impacts on British class structure.Book Review: An anti-war book with dry, British humour
Summary: 4 Stars
_Goshawk Squadron_ tells the story of a WWI squadron of pilots in the winter and spring of 1918. Robinson is ruthless in the treatment of his characters, tragic death following tragic death as both replacements and old hands fall from the sky as part of the randomness and unpredictability of war. This, and Robinson's portrayal of daily life within the squadron are its strong points. Each character struggles to cope with the stress and uncertainty of their job, compounded by the hard and heavy-handed leadership of the protagonist, Major Woolley - an anti-hero whose training methods are unconventional but effective.
Perhaps it is because the book is over thirty-years old, but many of the characters have become cliched: Woolley, for example is seen in film again and again (from the Dirty Dozen to the Die-Hard franchise); even some of the pilots are stereotypical (the fire-and-brimstone son of missionaries, the simple country bumpkin, the blue-blooded aristocrat unaccustomed to being treated with disdain and disrespect by the stern, common-man commanding officer ...) I also had difficulty keeping track of characters - partially because so many of them arrived to the squadron before they were killed, but partially because in only a few instances was there any remarkable feature that made them memorable or distinguishable from the others. This, of course, could be intentional, as Woolley himself doesn't expect any of them to live beyond the next three months.
Even with these shortcomings, though, I give the book four stars. Through Wooley, Robinson strips the veneer of "honor", "fairplay" and "sportsmanship" from combat, instead emphasizing what war really is: cold-blooded killing in as quick and efficient a manner as possible. He also shows the helplessness men underfire feel, and his descriptions of aerial combat are among the best I've read.
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