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by Christopher A. Lawrence and Jay Karamales.
Hardback (6.4×9.4 inches). 369 pages. 2024.
Subtitle: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke
I never heard of Buddecke, but early in the war he was right up there with Boelcke and Immelman in aircraft shot down and awards. He eventually was sent to Turkey and took part in the air war over Gallipoli. His transfer back to the Western Front proved his undoing and he was shot down and killed.
The basis of this book is an autobiography written just before his death and published after his death in 1918. Those chapters are a straight translation. In between are chapters with brief overviews of pilots, planes, the war in the air, and so on. It’s all choppy pieces, often multiples per page, that are traipsing through the period. That’s not to say bits and pieces are not interesting, but a coherent narrative this is not.
Indeed, the prose slips up from time to time and calls the Germans and Turks the “Axis” instead of the Central Powers (p155) and multiple references to the British and French as the “Allies” (p156, 159, 160) instead of the Entente.
The book contains 50 black and white photos and one black and white illustration.
To me, and I realize this might be a bit unfair, it’s like doomscrolling through the translation and clicking on various related links. Yet, efforts to intersperse relevant info in between the autobiography chapters reads like a cut and paste job. From the bibliography, I’m sure he spent a lot of time searching the web and consolidating info with secondary sources. Nothing wrong with the process, but the output isn’t a traditional biography. For including the autobiography translation, I’m still going to say ties go to the author.
Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
