ONE MAN'S WAR
ARMED PILGRIMAGE, by J. V. DavidsonHouston; Robert Hale. English price, 15/-. ‘THE gaudy cover of this book may '" suitably enclose a tale of thrilling advénture, but it bears no relation to the author’s quiet, restrained manner of telling his story. From 1931-1938 Colonel Davidson-Houston lived on the uneasy fringes of war in Manchuria, Mongolia, and China proper. The outbreak of war in Europe found him in Roumania, a country whose inhabitants are much given to staring at strangers. "These people stare and stare, sometimes with their capacious mouths half open. At first I regarded this as mere rudeness, and occasionally made a face at the offender, but this merely increased his astonishment and I concluded that he simply could not help it." Having instructed the Roumanians (possessors of oil wells) in the art of demolition, he escaped \into Egypt, was Engineer-in-Chief, Middle East, and took part in the retreat from .Cyrenaica. Afterwards he was in Persia at the
time of the Allied occupation. One of the few Englishmen able to speak their language, he came much in contact with the Russians, whom he evidently liked and admired, though some of their ways seemed strange. One general’s female A.D.C. intrigued him. "She informed me that her husband was serving against the Germans on the Caucasian front and that she was by training a doctor; how she came to be an A.D.C. remained one of those mysteries which are also to be encountered in our own service." Finally Colonel Davidson-Houston took part in the retreat through Burma, and afterwards in that country’s reconquest as one of General Wingate’s subordinates. The author’s style appears to betray the fact that he is a man with strong nerves who never loses his head in a critical situation, or his sense of proportion in recounting the frustrations; disappointments, and successes of his varied experience. Among his accomplishments is that of contriving to throw light on the characters of many people, both famous and infamous, not by laborious description but by relevant anec-
dote.
R. M.
Burdon
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 539, 21 October 1949, Page 16
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343ONE MAN'S WAR New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 539, 21 October 1949, Page 16
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