ALL Quartered Safe Out Here

[ap1]

All Quartered Safe Out Here
George MacDonald Frazer

This is one of the best ranker accounts from WW2 that I have read. Written by the well known author George MacDonald Frazer(Flashman), it's his recollections of his service with The Border Regiment in Burma 1943-45. He was a private soldier, and his story concentrates on life within his section, and how they coped with the fight against the Japanese.

Any infantryman who served prior to the early 1990's will be struck by how little had changed tactically at Section and Platoon Level from WW2 until the 90's. He uses terminology that we all understand, even Egyptian PT gets a mention. The book is extremely funny and sad in equal measure. If you want to know a little more about the Burma Campaign and what those ever decreasing numbers of Royal Welchman from the 1st and 2nd Battalions got up to....read this.

[Clive Hughes]

Heartily agree - and after reading hundreds of such memoirs over the years I can honestly say this ranks among the best. It's honest and not in the least self-centred, if you know what I mean.

His views on the long-term results of the war from a veteran's perspective would be unlikely to endear him to Europhiles or the PC brigade, but that was also a part of his desire to speak the truth as he saw it.

Glad I've got it in my bookshelves.

[ap1]

This WW2 classic is now selling on Amazon for £4.89 A bargain. Great holiday book.

[jcj]

I also recently read ALL Quartered Safe Out Here and would strongly recommend it. Amongst his many other books he also published three books of short stories, The General Danced at Dawn (1970), McAusland in the Rough (1974), and The Sheikh and the Dustbin (1988). When I was reading these books my Mrs kept asking me what I was giggling about, when I tried to explain she just could not get it. I guarantee any Infantry soldier will not stop laughing when reading these books; you can picture characters from your Regiment who were just like those in the books.

Extract from Wikipedia
Fraser also fictionalised his post-war military experience as the adventures of the rather unassuming "Dand" MacNeill in a Scottish regiment of the line. This series of short stories is noted for the strong and strange characters surrounding McNeill, including an aged and prototypical Colonel, a Wodehousian Adjutant, an active and dedicated pipe sergeant, a die-hard Algerian revolutionary, various blackguards and spivs, and, most memorably, Private John McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world. Featuring games of golf, scrapes and run-ins with the police both military and civil, the transfer of the die-hard to the French (of all people), and McAuslan's various disasters, these works form a picture of the British army in the period immediately after World War II.

[ap1]

Agreed Colin the McAusland books are brilliant, any squaddie could identify certain characters from their own units. His Flashman books are now available on Kindle.