The Sharp End

Raiding Forces, Book 10

By: Phil Ward

Narrated by: Miles Meili, Shauna MacDonald

Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

The United States has entered the war. However, it will take time before America can commit ground troops to the battle. Col. John Randal and the men in the American Volunteer Group who have been serving with Raiding Forces are back in US Army uniform serving under their own flag.

Raiding Forces is being expanded into a joint US/UK outfit. As it is, reorganizing events in remote parts of the world require Col. Randal and a team of his Raiders to carry out a pair of long range operations of national strategic importance. Meanwhile, there is a mole in Middle East Command HQ that Rommel calls his “Good Source”, and the German 621 Radio Intercept Company is providing the Desert Fox with the Allied Order of Battle that have become serious threats. Lady Jane is under suspicion of being the mole, and Raiding Forces has been ordered to track down and kill the 621st’s Nazi commander. The action is nonstop.

©2017 Phil Ward (P)2021 Phil Ward

Another Entertaining Chapter

Phil knows how to spin a great yarn. Keep in mind this series is not a documentary or accurate history, but then again, it never purports to be. There's this thing called poetic license, which is an author's prerogative. Hopefully the Raiding Forces series will spur interested readers to delve deeper into World War II history. So, don't get too spun up over some inaccuracies or anachronisms. This is fiction, really fun fiction. The good guys are great, the bad guys are really bad, and the women are all Victoria's Secret supermodel precursors. I could probably do without the use lengthy use of titles and ranks for each character time and again. We know Captain the Lady Jane is Captain the Lady Jane. Couldn't she just be called Jane from time to time? Then again, Brits love prefixes and suffixes, ad nauseam. It's a minor gripe. And yes, I know Phil is not a Brit but John Randall has been in the British Army for 10 volumes.

The narration is generally good, though Ms. McDonald should know that Corps is pronounced Core and not Corpse. To be fair, by the end of the North Africa campaign, the Afrika Corps truly was the Afrika Corpse. And this far into the series Miles Meili should know that the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was always referred to as the Bee A Are and not the place where you go to get a drink. The drums between chapters gets to be really, really annoying, at least to me.

SPOILER ALERT:
Just for historical reference and not a criticism at all of the story. See my previous reference to poetic license. There were no Clipper Girls during World War II. Neither Pan Am nor BOAC had stewardesses until after World War II. My mother-in-law was among the first 12 women hired by BOAC to be Air Hostesses on its flying boats and that wasn't until 1947. But Red and the "Clipper Girls" are a fun addition to the books. Likewise, John Randall could not have fought HUKS before the war. The Hukbalahap Rebellion didn't start in the Philippines until 1942 and during the war they fought the Japanese. It was only after the war when the Philippine government, prompted by the U.S., tried to arrest and disarm the Huks for being Communists that Hukbalahap members retreated into the mountains and conducted a guerilla campaign against the Philippine government. That lasted until 1954. But again, not really germane to our story. There were other insurgencies in the Philippines from time to time, though nothing came close to matching the 1899-1913 Moro Rebellion that cost the U.S. Army nearly 1,000 casualties (killed, wounded, and died of disease). There are a few other inaccuracies, like the Jeeps on steroids, but eh, so what. It's still a great story.

Er...(and the snare drum rolls are back!)

Unfortunately I am finding that the endless repetitions of phrases, dialogue, descriptions, titles are denying me what actual story-listening pleasure there might be in this the 10th novel of this once brilliant series. This blatant padding plus the really infuriating and irritating injection of wholly unnecessary and unbelievable female characters - why I can't figure out - who are not only exceedingly lame in their own right, but are voiced by a female narrator who is just not up to this task are neutralising the enjoyment...so... I'll buy one more book and I hope it is free of the creeping lurgy that set in around book five and became terminal around book 8...