It's all a load of Cannonballs in here! This is the virtual Arsenal pub where you can chat about anything except football. Be warned though, like any pub, the content may not always be suitable for everyone.
DB10GOONER wrote:Just finished Chris Kyle's "American Sniper". Fascinating read, but he comes across as a bit of a redneck America-can-do-no-wrong right wing kind of guy. Ironically after surviving the bloodsplattered battles for Fallujah, Sadr City and Ramadi as a SEAL sniper in Iraq he was shot dead by a fellow veteran at a gun range after he retired.
Think this is currently getting the Hollywood treatment.
More films should contain the word 'American' in the title, simply not enough of them around.
Personally I don't think there's enough films with the words "cum" "guzzling" "teen" "bimbo" in the title.
DB10GOONER wrote:Just finished Chris Kyle's "American Sniper". Fascinating read, but he comes across as a bit of a redneck America-can-do-no-wrong right wing kind of guy. Ironically after surviving the bloodsplattered battles for Fallujah, Sadr City and Ramadi as a SEAL sniper in Iraq he was shot dead by a fellow veteran at a gun range after he retired.
Think this is currently getting the Hollywood treatment.
More films should contain the word 'American' in the title, simply not enough of them around.
Personally I don't think there's enough films with the words "cum" "guzzling" "teen" "bimbo" in the title.
Just for you DB mate!
Visiting this thread just as your missus walks in . . .
In The Devil's Guard, author George Robert Elford has compiled the shocking testimony of an unrepentant Nazi mercenary, fighting for the French Foreign Legion in Indochina. The Devil's Guard follows SS Officer Hans Josef Wagemueller, from fighting the Russians on the eastern front at the end of World War II, through a training period with the French Foreign Legion and finally to prolonged and intense combat in the jungles of southeast Asia.
The book is in essence a confessional, though perhaps with the antagonist bearing no guilt, only a desire to reveal man's inhumanity to man, in its rawest and most unexpurgated terms. This ultimately means that the reader is confronted with chapter after chapter of how a Nazi and his platoon of fellow ideologues fought, shot, bayoneted, tortured and poisoned the Viet Minh; these scenes are depicted in their unflinching brutality in a way seldom captured by purveyors of war-memoirs, whether they be the literati of the late Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, or Andy McNab's tale of dubious authenticity, Bravo Two Zero.
The Devil's Guard does indeed have the whiff of verisimilitude, not to mention sulphur. However, the book is an "as told to" story, whereby Wagemueller met the author in a bar in the capital city of a small, unnamed Asian country - and then dictated this testament into a microphone over the subsequent eighteen days. As such, the book is entirely uncorroborated, as far as I can determine. If it is fiction, it is an exceptional rendering. If, as this reader believes, the story is essentially true, then author George Robert Elford has succeeded in capturing a remarkable document. A book such as this is a rare artefact indeed. Bloody, uncompromising, disturbingly vicious, relentlessly compelling, The Devil's Guard is a shocking revelation, unmatched in its intensity.
From a personal view - substitute yesterdays Viet Ming/Cong for Todays IS/Al Shabab and their evil like.
In The Devil's Guard, author George Robert Elford has compiled the shocking testimony of an unrepentant Nazi mercenary, fighting for the French Foreign Legion in Indochina. The Devil's Guard follows SS Officer Hans Josef Wagemueller, from fighting the Russians on the eastern front at the end of World War II, through a training period with the French Foreign Legion and finally to prolonged and intense combat in the jungles of southeast Asia.
The book is in essence a confessional, though perhaps with the antagonist bearing no guilt, only a desire to reveal man's inhumanity to man, in its rawest and most unexpurgated terms. This ultimately means that the reader is confronted with chapter after chapter of how a Nazi and his platoon of fellow ideologues fought, shot, bayoneted, tortured and poisoned the Viet Minh; these scenes are depicted in their unflinching brutality in a way seldom captured by purveyors of war-memoirs, whether they be the literati of the late Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, or Andy McNab's tale of dubious authenticity, Bravo Two Zero.
The Devil's Guard does indeed have the whiff of verisimilitude, not to mention sulphur. However, the book is an "as told to" story, whereby Wagemueller met the author in a bar in the capital city of a small, unnamed Asian country - and then dictated this testament into a microphone over the subsequent eighteen days. As such, the book is entirely uncorroborated, as far as I can determine. If it is fiction, it is an exceptional rendering. If, as this reader believes, the story is essentially true, then author George Robert Elford has succeeded in capturing a remarkable document. A book such as this is a rare artefact indeed. Bloody, uncompromising, disturbingly vicious, relentlessly compelling, The Devil's Guard is a shocking revelation, unmatched in its intensity.
From a personal view - substitute yesterdays Viet Ming/Cong for Todays IS/Al Shabab and their evil like.
Finished 'The Executioners Song' by Norman Mailer.
A sizable book (1,500 pages plus I think), but it was quite intriguing - though not very enjoyable due to it's grim subject matter.
It's about a man who's spent virtually all of his life incarcerated who gets released, falls in love, and then commits two completely unprovoked and ghastly murders after only being free for a matter of months; he then fights for the right to be executed as he can't tolerate jail any longer.
The story focuses on the many, many characters (it's difficult to keep track of them all) and how they're affected by the case: lawyers, police officers, Jail wardens, family, friends, lovers, the victims' family, etc.
In essence, it reads very much like a white-trash version of Romeo and Juliet.
Simon Murray was nineteen when he joined the French Foreign Legion. Inspired by the romantic myths of Beau Geste, he found himself in the ranks of one of the world's greatest - and toughest - fighting forces. He kept a unique diary of the hard living, harsh discipline, and the military tradition of 'March or Die' which he turned into this gripping book. 'Simon Murray's personal account of a gently reared, well-educated British youth's coming of age in the French Foreign Legion has the drama, excitement and colour of a good guts-and-glory thriller . . . Murray is a talented storyteller, and his fellow legionnaires and their disciplined and proud Corps are vividly portrayed. I was hooked from the first page.' Dr Henry Kissinger 'One of the greatest adventure stories in recent years.' Chris Patten
Book Description
Simon Murray was nineteen when he joined the French Foreign Legion. Inspired by the romantic myths of Beau Geste, he found himself in the ranks of one of the world's greatest - and toughest - fighting forces. He kept a unique diary of the hard living, harsh discipline, and the military tradition of 'March or Die' which he turned into this gripping book. 'Simon Murray's personal account of a gently reared, well-educated British youth's coming of age in the French Foreign Legion has the drama, excitement and colour of a good guts-and-glory thriller . . . Murray is a talented storyteller, and his fellow legionnaires and their disciplined and proud Corps are vividly portrayed. I was hooked from the first page.' Dr Henry Kissinger 'One of the greatest adventure stories in recent years.' Chris Patten
After finishing university but not ready to settle down, Gareth Carins joined the French Foreign Legion in 1996 and served for five years in their elite Parachute Regiment.
He experienced at first hand the extremes of human nature, witnessing both the brutal cruelty shown by some Legionnaires in the name of tradition, to the personal sacrifices shown by others. Along the way he met many of the fascinating characters that come from all corners of the world to serve in the ranks of the Foreign Legion. DIARY OF A LEGIONNAIRE is a candid and eye opening insight into this mysterious army. Told through Gareth's exciting and at times humorous adventures during the first eighteen months of his service, as we follow him from the brutality of basic training, to the realities of combat in the jungles of West Africa