Love and War

By Lt Col P

A good friend of mine, fellow Marine artilleryman and author of Team Med-Fah, just told me he had heard that Eric Newby had died. I did a quick search, and indeed this remarkable author has passed.

Newby was a British travel author, and a real master of the art. I have read several of his books, and can re-read them again with every bit as much pleasure and anticipation as when I first picked them up. My little eulogy to him belongs here, on a milblog, because his best book by far is Love and War in the Apennines, an account of his own experiences as an escaped prisoner of war on the loose in northern Italy. I remember parts of it like I read them yesterday, especially-- VMI grads will appreciate this-- his careful desciption of, (how shall I put this?), covert autoeroticism in a barracks-like POW camp where privacy was nonexistent, drawing upon lessons learned in all-male educational settings. "The more vigorous among us," he wrote, "soon revived these ancient skills." His descriptions of the hardy and kind mountain peasantry of the country are matchless, as are his renderings of their speech patterns.

I would also recommend A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, and The Last Grain Race. (The ship on which he sailed in that book, "Moshulu," is now a floating restaurant in Philadelphia, easily visible from I-95; that little bit of knowledge made an otherwise vile trip bearable, as I drove past it on drill weekends with HQ Battery 3/14.)

Godspeed, Mr Newby, you make me laugh out loud.

October 26, 2006 11:18 AM History