Favourite Book Jacket

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Time we had some more DJC.

and I was just settling down to Bargain Hunt!

Here's a couple that have used real photographs.

Captain Street's account of being with the Guns at Loos, published by Nash in 1916 & a Sapper's account of serving with the Northumbrian RE, published in 1932 by Cecil Palmer.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

While I'm still awake I thought I'd put on another special favourite. One of the few first hand accounts by a V.C., Captain Pollard's 'Fire Eater', published by Hutchinson in 1932. I don't know why the jacket is so scarce but this is the only one I've ever come across.

[Ghazala]

Much better than Bargain Hunt. Thank you.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Last one for today & suitably dark as the light is fading. Lt. Col. Hanbury-Sparrow's 'The Land-Locked Lake', a truly indispensable memoir from the Commander of the Royal Berkshires. His description of the action in Polygon Wood is especially noteworthy. A man not afraid to express his opinions of his superiors. Published by Arthur Barker in 1932.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

A couple of scarce German accounts.

Karl Broger's 'Pillbox 17', published by Thornton Butterworth in 1930, at the height of the 'War books boom'. Broger was known as the 'workman-poet' & in this novel relates the grisly fate of a group of German soldiers trapped in an overturned Pillbox. A powerful book.

The second book is Franz Schauwecker's 'The Fiery Way'. I'm especially fond of this jacket as I have the original artwork for it! It tells of a young German student in the icy wastes of the Russian Front & at the 2nd Battle of the Marne.

[Ghazala]

Keep them coming DJC.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

This arrived today. It's the author's account of his time with the South African Motor Cycle Corps in German East Africa & as such must be virtually unique. The only copy I'd previously seen was in the hands of a fellow collector some 7 years ago, so when this arrived I was surprised to see it was the very same copy. Maybe it is the only one! Anyway I just love the image. Inside there are several photos including a super one of the author astride his machine. It seems to have been written with a more junior readership in mind but is nonetheless interesting for all that.

[Black Maria]

My latest e-bay purchase and one of my favourite jackets, mind you I did have to fork out the exorbitant price of £16 ( including p&p) for it... good old e-bay !

[Dust Jacket Collector]

£16! Outrageous! Must have been the only one of these John Hamilton books to use a b & w image. I wonder why!

Nice copy by the way. Much better than mine.

[MartH]

Lovely dust jacket, I recall a line from the BOB, "Beware of the Hun in the Sun"

[Black Maria]

£16! Outrageous! Must have been the only one of these John Hamilton books to use a b & w image. I wonder why!

Nice copy by the way. Much better than mine.

Thanks DJC, yes I assume the original artwork would have been in colour , I suppose they may have thought a b & w image was more dramatic. I was very pleased

to get it at that price, I think the only other copies I have seen in a jacket have been around the £100 mark.

[Black Maria]

Lovely dust jacket, I recall a line from the BOB, "Beware of the Hun in the Sun"

Indeed, and if i remember the film correctly he didn't and paid the price.

[David Filsell]

Black Maria.

An excellent find in a dust jacket - which in English edition was the same as that used on the German. And a very good price too.

Were you aware that is a 'novelisation' of a series of true events and that that the author was a woman?

I have written a piece on it and would be happy to post if there's enough interest.

David

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Whilst we're on the subject of Flying Memoirs, this one came yesterday. Rather tatty but rather scarce as well. Future MP H. H. Balfour's account of his Wartime service. It's very informative on all aspects of Flying but he's also very candid on his own failings - Expelled from school, Trouble with the law for unpaid debts & speeding & flying off in the face of the enemy leaving a colleague to his fate.

[Black Maria]

Black Maria.

An excellent find in a dust jacket - which in English edition was the same as that used on the German. And a very good price too.

Were you aware that is a 'novelisation' of a series of true events and that that the author was a woman?

I have written a piece on it and would be happy to post if there's enough interest.

David

Thanks David, yes only because I recently read the Great War Autobiographies thread in the Book Reviews forum and there was a link to your posts about the

book in the Aerodrome Forum. I would be interested to read the piece you have written about it.

Whilst we're on the subject of Flying Memoirs, this one came yesterday. Rather tatty but rather scarce as well. Future MP H. H. Balfour's account of his Wartime service. It's very informative on all aspects of Flying but he's also very candid on his own failings - Expelled from school, Trouble with the law for unpaid debts & speeding & flying off in the face of the enemy leaving a colleague to his fate.

Great find DJC another of my favourite jackets and one I've yet to find myself.

[MartH]

The Poles always did good aviation dust jackets for the Second World War. Are there any for the Great War?

[Dust Jacket Collector]

The Poles always did good aviation dust jackets for the Second World War. Are there any for the Great War?

I don't know. Do you mean Polish illustrators working over here or just books published in Poland? I know they were great flyers in the second War.

[David Filsell]

BM

Will hunt it out and put it up over the next couple of days. It's from my unfinished (as yet) bibliography and commentary on the 120 or so German novels, personal accounts and diaries of German soldiers, sailors and airmen of junior rank and women about the Great War translated into English. Any feedback positive or negative will be most welcome. Incidentally I have a spare reading copy for sale if anyone's interested and I havn't broken the rules by saying so!

David

[MartH]

Well for example "Destiny can Wait" The OH of the Poles in the RAF.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Well for example "Destiny can Wait" The OH of the Poles in the RAF.

You mean this one by Felix Topolski

[David Filsell]

BM,

A little earlier than anticipated!

E M KÄHNERT - 1935

The grey clothbound first edition of M E Kähnert’s Jagdstaffel 356: Eine deutsche Fleigergruppe im letzen Weltkreigsjahr was first published in Stuttgart by Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft. It was also published in a second paperback edition which featured a bold stylised pictorial cover. Although neither contains a date of publication, an owner’s date-mark in a copy of the German paper-back indicates a purchase - or ownership - date of 1932. At least five further editions of the book appear to have been published in Germany between 1937 and 1941.

The English edition, Jagdstaffel 356, translated by Claud W Sykes and published by John Hamilton Limited, is also undated and dealers in the UK have variously recorded its publication at range of dates between 1924 and 1935. Although the book does not appear to have been published in the United States, the Library of Congress Catalogue records a publication date of 1935 and that seems a reasonable assumption.

Despite its spurious squadron number, the book was presented as a factual account by its British publishers who wrote in their spring 1937 catalogue:

“Whatever its real numbers may have been Jagdstaffel 356 undoubtedly

fought in the Flanders air in 1918. A book of genuine flying adventures”.

Nevertheless, although the German paperback edition noted that the text was based on “Authentic factual material and front line diaries of a Flanders Fighter Squadron made available by Emil K Beltzig” the book is not a first hand account. It was ‘freely’ authored by Maria Elizabeth Kähnert. and hand written comment in a copy of the book previously owned by the aviation writer and historian Owen Thetford notes that it is

“a composite account of Bavarian Staffels with emphasis on Jasta 16,

esp(ecially), von Roeth”.

At one time it was suggested that the book was actually authored by Rudolph Stark, author of Wings of War, which is also set in 1918. Even wilder was the belief the that the ubiquitous translator Claud Sykes, expert on German aviation and translator of Stark’s account, may have concocted the tale for initial publication in Germany and ‘untranslation’ into English. Although M E Kähnert does not appear to have authored any other books, the suggestion that it was written by Sykes seems unlikely.

Certainly, there was no Jagdstaffel 356 - German Imperial Air Service Jastas were numbered consecutively from 1 to 83. Equally none of the pilots named in the book appears in the definitive listing of German fighter aces Above the Lines by Norman Franks, Frank W Bailey and Russell Guest published in 1993.

The original German edition of Jagdstaffel 356 contains six plates. Amongst them – and also included in both the 27 illustrations contaioned in the German paper-back and the Hamilton edition – are four of unnamed pilots who it is claimed served with the Jasta. One is a pilot identified by Franks, Bailey and Guest as Otto Brauneck who joined Manfred von Richthofen’s Jasta 11 on the Western Front in April 1917 and was killed in combat on July 1917 near Zonnebeke. Another is a reproduction of a popular wartime postcard of the ace Kurt Wolf who also served with Jasta 11 from May 1917 and was killed in action in September 1917 commanding Jasta 29.

Owen Thetford’s view the Jagdstaffel 356 is a composite account of the experiences of Bavarian Jastas is supported by the book’s poignant conclusion. This records the flight of defeated 356 to Germany bearing home the body of their fictitious dead commander, Lieutenant Olden, who had shot himself after announcing news of the Armistice. Like Olden, Oberleutnant Freidrich Ritter von Röth - who took command of the Royal Bavarian Jasta 16 in April 1918 - a balloon attack specialist who was wounded in the foot. Like the fictitious Olden, von Röth was, “shattered at Germany loosing the war”, committing suicide; not in front of his men but on New Year’s eve 1918.

Taking all of the book’s anomalies and coincidences into account, it seems reasonable to conclude that Jagdstaffel 356 is a fiction based primarily on the activities of Jasta 16 and illustrated with a range of stock archive pictures. Nevertheless, E M Kähnert’s account of Germany’s air war in 1918 has considerable merit. It records with elegance and sympathy a German fighter squadron’s combats, its successes and losses, the integration of new, inexperienced, pilots, the sympathetic treatment of those suffering from flying fatigue, the courtesies extended by scout pilots to their enemies and the squadron’s final dissolution in Mainz.

Among the many aviation books published by Hamilton before the Second World War were Captain W E Johns’ early Biggles tales. Initially they were written for an adult audience – although boys bought them in large quantities. It is Johns’ works that Jagdstaffel 356 most closely resembles in its evocation of the fighter pilots’ war in the air and on the ground. Kähnert’s appeal – like that of Johns and much else in the Hamilton cannon – is clearly to the young men who Johns dubbed the ‘air minded’.

Whilst uncommon, copies of the English Hamilton edition and the later reprints can be found without too much difficulty although, like Stark’s Wings of War, those in the original German are harder to locate.

[MartH]

You mean this one by Felix Topolski

Yes, I love the title.

[Black Maria]

BM,

A little earlier than anticipated!

E M KÄHNERT - 1935

The grey clothbound first edition of M E Kähnert’s Jagdstaffel 356:.......

Thanks for posting that David, I found it very interesting.

[David Filsell]

It's quite a good tale which took a bit of digging out!

[Black Maria]

It's quite a good tale which took a bit of digging out!

Yes, I can imagine it did. It's amazing how these things can get lost in the mists of time, even the publication dates were not certain. You did a great job putting together

the pieces of the puzzle.