Armies in Europe

John Gooch

Anyone else leave college thinking "actually there was some interesting stuff on that reading list and if only I hadn't been stressed out having to produce essays and sit exams and all that stuff I'd have read those books properly instead of madly skimming". Yeah, right.

Fifteen years later I at last make good on that theory and snag an out-of-print history text penned by one of my old profs (one of the groovier ones, actually) from one of Ebay's darker and quieter corners (what does it say about your tastes if you're almost always the sole bidder for all the stuff you go for?).

Of course, it's mostly pretty dry stuff and most of me is glad I no longer need to know that in March 1935 France extended conscription from one year to two because of a declining male population (Gooch p. 213). But a part of me misses those history lectures.

So, at least now I own a hard-to-find 1980 edition of Armies in Europe. Most books in our shelves can take us back to where and when we read them. Funny thing is, even though I've just read this one properly, it will really always take me back fifteen years to a time when I was failing to read it (and many others like it).