List of best war memoirs

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Any war - go for it.

I’ll start with:

Spike Milligan - Hitler, my part in his downfall (and subsequent books in the series). Both immensely funny and immensely sad.

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Oberheim said:

Halmyre said:

Spike's books are great memoirs but it's interesting that he rarely mentions details of actual combat until he suffers the effects. Being an artilleryman probably did keep him away from the worst of the conflict - not wishing to demean his contribution, god forbid.

WW2 artillerymen would still have had it very rough I reckon. Whenever possible gun batteries would have been subjected to enemy counter battery fire once their position had been identified, or prior to an enemy assault. Spike would have had plenty of experience of being shelled by artillery - one can only imagine the sheer terror of being subjected to a heavy artillery bombardment.

And then you get glorious things such as this:

“An officer present, Noel Burdett, hearing Teske and me stating that we must have actually fired at each other that day, said, “Your survival indicates you must both be bloody awful shots.” Later Hans Teske dispelled the belief that Germans had no sense of humour by inscribing my menu “Dear Spike, sorry I missed you on February 26, 1943.”