Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser

There are deeply humorous episodes, mostly via the good-natured camaraderie of his fellow soldiers.

Serious issues are tackled via practical narrative, occasional brutal simplicity and sometimes a touch of levity. For the soldier and section in the close fight, it's about the moment they are in, the minute-to-minute struggle and dependence on your section politics and strategy become quite irrelevant. Q uartered Safe Out Here is a vivid representation of the confused, haphazard nature of battle for the junior soldier within a large formation where they frequently lack detail or awareness of the great events they are participating in. The insignificant but deeply personal moments of war.

Amongst other issues he reflects on the self-doubt he felt as a junior commander, fear and apprehension, understanding one’s enemy and allies, emotions involved in killing, of dealing with the death of a section mate and the close relationships found only within a section. The value of his personal account is in his observations of those things that concern the individual in continuous close combat.

The story commences the day he joins the men of Nine Section in the preparations for the capture of Meiktila, then continues through his war until he is sent to an officer selection board. This memoir honors his wartime comrades and illustrates the human reality of war commonly absent from soulless official military accounts. įraser's style makes it all seem tremendously genuine, but not in an overly dramatic manner. This is done by focusing on Fraser’s Nine Section just a tiny piece of the Fourteenth Army. But for a view from the exhausted, muddy and bloody soldier at the sharp end, Quartered Safe Out Here provides the personal aspects of the experience of war. In Defeat into Victory by Field Marshall Slim, a reader will find an excellent General’s book on campaigns and operations, on the big things. Quartered Safe Out Here is a soldier’s memoir it discounts the big events in order to focus on the personal experiences of the individual. In his own words Fraser states that, ‘by right, each official history should have a companion volume in which the lowest actor gives his version…it would at least give posterity a sense of perspective’. There is little doubt that soldiers of all ranks and experiences will find great resonance with the humor, horror and camaraderie described. The authenticity of his story, merged with the talents of a gifted novelist, result in an unforgettable read. This excellent memoir brilliantly recounts the frontline action he saw while serving as a young soldier during the British army’s savage campaign against the Japanese. Quartered Safe Out Here is the personal account of George Macdonald Fraser on his time as a rifleman in Slim’s 14 th Army during the Burma Campaign.

Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser