Arch Whitehouse (1895–1979)

I had a paperback copy of this book as a preteen and read it enough for the pages to fall out. I lost the book eventually and found a first edition copy which I read for this review. Arch Whitehouse was and American writer who volunteered to fight with the British during World War I prior to America's entry to the war. He initially served in the British Army, but later he became a gunner in the Royal Flying Corps before transitioning to becoming a pilot. He flew combat missions with the RFC, so he is a qualified World War I veteran. During World War II he acted as a war correspondent, a fact that is quite evident in this book. By the late 1950's and the 1960's, Whitehouse produced a number of fiction and non-fiction works, usually focused on military topics or the two world wars.

My copy of "Tank: The Story of Their Battles and the Men Who Drove Them From Their First Use in World War I To Korea" is the Doubleday first edition, which came out in 1960. The book contains 383 pages organized in ten chapters, with a conclusion, acknowledgements, bibliography, and index added at the end. There are two small sections of photographs. The book is arranged chronologically, although that is not necessarily how Whitehouse tells his stories, where the narrative within chapters skips around, and, in some cases, belonging in other chapters. The narrative covers the story of British, German, and American armor development and combat use almost exclusively. The Italians, Japanese, and Soviets are mentioned in passing, with most of the Soviet mentions appearing in the conclusion of the book. Whitehouse relies on personal narratives almost exclusively throughout the book, narratives that come from personal interviews, biographies and autobiographies, award citations, or correspondents' stories. You will not find primary source material in this book--those sources would not be declassified and available for research for another 15-20 years.

Whitehouse is not a student of technology--the various aspects of armored vehicle technology appear to be foreign to him, and he has trouble writing about this aspect of the topic. The era of the technology geek is several years in the future, and the first authoritative reference books on the topic (i.e. the Profile Publications series) are a few years off. As a war correspondent, Whitehouse simply had to tell a good (and positive) human story. "Tank" is a good example of that genre--a long multigeneration magazine/newspaper article. Taken in that spirit, this book is a good read that is difficult to put down once you start it.… (meer)