Gentlefolk:

I have just received this book in the mail, authors are Dennis Oliver and Michael Starmer, published by The Factory Publishing in Australia. I ordered this book from their web site, www.thefactorypublishing.com, and with airmail shipping to the USA, it cost AUD$34.55 (US$32.11 on my Visa card). The order was received within 10 days of the web page order being submitted, and the book came backed by stout cardboard, and plastic wrapped to avoid damage.

The book measures 11.5 x 8.5 inches, with a card cover, 32 pages in length. Being Pt.1 of a series, it covers Sherman tanks and M7 Priests, with the main focus of the book, as the title suggests, being colour and markings info for the North African campaign. Info is provided in written form on: Tactical signs, formation badges, arm of service markings and unit serial numbers, War Dept. numbers, bridge classification numbers, aerial recognition markings, AFV recognition markings, "temporary markings", signal flags and pennants, vehicle numbers, plus of course the camouflage details. Following this, we have written descriptions of the various units: 2nd Armoured Brigade; (Brigade HQ, The Queen's Bays, 9th Queen's Royal Lancers, 10th Roayl Hussars, 11th Regiment Royal Horse Artillery);4th Light Armoured Brigade; 8th Armoured Brigade: 9th Armoured Brigade; 24th Armoured Brigade; 26th Armoured Brigade. As with the 2nd Armoured above, each main unit is subdivided into individual units with a description.

The center of the book consists of 12 full pages jammed with full color art work of the highest quality. Each section of the artwork is given a comprehensive description in writing as to what it depicts. The description not only tells you exactly what you are looking at ("Priest, E Battery, 11th HAC, April 1943"), but also what colors are shown ("a Dark Green disruptive on a Desert Pink base" etc. Great stuff.

As I haven't read the book as it was just received this morning, I can't comment as yet on the prose etc. However, the color artwork plus black and white photos (most very well reproduced with detailed descriptions) for me make this an excellent purchase.

Highly recommended for those interest in British/Commonwealth N.African theater history.

Cheers,
Andrew

I just ordered mine - tried earlier and Vista (who else) warned me there was a security problem with the website. I just ordered from my Internet computer (XPM Pro) and no problem. Ya gotta love Microsoft...... I am looking forward to this for my Sherman project, especially since the book mentions alternate colors for the North African campaign after Alamein, and I had felt that from the review of pix from Africa. I want to model one Sherman II in each of the two color schemes.