Toy Soldiers, Military Relics and Stories of WWII

Ed Borris has done a review of Ross Arendell’s  and Steve Woodrum’s book Toy Soldiers, Military Relics.

Recently had the pleasure of reading a collaborative effort by Russ Arendell and Steve Woodrum.  The title was “Toy Soldiers, Military Relics and Stories of WWII.”

While I’m not a big reader of WWII books, I found this book to be very entertaining as I would guess it’s not your typical WWII type book. It doesn’t depict any one large battle or campaign in exhaustive detail, going into battle plans, logistics and tactics. Instead this book focuses in on equipment or uniforms used by different armies, or individual stories of war hero’s. While it shows pictures of actual combatants it also cleverly injects toy soldiers into almost every topic covered. The book is loaded with pictures of actual combat scenes as well vehicles, weapons, uniforms, equipment and individuals who took part in the war. Toy soldiers are interjected into the topics and are either shown individually or in vignettes. Many of the pictures are in color.

The book covers a wide array of units from many different countries in different theaters of the war. While most books I have seen focus in the big 5 (America, Russia, England, Germany and Japan) this book also covers armies not typically depicted, Italy, Hungary, Romania, India and the Gurkhas’.  One section of the book even covers Russian male and female snipers listing them by name and statistic about the number of kills attributed to each.

In addition to the wide array of topics covered this also a section dedicated to the painting of toy soldiers and bio’s of the authors.

The book is 140 pages crammed full of information and is a worthwhile addition to any WWII enthusiast’s collection.