More 28mm 1870 French Turcos painting and Embers of War reading

I spent Friday night and Saturday morning painting a 28mm 1870 French Turco infantry battalion.  It's now finished.  I have started two more 28mm 1870 French Turco battalions to finish painting in the coming weeks.  I also have one more 28mm 1870 French artillery battery to prime and paint, too.  That will complete 3 years worth of work on my 28mm Franco-Prussian armies.

I now have an entire 28mm 1870 French infantry division and a 28mm 1870 French Cavalry brigade.  I also have 1 28mm 1870 Prussian infantry brigade and 1 28mm 1870 Bavarian infantry brigade, completed.  This project has taken too long and is too expensive to justify the times I'll game it.  That was the risk I undertook when I thought up this up.

Now, I don't have the finances to spend on the 100 anniversary of the "Great War" or August 1914...  Alas, that's my loss.

However, I finished up the battle of Dien Bien Phu tonight in Embers of War.  I'm at page 555/715 of the book.  I've started the Chapter on the Geneva Conference of 1954.  The author spent quite a bit of time talking about the Eisenhower administration's position on French Indochina.  More than I care to read.  I'm limiting my comments until I complete this book.  I'd like to have it read by the end of the month.  Once I'm done reading Embers of War, I'll write a full-scale review.

There are other books on Vietnam waiting to be read.  One is Chickenhawk by Mason on the helicopter war in Vietnam.

My uncle never talked about his combat missions in Korea and Vietnam.  I would have liked to have heard his first hand accounts flying birds.  My uncle saw a lot of combat missions and two tours in Vietnam.  He retired a bird colonel and went to be successful stockbroker before dying a heart attack at age 78.  But my uncle wouldn't listen to his own son's advice about quitting smoking and changing his diet (even though my cousin is a successful MD who teaches at the University of Richmond's medical school).  That's until he had his first heart attack age 70.  But I guess there are a lot of helicopter pilots like my late uncle,

I have more books on Vietnam.  The other is called The Element of Surprise by Darryl Young.  It's about Navy SEALS in the Mekong delta in 1970.  The final book is called Mekong First Light written by a US Army 2nd lieutenant who survived his tour of Vietnam miraculously unharmed.

Though I'll get around to my 28mm Vietnam War project some day soon...