TREKKING ON;

351 pages: folding maps. Cloth, dust wrapper (blue), with minor neat repairs. Spotting on page edges.                                                                                         

TREKKING ON begins where COMMANDO (1929) ended. Reitz's period in Madagascar, his return to the Transvaal, his recuperation and his stay in the home of J.C. and Issie Smuts “the two people to whom I owe the most in the world” [p. 59], his years as a lawyer in Heilbron, the Rebellion, World War I in German West and German East Africa, and finally his time on the Western Front. Upon his arrival in London in 1917, Reitz enlisted as a private. General Smuts, then in the War Cabinet, found out and summoned Reitz to visit him at the Savoy Hotel (where Reitz witnessed Smuts and Churchill discussing the war). Thereafter Reitz was sent to Aldershot to complete a senior officers' course "This was General Smuts' doing… I had graduated from Private to Second Lieutenant, to Major, in the course of a week" [p. 165]. Reitz went on to command a regiment and saw considerable action until the end of the war. Reitz writes with an openness and style that is gripping and full of insight and information. This book will rank amongst the most readable books in your library, next to COMMANDO! This copy is in excellent condition- the book block is clean and tight, and the scarce dust wrapper immaculate.