Helion & Company: The Iran-Iraq War volumes.

Helion and Company have a great track record of publishing titles on some really obscure conflicts and topics, and it was at a war games show last year that I saw the four volume set for the Iran-Iraq War. That conflict is something I recall being on the news quite a bit as a child and as the late 20th Century is my period of choice, purchasing these volumes was an easy decision to make.

Volume one covers the initial battle for the province of Khuzestan in South Western Iran between 1980 and 1982. Volume two follows up with the Iranian response that eventually saw the Faw Peninsula fall to Iranian forces between 1982 and 1986. Volume three takes up the rest of the war, where Iraqi forces retook the Faw Peninsula and battered Iranian forces to a stalemate, at least on the ground. In the air, they had overcome the Iranian Air Force. The final volume relates to the conflict on the fronts further north. Although the fighting was equally bitter, it was not on the same scale as the conflict in the south.

Written by E.R. Hooton, Tom Cooper and Farzin Nadimi, the books themselves are quite slim, following the usual Helion format. At  around 80-ish pages each, these books combine well written text with numerous contemporary photographs, custom illustrations and details colour plates. Each volume contains an excellent biography and extensive notes on the main text and my only real issue with the series (and other Helion texts) is the lack of maps. More precisely, the lack of maps at the right juncture. In many, there is a detailed map with the names of key towns, facilities and the like, but they always seem to be placed in the back of the book. It would be handy if such maps were near the front where you can see them before being deluged with place names in the text, It is, however, a minor complaint.

Taken as a whole, the Middle East @ War Series volumes 5, 6, 9 and 10 provide a superb introduction, overview and description of the Iran-Iraq War and offer not only eye-witness accounts but also well argued analysis of the conflict. Given the nature and recent history of both nations, it is unlikely that we'll ever see a definitive single (or multi) volume history of this struggle but this quad of tomes is certainly enough to give the reader a finer appreciation of it. Indeed, the political shenanigans of the various factions within Iran was a revelation to me and provided a much greater depth of understanding as to why the state of Iran behaved the way it did. That and the ever-repeated experience of Iraq where dictators try to control too much centrally and end up making a hash of whatever they are trying to achieve.

Some might complain about the quality of the photographs (which is unwarranted considering the paucity of imagery anyway, due to the nature of the combatants) and the lack of detail in specific operations but as mentioned before, the bibliography is extensive and there are companion volumes also published by Helion that focus on specific aircraft types and their histories (The Mirage F1 and MiG 23 volumes in the same Middle East @ War Series provide far greater detail on the introduction to service and combat operations for those types).

I highly recommend these books to anyone with an interest in that specific conflict, the politics of the nations involved and late 20th Century military conflict in general. The information contained within is as much good use to war gamers as to history buffs and would contribute well to any game no matter what rule set you use. Certainly as far as my wargaming goes, future ventures to H'irraq will have some added verisimilitude courtesy of these fine books and others from Helion and Co.

If these titles have caught your interest or you just want to have a look at what else Helion offer, visit their website here.