My article An 'Argonaut Voyage' into Chaos - Saxon 212. Infanterie-Division in Southern Ukraine, April 1918 - March 1919 in Stand To! Number 132 ('Ukraine special', October 2023) benefited greatly from a very generous maximum word allowance by current editor Matt Leonard, but it was nonetheless necessary to make some painful cuts. Many colourful anecdotes had to be sacrificed, and I had to give up any hope of being able to quote at any length from my sources.

My original notes (including a detailed chronology assembled from all the available sources) amounted to a ridiculous 73 pages of A4, from which I then spent longer than I care to recall assembling and repeatedly condensing a coherent narrative!

Despite the enormous amount of work involved, I am very pleased with the result and honoured to be published alongside such distinguished authors as Sir Hew Strachan, Cordon Corrigan and my role model Jack Sheldon. The full list of contents for this issue can be seen on the WFA website here (WFA members can log in to download a PDF copy from this page).

In due course I may release a longer edit of the article incorporating a lot of the material which had to be cut for length. I may also translate some excerpts from the personal accounts in the regimental histories of 212. Infanterie-Division, which are remarkably frank and colourful. In addition I may flesh out the biographies of the officers I mention by name; these include the redoubtable Oberleutnant der Reserve Pache, who features prominently in our books on the Saxons in Flanders.

For now I will present some additional maps to supplement the rough annotated sketchmap (based on one taken from the history of FAR 279) which appears in the published article. I will also present some of our wealth of original photographs from 212.ID beyond the small selection which made it into the published piece.