Adventures By Men Of The 60th Infantry Regiment In Ww Ii The Ninth Infantry Division

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa. The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power. Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel. Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

The definitive chronicle of the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II, Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy is now together in one ebook bundle From the War in North Africa to the Invasion of Normandy, the Liberation Trilogy recounts the hard fought battles that led to Allied victory in World War II. Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author Rick Atkinson brings great drama and exquisite detail to the retelling of these battles and gives life to a cast of characters, from the Allied leaders to rifleman in combat. His accomplishment is monumental: the Liberation Trilogy is the most vividly told, brilliantly researched World War II narrative to date. WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Lavender was a member of Company I, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, originally arriving as a replacement in early October 1944 in the Hürtgen Forest. There are a lot of stories about the war. Some have been made into movies. If you are looking for sensationalism, you won't find it here. If you have an interest in what war was like to a 20-year-old in the Infantry, Nudge Blue comes close to describing that experience. The combat portion of this story was written directly from notes accumulated during the actual fighting. In the over 50 years since, facts about places and unit action have been verified to assure accuracy. It includes action in several places that are famousthe Hürtgen Forest, the Bulge, the Rhine River crossing at Remagen and contact with the Russians on the Elbe River. The military experience prior to combat, the post-war situation in Europe and commentary about war, in the appendices, were added later. Veterans who were in I Company of the 39th Infantry have commented favorably about Nudge Blue acknowledging it to be a faithful description of their personal experience. Lavender's experiences in combat make for fascinating, insightful reading, and an excellent companion to the late Bob Baldridge's Victory Road, showing what it was like to be an infantryman in the 9th Division.

I began this project for personal reasons: my uncle had made an enormous personal sacrifice for his family and his country; yet, because of his silence, no one in my family ever fully knew what he endured. As the last living relative who knew him, I felt a responsibility to rescue his story from the shadows before it disappeared forever and to preserve it as a source of pride for my family and me. But a second reason for telling my uncle’s story materialized as I assembled the details of his journey. I came to realize that while many GIs experienced extensive combat operations or the trials of being held in a POW camp, very few men survived the amount of combat my uncle experienced and six months in a POW camp. Frank’s five-year wartime journey, which included three monumental amphibious invasions, six major battle campaigns, and six months in three different POW camps, was breathtaking in scope. The odds against his surviving all this, or being seriously wounded out of the war, are almost incalculable. Despite the unusual scope of Sergeant Shaw’s tour of duty, his day-to-day adventures are quite typical of what tens of thousands of combat infantrymen experienced during WWII. To that extent, the character who emerges in this story is a composite or representative figure, an American Odysseus, whose mission of extraordinary historical significance, requires him to define himself through trial, suffering, courage, and perseverance before he returns home in triumph. But the similarity ends at the triumphant return. Earlier civilizations celebrated their returning warriors at ceremonial feasts. These men were expected to show their wounds and relate their adventures to their countrymen so bards might record them for posterity. Such rituals insured the warrior a rightful place in history, enshrined his virtues, and shed his reflected glory on his community. No such salutary ritual greeted a battered Frank Shaw when he returned from the war; no one saw his wounds or took his testimony. And his silence consigned his deeds to the shadows of time and dimming memory. But the ancient customs were correct — the hero’s deeds are not his alone. They are his legacy to his family and his country, and they deserve to be honored not shrouded. Therefore, since Sergeant Frank Shaw, like so many of his World War II comrades in arms, would not, and did not, tell his story, I did. Book Review 1: "Col. Brian H. Cundiff, USA (Ret), editor, --Blue Spader Newsletter: “I have just finished reading Fellowship of Dust: Retracing the World War II Journey of Sergeant Frank Shaw The book was written by Bill Shaw, his nephew, with a foreword by General Paul Gorman, USA (Ret). Sergeant Shaw served in Company E of the 26th Infantry for five years and survived the horrors of Europe under austere conditions. This is a story that needs to be told and is a must-read for all Blue Spaders. They were truly the 'Greatest Generation'.“ -- Blue Spader Newsletter Book Review 2: “As the foreword said, this is a story that deserved to be told. Much more than a biography of a courageous soldier in WW II, while focusing on the author's uncle Frank Shaw, this book vividly captures the horrors of war, the emotions surrounding the battles that young men in Frank Shaw's infantry regiment were forced into, their fears, day by day per the dangers they encountered, and the physical and emotional hardships and scars the war, the frontline and POW experiences left as a result. Having written the book after the subject's death, Bill Shaw must have done an incredible amount of research -- reading letters, e-mailing old friends, interviewing family, friends and colleagues, piecing in facts from numerous books, newspapers and magazines, etc. -- to produce such a comprehensive, very readable story. This was obviously a labor of love and gratitude -- the author's dedication to a real hero. The writing is very even and compelling, with interesting, relevant details, helpful dialogue and scenes of real action and danger. I was very moved by this book.” -- Writer's Digest

Wearing the remnants of a WWI uniform and pulling a water-cooled 30-caliber machine-gun, Spencer Wurst marched through his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1940 as a member of the National Guard. He was 15 years old. Five years later he was a hardened platoon sergeant leading his troopers through the frozen killing fields of “Death Valley” in Germany’s Heurtgen Forest. A squad leader in Company F, 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne, for most of the war, Wurst jumped into Italy in September 1943, and received his baptism of fire at Arnone. Jumping into Normandy on D-Day, he received his first Purple Heart in the liberation of Ste. Mère-Eglise, and a second Purple Heart in grueling combat through the hedgerows. On his third jump, Wurst’s bravery under fire earned him the coveted Silver Star when he and his fellow paratroopers were swept up in the ferocious battle with the SS for the Highway Bridge at Nijmegen, Holland, in Operation Market Garden. A few months later, the dawn of his twentieth birthday found him serving on point in the long, freezing march to the shoulder of the Bulge. A unique view of combat from pre-war training and mobilization to First Army maneuvers, parachute school at Fort Benning, and Europe’s killing fields, Wurst’s poignantly written and carefully researched memoir has been hailed as an outstanding addition to the literature of WWII.

"On the beaches of Normandy, on June 6, 1944, the U.S. Army suffered its heaviest casualties since Gettysburg. The losses were greatest among the infantry companies that led the assault, and Cawthon describes firsthand the furious and deathly chaos of the daylong battle to get off the beach and up the heights. Reduced by casualties to half its preinvasion strength, Cawthon's regiment still managed to fight off German counterattacks in an all-out pursuit across France before the Germans counterattacked again at the Ardennes forest."--BOOK JACKET.

“The 22nd is very much a part of my life and had it not been for your journal I would have had no idea of its destiny and its ending. I am very grateful to you for this experience.”—John Cheever Scores of combat incidents and fascinating insights are to be found in “A Soldier’s Journal.” Rothbart provides unusual details of the 4th Division’s, and especially the 22nd Regiment’s, achievements and obstacles in the Allied advance from Normandy to Germany; D-Day Normandy, the breakthrough at St. Lo, the liberation of Paris, the German counterattack in the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge, and the bloody Hurtgen Forest battle.—The Trenton Times (NJ) “Rothbart’s meticulously- kept journal is an ‘I was there’ record of World War II. It is a valuable piece of American history.”—The Huntsville Times (AL) “From the day he was drafted in 1942...Rothbart did what many people plan but rarely follow up. He kept a journal, tightly pencilled entries in little notebooks that somehow caught history roaring by, and in remarkably readable style.”—Pittsburgh Tribune Review (PA) “Compelling reading . . . made more so by the many ‘slice of life’ portraits. . . of his time in the U.S. Army.”—John Gresham, bestselling co-author (with Tom Clancy) of Submarine and Special Forces.

A significant combat memoir written by a young US soldier during the bitter fighting in the Vosges Mountains, 1944-45. When 17-year old freshman Frank Gurley was placed second in his first Harvard varsity cross-country meet, he thought he had achieved the ultimate in courage and tenacity. Just over a year later, still shy of his 19th birthday, and still a scout of sorts (First Scout in an infantry rifle squad), Gurley came down from a frowning peak in the Vosges Mountains with far deeper insights into the meaning of valor and intrepid endurance... after his odyssey 'Into the Mountains Dark.' This extraordinary work is actually the result of an operational security violation and military offence for which the author could have been severely punished. Throughout his six months of combat as an enlisted man in the U.S. Seventh Army's 100th Infantry Division in France and Germany, Private Gurley maintained an extensive, up-to-the hour journal in which he and his buddies painstakingly recorded every major incident in the life of their platoon. A former high school newspaper editor, the author risked the potential penalties for his actions and meticulously chronicled the fears, joys, grip