A kaleidoscopic overview of America's citizen soldiers in WW II's
European theater of operations. Hoyt (America's Wars, The Death of
the U-Boats, Hitler's War, etc.) focuses on the infantrymen and
company-grade officers who did the fighting. He tracks them from
their 1940 induction through V-E Day. Along the way, GIs trained in
dusty camps outside small southern towns endured life aboard troop
ships, went bravely into battle, and (when given half a chance)
sought, women, wine, or both in every foreign clime. Many of those
who survived their initial blooding (against French as well as
Germans) in North Africa fought their way across Sicily and up the
Italian peninsula. Subsequently, they and other dogfaces
participated in the Normandy campaign, which less than a year after
its June 6, 1944, start gave the Allies a hard-won victory over
Axis forces on the Continent. The combat experiences of Hoyt's
veterans ring true - protraCted periods of inaction or make-work
duty punctuated by moments of high drama, low comedy, and terror.
Though an ethnic and cultural potpourri, the author's GIs shared
many traits, most notably a mocking mistrust of authority - in part
because most remained civilians at heart, but mainly owing to the
high command's capacity for fouling up. To cite but one example,
the brass who mindlessly posted noncoms fresh from the States as
replacements for casualties sustained by battle-scarred outfits
invariably insisted on spit-and-polish military discipline in
rear-echelon areas. Drawing on letters home, memoirs, contemporary
newspaper accounts, personal interviews, and related sources, Hoyt
has fashioned a lengthy (592 pp.) narrative that includes vivid
vignettes of GIs in action during WW II. He also captures, perhaps
too well for a general readership, the tedium and frustrations that
were an integral part of the price paid by those who served in the
front lines. The text has black-and-white photographs (not seen),
plus a half-dozen helpful maps. (Kirkus Reviews)
The GI's War contains eyewitness accounts from ordinary young men,
farm hands and factory workers, who had war thrust upon them and in
the process became veteran soldiers. Their unsparing narratives,
presented in their own words, capture the many emotions evoked by
war. GIs and their commanding officers speak freely, and movingly,
of becoming soldiers, of enduring the ordeals of the various
campaigns, and of fightling for their lives and their country.
Vividly personal and compelling, this book puts the reader on the
front lines.
General
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