Download or read book On the Road to Innsbruck and Back A 103rd Division Infantryman s World War 2 Memoir written by William B. Bache and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merriam Press World War 2 Memoir. On the Road to Innsbruck and Back is a product of the author�s long obsession with serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the 103rd Infantry Division. Too often he was given a responsibility that he neither deserved nor desired. But then he was in an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, at the service of a regimental headquarters. The chief model for On the Road is Stephen Crane�s The Red Badge of Courage, the best short novel about war that he knows. Like Crane, he wanted, above all, to demonstrate the moral cost of some months in combat upon a not-insensitive young man.
Download or read book On the Road to Innsbruck and Back written by William Bache and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2012-02-18 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merriam Press Military Monograph 58. Third Edition (February 2012). "On the Road to Innsbruck and Back" is a product of the author's long obsession with serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the 103rd Infantry Division. He has always known that he would have to write about that time. And it seemed useful to put his overseas experience into the context of his Army years, from his enlistment in October 1942 to his discharge from an Army hospital in March 1946. His professional career as a Shakespeare critic was a matter of diligence applied; his imposed career as a soldier was a matter of mindless endurance. He was not a successful soldier: He was the last private in his regiment to be promoted to pfc. But then somebody must have thought the author was more reliable than he was. Too often he was given a responsibility that he neither deserved nor desired. But then he was in an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, at the service of a regimental headquarters. "On the Road" is authentic. He has made every effort to be faithful to the facts, as he remembers them. But he also believes that the best way to give form and direction to the reality of his experience was through a series of sixteen short stories, presented more or less chronologically. Experience teaches through insights, epiphanies, encounters. Ideally, a poem or a short story is an idea at the moment of dawning. Each of his sixteen stories has its theme, its ironies, its surprises. The realities of combat are simple and stark, but circumstances change. In his stories the events and incidents in one story are meant to echo and mirror the events and incidents in other stories. If the stories are read sequentially, as intended, certain metaphors and notions are emphasized and thus have a cumulative effect: the road as a metaphor for living; the Army as a metaphor for prison; animal references; clothing imagery; despair; resignation. The stories are meant to be considered, not for their individual merit, but for their collected value. The chief model for On the Road is Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage," the best short novel about war that he knows. Like Crane, he wanted, above all, to demonstrate the moral cost of some months in combat upon a not-insensitive young man. Contents: Preface; Poem: "Dog Tags"; Living with Violence: The Making of an American Soldier; Losing It; Under Fire; Dogfaces and Dogrobbers; Collaborating; Undercover; Delivering the Goods; The Hero Syndrome; Gathering Intelligence; Off Limits and Out of Control; Winding Down; On the Road to Innsbruck and Back; On the Way Back; Double Solitaire on the Home Front; Crime and Punishment; Period of Adjustment; The Author; 2 B&W photos. The Author: William Bache's great-grandfather was a Methodist minister; his father owned two grocery stores and ten farms. Bill was born in the coal mining town of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, in 1922. Bill is now widowed and has one daughter. After getting a Ph.D. in English Literature from Penn State in 1952 and then teaching there for a year, Bill joined the Purdue English Department in 1953. Except for a summer in Maine and one in Montana and except for two sabbaticals in Oxford, Bill spent his entire career at Purdue. He has received a large number of teaching awards. Bill retired in 1992. Bill's specialties are Shakespeare and lyric poetry. He published "Measure for Measure as Dialectical Art" in 1969; "Design and Closure in Shakespeare's Major Plays" in 1992; "Shakespeare's Deliberate Art" in 1996. Review by Paul Fussell, veteran and author: I've just finished reading with intense pleasure and admiration... your excellent book. Your having been in the pathetic 103rd Division where I was was just a small part of the pleasure. Most delight was in your clear critical intelligence, as well as your sensitivity and wisdom.
Download or read book On the Road to Innsbruck and Back written by William B. Bache and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2020-08-29 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On the Road to Innsbruck and Back" is a product of the author's long obsession with serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the 103rd Infantry Division. Too often he was given a responsibility that he neither deserved nor desired. But then he was in an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, at the service of a regimental headquarters. The chief model for On the Road is Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, the best short novel about war that he knows. Like Crane, he wanted, above all, to demonstrate the moral cost of some months in combat upon a not-insensitive young man. Contents: Dedication - Acknowledgments - Preface - Poem: "Dog Tags" - Chapter 1: Living with Violence: The Making of an American Soldier - Chapter 2: Losing It - Chapter 3: Under Fire - Chapter 4: Dogfaces and Dogrobbers - Chapter 5: Collaborating - Chapter 6: Undercover - Chapter 7: Delivering the Goods - Chapter 8: The Hero Syndrome - Chapter 9: Gathering Intelligence - Chapter 10: Off Limits and Out of Control - Chapter 11: Winding Down - Chapter 12: On the Road to Innsbruck and Back - Chapter 13: On the Way Back - Chapter 14: Double Solitaire on the Home Front - Chapter 15: Crime and Punishment - Chapter 16: Period of Adjustment. Published by Merriam Press.
Download or read book On the Road to Innsbruck and Back written by William B. Bache and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Victory Road written by Robert C. Baldridge and published by Merriam Press. This book was released on 1998-04 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book To Hell and Back written by Audie Murphy and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2002-05-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic bestselling war memoir by the most decorated American soldier in World War II. Originally published in 1949, To Hell and Back was a smash bestseller for fourteen weeks and later became a major motion picture starring Audie Murphy as himself. Many decades later, this classic wartime memoir is just as gripping as it was then. Desperate to see action but rejected by both the marines and paratroopers because he was too short, Murphy eventually found a home with the infantry. He fought through campaigns in Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany. Although still under twenty-one years old on V-E Day, he was credited with having killed, captured, or wounded 240 Germans. He emerged from the war as America's most decorated soldier, having received twenty-one medals, including our highest military decoration, the Congressional Medal of Honor. To Hell and Back is a powerfully real portrayal of American GI's at war.
Download or read book Sixty Days in Combat written by Dean Joy and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2004-03-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The infantryman’s war is . . . without the slightest doubt the dirtiest, roughest job of them all.” He went in as a military history buff, a virgin, and a teetotaler. He came out with a war bride, a taste for German beer, and intimate knowledge of one of the darkest parts of history. His name is Dean Joy, and this was his war. For two months in 1945, Joy endured and survived the everyday deprivations and dangers of being a frontline infantryman. His amazingly detailed memoir, self-illustrated with numerous scenes Joy remembers from his time in Europe, brings back the sights, sounds, and smells of the experience as few books ever have. Here is the story of a young man who dreamed of flying fighter aircraft and instead was chosen to be cannon fodder in France and Germany . . . who witnessed the brutality of Nazis killing Allied medics by using the cross on their helmets as targets . . . and who narrowly escaped being wounded or killed in several “near miss” episodes, the last of which occurred on his last day of combat. Sixty Days in Combat re-creates all the drama of the “dogface’s” fight, a time that changed one young man in a war that changed the world.
Download or read book Descending from the Clouds written by Spencer F. Wurst and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Packs On written by A. B. Feuer and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2005-11-16 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relates the personal experiences of men who fought with the 10th Mountain Division in both Alaska and Italy during World War II.
Download or read book A Dangerous Assignment written by William B. Hanford and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2008-06-13 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rare memoir of a risky job performed by relatively few troops. Honest and observant narrative describes the good, bad, and ugly of the war. Covers World War II's closing months in eastern France and Germany.
Download or read book From Omaha Beach to Nuremberg written by Daniel Altman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tough Jewish kid from the Bronx, Dan Altman enlisted in the Army when the U.S. entered World War II. Adapting street smarts to soldiering, he became a skilled sharpshooter and attained the rank of sergeant in the 1st Infantry Division. On D-Day, Altman's unit was among the second wave to assault the German defenses at Normandy. Surviving the invasion, the fighting in the lethal hedgerow country, the Hurtgen Forest, and the Battle of the Bulge, he was later assigned to gather information on the Nazi atrocities performed at the concentration camps for the trials at Nuremburg. Beginning with his plunge into the blood-tinged surf at Omaha Beach, his candid, often graphic memoir is presented here as told to his granddaughter.
Download or read book See Naples and Die written by Robert B. Ellis and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1943, 18-year-old Robert Ellis joined the elite U.S. Army Ski Troops of the 10th Mountain Division. This division has been called the most elite and publicized American military unit in World War II. While a member of the unit Ellis maintained a detailed battle diary and conducted extensive wartime correspondence. Upon their arrival in Italy, the U.S. Army Ski Troops played a major role in the defeat of the Germans in Italy. They also faced some of the bloodiest combat of the war; the 10th Mountain Division suffered the heaviest casualties relative to time-in-combat of any U.S. division in the Italian campaign. While the author details the exceptional service of the unit, he also explores the brutal reality of infantry service and reveals how the battles were falsely represented by the media.
Download or read book Bootprints written by Hobert Winebrenner and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After over sixty years of holding it deep within, an aging American soldier shares his harrowing tale of life and death on Northern Europe's front lines. Join the author as he walkes you back into World War II. From Utah Beach, through the hedgerows of Normandy, the liberation of France, the Battle of the Bulge, the assault on Germany and the chase into Czechoslovakia, follow in his BOOTPRINTS.
Download or read book Into the Mountains Dark written by Franklin L. Gurley and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Answering the Call written by Stephen L. Wilson and published by Hillcrest Publishing Group. This book was released on 2016 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the experiences of an American officer in WWII with the 362nd Infantry Regiment in Italy and U.S. Occupational Forces, Austria through over 600 letters, military records, and recorded interviews.
Download or read book In The Company Of Heroes The Memoirs of Captain Richard M Blackburn Company A 1st Battalion 121st Infantry Regiment WW II written by Jerald W. Berry and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never before in the history of the world had there been such cataclysmic destruction until World War II. The entire face of the earth changed, as millions died and entire cities were razed to rubble. World War II was the harbinger of the Holocaust and the herald of the Atomic Age. For Americans, it was a time of intense patriotism and sacrifice in the cause of freedom throughout the world. Follow an American infantryman as he goes to war in the European Theater of Operations. Walk with him among the treacherous hedgerows of Normandy and through the bitter cold of winter in Germany. See through his eyes the death, destruction, and depravation of a world gone mad. From the beaches of Normandy to the gates of Nazi Germany, read of heroic deeds and ultimate sacrifice. The vivid accounts of 1Lt. Richard Blackburn represent history in its purest form a firsthand story of how "The Greatest Generation" stepped up to save the world and the freedom we cherish as Americans. "I was no hero, but I am honored to have served in the company of heroes those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and rest forever under white crosses in the far away places they helped to liberate." Richard M. Blackburn (U.S. Army, Ret.)
Download or read book Parachute Infantry written by David Webster and published by Dell. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Kenyon Webster’s memoir is a clear-eyed, emotionally charged chronicle of youth, camaraderie, and the chaos of war. Relying on his own letters home and recollections he penned just after his discharge, Webster gives a first hand account of life in E Company, 101st Airborne Division, crafting a memoir that resonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel. From the beaches of Normandy to the blood-dimmed battlefields of Holland, here are acts of courage and cowardice, moments of irritating boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, and pitched urban warfare. Offering a remarkable snapshot of what it was like to enter Germany in the last days of World War II, Webster presents a vivid, varied cast of young paratroopers from all walks of life, and unforgettable glimpses of enemy soldiers and hapless civilians caught up in the melee. Parachute Infantry is at once harsh and moving, boisterous and tragic, and stands today as an unsurpassed chronicle of war—how men fight it, survive it, and remember it. NOTE: This edition does not include photos.
