You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The fascinating personal correspondence from a commanding general of the eighty-second Airborne Division to his young daughter during World War II. James Maurice Gavin left for war in April 1943 as a colonel commanding the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the eighty-second Airborne Division—America’s first airborne division and the first to fight in World War II. In 1944, at age thirty-seven, “Slim Jim” Gavin, as he was known to his troops, became the eighty-second’s commanding general—the youngest Army officer to become a major general since the Civil War. At war’s end, this soldier’s soldier had become one of our greatest generals—and the eighty-second’s most decora...
"Consisting of more than two hundred letters, this correspondence constitutes the majority of Gavin's private wartime letters. The General writes about his unique airborne command, about battles from Sicily through Germany, about the fears and hardships he shared with his soldiers, and about America's new responsibility as a world power." "In her prologue, epilogue, and notes, Barbara Gavin Fauntleroy gives a glimpse of the private man. Historical overviews by Starlyn Jorgensen set the letters against the background of Gavin's campaigns. Edited by Gayle Wurst, the correspondence also includes photographs, an introduction by noted historian and Gavin biographer Gerard Devlin, and a foreword by Rufus Broadaway, Gavin's aide-de-camp."--BOOK JACKET.
Throughout 1943, the German army, heirs to a military tradition that demanded and perfected relentless offensive operations, succumbed to the realities of its own overreach and the demands of twentieth-century industrialized warfare. In his new study, prizewinning author Robert Citino chronicles this weakening Wehrmacht, now fighting desperately on the defensive but still remarkably dangerous and lethal. Drawing on his impeccable command of German-language sources, Citino offers fresh, vivid, and detailed treatments of key campaigns during this fateful year: the Allied landings in North Africa, General von Manstein's great counterstroke in front of Kharkov, the German attack at Kasserine Pas...
“Gavin at War provides a lively self-portrait. His diary is especially notable for its skeptical assessments of his comrades and his Army.” — The New York TimesWinner, 2022 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Awards, Journals, Memoirs, and Letters "General Gavin was a very brave man who had great faith in his men. The battle or the weather never stopped him from going to check the troops. He would go in the rain or snow. If the battle was severe, he would crawl from foxhole to foxhole to talk to his men to let them know he was with them. Words cannot explain the love and pride I had for General Gavin."—Walter Woods, World War II aide to General Gavin Lieutenant General J...
The thrilling memoir of the legendary army colonel and paratrooper—the only airborne officer to lead three different battalions into combat during WWII. In his distinguished service during World War II, Col. Mark James Alexander took command of three separate battalions of parachute infantrymen within the 82nd Airborne Division. A legend in his own time, he fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France. Even after sustaining serious wounds in Normandy, he insisted on playing a role in the Battle of the Bulge. Alexander’s exploits in Italy, from capturing hundreds of prisoners in Sicily to holding ground against German counterattacks in Salerno, won him a reputation known from the low...
This WWII memoir offers a rare behind-the-scenes view of the 82nd Airborne and its heroic contributions to Allied victory in Europe and Africa. Joining the army in 1942, Leonard Lebenson was recruited into the 82nd Airborne for his skills as a typist and draftsman. Lebenson thus gained a ringside seat for some of the greatest campaigns of World War II—from the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and France, to the Netherlands, the Bulge, and the drive on Berlin. Throughout the campaigns, Lebenson was at the division’s nerve center, typing orders, drafting battle maps, and acting as liaison. A rare enlisted man with top-secret status, he was in the room with Gen. Patton, Field Marshal Mont...
They became America’s first black paratroopers. Why was their story never told? Sibert Medalist Tanya Lee Stone reveals the history of the Triple Nickles during World War II. World War II is raging, and thousands of American soldiers are fighting overseas against the injustices brought on by Hitler. Back on the home front, the injustice of discrimination against African Americans plays out as much on Main Street as in the military. Enlisted black men are segregated from white soldiers and regularly relegated to service duties. At Fort Benning, Georgia, First Sergeant Walter Morris’s men serve as guards at The Parachute School, while the white soldiers prepare to be paratroopers. Morris k...
The fateful days and weeks surrounding 6 June 1944 have been extensively documented in histories of the Second World War, but less attention has been paid to the tremendous impact of these events on the populations nearby. The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy tells the inspiring yet heartbreaking story of ordinary people who did extraordinary things in defense of liberty and freedom. On D-Day, when transport planes dropped paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions hopelessly off-target into marshy waters in northwestern France, the 900 villagers of Graignes welcomed them with open arms. These villagers – predominantly women – provided food, gathered intelligence, and navigated the floods to retrieve the paratroopers' equipment at great risk to themselves. When the attack by German forces on 11 June forced the overwhelmed paratroopers to withdraw, many made it to safety thanks to the help and resistance of the villagers. In this moving book, historian Stephen G. Rabe, son of one of the paratroopers, meticulously documents the forgotten lives of those who participated in this integral part of D-Day history.
The daughter of a D-Day paratrooper and her husband, a PTSD therapist, discover a family legacy of love, trauma, and resilience when they set out to explore a vast trove of WWII correspondence, official military documents, personal effects, and unique militaria found in closets and basements after her father’s death. Young Sue Gurwell had always known that her father had been a paratrooper. An old camo parachute from Holland served as her backyard tent, and high on a shelf she mustn’t touch, eight red devils in parachutes grinned from the front of mysterious drinking glasses Dad had sent Mom during the war. And then there was the special poem in his roll-top desk she sometimes snuck a pe...
Long before becoming a museum curator, author Jan Krulick-Belin curated memories, photographs, and mementos of her father who died when she was just six. Her mother rarely spoke about him again, until a year before her own death, when she gave Jan a box of one hundred love letters he had written her during World War II. Love, Bill chronicles the true story of Krulick-Belin's life-changing pilgrimage of the heart to find the father she thought she'd lost forever. The letters lead her on an extraordinary journey following her father's actual footsteps during the war years, leading to unexpected discoveries from Morocco to Paris to upstate New York. She learns about her parents' great love story, about the war in North Africa, and about the fate of the Jews in Morocco, Germany, and France. Love, Bill offers a testament to the enduring power of determination, love, family, and the unbreakable bond between fathers and daughters.