A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1992 Da Capo Press The Mighty Endeavor: The American War in Europe (1992) (Originally published in 1969 as The Mighty Endeavor: American Armed Forces in the European Theater in World War II ) By Charles B. MacDonald Dawn reached slowly into the Huertgen Forest, as if reluctant to throw light on a stark tableau that it seemed only the devil himself could have created. Once magnificent trees were now twisted, gashed, broken, their limbs and foliage forming a thick carpet on the floor of the forest. Some trees stood like gaunt, outsized toothpicks. Great jagged chunks of concrete and twisted reinforcing rods that together had been a pillbox. The mutilated carcass of a truck that had hit a mine. Everywhere discarded soldier equipment – gas masks, empty rations containers, helmets, rifles, here a field jacket with a sleeve rent, there a muddy overcoat with an ugly clotted dark stain on it. One man kicked a bloody shoe from his path, then shuddered to see that the s...

Although I like to read different types of books about the Second World War, I don’t usually read memoirs written by the participants because (a) most of them are written by generals or politicians, (b) they can be tedious to read and/or (c) the authors have axes to grind or are trying to twist history in order to enhance their reputation at the expense of the truth.  (In other words, they can often be self-serving and even misleading.)  There are other reasons why memoirs don’t attract my attention as a reader in the same fashion as books like Cornelius Ryan’s  A Bridge Too Far  or Stephen E. Ambrose’s  Band of Brothers  do; as historian Ronald H. Spector ( Eagle Against the Sun )  puts it, “Memoirs of wars and politics usually become less interesting with the passage of time.”  Readers who were born a generation after V-E or V-J Day find such works as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe  (1948) or Winston Churchill’s six-volume opu...

Pros: Gripping and well-written account of the U.S. Army's greatest battle   Cons: None. The Bottom Line: Although it covers the same battle as "The Bitter Woods," A Time for Trumpets is more focused and benefits from the declassification of the "Ultra" secret. Great read! On December 16, 1944, elements of three German armies -- 14 infantry and five panzer divisions in all -- attacked part of the American First Army along an 80-mile front along Germany's border with Belgium and Luxembourg. The sudden and unexpected counteroffensive hit the Americans in an area the Allies thought would be a nice, quiet sector for combat-weary divisions to rest and refit while green divisions fresh from the States could be acclimated to life on the line: the dark and deep forests of the Ardennes. Planned and ordered by Adolf Hitler himself, this massive onslaught was launched with one objective in mind: penetrate the American lines, pass through the "impassable...