Book Review: 'The Mighty Endeavor: The American War in Europe'
(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...