ISBN 0-89839-305-1
810 pages

Introduction; photos; maps

Appendices: Honor Roll; Individual Decorations; Distinguished Unit Citations; Foreign Citations; Battle Credits; Estimated Casualties; Strength Statistics; Airborne Songs and Poems; Abbreviations

   Thank heaven for Richard Gardner!
   In a time when too many publishers are bringing out shoddy material by authors who don't really know their subject, Gardner keeps The Battery Press tightly focused on publishing new, high quality editions of important older military books. These reprints encompass many wars of the 19th and 20th centuries—Battery's luscious editions of the British official history volumes from the Great War are enough to start many WWII collectors down the road of bibliomaniacal infidelity—but among the company's finest efforts is the steady re-issue of American WWII divisional histories.
   The majority of these divisional histories were published in the immediate post-war years and most of them went quickly out of print, leaving later generations of historians and collectors (and the descendents of veterans) to seek used copies from a dwindling and increasingly expensive supply on the secondhand market. So it was with Rendezvous with Destiny, originally published in 1948.
   Battery's willingness to invest in making a reprint edition available to the public is especially appreciated in this case, because not only was the 101st one of the most distinguished American divisions of the war, but it also has a fine unit history. The pair of officers who wrote the book utilized veterans to a far greater extent than did most writers: circulating questionnaires to clarify specific actions and meeting with groups of vets to review early drafts. In addition, Rapport and Northwood took advantage of the ground-breaking work of S.L.A. Marshall. Marshall spent considerable time with the 101st, interviewed many of the men, and wrote a number of after action reports on their engagements, many of which are included in this volume, notably Marshall's account of the opening days of the encirclement at Bastogne.
   The 101st was activated in Louisiana on 16 August 1942 with the "amboeba-like breaking-in-two" of the 82nd Division. Initially commanded by Major General William Lee—known in those days as the "Father of the Airborne," but nearly forgotten sixty years later despite a solid biography by Jerry Autry—the 101st began arriving in England in 1943 and was soon engaged in serious preparation for the return to the continent.
   The story of the division's role in Operation Overlord need not be repeated here, because nearly everyone familiar with any aspect of America's participation in World War II will know about the dramatic drop into Normandy in the pre-dawn hours of 6 June 1944. And, of course, the 101st went on to even greater fame in Holland during Operation Market-Garden and at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge.
   For the most part, Rapport and Northwood provide a very detailed, unblinking account of the division's battles:

   The colonel went outside and sent about ten men up the field which lay well beyond the farmhouse between the road and the Madeleine. They moved on as far as the crossroads. Four Germans came out of the woods shouting "Kamerad!" But they still held their arms. Two men of Company H had been killed by this same trick within a few hundred feet of the same spot earlier in the day. So the patrol shot into them. Two went down and the other two jumped back into the woods. Otherwise the patrol found nothing but dead Germans. They came back and reported it. Colonel Cole sent a second force of twenty-five men under Lt. George H. Craft and Lt. George E. Bean, both of Company G, to prowl the orchard. They crossed the first field in a skirmish line—a scratch force drawn from all four companies. There was no German fire; however, the advancing line continued to fire into the base of the hedgerow as it went forward. The second hedgerow and the orchard were about seventy-five yards away and it was another hundred yards across the orchard. From the area embracing the field and orchard had come most of the enemy fire throughout the day. The artillery had cut a few convenient holes in the hedgerow. Some of the men jumped through them. Others went by the gate. They stayed in the field and orchard for more than an hour. A German machine gun fired loosely at them from far over on the left. Next to the hedgerow they found an American 60mm mortar which the Germans had been using against them. Colonel Cole came up to them where they had formed a fire line along the hedgerow. He told them to hold it until 2nd Battalion came to relieve them. The German fire could still be heard faintly in the distance, but the whole front had cooled along the bank of the Madeleine. By morning the Germans had disappeared from this sector of the front.

   In addition to the famed battles of Normandy, Market-Garden, and Bastogne, Rendezvous with Destiny devotes about a hundred pages to the final campaigns of the 101st in France, Germany, and Austria.
   The authors weave into their narrative recollections of veterans but place all this material in the context of a larger perspective. In addition to photos and sketches, there are also more than a hundred maps.
   In sum, Rapport and Northwood have done just about everything right. This is a divisional history definitely worth having.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Battery Press.
   Thanks to Battery for providing this review copy.