Vannoy, Allyn R. and Jay Karamales. Against the Panzers: United States Infantry vs German Tanks, 1944-1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2006

ISBN 0-7864-2612-8
xii + 352 pages

Acknowledgments; Foreword; Preface; photos; maps; Bibliography; Index

   Originally published ten years ago, this softcover reprint retains all the nitty-gritty detail of small unit combat between US and German forces in western Europe during 1944-1945. The authors examine eight engagements under high magnification and determine exactly what happened and why it happened. These guys know their stuff and they've brought together all the pertinent information from both sides of the front to demonstrate how tanks and infantry fought their battles at the end of the war.

   Following the hour-long German attack in the predawn darkness of 19 December, Colonel John F. R. Seitz, commander of the Twenty-sixth Infantry, began moving elements of his First Bn. out of reserve positions in Butgenbach. Company B dug in along the north side of the Bullingen-Butgenbach road between the town and the Domane. Soon after that, Company A moved to new positions 1,000 yards south of Butgenbach to tie in with Company B. This had the added benefit of guarding Second Bn.'s open right flank, and by 0500 the gap between the two battalions was reduced to 600 yards. Company B would cover this gap by fire during the daytime and establish outposts there at night.
   At about 0630, shortly after daylight, the Germans began shelling the Second Bn.'s positions with artillery and mortar fire. Not heavy at first, the barrage gradually increased in intensity throughout the morning. By 1000 it reached its peak strength, which was maintained until 1010 when the second German attack of the day hit the American positions from south and east.
   The first force came out of Morschheck, over the crest of Hill 613 and down the road to the Domane. Leading the attack was a German eight-wheeled armored car, probably an Sd Kfz 234/3, with a turret-mounted 75mm gun. Following closely behind was a large armored vehicle. Contemporary accounts claim this second vehicle was a Mark V Panther tank, but the only Panthers in Twelfth SS Panzer Division were in I Bn. of Twelfth SS Panzer Regt., which was still on its way to Bullingen from Krinkelt-Rocherath. This second vehicle was probably from the Twelfth SS Panzerjager Bn. of KG Mulller, and was almost certainly a Jagdpanzer IV/48. Together, these vehicles protected the advance of a company of SS infantry, who were probably from III Bn., Twenty-sixth SS Panzergrenadier Regt. Because of the heavy fog blanketing the area, the American gun crews let the Germans approach to within 100 yards of their positions in order to increase the chances of a hit on the vehicles and to confirm their identity as enemy.
   The men of the Second Gun Squad, Second Platoon of the Regimental Anti-Tank Company had just finished setting up their 57mm gun on the MLR a few minutes before the attack, and now they drew a bead on the approaching vehicles. On command, they began firing the gun as quickly as they could reload it, hammering our three armor-piercing (or possibly discarding sabot) rounds in a few seconds. The first two shells were aimed at the Jagdpanzer, which, being the most heavily armed and armored of the two vehicles, was the greater threat. Both rounds struck the Jagdpanzer, and damaged it enough so that it was forced to limp back up the hill to its own lines. But the AT gun's muzzle flashes had given away its location, and the armored car swung its turret to fire at the gun. Armored car and AT gun fired simultaneously. The American 57mm shell struck the armored car and destroyed it instantly. However, the German 75mm shell also found its mark, destroying the AT gun and killing two members of its crew, Cpl. Hale Williams and Pfc. Richard Wollenberg. Another crewman was blinded by the blast, and another would have to be evacuated because of battle fatigue.
   The German advance from Morschheck now ground to a halt because the grenadiers could not advance against the deadly American artillery and small arms fire without armored support. The commanding officer of Company E, Captain Pierre Stepanian, called in artillery and 81mm mortar fire on the exposed Germans, and almost the entire company was slaughtered before the American foxholes. Some of the artillery rounds fell within 50 yards of the American positions. Those few SS troops who were able to stumble back into the Butgenbacher Heck were ambushed and killed by the men of the American listening post still hiding just inside the forest's edge.

   Very nicely done and definitely recommended to anyone interested in studying tactics in a manner simultaneously enlightening and exciting.

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Bando, Mark. Avenging Eagles: Forbidden Tales of the 101st Airborne Division in World War 2. Redford, MI: Mark Bando, 2006

ISBN 0-9779117-0-5
ix + 183 pages

Acknowledgements; Preface; photos; Bibliography; Glossary

   After more than thirty years of interviewing veterans of the 101st Airborne, Mark Bando has been able to produce a number of interesting books about the Screaming Eagles in World War II. This time around, however, he takes a different approach. Instead of a relatively glossy, heavily illustrated book, Bando has self-published "forbidden tales" learned from the vets over the years and made public for the first. Reading the stories here makes it clear why some are considered forbidden and why the author has in many cases altered names to protect the identities of individuals. Not all these recollections come from the dark side, but there are more than enough descriptions of episodes such as gang rape, fratricide, and execution of prisoners to make it clear that while some wars might be worse than others, there's no such thing as a good war.

   Two Germans, clad in camouflaged jackets, dropped down and raised their hands. These snipers were recently out of the Hitler Youth and had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the Nazi belief that they were of the Master Race. They were searched and lined up at the corner.
   Cocky, confident and contemptuous, the Germans sneered at their captors and spit on the ground defiantly, as they stood with their hands clasped behind their heads.
   "You would've had to be there, to understand it," Nick Denovchik later said. "The arrogance of these guys, the arrogance was infuriating! It made us see red."
   The three 501st troopers looked at Roy Spivey, who was lying semi-conscious, with blood running from his head wound, then at the brash young Nazis, who were literally pulsating up and down, displaying their defiant attitudes.
   The lives of these prisoners now hung on a precarious thread.
   From inside the aid station, Father Sampson emerged. He greeted his troopers warmly and said, "Hello, boys! Oh, I see you have some prisoners there. Take them a few miles back up the road and the MP escort guards will herd them back to the beach!"
   At this point, Johnny L- looked at the two snipers with the cocky attitudes, unslung his M1-A1 carbine and said, "Bullshit."
   L- started rapidly firing his semi-automatic .30 caliber weapon into the surprised prisoners.
   "No! Stop! Don't do that! You shouldn't do that," Father Sampson shouted.
   Too late. The now very dead arrogant prisoners sank down to the ground, and still L- continued firing until his 15-round magazine had emptied.
   Father Sampson recorded the shooter's name and brought charges against him, which resulted in a court-martial back in England. Johnny L- received minor punishment, amounting to extra duty and restriction to camp for a certain amount of time. He would finish WW2 with Company A and returned to his home in Ohio.
   In 1949, L- was among the WW2 101st veterans who acted as extras in the Hollywood film "Battleground". Shortly after the premiere, he left his hometown without notice, and his relatives never heard from him again. His whereabouts are unknown to this day.
   Down at Colonel Johnson's lock perimeter, the troops were alerted to prepare to move to Vierville, where the 501st regiment would regroup. There was a little medic at la Barquette nicknamed "Mouse", who had been an acrobat in a vaudeville show before entering the Army. Mouse later told his buddies in F Company that he had given fatal injections of morphine to several badly wounded German prisoners who had been hit in the June 7th fighting.
   The Germans had nodded gratefully, saying "Danke, danke..." when receiving the injections, not knowing the shots amounted to lethal overdoses. Such was the mood of vengeance at the time that the Fox Company troopers who heard the story viewed it with hilarity, and enjoyed a good laugh with Mouse, as he related what had happened.
   Some medics who heard about this were mortified at the perversion of their mission to preserve human life. To make things worse. Mouse would marry an English girl, then shoot himself in the foot at the airfield before the next mission. He had no intention of returning to combat, and he did not.
   It was also at la Barquette after the capitulation of the 1st Battalion 6th Para Regiment, that two members of the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion went out into the swamp to search for German survivors who were too badly wounded to walk in under their own power. This pair of troopers later returned to the lock perimeter and told their buddy, George Dickson, that they had cut the throats of all the wounded Germans they found out there. They claimed this was done to conserve ammunition, but their story had a disturbing effect on Dickson when he heard about it.

   Is it better to publish these stories and preserve the reality of the 101st's experience for future generations, or should these memories have died with the division's dwindling ranks of WWII veterans? Readers will need to answer that question for themselves. Either way, these escapades are guaranteed to captivate, but they will also be controversial, and Mark Bando is likely to catch heat from some quarters for having the guts to go public with these confessions.

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Hicks, Anne. The Last Fighting General: The Biography of Robert Tryon Frederick. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 2006

ISBN 0-7643-2403-6
270 pages

Introduction; photos; Bibliography; Index

Appendix: Frederick's Decorations and Awards

   Anne Hicks chose a great topic for her book. Unfortunately, her words make it sound like she's not much of a writer. Even worse for someone writing about a WWII general, she seems not to have much of a grasp of military terms and operations.

   By 25 March Frederick had chosen landing sites across the Rhine that would enable him to cut the Autobahn, to snip this easy passageway for the enemy. At 2:00 AM the next night he walked quietly on the river's edge through brush bursting with new spring growth; it was not necessary to see the Germans 1,000 feet away to know that they were peering from behind tall willows, crouched at weapons. Frederick had received no accurate diagnosis of their strength—but trying, by osmosis, to get into their heads, he felt they too did not exactly know their strength, and after an effort of determined resistance, would soften.
   At 2:30 AM blue lights flicked on in back of shacks nearby, and in hushed rows rising, his troops ran bent over to storm boats. The roar of boat motors brought murderous fire from German machine guns and 88s—the water churned by shells; the moonlight picking out dim forms—as wave after wave of Thunderbirds crossed over, leapt ashore, and fanned out. Almost half of the boats were lost, some when making a second run with troops, who then had to swim to the far shore, as meanwhile the 45th's tanks free-floated across....
   As he began maneuvering his regiments through the dozen towns, they encountered white flags and passive faces; and by a stroke of good luck, found a railroad bridge over the Main River intact. Frederick sped across it in his jeep, scattering what few Germans were attempting to blow up the bridge. Then, while engineers threw down planks and the 45th crossed over, he got his answer. Just south of Aschaffenburg was an organized mass of weapons manned by fanatical civilians, side-by-side with German troops.
   They put up hysterical opposition as Frederick, to initiate the siege of the city, ordered it be gradually encircled. His troops then pushed in and met even fiercer civilian opposition, motivated, somewhat, by the commander of Aschaffenburg's defense, Major von Lambert. He had issued to both civilians and his over 3,000 Nazi troops a decree "Everyone to fight to the last," and erected grisly reminders not to give up. Dangling from streetlights and buildings were a number of Lambert's own officers, on their limp bodies pinned signs that read "Cowards and traitors hang!"
   As the 45th punched in deeper, with a thousand decisions to make from dawn to dawn Frederick, orchestrating his infantrymen, tanks, and artillery, called on one chemical battalion to fire off rounds of explosives and phosphorous shells. In the ensuing inferno, his troops moved house-to-house, room-to-room, slugging it out with bayonets, while civilians on rooftops hurled hand grenades at them—and German reinforcements steadily arrived.

   Whether it's Frederick's effort at recon by osmosis, free-floating tanks, or "civilian" opposition (almost certainly Volkssturm, but Hicks apparently hasn't encountered the term), the text is so riddled with jarring phrases and concepts that it's difficult to take seriously. Too bad. Schiffer Publishing can usually be relied upon for a much higher level of quality.

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Thorburn, Gordon. Bombers First and Last. London: Robson Books, 2006

ISBN 1-86105-946-9
ix + 418 pages

Acknowledgements; photos; Postscript; Roll of Honour; Bibliography and Sources; Index

Appendix: RAF Bardney

   This history of Bomber Command's No. 9 Squadron showed up here rather unexpectedly and turned out to be a real treat that transcends the genre. While Thorburn writes a thorough history of the squadron, his skills turn the unit's story into something considerably broader and deeper. Of the multitude of books on Bomber Command, few perform such a fine job of following an ever-changing group of men from the war's beginning to end, and imbuing the story with a full measure of courage, horror, humor, and humanity.

   John Evans, 20, went on his second trip as captain to Stettin, 20 April. 'Flack over target. Bombs jettisoned at 200-500 feet without captain's knowledge owing to breakdown of intercom. Port outer engine caught fire. Fire started in cockpit and under pilot's seat. Port wingtip hit. Port side of fuselage hit. Fires extinguished. Explosion of jettisoned bombs caused severe damage to aircraft, but captain succeeded in bringing it back.'
   At Stettin former 9 Squadron skipper McDonald, now a pilot officer with his new Pathfinder squadron No. 83, was attacked by a nightfighter. Petrol leaking fast, they decided to try for Sweden, so made a landing attempt at Malmo and ended up ditching. McDonald, with his 9 Squadron vets Parrington, Nunn, Paley, Coles and Crebbin, was pulled from the sea, interned briefly and sent home to carry on to more adventures.
   A new Lancaster arrived at Bardney, W4964. She was assigned the letter 'J' and given to W/0 Herbert Wood for Stettin, her first Op. J-Jig came home, Wood came home, 'outline of factory seen', and two careers began; one would prove very much shorter than the other. At Stettin lots of factories were seen, first by the light of the excellently placed marker flares, and then by the light of the flames. Out of Oboe range this was professional bombing.
   Results were coming, though bought at the same dear price. The odds against an airman completing a full tour, averaged over the whole war, were four to one against. The average life expectancy was thirteen Ops.
   The new aircraft W4964 had odds of 250-1 against what she was going to do; fly over one hundred Ops. At the start of a tour of thirty Operations, a crew member and/or a new Lancaster seemingly had no chance of finishing it. Churchill, the War Cabinet, the Air Marshals and all the other top brass deemed it acceptable that heavy bomber losses should run at an average of five per cent per operation, one in twenty. That was to say, acceptable to those who did not fly in bombers, or love those who flew in them, who did not repair and maintain them, or work on bomber aerodromes.
   Take any twenty bombers and crews and after twenty Ops there shouldn't be any left. New boys, sprog crews, were more likely to be lost than old hands, that was observably true, but the powers-that-be counteracted that by giving the worst jobs to the old hands. Even so, some had to have the luck to survive the thirty, a reassuring thought for those who felt themselves to be very lucky. Perhaps it was like batting in cricket. If you scored nineteen not out, you were more likely to reach thirty and less likely to be out than you had been when you came in on nought. Also, the lost Lancasters were replaced so you could say, each time you went you were one of twenty again, 19-1 against being the one who had a prang, bought a packet, bought the farm, went for a Burton, got the chop. Was killed.

   Thorburn writes deftly, almost conversationally, in a rather staccato style and integrates a wide range of well-told anecdotes from RAF veterans. Even without those strengths, the book would be worth the money just for the absolutely hilarious collection of quotations from the squadron's "Line Book" which was compiled during the war whenever anyone delivered a humorous nugget in the officer's mess.

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   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from the publishers.
   Thanks to the publishers for providing these review copies.