Book reviews 
 Recommended reading 
 Book forum 
 Latest book feedback 

 Popular resources 
 Recent views 
 Random book 

 Newsletter requests 
 Sell your books 

 War Diary 
 Armies 
 Nations at war 
 History 
 Trivia challenge 

 WWII links

 About us 
 Site guide 
 Site index 

ISBN 0-8117-2682-7
304 pages

Foreword by Stephen E. Ambrose; Preface; map legend; maps; photos; References; Bibliography; Acknowledgments; Index

Appendix: U.S. and German Tables of Organization and Equipment

   Originally published in 1989, Joe Balkoski's terrific book has been out of print for several years. It's great to have it back.
   The new edition contains a few revisions and additions but mostly remains unchanged and that's just fine. The author's original version was a near-perfect blend of "what-it-was-like" snippets from veterans, authoritative descriptions of infantry operations, and thoughtful analysis of the opposing forces. While Balkoski succeeds in giving the men of the US 29th Infantry Division a first-rate unit history from mobilization through Omaha Beach and St Lo, he also succeeds in transcending the genre by revealing their failures and successes as a microcosm of the larger struggle by the fresh and mostly green American Army against its battered but hardened German opponents.
   Not only does Balkoski understand the military aspects of his subject, his strong, graceful prose discloses the depth of his respect for the men of the 29th Division. Their words and stories play an integral part in his history without overwhelming the larger historical issues, and it's further proof of Balkoski's skills as a writer that he can use a few telling details (such as the "oot" and "aboot" accent of the 29th's Virginians) to paint such lifelike portraits of his subjects. Which is not to say that his historian's eye is blind to their faults and shortcomings, or that he treats the soldiers of the German 352nd Infantry and 3rd Fallschirmjaeger Divisions with any less dignity or respect.
   The author also proves sure enough of his skills to twist the flow of his story in order to maximize both the drama of the costly landing on Omaha Beach and the reader's understanding of everything that has led up to H-Hour. His Introduction opens in England where the 29th boards its invasion vessels and sets out across the English Channel for the enemy-occupied shore. The tension rises as the young soldiers board their landing craft and begin the long run to the beach in conditions of calculated chaos. Already under fire, with other boats—jammed with friends and comrades—blown out of the water around them, the seasick men of the 116th Infantry Regiment gird themselves as the first wave of landing craft crunch onto the beach and drop their ramps.
   From that climactic moment Balkoski shifts gears and scenes, jumping back in time to the 29th's mobilization and training. He described the division's time at Fort Meade, Maryland in 1940 and 1941, its low morale, the aimless drills and routines, integration of draftees with the National Guardsmen, and training at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia and Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The narrative continues through 7 December 1941, and then Balkoski jumps back in time again to discuss the military heritage of the 29th's regiments.
   This heritage included the 116th Regiment's roots as the 2nd Virginia, senior regiment of the Stonewall Brigade of Civil War fame. Indeed, the men of the 116th continue to refer to themselves as the Stonewall Brigade. When the 29th Infantry was formed with regiments from Maryland and Virginia, it was named "the Blue and Gray Division" for its Union and Confederate antecedents and it symbolized this heritage with a distinctive circular blue and gray "yin-yang" shoulder patch. In World War I the division added to its battle honors with three weeks in the line during the Meuse-Argonne offensive.
   Balkoski returns to the Second World War at the time of Pearl Harbor to find the division's wartime morale surging despite a series of unglamorous assignments and exercises including patrolling beaches from the Outer Banks to Atlantic City and guarding warehouses, railroad junctions, and docks. In January 1942 Major Leonard T. "Gee" Gerow assumed command of the 29th. In March the division was reorganized from "square" to "triangular", with its 176th Infantry Regiment (the "Richmond Blues") departing. In mid-April the streamlined Blue and Gray departed Fort Meade for another round of maneuvers at Fort A.P. Hill. In July the division moved to Carolina for more exercises, and then to a new home post at Camp Blanding in Florida in August.
   In September the 29th's units began moving by train to New Jersey and on the 26th of the month they began moving to their points of embarkation. On 27 September 1942 the liner Queen Mary slipped past the Statue of Liberty, taking the first echelon of the 29th to England.
   On 2 October, 160 miles from her destination, in an incident that was hushed up, the Queen Mary picked up an escort of six destroyers and the cruiser HMS Curacao. Later in the day the cruiser cut across the huge ocean liner's bow and the Queen Mary sliced the smaller warship in half. Both sections of the cruiser sank in minutes with 338 sailors lost. The liner, packed with thousands of troops, followed orders and did not even slow down.
   The Queen Mary arrived at Greenock the next day and the Queen Elizabeth on 11 October with the balance of the division. The units moved to Tidworth Barracks near Stonehenge and quickly began to orient themselves and resume training. The 29th was one of the first American divisions to arrive in England and, as one that did not move to the Mediterranean for operations in North Africa and Italy, by the spring of 1944 had become known derisively as "England's Own."
   In July 1943 Major General Charles Hunter Gerhardt assumed command of the Blue and Gray. Balkoski devotes a large section of his "England" chapter to describing the new CO and his impact on the division. He was a demanding officer who wanted his men to look like soldiers, act like soldiers, and know the business of soldiers. He was also not above petty demands that, for example, had his aide and divisional cooks scrambling to oblige his sudden craving to have waffles for his breakfast. Later, the story is also told how, among the debris and corpses on Omaha Beach, on the morning of D+1 Gerhardt chewed out a passing GI for dropping orange peels in the sand.
   Later in 1943 the 29th also received Brigadier General Norman Cota as assistant CO. He got along well with Gerhardt and, we're told, was the only man in the division who could get away with wearing his helmet strap unfastened.
   The "England" chapter ends where the Introduction began, with Gerhardt's men ready to board their invasion vessels and serve as half of the first wave assaulting Omaha Beach.
   In the following chapter Balkoski switches gears again to describe the German army and its forces occupying France and guarding the invasion coast. In particular he examines the state of the 352nd Infantry Division, the formation that would soon be providing a stiff test for the Americans. Balkoski notes the unusual deployment of the 352nd with a high proportion of its forces defending the sector least likely to see an enemy landing. He also explains the siting of obstacles, "resistance nests", and weapons along Omaha Beach.
   In "Men and Guns" Balkoski presents a brilliant essay on small unit organization, weapons, and tactics for both Americans and Germans. This lucid, well-written exposition should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the beachhead, bocage, and breakout. It also serves as an unsurpassed primer on some of the fundamental differences between American and German ground forces and why not only the Normandy campaign but the entire war in western Europe in 1944-45 unfolded as it did. This chapter alone is worth the price of admission.

   US Army field manuals emphasized the importance of fire superiority, but in truth, the Yanks found it difficult to achieve without supporting artillery. American infantrymen simply were not provided with enough firepower to establish battlefield dominance. Each 29th Division rifle company of 193 men had only two machine guns, both of which were in an independent weapons platoon. On the other hand, a German infantry company of only 142 men had fifteen machine guns. The German company's firepower was further enhanced by its twenty-eight submachine guns. The 29ers had no weapons of this type. The American rifle company was dependent on its nine BARs for rapid fire, but these weapons could not stand up to the MG 42s. Instead of forcing the Germans to keep their heads down with a large volume of M1 and BAR fire, as the American manuals demanded, it was usually the Yanks who got pinned.
   Even a depleted German rifle company, consisting of no more than fifty men, commonly covered a 1,000-yard front. Such a sector would have been considered lengthy for an American company at full strength. As long as the German company's fifteen MG 42s were functional—which required a total of only thirty men (two per weapon)—the Kompaniefuehrer (company CO) was content, for the machine guns were the linchpins of German tactics. The remaining twenty men would act as ammunition bearers and lookouts for the MG 42 crews. Thus, on the defensive, even a skeletal German company proved a tough opponent.

   When the Americans run into the 3rd Fallschirmjaeger Division later in the campaign, Balkoski notes an even greater imbalance in infantry firepower:

   The Fallschirmjaeger were probably the best-armed infantrymen in the world in 1944. The Luftwaffe spared no expense in providing the paratroopers with MG 42s. The 3rd FJ Division had 930 light machine guns—almost twice as many as the 352nd and over eleven times [author's italics] as many as the 29th Division. An American rifle company had two Browning air-cooled machine guns and nine BARs; a Fallschirmjaeger company had twenty MG 42s and forty-three submachine guns. At the squad level, the only source of automatic fire for the Yanks was a single BAR; in contrast, the German parachute squad had two MG 42s and three submachine guns. Thus, in a skirmish between equal numbers of 29ers and the Fallschirmjaeger, the American quest for fire superiority was doomed to failure.

   Is it any wonder many sources condemn American infantry for being "overly reliant" on artillery support?
   The first section of the "D-Day" chapter explains the exact plan for the landing on Omaha Beach in the sector of the 29th Division, although its assault elements would be subordinated to the 1st Infantry Division on 6 June. Finally, after his tour de force—and now that we know exactly who these men are and what they'll be facing—Balkoski returns to the moment he left the assault companies in their landing craft with ramps clanging down on enemy-held beaches.
   At this point the author proves he is also a master of describing the combat operations of companies, platoons, and small groups of frightened men. Thanks largely to the efforts of assistant division command Norm Cota, the Stonewallers of the 116th Regiment, soon supported by their comrades of the 115th, despite horrendous casualties managed to fight their way off the beach and into the heights beyond.
   Cota continued to energize the 29th on D+1:

   Cota was a one-man army again. He spent most of the morning with the 115th, supervising their mop-up efforts, prodding the men forward, issuing progress reports to Gerhardt. During the fighting near St Lauren, Cota came across a group of infantrymen, pinned by a few obstinate Germans in a nearby house. Cota sought out the man in charge, an infantry captain, and asked why the men were making no attempt to take the building. "Sir, the Germans are in there, shooting at us," the captain replied.
   "Well, I'll tell you what, captain," said Cota, unbuckling two grenades from his jacket. "You and your men start shooting at them. I'll take a squad of men and you and your men watch carefully. I'll show you how to take a house with Germans in it."
   The astonished captain watched as Cota led his little group around the house to a nearby hedge. Suddenly, the general and his group raced forward, screaming like wild men, hurling grenades in the windows. Cota and another man kicked in the front door, tossed a few more grenades inside, waited for the explosion, and then disappeared into the house. As the rest of Cota's team followed him inside, the Germans streamed out the back and ran for their lives.
   Cota returned to the captain. "You've seen how to take a house," said Cota, still out of breath. "Do you understand? Do you know how to do it now?"
   "Yes, sir," the captain replied meekly.
   "Well, I won't be around to do it for you again," Cota said. "I can't do it for everybody."

   Leavened with brief, to-the-point quotes from veterans of the 29th—rather than overwhelmed with lengthy tales that don't add to the story—Balkoski's narrative follows the Blue and Gray division through the bocage fighting where time and again the 29th's operations ("ill-conceived, ill-planned, and ill-executed" in the words of Norman Cota) led to heavy casualties among unsupported companies and battalions at the hands of steadfast German defenders and their deadly MG 42s. 2nd Battalion of the 115th was ambushed while sleeping along hedgerows without having dug themselves foxholes. The 175th Regiment was "roughly handled on June 12 and 13...[t]wo companies were decimated, one was almost annihilated, and a regimental CO...was presumed dead..." when attempting to cross the Vire. Whether Gerhardt and his soldiers recognized it at the time, the book makes it clear the infantry was being frittered away in uncoordinated and unsupported movements and attacks. "In only eight days of combat, the division had suffered 2,400 casualties—17 percent of its authorized strength."
   Despite heavy losses while in the process of unlearning some questionable tactical doctrine and discovering the realities of grappling with the enemy's intense automatic weapons firepower, Gerhardt's men gradually gained the upper hand as they repeatedly pushed forward and inflicted irreplaceable losses on the dwindling German defenders. The "one squad, one tank, one field" doctrine for breaking through the bocage eventually winkled the 352nd Infantry and 3rd Fallschirmjaeger from one position after another. Despite dispersed forces, uncoordinated movements, and failure to exploit local successes, the Americans managed to seize St Lo, the objective long denied them, on 18 July.
   By that time there was only a dwindling number of original 29ers still with the division.

   The old-timers sarcastically referred to Gerhardt as a corps commander rather than a division commander. "He has a division in the field, a division in the hospital, and a division in the cemetery," the men used to say.

   Painful and costly though the campaign proved to be, the 29th persevered and emerged victorious. After forty-three days of combat from Omaha Beach to St Lo, the division was granted eight days of rest before joining the battle once more. The final scene, a description of the 29th Division memorial service at the new American cemetery near Omaha Beach on 23 July 1944, provides a moving conclusion to the account.
   Beyond the Beachhead is outstanding, an engrossing book by an author who knows and respects his subject. Balkoski succeeds in educating the reader about the nuts and bolts of organization, tactics, and weapons while simultaneously providing a dramatic, entertaining story of men in combat. Highly recommended.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Stackpole Books.
   Thanks to Stackpole for providing this review copy.

Read and submit feedback

Reviewed 26 March 1999
Copyright © 1999 by Bill Stone
May not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Stone & Stone