I'm wondering if anyone has read this book before.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cu...e=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1175933913&sr=8-1
I'm taking this off some guy's review since I'm lazy to write one for it.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best World War II related books I have ever read. Burgett's personal accounts go unrivaled in detail. In the preface he mentions that he had composed most of it many years ago, after the war ended, and it shows. He describes the men in his squad, who you eventually grow slightly attached to, and you watch them die next to him. You hear of daily struggles with lack of food, sleep, warmth, and very close brushes with death. This man had me laughing out loud and sighing in pain on the same page. There is humor, there is sadness, there is awe that someone could live through something like this - considering it was one of his many campaigns in WW2. You can read many a book on WW2 or even the Bulge, movies too, to try and give you a closer look, but this goes deeper than all of them.
You get to feel, in a mild comparison to his experience, what it was actually like to be there - something which interests me and alot of people from my generation. This is one huge story of a campaign and many small, mind blowing stories tucked away inside of that. Prisoners who are left for dead because they can't be helped. Close friends who are left in the spot they fell because there's no way you can get to them.
I stopped several times while reading this book and told myself if I had watched it in a movie, I probably wouldn't have believed it.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Read it, appreciate it.
I'll add in a line in the book as well. This is them walking to Bastogne through the retreating crowds.
They walked, ran, and stumbled past us in singly, in twos, in threes, and in large gangs of men-all of them in wide-eyed shock and terror. Most were silent, althougth some mumbled incoherently. The few who did speak clearly repeated the same thing we'd heard during the night:"We're goin' back; you're goin' up. You'll all be killed! You'll all be killed! The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming! You'll all be killed!" Others could only do nothing more than mumble over and over,"Tanks, tanks, tanks..."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cu...e=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1175933913&sr=8-1
I'm taking this off some guy's review since I'm lazy to write one for it.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best World War II related books I have ever read. Burgett's personal accounts go unrivaled in detail. In the preface he mentions that he had composed most of it many years ago, after the war ended, and it shows. He describes the men in his squad, who you eventually grow slightly attached to, and you watch them die next to him. You hear of daily struggles with lack of food, sleep, warmth, and very close brushes with death. This man had me laughing out loud and sighing in pain on the same page. There is humor, there is sadness, there is awe that someone could live through something like this - considering it was one of his many campaigns in WW2. You can read many a book on WW2 or even the Bulge, movies too, to try and give you a closer look, but this goes deeper than all of them.
You get to feel, in a mild comparison to his experience, what it was actually like to be there - something which interests me and alot of people from my generation. This is one huge story of a campaign and many small, mind blowing stories tucked away inside of that. Prisoners who are left for dead because they can't be helped. Close friends who are left in the spot they fell because there's no way you can get to them.
I stopped several times while reading this book and told myself if I had watched it in a movie, I probably wouldn't have believed it.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Read it, appreciate it.
I'll add in a line in the book as well. This is them walking to Bastogne through the retreating crowds.
They walked, ran, and stumbled past us in singly, in twos, in threes, and in large gangs of men-all of them in wide-eyed shock and terror. Most were silent, althougth some mumbled incoherently. The few who did speak clearly repeated the same thing we'd heard during the night:"We're goin' back; you're goin' up. You'll all be killed! You'll all be killed! The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming! You'll all be killed!" Others could only do nothing more than mumble over and over,"Tanks, tanks, tanks..."
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