Beyond Valor: World War II's Ranger and Airborne Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat - Softcover

O'Donnell, Patrick K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684873850 ISBN 13: 9780684873855

Verlag: Free Press, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

The thrilling story of the Airborne and Ranger troops that saw the worst of WWII action—told for the first time in the voices of the soldiers themselves.

From the first parachute drops in North Africa to the final battles in Germany, U.S. Ranger and Airborne troops saw the worst action of World War II. In Beyond Valor, Patrick O'Donnell, a pioneer of internet-based “oral history” who has collected the first-person stories of hundreds of veterans on his online oral history project, re-creates the frontline experience in stunning detail, weaving together more than 650 “e-histories” and interviews into a seamless narrative.

In recollections filled with pain, poignancy, and pride, veterans chronicle the destruction of entire battalions, speak of their own personal scars, and pay tribute to their fallen colleagues. Beyond Valor brings to light the hidden horrors and uncelebrated heroics of a war fought by a now-vanishing generation and preserves them for all future generations.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bestselling author Patrick K. O’Donnell is a special operations historian who has written numeroous books, including, The Indispensables; First SEALs; Beyond Valor; Into the Rising Sun; Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs; The Brenner Assignment; They Dared Return; We Were One (selected for the Marine Commandant’s Professional Reading List); Give Me Tomorrow; and Dog Company. The author is the recipient of numerous awards including the prestigious William E. Colby Award and the OSS Society’s John Waller Award. He has provided historical consultation for DreamWorks’s award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers and for documentaries produced by the BBC, the History Channel, and Fox News. He served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah and is in demand as an expert speaker on WWII espionage, special operations, and counterinsurgency on the modern battlefield. Over the past twenty years, O’Donnell has interviewed more than 4,000 veterans who fought in America’s wars from WWI to Afghanistan and specializes in “unearthing untold true stories that read like novels.” Visit him online at PatrickKODonnell.com.

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Introduction

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

-- Laurence Binyon, "For the Fallen"

In 1939, just twenty-one years after the end of a war more destructive than anything humanity had dreamed possible, Europe began a war that proved even more horrific and more widespread, bringing all the intervening technological advances to bear against civilians and soldiers alike. In December 1941, the United States joined a battle in which the stakes were enormous and the outcome by no means certain. But the story of war is familiar. Less familiar is the very personal and human side of war, a side often purposely hidden from easy view: war as seen, heard, smelled, and felt in the day-to-day front-line experience of the combat soldier. This book tells that hidden story, through the oral and e-mail histories of America's elite infantry troops who fought in World War II's European theater -- paratroopers, glidermen, Rangers, and the 1st Special Service Force.

Throughout the war, America's elite troops often played a key role in the war's most important battles, leading the breakthrough off bloody Omaha Beach; fighting to help save the Sicily and Salerno beachheads; cracking the stalemate on Italy's Winter Line; spearheading the invasion of Holland; turning the tide in the Battle of the Bulge; and making the final plunge into Germany. On the home front, the little-known sacrifices of America's first African-American paratroopers were an important step toward integration of the United States armed forces.

Underlying these important victories are the countless individual experiences of the men who made them possible. Their stories go far beyond casualties taken, hills won or lost. In nine years and over six hundred interviews, I found that beneath the war of official documents and carefully composed memoirs lies a bottled-up, buried version shielded even from family members, because many of the memories are too painful to discuss.

The hidden war includes the love that these men had for one another. Friendships and bonds forged in the heat of battle are so strong that they survive today. These men were willing without hesitation to lay down their lives for the men next to them. Time and again, they describe submergence of self within the spirit and pride of these elite units. Wartime experiences, however horrific, were often the most complete and most memorable in these soldiers' lives. Not one of the six hundred men I interviewed ever complained about his war experience, though most of these men were only temporary citizen soldiers, not professional military men.

As these men delve into their recollections, three major themes emerge: their hidden war, the story of the elite units, and the broader story of World War II's Western Front, since their war is largely a reflection in miniature of the European Theater. A bit of background on these units shows how they fit into the picture of the war.

The great armies of history all had their elite units, including Rome's Praetorian Guard, Napoleon's Imperial Guard, and the Civil War's Iron Brigade. As one historian stated, "In battle they were the ultimate reserve if things went wrong, and the exploiting force if things went right." Nevertheless, America's elite ground troops in Europe in World War II -- the Rangers, airborne troops, and the 1st Special Service Force -- were different and special compared to the elites of other eras as well as to the regular troops of their own.

The Airborne

The largest elite unit was the airborne. The first practical plans for employing parachute troops in combat were conceived in the waning months of World War I by a U.S. aviation pioneer, Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell. Mitchell proposed outfitting troops of the 1st Division with a large number of machine guns and parachuting them behind the lines on the German-held fortress city of Metz. A ground attack would be coordinated with the paratrooper assault, known as a "vertical envelopment." But the war ended before Mitchell's innovative plans could be tried.

After the war, the concept of vertical envelopment was neglected in the United States. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, pushed ahead with large-scale airborne exercises in the 1930s. Germany took notice of the Soviet exercises and began building its own airborne program, made up of paratroopers and infantry that would ride in gliders.

With the outbreak of war, the Germans successfully used paratroopers to seize critical military objectives in Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium, where a small band of paratroopers and glidermen seized Fort Eben Emael, which many had considered impregnable.

These victories spurred the creation of the U.S. airborne program, and a fifty-man test platoon was formed on June 25, 1940. On August 16, Lieutenant William Ryder became the first member of the test platoon to make a parachute jump. In one demonstration jump, the famous airborne phrase "Geronimo!" was born when Private Aubrey Eberhardt yelled it after exiting the plane.

Over the next few months, parachute tactics and techniques were developed and techniques borrowed from Germany and Russia. The fledgling program expanded as volunteers formed the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion. A special Élan was part of a program that stressed the role of the individual and the necessity that he be capable of fighting against any opposition. As the parachute program evolved, men were taught that they were the best, a lesson reinforced by rigorous training that had a high washout rate. Beyond the rhetoric, the troops began demonstrating their worth by smashing previous army training records.

Parachute training culminated with the individual completing five parachute jumps. The successful trooper earned the right to wear a pair of small silver jump wings designed by a young airborne officer, William Yarborough. Special leather jump boots and jump suits were also issued to paratroopers. An unofficial ceremony known as the Prop Blast, in which new paratrooper officers drank a secret concoction and toasted their success, marked the completion of airborne training. The recipe was then encoded into an old M-94 signal-encrypting device with "Geronimo" as the key word. The Prop Blast survives today.

The U.S. airborne program remained relatively small until a pivotal German airborne operation in May 1941, when the Germans captured the British-held island of Crete in the largest German airborne operation ever. Losses were enormous and Hitler was persuaded never again to launch a major airborne operation. Not privy to the magnitude of German losses, however, the U.S. command looked at Crete as a success and began building up its airborne.

The buildup was led by General George C. Marshall, who foresaw large-scale American airborne operations. A Provisional Parachute Group was created along with three new battalions. After the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the war in December 1941, six new airborne regiments, consisting of roughly two thousand paratroopers, were authorized, and most of the men were handpicked.

The first division to be activated was the 82nd, at eight thousand men about half the size of a normal army division. A cadre of men from the 82nd later was set aside for the formation of the 101st Airborne Division. The army would create three other airborne divisions, the 11th, 13th, and 17th, plus several independent battalions and regiments, such as the 509th, 517th, 550th, and 551st. The units serving in Europe eventually became part of the First Allied Airborne Army, formed in the summer of 1944.

Gliders

Gliders gradually became part of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Free Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0684873850
• ISBN 13: 9780684873855
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande