From Beachhead to Brittany

From Beachhead to Brittany PDF Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811740501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Engaging history of a controversial World War II battle. Brilliantly researched and compellingly written by a top military historian.

From Beachhead to Brittany

From Beachhead to Brittany PDF Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811740501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Engaging history of a controversial World War II battle. Brilliantly researched and compellingly written by a top military historian.

Beyond the Beachhead

Beyond the Beachhead PDF Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811741451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Expanded edition with a new chapter on the final battles of the Normandy campaign.

Brittany 1944

Brittany 1944 PDF Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472827368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
One of the prime objectives for the Allies following the D-Day landings was the capture of sufficient ports to supply their armies. The original Overlord plans assumed that ports along the Breton coast would be essential to expansion of the Normandy beach-head. This included the major ports at Brest and on Quiberon Bay. The newly arrived Third US Army (TUSA) under Lt. Gen. George S. Patton was delegated to take on the Brittany mission. In one of the most rapid mechanized advances of the war, TUSA had the ports of Avranches and Quiberon encircled by the second week of August 1944. But changing priorities meant that most of TUSA was redeployed, meaning only a single corps was left to take the Breton port cities. The fight would drag into 1945, long after German field armies had been driven from France. Using full colour maps and artwork as well as contemporary accounts and photographs, Brittany 1944 is the fascinating story of the siege of Germany's last bastions on the French Atlantic coast.

Our Tortured Souls

Our Tortured Souls PDF Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811711692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Balkoski's acclaimed multi-volume history of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division in World War II covers the division's vital role in the U.S. Army's November offensive, which Gen. Omar Bradley hoped would get the Allies to the Rhine River by Christmas. A riveting story of heroism and tragedy.

Utah Beach

Utah Beach PDF Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811733779
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
The attack on Utah Beach during the Normandy invasion was one of the most successful military operations ever undertaken, especially bearing in mind the complexities of such a massive air & seaborne assault. Joseph Balkoski describes the unfolding drama.

The Last Roll Call

The Last Roll Call PDF Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811762904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Joseph Balkoski concludes his landmark series on the U.S. 29th Infantry Division in World War II with the story of the 29ers during the war's final five months. Opening with the division's participation in Operation Grenade, Balkoski follows the 29ers through the crossing of the Roer River, the blitzkrieg-style drive across the Rhineland to the Rhine River, their military-government duties while helping to reduce the Ruhr pocket, and the survivors' return home.

Mobilizing the South

Mobilizing the South PDF Author: Christopher M. Rein
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817321349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
"Throughout its history, the United States has fought its major wars by mobilizing large numbers of citizen-soldiers. While the small, peacetime, regular army provided trained leadership and a framework for growth, the citizen-soldier, from the minuteman of the American Revolution to Civil War volunteers and the draftees of World War II, have successfully prosecuted the nation's major wars. But the Army, and the nation, have never fully resolved the myriad problems surrounding the mobilization and employment of reserve troops. National Guard divisions in World War II suffered from neglect during the interwar period and Great Depression, and regular Army commanders often replaced or relieved National Guard officers, which generated lingering resentment. At the same time, draftees from across the nation diluted the regional affiliations of many units, with a corresponding effect on morale and esprit de corps. Chris Rein's study of one division, recruited from the Gulf South and employed in the Southwest Pacific Theater in 1944 and 1945, highlights the challenges of reserve mobilization, training, and the combat deployment of National Guard units. His account demonstrates the still-strong connections between the local communities that hosted and supported National Guard companies before the war, even after an influx of new personnel nationalized the units and they shipped overseas. The 31st Division, reorganized after combat deployment in World War I, consisted primarily of infantry regiments from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and, until 1942, Louisiana. Mobilized for federal service in late 1940, the division participated in the critical Louisiana and Carolina Maneuvers in 1941, but then languished for the next two years as a training organization, though it provided trained cadres and replacements for other divisions the Army deployed to Europe and the Pacific. In 1944, the division finally shipped overseas, enduring the brutal conditions in the Southwest Pacific, but successfully conducting landings on the New Guinea coast in support of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's "island hopping" campaign directed at liberating the Philippines. After a change in leadership, on the second day of the amphibious assault on Morotai, the division supported the liberation of Mindanao, the southernmost major island in the archipelago, before redeploying for demobilization at the end of 1945. Rein's study traces the division's decades of duty from the interwar period, when it contended with a series of devastating natural disasters, through its mobilization and combat deployment. However, within the 31st Division's story, there are several significant issues that remain highly relevant for reserve deployment today. The first centers on the issue of World War II-era National Guard leadership. The Army implemented a "purge" of overage and less competent National Guard division commanders in order to replace them with younger officers of the regular Army. Maj. Gen. John C. Persons, a pre-war Birmingham resident and Alabama National Guard officer, commanded the division throughout the peacetime mobilization and training and the first operation in New Guinea, only to be summarily fired on the second day of the Morotai landings, an action not adequately explained in the existing literature. The second issue concerns the Army's "nationalization" of regional units. While this policy has the benefit of spreading any casualties across the nation, rather than duplicate the horrific losses of the "Bedford Boys" of the 29th Infantry Division that devastated one small Virginia community, it also erodes regional identity and esprit de corps. This work is a case study of the strength and weaknesses of units with a regional identity and explores the connections with the home front once that identity erodes. It also examines the Dixie Division's operational and strategic evolution, but just as importantly details drawn from soldiers' correspondence and oral histories to show how their exposure to a larger world, including service alongside African-American and Filipino units, changed their views on race and post-war society"--

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach PDF Author: Joseph Balkoski
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811741192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Balkoski's depiction of 'Bloody Omaha' is the literary accompaniment to the white-knuckle Omaha Beach scene that opens Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. -- John Hillen, New York Post

Rudder

Rudder PDF Author: Thomas M. Hatfield
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603442626
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
Rudder From Leader to Legend Thomas A. Hatfield In this first comprehensive biography of James Earl Rudder, Hatfield covers Rudder's storied military exploits -- from years spent stateside training the all-volunteer 2nd Ranger Battalion to the unit's trek over the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc during the D-Day invasion. 540 pp. 68 b&w photos. 8 maps. Bib. Index. $30.00 cloth

The Ranger Force

The Ranger Force PDF Author: Robert W. Black
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811743837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
One of the most famous units of World War II and all of military history. First Americans to see active combat in the European theater. Expands on events described in Rick Atkinson's An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle.