On the Road to Innsbruck and Back: A 103rd Division Infantryman's World War 2 Memoir

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back: A 103rd Division Infantryman's World War 2 Memoir PDF Author: William B. Bache
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1678122394
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Merriam Press World War 2 Memoir. On the Road to Innsbruck and Back is a product of the author�s long obsession with serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the 103rd Infantry Division. Too often he was given a responsibility that he neither deserved nor desired. But then he was in an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, at the service of a regimental headquarters. The chief model for On the Road is Stephen Crane�s The Red Badge of Courage, the best short novel about war that he knows. Like Crane, he wanted, above all, to demonstrate the moral cost of some months in combat upon a not-insensitive young man.

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back: A 103rd Division Infantryman's World War 2 Memoir

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back: A 103rd Division Infantryman's World War 2 Memoir PDF Author: William B. Bache
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1678122394
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
Merriam Press World War 2 Memoir. On the Road to Innsbruck and Back is a product of the author�s long obsession with serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the 103rd Infantry Division. Too often he was given a responsibility that he neither deserved nor desired. But then he was in an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, at the service of a regimental headquarters. The chief model for On the Road is Stephen Crane�s The Red Badge of Courage, the best short novel about war that he knows. Like Crane, he wanted, above all, to demonstrate the moral cost of some months in combat upon a not-insensitive young man.

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back PDF Author: William Bache
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781470089412
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Merriam Press Military Monograph 58. Third Edition (February 2012). "On the Road to Innsbruck and Back" is a product of the author's long obsession with serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the 103rd Infantry Division. He has always known that he would have to write about that time. And it seemed useful to put his overseas experience into the context of his Army years, from his enlistment in October 1942 to his discharge from an Army hospital in March 1946. His professional career as a Shakespeare critic was a matter of diligence applied; his imposed career as a soldier was a matter of mindless endurance. He was not a successful soldier: He was the last private in his regiment to be promoted to pfc. But then somebody must have thought the author was more reliable than he was. Too often he was given a responsibility that he neither deserved nor desired. But then he was in an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, at the service of a regimental headquarters. "On the Road" is authentic. He has made every effort to be faithful to the facts, as he remembers them. But he also believes that the best way to give form and direction to the reality of his experience was through a series of sixteen short stories, presented more or less chronologically. Experience teaches through insights, epiphanies, encounters. Ideally, a poem or a short story is an idea at the moment of dawning. Each of his sixteen stories has its theme, its ironies, its surprises. The realities of combat are simple and stark, but circumstances change. In his stories the events and incidents in one story are meant to echo and mirror the events and incidents in other stories. If the stories are read sequentially, as intended, certain metaphors and notions are emphasized and thus have a cumulative effect: the road as a metaphor for living; the Army as a metaphor for prison; animal references; clothing imagery; despair; resignation. The stories are meant to be considered, not for their individual merit, but for their collected value. The chief model for On the Road is Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage," the best short novel about war that he knows. Like Crane, he wanted, above all, to demonstrate the moral cost of some months in combat upon a not-insensitive young man. Contents: Preface; Poem: "Dog Tags"; Living with Violence: The Making of an American Soldier; Losing It; Under Fire; Dogfaces and Dogrobbers; Collaborating; Undercover; Delivering the Goods; The Hero Syndrome; Gathering Intelligence; Off Limits and Out of Control; Winding Down; On the Road to Innsbruck and Back; On the Way Back; Double Solitaire on the Home Front; Crime and Punishment; Period of Adjustment; The Author; 2 B&W photos. The Author: William Bache's great-grandfather was a Methodist minister; his father owned two grocery stores and ten farms. Bill was born in the coal mining town of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, in 1922. Bill is now widowed and has one daughter. After getting a Ph.D. in English Literature from Penn State in 1952 and then teaching there for a year, Bill joined the Purdue English Department in 1953. Except for a summer in Maine and one in Montana and except for two sabbaticals in Oxford, Bill spent his entire career at Purdue. He has received a large number of teaching awards. Bill retired in 1992. Bill's specialties are Shakespeare and lyric poetry. He published "Measure for Measure as Dialectical Art" in 1969; "Design and Closure in Shakespeare's Major Plays" in 1992; "Shakespeare's Deliberate Art" in 1996. Review by Paul Fussell, veteran and author: I've just finished reading with intense pleasure and admiration... your excellent book. Your having been in the pathetic 103rd Division where I was was just a small part of the pleasure. Most delight was in your clear critical intelligence, as well as your sensitivity and wisdom.

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back PDF Author: William B. Bache
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 0759616558
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
On the Road to Innsbruck and Back chronicles the unheralded experience of a common soldier during World War II, from his enlistment in the army in 1942 to his discharge from an army hospital in 1946. It is the only war memoir to present itself in the form of short stories, sixteen in all. The first two stories ("Living with Violence" and "Losing It") deal with pre-combat events. The next ten stories describe combat from the clarifying perspective of a member of a regimental Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon. The final four stories are concerned with the soldiers hospital experience. "The Hero Syndrome," like the title story, is retrospectively concerned with a single memorable event. The other eight combat stories are concerned with less remarkable, single events ("Gathering Intelligence" and "Off Limits") or with thematic matters ("Under Fire" and "Winding Down"). The style is clear; the tone is ironic; the hallmark is authenticity. On the Road reveals what happens to a young man who has been in combat and who has been seriously wounded. The historian Paul Fussell has praised the memoir for "its clear critical intelligence as well as its sensitivity and wisdom."

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back

On the Road to Innsbruck and Back PDF Author: William B. Bache
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781576382844
Category : Soldiers
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description


A Dangerous Assignment

A Dangerous Assignment PDF Author: William B. Hanford
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811746364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Rare memoir of a risky job performed by relatively few troops. Honest and observant narrative describes the good, bad, and ugly of the war. Covers World War II's closing months in eastern France and Germany.

Victory Road

Victory Road PDF Author: Robert C. Baldridge
Publisher: Merriam Press
ISBN: 1576380009
Category : Soldiers
Languages : en
Pages : 704

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Book Description


Sixty Days in Combat

Sixty Days in Combat PDF Author: Dean Joy
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307416666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
“The infantryman’s war is . . . without the slightest doubt the dirtiest, roughest job of them all.” He went in as a military history buff, a virgin, and a teetotaler. He came out with a war bride, a taste for German beer, and intimate knowledge of one of the darkest parts of history. His name is Dean Joy, and this was his war. For two months in 1945, Joy endured and survived the everyday deprivations and dangers of being a frontline infantryman. His amazingly detailed memoir, self-illustrated with numerous scenes Joy remembers from his time in Europe, brings back the sights, sounds, and smells of the experience as few books ever have. Here is the story of a young man who dreamed of flying fighter aircraft and instead was chosen to be cannon fodder in France and Germany . . . who witnessed the brutality of Nazis killing Allied medics by using the cross on their helmets as targets . . . and who narrowly escaped being wounded or killed in several “near miss” episodes, the last of which occurred on his last day of combat. Sixty Days in Combat re-creates all the drama of the “dogface’s” fight, a time that changed one young man in a war that changed the world.

Descending from the Clouds

Descending from the Clouds PDF Author: Spencer F. Wurst
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504021843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Wearing the remnants of a WWI uniform and pulling a water-cooled 30-caliber machine-gun, Spencer Wurst marched through his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1940 as a member of the National Guard. He was 15 years old. Five years later he was a hardened platoon sergeant leading his troopers through the frozen killing fields of “Death Valley” in Germany’s Heurtgen Forest. A squad leader in Company F, 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne, for most of the war, Wurst jumped into Italy in September 1943, and received his baptism of fire at Arnone. Jumping into Normandy on D-Day, he received his first Purple Heart in the liberation of Ste. Mère-Eglise, and a second Purple Heart in grueling combat through the hedgerows. On his third jump, Wurst’s bravery under fire earned him the coveted Silver Star when he and his fellow paratroopers were swept up in the ferocious battle with the SS for the Highway Bridge at Nijmegen, Holland, in Operation Market Garden. A few months later, the dawn of his twentieth birthday found him serving on point in the long, freezing march to the shoulder of the Bulge. A unique view of combat from pre-war training and mobilization to First Army maneuvers, parachute school at Fort Benning, and Europe’s killing fields, Wurst’s poignantly written and carefully researched memoir has been hailed as an outstanding addition to the literature of WWII.

Into the Mountains Dark

Into the Mountains Dark PDF Author: Franklin L. Gurley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
A significant combat memoir written by a young US soldier during the bitter fighting in the Vosges Mountains, 1944-45. When 17-year old freshman Frank Gurley was placed second in his first Harvard varsity cross-country meet, he thought he had achieved the ultimate in courage and tenacity. Just over a year later, still shy of his 19th birthday, and still a scout of sorts (First Scout in an infantry rifle squad), Gurley came down from a frowning peak in the Vosges Mountains with far deeper insights into the meaning of valor and intrepid endurance... after his odyssey 'Into the Mountains Dark.' This extraordinary work is actually the result of an operational security violation and military offence for which the author could have been severely punished. Throughout his six months of combat as an enlisted man in the U.S. Seventh Army's 100th Infantry Division in France and Germany, Private Gurley maintained an extensive, up-to-the hour journal in which he and his buddies painstakingly recorded every major incident in the life of their platoon. A former high school newspaper editor, the author risked the potential penalties for his actions and meticulously chronicled the fears, joys, grip

To Hell and Back

To Hell and Back PDF Author: Audie Murphy
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 146682638X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
The classic bestselling war memoir by the most decorated American soldier in World War II. Originally published in 1949, To Hell and Back was a smash bestseller for fourteen weeks and later became a major motion picture starring Audie Murphy as himself. Many decades later, this classic wartime memoir is just as gripping as it was then. Desperate to see action but rejected by both the marines and paratroopers because he was too short, Murphy eventually found a home with the infantry. He fought through campaigns in Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany. Although still under twenty-one years old on V-E Day, he was credited with having killed, captured, or wounded 240 Germans. He emerged from the war as America's most decorated soldier, having received twenty-one medals, including our highest military decoration, the Congressional Medal of Honor. To Hell and Back is a powerfully real portrayal of American GI's at war.