| “Dog
eat dog, no quarter asked and no quarter given,”
recalled Canadian Army Corporal Charles Kipp of heavy
infantry combat around the Normandy village of Tilly-la-Campagne,
“It was a fight to the death.” This is one
of the many vignettes from participants contained in
this book that seem to testify to the ferocity and intensity
of the fighting around reinforced hamlets south of Caen
in late July and early August 1944.
Operation Goodwood
was ostensibly designed to permit the British and Canadians
to break out of the Caen area and reach the Bourguebus
Ridge and eventually Falaise to the south. The operation,
the Canadian portion of which was called Operation Atlantic,
kicked off on 18 July 1944. The British threw three
armoured divisions - the Guards, 7th, and 11th - totalling
some 800 tanks, into the fray, while the Canadian 2nd
and 3rd Infantry Divisions operated on the British right.
After about four days of fierce fighting in the Norman
hedgerows, Operation Goodwood petered out in the face
of determined German opposition, with the British losing
about half their tanks.....more
Read
viewer comments
|
| “Kill
them, Lieutenant. Don't take any prisoners,” exhorted
the bedraggled engineer officer to the new replacements,
“Don't take any prisoners!” US Army Second
Lieutenant A. Preston Price, also newly arrived in the
European Theatre of Operations, was in charge of that
platoon of wide-eyed replacements. Within hours on that
bleak day of December 23, 1944, they were on their way
to the “front” and assigned to units to
help blunt the German onslaught in the Battle of the
Bulge. Price was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division,
the “Big Red One”, and this riveting account,
The Last Kilometre: Marching to Victory in Europe with
the Big Red One, 1944-1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 2002; 224 pp., illustrations, maps, index, $24.95
hardcover) chronicles his combat service from Belgium
during the Bulge to V-E Day and the end of the war in
Czechoslovakia.
Price was immediately thrown
into the maelstrom of combat as an 81 mm mortar forward
observer in the 3rd Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment.
After learning the procedures of observing and calling
for fire in his sector near the Elsenborn Ridge, Belgium,
Price settled into a routine where “the days blend
into one long period of misery alternating with excitement
and boredom.” He also participated in a number
of dismounted infantry attacks, frequently plodding
through deep snow while bracketed by exploding enemy
artillery shells, finally piercing the dragon's teeth
of the Siegfried Line and entering Germany. At that
point, near the end of January 1945, the 1st Infantry
Division was relieved by the 99th Infantry Division
and moved to a rest area in Belgium...more
Read
viewer comments
|
