Customer Reviews

Currahee!: A Paratrooper's Account of the Normandy Invasion

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Donald Burgett served as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division and gifts us with this remarkable account of his experience during the Allied invasion of Normandy. The first part of the book about the formation of the paratroopers and their early training will be familiar to those who have read Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" or watched the HBO miniseries. From D-Day forward, however, the stories are very different. In comparison to "Currahee!", BoB appears to be an almost sanatized version of the invasion and fighting in Normandy. In "Currahee!" Burgett does not hesitate to vividly describe the horrors of war - excrutiating wounds, rotting corpses, moments of incredible fear and agony. Even if you think that you are prepared to face these grim realities, you will still find Burgett's frankness disturbing. However, I encourage you not to let this put you off reading this book. Burgett's experience in Normandy was extraordinary, and he does a masterful job of conveying all the terror, exhilaration and grief he experienced. Since this is just one man's story, it necessarily captures only one perspective about a limited part of the invasion, but Burgett's skillful storytelling successfully conveys what many of the troops must have been thinking and feeling during those remarkable days.

So we've all seen Private Ryan now and think we know something about the horrors of war, but I would suggest that there is no way that anybody who was not there can truly understand it. This great book, written by an American paratrooper about his experiences leading up to and then at D-Day, makes us realize that the visceral horror of war is something that probably can not be conveyed.

It is a rather short read and is in three parts: the first is at training camp in Georgia; the second in England preparatory to the assault; and the third is the terrifying jump into France, and the grim, terrible battle which followed. To say the least, it makes for very compelling reading.

The training aspect was remarkable for its undisguised brutality. The men were told in no uncertain terms that the paratroopers did not want them; they were going to try to make them quit. The first day, for example, several men collapsed during the morning's six mile run. They were left by the side of the road, to crawl back as they could, with one of them not arriving until after midnight. He quit. Treatment, as well as being harsh, was also intentionally unfair. The narrator, after his first night jump, broke his ankle. He was left out there as well, in the darkness, to crawl back to the barracks as best as he could. "If I knew how to cry," he said. "I would have." The men were told that their likelihood of surviving combat was very poor, and that they should expect to die. The men accepted this. Most died.

Their mission was to jump behind enemy lines the morning of D-Day. Each company was given specific tasks to accomplish, but one gets the sense that all it was really hoped they would do was to create as much chaos as possible. This is exactly what happened after the chaotic, haphazard way in which they were dropped. Nobody was dropped where they should have been. Entire planeloads of men were actually dropped at sea, where they drowned. The author witnessed one cowardly pilot, fearful of anti-aircraft fire, drop the men from an altitude of 100 feet. Every one of them was killed before his chute could open.

The battle scenes are horrific, almost beyond comprehension. The way one killed one's enemy was by creating situations in which there were large amounts of flying metal in the enemy's area. This was done with bombs dropped from planes or fired from cannons and mortars, tanks, bazookas, grenades, machine guns, rifles and pistols. With such firepower on both sides, one realizes that getting killed was likely not a matter of if, but when. The author, diving into a hole, finds two German soldiers apparently hit by a bomb. Their faces, hands and feet are all blasted away but incredibly, they are still alive. The author shoots them, and prays that if the same were to happen to him, the Germans would show the same mercy.

After a time the Americans are able to establish some order. The author is sent behind with communications, and retreats through fields of dead. For a quarter of a mile, they litter the ground so thickly that he is literally able to step from body to body. Finally coming to the end of this, he describes the experience as of coming from some hideous darkness, back into light.

Eventually the author is wounded, first surviving a grenade blast which deafens him, then a piece of shrapnel which rips away the muscle of his forearm, exposing four inches of naked bone. He is sent behind to recover only so that he can come back and fight again.

The narrative is written in a candid, matter-of-fact way, remarkable for its lack of sentimentality. This, we realize, is the way he was supposed to be. This is how he was trained. Gentility, kindness, thoughtfulness, and feelings were emotions wiped clean from the consciousness of these young men, trained as they were to kill and to die. This fine book is a sobering reminder of the sacrifice made by them, most of whom met a gruesome end at an age when Americans today are graduating from high school or going to the martini bar to meet girls. They instead lie in cold graves dug hastily for them in the north of France.

This was an outstanding book! The author tells his story with almost a "dry-biscuit matter of factness" about his experience starting with jump school in Georgia, training in the British Isles, Combat in Normandy and finally back in England recuperating from his combat wounds.

Just reading this book makes you feel like you are actually with him in combat, although of course you are not, seeing the horror of combat first hand. It goes without saying that no book or movie can ever truly describe the reality of combat but this book goes far enough to make the reader realize that combat is probably the most horrific thing a human can experience.

The book is loaded with very vivid descriptions throughout and a number of them stick in my mind: In the early morning of D-Day the author had just landed in his parachute and was on his back getting himself organized when another C-47 flew over at a very low altitude and he saw every single paratrooper jump to their deaths before their chutes even had a chance to unfurl. "They sounded like ripe pumpkins hitting the ground and bounced" quite horrifying! Another C-47 dropped all of its troopers into the English Channel. The first man out landed in waist deep water and was the only one out of his plane that lived. All of the others drowned (the paratroopers carried around 100lbs of equipment with them which no doubt took them straight to the bottom of the sea.) In another place the author describes how they saw some Germans who had just butchered a cow and put some steaks on a makeshift grill. The author and his comrades promptly killed all of them and then finished cooking the steaks and ate them themselves.

The battlefield descriptions are straight to the point and are not for the faint of heart. The author describes with brutal honesty throughout the book his entire experience.

I would recommend this book to everyone. It is an excellent read and very fast paced (I read it in a few hours cover to cover). Five stars most definently!

If you havn't read this book you are in for a treat!
With the recent release of Ambrose' 'Band of Brothers' on HBO there has been an overdue increase of interest in the Screaming Eagles of WWII. This book is what first interested me. This is the first in a series of four books written by a regular trooper of the 101st...And what a series it is. This set is considered by most to be one of the best memoirs ever written about war. Here is exposed the fear and tradgedy of a real battlefield. Burgett has you on the edge of your seat for the entire ride from the unbearable training in the hot Southern sun to the terrors of D-Day and the battle around Carentan. This is no holds barred, exposed in all its raw detailed writing at its best!
Please be sure to couple this book with the next three, including the number one WWII book (in my opinion), Seven roads to Hell. Together this set allows an unforgettable glimpse into the life of a WWII paratrooper!
If you want the complete experience, read 'Rendezvous with Destiny' (see my review) for the complete unit history of the 101st, and do so before this memoir.

I read Currahee! for the first time as a teenager in the early 1970s then a second time just after touring Normandy in 1975. It was then and remains to this day a historical treasure. The book motivated me to go on to become a paratrooper (now a master parachutist.) Nearly a quarter of a century later I'm serving as a U.S. Diplomat and Special Forces Reserve Lieutenant Colonel. Now living in Europe, I visit the 101st's battlefields often and try to pass on the lessons of history to my children. I like to think that guys like me are carrying on in the spirit of Burgett and his band of brothers to whom mankind owes a debt of gratitude.

Just like the real thing, the author tells his story without fanfare. No Hollywood special effects, music, embellishments, etc., this reads just like you're sitting with Burgett over a cup of coffee and a game of checkers as he recounts the horrors he and his "buddies" went through to rid the world of fascism. I agree with the other positive things said about this book on his page, so let me let the author speak for himself in a few quick, unforgettable excerpts, as this book has many:

After breaking his leg on his first practice jump: "The only way I could travel was to lie on my side, throw the chute forward, crawl to it, and repeat the procedure over and over again. Finally another jeep came up and this time a sergeant leaned over the steering wheel and said, 'That's the spirit we like around here,' and then drove off. I crawled for what seemed to be hours."

On the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, having just dropped behind enemy lines: "Another plane came in diagonally over the field....then I saw vague, shadowy figures of troopers plunging downward. Their chutes were pulling out of the pack trays and just starting to unfurl when they hit the ground. Seventeen men hit the ground before their chutes had time to open. 'That dirty SOB pilot,' I swore to myself, 'he's hedgehopping and killing a bunch of troopers just to save his own ass. I hope he gets shot down in the Channel and drowns real slow.'"

War is hell: "The two German prisoners tried to climb the steep bank behind them, but just as they got to the top, Brininstool fired his tommy gun. Both of them slid down, whirled around, and were slammed back against the bank so hard by the .45 slugs that their eyes popped out of their sockets and hung down on their cheeks. What kept them standing is a mystery to me, but neither one fell. They just stood in a leaning position, side by side against the dirt wall, with arms hanging loosely at their sides. From the expressions on their faces they must have just looked through the open gates of hell."

Near the end of his time in Normandy: "Suddenly a strange smell came to our noses and wisps of a funny looking smoke crept over the hedges from our left. It clung close to the ground and moved slowly toward us. Phillips looked back at me. His eyes were round and wide. 'Gas,' he exclaimed. 'What'll we do now?' 'Nothing,' I said. 'Just stay here and die, I guess. I wish I had my gas mask now.' 'So do I,' said Phillips and Benson together. They had been the first things we had thrown away."

I did not preselect the above excerpts. I literally spent a very few minutes leafing through the book, finding a striking passage, and typing it for you. Burgett's experiences are all as rich as the above, about 200 pages' worth in paperback packed with such horrific stories that make one truly appreciate the sacrifices and bravery of such men in that era and, by extension, the current one.

My only nitpick with the book is that the author several times mentions an event without giving the result; for example, the two paratroopers who got into a drunken knife fight and were taken to the hospital by the MPs. Their fate is never revealed beyond being taken from the bar, and surely the camp was abuzz with stories about them; for some reason, we don't know whatever became of them. This is still a five-star book, however, because of the matter-of-fact tone and unmistakeable realism with which Burgett tells his remarkable tale. Very highly recommended.

Burgett's memoir was initially published in 1967. It came out when most books on World War II were about generals, or not even about the fighting. Burgett's book was a reminder that war is essentially about young men trying to kill other young men and the hell of it all. I purchased this book when Bantam reissued it under the title "As Eagles Screamed." I still have that copy and have read it several times.
All I can say is that if you're picking up this book for the first time, you're in for a treat. If you've already read it, well then you know how good it is. Burgett's books are a fine companion piece to Ambrose's "Band of Brothers." In some ways, it's even better because we see the whole war through the eyes of one man who survived it's most horrible moments.

Horrific depictions of what it was like for the men on the ground. Burgett's account gives a good glimpse, but civilians like us can never fully experience what it must have been like. Reads easy; only took two days for me.

What i didn't like was all the typos i found in my edition. There were glaring problems with the language and spelling. One of Burgett's buddies is alternately listed as "Brinninstool" and "Brennenstool." Not the most efficient editing job...

Overall, a good piece of memoirs. Hard to believe no one wanted to read this book when it was originally published. Must have been way before its time.

I read this book back in the 70's, I must have checked this book out of the libary at least a half a dozen times. I was in a bookstore just last night when I caught the book title out of the corner of my eye. I started to re-read the book right then & there and it came to me why I enjoyed this book so long ago. Its the realism, I felt I was right beside the author from jump school to the training in England prior D-Day. Anyone who wants to understand the life of a foot soldier in WWII this is a must read. I bought Currahee and his 2 new books! I can't wait to finish re-reading his first book and then start the other two.

This book is a great example of the transformation that can befall a young man to be turned from an every-day kid to a lethal killing-machine. The account of Burgett's own transformation and the rigorous trials he was forced to endure, make this book one of the best WWII books ever to hit the shelves. I would love to instill in every reader the insuraance of this book being a great buy.