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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Combat Is Very Personal,
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This review is from: D-day to Bastogne: A paratrooper recalls World War II (Hardcover)
Sergeant Robert J. Houston was a member of the third platoon, H Company of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He participated in the campaigns of Normandy, Holland and the Battle of the Bulge. From Camp Toccoa to V-E Day, he lived and breathed the "paratrooper creed" of aggressive action and devotion to duty. His third squad of the third platoon was a 60-millimeter mortar squad but the chaos and losses of the D-Day drop prevented them from functioning as a team. Wounded slightly in Normandy, he had to be ordered to the hospital to have his injury treated because he didn't want to leave his men. His description of the close-in fighting through the Normandy hedgerows is among the best narratives written about that campaign. First person accounts of war histories are often replete with tactical or strategic errors but Houston did his homework. His research is dead-on and his facts and figures as well as his helpful maps provide an accurate backdrop to his compelling story. After the Holland drop the division was kept in the field as leg infantry for about 2 months. Retiring to Mourmelon, they hardly had time to refit and absorb replacements before being sent off to defend the strategic road-town of Bastogne. The 501st defended the eastern side of the perimeter as the 101st Airborne Division was surrounded and tenaciously defended every inch of ground in their historic stand. Houston takes the reader through all of these battles from the viewpoint of the grunt on the ground. His descriptions are real and his words drip with the pathos of struggling boys fighting their fears and the enemy to both win and survive the battles. A poignant touch to this memoir is his return to Europe well after the fighting was over to revisit his old battlefields and meet with the civilians he encountered during the war. This is a very personal and sensitive first person account of his experiences in some of the most gruesome and hard-fought battles of World War II. JOhn E. Nevola Author of The Last Jump - A Novel of World War II
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