Customer Reviews

Into the Mountains Dark: A WWII Odyssey from Harvard Crimson to Infantry Blue

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is not your typical WWII memoir! It has many unique facets that distinguish it from all other memoirs. The previous words may make it seem I am the paid publicist (I am not) - so let me explain my unadulterated praise.

First, the story is one seldom heard. The 100th Infantry division missed all the famous battles - so this is a new story for most of us. The story takes Gurley from training in the USA, through a boat ride to Marseilles, and finally a month of combat in France's Vosges mountains.

The descriptions of the events are more detailed and interesting that most accounts. The author is a writer by profession and that skill produces a well-penned account. In addition, he has written about his unit in the past, giving him a wealth of material from which to draw.

But there are a couple of additions which make this book remarkable. The first is that we get an overview of the "big picture". Most personal accounts only present, appropriately, the view from the rifleman. But in this book we are given overviews of why each battle was fought and the tactics used to win the battle. Thus, the accounts are woven into a larger, more understandable whole rather than the usual series of fights for anonymous towns or patches of woods. Finally, the author has a graphic in the book showing the names of all members in his platoon and where they belonged in the organization. I greatly appreciated being able to place a name into the overall unit. Usually, you can understand who the authors friends are, but can seldom understand how all the non-coms and many enlisted men peripheral to a story fit in.

This book is outstanding in describing Gurley's battle experiences. This is possible through great writing and additional touches that allow the reader to really understand the whole story.

Mr. Gurley's new book comes in a wave of books in this genre. What distinguishes his book is the obscure battle location - the Vosges mountains and the incredible amount of detail given within his platoon and company. The author must have kept a very complete diary to accomplish this feat. Also, the discussion of the ASTP program for training officers was new to me as well as the fact it was dissolved because of excessive casualties in the ETO. In retrospect, it seems a travesty that so many of America's best and brightest were shipped to the ETO as so much cannon fodder to serve in line companies in the infantry. This is a intensely personal account by the author and gives an in depth account of what it was like to serve in one of the late arriving divisions to the ETO - the 100th division. Description of training, transport, and eventual combat are excellent. The author seems quite proud of his service in the infantry - the real bloodletters in any war - as he quite deservedly should be. This is the story of real men, nonprofessional soldiers, in their journey through the hell of war and how they handled it (or didn't). These men are not glorified in this, but their story is the way it was, both the good and the bad. I would reccommend this book highly to someone wanting to gain insight into the day to day life of a combat infantryman in WW 2. This person could be your father or grandfather now and it would make you proud of the sacrifice they made for us and freedom.

"Into the Mountains Dark - A WWII Odyssey from Harvard Crimson to Infantry Blue" by Franklin L. Gurley is a wonderful memoir of an infantry grunt (lowly buck-Pvt) that paints one of the most realistic and unembellished pictures of war I have ever read. The story on its own is compelling but Gurley's ability to tell a story with literary style makes this book an extremely enjoyable read, one I found hard to put down. A rare combination of gifted writer and battle-aged dogface that experienced the facts described!

"Into the Mountains Dark" is not a one-man story steeped in combat history accumulated over periods of months or years (as contrasted to another Aberjona Press book, "Black Edelweiss" by Johann Voss - which is a great book in its own right), but rather a book chronicling a young mans transformation from a naïve Boston high school kid (and then Harvard freshman) to an aged 19-year old man shaggy in appearance but wise in the ways of life-and-death as taught him by the field of battle over little more than a month in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France. The first third of the book details Gurley's experiences late in childhood through his time as an ASTPer (Army Specialized Training Program) and finally his call-up to active duty and training for deployment to the Continent. The remainder of the book is dedicated to Gurley's time from debarkation in late September '44 to the end of his unit's (1st Battalion, 399th Regiment, 100th Infantry Division) time in the Vosges Mountains, late November '44. Both parts of the book are fascinating and highly detailed. The latter trait is derived from the fact that this book, while compiled and published 60-odd years after the events, was taken nearly verbatim from Gurley's personal diaries and notes written at the time of the events discussed. We thus see the "action" - whether dealing with anti-Semitism within his ASTP group while at Ohio University, his trials and tribulations of earning the Expert Infantryman Badge at Ft. Bragg, or negotiating the near vertical climb up to "Bloody Knob" during the final stages of the battle for Hill 462.8 - not through the tainted-glass of time but from the perspective of someone living through the experience without either hindsight or particular foresight. In this regard "Into the Mountains Dark" is a truly unique reading experience with respect to most books about WWII.

How does the "writing from the moment of experience" play out? One clear example is the frantic picture Gurley paints of his emotions as he moves through the experiences. This is done only with the hindsight of days or weeks at most between the jotting of one passage to the next, and thus it is not sanitized to remove his initial naïve machismo as he trained for deployment and debarked to Europe or the real fear he felt once faced with the reality of combat. It's all here! Gurley's discussion of life on the "line" is one of the most clear and honest I have read (another good example, for different reasons, is "Foot Soldier" by Roscoe Blunt). For example, Gurley talks about his many foxholes dug over the month in the Vosges as if they were each a new vaulted-ceiling split-level condo in a posh Boston neighborhood. Only a man who has lived the experience of enemy shelling at the front lines can speak of a 5 ft deep water-saturated hole in the rock and mud with such passion. You can "see" all of the different permutations of his holes as the critical life sustaining shelter and home-away-from-home they were. An infantry dogface's life on the line is not a constant expenditure of ammunition, but rather periods of digging homes and wanting for food and water, to emotionally and physically draining periods of close order combat. Gurley neither adds or removes anything - you can experience a foot soldier's life as it was.

This is a fabulous book both for content and readability. I give it a hearty 5 stars!!! Highly recommended for novices and professionals alike.

I had been looking forward to getting hold of this book due to the glowing comments on the book ad pages in various military magazines. I don't think it lived up to the hype.

The author was one of those 'College' soldiers who was being educated by the army in order to be ready for employment in various technical fields down the track. Instead, like most others in this program, he found himself in the infantry (100th Div) following the casualties in Europe.

The author does a good job outlining the various changes of the program and how this affected him. There are also some reasonable passages describing basic training and the characters he trained with. This went on to about Page 100, which I thought was a bit long given the total length of the book. Once, the 100th arrived in France it was sent to the Vosges Mountains. Here the author details his companies experiences in combat in the first few weeks. Again, some reasonable stuff here, a fair bit of attention is given to the constant digging of foxholes, the hunger and the tension. The author, essentially gives a company history, with the points of view and experiences of many others in his unit told. He does write about his own experiences but these were of a modest nature and hence my issue with the 'breathless' comments made in those reviews. The most bizarre thing though is that the book stops with the first events in the Vosges. The author soldiered on to the end of the war and earned himself a Bronze Star in December 44!! I am at a loss as to why the rest of his story is missing.

Compared to other memiors, this account lacks the punch and the gore that make this genre so compelling. It is certainly well written, and the author is the 'real deal' as a soldier but it was hard to get involved in the story. It seems he meant to do a sort of company history and here there is a lot on the other men in the unit, the incompetents, the cowards and the many who just did their best. So there is value in the reading of this book but for me, it is on the second level of such things.

This book is different, in that it grew out of a violation of Army regulations. The author had written for his high school paper, as well as for the Harvard Crimson university paper. When he went to combat, he maintained an unauthorized journal. He was aided by his comrades, while his superiors "turned the other way." Thus, when he sat down decades later, he didn't have to recall events from half a century before. His journal notes were hours, or at most a day or two old. It shows in the telling of his story.

The book is broken down into nineteen chapters, that take the author from 1939 through his participation in the Vosges Mountains as a member of the 100th Infantry Division. The first two chapters introduce the author, and provide some background to help understand him as a person. They discuss his experiences as a Boy Scout, writing for the high school paper, and sneaking into Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play. Managing to make the grade to get into Harvard University, he also joined the track team. His coach there was Jaakko Mikkola, who had coached the Finnish Olympic teams in 1920 and 1924. However, one of the definite highlights of his time at Harvard was when he got to listen to Winston Churchill speak in September 1943.

Having been accepted to the Army's A-12 Program. This was a commissioning program, similar to the ROTC program. Qualifying for this meant that the author spent one semester at Harvard, then was sent to Ohio University with 583 other "Army scholars" who had become part of the Army Specialized Training Program, (ASTP), also known as the "Ain't Safe Till Peace" program. Here he was to study Basic Engineering, along with the rest of the course load. It was here that he had his first experience with anti-Semitism. The cadet appointed to the position of company commander had been born in Palestine, and this bothered some of the cadets. A couple of them went to far as to try to get the Jewish cadets moved out of the building they were billeted in. However, this attempt didn't go anywhere.

By the end of March, 1944, the ASTP had been dissolved, and the men in it had been assigned to the infantry. The author was assigned to the 399th Infantry Regiment, and his training began. By the time it was over, he was designated as his platoon's second scout, narrowly talking his way out of being an assistant BAR-man. The training regimen ended at the close of August 1944, and by the end of the following month, the 100th Division was entrained for the Port of Embarkation at New York.

After being welcomed to France by Axis Sally, the troops disembarked at Marseilles, and moved into a nearby encampment. It wasn't long before they moved to the front, after a short stint as stevedores. They ended up in the High Vosges, just in time for winter. The story then goes into combat around St. Remy and La Salle, which blooded many of these men.

The men went through a couple of weeks combat in that area. What is interesting here is the detail that the author is able to go into. Drawing from his contemporary notes, he is able to vividly help the reader understand the experiences of his unit in action. The combat, waiting for combat, and even dealing with the locals, aided by his knowledge of the French language, is described in a manner that can easily bring the reader right into the foxholes with the "Century Men." Gurley is able to describe not only the emotions the men felt, but all the physical discomfort and challenges, including mind numbing fatigue that causes a potentially serious security lapse. Even simple problems such as reloading a rifle with fingers that won't cooperate.

The final chapters inform the readers of several other smaller actions that the men of Gurley's regiment endured. This is the important part of the book. Not a wide-ranging story of the Alsatian Campaign, or Operation Nordwind, it is a view inside the foxholes of men in combat. The author tells his story, but he manages to do It while freely sharing the spotlight with his comrades. That is one of the things that I really liked about the book. He doesn't simply write a book about "what I did in the war." Here, you find more of a "how we fought our war, and I was in there too" attitude.

Here, you will find one of the best descriptions of what war was like for a bunch of men who weren't supposed to be in the infantry. Men who should have received more training than they did. Men who when faced with the ultimate challenge, responded in the best way they knew how, and managed to carry the day.

As a disclaimer, I will state here that while I am associated with The Aberjona Press, I was not involved with the production of this book in any way.

Extremely realistic and personal account of how it was to be an infantry soldier fighting in Europe during WWII. Includes the psychological aspects of combat, not just the hard facts.

Franklin Gurley has put on paper his memoirs in 1945-1946 while in Germany as part of the occupation force. The story is therefore precise with many facts and interviews recollected from his teammates.

The authors goal was to put on paper, the way he found himself involved into the conflict and how he went through it. He basically tells his personal story for his family.

The book is very good, I found it a bit long at the beginning but kept reading and it became very interesting. You feel when the soldier slowly gets closer to the enemy and finally directly involved and confronted to the fact that he might die very soon. His whole company got decimated in a few minutes !!!

Unfortunately Franklin Gurley didn't put down his whole story.
The book is a reprint, it looks like the maps are not the original ones. The Editor has probably introduced mistakes by updating the maps. There is a contradiction between map page 186 et mape 202, they don't indicate the same hill as being hill 262.8! First location seems wrong.

You might like Wolf Zoepf "seven days in January" and Guy Sayer "the forgotten soldier".