Customer Reviews

On The Way: General Patton's Eyes and Ears on the Enemy

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On the Way, by Edward Marinello, is a fascinating eyewitness account of the American soldier on European battlefields during World War II. Through the eyes and ears of Edward Marinello, the reader witnesses the fears, challenges, and ingenuity of the men in Battery B. This should be required reading for all American history courses. On the Way gives a powerful insight to the human face of war. It is a reminder of how the courage, integrity, and tenacity of each soldier is crucial on the battlefield. This is a must read book!

"On the Way" by Edward Marinello, with subtitle: General Patton's Eyes and Ears on the Enemy, is not your ordinary World War II memoir/histoire. This is a must-read for WW II buffs and others. What we get here, in addition to the GI's sense of war in the European theatre--and especially a riveting account of the Battle of the Bulge--is a rare view into one of the highly specialized combat units of WW II. The Field Artillery Observation Batallion (FOB) is distinguished from the regular Field Artillery Batallion in that it did not fire any of the big guns generally associated with artillery. Its weapons were sensitive, heavy-duty microphones sunk into the ground along the front lines--precisely four sound seconds apart--and flash bases where forward observers sighted on a star or other agreed upon point and swung their transits around to where the momentary flash of an enemy piece had just fired. These were the "eyes and ears" of General Patton's advancing Third Army. The author, a member of the sound team of the wide-ranging Battery B of the 286 FOB, focuses on the deadly decibels of enemy artillery and how they were secretly and silently tracked. The microphones, precisely surveyed in along the front--regardless of the terrain, which included hills, forests, snow, bodies of water--"captured" and transmitted the sound waves of dreaded 88's and other enemy artillery, to an oscillograph at a command post--so that the locations of German guns could be plotted and relayed to artillery units for effective counter fire. A high suspense episode is described as a General orders an entire sector of the front shut down for 15 minutes during the Battle of the Rhine, in order to track the report of the German "Big Bertha", a huge mobile piece that caused severe damage and casualties before being knocked out using the coordinates supplied by the 286th. There are few real heroes here, although Dusty Swenson is awarded the Croix de Guerre and other decorations, because of his battle smarts and long tenure in dangerous forward observation posts. As a counterpoint, Marinello describes the understandable rumblings of the enlisted men when the mess sergeant is awarded a Bronze Star--for cooking nice meals for the officers in combat. Shellfire, casualties, fear, courage, the battles, are all depicted as daily occurrences for these GI's, yet there is always drama, unexpected humor, and an acceptance that this is what has to be done, and everyone has to do his part, without grandstanding, but with a normal amount of colorful bitching--in order to get back to the States. Ultimately, the book succeeds because it reflects in graphic detail what the author and his comrades went through, with the life-and-death sense that each man had an important technical job to do and they all had to get it right. The 286th --and the handful of other artillery observation battalions--were among the special unheralded units of the war. The cold ferocity of the Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg is described in detail that puts you right there--in frigid foxholes, along icy roads, dodging 88's, and running--running to keep warm, running to avoid incoming "mail", running to do what has to be done--fast. "On the Way" is what the OP (Observation Post) GI calls into his phone to activate the whole tracking process when he hears a German gun go off--never too far away. Those decibels were essential; an oscillograph in a command post a few miles back ate them up and produced coordinates often within an accuracy of 25 yards. Those silent decibels, the DNA sound waves of lethal missiles heading your way, proved invaluable to Patton's invading Third Army. Similarly, Marinello's word-decibels in "On the Way" are an invaluable contribution to the still emerging lore of World War II.

A perspective of WWII that I have never read before. Brings the day-to-day experience of the ordinary soldier into brutal reality. Wordy and rambling at times, but still a good book.

I am something of a World War II buff. For me, On The Way captures the essence of combat like no other book I've read. It accomplishes this by combining the parallel and paradoxical moods of the fighting GI-the aloneness and the sharing-in such a way as to place the reader alongside. In gripping detail, the book recounts the experiences of a small group of artillery observers and their support teams as they track enemy artillery and destroy it. These GI's spearheaded Patton's Third Army across France, Luxembourg and Germany until one fine day they entered into Austria and war's end. The book was so absorbing that I've promised myself to read it a second time.

I am something of a World War II buff. For me, ON The Way captures the essence of combat like no other book I've read. It accomplishes this by combining the parallel and paradoxical moods of the fighting GI-the aloneness and the sharing-in such a way as to place the reader alongside. In gripping detail, the book recounts the experiences of a small group of artillery observers and their support teams as they track enemy artillery and destroy it. These GI's spearheaded Patton's Third Army across France, Luxembourg and Germany until one fine day they entered into Austria and the war's end. The book was so absorbing that I've promised myself to read it a second time.

This battle and the ones on D-Day were the most important of the Second World War, and Marinello's book is well written by a soldier
who was there and felt and saw what all the front line soldiers felt and saw, under constant shelling and snow falling.

On The Way is a terrific read it captures combat for what it was.I plan to read it a second time so that I can savour those unreal moments that were so ordinary to the combat GI"of World War II"

I am trying to find out more about the 8th Armored Division, 194