Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:37 am Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
A book by Donald Burgett called Seven Roads To Hell - A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne.
Recently read Currahee! - A Screaming Eagle at Normandy by Burgett. There are two other books by him about Market Garden and the end of the war in Germany.
Ok just finished this one. I'll list off whats most memorable to me.
This is a good book detailing how weak the Sherman really was. Cooper is an Ordanance Office in charge of keeping track of his tank divisions vehicle losses. He had full knowledge of every Sherman knocked out tank from Normandy to VE day.
- His division suffered a 580% casualty rate for Shermans.
- Sherman tanks were routinely lost in the 10's per day
- Tank crews during the Bulge were so limited that some tanks went into action with only 3 crew
- During the crew shortage, infantrymen who were destined to be replacements were placed as tank crewman with some of them recieving little over 24hrs of training in a tank
- The maintanence battaltions attached to the divisions were incredible. They followed the battle fixing any Sherman tank that could be fixed and pressed them back into combat
Reading this book you will get an idea on how large a division is, and how small the fighting portion of that division is. Maint and support accounts for a massive percantage of all ranks.
Its a good book. Copper's memoirs with some added in strategic overview. You will come out of it with an understanding of how the Sherman came into existance and how pitiful it operated on the battlefield.
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 10:55 pm Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
Quote:
This is a good book detailing how weak the Sherman really was.
like every other tank in any country .
Remember Loza memoirs about T-34 and Sherman .
Quote:
You will come out of it with an understanding of how the Sherman came into existance and how pitiful it operated on the battlefield.
IMO, you should not take Cooper's explanations and descriptions as an ultimate truth, better read Hunnicut regarding appearance and operations of Sherman tanks. Especially taking into account his (Cooper) description of how M7 were fiighting .
Anyway, that's the problem of the most of memoirs as authors always tend to express their experience as the only correct and same for every other personnel.
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 11:12 pm Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
I have just finished reading David Webster's memoir of his time with Easy Company of the 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division titled "Parachute Infantry"
Easy, it would mean that the division lost 5,8 times it's formational number of tanks.
That still doesn't mean anything. How much action did the formation see? What were the percentage losses for german and russian tank formations as a basis of comparison?
There are 3 kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics.
I have just finished reading David Webster's memoir of his time with Easy Company of the 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division titled "Parachute Infantry"
Really? I read that very recently. Not terribly action packed but good descriptions of the real events, makes BoB the series look a bit tame.
That book Soldaten that I think Dima had read is next on my to read list. Many good recommendations in this discussion.
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 10:29 pm Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
One book I can't reccomend is Lost Victories, memoirs of Field Marshall Erich Von Manstein. I made it about 1/3 through before I quit. It was too much strategy talk for me. Nothing really heart pumping, just a grand overview of the war. It would be a excellent read for those that like politcal/strategic side of German WW2 history.
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Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2011 5:50 pm Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
Quote:
One book I can't reccomend is Lost Victories, memoirs of Field Marshall Erich Von Manstein.
I believe that was my first memoir of the German officer - can't pretend i understood everything that time (was like 14 or so), but the amount of information in book got me start thinking criticly about the WW2 history knowledge we were getting in schools in Russia .
Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2011 11:13 pm Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
I liked Webster's book. I haven't read Ambrose's BoB-book but I've heard some negative stuff about Ambrose himself.
A couple of books I've read some time ago that are at least interesting in some ways are:
Carell, Paul. Stalingrad: The Defeat of the German 6th Army.
Chuikov, Vasili. Battle of Stalingrad and Fall of Berlin.
The thing that's strange about Carell is that he, in the book that's written after WW2, still refers to Hitler as 'the Leader', Führer I guess in German. Makes you think that the guy is still an unrepentant nazi.
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 5:27 am Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
Quote:
The thing that's strange about Carell is that he, in the book that's written after WW2, still refers to Hitler as 'the Leader', Führer I guess in German. Makes you think that the guy is still an unrepentant nazi
The thing that's strange about Carell is that he, in the book that's written after WW2, still refers to Hitler as 'the Leader', Führer I guess in German. Makes you think that the guy is still an unrepentant nazi
Generally, I despise those folks who, after losing the war, or later when the [so called] communism collapsed claimed that they never were in either of the parties, nor their symphatizers.
I read a couple of his books, and despite being a nazi those are fair works.
One book I can't reccomend is Lost Victories, memoirs of Field Marshall Erich Von Manstein. I made it about 1/3 through before I quit. It was too much strategy talk for me. Nothing really heart pumping, just a grand overview of the war. It would be a excellent read for those that like politcal/strategic side of German WW2 history.
On the other hand I would recommend this book, although one has to be careful not to buy Manstein's pretty picture of himself and his moral integrity (which he lacked altogether).
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 8:12 pm Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
I just finished reading a book of memoirs of the last living Russian sailor from Tsushima.
One thing that puzzled me is how the Japanese treated P.O.W.s back then - they took them to Japan, held them in comfortable condition, taught them Japanese culture and language, allowed them to move freely, go on trips, etc.
It's kinda shocking that it's the same country which later commited the rape of Nanking and many other atrocities.
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:16 pm Post subject: Re: What are you reading?
Nearing the end of Gilles Kepel's "Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam", and it is a superb read in it's category. The book deals with the expansion and decline of the Jihadist movement throughout past 50 years, and provides understanding why it is attractive to some portion of Muslim population.
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