Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
Fighting in the Great Crusade
- An 8th Infantry Artillery Officer in World War II
- Narrated by: Clyde Walker
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
Fighting in the Great Crusade
Buy Now for £14.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Summary
Fighting in the Great Crusade combines the terse clarity of George E. Schwend's World War II combat journals with Gregory Daddis's expert commentary on the greater context of that conflict. The result is the rare military work that counterpoints historical and strategic analysis against a foxhole-level view of the war in Europe as US soldiers experienced it.
Schwend's story, which typifies that of young American citizen soldiers on whom the Allied cause depended, follows a draftee through the rigors of basic training and Officer Candidate School and into the grim theater of the European campaigns in 1944 and 1945. The accretion of detail forms a grittily realistic day-to-day account of military life, while Daddis's expansive historical backdrop invests with poignance even such routines as Schwend's faithful attendance at movie screenings as the soldier - and listeners - anticipate the fateful Normandy invasion.
Schwend observes that despite the rigors of his training nothing could have prepared him or his comrades for the savagery of the actions in which they fought.
The book is published by Louisiana State University Press.