Free extract from Dear Coach: Letters Home from WWII

On the 11th November I will be posting a free extract from a new book by Lois Herr - Dear Coach: Letters Home from WWII.

Dear Coach features letters that were sent to Lois's father, sports coach Ira Herr, during WWII. The letters were written by various students, friends and family members who once played for the coach at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

The book gives an inside look at not only the impact of the war on a small college community in the US, but also that of multiple heartfelt player and coach relationships.

The book can be purchased via the author's website.

Master of None

An autobiography of a retired Army officer, Master of None follows the complete life story of Major Douglas Goddard, from his early memoirs of childhood days in south east London and Suffolk farms, then focusing on his service as a regular army officer who fought with the 43rd Wessex Division during World War 2 from the Normandy landings through to Bremen.

After the war, he was involved in the repatriation of some 30,000 Russian & Polish displaced people from the area around the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camps (including attending the trial of the camp guards) and saw post-war service in the Middle East during the Suez Canal crisis.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Peace, War and Love

Peace, War and Love by John Smale is the story of two people who came together and married just after WW2 started.

Jack and Sophie had different childhoods in the years between the Wars. Jack grew up on a Dorset farm as the youngest of seven children. Sophie, as the eldest of seven sisters found herself increasingly having to look after her growing number of siblings.

The couple met and then moved apart. There were lots of `near misses' during the War, but they both, luckily, survived. Jack was a soldier who was stationed in London during the Blitz and was later torpedoed on his way to Algiers with the REME. The book includes an account of the last few hours of the Windsor Castle and how the troops were rescued. There are descriptions of his advance through North Africa and his posting in Italy.

Meanwhile Sophie was stationed at RAF Manstone and only escaped death because she, and a friend, had a bad feeling about going into an air-raid shelter one night. She became pregnant by Jack, now her husband, on their last night together before he was posted the ill fated Windsor Castle.

So, fate appeared to be ganging up on them but it was actually conspiring to keep them together. After the War, they remained a happily married couple until Jack died earlier this year (2009). Sophie is still alive and lives in the village where they met.

Available from:
Amazon

Corvettes Canada: Convoy Veterans of WWII Tell Their True Stories

In Corvettes Canada, Mac Johnston re-creates life aboard corvettes through the worlds of the veterans themselves. Within a framework of the basic events of the war, this book is essentially the product of the memories of more than 250 men, collected by correspondence in a project that got underway with an initial personalized letter to several hundred corvette veterans in 1990. Hundreds of additional letters followed as more veterans were identified. The letter count rose to 1,400 and then 1,900 to flesh out the corvette story.

From the fall of 1940 until May 1945, Corvettes Canada follows these small warships as they shepherd convoys of merchant ships carrying weapons, food, oil, raw materials and manufactured goods from North America to the United Kingdom. On the return trip, the escorts bring back the empty vessels for reloading.

As told in the worlds of the veterans, the routines of life aboard a corvette are punctuated by sudden burst of fierce action--the life-and-death moments for warships, merchant ships and German submarines. This was but one enemy--the other was the North Atlantic itself, a powerful force that brought severe cold, icy storms and fierce gales.

In addition to the famous Newfie-Derry Run on the North Atlantic, corvettes also saw duty in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the triangle run to New York and Boston, in the Caribbean, in the Mediterranean and in the English Channel, as well as the Pacific Ocean.

Published by Wiley. Preview at Google books.

Available from:
Amazon

Naked Heart - A Soldier's Journey to the Front

Naked Heart: A Soldier’s Journey to the Front is a powerful statement about the dark and vainglorious side of combat as experienced in World War II by a young private, Harold Pagliaro. His true story is a gripping, authentic account of men’s behavior in the face of death on the battlefield.

Pagliaro is sent to the Vosges front in France in 1944, as a solo replacement in a reconnaissance unit, isolated from the men he trained with. Facing death moment to moment, without friends or a sense of belonging, he sees firsthand how the reality of battle distorts men with fear. They look for relief in pathetic shows of false courage or the exercise of arbitrary power. Throughout Naked Heart, Pagliaro’s army life and war experiences connect closely with his personal life: unfulfilled love, friends, family—in particular a younger brother.

Shocked by a lack of truth revealed in letters he sent home from the war, Pagliaro gathered his memories into a book. He committed himself to relate the true story behind the letters’ white-washed surface. His straightforward, informal style blends fact, feeling, and perspective.

There are a number of positive reviews on Amazon.

Available from:
Truman State University Press

Two Soldiers, Two Lost Fronts - German War Diaries of the Stalingrad and North Africa Campaigns

This book is built around two recently discovered war diaries—one by a member of the 23rd Panzer Division which served under Manstein in Russia, and the other by a member of Rommel’s AfrikaKorps. Together, along with detailed timelines and brief overviews, they comprise a fascinating “ground level” look at the German side of World War II.

The assignment of keeping the first diary was given to a soldier in the 2nd Battalion, 201st Panzer Regiment by a commanding officers and the author never saw fit to include his own name. This diary covers the period from April 1942 to March 1943, the momentous year when the tide of battle turned in the East. It first details the unit’s combat in the great German victory at Charkov, then the advance to the Caucasus, and finally the brutal winter of 1942–43.

The second diary’s author was a soldier named Rolf Krengel. It starts with the beginning of the war and ends shortly after the occupation. Serving primarily in North Africa, Krengel recounts with keen insight and flashes of humour the day-to-day challenges of the AfrikaKorps. During one of the swirling battles in the desert, Krengel found himself sharing a tent with Rommel at a forward outpost. The Field Marshal read parts of the diary with interest and signed it. Evacuated due to illness, Krengel then records service in Berlin beneath the relentless Allied bomber streams and other occurrences on the German homefront.

Neither of the diarists was famous, nor of especially high rank. However, these are the brutally honest accounts written at the time by men of the Wehrmacht who participated in two of history’s most crucial campaigns.

Available from:
Casemate

Soldiers of Misfortune - lvoirien Tirailleurs of World War II

This is a study of the African veterans of a European war. It is a story of men from the Cote d'Ivoire, many of whom had seldom traveled more than a few miles from their villages, who served France as tirailleurs (riflemen) during World War II.

Thousands of them took part in the doomed attempt to hold back the armies of the Third Relch in 1940; many were to spend the rest of the war as prisoners in Germany or Occupied France.

Others more fortunate came under the authority of Vichy France, and were deployed in the Defense of the “Motherland” and its overseas possessions against the threat posed by the Allies. By 1943, the tirailleur regiments had passed into the service of de Gaulle's free French and under Allied command, played a significant role in the liberation of Europe.

In describing these complex events, Dr. Lawler draws upon archives in both France and the Cote d'Ivoire. She also carried out an extensive series of interviews with Ivoirien veterans principally, but not exclusively, from the Korhogo region. The vividness of their testimony gives this study a special character. They talk freely not only of their wartime exploits, but also of their experiences after repatriation.

Lawler allows them to speak for themselves. They express their hatred of forced labor and military conscription, which were features of the colonial system, yet at the same time reveal a pride in having come to the defense of France. They describe their role in the nationalist struggle, as foot soldiers of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, but also convey their sense of having become a lost generation. They recognize that their experiences as French soldiers had become sadly irrelevant in a new nation in quest of its history.

Available from:
Ohio University Press