Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Guns of Normandy: A Soldier's Eye View, France 1944 by George G. Blackburn ISBN: 0771015038 Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Pub. Date: October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6
Rating: 5
Summary: A trench-level view of one of history's pivotal battles.
Comment: George Blackburn survived the epic battle for Normandy. You read his book and wonder how. Blackburn, a Canadian artillery forward observer, puts readers into the lines where Canadian infantry and tanks slug it out with fanatical SS infantry and panzers. The author's frequent use of a present tense writing style brings this battle uniquely alive. The Canadian Army shed oceans of blood in Normandy, sustaining a casualty rate far in excess of the Americans and British. Blackburn's admiration for the grunts, who suffered and endured, is heart-felt. "I wonder then and I wonder still how men found the will to move out from cover and risk death and crippling wounds day after day until they were wounded or killed. I saw them do it when they were so stunned by fatigue they scarcely flinched when an 88-mm whacked an airburst above them," he writes. For those of us who weren't there Blackburn's book is as close as we'll ever get to the misery and fear of those desperate days when history hung in the balance.
Rating: 5
Summary: To quote Kipling: "The guns, thank God, the guns"
Comment: I actually came to read "The Guns of Normandy: A Soldier's Eye View, France 1944" after having seen and read "Band of Brothers." Watching and reading those two versions of Stephen E. Ambrose's work both left me wanting more details to get a fully picture of what it was like for these soldiers to fight World War II. That sort of detail is precisely what I found in this memoir by George G. Blackburn, the second of his trilogy of books on his experiences during World War II. Blackburn's extensive background as everything from a journalist and radio producer to a playwright and lyricist serves him in good stead in the writing of this volume, which is quite readable and broken down into very discrete narrative segments, including quotations from interviews, and detailed footnotes of interest that avoid getting in the way of the narrative.
The narrative starts in July of 1944 with his unit, the 4th Field Regiment of 25-poundrs attached to the 2nd Canadian Division, finally headed off to war after years of training. By the end of "The Guns of Normandy" it is early September of that same year and the unit's participation in a victory march into Dieppe. On the one hand this is the recollection of a soldier about the war, but it is also an argument by Blackburn regarding the crucial role of these guns as the Canadian army fought its way from Caen to Falaise, a distance of roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers). Of course, my knowledge of non-American troops movements after D-Day is both limited and suspect, so the questions as to how and why the RCA was "confined" are news to me (I seem to recall a small reference to the situation in "Patton"). Consequently, Blackburn is not only recalling events he is making an argument as to "what really happened."
I have only read a few soldier biographies from the American Civil War and there are two significant differences between those works and "The Guns of Normandy." First, Blackburn is much more forthcoming with regards to the details of war's horrors, providing a sense of the bloody campaign of the Canadian army in Normandy. Second, the story of an artillery unit is rather uncommon certainly in my experience and I would think for most readers of military memoirs as well. I was surprised by how much I learned about how many rounds were fired by these 25-pounders in a single day and the performance differences between Churchill VII and Tiger MK I tanks. Certainly you will have a much greater appreciation of the significance of field artillery than ever before.
Ultimately "The Guns of Normandy" is half the personal story of Blackburn's war experiences and half a detailed account of this particular military campaign. Again, I really do not know enough about the invasion of Europe to offer a definitive judgment, but my feeling by the end of this volume was that the campaign against the Germans around Falaise was the most significant and most hard-fought campaign in 1944 between the actual D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. Consequently, I find it hard to believe that the other two volumes in Blackburn's trilogy can be as significant as "The Guns of Normandy." I find myself thinking what a great idea it would be for Canadian television to do a mini-series based on this book seeing as how it tells the story of what is arguably the greatest campaign in the military history of Canada (again, another subject of which I know admittedly next to nothing). One outcome of such a project is that this book would get the sort of notice in Canada I would think it deserves.
Rating: 5
Summary: This is the real history of WWII
Comment: "Where the hell are the guns", "The Guns of Normandy", "The Guns of Victory" George G. Blackburn, M.C.
World War II as seen from a terrible muddy field.
George G. Blackburn survived WWII. From September 1944 on his colleagues in the 4th Field Artillery drew lots on his survival. Forward Observation Officers, (or FOOs to give them their Army name) usually didn't last 3 months: here was Blackburn in October 1944 still calling down Battery, Regimental, Divisional, Corps and Army fire on the heads of the fanatical SS troops. As the Second Canadian Infantry Division fought its way through a ruined Caen, past Falaise finally, Dunkerque, Calais, half drowned like rats in the Dutch polders. Freeing the sea-approach to Antwerp and into Germany.
The 4th Field Regiment faught its war armed with the British designed 25-pounder gun-howitzer and fired hundreds of thousands of 25-pound shells at the Nazis; many directed by Lt. George Blackburn. Fi! ! ring the guns till their barrels often glowed red in the night. Blackburn explains in detail his training on the 25-pounder. How the accuracy of the laying of the No.1 gun in a troop accounted for the great shooting that his Regiment did. The speed with which they served their guns was double and even triple the manual's definition of rapid fire: so awsome, in fact, that the Germans thought the 25-pounders were magazine fed.
A journalist in civilian life, Blackburn left a pregnant wife at home sustained by the pittance that our society then thought sufficient for mother and child, a two-digit monthly stipend. This young couple was torn asunder for five years and with George's death always imminent in the last year, always just around the next village corner, ready to explode in every observation post, slit trench or muddy shell hole he occupied. Many of Blackburn's friends were mutilated, or blown apart in just this way.
He saw it all. From his own notes and interviews the! ! n and later, and from the Regimental Histories of the 4th F! ield Regiment and of all the other infantry and armoured units that his guns had supported he has compiled a startling memoir. A new generation of World War II scholars will prize this trilogy.
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
