BattleFire!

Combat Stories from World War II

Arthur L. Kelly

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780813120348
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813146003
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

"From Pearl Harbor to Leyte Gulf and Okinawa to Iwo Jima, the stories are presented as the individual soldiers, sailors, and marines lived them." — Gun Week
 
Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941: High on the bridge of the USS West Virginia Sfc. Lee Ebner was looking forward to the end of his watch and a relaxed Sunday morning breakfast. But the two low-flying planes painted with rising sun insignia and bearing down on the ship had other plans for him and his fellow seamen. Ten hours later, at Clark Field in the Philippines, Pfc. Jack Reed felt the brunt of another Japanese air attack and within weeks found himself a part of the gruesome Bataan Death March that was to claim the lives of hundreds of his comrades. On another continent, four years into the war, Capt. Benjamin Butler led his exhausted company up a steep, fog-shrouded Italian mountain toward a well entrenched German defensive position. The odds against their survival were appalling, though worse was to come in the months ahead.
 
Such were the experiences of many young men-plucked from their local communities all across America, trained for war, and hurled into the strange reality of combat thousands of miles from home. In this stunning collection of World War II oral histories, Arthur Kelly recreates the experiences of twelve young men from Kentucky who survived the seemingly unsurvivable, whether in combat or as prisoners of war.
 
"A fascinating collection . . . A story of men at their best in the worst of times." — Louisville Courier-Journal
 
"This excellent book continues the current trend of exploring the individual soldier's experiences in World War II." — Military Review

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Pearl Harbor, Leyte Gulf, And Okinawa
• 2 The Bataan Death March And Camp Cabanatuan
• 3 Kamikaze Attacks In The Pacific
• 4 Monte Pantano, Monte Cassino, And Beyond
• 5 The Air War Over Germany, And Stalag
• 6 Normandy, Holland, Bastogne, And Stalag 4B
• 7 New Guinea And The Philippines
• 8 Normandy And Lorraine
• 9 Depth-Charge Attacks In The Pacific
• 10 Bastogne And Germany
• 11 Iwo Jima
• Epilogue
• Sources
• Index