Description
Condition
VERY GOOD: This book is in very good condition, showing only slight signs of use and wear. The book has a yellow ribbon bookmark and a navy blue cloth cover with golden lettering.
Product Details
About the Series
From the copyright page: “The Great Commanders: a collection of first person accounts of history’s great military leaders published under a common imprint and in a uniform format.”
This is the First Printing of this book for the new series, obtained from the first edition of A Soldier’s Story from 1951 and printed by Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
About the Author
From Wikipedia: Omar Nelson “Brad” Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981) was a United States Army field commander in North Africa and Europe during World War II, and a General of the Army. From the Normandy landings through the end of the war in Europe, Bradley had command of all U.S. ground forces invading Germany from the west; he ultimately commanded forty-three divisions and 1.3 million men, the largest body of American soldiers ever to serve under a U.S. field commander. After the war, Bradley headed the Veterans Administration and became Chief of Staff of the United States Army. In 1949, he was appointed the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the following year oversaw the policy-making for the Korean War, before retiring from active service in 1953.
Bradley was the last of only nine people to hold five-star rank in the United States Armed Forces.
A Soldier’s Story
From the Author, in the Preface: “In this book, I have tried to achieve one purpose: to explain how war is waged on the field from the field command post. For it is there, midway between the conference table and the foxhole, that strategy is translated into battlefield tactics; there the field commander must calculate the cost of rivers, roads, and hills in terms of guns, tanks, tonnage—and most importantly in terms of the lives and limbs of his soldiers. How, then, did we reach our critical decisions? Why and how did we go where we did? These are the questions I have been asked most often. And these are the questions that give me justification for writing this book.” (page ix)
CHAPTERS
- Summons to the Normandy Invasion
- Overseas
- Tunisia
- With Patton to El Guettar
- Commanding General, II Corps
- Objective: Bizerte
- End of the Afrika Korps
- Priming of the Sicilian Invasion
- Invasion of Sicily
- Coast Road to Messina
- Arrival in England
- Evolution of OVERLORD
- Problems of Command
- Planning the Assault
- D Day, Normandy
- Cherbourg Falls
- Breakout
- Encirclement of a German Army
- Liberation of Paris
- Famine in Supply
- Counteroffensive
- Breaching the Rhine
- To the Elbe
Appendix: Order of Battle, 12th Army Group
The book includes maps, organizational charts, list of principal persons, a glossary, and index.