The World War II Memoir of a Reluctant Rifleman. What happens when an Ivy League preppy is suddenly dumped from a comfortable college environment into combat as a rifleman? Hadden knew that he would find no glory in a foxhole, and for the first two years of his service managed to avoid answering that question. Knowing he would never be a hero, he said "Not me!" to the Air Corps and "Not me!" to the OSS. But like a moth to the flame, he was sucked into war's vortex. And so it was that in the early morning hours of 16 December 1944-the date the Germans launched their surprise Ardennes Offensive-Hadden found himself exactly where he dreaded to be: in a front line foxhole with the 28th Div., stupefied by the first assault. And it goes on to document how almost miraculously the survivors rose above their "chickenshit" training and their misguided and even cowardly leadership. It strips away the veneer that cloaks most combat writing and lays bare what soldiers really think. 30 photos, 3 maps.

Growing up in a small college town in central Mississippi in the 1930s, Leon C. Standifer knew little of the trauma of war. But by the time he was nineteen, World War II had made war a reality for him. Standifer volunteered for and was accepted by a special army program that would send him to college for technical training; he sometimes hoped and some-times feared that the war would end before the training did. Events turned out quite otherwise. A serious shortage of trained riflemen needed for the invasion of Normandy meant that Standifer and more than one hundred thousand other young men were taken from the program and sent into battle as combat infantrymen. Not in Vain: A Rifleman Remembers World War II looks at American involvement in the war from the firsthand perspective of this nineteen-year-old soldier. As an infantryman in France and Germany during the latter part of the war, Standifer experienced the numbing boredom of daily routine and the adrenaline-pumping excitement of combat. He re-calls the anguish of losing friends in battle and the decisive moment when he slit the throat of an enemy soldier, memories that haunt him still. But Not in Vain is far more than a conventional soldier’s memoir. Although he recounts in vivid detail his personal experiences, Standifer also makes a far broader inquiry into the forces that turned a sheltered young man from a religious, small-town back-ground into an effective soldier. Growing up in the Baptist church, Standifer thought he had learned the differences between good and evil, right and wrong. But after his days in battle, moral distinctions were no longer as clear. Not in Vain documents Standifer’s lifelong debate with himself over the justification for war by considering not only his reactions during combat but also the feelings that have remained with him for life. He describes these intense emotions in his account of a trip taken to Europe many years after the war and of his recent reunion with some of the former members of his rifle company. Written in an effort to come to terms with his involvement in the war, Not in Vain is a probing and timely study of a citizen’s dedication to his country.

“A comprehensive and vivid account of the heroic defense of Bastogne... McManus has taken a great old story and made it new again.”—Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of An Army at Dawn During the Battle of the Bulge, the 101st Airborne made their legendary stand at Bastogne. But their heroics never could have happened if not for the unsung efforts of others. This is the powerful yet little-known story of the bloody delaying action fought by the 28th Infantry Division, elements of the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions, and other, smaller units. Outnumbered and outgunned, they made the Germans pay for every icy inch of ground they gained. It was their gallant efforts that allowed the 101st Airborne to reach and fully occupy Bastogne and prepare for the ferocious attack to come. Featuring numerous helpful maps and a complete list of the soldiers, local civilians, and German commanders whose actions it recounts, Alamo in the Ardennes provides a compelling, day-by-day account of this pivotal moment in America's greatest war.

A new assessment of the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and bloodiest battle fought by U.S. forces in World War II, offers a balanced perspective that considers both the German and American viewpoints and discusses the failings of intelligence; Hitler's strategic grasp; effects of weather and influence of terrain; and differences in weaponry, understanding of aerial warfare, and doctrine.