5 comments about Street Fight in Iraq: What It's Really Like Over There (Valor in Combat Series).

1. This book is harsh and to the point, one can never doubt that. Tracy is brutally honest and at times seems cruel. He does write a harrowing account of his time in Iraq that is an easy read. What he does seem to do well in this book is show a total lack of respect and utter disregard for his superior officers. Anyone who knows anything about the Marine Corps knows that you just don't do this, then claim to be professional. But this is all from his perspective. Read this book if you want to read 396 pages of how nobody but him knows how to do anything right in Iraq.



2. First Sergeant Pat Tracy wrote this book in 2004, but it doesn't lessen the battles being fought in Iraq one bit. He is a warrior and this, for now, is the only war he has to fight. This is a personal account, almost day to day, of how he copes with the real world, the world of guns, bullets, and IEDs with deadly effect. Pat is earthy, a Marine with Marine language. If you hate war, this is not your book unless you would like to know more about how the individual soldier or Marine feels about life on the edge of extinction. Battles with murderers, others call them insurgents, is no game to be played; these people are clearly trying to stop solutions to events which will improve the lives of millions of Iraqi people. However, these murderers would live in the middle-ages except for heros and heroines about which Pat Tracy writes. Earthy language and violence, so beware.



3. If I wanted to know how the Marines really operated in Iraq, I would read this book. If you read the book and then read recent newspaper stories on the slow respoinse of the Marines getting lasers to stop road block runners, you will know why it is so important to have them. The book lays the grounwork for the need for lasers. Gunny cares for his troops. I appreciate his candor. He is a solid family man and yet a real warrior. I would highly recommend this book.



4. This transaction was super from begining to end. the book was number one... HARD to find...but was on Amazon... the seller was 100% from the discription to the packageing and the transport of the book. SUPER TRANSACTION!!!



5. Like combat patrols in Iraq, 'Street Fight' shoots for effect with no concern about hurt feelings or diplomatic fallout, and it's authenticity makes it beautifully vulgar. Somewhere in this book I forgot I was reading a diary and felt like I was on patrol with Fox Company in Ramadi. Everyone who cares about America, Iraq, or the Marine Corps would benefit from sharing the Gunny's perspective,and we're lucky he wrote it down.

1 comments about A Soldier in the Cockpit: From Rifles to Typhoons in WWII (Stackpole Military History).

1. Author Ron Pottinger spent much of World War II planning rhubarbs and searching for doodlebugs -- and no -- he wasn't gardening. He was flying Hawker Typhoons on dangerous interdiction missions over German occupied Western Europe.
   
   Often by moonlight, two "kites" (Typhoons armed with 4 lethal 20mm cannon and two 250 lb. bombs) would "do a trip" in search of targets of opportunity at extreme low level. Coastal shipping, E-Boats, canal locks, barges, as well as industries and trains were his favorite prey.
   
   Crossing the sea down on the deck to avoid detection was not all that safe at high speed. Even in daylight, poor weather could mask obstacles such as chimneys -- and at such low altitude it was easy to get lost. At that level, any German gunner could get lucky, and there was little altitude to bail out when seriously hit.
   
   W/O Pottinger knew this type of flying was very dangerous, but he kept on looking for anything worthy of attack. Many such pilots were lost with mediocre results.
   
   The Hawker Typhoon was developed as an interceptor but its power was disappointing at high altitude and the fuselage had problems -- the tail sometimes broke off. Nevertheless, it proved to be extremely fast at low level. In fact, it was faster than the Fw-190 or Messerschmitt Bf-109. Heavily armed with 4-20mm cannon, it was a natural strafer.
   
   "Soldiers In the Cockpit" is W/O Pottinger's memoir of his service in World War II. But how does an infantrymen in the British Army get to fly a hot fighter-bomber? The R.A.F. lost many fine pilots in the Battle of Britain and soldiers were being recruited for flying school. W/O Pottinger didn't train in gloomy Scotland however, but in sunny Florida, U.S.A. Here, he flew the Stearman PT17, Vultee BT13A, and the AT6A Harvard. In "The Wide Blue Yonder", he narrates his stateside training with humorous stories of living in the swamps, chasing girls, and nail-biting flights.
   
   The Luftwaffe had several nasty surprises for the R.A.F. such as the Messerschmitt Me-262 jet, and the diabolical V1 Doodlebug flying bomb. W/O Pottinger's squadron was soon upgraded to the new Hawker Tempest. The 24-cylinder fighter was among the fastest allied aircraft at all altitudes and proved an excellent interceptor of the doodlebug -- 638 V1's were downed by Tempests. After the Allies invasion of France, the new Tempest really began to pay off.
   
   Fighter nerds hoping to read about the Typhoons knocking out 175 German tanks in one day at the Falaise Gap, or the strafing of roads choked with armored columns during the Battle of the Bulge will be disappointed -- W/O Pottinger was not there. His main assignment was supporting General Montegomery's Operation Market-Garden, in Holland.
   
   On New Years Day, W/O Pottinger's luck ran out and he was shot down over Paderborn, Germany while strafing a train.
   
   To be honest, only one-third of this book is fighter plane action. In the final fifty pages he narrates his bailout, capture and imprisonment in various POW camps until finally transferring home after the war.
   
   W/O Pottinger has not set out to write a complete history of the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest operations. Rather, he has given us an intimate look at his own experiences in World War II -- much in diary form. The book works best when W/O Pottinger has his feet on the ground. As should be apparent now, Ron Pottinger was an "ordinary working-class chap" who wants us to know that the war was unglamorous and a dirty business.
   
   "Soldier In the Cockpit" has numerous photographs taken during the war by the author. There were no maps included. This book will be of most interest to the fans of POW stories and wartime biographies.

2 comments about Discovering the Rommel Murder: The Life and Death of the Desert Fox.

1. the book is almost of the same caliber Rommel was. Do not waste your time, get it now .Entertaining, exciting, it flows so fast. Buy this book now and have an wonderful time!



2. Charles Marshall has done an excellent job in preparing a literary work that is, in my studied opinion, a complete overview of Rommel...as a man and military genius. Marshall's detailed account of Rommel's life is reinforced by information received during interviews with Rommel's widow as well as the letters Rommel sent her during the African campaigns. Further, Marshall, as a former Army Intelligence Officer during WWII, relies heavily on his own detailed diary enteries of interviews with German/Nazi officals in captivity prior to the end of the war. Marshall's work details Rommel's life from pre WWI through his untimely death, forced by Adolf Hitler, before the end of WWII. If there is only one true account of Rommel's life, "Discovering the Rommel Murder" is it.

3 comments about Portrait of War: The U.S. Army's First Combat Artists and the Doughboys' Experience in WWI.

1. What a surprise. Peter Krass does a brilliant and engaging job capturing the details of the the Official War Artist's experiences as they chase the American Doughboys across France throughout their entire engagement in WWI. For anyone interested in either the war or the role of art in interpreting war. Importantly it captures the details of Harvey Dunn's role, one of America's leading and most influential illustrators. I highly recommend this book. It is a unique and fresh insight into these subjects. My highest recommendation.



2. PORTRAIT OF WAR reads like a novel - it was a pleasure. There are great characters, drama, an honest portrayal of war. And while the art of the combat artists is discussed somewhat, the balance is perfect by not overindulging in art theory, etc. Too many history books are not accessible to the average reader - they're too long or too dense - but not this one. I even gave it to my young teenager to read and he's thoroughly enjoying it.



3. Although the so-called "Great War" ended nearly ninety years ago, there are still new stories to be told, and Peter Krass, author of a fine biography of Andrew Carnegie, has written one of them. Plus he was lucky enough to secure the cooperation of one of his subject's sons, George Harding Junior, who opened his father's archive to apparently unrestricted use, a true coup for a biographer.
   
   Not that this is a biography in any real sense, for the action takes place during an intense period of two years, and an epilogue briefly charts the postwar lives of his eight subjects, a paragraph apiece. Amazingly none of them were killed in the War. What a difference from the British and French artists who these American men were imitating! As Krass tells it, all one hundred of the British "official artists" were mowed down in the slaughterhouse that was Europe.
   
   Perhaps inevitably. the lives of these men after the war don't seem very interesting after the thrills and the horrors they experienced, but one or two of them left hints of interesting careers that I hope get explored in later volumes. Harding himself, if you can imagine, volunteered again in the SECOND World War, becoming the only artist brave enough, or crazy enough, to sign on in both wars. J. Andre Smith became a "pioneer of surrealism," whatever that means, and suffered from phantom pain all his life after his right leg was amputated above the knee. (Harding and Smith managed to live all the way through to 1959, though none of the artists made it to the 1960s.) Ernest Peixotto became a famous muralist and art activist, particularly in New York during the Depression and the WPA years, serving under Fiorello LaGuardia. The rest of them had OK careers.
   
   The day to day adventures of these 8 captains are remarkably well documented in a steady stream of letters home, personal diaries, after-the-war memoirs, and beyond these, the art works themselves created by these men, a body of work comprising over 500 different pieces (now owned by the Smithsonian). From Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood, they went scouting for materials on which to build propaganda. That was their mission pure and simple. The AEF hired them for one reason alone, to bring the war home, or perhaps to dissolve the boundaries between war and home so that more recruits would come to replace the bodies of their fallen comrades. Harry Townsend despaired of war, as he viewed the bodies at Chateau Thierry--too many to bury, heaped up like sardines, thousands and thousands of men. Rumors spread that the powers that be intended to leave them there until all were nothing but bones, for cleanup would be easier that way. "What a thought," Townsend added with disgust. A Christian Scientist by nature, he believed that healing and prayer would shield him from the worst, but when the shells came rattling down on his tin roof, he couldn't even sleep.
   
   The book is packed with marvelous scenes: Peixotto and Morgan passing through ruined villages so bombarded that now they "resembled only the reefs of some coral islands." On the St. Mihiel front, a stunned Harding takes a moment to jot down, frantically, the sights and sounds "swirling" around him: "5 Amer dead, high explosive, one's brain entirely out, the dead horses . . . slept in car, no food 36 hours, started at 5:30 a.m. went on and on . . ." One would like to see an exhibition of the best of this work, which Krass responds to with a connoisseur's eye and a fine gift for vivid description. Then raise a glass to the men who never came back, whose bones still live while they're "over over there."

5 comments about The Saga of Tom Horn: The Story of a Cattlemen's War.

1. I was a resident of Boulder Colorado for 40 years. Tom Horn is buried in the old Columbia cemetery there. I have seen the pink granite stone with the simple inscription In Loving Memory Of Tom Horn. Everything I have read about the man never disclosed why Tom was buried in Boulder until I read Dean Krakel's book, The Saga of Tom Horn, A Vindication written by Himself. Tom was born in Missouri, not Texas. He left home after his Dad gave him a severe beating for skipping school and chores to go scouting for varmints. Tom had a natural talent to speak other languages. On his way to the Southwest he learned Spanish and later Apache after he was assigned to live with the Apache at San Carlos and Cibecue to keep an eye and an open ear on the Indians. After the Indian wars he became a Pinkerton detective, a miner, and a cattleman's detective. It was in this last capacity that got him into trouble. Tom had a brother, Charles, who operated a freighting business in Boulder. After Tom was hanged his body was sent to Boulder where Charles received him and was buried in the family's cemetery. This was his only connection to Boulder.
   I have read microfilmed letters that were sent to Tom by nieces while he waited in jail.The Boulder library has these microfilms,
   In 1993, Sept.16th and 17th a new trial was ordered for Horn in the Laramie, Wyoming courthouse. Charles O'Neal was the oldest living descendant of Tom Horn at that time and was gratified that the modern day retrial won Horn a posthumous acquittal.
   However the descendant of Willie Nickel, a niece named Viola Nickell Bixler, then 70 years old stated that she didn't think it was wise or reasonable to change history so many years after the fact. This information was taken from an article written by Kevin McCullen and published in Rocky Mountain News.
   Another article about Tom Horn and written by William Hafford and published in the May 1996 issue of Arizona Highways is also interesting reading along with a few great photos.



2. I have read more western history than many and while the book is good as far as it goes, it overlooks most of who and what Tom Horn was. He hailed from Texas of German stock and had a very Wild West life - mining, Indian Scout, spoke the Apache language, worked with the legendary Al Sieber and was in on at least one capture of Geronimo. The Apache Chief in whose camp he learned their language called him Talking Boy, his Apache Name (used to describe one's character or most salient trait), and the one that proved his undoing. I believe Tom Horn was a great frontiersman and, like so many, used by the government, discarded without so much as a by-your-leave to either discard all the government had set his life to, or else be brought down. I believe many a Viet Nam Veteran will know whereof I speak on this. What is missing from this book is Horn's early experience, which is nowhere documented properly in print. He, Mickey Free, Al Sieber and a handful of other white and Apache scouts won the Apache Wars. And they were all dropped like hot rocks so soon as the war was over, with lesser men garnering glory and acclaim for what others in fact did. Tom Horn's story, here, shows what happens when a man out-lives his time, when a soldier used to truly vicious conditions plies his trade for his own purpose, and in service of the way of life he thought he was defending. I rate this at 3 stars only because I wanted to more know about Tom Horn from this book, and less about the penny-ante locals. The book's evidence shows pretty clearly, to my mind, that Tom Horn was railroaded to top it all off.



3. This is a 'must read', for anyone interested in the 'Old West' and 'cattle country'. Mr. Krakel, dis-spells rumor and conjecture about Tom Horn. Through newspaper articles and interviews with the people who were 'around' at the time, Mr. Krakel, unfolds a story of mystery surrounding the killing of a 14-yr. old boy. With actual court transcripts, he relates the trial of a Wyoming 'Stock Detective'and his eventual hanging. This is about as close to the truth as we may ever get on the subject of Tom Horn. This review is in regard to the 'un-expurgated' edition.



4. The Saga of Tom Horn is a very good book on the trial of Tom Horn.It recreates the trial that found Tom guilty,and hanged him for the death of a 14 year old boy. A crime a lot of people including me belives he did not do. The book is very detailed on the trial, and about Tom Horn himself. A must read for all western history buffs.



5. Tom Horn devotees will be enthralled with this book as it uses historical evidence and trial documentation to tell the truth. It is the most comprehensive book on the Wyoming years of Tom Horn.

2 comments about Admiral Arleigh Burke.

1. Frankly speaking I have given it a very quick screen. This is one of the books I bought for my summer holiday(which has not started yet:). Looks like something very promissing and I just cant wait to start reading it.



2. During World War II a lot of good men rose to the top from relatively low levels when the war started. Arleigh Burke started the war as a commander on shore duty at the Washington Navy Yard, also known as the Naval Gun Factory. His superior officer refused to let him go.
   
   Eventually he got orders to go to the South Pacific, it had been twenty years since he had graduated from the Naval Academy. From there his career skyrocketed. Twenty years younger than Nimitz/Halsey he was the most famous Naval officer in active service after the war. He eventually became Chief of Naval Operations under Eisenhower. He was the CNO for an unprecedented six years.
   
   The author of this book served in the Navy during World War II, and afterwards was a civilian faculty member of the Naval Academy. His biographies of Nimitz and Halsey won numerous awards and was selected by Burke and some of his friends as biographer. Admiral Burke, by then unable to read because of failing eyesight, listened to the book as it was read by his wife and assisted in the correction of errors.
   
   This book is well written and brings interesting insight not only to the story of World War II, but of the political happenings afterward when Truman wanted to unify the services in an attempt to do away with the inter-service rivalry.

5 comments about Behind the Blue-Star Banner: A Memoir from the Home Front.

1. Awesome book, great for new military spouses. Michelle candidly shares the ups and downs of her experiences as a Army wife and mother and shares many helpful pieces of advice for families dealing with deployments and separation. I laughed, I cried and I marveled at how I've felt so similar to Michelle as I've braved 2 deployments - its nice to hear another perspective!!



2. I absolutely love this book. This book touches your heart and the experiences families go through during the long deployment. In fact, she described the same feelings & thoughts while I went through my own 15 month deployment from my husband. I highly recommend this book!



3. I had the pleasure of meeting Michelle very briefly right after my husband and I got stationed at Ft. Wainwright, which was right before she and her husband left for their next duty station. It was such a brief introduction, but I was instantly drawn to her upbeat, smiling demeanor. Almost two years later, I was on a plane from Seattle to Fairbanks, and who walked past my seat, but Michelle Cuthrell! She was heading to Fairbanks to do a book signing at Barnes and Noble, and unfortunately I didn't find out that's why she was back in town until two days later. I was, however, at Barnes and Noble the day her book officially came out, a few weeks later. I've read a ton of books on being an army wife, dealing with being an army wife, dealing with the army life, etc... but I have to say this one really touched me deep in my heart, and taught me many valuable lessons - it taught me how to be me, how to be grace under pressure, to not take my life, my marriage, my husband for granted, and to smile and thank God everyday for what I have been blessed with, Army or not. It also taught me that surviving deployment IS possible, and so are deployment extensions. Us Army wives need more positive upbeat reading like this, and I look forward to reading any and everything else Michelle writes!



4. I do not have a spouse in the military, but took interest in the book from a recommendation from a friend. Michelle wrote with elegance and wit...I felt like I was her best friend stealing a peek at her diary. Her words challenged me. When I find myself in a hard situation, I remember her words clearly..."joy is a choice..." Michelle has helped me to see the positive in situations and to realize that although a current situation may not be easy, I still have the option of choosing joy in the midst of sorrow. I recommend this book to anyone who has a loved one serving or to anyone who is in the midst of a personal battle...A very thought provoking, rewarding book. Great job & thank you!



5. After reading this book from cover to cover I had the happy experience to hear Michelle speak. She is very uplifting and it comes out clearly in her book. I too made it through the deployment and extension of the 172nd Stryker Brigade by finding joy and relying on God. This was a wonderful read and I am recommending it to all the spouses in my FRG.

5 comments about Reluctant Warrior.

1. Semper Fi is about all that can be said. This was the life of the grunt. No amplification or heroism that was not there. This is the best book I have ever read discribing the life. Also the excerpt on page 299 and 300 "These Good Men" by Micheal Norman is the first and only explanation of all of us that have ever served and our feelings forever to our comrades. I wish Micheal could write another book, I don't think he will. It was all in this one.



2. Excellent book about Recon operations in Vietnam. I served with Mike in OCS before Vietnam. I highly recommend the book.



3. Michael Hodgins captures the real spirit of the place and time. As a former Marine who served with the 1st Recon Bn, I can testify Mr. Hodgins presents a true and vivid picture of life in the bush, on an OP, and in Camp Reasoner. With all the distortions about Vietnam presented in the movies and on TV, as well as the anti-war prejudice of public school history teachers, this book should be required reading in the high school cirriculum. I hope someday someone will write a book that will tell us more about Lt. Skibbe, Lt. Rathmell, and Captain McVey who gave lost their lives protecting their troops.



4. This book is an outstanding account of recon battalion actions in Vietnam. It is well worth reading. I served with Mike before the war. He was a straight shooter then, and a straight shooter in Vietnam



5. Reading Reluctant Warrior was like stepping through a door into the jungle. For just a little while I was on patrol again with 1st Recon, 3rd Plt, "C" Company. I saw and smelled OP 425, ran through the jungle and listened to the 46s coming to extract our team when we got in the "S__t Sandwich". My friends lived again---Thanks Mike! Chuck Fenwick HM3 1st Mar Div, 1st Recon, 3rd Plt, "C" Company, RVN 69-70.

1 comments about The Mysterious Private Thompson: The Double Life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Soldier.

1. "The Mysterious Private Thompson" is a first-rate, riveting book about a woman who ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage and disguised herself as a man to make her way in the world. She first became a successful traveling book salesman and then, astoundingly, served as a Civil War soldier for two years. Not only is the story fascinating as to how someone could maintain a disguise so effectively for so long a period of time, but the story's historical context is so carefully researched and deftly conveyed that you are almost unaware that this is a history book as well as a human interest story. I learned more in this book about the Battles of Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, the Battle of Fredericksburg, plus Generals McClellan and Burnside, than I had in all my years of school. Laura Gansler is a brilliant, gifted writer and I highly recommend this book.

5 comments about RED ROAD FROM STALINGRAD: Recollections of a Soviet Infantryman.

1. I enjoyed this book. Better yet, "I'm sorry I finished this book." I read this before I went to sleep every night. I could have gone on reading it right up to the present. NOTE: it didn't go on to April 13, 2007. There is a very human and humble quality to this book which I appreciated. I have read the German accounts of the various battles and got a better appreciation of the hardships. Is this the difference between "winner" and "loser" I don't know? Maybe you do?



2. This is an excellent account of the war as seen by a mortarman attached to a Soviet infantry division. It is very moving to read of the hardships Abdulin and his comrades experienced in this most brutal of wars. I was particularly struck by one story, in which the author and his friends feel overjoyed to immerse themselves in human excrement in an old latrine that had been forgotten and covered by snow. Compared to the -50 degree temperatures they had experienced, the feces were like a warm blanket. This really brings home just how unfathomably horrible the Eastern Front could be. Abdulin also gives us a view of the take-no-prisoners mindset that characterized both sides on the Eastern Front. He boasts of an incident where he and his men shoot several wounded Germans after overrunning their positions. As anyone who has studied the Eastern Front knows, this was an unfortunate, but common, practice on both sides. It makes the reader hope quite fervently that war will never reach this level of cruelty again. It should also be remembered that it already has, many times even if on a smaller scale, since the last shot rang out in Berlin.



3. A series of new World War II memoirs by soldiers of the Red Army provide fresh and valuable insights into the Soviet armed forces of the Great Patriotic War. Readers will find Mansur Abdulin's "Red Road From Stalingrad" among the best written, compelling and moving works recently published.
   
   Abdulin reminds us that Ivan, the Red Army soldier, was a living, breathing being, who cherished life as much as his counterparts in the West and who was willing to defend his family and his homeland fanatically and lay down his life dearly for all that he loved. This stands in stark contract to the myth of the Soviet soldier - savage, unfeeling, and following orders unquestioningly - embedded in the military culture of the West by the officers of the defeated Wehrmacht seeking to exploit the growing rift between the West and the Soviet Union after the war.
   
   In the first months of his invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler's Wehrmacht inflicted catastrophic losses on Stalin's Red Army, causing many to wonder how it was Russia managed to survive. By December 1941, or only six months after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army had lost 177 divisions, comprising some five million men, including almost three and a half million, which had been captured by the Germans. Gone too were tens of thousands of combat aircraft, tanks and artillery pieces. Abdulin's book makes it clear that by 1942 Russia's strategic situation was already stabilizing, although much hard fighting and further defeats lay ahead. Still, in 1942 and 1943 Soviet Russia and the Red Army were fighting to survive a Wehrmacht bent on nothing less than the complete annihilation and enslavement of the Jews and Slavs and winning Lebensraum [living space] for Hitler's Third Reich. Liberation of the wide expanses of the Soviet Union captured by the Germans seemed a distant hope in 1942. It was only through the heroic efforts of tens of millions of Red Army soldiers like Mansur Abdulin that Hitler and the Wehrmacht found only defeat in Russia.
   
   Born a Tartar in central Siberia in 1925, at a time when the newborn Soviet state was suffering from prolonged famine and disease, Abdulin experienced a hard childhood. "My mother would sometimes get hysterical from constant starvation and despair, screaming madly," he remembers. Abdulin went to work at a young age as a miner alongside his father. In June 1942 he volunteered to fight for the Red Army. After completing his course at the Tashkent Infantry School, he fought as mortar man on the Stalingrad Front during the Soviet counter-offensive, which crushed Field Marshal Paulus' Sixth German Army in the city between November 1942 and January 1943, killing and capturing hundreds of thousands of German and Romanian soldiers. Later, in July 1943, Abdulin took part in the battle of Kursk, where the Red Army held its ground against an unprecedented German onslaught led by Hitler's most elite divisions and supported by hundreds of new Tiger and Panther tanks. The Wehrmacht and the German panzer force were gutted during the battle and the Red Army followed up with a stinging counteroffensive, which hurled the Germans back across the Steppes all the way to the banks of the Dnieper River. It was there that Abudlin was seriously wounded.
   
   Throughout his book Abdulin describes the small delights as well as the agonies of being a soldier in the Red Army during the war. "It was a great joy for us to receive a letter, a note, or a parcel from home," he writes. "Also, in each box containing shells, bombs or cartridges, we found pleasant surprises: a piece of paper bearing the address of an unknown girl, so that we could write her, or tobacco pouches filled with makhorka [strong Russian tobacco]." These small joys, however, were overshadowed by the death of friends and family, which dogged every Red Army soldier with each step westward. "I cried, like women cry, beside the dead boy of their beloved," admits Abdulin, poetically, as only a Russian can, on the death of a close friend in January 1943. "I howled, like little children howl, when they are greatly and unfairly offended by someone." The author also details the atrocities uncovered by Red Army soldiers as they advanced westward, liberating Russian villages and towns. "We entered a concentration camp for Soviet prisoners. Some of the men were on the verge of death; they were speedily evacuated to hospital," he remembers. "Several thousand corpses were stacked in an open field. One horror followed another. How can I survive this nightmare? If a bullet doesn't find me, surely I'll lose my mind..." Indeed. In all, more than three million of the almost five million Soviet prisoners held by the Wehrmacht died in such camps during the course of the war. Such atrocities fed Ivan's hatred for the Germans, prompting the Soviet solder to attack even more attack fanatically and defend even more tenaciously than before. More ominously, such massacres also fed Ivan's thirst for revenge. The author admits that at one point he ordered the execution of more than two hundred German prisoners held by his unit. "By nature I am a tender and sensitive person," writes the author. "I was never a hooligan or a brawler. But when I went to war I wanted to destroy the Fritzes; `Kill or be killed.' This was my message to the newcomers. I was consumed by the idea that while alive, I would have my revenge on the Germans in advance: for I never expected to survive that slaughter."
   
   In January 1943, Abdulin's 293rd Rifle Division was redesignated the 66th Guards Rifle Division for its role in the battle of Stalingrad. "Fighting for our Soviet Motherland against the German invaders, the 293rd Rifle Division proved to be a model of bravery, courage, discipline and order," noted the order signed by Joseph Stalin, designating the unit an elite formation. "Engaged in continuous combat...the division inflicted heavy casualties on the Fascist forces and with its shattering blows destroyed enemy manpower and equipment, mercilessly crushing the German invaders." Abdulin was one of the fortunate few to have survived the war. Having done his part to defeat Hitler's armies, he returned to his work as a miner. He lives in retirement near Orenburg in the Urals, one of Russia's Greatest Generation.



4. Overall this is a pretty good book. It shows the very hard life of a Soviet soldier in WWII. One does, however, have reason to question the accuracy of the author's memory. For example, he tells us that just prior to the battle of Kursk he and other veterans told inexperienced soldiers about the strengths and weakness of various German tanks, including the Ferdinand. Since that particular tank made its debut at Kursk, his claim is hard to believe.



5. If the reader approaches this memoir as literature, he'll learn quickly enough that Red Road from Stalingrad is no War and Peace - hence my three-star rating.
   
   BUT - if the reader is interested in real history, in raw "data", in developing a feel for what it took to beat into pulp the greatest Army the world has ever seen, this book and its ilk are invaluable resources: the simple records of simple men.