Collection
Publication
Washington, Infantry Journal Press [1947]
Description
As a newly commissioned Captain of a veteran Army regiment, MacDonald's first combat was war at its most hellish -- the Battle of the Bulge. In this plain-spoken but eloquent narrative we live each minute at MacDonald's side, sharing in all of combat's misery, terror and drama. How this green commander gained his men's loyalty in the snows of war-torn Europe is one of the great, true, unforgettable war stories.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Highlander99
An excellent autobiography of a WW2 company commander. In the telling of his tale and his company's exploits on the Siegfried Line, highlights the requisite traits of leadership needed to command at the tactical level. Highly recommended for all junior officers or readers interested in military
Show More
history. Show Less
LibraryThing member seoulful
One of the best told accounts of a company on the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge and beyond. The author,Charles Macdonald,a 21 year old company commander, went on to become a WWII historian of note after the war.
LibraryThing member Whiskey3pa
An excellent account of life at the company level in the ETO from Dec 1944 thru VE day. Very compelling reading. Macdonald is a fairly unique individual, as a serving small unit CO and noted historian. The lack of macro strategy in this account is a plus, you feel some of the confusion experienced
Show More
by the men on the ground. Cannot recomend this book strongly enough. Show Less
LibraryThing member ecw0647
This was written shortly after the end of the war. The author went on to become a military historian and his experiences as a company commander parallel those of Winters in Band of Brothers. This is not for the faint-hearted and the names have not been changed to protect the innocent - or the dead.
The introduction provides some context. "An infantry regiment with on-paper strength of a little more than 3,000 might lose over twice that many in less than a year of combat." The author of the introduction suggests that "such casualty rates played havoc with the concept of 'Band of Brothers' . . .An infantry company's makeup was constantly changing." Wounded being sent back to the front rarely were returned to their original outfits. Casualty rates among the infantry -- note that Winters was airborne -- were staggering. They suffered "more than 90% of the casualties in Europe."
Marshall's "ninety-division gamble," an attempt to keep the army as small as possible -- something I had no clue about -- is so reminiscent of Rumsfeld's similar attempt with its consequent disaster in Iraq. Marshall's reasoning was to apply as much resource as possble to war production and air and naval power. Plus ca change.......
This is the unvarnished memoir of combat. Sometimes retreats occur against orders. Often superior officers flee the battlefield, then write each other up for medals. Fear is omnipresent, atrocities happen, hot showers become more than luxeries.
He dreaded sending out patrols at night to collect information they had already reported to headquarters just so the rear brass could type up more reports. He and his men have little respect for the higher ranks. "It seemed that since we were now in a 'quiet' position that every officer in the division with the rank of major or above wanted to inspect the company area. The condemned the men for not having shaved or for wearing knit wool caps without their helmets, evidently an unpardonable misdemeanor, or for untidy areas around the dugouts. The officers did not inspect my 1st Platoon area, [stationed farthest foward and subjected to random shelling:] however, usually passing it over with the excuse it was too far to walk, but we laughed inwardly, knowing it was the threat of enemy shelling that kept most of them away."
MacDonald was thrown into combat as a captain replacement officer with little or no combat experience. He was assigned company I, a group that swore action followed them around. As soon as they were pulled from a an intense sector, it quieted down. When they were assigned to a previously quiet area, the Germans would attack with a bayonet charge or something smilar.
Following several months in relatively static defensive positions, his company is quickly rounded up and sent to back up the 99th Inf. Division that had been counterattacked and mauled after they had attempted to take some dams to prevent their destruction. MacDonald's account of moving to the front in snow, setting up his men with not enough ammunition, the chaos and opacity of battle is simply amazing. ' "Which way's the enemy?" I asked [of the colonel:]" "I dunno. [he replied:] Nobody seems to know a goddamned thing. They say it's that way," and he motioned with one arm to the east.'
The small military horizon of the company commander was striking. They maintained closest contact with companies on their flanks; some with Battalion, very little with Division, Corps is almost unimportant. Maps and map reading ability was crucial. The British had been given responsibility for mapping Europe; they were forced to use mostly WW I maps, but updated them with aerial reconnaissance whenever possible. The aerial map readers provided some astonishing information. They could recognize defensive positions by noticing darker grass. Dew would fall off barbed wire nourishing the grass underneath the wire more effectively hence making it more visible from the air.
What's amazing to me is how well MacDonald did with his men, perhaps a tribute to the training he had received. The story is recounted in such a matter-of-fact way, that the day-to-day horrors somehow become that much more memorable for their ordinariness.
Note: a really nice foldout map accompanies the History Book Club edition.
Show More
His men are revealed with all their flaws. As the author says in his preface: "to make a story of a war authentic you must see war--not a hasty taste of war but the dread, gnawing diet of war, the horrors and the fears that are at first blunt testimony that you are a novice and then later become so much a part of you that only another veteran, through some sixth sense, may know that those same horrors and fears are yet there." The introduction provides some context. "An infantry regiment with on-paper strength of a little more than 3,000 might lose over twice that many in less than a year of combat." The author of the introduction suggests that "such casualty rates played havoc with the concept of 'Band of Brothers' . . .An infantry company's makeup was constantly changing." Wounded being sent back to the front rarely were returned to their original outfits. Casualty rates among the infantry -- note that Winters was airborne -- were staggering. They suffered "more than 90% of the casualties in Europe."
Marshall's "ninety-division gamble," an attempt to keep the army as small as possible -- something I had no clue about -- is so reminiscent of Rumsfeld's similar attempt with its consequent disaster in Iraq. Marshall's reasoning was to apply as much resource as possble to war production and air and naval power. Plus ca change.......
This is the unvarnished memoir of combat. Sometimes retreats occur against orders. Often superior officers flee the battlefield, then write each other up for medals. Fear is omnipresent, atrocities happen, hot showers become more than luxeries.
He dreaded sending out patrols at night to collect information they had already reported to headquarters just so the rear brass could type up more reports. He and his men have little respect for the higher ranks. "It seemed that since we were now in a 'quiet' position that every officer in the division with the rank of major or above wanted to inspect the company area. The condemned the men for not having shaved or for wearing knit wool caps without their helmets, evidently an unpardonable misdemeanor, or for untidy areas around the dugouts. The officers did not inspect my 1st Platoon area, [stationed farthest foward and subjected to random shelling:] however, usually passing it over with the excuse it was too far to walk, but we laughed inwardly, knowing it was the threat of enemy shelling that kept most of them away."
MacDonald was thrown into combat as a captain replacement officer with little or no combat experience. He was assigned company I, a group that swore action followed them around. As soon as they were pulled from a an intense sector, it quieted down. When they were assigned to a previously quiet area, the Germans would attack with a bayonet charge or something smilar.
Following several months in relatively static defensive positions, his company is quickly rounded up and sent to back up the 99th Inf. Division that had been counterattacked and mauled after they had attempted to take some dams to prevent their destruction. MacDonald's account of moving to the front in snow, setting up his men with not enough ammunition, the chaos and opacity of battle is simply amazing. ' "Which way's the enemy?" I asked [of the colonel:]" "I dunno. [he replied:] Nobody seems to know a goddamned thing. They say it's that way," and he motioned with one arm to the east.'
The small military horizon of the company commander was striking. They maintained closest contact with companies on their flanks; some with Battalion, very little with Division, Corps is almost unimportant. Maps and map reading ability was crucial. The British had been given responsibility for mapping Europe; they were forced to use mostly WW I maps, but updated them with aerial reconnaissance whenever possible. The aerial map readers provided some astonishing information. They could recognize defensive positions by noticing darker grass. Dew would fall off barbed wire nourishing the grass underneath the wire more effectively hence making it more visible from the air.
What's amazing to me is how well MacDonald did with his men, perhaps a tribute to the training he had received. The story is recounted in such a matter-of-fact way, that the day-to-day horrors somehow become that much more memorable for their ordinariness.
Note: a really nice foldout map accompanies the History Book Club edition.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jamespurcell
Apt portrayal of the mental and physical stress of war at the individual and unit command level. Those of us who have never experienced such can only marvel at the strength and commitment of those who did.
LibraryThing member lamour
MacDonald was a |Captain in the US Army. His outfits were Companies I and G of the 23d Infantry which he joined in September 1944 as replacement. He was green having never experienced combat. Fearing the men he led would be suspicious of his abilities, he held self-doubted his leadership ability.
He includes such tremendous detail in his narrative that more than once I checked to see that I wasn't reading a novel. He includes the names of men who he spoke to, who were wounded, who were killed plus the names of German officers he met near the end of the war and even women he danced with in the celebrations in the Czech Republic when the war ended. Once in a while when his narrative may leave you wondering what happened to some one, he adds in italics what he found out years later or information someone who read the first edition of the book told him later.
This is a great read if you wish to know what it was like to be a basic infantry soldier fighting your way across Europe in 1944-45. One caution about the text is that German soldiers were often cited as killers of prisoners or wounded soldiers. While MacDonald never admits to actually seeing American GI's performing the same atrocities, he definitely never leaves you in doubt that some prisoners sent to the rear never made it there. As well, German wounded were frequently left to die if it was inconvenient to care for them.
Show More
But his caring for his men and his lack of fear at the front soon made him a popular officer. He led his units across France, Belgium, Germany and ended the war in Czechoslovakia. He includes such tremendous detail in his narrative that more than once I checked to see that I wasn't reading a novel. He includes the names of men who he spoke to, who were wounded, who were killed plus the names of German officers he met near the end of the war and even women he danced with in the celebrations in the Czech Republic when the war ended. Once in a while when his narrative may leave you wondering what happened to some one, he adds in italics what he found out years later or information someone who read the first edition of the book told him later.
This is a great read if you wish to know what it was like to be a basic infantry soldier fighting your way across Europe in 1944-45. One caution about the text is that German soldiers were often cited as killers of prisoners or wounded soldiers. While MacDonald never admits to actually seeing American GI's performing the same atrocities, he definitely never leaves you in doubt that some prisoners sent to the rear never made it there. As well, German wounded were frequently left to die if it was inconvenient to care for them.
Show Less
LibraryThing member goosecap
This is a middling offering in a very real sense: it comes from the middle layer. On the one hand, The Company Commander was an officer, and an officer of the 1940s—back when things were “the way things should be”—GIs were still GIs, even then, though. (The treatment of civilian women was
…. Though, incidentally, when Jack was about to be drafted into WWI, he made an agreement “with (his) country”, that he would serve when called upon, but not waste time beforehand on the journalistic drudgeries of modern war; and I think that, to some extent at least, our modern skepticism for the classical poetry of heightened sense perception in time of war, relates to the sort of modern war journalistic pieces of deadened sensitivity in war written by people like The Company Commander.
…. They weren’t as trigger-happy as the Soviets, but I’m not proud of everything they did.
…. But he freed the captives.
…. I moralize, so I’ll say this. Talk of justice can annoy, and perhaps some might find too much of that here. (White American men in the 1940s and their foibles, right.) The Company Commander too, though, speaks of justice; the mid-level officer thinks at one point that he’s a little bit more macho than the higher officer eating hotdogs or whatever at headquarters. Personally I think that if he had a little bit more awareness of himself, he, like all of us, would find less cause for complaint, who as a body gives so much cause for offense on our own part. My own apology for pointing this out can only be that I try to play more the part of a “Pop” Winans (or, rather, his father, I suppose), than a Malcolm X. Though, of course, Winans would not have served in this particular company.
This is of course, to speak of words not spoken, more than things as they appear, hahaha.
Show More
perhaps the most obvious faux pas; every woman is yearning for a stranger with a gun, right. What to me is fear of the Negro soldiers is also a little off-color to my interpretation.) So because of this 1940s middle class formality and dryness, there’s little of courage and hate and so on. (Hate is when you don’t want the other man to be brave; Narnia Jack could never approve, whereas The Company Commander could simply never mention.) And the book was never intended to be about strategy and the higher officers. So we’re left with the middle. Chapter break. Incoming artillery, two wounded. Chapter break. Ate food, quiet day. Chapter break…. But The Company Commander knew what it was like to be a man in an engine of war, and it was an important engine. …. Though, incidentally, when Jack was about to be drafted into WWI, he made an agreement “with (his) country”, that he would serve when called upon, but not waste time beforehand on the journalistic drudgeries of modern war; and I think that, to some extent at least, our modern skepticism for the classical poetry of heightened sense perception in time of war, relates to the sort of modern war journalistic pieces of deadened sensitivity in war written by people like The Company Commander.
…. They weren’t as trigger-happy as the Soviets, but I’m not proud of everything they did.
…. But he freed the captives.
…. I moralize, so I’ll say this. Talk of justice can annoy, and perhaps some might find too much of that here. (White American men in the 1940s and their foibles, right.) The Company Commander too, though, speaks of justice; the mid-level officer thinks at one point that he’s a little bit more macho than the higher officer eating hotdogs or whatever at headquarters. Personally I think that if he had a little bit more awareness of himself, he, like all of us, would find less cause for complaint, who as a body gives so much cause for offense on our own part. My own apology for pointing this out can only be that I try to play more the part of a “Pop” Winans (or, rather, his father, I suppose), than a Malcolm X. Though, of course, Winans would not have served in this particular company.
This is of course, to speak of words not spoken, more than things as they appear, hahaha.
Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1947
Physical description
ix, 278 p.; 24 cm
Similar in this library
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by Stephen E. Ambrose
CITIZEN SOLDIERS : The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany -- June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945 by Stephen E. Ambrose