Perhaps the most honest story of World War Two ever written! Author Dick Stodghill tells of his experiences as a young rifleman
serving in the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. He takes us to Normandy and the subsequent
fighting in France. We are there during the action which earned him the Combat Infantry Badge and the Bronze Star. His book tells a vivd story at the ground level. He wastes no thoughts on strategy, politics or heroics but speaks rather of the infantryman's war as it really happened: on the sands and the hedgerow
country of Normandy, and through the mud and snow of northern France. The author is brilliant in the way he describes the realities of war and of the fighting man - for better or worse. The long days of drudgery interrupted by the sudden terror of war come alive. We feel his frustrations at the shortcomings of leadership, and the downright incompetence of some are not spared by his pen. Respect, and even compassion at times, for the enemy is unusual in a story of this nature, yet Stodghill somehow is able to see through enmity and avoid hate, knowing that the man shooting a him was very much like himself - a man believing that he was serving his country. Dick Stodghill's true tale makes a lasting impression, and no one who reads it will forget the cruelty - and nobility - which war can evoke from men of all nations. He is what a real soldier is made of: loathing what he had to do, yet doing it in duty for his country.