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Title: The Guns of Victory: A Soldier's Eye View, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, 1944-45 (Guns of Victory) by George G. Blackburn ISBN: 0-7710-1505-4 Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant Final Volume Of A Superb WW II Trilogy!
Comment: In this, the concluding chapter of Canadian war veteran George G. Blackburn's superb three-volume eyewitness history of our northern neighbor's involvement in the war in Europe, we find a truly stunning successor to the previous two volumes. As with "The Guns Of Normandy" volume, we discover a masterful narrative punctuating the combination of dramatic life and death struggles contrasted with moments of drumming ennui or utter despair. For the Canadian soldier on the ground, the several months following the heroic and costly landing on D-Day were seemingly a coda, a time that seemed unreal because while they had the enemy on the run, the remaining elements of the Wehrmacht fought savagely and well in the ensuing period of time. So, although many of the allies felt it was all over but the shouting, especially after the re-taking of Paris and much of France, as Blackburn shows us from the ground grunt's view, it was anything but over and done with.
This volume picks up the narrative thread where the previous volume left it, with the much-vaunted Canadian 4th Field Regiment ordered in to relentlessly pursue the Germans as they retreated through the treacherous topography of the flooded French area known as the 'Low Country'. As the pursuit ensued, the soldiers began to reach the limits of their physical and emotional endurance. And the battle as it unfolded before them promised no respite from the hellish demands posed by an enemy with no real thought of surrendering or fleeing. Yet, as they knock the Wehrmacht from its hastily devised defense perimeters within the Scheldt estuary again and again, they gradually succeeded in creating the conditions for re-opening of Antwerp, and thus helped to unleash the productive power and formidable logistics trail previously left hanging for want of such a large and capable deep-water port.
In the midst of all this, the Canadians, along with the rest of the Allied forces, had to suffer through the worst winter in decades in the European theater in the open and on the ground, and many died from such harsh exposure to the elements. Yet the Germans, fighting under these horrific conditions, still were able to mount savage resistance as they fought even more ferociously even as they began to understand how desperate their situation was. And as they beat the foe back yard by yard, mile by mile, back across the Rhine, the Canadians are enlisted in the increased fight once more in the Battle of the Rhineland, the final push toward the German heartland. And, as victory finally comes, Blackburn assures us it was indeed a bittersweet experience, felt equally with measures of pride and relief, knowing the unbelievable ordeal of the last several years was finally over.
As with his other books, here Blackburn relates his personal experience with a wonderfully literate and engagingly approachable writing style, and he surely uses his journalist's experience and his obvious facility with words to great advantage here, adding immeasurably to our understanding of what the experience on the ground was in as the first fatal hours and days turned into weeks and months of savage fighting, as the Allies bludgeoned their ways through the brutal resistance of a frenzied Nazi war machine. This is a story we should hear again and again, as we rediscover once more how truly amazing the feat of both the Canadians in particular, but all the Allies in general, stood tall in the very face of tyranny and smashed it into smithereens, saving the world from what has to be considered the face of absolute evil. Mr. Blackburn writes with surprising intensity and emotion, and his sense of recall of particular events and existential circumstances for himself and his fellows is both impressive and quite moving at points in his narrative. This is first person history at its best, one that employs both a more objective coda to the book, which also serves to lend a more authoritative aura to the proceedings than would otherwise have been possible. I recommend not only this book, but the other two volumes as well. Enjoy!
Rating: 5
Summary: In celebration of those "in baggy pants covered with mud"
Comment: Although hardly a scholar in the field of military history, I certainly have a keen interest in it. One of my favorite sources of information is John Keegan's The Face of Battle in which he explains combat experience from the perspective of those who were directly involved at Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815), and the Somme (1916). According to the first-hand accounts on which Keegan relies, films such as Paths of Glory, Pork Chop Hill, and most recently Saving Private Ryan probably offer about as realistic a visual account as is possible. However, as Ken Burns demonstrated when calling upon various sources for the narrative of his television series on the Civil War, first-hand accounts have unsurpassed authenticity and credibility. For that reason, I hold George Blackburn's work in such high regard. In each of his three volumes based on his own experiences with the Canadian 4th Field Regiment during World War Two, he enables his reader to know precisely what he was thinking and feeling as well as what he was encountering during the Normandy Invasion, during the Battle for the Rhineland, and then during the final months of the war.
In this volume as in The Guns of Normandy, Blackburn brilliantly uses two strategies to present his narrative: the present tense (to invest the material with immediacy) and the second person voice (to engage his reader in each situation, albeit vicariously). This volume offers so much technical information but always within a human context. For example, consider this brief passage in which Blackburn explains the symbolic importance of guns (as opposed to rifles) which bears striking resemblance to the importance pilots assign to the carriers on which they and their squadrons are based. In this instance, Blackburn describes what is (in effect) a warrior's reunion with artillery:
"You get the feeling that you are visiting a very strange place -- one of the most welcoming places you will ever visit in your whole life --even though you are conscious that tomorrow, or before today is out, this field will be abandoned, never to be seen again by you or any of these fellows. How strange that something that has no permanence by way of form or location should become fixed in your mind as something of substance, something reliable to be counted on in this shaky, impermanent world, an island of stability and order in a churning ocean of disorder, an ultimate refuge to which you can withdraw if everything else disintegrates: home." Surely this is passage could also describe a weary survivor of the air war in the Pacific as he prepares to return to his carrier, "an island of stability and order in a churning ocean of disorder, an ultimate refuge to which [he] can withdraw if everything else disintegrates: home."
By the time we reach the conclusion of this volume, we fully understand the meaning and significance of the quotation from Kipling with which Blackburn concludes Part Four. Specifically, the last line "The guns, thank God, the guns." Perhaps Blackburn will not object if I presume to thank God also for those "in baggy pants covered with mud, their boots and socks always wet."
Rating: 4
Summary: Wonderful Soldier's Eye Story
Comment: The Guns of Victory is a fascinating account of what it was like to be an artillery officer for the Canadian army during some of the heaviest fighting of the second World War.
Blackburn is not a full "grunt", he is an officer. But he is on the front lines, and by war's end, he has become the longest-serving artillery officer on the front lines. That is a rather dubious honor as Blackburn learns that an informal betting pool has been established on when he would be either wounded or killed.
This is the third book in Blackburn's trilogy, Where The Hell Are The Guns and The Guns of Normandy being the first two. As in the others, you get a wonderful picture of the emotions of serving in the war, the fears, joys and hardships. There are some things that happen in a war that are simply weird and Blackburn reports them as well.
This would be a 5-star review, but the book fails in providing enough pictures. The two or three maps included are woefully inadequate. Plus the book does a poor job of explaining the various companies, troops etc. Perhaps they were explained in other parts of the trilogy, but a glossary is badly needed.
A companion CD-ROM would have helped greatly in showing more of the faces, sites and campaigns of the war.
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Title: The Guns of Normandy : A Soldier's Eye View, France 1944 by GEORGE BLACKBURN ISBN: 0771015038 Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Pub. Date: 26 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Where the Hell Are the Guns?: A Soldier's Eye View of the Anxious Years, 1939-44 by George G. Blackburn ISBN: 0771015062 Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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