I just finished “A time for trumpets”
Excellent book. Dispels a lot of myths.
Biggest one is that the Americans ran away or surrendered - they fought hard for every mile. Even burnt out National Guard units.
The Germans really had no chance. Even if everything went their way, which it didn’t, their plan to capture Antwerp and split the allies had no hope of success.
‘I just finished “A time for trumpets”
Excellent book. Dispels a lot of myths.
Biggest one is that the Americans ran away or surrendered - they fought hard for every mile. Even burnt out National Guard units.
The Germans really had no chance. Even if everything went their way, which it didn’t, their plan to capture Antwerp and split the allies had no hope of success.’
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I logged in to mention and recommend this book and you beat me to it! It is a very different depiction of the Ardennes Offensive than we get in popular culture. More desperate and determined defense by American units, often fighting to the point of annihilation if they did not have permission to withdraw, or more commonly did not get the word that they could.
Close range tank battles, obsolescent ATGs making the difference in close quarter fighting, a unit of engineers that kept being in the right place at the right time. The author takes the battle’s perspective all the way from a Belgian teenager hiding in a root cellar, to the highest chain of command in Germany, and conversations between Churchill and Eisenhower.
A great read, highly recommended. Get yourself some good maps alongside; the e-version didn’t have any. Available as a kindle download. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182138.A_Time_for_Trumpets