The Guns at Last Light, Atkinson - A*

                                         This is the third volume of 'The Liberation Trilogy', the author's homage to the U.S. Army and its men in their three theater battle with Germany in World War II.  'An Army at Dawn' told of their start in Africa and won a Pulitzer. 'The Day of Battle' detailed the gruesome, brutal, and under-appreciated campaign in Italy. This is the story of their triumph from D-Day to VE day, at D+335.  As a nation, we remember the perfidy of Pearl Harbor and know the outline of our almost four year battle against Japan, but it is this eleven month tale that we treasure, honor and remember just a bit more. This is the war whose leaders are part of our folklore: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Smith, Ridgeway, Roosevelt,Taylor, Gavin, Abrams, and McAuliffe. Very few of us know as many names from the Pacific.
                                       From June 6, 1944 right up to the end, the Army was hindered by supply shortages. Men and material were perpetually unavailable. The French port of Cherbourg was destroyed by the Germans and only one of the two Mulberries survived a gale that hit the Channel soon after the landings.  It would not be until Nov. 28, when the Belgian port of Antwerp was liberated by the Canadians, that the Allies had reliable and sufficient dockage on the continent.  Fortunately for us, Hitler kept a twenty-division reserve in the Pas-de-Calais, because that is where they figured the invasion would come. The depth of the Normandy beachhead was only six miles on July 1. Casualties on both sides were at the same ratio as 1917. The breakthrough did not come until July 26. By August 21, the Germans were essentially out of France and headed to the Westwall.                                                            
                                      The U.S. Army actually entered Germany on Sept. 11, but it would take them another six months to breach the Rhine, barely seventy-five miles away. Allied planners had assumed they would not reach the Fatherland until May,1945. They were not prepared for their early success. Again, they simply did not have the supplies to project their strength into Germany. Ammo, food, and winter clothing were lacking. The rainfall along the front in November was triple the annual averages. A brutal winter followed. The fall saw the failure of Market Garden, the slog in the Huertgen Forest, and the repulse that was the Battle of the Bulge. When the Germans initiated their Ardennes offensive on Dec.16, they had a 5:1 advantage in artillery  and a 3:1 in armor.
                                        On Jan. 20th, the Soviets were on the Oder, fifty miles from Berlin, and we were still two months from crossing the Rhine. In addition to supply challenges, there still was not an agreed upon strategy for finishing off the Germans. Monty and Ike battled incessantly (as an American, it certainly appears as if Monty was insufferable).  Monty wanted a British thrust into northern Germany; Ike wanted a massive front with Monty on the north and Bradley in the south. It got so bad that Marshall told the Combined Chiefs that Monty "was an impudent and disloyal subordinate, who treated all American officers with open contempt. "                                                        
                                       Two weeks after the March 7 breach at Remagen, seven Allied Armies crossed the Rhine and entered Germany.  It was pretty much over then as there were few organized forces between the Rhine and the Elbe. We met the Soviets on April 25th, the day they surrounded Berlin.  The Battle of Berlin cost the Soviets three hundred thousand casualties, thus confirming for Ike, his decision to not try for the Reich capital.
                                       "Twelve years after it had began, the Thousand-Year Reich had ended. Humanity would require decades, perhaps centuries, to parse the regime's inhumanity, and to comprehend how a narcissistic beer hall demagogue had wrecked a nation, a continent and nearly a world."
                                        In 1947, the US Army forwarded Quartermaster General Form 345 to the next of kin of 270,000 Americans asking if they wished to have their soldier brought home for interment. Over sixty percent came home on ghost ships carrying over five thousand caskets apiece, which then traveled by rail across the republic.
                                        16,112,566 Americans were in uniform during the war. Demographers forecast that the number will dip below a million in late 2014 and 100,000 in 2024. Shockingly, they expect there will be four hundred veterans alive to see the 90th anniversary of D-Day. Certainly those soon to be centenarians never became devotees of the Luckies, Camels and Chesterfields that were staples in their K-rations.