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Review for The Americans and Germans at Bastogne
Author/Director : Gary Sterne
Format : Book
This is a good account of the holding of Bastogne told in a most confusing way. The German story is told at big unit, i.e. corps, divisional and regimental level. The American narrative rarely reaches corps and frequently gets down to squad action. This is a strange imbalance for the reader to reconcile. Also there is a glaring error in the absence of a good map of the whole area. To be able to understand what is happening in such a fluid situation you need to know where places referred to in the text are located. There are many sketch maps seemingly drawn at the time, which are scattered through the book, but most of these are without scale or key and with writing which is almost undecipherable. On page 138 there is a map reference given but no map on which to locate it.
Further milder criticism is that, given the large number of abbreviations used, it would have been helpful to have included a glossary. The section of photographs is interesting in that they are not the most common Bastogne pictures.
We don’t recommend a cover to cover read but would suggest as a way round the confusion that all the German sections are read first and then all of the American ones. There is a wealth of information in this book and if the reader provides their own detailed map of the area a good understanding of the unfolding battle will be gained.
Published by : Pen & Sword Military, 2020
ISBN : 978 1 52677 077 6
Review last updated : 2020-07-08 12:58:12
