Search results for ""author david b. hurt""

"...a well-wrought ground level view of daily life in hell." - WWII Magazine This is the remarkable story of a German soldier who fought throughout World War II, rising from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front.William Lubbeck was 19 when he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa. After gruelling marches admidst countless Russian bodies, burnt-out vehicles, and a great number of cheering Baltic civilians, Lubbeck’s unit entered the outskirts of Leningrad, making the deepest penetration of any German formation.The Germans suffered brutal hardships the following winter as they fought both Russian counterattacks and the brutal cold. The 58th Division was thrown back and forth across the front of Army Group North, from Novgorod to Demyansk, at one point fighting back Russian attacks on the ice of Lake Ilmen. Returning to the outskirts of Leningrad, the 58th was placed in support of the Spanish “Blue” Division. Relations between the allied formations soured at one point when the Spaniards used a Russian bath house for target practice, not realising that Germans were relaxing inside.A soldier who preferred to be close to the action, Lubbeck served as forward observer for his company, duelling with Russian snipers, partisans and full-scale assaults alike. With the assistance of David B. Hurt, he has drawn on his wartime notes and letters, Soldatbuch, regimental history and personal memories to recount his four years of frontline experience. Containing rare firsthand accounts of both triumph and disaster, At Leningrad’s Gates provides a fascinating glimpse into the reality of combat on the Eastern Front.

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Ernest ‘Andy’ Andrews began his training as a machine gunner at Fort McClellan in Alabama in July 1943. In early 1944, he arrived in the UK for further training before D-Day, ahead of the 1st Infantry Division deploying on the evening of June 5th on the USS Henrico. Due to a problem with his landing craft, Andrews only reached Omaha Beach on the early evening of June 6th, but his experience was still a harrowing one. Fighting in Normandy, he was nicked by a bullet and evacuated to England in late July when the wound became infected, before returning to participate in the Normandy breakout. Following the race across France in late August, he participated in the rout of several retreating German units near Mons, Belgium, and his outfit approached Aachen in mid-September. For a month, Andrews’ squad defended a bunker position in the Siegfried Line against repeated German attacks, then after Aachen surrendered, the unit fought its way through the Hurtgen Forest to take Hill 232. Early on the morning of November 19th, he engaged in his toughest battle of the war as the Germans attempted to retake Hill 232, where he was again wounded. After surgery and a month’s convalescence he rejoined H Company in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. His unit then participated in the fast-moving Roer to the Rhine campaign, then the battle to expand the Remagen bridgehead. Breaking out from the Remagen bridgehead, Andrews’ squad stumbled on a German tank unit and this time he narrowly escaped death. Following a rapid advance up to the Paderborn area, the unit raced to Germany’s Harz Mountains, where the Wehrmacht was trying to organize a last stand. They ended the war fighting in Czechoslovakia, where Andrews witnesses the German surrender in early May. Following occupation duty, he returned to the States in October 1945. This vivid first-hand account takes the reader along from Normandy to victory with Andy Andrews and his machine-gun crew. The war shaped the author’s postwar life in countless ways, and in 1994, he made the first of three return visits to the European battlefields where he had fought.

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