foreword william sands (1 risultati)

Hardback. Condizione: Good. Condizione sovraccoperta: Poor. 1st Edition. 1st Edition - Stated (1958) - GOOD in poor dust jacket. DJ has closed tears and is now covered in Mylar protection. Text proper is clean but there are some penciled marginalia. Binding is sound. x, 257 pages. . . . . . . . .*The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo* by Glover S. Johns Jr. is a first-person World War II combat memoir about the U.S. 29th Division's brutal fight to capture the ruined French town of St. Lo in the summer of 1944. The book recounts how Johns, then a major, led the 1st Battalion, 115th Infantry Regiment's grimly nicknamed *the Indestructible Clay Pigeons* because of their exposed, repeatedly battered front-line role - during the month-long struggle in the hedgerows of Normandy. He describes near-continuous artillery and mortar fire, close-quarters infantry actions, and the grinding attrition that turned St. Lo into a shattered objective taken only after heavy American and German casualties. Written in a plainspoken officer's voice, the narrative mixes tactical detail (battalion-level movements, coordination with other units, problems of terrain and communication) with candid portraits of individual soldiers under stress. Johns emphasizes confusion, miscommunication, fatigue, and the emotional toll of seeing his unit repeatedly sent forward, making the book both a unit history and an unsentimental ground-level view of the Normandy campaign. Originally published in 1958 by Military Service Publishing in Harrisburg, the work has since come to be regarded as a classic of modern American military history and a key firsthand account of the bocage fighting.