The Liberator - One World War II Soldier s 500 Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily

Zusatztext 49651209 Informationen zum Autor ALEX KERSHAW is the  New York Times  bestselling author of several books on World War II, including  The Longest Winter and The Bedford Boys . He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Klappentext The untold story of the bloodiest and most dramatic march to victory of the Second World War-soon to be a Netflix original series starring Jose Miguel Vasquez, Bryan Hibbard, and Bradley James "Exceptional . . . worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers."-Wall Street Journal Written with Alex Kershaw's trademark narrative drive and vivid immediacy, The Liberator traces the remarkable battlefield journey of maverick U.S. Army officer Felix Sparks through the Allied liberation of Europe-from the first landing in Italy to the final death throes of the Third Reich. Over five hundred bloody days, Sparks and his infantry unit battled from the beaches of Sicily through the mountains of Italy and France, ultimately enduring bitter and desperate winter combat against the die-hard SS on the Fatherland's borders. Having miraculously survived the long, bloody march across Europe, Sparks was selected to lead a final charge to Bavaria, where he and his men experienced some of the most intense street fighting suffered by Americans in World War II. And when he finally arrived at the gates of Dachau, Sparks confronted scenes that robbed the mind of reason-and put his humanity to the ultimate test.Chapter One The West Miami, Arizona, 1931 Felix Sparks woke early. It was getting light outside. He pulled on his jacket, grabbed his shotgun, and headed out into the dusty canyon, past miners' shacks and mountains of tailings from the nearby mine, and into the red-rocked canyons, eyes darting here and there as he checked his traplines. The Tonto forest and mountains surrounding his home were full of bounty and menace: snapping lizards, tarantulas the size of his fist, and several deadly types of scorpion. It was important to tread carefully, avoiding porcupines beneath the Ponderosa pines and always being alert for the raised hackles of the diamondback rattler and the quick slither of the sidewinder snake, with its cream and light brown blotches. Each morning, he checked his traplines and hunted game, hoping to bag with just one shot a quail or a cottontailed rabbit or a Sonora dove. He couldn't afford to waste a single cartridge. As the sun started to warm the cold, still air in the base of canyons, he returned to the small frame house he shared with his younger brother, Earl, and three sisters, Ladelle, Frances, and Margaret. His mother, Martha, of English descent and raised in Mississippi, and his father, Felix, of Irish and German blood, counted themselves lucky to have running water. They had moved to Arizona a decade before to find work. But now there was none. Every animal their eldest son brought home was needed to feed the family. The economic panic and failure that followed the October 1929 Wall Street crash had swept like a tsunami across America; more than nine thousand banks had failed, and unemployment had shot up tenfold, from around 1.5 million to 13 million, a quarter of the workforce. There was no stimulus spending, nothing done to stop the catastrophe enveloping the nation like one of the dust storms that buried entire towns in Oklahoma. By 1931, the copper mines in Miami had closed down and a terrible silence had descended on the town that stood three thousand feet in the lee of Mount Webster. The rumble of machines far below, the distant growl made by their grinding and lifting, was gone. Over Christmas, at age fourteen, Sparks hiked far into the mountains with his father and Earl, laid traps and hunted for two full weeks, then skinned and dried pelts. They also fished for perch. But none of it was enough.<...

Product details

• Authors: Alex Kershaw
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 15.10.2013
• EAN: 9780307888006
• ISBN: 978-0-307-88800-6
• No. of pages: 448
• Dimensions: 131 mm x 203 mm x 24 mm
• Series: Broadway Books
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > 20th century (up to 1945); Non-fiction book