Allied special operations units fight and flounder in the ill-fated Market-Garden offensive in this colorful but unfocused WWII picaresque. Former Special Forces fighter Irwin (The Jedburghs) recounts the exploits of three-man “Jedburgh Teams” sent into German-occupied Holland to organize Dutch resistance fighters in support of General Montgomery’s infamous “bridge too far” debacle. The author focuses on two Americans: Lt. Harvey Allan Todd, who was taken prisoner by the Germans at Arnheim, and Maj. John Olmsted, who organized a secret intelligence network behind enemy lines. There’s not much shape or significance to these largely unrelated plot lines, which concern some of the most ill-conceived and useless operations of the war. Olmsted lost important enemy plans; in Todd’s case, an American rescue force is captured by the Germans and imprisoned in the very POW camp it was supposed to liberate. Still, the author vividly recounts many varieties of WWII experience: blood-and-guts combat set pieces; a tense espionage thriller; and a harrowing captivity narrative. Irwin’s angle on the oft-told Market-Garden fiasco doesn’t make for a grand epic, just a collection of well-told war stories. Photos, 4 maps. (Mar. 23)
The operation known as "Market Garden"-made famous in the book and film A Bridge Too Far-was the largest airborne assault in history up to that time. A high-risk Allied invasion of enemy territory that has become a legend of World War II, it still invites criticism from historians. Now a thrilling and revelatory new book re-creates the operation as never before, revealing for the first time the full adventures of the bold "Jedburgh" paratroopers whose exploits were almost unimaginably risky and heroic.
Kicked off on September 17, 1944, Market Garden was intended to secure crucial bridges in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands by a parachute assault conducted by three Allied airborne divisions. Capture of the bridges would allow a swift advance and crossing of the Rhine by British ground forces. Jedburgh teams-Allied Special Forces-were dropped into the Netherlands to train and use the Dutch resistance in support of the larger operation. Based on new firsthand testimony of survivors and declassified documents, Abundance of Valor concentrates on the three teams that operated farthest behind enemy lines, the nine men whose treacherous missions resulted in deaths, captures, and hair-breadth escapes.
Here in unprecedented detail are the heat and stench of fuel, oil, and sweat in the troop carriers going over; the remarkable (and misleading) initial success of the daylight parachute landings; and the deadly, brutally effective German response, particularly by crack SS armored units in the blood-soaked town of Arnhem. Abundance of Valor portrays with stunning verisimilitude the experiences of Lieutenant Harvey Allan Todd, who fought from a surrounded position against overwhelming numbers of the enemy before surviving capture, near starvation, interrogation, and solitary confinement in German POW camps, and Major John "Pappy" Olmsted, who made a hazardous journey, in disguise, from safe house to safe house through enemy territory until finally reaching friendly lines.
With piercing criticism of the mission's ultimate failure from faulty use of intelligence-and Field Marshall Montgomery's distrust of the Dutch underground-Abundance of Valor is a brutally honest and truly inspiring account of fighting men in a noble cause who did their jobs with extraordinary honor and courage.
"1100294074"
Kicked off on September 17, 1944, Market Garden was intended to secure crucial bridges in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands by a parachute assault conducted by three Allied airborne divisions. Capture of the bridges would allow a swift advance and crossing of the Rhine by British ground forces. Jedburgh teams-Allied Special Forces-were dropped into the Netherlands to train and use the Dutch resistance in support of the larger operation. Based on new firsthand testimony of survivors and declassified documents, Abundance of Valor concentrates on the three teams that operated farthest behind enemy lines, the nine men whose treacherous missions resulted in deaths, captures, and hair-breadth escapes.
Here in unprecedented detail are the heat and stench of fuel, oil, and sweat in the troop carriers going over; the remarkable (and misleading) initial success of the daylight parachute landings; and the deadly, brutally effective German response, particularly by crack SS armored units in the blood-soaked town of Arnhem. Abundance of Valor portrays with stunning verisimilitude the experiences of Lieutenant Harvey Allan Todd, who fought from a surrounded position against overwhelming numbers of the enemy before surviving capture, near starvation, interrogation, and solitary confinement in German POW camps, and Major John "Pappy" Olmsted, who made a hazardous journey, in disguise, from safe house to safe house through enemy territory until finally reaching friendly lines.
With piercing criticism of the mission's ultimate failure from faulty use of intelligence-and Field Marshall Montgomery's distrust of the Dutch underground-Abundance of Valor is a brutally honest and truly inspiring account of fighting men in a noble cause who did their jobs with extraordinary honor and courage.
Abundance of Valor: Resistance, Survival, and Liberation: 1944-45
The operation known as "Market Garden"-made famous in the book and film A Bridge Too Far-was the largest airborne assault in history up to that time. A high-risk Allied invasion of enemy territory that has become a legend of World War II, it still invites criticism from historians. Now a thrilling and revelatory new book re-creates the operation as never before, revealing for the first time the full adventures of the bold "Jedburgh" paratroopers whose exploits were almost unimaginably risky and heroic.
Kicked off on September 17, 1944, Market Garden was intended to secure crucial bridges in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands by a parachute assault conducted by three Allied airborne divisions. Capture of the bridges would allow a swift advance and crossing of the Rhine by British ground forces. Jedburgh teams-Allied Special Forces-were dropped into the Netherlands to train and use the Dutch resistance in support of the larger operation. Based on new firsthand testimony of survivors and declassified documents, Abundance of Valor concentrates on the three teams that operated farthest behind enemy lines, the nine men whose treacherous missions resulted in deaths, captures, and hair-breadth escapes.
Here in unprecedented detail are the heat and stench of fuel, oil, and sweat in the troop carriers going over; the remarkable (and misleading) initial success of the daylight parachute landings; and the deadly, brutally effective German response, particularly by crack SS armored units in the blood-soaked town of Arnhem. Abundance of Valor portrays with stunning verisimilitude the experiences of Lieutenant Harvey Allan Todd, who fought from a surrounded position against overwhelming numbers of the enemy before surviving capture, near starvation, interrogation, and solitary confinement in German POW camps, and Major John "Pappy" Olmsted, who made a hazardous journey, in disguise, from safe house to safe house through enemy territory until finally reaching friendly lines.
With piercing criticism of the mission's ultimate failure from faulty use of intelligence-and Field Marshall Montgomery's distrust of the Dutch underground-Abundance of Valor is a brutally honest and truly inspiring account of fighting men in a noble cause who did their jobs with extraordinary honor and courage.
Kicked off on September 17, 1944, Market Garden was intended to secure crucial bridges in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands by a parachute assault conducted by three Allied airborne divisions. Capture of the bridges would allow a swift advance and crossing of the Rhine by British ground forces. Jedburgh teams-Allied Special Forces-were dropped into the Netherlands to train and use the Dutch resistance in support of the larger operation. Based on new firsthand testimony of survivors and declassified documents, Abundance of Valor concentrates on the three teams that operated farthest behind enemy lines, the nine men whose treacherous missions resulted in deaths, captures, and hair-breadth escapes.
Here in unprecedented detail are the heat and stench of fuel, oil, and sweat in the troop carriers going over; the remarkable (and misleading) initial success of the daylight parachute landings; and the deadly, brutally effective German response, particularly by crack SS armored units in the blood-soaked town of Arnhem. Abundance of Valor portrays with stunning verisimilitude the experiences of Lieutenant Harvey Allan Todd, who fought from a surrounded position against overwhelming numbers of the enemy before surviving capture, near starvation, interrogation, and solitary confinement in German POW camps, and Major John "Pappy" Olmsted, who made a hazardous journey, in disguise, from safe house to safe house through enemy territory until finally reaching friendly lines.
With piercing criticism of the mission's ultimate failure from faulty use of intelligence-and Field Marshall Montgomery's distrust of the Dutch underground-Abundance of Valor is a brutally honest and truly inspiring account of fighting men in a noble cause who did their jobs with extraordinary honor and courage.
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940171154554 |
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Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
Publication date: | 04/12/2010 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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