Showing results by author "Alex Kershaw"

From July 10, 1943, the date of the Allied landing in Sicily, to May 8, 1945, when victory in Europe was declared - the entire time it took to liberate Europe - no regiment saw more action, and no single platoon, company, or battalion endured worse, than the ones commanded by Felix Sparks, who had entered the war as a greenhorn second lieutenant of the 157th "Eager for Duty" Infantry Regiment of the 45th "Thunderbird" Division. Sparks and his fellow Thunderbirds fought longest and hardest to defeat Hitler.

The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris' hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son, Phillip, at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high.

World War II had been raging for nearly a year. Hitler was now planning an invasion of England to seal Europe's fate. Though the United States was still neutral, a few Americans decided they couldn't remain on the sidelines. They joined Britain's Royal Air Force - with the future of civilization hanging in the balance. The Few tells the dramatic story of these Americans who defied their own country's neutrality laws and risked their very citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots.

December 1944: Deep in the Ardennes forest, a platoon of 18 men under the command of 20-year-old lieutenant Lyle Bouck huddle in their foxholes. Under attack and vastly outnumbered, they repulse three German assaults in a fierce day-long battle, killing more than 500 Germans. Only when Bouck's men run out of ammunition do they surrender. As POWs, Bouck's platoon experience an ordeal far worse than combat: trigger-happy German guards, Allied bombing raids, and a daily ration of thin soup. Somehow, the men of Bouck's platoon all miraculously survive. 

Hailed as “a master storyteller” ( Booklist), Alex Kershaw routinely climbs best-seller lists with his narrative histories. In the waning months of World War II, SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann sent over half a million Hungarians to their deaths at Auschwitz. But one Jewish ghetto remained, and only one man - a Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg - could stop Eichmann.

Felix Sparks (1917-2007) stammte aus einer Bergarbeiterfamilie in Arizona und ließ sich nach der High School von der Armee anwerben, weil er in der Großen Depression keine Arbeit fand. Dann ging er ans College, um Jura zu studieren, und wurde erneut einberufen, als die USA sich für den Kriegseintritt rüsteten. Er nahm teil an der Invasion Siziliens 1943, war der einzige Überlebende seiner Einheit bei der Schlacht von Anzio, überlebte die deutsche Ardennenoffensive, den Häuserkampf in Aschaffenburg, wo der "Volkssturm" die Amerikaner aufzuhalten versuchte, und kommandierte die Einheit, die Dachau befreite.

The Bedford Boys is the astonishing true story of 21 young men who were killed during the first horrifying minutes of D-Day and the friends and families they left behind in the small town of Bedford. Twenty-one sons killed - no other town in America suffered a greater loss in one day. It is an unforgettable story of triumph, courage, and tragedy based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives as well as diaries and letters.