Citizen Soldiers

Citizen Soldiers

From the beaches of Normandy to the German surrender. That is the length of the war that Citizen Soldiers covers. It talks about personal stories and experiences from the private on the ground to the generals at the top. The book tells of the trials and tribulations of fighting a war far away from home and in many cases little knowledge of what the objectives are and were the war is headed.

The stories told in the book range from Lt. Waverly Wray’s assault on the German hedges the day after landing at Normandy, to Sgt. Edgar Lauritsen’s accounts of German infiltration techniques.

When Sgt. Lauritsen was manning a checkpoint on December 21, 1944, his CP was being shelled by a German tank. Just then two jeeploads of soldiers in American uniforms pulled up. There were nine of them. One a captain and the rest in enlisted uniforms. They pulled up, got out of the jeeps and began walking around a house near the checkpoint toward the German lines. Sgt. Lauritsen got suspicious, so he asked the captain what unit he was with. When the captain replied with slight difficulty pronouncing his unit, he was shot in the back. Unfortunately, the eight men with him grabbed him and dragged the shot captain back to German lines. Stories like this are found throughout the book. These stories show how evasive and seemingly overly ambitious there enemy was.

Although the book has many accounts of what general did this on that day, it merely helps paint the big picture of what was happening. The truly interesting parts of the book are where the young enlisted men tell their stories of what happened down in trench or at their machinegun bunker. Because of these men, America was able win the war on both fronts.

In closing, this book is a good book to read if you want to learn about actual historical accounts of what happened down on the ground.