The Screaming Eagles
by
George E. Koskimaki
The best way to understand a war is to read the accounts of the guys who fought -- in other words, get the view from the battlefield. I've read a couple accounts like that,like Russell Miller's Nothing Less than Victory and Waterloo: A Near Run Thing by David Howarth. Both books proved to be engaging page turners that related the experiences of ordinary soldiers on the battlefield.
I picked up The Screaming Eagles looking for a better understanding of the airdrops behind enemy lines during the D-Day Invasion and discovered this book had been written in the same vein. The Screaming Eagles relates the account of the parachute landings on top of DZ areas in the hedgegrows on D-Day. My closest reference to this part of the D-Day Invasion is the Spielberg movie, Saving Pvt. Ryan, where the character, Pvt. Ryan, played by Matt Damon, is part of the airborne 101st.
The book shares the accounts of the parachutists, pilots and support people in the incredible logistical nightmare of dropping an army behind the defenses of Hitler's Fortress Europe and the tasks they tackled supporting the following beach invasion. The author offers short one and two paragraph narratives from the GIs who jumped, starting with the angst of delayed take-offs and through the first day of the Normandy Battle.
The Screaming Eagles is full of anecdotal stuff that fleshes out this highly secret invasion. Like the predecessors of this kind of narrative, George E. Koskimaki puts the reader right down on the ground with the soldiers rather than taking a homing pigeon's view of the battle. In the big picture, what's fascinating about the D-Day Invasion was the scope of the operation, with thousands of ships crossing the channel and hundreds of planes towing gliders full of personnel and equipment.I was knocked over by how these individuals accounts shed light on such a big operation.
There are so many facets to the D-Day battle plan, so many parts that had to come together. This book sheds light on this inexhaustible subject.
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