• Complain

Kershaw - The Liberator

Here you can read online Kershaw - The Liberator full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2012, publisher: Crown Publishing Group, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover

The Liberator: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Liberator" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

The true story of the bloodiest and most dramatic march to victory of the Second World War: the battlefield odyssey of a maverick U.S. Army officer and his infantry unit as they fought for over five hundred days to liberate Europe - from the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau. 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, often against his most fanatical troops, when the odds on the battlefield were even and the fortunes of the Allies hung in the balance -- and when the difference between defeat and victory was a matter of character, not tactics or armor. Drawing on extensive interviews with Sparks and dozens of his men, as well as over five years of research in Europe and in archives across the US, historian Alex Kershaw masterfully recounts one of the most inspiring and heroic journeys in military history. Over the course of four amphibious invasions, Sparks rose from captain to colonel as he battled from the beaches of Sicily through the mountains of Italy and France, ultimately enduring bitter and desperate winter combat against the diehard SS on the Fatherlands borders. Though he lost all of his company to save the Allied beach-head at Anzio and an entire battalion in the dark forests of the Vosges, Sparks miraculously survived the long bloody march across Europe and was selected to lead a final charge to Bavaria to hunt down Adolf Hitler. In the dying days of the Third Reich, Sparks and his men crossed the last great barrier in the West, the Rhine, only to experience some of the most intense street fighting and close combat suffered by Americans in WWII. When they finally arrived at the gates of Dachau, Hitlers first and most notorious concentration camp, the Thunderbirds confronted scenes that robbed the mind of reason. With victory within grasp, Sparks confronted the ultimate test of his humanity: after all he had faced, could he resist the urge to wreak vengeance on the men who had caused untold suffering and misery? Written with the narrative drive and vivid immediacy of Kershaws previous bestselling books about American infantrymen in WWII, The Liberator is a story for the ages, an intensely human and dramatic account of one of historys greatest warriors and his unheralded role in Americas finest achievement -- the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Kershaw: author's other books


Who wrote The Liberator? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Liberator — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Liberator" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR The Envoy Escape from the Deep The Few The Longest - photo 1
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

The Envoy

Escape from the Deep

The Few

The Longest Winter

The Bedford Boys

Blood and Champagne

Jack London

After five hundred days of combat Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks fires his - photo 2

After five hundred days of combat Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks fires his - photo 3

After five hundred days of combat, Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks fires his pistol into the air to stop his men slaughtering captured SS soldiers during the liberation of Dachau on April 29, 1945. [Courtesy David Israel]

Copyright 2012 by Alex Kershaw All rights reserved Published in the United - photo 4

Copyright 2012 by Alex Kershaw All rights reserved Published in the United - photo 5

Copyright 2012 by Alex Kershaw

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kershaw, Alex.
The Liberator: One World War II Soldiers 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau / Alex Kershaw.First Edition.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Sparks, Felix Laurence, 19172007. 2. United States. Army. Infantry Regiment, 157th.
Battalion, 3rd. 3. United States. ArmyOfficersBiography. 4. World War, 19391945CampaignsWestern Front. 5. World War, 19391945CampaignsItaly.
I. Title. II. Title: Five hundred days. III. Title: One soldiers odyssey from the beaches of Sicily to the gates of Dachau.
D769.31157th.K47 2012
940.541273092dc23 2012017064

eISBN: 978-0-307-88801-3

Maps by David Lindroth, Inc.
Jacket design by Eric White
Jacket photograph by Robert Capa/International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos

v3.1_r1

In memory of Jack Hallowell

CONTENTS

American casualty in Europe 1944 National Archives - photo 6
American casualty in Europe 1944 National Archives PROLOGUE THE - photo 7

American casualty in Europe, 1944. [National Archives]

PROLOGUE THE GRAVES EUROPE OCTOBER 1989 THEY LAY BENEATH PERFECT rows of - photo 8
PROLOGUE
THE GRAVES
EUROPE, OCTOBER 1989

THEY LAY BENEATH PERFECT rows of white graves that lined lush green lawns. He knew where they were buried. He had their names. Finding all of them meant walking back and forth, all across the graveyard, through avenues of thousands of white crosses. But he could manage the strain. His heart had given him problems for years, yet he still had the strength, the will, to search for his men. They had died near here, at Anzio, the bloodiest piece of ground occupied by American and British forces during World War II. Seventy-two thousand men lost in allkilled, wounded, sent insane, blown to shreds, missing, or captured, now a mere statistic in a history book.

The men he had commanded had achieved something of lasting greatness, something of permanence. They had defeated barbarism. He had seen it. He had been there, poisoned and heartbroken but somehow blessed, or rather damned, with the strength to fight on, to beat Hitlers most violent men.

Often he had questioned what kept his men going. The American Army was on the attack all the time in Europe. He had kept thinking: Why do they go? It was hard to explain why his men had not hesitated. Many times he had said: Lets go! Every time, they had gone. Now that he was back in Europe, he marveled once more at the American spirit, as he called it, that had kept them advancing toward death or at best debilitating injury. It was this spirit that had mattered so much when the odds had been even.

The American soldiers under his command had performed magnificently. He wanted to pay his respects to some of those who had fallen. That was why he was back. There had been no time during combat to stand over them and grieve, no time to say how he felt, to show his love other than by trying his best to keep them alive. At that, he had failed, over and over, and over again.

Never give up. That was what had counted most. He had never given up, not once in his entire life. He had fought since he could rememberto eat, to stay alive, to overcome everything a vengeful God could throw at him. He had survived, somehow, perhaps through grit and rage, perhaps because God took the good first and left the rotten until last.

He had never been afraid of God or any man. Fear had never thrown him off balance, but he had felt great anxiety, mostly about what was going to happen to his men. Thankfully, he had always been able to think and act fast. In fact, he had functioned extraordinarily well in combat, remaining for the most part calm and focused. He had some of the fighting Irish in him plus a lot of anger. It was in his blood. His great grandfather had fought at the Alamo.

The graves of his men stretched across Europe, over two thousand miles. They had died in Sicily, in France, at the dark heart of Nazi Germany. There had been several hundred killed under his command, half of them buried in Europe. Near a crossing over the fast-flowing Moselle, he looked for Sergeant Vanderpool and Lieutenant Railsbacks final resting places. Railsback had looked like a high school valedictorian with his confident, easy smile and neatly cropped hair. He had been a hell of an officer, like Sparks at his age. As for Vanderpoolhe should never have died. He should have ignored the fact that he wanted to stay with his brother and pulled him off the line, but he had left it too late.

On the German border, near a small village, he traipsed along the ridge where he had been beaten just that one time, where in snow and ice the SS had humiliated him. His mens foxholes were still there as well as their spent cartridges. He had never gotten over their loss. How could anyone recover from losing so many men? Thirty platoon leaders and six hundred warriors who had never hesitated to carry out his every command.

Then it was on into the dark forests where you could get lost after a hundred yards without a compass, a place of primeval fears, to the border of Germany and the Siegfried Line with its famous dragons teeth, now decomposing concrete and rusted iron; across the swirling Rhine to a city on the banks of the Main River where a grateful mayor and townspeople honored him and left him beaming with pride; south toward the Alps and a pretty town where he pointedly reminded the good burghers that the German government had authorized the building of a center for the study of the Holocaust. Why hadnt it been built? Much as they might want to forget, future generations should not.

He had never been able to forget that day. He could still picture the girl lying on top of all the bodies. It was as if she and others were looking at him with reproach, asking: What took you so long?

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Liberator»

Look at similar books to The Liberator. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Liberator»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Liberator and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.