Название: The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe Автор: Stephen Harding
Издательство: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822962
Год: 2014
Страниц: 256
Язык: английский
Формат: epub, mobi, pdf (conv)
Размер: 10.4 MB
May 1945 Hitler is dead the Third Reich is little more than smoking rubble and no GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis The Last Battle tells the nearly unbelievable story of the unlikeliest battle of the war when a small group of American tankers led by Captain Lee joined forces with German soldiers to fight off fanatical SS troops seeking to capture Castle Itter and execute the strongholds VIP prisoners It is a tale of unlikely allies startling bravery jittery suspense and desperate combat between implacable enemies.
On the morning of May 4, 1945, Captain John C. "Jack" Lee Jr. sat cross-legged atop the turret of his M4 Sherman tank, comparing the narrow streets before him with the terrain features marked on the map that lay partially open across his lap. Lee, a stocky twenty-seven-year-old from Norwich, New York, had spent the last five months leading Company B of the 23rd Tank Battalion—and, at times, much of the entire U.S. 12th Armored Division—on a headlong advance across France, into Germany, and now, in what would turn out to be the last days of World War II in Europe, into the Austrian Tyrol.
Lee’s tank was parked at the intersection of two streets in the town of Kufstein, Austria, three miles southwest of the German border on the south bank of the swift-flowing Inn River. All three of the 23rd’s tank companies had crossed the frontier the day before, leading the 12th Armored Division’s Combat Command R on its drive southward from the suburbs of Munich. Lee’s company had spearheaded the drive into Kufstein and had fought its way through a well-defended German roadblock before quickly clearing the town of its few defenders. Now, with the situation stabilized and lead elements of the 36th Infantry Division moving in to assume responsibility for the area, Lee and his men could catch a few minutes’ rest.
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