The Last Hill: the Epic Story of a Ranger Battalion and the Battle that Defined WWII<\/a>\u201d by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, St. Martin\u2019s Press, NYC, 2022. Often in the words of the men who participated in the invasion of Nazi-held Europe, it follows the troops through the inception of the Rangers to the training and the campaign from D-Day to VE Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSome take-away quotes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is an old soldier\u2019s adage that when the army spends time and money on you it isn\u2019t trying to save your life, but rather attempting to find a more efficient way for you to lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNearly half of all A&M graduates had volunteered for military service at the height of the fighting \u2013 the highest percentage of any institute of higher learning in the United States \u2013 and in 1918 the university\u2019s entire senior graduating class had enlisted en masse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Nazis put a price on their enemies\u2019 lives: \u201c\u2026each German marksman had been promised a reward of one hundred cigarettes for every ten Allied bodies he felled in the Norman hedgerows, twenty days\u2019 leave for twenty corpses, and the Iron Cross,1st<\/sup> Class and a wristwatch from Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler for fifty verified kills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nDrury and Clavin are among my favorite historians. Here they have captured the essence of the American spirit, and a timeless lesson in righteous determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Military history is of value to more than the military. It teaches life principles, too, and guides us all in existential decisions of all kinds. I recently read \u201cThe Last Hill: the Epic Story of a Ranger Battalion and the Battle that Defined WWII\u201d by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, St. Martin\u2019s Press, NYC, 2022. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9246,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9244\/revisions\/9246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}