Book Review - Citizen Soldiers

• Author: Major Mary E. Hartman
• Pages: 06

1999] BOOK REVIEWS 210

CITIZEN SOLDIERS

THE U.S. ARMY FROM THE NORMANDY BEACHES TO THE BULGE TO THE SURRENDER OF GERMANY,

JUNE 7, 1944 - MAY 7, 19451

REVIEWED BY MAJOR MARY E. HARTMAN2

1. Introduction

   Reading Citizen Soldiers is like leafing through an old photo album stuffed with snapshots of combat soldiers. The time and place is World War II Europe, and Citizen Soldiers connects the snapshots. Attached to each snapshot is a soldier's brief account of the moment the picture was taken. Not much else is written on the snapshots, and sometimes there is only one snapshot of a particular soldier in the whole album. But sometimes the snapshots jump to life, and the reader is swept onto the battlefield with head ducked to avoid German bullets whizzing past. Upon reaching the end of the album, the reader truly understands the combat soldiers' sacrifices to ensure our freedom.

   Author Stephen Ambrose's stated goal is to tell the story of the citizen soldiers of the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Air Forces in the European Theater of Operations in World War II. As the founding director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies, a non-profit research institute located at the University of New Orleans, Ambrose interviewed over one thousand combat soldiers to preserve their memories of World War II. Ambrose's son, Hugh, working with the son of a German WWII veteran, also interviewed dozens of German combat veterans for Citizen Soldiers.3

   Ambrose drew from hundreds of diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral histories of front-line soldiers archived at the Eisenhower Center to tell

   their stories in Citizen Soldiers. He wanted the reader to know "who they were, how they fought, why they fought, what they endured, [and] how they triumphed."4 He promises in the introduction not to dwell on the generals, but rather to tell the soldiers' stories: the GIs, the junior officers, and the enlisted men fighting on the front lines. Ambrose promises to discuss only enough strategy to keep the reader abreast of the "big picture."

   Ambrose does not keep all his promises in this book, but he does give a memorable voice to World War II combat soldiers. Although his analysis of the Allied victory is logically flawed, this book soars when it focuses on the determination, resourcefulness, and bravery of the foot soldiers.

   Ambrose begins his mostly chronological account of the citizen soldiers on 7 June 1944, the day after D-Day. Focusing primarily on the front-line soldiers, Ambrose begins with the expansion of the Allied beachhead and the excruciatingly slow hedgerow fighting that stalled Allied progress for weeks. In succeeding chapters, he recounts the breakout from Normandy, the effort to cross the German border, and the setbacks experienced in the Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. He tells of soldiers spending Christmas 1944 in the thick of battle and of the winter war on German soil in early 1945. He closes with the crossing of the Rhine River and the Allied victory upon Germany's surrender on 7 May 1945.

   Ambrose also devotes a section of the book to other aspects of life in the European Theater: he leads us through a terrifying night in a foxhole on the front line, he recounts the heroic work of the Medical Corps after facing ridicule in training, and he details some experiences of prisoners of war. Ambrose also tells of the Jim Crow racism of the Army and of the "jerks, sad sacks, and profiteers" of the war. Finally, Ambrose describes and condemns the U.S. Army's replacement policy that sent young untrained men just out of high school straight to front-line combat.

   This review will focus on the "photo album" quality of Citizen Soldiers, the logical flaws in its analysis of why the Allies won the war, the revelation of the darker side of the American GI, and what remains after reading Citizen Soldiers.

2. The Bulging Photo Album

   When I began the book, I hoped to learn how the Army transformed a citizen-a...