Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Tuesday Ebook Spotlight: 'Band of Brothers'

“Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest” by Stephen E. Ambrose is on sale now for $1.99 as an ebook download. The book was a New York Times bestseller about the ordinary men who became World War II’s extraordinary soldiers in Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, US Army. The book was later made into an award-winning mini-series. Ambrose was an historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, among many bestselling volumes of American popular history, and a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans. His work with the Eisenhower Center and D-Day veterans inspired him to found the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, which is now called the National World War II Museum.

Here’s the publisher’s description of “Band of Brothers:”

They came together, citizen soldiers, in the summer of 1942, drawn to Airborne by the $50 monthly bonus and a desire to be better than the other guy. And at its peak—in Holland and the Ardennes—Easy Company was as good a rifle company as any in the world.

From the rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to the disbanding in 1945, Stephen E. Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company. In combat, the reward for a job well done is the next tough assignment, and as they advanced through Europe, the men of Easy kept getting the tough assignments.

They parachuted into France early D-Day morning and knocked out a battery of four 105 mm cannon looking down Utah Beach; they parachuted into Holland during the Arnhem campaign; they were the Battered Bastards of the Bastion of Bastogne, brought in to hold the line, although surrounded, in the Battle of the Bulge; and then they spearheaded the counteroffensive. Finally, they captured Hitler’s Bavarian outpost, his Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden.

They were rough-and-ready guys, battered by the Depression, mistrustful and suspicious. They drank too much French wine, looted too many German cameras and watches, and fought too often with other GIs. But in training and combat they learned selflessness and found the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They discovered that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them.

This is the story of the men who fought, of the martinet they hated who trained them well, and of the captain they loved who led them. E Company was a company of men who went hungry, froze, and died for each other, a company that took 150 percent casualties, a company where the Purple Heart was not a medal—it was a badge of office.

Louisiana Book News is written by journalist Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances under the pen name of Cherie Claire. The first two books in her award-winning series are FREE as ebooks! For more information and to sign up for her newsletter visit www.cherieclaire.net.






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