Copyright 2004 by Walter J Eldridge. Published by PageFree Publishing, Inc, Oswego MI.
Disclaimer: the author is a fraternity brother.
I have had this book in my to-be-read pile for over a year and, frankly, was dreading it a bit. I thought it would be a dry recounting of World War II history. Instead it turned out to be the a gripping, humanizing story of a chemical mortar battalion that was instrumental in winning the war.
To be honest, I had no idea that a “chemical warfare battalion” even existed in World War II. I had the mistaken impression that all kinds of chemical warfare had been banned after World War I. While certain kinds of chemicals – mustard gas, nerve gas, etc – had indeed been banned, use of incendiary chemicals like white phosphorus had not. A lot of white phosphorus mortars – useful as anti-personnel weapons and to lay down smoke screens – were used in the second World War. These mortars were highly accurate and became valued support weapons for infantry in Italy, France and Germany.
The technology of the chemical mortars and its successes and failures were fascinating (e.g., some men were killed, late in the war, due to “early detonations” – mortars exploding in the tube – due to cold and dampness). But the human stories – laboriously researched and documented by Eldridge – were even more fascinating. The action photo of the soldier taken a minute before a shell took his life. The two soldiers who reluctantly left their foxhole to move to a place deemed safer by their commanding officer, only to see their foxhole take a direct hit from a shell a few minutes later. The misery of a cold, wet winter in the mountains of Italy. The legendary direct hit – a mortar shell dropped through the open hatch of a German tank.
You can’t make this stuff up. This is the fog, the misery and the triumph of war recounted in a compelling way. More than any other book on war that I have ever read, this one put me there and made me understand the experience of the Greatest Generation.
8 out of 10.