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Tonight We Die As Men: The Untold Story Of Third Battalion 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment From Toccoa To D-Day (2009)

by Ian Gardner(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1846033225 (ISBN13: 9781846033223)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Osprey Publishing

review 1: Band of Brothers was about Easy Company in the 2nd battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. This book is about the lesser known men in the third battalion of the same regiment. As a battalion history it is very good and covers the period of their training through the Normandy invasion. It is written in a similar format featuring numerous first person narratives. However as a book it just doesn't have to readability of Band of Brothers. i think that part of the problem comes from covering a full battalion rather than one company. I was never able to really get to know or identify with the men. There were just too many. It was difficult to keep them separate. Another thing that hurt was that the officer corps just did not seem as str... moreong. The officers and non-coms in Band of Brothers were an outstanding group that pulls the story together just like they pulled the men together in battle. Certainly Captain Dick Winters of Easy Company stands out as one of my heroes. Certainly from the standpoint of depicting the horror and chaos of battle the book does a very good job. It is really remarkable that scattered over such a wide territory in the midst of a heavy pocket of enemy soldiers those small groups of 1-5 paratroopers were able pull together against impossible circumstances and accomplish their mission. For pure history this is the better book, but for a more enjoyable read go with Band of Brothers.
review 2: On June 5, 1944 -- D-Day minus one -- more than 800 young Americans of the Third Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, stepped out into the slipstreams of their C-47 transports over France's Cotentin Peninsula, destined to begin Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's "great crusade" to liberate Europe from Adolf Hitler's armies. Their objective was to take and hold two bridges, stopping any German effort to reinforce their defenses at Utah beach.Although only about a third of the battalion actually landed in the intended place and their commander was dead before his boots touched the ground, courage, training and dedication to the task assigned to them took over.British researchers Ian Gardner and Roger Day undertake to tell the story of the 506th. Gardner's interest springs from his own experience as a modern-day paratrooper, and Day's from growing up near the English village of Ramsbury, where the 506th lived and trained while preparing for its jump into Normandy. Along the way, they correct some long-held misconceptions about the battlefield itself, and provide a rich and skillfully woven collection of Stephen Ambrose-style oral histories. less

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