100 books like LST 388

The day I was born, the German U-boat U-505 lurked off the west coast of Africa, awaiting American and Allied ships. The submarine was part of the Nazi’s fleet of “wolfpacks,” terrorizing the Atlantic, and even the East and Gulf Coasts of the United States. The book tells about the capture of the submarine after it had carried out a dozen patrols, sinking eight ships. It was secretly towed to Bermuda where the crew interned at a U.S. POW camp. Codebooks, an Enigma machine, and other materials found on board bolstered Allied codebreakers.

The U-505 was eventually donated to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, one of only four German WWII U-boats to survive as museum ships. The submarine was towed 3,000 miles from Portsmouth, NH, through the St. Lawrence River, and across four of the Great Lakes to Chicago. The logistics of getting the huge boat across traffic… show more.

My uncle, a survivor of the sinking of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) at the Battle of Midway and months of combat (including kamikazes) as CEM of the USS Hancock (CV-19), referred me to this book about another terror they encountered while in combat aboard the Hancock. Strikes were canceled due to the severe typhoon. At the height of the storm, waves broke over the carrier’s flight deck, fifty-five feet above the waterline.

As commanding officer of a ship that came close to destruction in the typhoon of December 1944, the author of this book, Captain C. Raymond Calhoun, was in an unparalleled position to document a tragic ordeal that claimed 778 men, 3 destroyers, and more than 100 aircraft. This compelling account details for the first time the events surrounding the storm, as well as the controversial aftermath.

Divided into four parts--Prelude to a Typhoon, The Struggle for Survival,… show more.

An important piece of history, especially since I have a young uncle, buried at an American cemetery in France, whose remains went through a very detailed Graves Registration process from southern Austria to a temporary cemetery in eastern France, before being permanently buried there.

I was interested in the technical training the unit underwent in Colorado before deploying to England. And the great care they took to make sure that identifications were certain and that personal items were protected to send home to loved ones.

This book was published before most of the overseas American cemeteries were officially open. It follows the 611th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company, which the author was the commanding officer of for twenty-one months, giving the reader a first-hand account of the dreadful but important job they undertook to care for our war dead.

Their unit alone buried more than 21,000 bodies, following the D-Day landings… show more.

I was so taken by the first handsome volume of Soldiers’ Stories that I submitted stories for this one. The Wilson family story is laid out so well across eleven pages of this treasure. Five brothers served. Only two came home.

There are stories of men and women from every branch of the service, some who survived, some who did not. The memoirs are written by the veterans themselves, by family members, or interested friends.

There are stories about the Manhattan Project, Red Cross workers, Rosie the Riveter, men who have adopted the overseas graves of American fallen, even one who found dog tags in Belgium and did the research to find family members. One veteran is honored by memories of his 12-year-old great-grandson. Michelle Obama's grandfather's service is also documented.

The Day of Battle was Volume Two of Rick Atkinson’s acclaimed Liberation Trilogy. While all three volumes of this series are well worth reading, Atkinson was at his best in the second volume which deals with the much-neglected campaigns of Sicily and Italy. The doyen of British military history and a veteran of the Italian campaign, the late Sir Michael Howard wrote that The Day of Battle was ‘one of the truly outstanding records of the Second World War’. I think it is too.

Holland is a talented scholar who has honed his skill in providing excellent campaign-level accounts of the war. Thus, among much else, his books include Fortress Malta (2003), The Battle of Britain (2010), Burma ’44 (2016), Normandy ’44 (2019), and this excellent study of the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily in 1943. Holland is particularly good at capturing the grittiness of war, and at adding the perspective of individual combatants without being trapped by it. Reads very well and provides a superb campaign-level account that is also tactically adroit.

This is an unusual novel in that it shows the lives of British soldiers in Sicily during World War Two, but there is no actual fighting. Instead we see the soldiers’ lives from the inside as they struggle with boredom, frustration, and try to interact with the locals. There are no heroics or sentimental patriotism, instead we see the soldiers in all their humanity, including their weaknesses. Above all it does what all good writing should do, takes you into a vividly believable world of emotion and behavior.  

I found this original edition, published in 1949, in a used bookstore back in the early 1990s. It was the first memoir I read about a soldier and the higher-up officers he reported to who fought in the same regiment as my late uncle. 

Johnson contributed to two books I wrote on the official history of the 18th Infantry Regiment in World War II. His was a personal memoir up to the time his war was cut short after the Normandy Invasion. The writing style is sweeping and one of the better memoirs I’ve read about an anti-tank battalion during the big war.

Alright, this is not technically a book about WWII letters, but it’s very close, and my favorite historical accounts’ book ever. Just like with wartime correspondence, Ernie Pyle wrote from the battlefield about the daily routine of the regular GI while experiencing it himself. Just like in a personal military letter, you get to know a tired civilian in uniform rather than a multi-medal bearing superhero with a thirst for action. With his exceptional writing, Pyle painted touching and realistic portraits, not of the Generals we've already read all about, but of the simple soldier who simply did his job and won the war with his sweat and blood.