Currahee.

[Jack]

Currahee. A Screaming Eagle at Normandy.

 

I was lent this book earlier in the year and read it from front to back without putting it down. I now have in my hands my own copy of Currahee and is personally signed to me from Burgett and was a surprise present from my good lady who has been busy working 'behind' the scenes with Burgett to have this book sent over from the US in time for Christmas......so I am one happy man then.

 

This book mesmerized me when I first read it and I was then lucking enough back in the Spring to meet the author, a Mr Don R Burgett. Currahee was the only book of WW2 to of been endorsed by Eisenhower.

 

 

The first page will without doubt grab your attention no matter if you are a fan of WW2 or not as it applies to everyman in every conflict from every country:

 

"We were being annihilated, our ranks disintergrating as we ran. Glancing at my comrades around and behind me to draw courage and strenght from their presence, I saw that the field was being littered with dead, our dead. A trooper in front and to the right of me was hit in the chest by an 88 shell. His body dissappeared from the waist up, his legs and hips with belt, canteen and entrenching tool still on taking three more steps, then falling over. Another trooper went to his knees, ran a couple of yards in that position, tried to gain his feet, stumbled and went down...Other men were falling, but at the same time others had gained the hedge and were lobbing grenades over it. We had been yelling and screaming like animals at the top of our lungs all the way. The Germans were falling back...."

 

 

Burgett was only 19 when he jumped into Normandy. What was I doing at 19? I will be back when I have finished the book again but this is a book that will, on a human level allow you to see a glimpse of the complexities of war on the human soul.

 

[oddball]

Halfway through "Seven roads to hell" by Burgett at the moment. Another good read.

[Joris]

I've got and read all Burgetts books, all brilliantly written and amazing to read.

[Jack]

Currahee. A Screaming Eagle at Normandy.

Donald R Burgett

Pages 202

4 pages of images

ISBN 0440236304

 

 

The first page will without doubt grab your attention no matter if you are a fan of WW2 or not as it applies to everyman in every conflict from every country. Burgett was one of the many Screaming Eagles that jumped into the skies of Normandy. Unlike all the books that I have read on WW2 this one is unique in the way that it is written by the man who was there.

 

Burgett’s approach is simplistic, not in an unsophisticated way but more in a brutal way. As a topic, war isn’t simple but Burgett has written how he saw it through the eyes of shock trooper during D-Day.

 

Currahee takes you on the journey of when he enlisted into the army, where he was “put into a uniform at the age of 18 and brutalized” right through the tough and demanding training of paratrooper selection. He talks of the friends he made and how the human body sounds like a pumpkin exploding when a mans chute fails to open.

 

He then picks up the story again when the arrive in the UK and when they made Aldbourne their home, you detect a fondness for Aldbourne and this is great reading. Again training was tough and he tells the tail how on one training jump his chute failed to open but found himself coming down on top of someone’s else chute which saved his life – there seems to be a thread that runs through the book about how lucky this man is because by rights he should have been killed back in the USA. I absolutely enjoyed the part of the chapter where he talks of being locked into the marshalling area of Uppottery and when they were ready to go on the 4th but it was delayed until the 5th and the emotions of take off along the long Uppottery runway.

 

I found the book structured in a easy to read way and the chapters flowed easily into each other and it is written for all, for the student, for the academics. Again, the beauty of the book is that it isn’t written by an historian who may have weak research or may be biased in someway or is making assumptions. This is written as a first hand account so it is pretty pure.

 

Once the chapter ‘Combat’ starts then hold on tight as you are in for one hell of a non stop ride. This is where you would expect the brutality of war to stare you in the face and you will not be disappointed but there is a lot more than that. This is where Burgett gets down to the detail of war, the smells, the excitement of being young warriors in a foreign country and being unleashed to kill as many of the enemy as possible. The hunger and the taste of gun powder. The extremes are eye opening, going from sitting down and having a smoke with your chum sharing a laugh at their CO as he was being shot at whilst crossing a road to the time where Burgett was crawling across a road whilst under MG42 fire, to go and scalp a blond haired German – this is breathtaking reading.

 

This chapter will suck you in and take you along for the ride, this chapter is quite emotional and at times I was there fighting along side them, I was there at the fighting of what is now know as Deadmans Corner. I have had the same dry mouth where you are unable to speak because of fear and I have smelt the horrid smell of dead bodies and it was also through this chapter that I would get butterflies in my stomach and you finding yourself willing the men to push on and get through the shear hell that is being fired at them.

 

Again the extremes are there and is illustrated by when they sit down and drink looted champagne after a major firefight. Burgetts war has barely started when he was wounded and shipped back to England on a LST that he also shared by Germany causalities. It is now where the book starts to slow down and you can relax.

 

I was pleased by the ending and the book delivered more than I expected, I may be fortunate to know of some of the places that he talks about but the great thing is that this is possible for any reader to follow his footsteps as there are all accessible from Aldborne, Upottery to Normandy, it is this that helps bind the book together in ones own mind.

 

Burgett is never boastful but he is never repentant either – I recommend it to everyone.

 

[Joris]

Brilliant review!

[Snapper]

Clearly, I am going to have to get a copy. The reviews section site would have been treated to something from me this week, a superb biography of Douglas Haig. But following my wife and I spending a weekend in sunny Camber (not); it has gone completely missing. Next stop some WW1 battlefield guides. Sleep on, brethren.