When the United States entered the Second World War, eighteen-year-old enlistees were routinely assigned temporary duties and not sent into battle until they turned nineteen. But as the fighting dragged on, America was eventually forced to draft younger men into combat to replace wounded troops—and following the Battle of the Bulge, more than 300,000 eighteen-year-olds were sent as replacements to the army’s decimated divisions.

In The Eighteen-Year-Old Replacement, Richard Kingsbury brings an often-overlooked perspective to the annals of World War II. Torn from an ordinary teenager’s life in the Midwest, young Dick was drafted six weeks after D-Day and rushed with other eighteen-year-olds to the Siegfried Line to bolster Patton’s 94th Infantry Division. His reminiscence provides a moving, diarylike account of what he endured both physically and emotionally—and tells how he went from boyhood to manhood almost overnight.

In prose that is both succinct and evocative, Kingsbury recounts his experiences as a rifleman during the final bloody battles in Germany, giving readers a real feel for what combat was like for a raw recruit. He recalls his first night in a foxhole on the front line and the “unbelievable luxury” of sleeping in a barn’s hayloft. He relives freezing cold at the Bulge, which permanently damaged his legs, and the pounding of enemy artillery during Patton’s breakthrough of the German West Wall, which affected his hearing for life.

More poignantly, Kingsbury shares his anxieties over killing—as well as the distinct possibility of being killed as Wehrmacht tanks mercilessly blasted individual foxholes at Bannholz Woods. He vividly recalls Patton’s attack on Ludwigshafen, on the west bank of the Rhine, where he took a German bullet in his chest—and where three of the six newly arrived eighteen-year-olds were killed.

Interspersed with the accounts of battle are letters between Dick and Mary Jo, his sweetheart back home, capturing the blossoming of romance that transcended both distance and bloodshed. His book casts a new light on war—and courtship—in an era when boys were rushed from the home front to the front lines. By showing how crucial the contribution of these young men was to the war effort, this book gives the eighteen-year-old replacements the recognition they have long deserved.

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Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire

It is easy to write a history of an amazing time represented by amazing people, but rarely do we navigate the complexity of emotion mixed with execution the way Ted Barris has in: “Rush to Danger”.
The peeling of layers crafted by this book is the very reason we have a compassion during the worst experiences of humanity.  Through the pages, we experience how we call out for courage in war and can manifest humanity through saving lives over taking them.   The themes of self-sacrifice and devotion to an oath – leave you with the knowledge that greatness is not limited to a time and place – but, the act and the person for today.  Ted Barris runs a thread from then to now and illuminates how great people rose to the occasion and exemplified what we read in awe.

Ted recognizes his father, as a good son should, but provides a pulpit from whose greatest voice is the way were drawn into the minds of these uncommon people.  The sublime nature of duty is constant in this book and exhibits that the heart is not for audacious action, but for the love shared in the struggle for survival. 

Ted weaves the 94th Infantry Division into the pages of this book and frames the “story” with the 94th occupying a unique space.  Having known Raiden Winfield Dellinger - and being his relation - makes reading about him well up a sound that comes out screaming inside yourself.  You want to be there and watch them run towards immortality.  How many people live today for the actions they performed? 

This should be a required text for anyone exploring the circumstances of our modern world. 
“Rush to danger” – is not a book about medics / It is a text that sets standards to live by.

Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire
by Ted Barris | Aug 20, 2019
Hardcover
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by Tony Le Tissier

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The 94th US Infantry Division was an organization formed late in the Second World War, made up largely of draft-deferred university students as enlisted men and an officer corps pulled together from various domestic postings with unfortunate consequences for mutual trust and respect.

Initially used as part of the force blockading the Brittany ports after D-Day, in December of 1944, the division was incorporated into General Patton?s Third Army south of the Moselle-Saar Triangle, the base of which was a portion of the Siegfried Line known as the Orscholz Switch. Its first combat experience came in battalion-sized attacks during that terrible winter while the Battle of the Bulge raged to the north, and the Division suffered heavy casualties, many due to the ferocity of the winter weather. Patton, with characteristic zeal, excoriated the division?s officers and senior NCOs for the rate of non-combat casualties. Thereafter, the division was ordered forward on an all-out assault to break through the Siegfried Line. After horrific fighting against entrenched defenders, with ice turning to mud as spring approached, on February 19, 1945, the 94th broke through to open the roads to Trier and the Rhine.

This book is the most comprehensive study to date of the fierce fighting between the 94th U.S. Infantry Division and their German counterparts during that spring of 1945. It sheds new light on the achievements of the outnumbered division in penetrating Germany?s Westwall. With characteristic verve and detail, Tony Le Tissier narrates the action and illuminates the tribulations and sacrifices of American soldiers who won their laurels at great cost.

Tony Le Tissier is a retired French —and German —speaking lieutenant colonel in the British military. A well -recognized expert on World War II and the Cold War, he is author and translator of many books, including The Battle of Berlin 1945, Farewell to Spandau, Race for the Reichstag, and Slaughter at Halbe.

This is the story of a US military officer, as seen by his son, serving in Europe before and during World War II, with particular emphasis on the officer's heroic actions in stopping the bombing of Belgrade, Yugoslavia.During the onset of World War II, Fortier's father, a U.S. Army officer, was stationed first in Paris and then in the Balkans. As he gathered intelligence he was at first rebuffed at his efforts to get the War Department to recognize the validity of the intelligence he was sending back. However, after having predicted the opening day of the war (Invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939), the swift penetration of the Maginot Line by German mobile forces (1940), and finally determining the composition and fighting organization of a German Panzer Division from first hand observation (1941), he became a significant part of America's intelligence for the war.In the course of these intelligence activities he was credited with persuading the Germans to stop the bombing of Belgrade by the Bulgarian air force, thus saving many Serbian lives. For these actions he was highly decorated by both the Yugoslavs and the U.S.The book is authored by the officer's son, Louis Renshaw Fortier, who was with his father during much of these activities. Louis Renshaw Fortier gives his impressions of traveling to Europe and the reactions of himself and his sister to living in France and Yugoslavia during the build up years of World War II. The author also describes some of his mother's exploits in returning to Belgrade through war-ravaged Serbia after her train was bombed, and his own experience of being charged with the taking out of eight children of the Legation when dependents were ordered home.

The story begins with the background of the life of a junior military officer during the peacetime years, and family life during the inevitable travels from station to station. The son concludes with his descriptions of both his father's and his own experiences upon return from Yugoslavia (1941) throughout the remainder of the war (1945). Available from Amazon.com

Editorial Reviews - From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. When retired newspaperman Stewart Dubinsky (last seen in 1987's Presumed Innocent) discovers letters his deceased father wrote during his tour of duty in WWII, a host of family secrets come to light. In Turow's ambitious, fascinating page-turner, a "ferocious curiosity" compels the divorced Dubinsky to study his "remote, circumspect" father's papers, which include love letters written to a fiancée the family had never heard of, and a lengthy manuscript, which his father wrote in prison and which includes the shocking disclosure of his father's court-martial for assisting in the escape of OSS officer Robert Martin, a suspected spy.

The manuscript, hidden from everyone but the attorney defending him, tells of Capt. David Dubin's investigation into Martin's activities and of both men's entanglements with fierce, secretive comrade Gita Lodz. From optimistic soldier to disenchanted veteran, Dubin—who, via the manuscript, becomes the book's de facto narrator—describes the years of violence he endured and of a love triangle that exacted a heavy emotional toll. Dubinsky's investigations prove revelatory at first, and life-altering at last. Turow makes the leap from courtroom to battlefield effortlessly.