No Less Than Victory--A Review for Jeff Shaara

Author Shaara has written a wonderful trilogy on World War II that includes the titles The Rising Tide, The Steel Wave and the final and best, No Less than Victory. This review comments on the last book in the trilogy.

The Battle of the Bulge, the late 1944 German attack through the Ardennes, is the centerpiece of the work. Using extensive research with those who actually lived through this horrific battle and also the air war, Shaara presents a chilling and accurate portrayal of the conditions experienced by the men there. The author describes the conditions so well that you can shiver the icy cold and endless mud and immediately wonder how so men survived not only the German onslaught but the weather conditions, too

The story of the foot soldiers and their plight is the centerpiece of the book. It is told so succinctly that one can feel the desperation of their plight and experience the pangs of hunger in their bellies as they fought to survive the German armored onslaught. Often, great battles are told from the perspective of the generals, omitting the agony of the foot soldiers. During the Battle of the Bulge there was a significant change in the Allied soldiers mood as they soon learned to match German tactics blood for blood. This writer’s uncle was one of those who survived the Battle of the Bulge, awarded a bronze star for his actions during this battle.

A vivid description of the gruesome air war opens the book. Survival meant meeting the required number of missions, which was 25 initially but increased steadily as the number of air crews diminished. The average survivability of a plane and crew was just 16 missions during the daylight bombing raids. As many as 60 planes carrying 600 men were lost in a single raid. Again it is accurate based on this writers own interviews with survivors of this carnage, including one who was shot down on his very first mission and was a prisoner of war for over a year. That individual’s recollections include the fate of Russian prisoners kept in a nearby compound who died like flies because they were not allowed Red Cross assistance.


One of the things at which Shaara excels at is the creation of believable and plausible dialog between the principal real-life characters of the era, including Eisenhower, Patton, the German generals and Adolph Hitler. He extends this unique ability to the guys on the ground, the G.I.’s. It was a bit tiresome to hear of the intrigue between Montgomery and everyone else, but even Eisenhower came to despise the man and it is factual.

Historical novels can sometimes wander far away from fact because research can be spotty and some authors are tempted to embellish a story for dramatic effect. Shaara does not do so, listing his sources of and letting the story tell itself. This is a tribute to his care in presenting a gripping account of the last year of the war. It is a great read, as are all three of the books in the trilogy.



Thad McAfee is a novelist and civil war buff. His latest publication is Sulfur Creek, released in August, 2009.

Permission to Reprint is Granted.

AMBUSHED!

It started on a Sunday afternoon, a pain in my right thigh, actually sort of a band of discomfort. No big deal, I have aches and pains all the time and they go away.
The next morning, I arose, made the coffee and headed out the door for the newspaper. As I stepped down on the garage floor (two steps) a pain shot up through my leg. I walked outside; now it really hurt and I almost collapsed in the driveway. I stumbled back into the garage and used the car as a prop as I moved towards the back door. I ended up crawling into the house and laying there until the pain abated. I crawled to the rear bedroom and hailed the bride. She was amazed to see me on the floor!

“It’s my leg,” I muttered. The pain abated and I made it to the couch. I looked at my leg. My God, it was swollen to twice the size of the other limb and was as hard as a rock! “I think you need to take me to emergency!” She did.

We speculated as to the cause. A spider bite? An infection? We didn’t have a clue.
The Emergency Room people immediately recognized it as a possible blood clot and arranged for an ultrasound test to confirm the preliminary diagnosis. Yep! That’s what it was!
It was recommended that I be hospitalized for a “day or two.” Sounded good to me! They checked me in and immediately began attacking me with needles filled with a drug called Lovenox and pills of a rat poison called Coumadin or Warfarin. I would be in the hospital until my blood thinned to a therapeutic level as determined by what was called an IN/R test of a value between two and three on some obscure scale. It also meant a daily blood test where I got stuck with a needle at 5:30 in the morning or earlier. That made three punctures a day.
My doctor was a Filipino lady who struggled with both language and bedside manner. Hell, it wasn’t her leg that throbbed and ached. We did eventually reach a satisfactory level of communication.

I learned a lot during my stay. My condition was called DVT or deep vein thrombosis. It can be very serious if a clot gets to the lungs. It is caused by injury, pregnancy or stasis. Mine was caused by stasis or inactivity and had been, looking back, coming on for a while. I was counseled on diet and exercise and even by an occupational therapist because a nurse reported I was a writer. I was lucky in a way. There can be tissue damage caused by DVT and some experience intense pain. I felt discomfort but really couldn’t call it pain.

It took seven days before my blood thinned out. That was 15 shots of Lovenox and 8 blood tests! They added a pneumonia shot for good measure and then my arm was swelled up!
They said it might be months before the swelling in my leg goes down. Sometimes it never does. It’s no longer as hard as a rock, so that’s progress. It’s a protein in the body that works to dissolve the clot and that takes time. Every time I talk to my regular doctor I am reminded to keep the leg elevated. My blood is checked every ten days or so for IN/R. I’m trying to exercise on a treadmill but that results in discomfort after a few minutes so I don’t push it, even though my internist said to exercise as much as I could stand. I guess there’s not much worry about the thing ‘breaking loose’ and traveling to the lungs.

The support shown by family and friends was heartwarming both to my bride and myself. People called, people visited and that was the upside of the episode. Suffice to say it’s really good to be back home!

Thad McAfee is a novelist and civil war buff. His latest publication is Sulfur Creek, released in August, 2009.

Permission to Reprint is Granted.