No Silent Night: The Christmas Battle for Bastogne
By: Leo Barron, Don Cygan / Narrated By: Paul Hecht
Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
Just canNOT help but feel pride and, gosh: AWE!!!
Okay okay okay!
Yup, I read the >MEH< reviews before starting my own, and they do indeed have merit to them. Most of them made the case that Bostogne wasn’t THE Big Battle, that the most impressive and dire battles happened before the Christmas Eve/Morning/Day of 1944.
But jeez! No Silent Night was just awesome all around.
And other reviews said it was based too much on the personal rather than stark statistical facts. And other reviews said it was based too much on stark statistical facts over the personal.
But jeez! No Silent Night was just awesome all around!!!
I must admit that this was the 2nd attempt made to listen to this as I tried last year for Christmas and plum fell asleep during the first hour. Yeh, kinda got dozy again during the first part this year, but it very much picks up speed as it goes along.
I shouldn’t have to put a summary about this, so I shan’t. Just know that around Christmas of 1944, Hitler got a bee up his b’hind and threw out orders in a last big push that would not only save The Third Reich, but would bring honor and glory as well. Forget about the fact that Germany was scraping the bottom of the barrel to gather troops, using reeeeeally young teenagers and muuuuuuch older men, transferring airmen from the fairly decimated Luftwaffe to become ground troops. It was Go Big or Go… Home?
So a tiiiiny bit of the heroism of the Americans during the siege of Bastogne is toned down when one considers the quality of the German fighting ranks.
But that’s where I delighted in the “personal” angle of this book. Authors Leo Barron and Don Cygan gathered much info, did the research, culled for interviews, brought together this tale of men fearing the worst but doing the job anyway. How can a person NOT be touched by men who somberly shake hands on Christmas Eve, hearing the pounding of German firepower, hearing tanks roaring to life en masse, knowing that this might indeed be their very last Christmas, that they’re soon to be numbered amongst the dead.
Sooo many scenes like that here, and sooo much info on behind the scenes planning and the thought processes of those in command. Even what was going on in the minds of German leadership is brought forth by what those men said in interviews after the fact, so I felt it all rang true (Tho one DESperately irate reviewer wanted to rate this a paltry 1-star as he believed twasn’t a great feat holding out, holding on, Allies coming through with a victory against already beleaguered German troops… Good cow! Where’s the respect?!).
I do agree that the most valiant fighting happened on the days prior to Christmas in surrounding towns; seriously! the writing of the Americans experiencing barrage after barrage, of infiltration, of surviving in icy conditions with frostbite, the result was mesmerizing. The writing of the cargo planes dropping supplies which allowed them to hunker down in the surrounded Bastogne? Mesmerizing.
The fraught heroism, the manning of artillery against tanks, the gory deaths of comrades, was quite simply well done.
Part of that I chock up to Paul Hecht’s narration. He kinda has a Robertson Dean thing going with his almost-flat narration style, kinda like none of it is fazing him. So many Boom Bang Zings going on, things exploding, houses blown to bits, men crying out in frozen foxholes, a reporter who looks at the Hell surrounding him and thinks: Oops, am I going to die? Hecht has even and modulated tones. He does speed things up when action needs the quicker pacing, but for the most part, his was a steady and capable voice (And yo, man, so sorry I dozed off on ya that first attempt last year!).
Okay, kinda a long 14 1/2 hours, but oh soooo worth it to hear of heroes, to wonder WHY on earth war still exists. No such thing as a humane war, civilians always being plundered before getting blasted by the crossfire, POWs being executed out of revenge and pain, or just cuz they’d be a nuisance.
Crazy world we live in, but at least I have a few more heroes to tally up within my brain.
Merry Christmas everyone…
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