The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon
By: Alex Kershaw / Narrated By: Grover Gardner
Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
Kiiiiinda misleading secondary title. That noted, however? 9+ hours fly by when you’re actually there with the men
Okay, so! The secondary title to this AWEsome audiobook is: “THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE—and the epic story of WWII’s most decorated platoon”
Do NOT go into The Longest Winter expecting that. Rather, this is a bit of a mishmash of soldiers’ stories, a bit of the story of the platoon’s experience as a whole, a bit of their experiences as POWs after a brief (Yet oh soooo long day’s-worth of fierce battle/fighting), a bit of the Nazis’ stories on the other end, soooome history, and just a brieeeef touch upon why that particular platoon’s efforts were so vastly important as the Battle of the Bulge unfolded.
It opens with the platoon as they train in sultry, insect-infested, Texas heat, and then go onboard a ship taking them to gosh only knows where. Given they’ve been in hot and humid temperatures, they assume they’ll be heading to the Pacific Theater.
Uhm, nope. Instead, they wind up in a densely forested area in the Ardennes, in yessss, freaking December. Given only mildly weather-appropriate gear/clothing, the platoon, led by a 20-year old lieutenant, Lyle Bouck, sit, unbeknownst to them, right in the spot where Hitler will be launching Germany’s last great offensive: What will become known forever more as The Battle of the Bulge. It’s an attempt to surround and defeat Allied forces, and thus will leave Germany with wiggle room to negotiate a peace that does NOT mean Unconditional Surrender. Things are dire for the Nazis, and Hitler’s been getting twitchier and twitchier, an unsuccessful assassination attempt having juuuust been made, a doctor prescribing him cocaine to deal with his nerves (Ooooh, NEVER a good idea!).
Do I sound glib? Well, I don’t mean to be, but author Alex Kershaw (No relation to historian of note, Ian Kershaw) gives us aaaalll the information that is now available. It’s details details verrrry interesting details, enough to keep the story running at a steady clip, enough to make this a Listened To In One Day kinda audiobook. Kershaw catalogues just what the platoon went through, how they were sitting ducks with a MIGHTY show of forces coming to blaze them away. Allied reconnaissance was abysmal (Wikipedia states this is because of weather too poor to fly in… -but-), Kershaw posits this as gross negligence on the Allies’ part. Troop buildup, massive military might and heavy-duty weapons of war and war machines were a bit quiet, but really: The show of force that Hitler threw forth was formidable indeed.
Kershaw makes the listener cope with An Edge of the Seat experience as all hell breaks loose that December day in 1944, as Bouck and those who will fight with him struggle and battle down to the last bullet, before being taken as Prisoners of War. I did, at this point, feel there was a tiny bit of History As Written By The Victors as Kershaw describes in horrific detail a massacre of other Americans. After all, this is war, and who in gosh’s name said that it can EVER be waged honorably: It’s a brutal thing, and brutal, uncivilized atrocities occur. After all, that bit o’ history I pointed out before in earlier paragraphs? I’m speaking of the bombing of Dresden, where thousands upon thousands of civilians were charred to cinders by tons of incendiary bombs and high-explosives. Also, Kershaw writes of one American’s view of carnage, is shocked by it, but then rationalizes it with a shrug and a: Well, maybe they had it coming; maybe they deserved it.
It’s all pretty ferocious, this war thing…
Then the book goes into a lengthy account of what it was like to be an Allied POW in Nazi POW camps; the brutality of guards, the slow starvation, the lack of stimulation where talk of women soon nightmarishly turned to an exchange of recipes of food they dreamt of eating someday.
And then boy oh boy: As if Patton couldn’t be any MORE of a controversial hero, Kershaw goes deep into detail of Task Force Baum that occurred in late March 1945. Patton ordered a practically unforgivably small group of men to march through heavily occupied territory to liberate the prisoners of one camp. Of the around 300 men sent, 32 were killed, and only 35 made it back to Allied territory. Plenty of POWs who chose to take their chances with the oh so small group (Which meant fairly certain failure, the task force being so small, so ill-equipped to handle the hundreds of POWs) were slaughtered as well, and all (Task force members included) were sent back to the camp and imprisoned until near the end of the war. Patton’s goal? NOT the POWs, but only his son-in-law who’d recently be captured. NOT good form, and exceedingly tragic all things considered.
See? Kershaw goes off on tangents wholly unrelated to the secondary title, and as far as that “Most Decorated Platoon” goes? These men were enTIREly forgotten, came back to the States, their efforts unsung and unknown even. They received no medals, no recognition, but just tried to pick up the pieces of their lives, create something new out of their nightmares. It wasn’t until interest, well after the war, started picking up and historians started looking into what was finally becoming seen as a VITAL point in the war, a standoff that GREATLY impeded Nazi efforts, that questions started being asked. That survivors were finally questioned about their experiences, finally heard, seen, acknowledged. Honored.
This is a blazing testament to the men, and Grover Gardner does his usual grand narration. He has a folksy and nasal-kinda style of speaking that is well-suited to relaying the lives of inexperienced and unworldly folks, here the young men. He does the snide and imperious tones of an increasingly frustrated Joachim Peiper as his attempts at Nazi domination kept getting thwarted. And tho’ Gardner does indeed flesh the man out as a human being, I can’t say that I shed any tears at learning of the man’s ultimate fate.
Just AWEsome. No wonder these young men were my Dad’s heroes…!
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