Fighting in the Great Crusade
Subtitle: an 8th Infantry artillery officer in World War II
By: Gregory A. Daddis ; foreword by Russell F. Weigley.
Contributors: Schwend, George Eugene, 1919-1986.
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Baton Rouge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 265
Subjects: Schwend, George Eugene, 1919-1986.; Schwend, George Eugene, 1919-1986 -- Diaries.; United States. Army Field Artillery Battalion, 43rd -- Biography.; United States. Army -- Officers -- Biography.; World War, 1939-1945 -- Artillery operations, American.; World War, 1939-1945 -- Campaigns -- Western Front.
Genres: Diaries.
Description: "Fighting in the Great Crusade combines the terse clarity of George E. Schwend's World War II combat journals with Gregory Daddis's expert commentary on the greater context of that conflict. The result is the military work that counterpoints historical and strategic analysis against a foxhole-level view of the war in Europe as U.S. soldiers experienced it.".

"Schwend's story, which typifies that of young American "citizen soldiers" on whom the Allied cause depended, follows a draftee through the rigors of basic training and Officer Candidate School and into the grim theater of the European campaigns in 1944 and 1945. The young lieutenant's diligent entries initially record quotidian particulars of meals, training, and letters home.

The accretion of detail forms a grittily realistic day-to-day account of military life, while Daddis's expansive historical backdrop invests with poignance even such routines as Schwend's faithful attendance at movie screenings as the soldier - and readers - anticipate the fateful Normandy invasion."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-258) and index.
Text by Gregory A. Daddis interwoven with the war diary of George Eugene Schwend.