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Atkinson captures the sights, sounds and smells of the battlefield. The odors that drifted over Normandy, for example, combined cordite with the stink of dead cows. The vicious cycle of atrocities and reprisals begins soon after D-Day when an SS Panzer unit methodically slaughters scores of Canadian prisoners. British troops responded in kind, with a platoon commander's daily orders noting, "NPT below rank major": no prisoners to be taken below the rank of major. Atrocities culminated in the Malmedy massacre a week before Christmas in the Ardennes, but never approached the scale that was routine on the Eastern Front. Non-battle casualties take a crushing toll, whether from trench foot and combat exhaustion (formerly known as shell shock) to desertion and the rising incidence of venereal disease that inevitably followed the issuance of 48-hour passes to Paris. Atkinson's accounts of the war's final days and its aftermath are emotionally gripping, from the liberation of concentration camps to the repatriation of more than 82,000 dead soldiers whose families elected to have their remains brought back to America; the personal effects of the fallen also were carefully tended to and delivered to loved ones. The history detailed in this book has been recounted many times, from Cornelius Ryan's marvelous accounts of D-Day and Operation Market Garden to more recent works by historians Max Hastings and Anthony Beevor. More is sure to be written, but it's hard to imagine a more engrossing, dramatic, fair-minded and elegantly written account of these 11 months that changed the course of history. ___ Online:
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