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Last Kilometer Marching to Victory in Europe with the Big Red One, 1944-1945
 | By: A. Preston Price
Reviewed By: Roger Cirillo
Preston Price has given us a unadorned account of a soldier at war in his memoir and a new AUSA book -- The Last Kilometer: Marching to Victory in Europe with the Big Red One, 1944-1945.
Price, who was born in Germany during the occupation following World War I, graduated from the Citadel in 1943.
In November 1944, he arrived in France as a "replacement officer" waiting to fill one of the numerous officer slots opened by combat losses.
Arriving at the 1st Division in Belgium in December, Price found himself participating in the Battle of the Bulge.
Assigned as a forward observer in the Heavy Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Infantry, Price controlled fires for 81mm mortars supporting beleaguered rifle companies attempting hold part of Elsenborn Ridge.
His combat service later took him through the Siegfried Line, across the Rhine at Remagen and in the pursuit across Germany and into Czechoslavakia.
Price participated in some 23 separate actions during three of the Big Red One's European campaigns.
Wounded in the leg by shell fragments, he rapidly left the field station where they were removed and re-entered the line where his battalion was still fighting.
While combat might be thought to be the subject of the book, Price generally bypasses the terrain and maneuver aspects beloved by historians to tell the simple story of how men live at war.
As such, his story is not one of colonels or even captains, but mainly tales of his enlisted drivers and radiomen that fight alongside him and assist him in his deadly task.
Some remind us of the unchanged unpleasantness of a soldier's life in the field: sleeping in holes, endless rain, marches, unsatisfying rations, occasional cold truck hauls to a new sector - and what is unsaid of fighting at this time, how daily combat, ground up companies into bands of replacements waiting their turn on the litters on to be wrapped in mattress covers.
Only those with a lot of line time knew how poor the odds of escaping either fate was, even late in the war.
The author's self-effacing style eliminates any hope of the gutsy, blowhard war story -- although one momentous action is humbly described.
A fellow forward observer, who Price had originally replaced, returns to the story to direct 16 battalions of field artillery outside Remagen in order to break up a large German attack.
Price, who vividly describes the lieutenant's action, relayed the fire missions to the higher headquarters that massed the fires.
Price does his readers a great service.
Eminently readable, he reminds us in the days before Schwartzeneger, sound bites and CNN -- ordinary men preserved our freedom in an unglamorous way by serving in a war that had to be fought.
His story, is their story, and it deserves to be read by those who benefited and who should remember their sacrifice. |
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