Summary of Alex Kershaw's The Longest Winter

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I was able to interview the commanding officer of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, Lyle Bouck Jr. He was a true American officer and gentleman, and he handed over years of careful documentation and press clippings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822533691

IRB Media

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Insights on Alex Kershaw's The Longest Winter

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was able to interview the commanding officer of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon, Lyle Bouck Jr. He was a true American officer and gentleman, and he handed over years of careful documentation and press clippings.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The meeting with senior generals to discuss the war went on as planned. At 12:26 P. M. , Stauffenberg placed a bomb in a briefcase and left the room. It exploded at 12:42 P. , killing several generals and Hitler.

#2

The plotters were ecstatic when they heard the news. Hitler had not survived an attack by Stalin’s air force, but an assassination plot by his own senior Wehrmacht officers. Meanwhile, Stauffenberg was on a plane headed for Berlin.

#3

On July 21, 1944, the BBC announced that only Germany’s total and unconditional surrender would end the war. For Hitler, there was no other option but to continue the fight, even to the bitter end.

#4

Robert Kriz, a major in the 99th Division, was the intelligence officer for the 394th Infantry Regiment. He had selected Lyle Bouck to lead a reorganized intelligence and reconnaissance platoon of the regiment. Bouck was eager to excel in his first command.

#5

The reconstituted IR platoon was formed up outside their barracks. Platoon Sergeant William Slape commanded the men, and they took pride in making any unit they were in the best in its regiment.

#6

The first challenge for the men was to get over an eight-foot-high wall. Beyond that lay several twenty-foot logs, fourteen inches in diameter, that the men would have to walk across. If they fell, they would land in deep mud and water.

#7

The men were not performing well. Three were not making progress, and were taken aside by their platoon leader, Sergeant George Redmond. He told them to quit goofing off, and that their previous officer, a man called Thomas, was a real cowboy who only cared about himself.

#8

Leopold soon rose high on Slape’s shit list when the platoon sergeant discovered he had tried to get a transfer out of the platoon to a different unit where his native German and radio skills would be better employed.

#9

The platoon was initially divided between those who had been in the original platoon and the newly arrived draftees and ASTPers. The ASTPers felt that their noncom superiors resented their education and assumed they were soft and lazy.

#10

In early August 1944, a new regimental commander, Colonel Donald