Etched in Purple: One Soldier's War in Europe | 
| Author: Frank Irgang
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 134906
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1597972045
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.541273092
EAN: 9781597972048
ASIN: 1597972045
Publication Date: April 30, 2008
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Product Description
?Pulls no punches in painting the life of a combat infantryman.? ?Detroit Free Press
?One of the most brutal war books published. . . . Frank J. Irgang . . . has succeeded in doing what at least one million others who served with the infantry during the war wished they could have accomplished. He has told the story of the war simply and plainly as it is seen through the eyes of a combat infantryman. . . . Never once does the author let reader attention slip.? ?Los Angeles Times
?A taste of the brutal truth.? ?Cincinnati Enquirer
First published in 1949, Frank J. Irgang?s personal record of his unforgettable experiences as a combat infantryman during World War II has its beginning on the dawn of that famous ?longest day? when Allied troops set foot on Normandy beaches. We know the surface facts of that invasion?what was planned, how it was executed, and what happened?but what most of us don?t know are the thoughts of those brave men who fought their way across France and into Germany. What were they thinking? How did they meet the terror of each new day?
In this revealing look at a young American soldier?s European tour of duty, the inner facts we have wanted to discover are found. And they are revealed truthfully and with a freshness of reality that would be impossible to recapture unless the observations had been jotted down, as they were, soon after the events took place. Irgang?s keen eye, his unliterary terseness, his sometimes blunt way of stating brutal truths?all these contribute toward making this book more than one man?s record of the war. In its unpretentiousness, Etched in Purple says vividly and powerfully what hundreds of other soldiers would have said had they found a means of expression: that World War II would always be etched in purple in their memories.
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| Customer Reviews:
Etched in Purple June 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a raw look at life as an infantryman in WWII. Well-written, honest and poignant, this painful recounting of one soldier's experience will stay with you forever.
Don't hesitate to order this book!
Couldn't put it down June 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In a thrilling, and disturbing, biographical narrative, Irgang reveals the personal hell of hand to hand and squad-level combat in World War II from the Normandy beaches, through the Battle of the Bulge and into the heart of Germany. This is not a broad strategic work, profiling salients and counterattacks, but a step-by-step, ravine-to-ravine account of one soldier's fight to stay alive, and to make any rational sense of the hell played out every day in front of him. Parts resemble the last scenes in "Saving Private Ryan," but this gripping book is much more grounded in reality. What's most interesting is that the book was first published in 1949, when few recently discharged veterans had the stomach and inclination to relive the war. Now, the book has been reprinted in 2008, amid efforts by World War II veterans to keep their stories alive, so the world will have a greater appreciation of the sacrifices they made, and an understanding of the moral judgments that were forced to be made in an instant. There's fascinating detail: such as the order to tape dog tags together that was issued before the invasion, so their clinking sound would not alert enemy soldiers; a morbid description of how German soldiers' bodies decayed differently than Americans; and how uniforms of those landing at Normandy were treated with an anti-gassing repellent. In one digression, Irgang while in Paris is caught up in a raid on Army deserters who were engaged in the black market; and he finds through a newspaper clipping while in combat that his State-side sweetheart was married to a man with a deferment. In an almost unbelieveable coincidence, a clipping from home informs him that three of his good friends died in Normandy. While in an Army field hospital near the landing beaches, he come across the graves of two of them, found in a hastily built military graveyard in Ste. Mere Eglise. For those of us raised on films such as "The Longest Day," "The Bridge at Remagen," "Battle of the Bulge," and "Saving Private Ryan," which provide the geographic context and broad-brush overview, "Etched in Purple" presents the real story of ground fighting by The Greatest Generation. The book is sparse on geography and dates, but time and place are not part of a soldier's mission. It's hurry up and wait, or take that next village or town. There's much bonding here between soldiers -- bonds that in many cases are cut short by artillery attacks, snipers' bullets and simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Best WWII Infantryman Memoir ever Written, Bar None May 17, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Suppose that one of the men in the Band of Brothers had also been a top-caliber writer with a keen eye for detail, and a man who wasn't afraid to tell his story without glossing over the grey moral and ethical middle areas all men face in combat, and you will only begin to understand the greatness of this book. As a WWII writer, I've read literally hundreds of memoirs, but none hit me so viscerally as Frank Irgang's powerful 'Etched in Purple'.
Originally published in 1949, only a few years after the war, this book has been given new life by the nation's largest military publisher, Potomac Books, and is being touted as 'The Rediscovered Classic Memoir of World War II'. And that it is.
Mr. Irgang landed on D-Day with the famous 29th Infantry (think Bedford Boys), and the memoir begins as the men load up into their ships for the trip across the English Channel before that momentous day in June of 1944. Originally a medic, Irgang's unit took such heavy casualties that he soon found himself a rifleman and sniper. He witnessed the heaviest fighting in Europe in one campaign after another, and the book tells his story in spare, lean prose. Irgang's writer's eye for detail draws out the intensity of each scene as the reader experiences men fighting for their lives, watching comrades die, dealing with the killing of the enemy and the suffering of the civilians unfortunate enough to get in their path. Along the way, Irgang is wounded, evacuated, treated, and sent back to the front. He tells of watching a Black soldier slowly bleeding to death because the white southern doctor doesn't want to treat the man until Irgang protests. He tells of watching a German woman pouring a kettle of boiling water onto the face of a wounded American soldier, and his instant reaction of shooting her. He tells of watching his friends die, not only from enemy fire, but by malfunctioning hand grenades and stray friendly fire. Jotted down as they happened, each scene has an immediacy that allows the reader to feel they are sitting right next to the young soldier.
In the end, the book tells a reader exactly what war was like, stripped bare in all of its brutality, ambiguity, and heartbreak. But it also shows the loving bond of men fighting and dying side by side in some of the most brutal fighting of the European war. You don't just read this book, you experience it. It will move you to tears at times.
I cannot recommend it highly enough. A must-read for anyone interested in the infantryman's experiences from D-Day through the Bulge and into Germany.
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