Glide to Glory: 325 Glider Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division

Rating:
Summary: Glide to Glory by Jerry Richlak
Review: GLIDE TO GLORY is a fresh breeze in the Book Market. Written in the style of The Greatest Generation, this book fills a void with personal stories of courage, bravery and desparate situations told by the men who lived through them. Serving in the Glider Infantry of the 82nd Airborne Division these men were on the front line of World War II. Their stories have never previously been told. With unpublished photos, this book is a treasure you will want to keep. Wayne Pierce

Rating:
Summary: Glide to Glory by Jerry Richlak
Review: GLIDE TO GLORY is a fresh breeze in the Book Market. Written in the style of The Greatest Generation, this book fills a void with personal stories of courage, bravery and desparate situations told by the men who lived through them. Serving in the Glider Infantry of the 82nd Airborne Division these men were on the front line of World War II. Their stories have never previously been told. With unpublished photos, this book is a treasure you will want to keep. Wayne Pierce

Rating:
Summary: Chairman 325GIR 2003
Review: Glide to Glory is a great collection of stories
submitted by the people who lived them.Jerry has
put them together with pictures that can bring them
to life for all who read the book..

Rating:
Summary: Chairman 325GIR 2003
Review: Glide to Glory is a great collection of stories
submitted by the people who lived them.Jerry has
put them together with pictures that can bring them
to life for all who read the book..

Rating:
Summary: Glider Infantry Heros
Review: This book is no disappointment. It cuts no corners in its size and quality as well as the number of pages, 457 of them. The book details the experiences of the glider infantry soldiers, specifically the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. Never heard about gliders being used in WWII? Don't know what a glider infantry soldier is? Then this is the book for you. Imagine having to sit aboard a glider having wood wings, a wooden floor, a tubular steel fuselage and covered with fabric being towed behind a C-47 at 100 mph at low altitudes where ground fire and flak ripped through the wings, the floor, the canvas, and you. They were to low to bail out if your glider was hit, so no one had a parachute. Then if you survived the long flight, which could have been up to 4 hours, you hoped the skill of the trained glider pilot could bring you in onto a safe landing. But quite often, the glider pilots had to fly into postage stamp size fields where other gliders had already landed and crashes were inevitable into either another glider or the many hedgerows found along the fields. Then there were the trained German 88 crews just waiting for you to touch down so they could throw a round or two into the glider as you came to a rolling stop or the German troops who peppered the side of your glider as you sat inside watching the holes tear into the fabric hoping you would make it out as you waited for the glider to stop rolling. And if you survived the flight as well as the landing, now you had to unload your cargo of equipment and assemble into your company while being a moving target for German troops. Read about Glider Infantry Heros because that is what these guys were as told by them about them and those who didn't make it back. This book is their story and their history. You will find your emotions being tapped into as you read their personal stories and at times feel your eyes begin to well up. The glidermen played a key role in the war as did the use of the glider. Casualties and injuries were high for the C-47 crews, the glider pilots and glidermen BUT, they did what they had to do in preserving freedom. This book honors them with text, photos, maps, documents, and the names of all who died. You will not be disappointed, unless you don't have a copy of your own.

Rating:
Summary: Glider Infantry Heros
Review: This book is no disappointment. It cuts no corners in its size and quality as well as the number of pages, 457 of them. The book details the experiences of the glider infantry soldiers, specifically the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. Never heard about gliders being used in WWII? Don't know what a glider infantry soldier is? Then this is the book for you. Imagine having to sit aboard a glider having wood wings, a wooden floor, a tubular steel fuselage and covered with fabric being towed behind a C-47 at 100 mph at low altitudes where ground fire and flak ripped through the wings, the floor, the canvas, and you. They were to low to bail out if your glider was hit, so no one had a parachute. Then if you survived the long flight, which could have been up to 4 hours, you hoped the skill of the trained glider pilot could bring you in onto a safe landing. But quite often, the glider pilots had to fly into postage stamp size fields where other gliders had already landed and crashes were inevitable into either another glider or the many hedgerows found along the fields. Then there were the trained German 88 crews just waiting for you to touch down so they could throw a round or two into the glider as you came to a rolling stop or the German troops who peppered the side of your glider as you sat inside watching the holes tear into the fabric hoping you would make it out as you waited for the glider to stop rolling. And if you survived the flight as well as the landing, now you had to unload your cargo of equipment and assemble into your company while being a moving target for German troops. Read about Glider Infantry Heros because that is what these guys were as told by them about them and those who didn't make it back. This book is their story and their history. You will find your emotions being tapped into as you read their personal stories and at times feel your eyes begin to well up. The glidermen played a key role in the war as did the use of the glider. Casualties and injuries were high for the C-47 crews, the glider pilots and glidermen BUT, they did what they had to do in preserving freedom. This book honors them with text, photos, maps, documents, and the names of all who died. You will not be disappointed, unless you don't have a copy of your own.

Rating:
Summary: Glide to Glory
Review: This is a big, impressive book,(coffee table size) written about an impressive war (WWII)and the exceptionally brave young men who had to fight it. The story relates a complete day-to-day account of each combat action for the 325 Glider Infantry Regiemnt of the 82nd Airborne Division. It details the actual experiences of an airborne regiment who landed in North Africa and subsequently fought in every major battle in Europe. This is the story by the men who fought those battles, and in their own unedited words and in GI vernacular, whether good or bad. It is truly their story right from the heart. Father Thuring of Groesbeek, Holland authors the final chapter which includes a memorial of those Airborne Glidermen killed in action (748) The book also contains many photographs out of the "Liberation Museum" Groesbeek, Holland.The book is loaded with photographs never before seen of some actual combat landings and the "Crosses Of Normandy" on how the soldiers killed in action were processed in the first burial. The book is loaded with all kinds of stories --- witty, homorous, gripping, and courageous,too. It's a story of young men at war, filled with bravery and high adventure. It's a story, too, of death in the afternoon. Here is another side of war as stressed in Glide to Glory - often brutal statistics of Death in the Afternoon, in particular, of the 325 Glider Infantry Regiment: 280 KIA, Normandy, June 1944, 217 KIA Holland, September 1944: 205 KIA, the Battle of the Bulge. Records indicate that out of 2500 in the regiment, 2,375 purple hearts were awarded. A minimum of 3,089 were either killed in actin or wounde. Much of their combat time was behind enemy lines for atotal of 190 combat days. This is just the bare stats for one airborne infantry regiment...the 325 GIR. Never Before, Never again will ring forever as combat gliders only were used from 1943 to 1946 by he U.S. Army Airborne. No other book is available on only Glidermen during WWII.