Engineering the Victory: The Battle of the Bulge: A History

Rating:
Summary: Member of ECB WW2
Review: As the title states, this book is about the exploits of combat engineers in the Ardennes and, in part, in the Heurten Forest during the period November to January, 1944. It is somewhat unique in that it focuses on the contributions that engineers made toward stopping two Nazi panzer divisions and one army division during the December attack in the Belgium-Luxembourg area. It is a story that needs to be told and Col. Pergrin does a good job of doing it. He had his headquarters in Malmedy, and he was in a very good position to critique the exploits along the northern shoulder. (At one point, the Colonel identifies not only a northern and southern shoulder, but an eastern and western one as well!) However, the importance of this book is marred by a distinct lack of editing and proof reading. Spelling errors are myriad. For example, the same place name is spelled in different ways. Photographs are repeated for no particular reason with different captions. Some sentences make no sense. H.M. Cole's maps from the US Army in WWII, "Ardennes" book are reprinted, so small that the information is unusable, and no citation is given for the source. (Lack of citations for sources is another shortcoming of the book) On the other hand, there are a few unit action maps that are very useful in interpreting the actions of engineers at Trois Ponts, Stavelot, and Malmedy. Col. Pergrin has made a valuable contribution in this work. If he had had a good editor to smooth out the repetitious repeats of general Battle of the Bulge history, bring the chapters together as a cohesive unit and eliminate extraneous side trips, we would have a 5-star book.

Rating:
Summary: Engineering the Victory-The Battle of the Bulge
Review: As the title states, this book is about the exploits of combat engineers in the Ardennes and, in part, in the Heurten Forest during the period November to January, 1944. It is somewhat unique in that it focuses on the contributions that engineers made toward stopping two Nazi panzer divisions and one army division during the December attack in the Belgium-Luxembourg area. It is a story that needs to be told and Col. Pergrin does a good job of doing it. He had his headquarters in Malmedy, and he was in a very good position to critique the exploits along the northern shoulder. (At one point, the Colonel identifies not only a northern and southern shoulder, but an eastern and western one as well!) However, the importance of this book is marred by a distinct lack of editing and proof reading. Spelling errors are myriad. For example, the same place name is spelled in different ways. Photographs are repeated for no particular reason with different captions. Some sentences make no sense. H.M. Cole's maps from the US Army in WWII, "Ardennes" book are reprinted, so small that the information is unusable, and no citation is given for the source. (Lack of citations for sources is another shortcoming of the book) On the other hand, there are a few unit action maps that are very useful in interpreting the actions of engineers at Trois Ponts, Stavelot, and Malmedy. Col. Pergrin has made a valuable contribution in this work. If he had had a good editor to smooth out the repetitious repeats of general Battle of the Bulge history, bring the chapters together as a cohesive unit and eliminate extraneous side trips, we would have a 5-star book.

Rating:
Summary: Member of ECB WW2
Review: Serious mistake in not having an index.
Content of book good.
Col. Pergrin an excellent commander during those difficult times.