G COMPANY'S WAR - Two Personal Accounts of the Campaigns in Europe, 1944 - 1945 by Egger, Bruce E. & Lee MacMillan Otts

Tuscaloosa, 1992, Univ. of Alabama, US first edition, 6x9, hard bound in dust jacket, FINE/FINE condition, x, 293 pages, illus, maps, notes, bibliog, index--------------------------------------------------------G Company's War is the story of a World War II rifle company in Patton's Third Army as detailed in the journals of S/Sgt. Bruce Egger and Lt. Lee M. Otts, both of G Company, 328th Regiment, 26th Infantry Division. What distinguishes it from other accounts of combat in World War II is its parallel day-by-day records of the same events as seen by two men in the same company, one an enlisted man, the other an officer. These are the voices of ordinary GIs, the men who did the fighting, not the generals and statesmen who viewed events from a distance.-----------------------------------------------------The two authors came from different parts of the country—Egger from the mountains of central Idaho and Otts from a small town in the Alabama Black Belt. They did not know each other during the war, yet a remarkable similarity exists between their individual recollections of G Company's war, even down to the smallest of details.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------The juxtaposition of their accounts provides fascinating insights into how these two distinctly different personalities responded to the same experiences. For the serious-minded Egger the war was a grim ordeal, and his account is packed with descriptions of the dead and wounded, the privations endured by the soldiers, and the destruction they witnessed. For Otts the war was no less an ordeal, but with a sunny disposition he responded to it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, sometimes even fun, and recorded pranks as well as his own foibles.