Company Commander

New York: Bantam, 1978. First Bantam Edition, presumed first printing thus. Mass market paperback. Good. Tom Beecham (Drawings) and Alan McKnight (Maps). vii, [3], 370, [4] pages. Drawings. Maps. Cover has some wear and soiling. Slightly cocked. The Classic Account of Infantry Combat in World War II (Specially Illustrated Edition). Includes Preface, Book One: Company 1: Meet Company 1; Into the Lines; Eleven Men in a Pillbox; Shooting War; One Round at a Time; "It's Too Damned Serious"; Nine Long Days; Rain and Showers; Quiet Area; Digging In; We Run Like Hell; "Nice Work, Mac''; We almost Have a Baby; Attack!; Purple Heart. Book Two: Company G, Meet Company G; "IT has Been Hard for Us''; Rear-Echelon Bastards; Across the Weser; "Thank Adolf!"; "Across the Weser; "Thank Adolf!'; G Company Leading; "Schkopau by Morning''; Seventy-Five Cents per Day; Whitman Shells Himself; "Want to Capture Leipzig?"; I do not Capture Liepzig; Two Thousand Cases of Champagne; Czechoslovakia--and Peace. Also includes Epilogue. This story of a young infantry captain leading men in battle in World War II is one of the most brutally honest accounts of combat ever written. Charles MacDonald was twenty-one years old when he was given command of Company I, 23rd Infantry. His men had fought their way ashore at Normandy on D plus one, had battled their way through St. Lo, and stormed the ring of pillboxes at Brest. MacDonald had never been in battle. Dirty, tired, frightened, constantly under fire, MacDonald knew that he was responsible for other men's lives--and that any mistake by him could mean their death. Charles B. MacDonald (November 23, 1922 - December 4, 1990) was a former Deputy Chief Historian for the United States Army. He wrote several of the Army's official histories of World War II. MacDonald was commissioned as a US Army officer through ROTC and deployed to Europe. By September 1944, as a 21-year-old captain, he commanded a rifle company in the 23rd Infantry Regiment. His company was intended to be part of the effort to capture the Huertgen Forest. They had been transferred north from the area which was, soon after, overrun by the Germans in the first moves of the Battle of the Bulge. They were redeployed to defend a crossroads against the German advance. After delaying the Germans long enough to allow the rest of MacDonald's division to deploy, they withdrew. He received the Silver Star for the action. While leading his company in a counterattack, MacDonald was wounded on January 17, 1945. After two months' convalescence, he was given command of another company in his old regiment, which he led until the end of the war. He also received the Purple Heart. His first book, Company Commander, was published in 1947, while his wartime experiences were fresh in his mind. Derived from a Kirkus review: A day by day account of battle action as experienced by the two companies Charles MacDonald captained. Young, modest, inexperienced, and with a real concern the men under him, MacDonald was first assigned to Company I, stationed on the Siegfried Line. Within a short time he was to know action, the repulse of a large-scale the more monotonous foxhole fighting, and finally an offensive in which he was wounded. Hospitalized, reassignment brought his transfer to Company G, the crossing into Germany, and finally into Czechoslovakia for the peace.