Rating: 
Summary: This is the real history of WWII
Review: "Where the hell are the guns", "The Guns of Normandy", "The Guns of Victory" George G. Blackburn, M.C.World War II as seen from a terrible muddy field. George G. Blackburn survived WWII. From September 1944 on his colleagues in the 4th Field Artillery drew lots on his survival. Forward Observation Officers, (or FOOs to give them their Army name) usually didn't last 3 months: here was Blackburn in October 1944 still calling down Battery, Regimental, Divisional, Corps and Army fire on the heads of the fanatical SS troops. As the Second Canadian Infantry Division fought its way through a ruined Caen, past Falaise finally, Dunkerque, Calais, half drowned like rats in the Dutch polders. Freeing the sea-approach to Antwerp and into Germany. The 4th Field Regiment faught its war armed with the British designed 25-pounder gun-howitzer and fired hundreds of thousands of 25-pound shells at the Nazis; many directed by Lt. George Blackburn. Fi! ! ring the guns till their barrels often glowed red in the night. Blackburn explains in detail his training on the 25-pounder. How the accuracy of the laying of the No.1 gun in a troop accounted for the great shooting that his Regiment did. The speed with which they served their guns was double and even triple the manual's definition of rapid fire: so awsome, in fact, that the Germans thought the 25-pounders were magazine fed. A journalist in civilian life, Blackburn left a pregnant wife at home sustained by the pittance that our society then thought sufficient for mother and child, a two-digit monthly stipend. This young couple was torn asunder for five years and with George's death always imminent in the last year, always just around the next village corner, ready to explode in every observation post, slit trench or muddy shell hole he occupied. Many of Blackburn's friends were mutilated, or blown apart in just this way. He saw it all. From his own notes and interviews the! ! n and later, and from the Regimental Histories of the 4th F! ield Regiment and of all the other infantry and armoured units that his guns had supported he has compiled a startling memoir. A new generation of World War II scholars will prize this trilogy.
Rating:
Summary: To quote Kipling: "The guns, thank God, the guns"
Review: I actually came to read "The Guns of Normandy: A Soldier's Eye View, France 1944" after having seen and read "Band of Brothers." Watching and reading those two versions of Stephen E. Ambrose's work both left me wanting more details to get a fully picture of what it was like for these soldiers to fight World War II. That sort of detail is precisely what I found in this memoir by George G. Blackburn, the second of his trilogy of books on his experiences during World War II. Blackburn's extensive background as everything from a journalist and radio producer to a playwright and lyricist serves him in good stead in the writing of this volume, which is quite readable and broken down into very discrete narrative segments, including quotations from interviews, and detailed footnotes of interest that avoid getting in the way of the narrative. The narrative starts in July of 1944 with his unit, the 4th Field Regiment of 25-poundrs attached to the 2nd Canadian Division, finally headed off to war after years of training. By the end of "The Guns of Normandy" it is early September of that same year and the unit's participation in a victory march into Dieppe. On the one hand this is the recollection of a soldier about the war, but it is also an argument by Blackburn regarding the crucial role of these guns as the Canadian army fought its way from Caen to Falaise, a distance of roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers). Of course, my knowledge of non-American troops movements after D-Day is both limited and suspect, so the questions as to how and why the RCA was "confined" are news to me (I seem to recall a small reference to the situation in "Patton"). Consequently, Blackburn is not only recalling events he is making an argument as to "what really happened." I have only read a few soldier biographies from the American Civil War and there are two significant differences between those works and "The Guns of Normandy." First, Blackburn is much more forthcoming with regards to the details of war's horrors, providing a sense of the bloody campaign of the Canadian army in Normandy. Second, the story of an artillery unit is rather uncommon certainly in my experience and I would think for most readers of military memoirs as well. I was surprised by how much I learned about how many rounds were fired by these 25-pounders in a single day and the performance differences between Churchill VII and Tiger MK I tanks. Certainly you will have a much greater appreciation of the significance of field artillery than ever before. Ultimately "The Guns of Normandy" is half the personal story of Blackburn's war experiences and half a detailed account of this particular military campaign. Again, I really do not know enough about the invasion of Europe to offer a definitive judgment, but my feeling by the end of this volume was that the campaign against the Germans around Falaise was the most significant and most hard-fought campaign in 1944 between the actual D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. Consequently, I find it hard to believe that the other two volumes in Blackburn's trilogy can be as significant as "The Guns of Normandy." I find myself thinking what a great idea it would be for Canadian television to do a mini-series based on this book seeing as how it tells the story of what is arguably the greatest campaign in the military history of Canada (again, another subject of which I know admittedly next to nothing). One outcome of such a project is that this book would get the sort of notice in Canada I would think it deserves.
Rating:
Summary: To quote Kipling: "The guns, thank God, the guns"
Review: I actually came to read "The Guns of Normandy: A Soldier's Eye View, France 1944" after having seen and read "Band of Brothers." Watching and reading those two versions of Stephen E. Ambrose's work both left me wanting more details to get a fully picture of what it was like for these soldiers to fight World War II. That sort of detail is precisely what I found in this memoir by George G. Blackburn, the second of his trilogy of books on his experiences during World War II. Blackburn's extensive background as everything from a journalist and radio producer to a playwright and lyricist serves him in good stead in the writing of this volume, which is quite readable and broken down into very discrete narrative segments, including quotations from interviews, and detailed footnotes of interest that avoid getting in the way of the narrative. The narrative starts in July of 1944 with his unit, the 4th Field Regiment of 25-poundrs attached to the 2nd Canadian Division, finally headed off to war after years of training. By the end of "The Guns of Normandy" it is early September of that same year and the unit's participation in a victory march into Dieppe. On the one hand this is the recollection of a soldier about the war, but it is also an argument by Blackburn regarding the crucial role of these guns as the Canadian army fought its way from Caen to Falaise, a distance of roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers). Of course, my knowledge of non-American troops movements after D-Day is both limited and suspect, so the questions as to how and why the RCA was "confined" are news to me (I seem to recall a small reference to the situation in "Patton"). Consequently, Blackburn is not only recalling events he is making an argument as to "what really happened." I have only read a few soldier biographies from the American Civil War and there are two significant differences between those works and "The Guns of Normandy." First, Blackburn is much more forthcoming with regards to the details of war's horrors, providing a sense of the bloody campaign of the Canadian army in Normandy. Second, the story of an artillery unit is rather uncommon certainly in my experience and I would think for most readers of military memoirs as well. I was surprised by how much I learned about how many rounds were fired by these 25-pounders in a single day and the performance differences between Churchill VII and Tiger MK I tanks. Certainly you will have a much greater appreciation of the significance of field artillery than ever before. Ultimately "The Guns of Normandy" is half the personal story of Blackburn's war experiences and half a detailed account of this particular military campaign. Again, I really do not know enough about the invasion of Europe to offer a definitive judgment, but my feeling by the end of this volume was that the campaign against the Germans around Falaise was the most significant and most hard-fought campaign in 1944 between the actual D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. Consequently, I find it hard to believe that the other two volumes in Blackburn's trilogy can be as significant as "The Guns of Normandy." I find myself thinking what a great idea it would be for Canadian television to do a mini-series based on this book seeing as how it tells the story of what is arguably the greatest campaign in the military history of Canada (again, another subject of which I know admittedly next to nothing). One outcome of such a project is that this book would get the sort of notice in Canada I would think it deserves.
Rating: 
Summary: Vivid account, a WW II "All Quiet on the Western Front"
Review: I found the book very enjoyable even though I am neither Canadian nor a veteran of any war (just lucky). My father served in the Second World War building airstrips in the Northern Pacific. At his funeral, I noted in the eulogy that he was one of the few people to ever like army food. Mr. Blackburn wrote a wonderful book. Being an artillery officer is not a glamorous job and his task was further complicated by the decision to have the Canadians do a lot of the dirty work in the Normandy invasion. It was the Canadians who kept the Germans occupied while Patton ran wild. The point is clearly made that the invasion was a TEAM effort. The writing is superb when it focuses on the daily minutiae of what it felt to be a soldier in the war. The emotions are beautifully explained. Blackburn also does a fantastic job in describing how dysentery and fatigue are just as feared as the enemy. He does not get gross about it, but he makes his point nevertheless. The shortcomings of the book can be attributed to the publishers. For me, reading a book like this requires copious maps and charts. If the author explains a battle with troop movements and bombing targets, it is much more understandable when there are maps and diagrams. There are few in the book. Now that is covered up by the author's remarkable focus on the life of a soldier. But some more maps would have helped greatly. The author quotes other eyewitness accounts at great length, some going on for several pages. But they are in the same typeface and style as the regular narrative and it becomes confusing after a while as to who is talking. Surely, these other accounts should have been put into another typeface, or at the very least, italics. Those concerns aside, the book also has other elements rarely seen in war books. Humor for one, there are several funny incidents in the book. And Mr. Blackburn pulls no punches from the introduction to the last page. A lot of World War II veterans chose to say little of the horrors they saw during the war, that is understandable. A big round of thanks to Mr. Blackburn for his casual heroism and for telling his story.
Rating:
Summary: Canada roars
Review: In this second volume of a trilogy by a former very junior officer, George Blackburn, in the Canadian Royal Artillery, the author records his experiences, and those of the Canadian 2nd Infantry Division in general, in World War II's western European campaign. The first book, WHERE THE HELL ARE THE GUNS?, covers the training in Canada and England of Blackburn's unit, the 4th Field Artillery Regiment, from its formation to June 1944. This book, THE GUNS OF NORMANDY, describes the 4th Field's actions in northern France from early July 1944 to its arrival at the Seine River in late August. The final installment, THE GUNS OF VICTORY, chronicles the advance from the Seine into the Third Reich via the Benelux countries.
THE GUNS OF NORMANDY is one of the most compelling descriptions of men embroiled in modern land warfare that I've ever read. It gives (over)due credit to the Canadian efforts in the war against Hitler, this effort having been largely ignored in popular history next to those of its British and American allies. As Blackburn states regarding Canadian battle casualties in Normandy:
"The two infantry divisions (2nd and 3rd) accounted for 78 percent: 7,869 dead, wounded, or missing per division, the highest casualty rate in all fifteen divisions in 21st Army Group." Note: at this time, the 21st British Army Group comprised two of the four allied armies attempting to consolidate their Normandy foothold immediately after the D-Day invasion.
Although, late in the book, the author acknowledges the comradeship fostered among the troops of his artillery unit, the 2nd Battery of 4th Field, the reader may not be as mindful of such as compared to its portrayal in, say, BAND OF BROTHERS, the exemplary popular history of a company of 101st Airborne paratroops from D-Day to the war's end, subsequently made into an HBO TV miniseries by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, perhaps the best miniseries produced in the history of television. At times, Blackburn and his fellow GPOs (Gun Position Officer), seem almost like independent operators. Perhaps it's the distracting 2nd person viewpoint ("You ...") the author employs to describe his own battlefield experiences. I wish Spielberg and Hanks would produce a miniseries on 4th Field's exploits; it would be a visually powerful blockbuster hit. (George, can you land a Hollywood deal?)
At times in the narrative, following the complex movements of various artillery, armored, and infantry units across the French terrain is difficult. The author provides a couple of reasonably detailed maps of the principal combat area between Caen and Falaise that help considerably. But Blackburn is at his best when describing the isolated experiences of himself and others interviewed for the history. At one point, exhausted infantry grunts resting alongside a road stand up and cheer a passing arty column, something of a pleasant surprise to the latter, which apparently suffered an inferiority complex relative to the "footsloggers". At another, a trooper notable for his compulsive attention to personal appearance and hygiene jumps off a vehicle in darkness and lands on, and breaks through, the bloated belly of a dead bovine. Yuk! And definitely my favorite, a liberated French farmer gratefully invites a couple of 4th Field troopers over to the house to have dinner and sleep with his two teenage daughters. (They took the offer. War is hell.) But the reader might be left wondering what the mademoiselles thought.
There are two sections of photos that come primarily from government (rather than private) sources, and which mostly depict either equipment (tanks, field guns, transport vehicles) or the devastating damage inflicted on French towns and fleeing German columns. There are absolutely none of the author taken either then or since, a deficiency I deplore as I'd like to put a human face on the words of the man. (George, how about an autographed snap of you in uniform?)
The net effect of THE GUNS OF NORMANDY is to emphatically make the point that Canada's forces held the Wehrmacht by the nose in a bitter life or death struggle south of Caen while Georgie Patton's 3rd U.S. Army waltzed all the way to Paris through the lightly defended German left flank. One's opinion of the Canadians' sacrifices and fighting abilities - in the face of enemy action, demoralizing "friendly bombing" incidents, dysentery, lice, prolonged sleeplessness, poor rations, heat, dust, rain, and mud - must necessarily increase to that nation's profound honor. My perception of the Normandy struggle has been forever altered.
I eagerly anticipate reading THE GUNS OF VICTORY.
Rating:
Summary: The Guns of Normandy
Review: My late father-inlaw was a artillery battery commander and was severely wounded on 10th July 1944 during the events described brilliantly by George Blackburn. I also served as an officer in the artillery for some 15 years (well after the war) but I can vouch for the athenticity and realistic detail involved with the art of soldiering. Apart from anything else the book is a wonderfully stirring antidote to the rather cynical views that tend to prevail in today's society. A book that should not be missed.
Rating:
Summary: None can touch this amazing work!
Review: One of the nice things about reviewing for the Amazon sites, is the wonderful people you "meet". Recently, Mark Blackburn, the son of this author, contacted me concerning three books his father wrote. My main focus of interest in history was medieval Scotland and England, with a secondary interest in the War Between the States of the US. Hand me a book on either topic and I am in history maven's haven. Mention WWII - I know the period - but it held a lesser interest to me, so purchases books on the era generally takes second seat. However, Mark interested me in his father's books; they sounded so rich with detail, being a first person account. I was lucky to locate copies of all three books. I truly thank Mark for pointing me in their directions. I always loved the works of Bruce Catton on the US Civil War, because they were not dates and stale history; he was the master conductor for a time machine. When you read his works, you were there! Few historical writers really reach that depth, and yet still make the history so vital and alive. I must say George Blackburn is in that league. I am just sorry he stopped writing at these three works; he is a great talent. They came in, and frankly, I was backlogged with review requests so I figured it would be weeks before I could get to them. I picked up this one, just to read a bit to get a feel for his style of writing. FOUR HOURS later, I returned to present day and was shocked so much time had passed. Never have I seen anyone make WWII so alive and accessible...you are there. But it's not just in that time travel feel, where you forget you are reading and experience it - it's his observations that are so incisive that go way beyond other historians of the period. It's it so easy to stand back and be an "armchair general", point fingers and blame this unit or that unit with failing to do what was commanded. He makes you see the men, the shoddy uniforms, the hardship of chronic dysentery from bad food and terrible living conditions, yet they were still expected to march miles! He makes you see the ridiculous odds the Yanks, Brits and Canadians faced with having tanks that were so inferior to the Germany Tigers. More than that, he shows where command KNEW this and yet no one voiced objections except the poor man depending on that tank to save his life! I loved how he pointed out men could vividly recall the horrors, the loss of life, of friends dying - the emotions - rather than actual details of the battle, the logic of a man scared to his very bones doing what he had to do to protect his country. This is a work without peer for WWII. If you are interested in this era, I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: None can touch this amazing work!
Review: One of the nice things about reviewing for the Amazon sites, is the wonderful people you "meet". Recently, Mark Blackburn, the son of this author, contacted me concerning three books his father wrote. My main focus of interest in history was medieval Scotland and England, with a secondary interest in the War Between the States of the US. Hand me a book on either topic and I am in history maven's haven. Mention WWII - I know the period - but it held a lesser interest to me, so purchases books on the era generally takes second seat. However, Mark interested me in his father's books; they sounded so rich with detail, being a first person account. I was lucky to locate copies of all three books. I truly thank Mark for pointing me in their directions. I always loved the works of Bruce Catton on the US Civil War, because they were not dates and stale history; he was the master conductor for a time machine. When you read his works, you were there! Few historical writers really reach that depth, and yet still make the history so vital and alive. I must say George Blackburn is in that league. I am just sorry he stopped writing at these three works; he is a great talent. They came in, and frankly, I was backlogged with review requests so I figured it would be weeks before I could get to them. I picked up this one, just to read a bit to get a feel for his style of writing. FOUR HOURS later, I returned to present day and was shocked so much time had passed. Never have I seen anyone make WWII so alive and accessible...you are there. But it's not just in that time travel feel, where you forget you are reading and experience it - it's his observations that are so incisive that go way beyond other historians of the period. It's it so easy to stand back and be an "armchair general", point fingers and blame this unit or that unit with failing to do what was commanded. He makes you see the men, the shoddy uniforms, the hardship of chronic dysentery from bad food and terrible living conditions, yet they were still expected to march miles! He makes you see the ridiculous odds the Yanks, Brits and Canadians faced with having tanks that were so inferior to the Germany Tigers. More than that, he shows where command KNEW this and yet no one voiced objections except the poor man depending on that tank to save his life! I loved how he pointed out men could vividly recall the horrors, the loss of life, of friends dying - the emotions - rather than actual details of the battle, the logic of a man scared to his very bones doing what he had to do to protect his country. This is a work without peer for WWII. If you are interested in this era, I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: without peer
Review: One of the nice things about reviewing for the Amazon sites, is the wonderful people you "met". Recently, Mark Blackburn, the son of this author, contacted me concerning three books his father wrote. My main focus of interest in history was medieval Scotland and England, with a secondary interest in the War Between the States of the US. Hand me a book on either topic and I am in history maven's haven. Mention WWII - I know the period - but it held a lesser interest to me, so purchases books on the era generally takes second seat. However, Mark interested me in his father's books; they sounded so rich with detail, being a first person account. I was lucky to locate copies of all three books. I truly thank Mark for pointing me in their directions. I always loved the works of Bruce Catton on the US Civil War, because they were not dates and stale history; he was the master conductor for a time machine. When you read his works, you were there! Few historical writers really reach that depth, and yet still make the history so vital and alive. I must say George Blackburn is in that league. I am just sorry he stopped writing at these three works; he is a great talent. They came in, and frankly, I was backlogged with review requests so I figured it would be weeks before I could get to them. I picked up this one, just to read a bit to get a feel for his style of writing. FOUR HOURS later, I returned to present day and was shocked so much time had passed. Never have I seen anyone make WWII so alive and accessible...you are there. But it's not just in that time travel feel, where you forget you are reading and experience it - it's his observations that are so incisive that go way beyond other historians of the period. It's it so easy to stand back and be an "armchair general", point fingers and blame this unit or that unit with failing to do what was commanded. He makes you see the men, the shoddy uniforms, the hardship of chronic dysentery from bad food and terrible living conditions, yet they were still expected to march miles! He makes you see the ridiculous odds the Yanks, Brits and Canadians faced with having tanks that were so inferior to the Germany Tigers. More than that, he shows where command KNEW this and yet no one voiced objections except the poor man depending on that tank to save his life! I loved how he pointed out men could vividly recall the horrors, the loss of life, of friends dying - the emotions - rather than actual details of the battle, the logic of a man scared to his very bones doing what he had to do to protect his country. This is a work without peer for WWII. If you are interested in this era, I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: "C'est la guerre!" Compelling (but no adventure story)
Review: The familiar French expletive is uttered by the narrator after an exploding shell has spilled ink on the song he's just written for his wife, negating his night's labors but not his determination to rewrite it. It's this sort of touch that separates Blackburn's uncommon account about the common soldier's experience from other books about the Normandy campaign or any other war. "The Guns of Normandy" describes the two-month mission of the author's regiment in the ferocious and decisive battle for Verrieres Ridge, but it is clear from the outset that the author is on another mission. Like Toni Morrison's narrator in "Beloved," who insists that hers is "not a story to be retold," Blackburn insists that his account, however gripping it may be, is "never, never an adventure story." It is time to salvage this critical moment in history from the dispassionate reconstructions of the academics, from the fanciful fabrications of the "war games" crowd, and even from the fading memories of the participants themselves. The resulting account is at once a powerful tribute to the Canadian 2nd Division's contribution (the victory at Falaise seals the doom of Hitler's forces in the west) and a stirring memorial to the author's comrades. But above all it is an honest portrayal of men engaged in a protracted "real" war, not an in-and-out invasion where the primary focus is on high-tech weaponry and smart bombs. Blackburn's use of the second-person narrator, in effect, de-emphasizes his own persona and directly engages the reader in the experience-from the undeniable fascination of war to the horrifying spectacle to the depressingly prosaic daily business. The narrator's question before landing in France quickly became my own: Would I be able to stand up in a similar situation? Doubts entered my mind even when, shortly after landing, the narrator describes a herd of distended, dead cows, each with two legs pointing toward the sky. That unsettling scene much later becomes a powerful, unshakable metaphor representing the horror, the absurdity, the futility of war. A Canadian gun officer, preoccupied with guiding his weapon, jumps down from his quad-and finds himself buried in the rotten intestines of one of those swollen carcasses, the bowels of hell literally engulfing him in an instant. Other images become indelible with little help, and certainly no hype, from the narrator. We register disappointment at the overmatched Allied tanks vs. their heavily-armored German counterparts; we're attracted to the German Nebelwerfers that unexpectedly discharge terrifying "Moaning Minnies" at the Canadians' expense; we share the narrator's helplessness and dismay while his comrades fall victim to the misdirected bombs of the RAF; we can't shake off the image of a barely recognizable human form after it has been run over the previous night by a column of tanks. Throughout, we share the narrator's amazement at the tenacity and sheer will of men who continue to fight in the face of relentless dysentery, massive lice infestation, and overwhelming fatigue. But our final impression--standing out from the grizzly details, the courageous actions of the men, the ultimate victory even-is one of comradeship, of a mutual trust so strong that the infantry soldiers view the gunners as protectors while the gunners, in turn, take extra care not to disturb the precious few hours of sleep granted the frontline soldiers. And the narrator takes this theme one additional, unforgettable step when he finds himself struggling to administer medical care to a critically wounded German soldier whose face reminds him of his own brother. At that climactic moment, the depersonalized narrator materializes fully for us, validating not just the authenticity but also the value of his mission-both as soldier and historian. "The Guns of Normandy" certainly is no mere "adventure story." It's an unflinching record, a powerful elegy, a story of faith, hope and, not least of all, charity.
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