Tour of duty during WW II
 

Was watching Band Of Brothers and was wandering how long there deployment
was during WW II? You hear about WWII soldiers fighting in Africa, Europe; liberating France, Belgium, Holland going to Berlin and then being shipped over to the Pacific to fight the Japanese, were they fighting 'till it was over?

No, there tour was from June 6 to the end of the war. Certainly some people saw duty from 1941 or even before, until the end, but it wasn't commen.

Duration.

'till the end.

unfortunately many units were kept on the front til a huge majority had turned over from death or wounding. this was really tough on morale.

a friend from my optomist club who died a few years back was a paratrooper who paricipated in three major invasions: africa, italy and france. on one of them he broke both legs (or was it ankles?).

in some ways though they had it easier than our soldiers in iraq. the germans mostly played by the rules (not the japenese though) and you could tell soldiers from civilians.

tom w

Hattie,

June 6 wasn't the start of it, not even the middle of it. My Dad jumped into Tunisia, where he fought and had to recoup from wounds before jumping into Sicily, where he fought some more before heading to England. In England he trained for months before the D-Day jump. After D-day he went into Holland where he fought and was seriously wounded. Field hospital, shipped to France, then to England then Stateside to Fort Sam Houston for a couple years rehab, then it was off to Fort Benning to resume duties as an jump instructor until he shipped off to Korea. I'm sure I missed a couple jumps in there.

Yea, you could say it was for the duration.

I thought they had some kind of point system. But I guess I'm wrong.
Your right June 6 wasn't nearly the beginning.
If Roosevelt had listened to his advisors and gone for operation Sledgehammer instead of operation Torch the Germans would be ruling most of the world now.

Interesting read:
"An Army at Dawn" by Rick Atkinson

Danny

Dick Winters published a book recently that you might enjoy. I sure did. It was more about leadership than abour blood and guts. He is quite a man.

B

I just picked up the book on CD... I put it on my iPod for our trans-atlantic flight next week. I'm really looking forward to it!

Maybe I missunderstood I was talking about the series. June 6, was the beginning of the war for them. They were training up until that point. If you count training then when did the series start? Late 42 I think?

The series starts with the preparation for operation OVERLORD.

The actual war in Europe/Africa started for us with operation TORCH in 1942. The British were in Africa long before that though. But they were there to mainly protect their interest in the East. Montgommery was absolutely brilliant commanding the British 8th Army but was pretty much wasted as a commander after that. When the war in Africa is mentioned that's what is usually brought up.
The war in Africa for the most part goes largely unnoticed for us though. Mainly because we got our butts kicked. We would have lost it all together if we hadn't broken the Nazis code.

Danny

The war in Africa was considered a side show, by certain Germans. Bailing out the Italians ect. Although some Generals, Guderian among them thought that a Med campaign should be fought as part of an overall strategy. Hitler was more interested in Russia than crushing the British and securing large chunks of the middle east and north Africa.

Most of the German General staff on the other hand was more interested in finishing the war in the west. As the war progressed they started getting pissed off that units were being committed to Africa that were needed on the Eastern front. Also important units were vacationing in France through most of the war. This started with the prep for Operation Barbarossa, but got worse as time went on.

That's very true. Stalin was pressuring us to get involved for the longest time. It didn't matter to him if we went into Europe of Africa he just wanted some pressure taken off his army.
The Germans overran Europe in about 9 months with roughly 50 divisions. At that time we were maybe able to field 3 or 4 divisions tops. And poorly trained at that. You need to remember we were just coming out of the depression.

Roosevelt made some bad decisions. the biggest was, in my opinion, keeping Fredendall in command. That guy was an idiot.
He also kept Patton in Cassablanca waiting for a rear attack that never came. He should have put Fredendall in Casablanca and Patton in Algeria. We would have kicked ass then. But Patton was only a junior officer then.
Maybe if Eisenhower had been a little closer to the fighting than Gibralter?

Danny