Dick Stodghill

REVIEWS - NORMANDY 1944

Excellent infantry account of WWII, September 4, 2006

Reviewer:

Bob Babcock "Bob" (Atlanta, GA) -

I've read many military books and find that Dick Stodghill's "Normandy 1944" is the most compelling account of a rifleman in combat that I've ever read. As historian of the National 4th Infantry Division Association, I am very aware of the actions that Dick describes in June, July, and August 1944. I would highly recommend it to any military reader and will insure that all our 4ID vets know about this outstanding addition to our WWII history.

Reviewer:

William H. Mcdonald Jr. "President of The Military Writer's Society of America" (Elk Grove, CA USA) -

The movies can hardly capture it; and books and articles rarely get that real feel and sense of battle that can only come from those Army grunts humping along in the midst of a death zone. It matters not if it is The Civil War, Korean War, Vietnam War or WWII; the infantry soldiers still have to endure the weather, the dangers, and the drudgery of capturing the ground a small piece at a time. So it is from this point of view that author Dick Stodghill writes his memoir. His book "Normandy 1944: A Young Rifleman's War" is that classic look at battle through the eyes of those who were down on the ground fighting in the hedgerows across France. This book is not just a great insider view of history but it is an emotional and spiritual look within the heart and mind of an 18 year old warrior from a now much older veteran.

Few books on WWII are as interesting, personal or moving as this memoir. It has a very easy to read flow to it as it takes you through the author's younger life when he enters the Army, trains and is shipped out to England. We then follow the author's landing in Normandy and his trek across the farms and fields of Normandy to face the German Army. He risks his life, sees his friends and comrades killed and sees the waste and destruction of war all around him. He even focuses on an area that most writers of this genre do not--on the dying and dead cows, horses and other animals all around him. It is obvious that this still bothers him today as he remembers back to that time and place.

The author's story of his war experiences also includes those around him and he recalls people and events still fresh in his mind. His remembrances about the burying of the dead of both armies by the graves registration teams and helped by German POWs makes one realize the cold harsh reality of war and death. His descriptions of those memories are emotionally real and drive home the point of how war destroys not only of the body but the spirit as well.

I am adding this to my personal list of best books about WWII that I have read and enjoyed. It is really a great reading experience but an emotional one as well. This is history as seen by someone who was there and served and did his duty. It is truly a blessing that this personal story is now saved through his book and will be read about and discovered by future generations.

Reviewer: Duane March  (PhD in history)

I've just read "Normandy 1944 - A Young Rifleman's War" and am still thinking about it. Mr. Stodghill has written an unique account of the war in Europe - unique in several aspects, but primarily in its humility.
One will look in vain for passages praising the justice of the war, America's cause for being there, the superiority of American (or his own) character or other vainglorious bragging. Stodghill instead presents us with war from the viewpoint of the soldier doing his duty as best he can, under unimaginable circumstances.
One almost feels his weariness whilst trudging endlessly from one battle field to the next, the despair felt as friends were killed and respite was denied again and again, the confusion and frustration caused by his immediate superiors and the commanders in the rear.
He is honest too. Acts committed by his own comrades which one would easily recognize as war crimes are told as he must have felt them at the time: acts he condemned, and yet set in the context of battle and the struggle to survive, somehow unsurprising - a tragedy in itself.
To me perhaps most impressive was his admiration - or at least his understanding - of the enemy. For him the German soldier was no worse than many of his own comrades - he too was a man who would rather be anywhere else, yet was there fighting and dying, as he thought, for his country. His open admiration of the German soldiers' superior training and performance betrays again his essential humility.
My only major criticism: I would have liked at least one map.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in war and the experience of men in war - at the ground level. Bravo, Mr. Stodghill!

Vivid description of WWII EXPERIENCIES, January 16, 2007

Reviewer:

Daniel S. Roy (Atlanta, Georgia)

Mr. Stodghill gives the reader a rare emotional personal experience of the life of an 18 year old Infantry soldier's obervations and impressions of daily close combat during the Normandy Campaign. Outspoken and honest. Spares no punches in describing good and bad leadership from Generals on down the leadership chain in the bloody hedgerow fighting following the Normandy Invasion.

An courageous soldier, an honorable man, and a must remember tale, January 4, 2007 Reviewer: Carolyn Rowe Hill "author of 'The Dead Angel" (Ann Arbor, Michigan)  There cannot be enough books written about any war by any soldier who has lived through its horrors. It helps those of us at home appreciate what they have experienced and adds to the hope that one day, perhaps, we won't have to go through it all again. Dick Stodghill has done a superb job of telling us about one of those wars. I was born in August 1944 so knew nothing of his and others tormented days and terrible nights during World War II as it happened; the destruction of city and town, countryside and hamlet, and nations; the tremendous human loss and ruined lives. I heard about them as I grew up, and as I grew I learned to appreciate our service men and women because of parents and community members who cared. There are many positives comments about Dick's writing in the reviews of Normandy 1944: A Young Rifleman's War and about his humanity with which I agree. His descriptions of the Normandy Invasion and days following are at once compelling and nauseating. His devotion to his fellow soldiers endearing and long-lasting and so common among comrades-at-arms. There can never be too many of these heartfelt stories, stories and men/women we must never forget.

Dick remarked to me he wouldn’t call his book enjoyable. Neither was living through WWII on the home front, but nothing he has written would have been known to me at the time, or what the “boys at the front” were actually experiencing. This book gave me an insight, and not a pretty one, into what was happening “over there” during my childhood and teenage years, while I was busy cheering on the football team, dancing, and enjoying my freedom. It gives participants on the sidelines today a different picture of how war in this decade is affecting our military around the world.
I have selected a few excerpts of how Dick experienced war as a young boy of 18, as well as his reflections as a mature man.
“The majority were tough men, most hardened by years of training and then made even tougher and harder by combat. Tough, but quiet, because genuine toughness is inside a man and there is no reason for him to express it in words, or certainly not by swaggering. The men I was now among had survived while more than half of their comrades had not.
“Within a few feet of one another, a German called out from across the hedgerow, ‘Hey, anybody over there from Brooklyn?’ Of all the places in the U.S., it had to be Brooklyn, and there was someone, of course. It turned out they had grown up only a few blocks from each other and attended adjacent high schools…they carried on a lengthy conversation about the neighborhood hangouts.
“Later I learned that many young German boys had emigrated with their parents in the 1920’s and …got caught up in the Nazi hoopla and returned to their native land.
“What a crazy, mixed-up world it was and what a crazy war we were fighting. Men who would have enjoyed sitting around a table sharing a few pitchers of beer instead were doing everything possible to kill each other. Did it make sense?
“Long years afterward I would just shake my head even though anger boiled inside me when do-gooders and other misguided …concluded that a man of eighteen was too immature to drink beer. Oh, really? Then why had thousands of 18-year old men been sent into combat? Why is it still being done today if the do-gooders are right?”
Finally:
Two men had joined in helping a wounded American who kept calling out for his mama to help him. One was an aid from the German side and one an American Aid, both of whom had risked going onto the field and being killed.
“Our aid man climbed back over the hedgerow. His German counterpart, a strapping, handsome fellow, stepped back several paces, came to attention, gave us a big smile and then a snappy salute. Having done that, he turned and trotted back to his own side of the line. Once he was safely on the other side of his hedgerow, the war took up where it had left off. Kill or be killed was the rule for all, unless a particular variety of screaming was too much for anyone to endure.”
I hope you find these words and memories of Dick Stodghill as meaningful as I have and will read this unforgettable book.
Joyce Ann Edmondson

Review by Ron Kruger, newspaper columnist for 30 years and author of "A Higher Good."

Did you every wonder what it’s like to actually be in combat? I’m not talking about some movie or some glorified account, or even how history records it, but a candid and painfully sincere account by someone with more practical experience at war than any man should have to endure.

Dick Stodghill’s account of "A Young Rifleman’s War" is the finest account of front-line combat I’ve ever read, and to do it justice with a few short paragraphs is impossible.

Though he talks often of heroism, you are left with the impression that the reasons he made it through such a harrowing and lengthy ordeal was simply luck and his ability to duck. I’ve known a few men over the years who have been in heavy and extended combat. None of them, even when pressed, would talk about it much, except to each other.

"You had to be there to understand," is what I heard most often. Dick Stodghill answered all those questions for me with candid and clear prose that put me not only in the thick of battle but inside the mind of a humble infantry man.

To recall and recount the many battles must have required almost as much courage as to be there.

The most honest story of WWII that I have ever read. It does not dwell on heroics but tells a story as it really happened. The author is brilliant in the way he describes the realities of war and of the fighting man. The drudgery and treachery of war comes alive in the telling. The shortcomings of leadership and downright incompetence of some are not spared from the pen. Respect and even compassion at times for the enemy is unusual in a story of this nature. Dick Stodghill has made a lasting impression on me. He is what a real soldier is made of. He loathed what he had to do, but did his duty for his country.

Reviewer:

Richard Neal Huffman (Mi)

As I write this review, I am nearly three-quarters through Dick Stodghill's book, Normandy: A young rifleman's war. I have only had the book a few days, carrying it back and forth from my job each day. My break time at work provides me the best opportunity for reading. However, I've found it nearly impossible to tear myself away from Dick's book when it's time to go back to work.
I have always loved reading anything to do with history and of course Dick's book centers around that. I've watched countless documentaries concerning WW2, in particular the Normandy invasion: Dick's book has filled in the many `gaps' left out by those. I've come away with a much better understanding of what our troops went through in liberating France. Dick was there and gives a first hand, undiluted, account of what took place: He did not embellish nor detract from those events, simply told it as it was. Dick did not write to impress anyone nor to try and make it appear he or others were not anything other than what they were or what they did. In essence Dick's book is an honest, sometimes brutal, account of the war and its combatants.
I would greatly recommend this book to anyone that wants to learn from someone who's been there, what it was like: Keeping in mind no one can truly know what it was like and should be very glad and hope they never will know.
Dick and others like him who served in WW2 are getting fewer and fewer as age does what the war was unable to do. I am so glad that Dick has written this book so that these memories are not erased, for we the beneficiaries should have something to remind us why war is so terrible, not glorious.
Richard Neal Huffman - Author of Dreams In Blue: The Real Police.

Captivating, Hard-To-Put-Down Story, January 30, 2007

Reviewer:

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) -

As I think about this book that I've just read I am struck by several rather random, disconnected thoughts.
First there's the writing style. Mr. stodghill is an accomplished writer, and it comes through wonderfully. Sample from the first couple of pages: 'On long summer days we sometimes played at war. Americans versus Germans, a replay fo the war fought by our fathers two decades earlier.' And a paragraph later, 'Curly-haired Lewis Gorkowski died on a battlefield in Italy, lanky Harry McKitrick on another in Germany....'
Second, my stint in the Army was twenty years later clearly said that most things never changed. They woke up one day and were told, 'Today you get your overseas shots.' Stand in line, one in the left, one in the right, seventeen shots. The next day they are told, 'Today you get your overseas shots.' 'But we got them yesterday.' 'They lost the records.' Seventeen more shots. My experience was different, but only in minor details.
Third, Mr. Stodghill went into Normandy shortly after D-Day. The life of a replacement joining an established unit had to be miserable. The vets didn't want to make friends with the newbies. It was then too hard to watch them die and they were too weary to care. The new replacements were alone, alone he was led up to his unit as they were engaged in a fire fight.
This is a captivating hard-to-put-down story, well told and well worth your time reading.

Dick Stodghill has written a very penetrating book about the days following the June 6, 1944 landing of the allied invasion forces at Normandy on the beaches of France. Dick’s description of war comes from the eyes of a young soldier who saw war from the perspective of men who experienced war from foxholes, artillery craters, and behind or under anything that might provide protection, even if that protection was only temporary. His eyes saw war through the eyes of other soldiers too; eyes that portrayed the misery, horror, sudden death, and the sharp edges of war that permanently wound the soul. He also saw war through the eyes of soldiers whose eyes would never open again.
Dick Stodghill experienced and witnessed first-hand the unfolding of war as it seemed to progress in some bizarre organized confusion; that unreal vantage point from which men who do the fighting and dying, and those who somehow miraculously manage to survive and come home, yet never able to forget the images of war that were painted so indelibly upon their memories. Often feeling helpless yet duty bound to follow orders from somewhere above; it is the riflemen, the grunts, the gravel crunchers, the mud dogs, those heroes of battle who must carry on, day by miserable day, to final victory or defeat. This book is a fitting tribute to all the soldiers who brought us victory in one of the world’s greatest conflicts.
‘Normandy 1944 – A Young Rifleman’s War’ is one of those books that should be mandatory reading for military officers attending senior officer schools such as the Army’s Command and General Staff College and War College. The best officers come from those officers who have walked in the boots of their men.
_________________

Reviewer:

Alice Crooker

This book is highly unusual. The reason it is unusual is Stodghill has the unique ability to take you with him. When you read this book it is not like reading a book, it is as though you are there going through it all with him. When I finish it, my husband who is an avid World War 11 buff will digest it and then our friend who is an absolute World War 11 obsessor will read it. This is a classic and I am proud to own it.

The way it was   
Barb
FL  (10/30/2006)

This is not a Hollywood version of a WWII story, or a glorified historical version of events. It is the way it really happened. This is a down to earth in the trenches account of what it was like for an infantryman in the thick of battle in Normandy in 1944. Although our troops were there to fight for our country, their main goal was to stay alive during a horrendous time. The author is an experienced writer. He puts you in the middle of the action. I felt like I was right there. You can feel the fear; hear the exploding shells and gunfire and, see the death and destruction all around. It makes you wonder about the insanity of war. It also makes you realize that although the enemy must be destroyed they were men with families and dreams too. Many young people today do not realize the sacrifices of their forefathers. When they complain that they can’t find a parking place close to the door of Wal-Mart and have to walk the extra distance they should read how far the troops had to walk. When they complain that the fast food restaurant forgot to put tomatoes on their burger, they should realize what those fighting men had to eat day after day. If a person today complains they are tired and have to work overtime, they should learn how the men in the thick of battle received no sleep or break even when beyond exhaustion. I totally enjoyed this reading experience and recommend the book to all.

I have photographs taken in Normandy in 1984 of my young children standing in front of ruins of military vehicles still at the site. As I look into the faces of my children in the photos, I realize they were only a couple of years younger than Dick Stodghill was when he was there to fight a war. I remember looking down at the pristine Normandy beaches and thinking if I had not known what had happened there from history books, and had not seen the memorials or walked through the cemetery, I would still have known something monumental had occurred there. As others have said also, when standing there looking down at the sea, tears come from unknown places in one’s being.
As I read Normandy 1944, by Dick Stodghill, I realized the writer’s memory is phenomenal and his skill as a writer outstanding. He remembered the words of comrades as well as the looks on their faces. This book is filled with unusual incidents, incidents that are not in the history books. Dick writes with a matter-of-fact style that influenced this reader to believe he is speaking the absolute truth. Dick speaks of heroes and villains, which include both generals and privates, on both sides of the war. He gives the glory to his comrades who gave their lives and at times saved his.
In June 1994, we were again visiting Normandy with friends. The father of one of these friends had also fought there in 1944. We drove through towns with more American flags than I had ever seen in one day. We stayed at a hotel in Calais filled with veterans who had come over on a ferry from the same place in England they had left 50 years before. In 1994, they had come thanks to the London taxicab drivers, who also brought their taxicabs and would take the veterans to the events the next day commemorating D-Day. We spent the evening in the bar listening to stories from these men, men with stories similar to Dick’s. The next morning we got up early and shook their hands as we saw them off to spend a day far different than they had fifty years before. Dick Stodghill was also on those roads in 1994. Perhaps we ate at the same restaurant or stopped at the same commemorative site.
We need to listen to all these stories because as Dick says, “An infantryman may survive the battles, but will forever be burdened with the memories.” I am reminded of a Walt Whitman poem written in 1865, where he speaks of those suffering after a battle being the “musing comrade and the remaining armies.”
What you will find in this book is summed up in a quote Dick includes from Field-Marshall Lord Wavell to Basil Liddell Hart, “If I had anything like your abilities to study war, I think I would concentrate almost entirely on the ‘actualities’ of war—the effects of tiredness, hunger, fear, lack of sleep, weather….” Dick has done this in a remarkable way with words that will not soon be forgotten. This is one of the best books on World War II I have ever read. It brings history alive most effectively for this and future generations.

Reviewer:

Bhawana Verma "www.freewebs.com/Bhawanaverma/" (Los Angeles,CA.USA) -

I am very nervous to write about such a great author....
Dick Stodghill's "Normandy 1944" is the most undeniable story of a rifleman in combat. Dick gives the glimpses of August 1944. As a student of International student's perspective this is surely a rare book. What Dick writes as an author and his chronicle....This is his book "Normandy 1944: A Young Rifleman's War" . Dick's eyes saw all those ,who were downward on the soil warfare . I felt this book not only a book on history. It is wrapped with the poignant and devout look within the compassion and intelligence of an 18-year-old warrior...
I can say that Dick's book is unexpected, appealing and based on observable facts. While reading you will be trapped on many places where this author was in Normandy and all set to face the German army. He has seen every jeopardy of his life where he has taken it entirely. He has witnessed the injured soldiers, friends blood and mass destruction every where.
Dick has no doubt the best memory and in his book is seen clearly. His people and their allied reminiscences are as unmarked in his mind.
I really wonder that when this author was facing this harsh life of war and destruction....Did he ever think to write it...?
Why the myth prevails in this world that soldiers are hard hearted. While reading Dick's book I always had Dick's picture in my mind. When I was new to this board I first went to see who is Dick.?Don't know why. I was learning those days how to make posts...and truly speaking through his short visits and rare posts and blunt comments. I thought that God!!!!!This author is really rude. I am sorry Dick...but your book has changed my mind and many views. You are the most insightful and touching person on this board..