{"id":11344,"date":"2022-07-21T08:07:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T12:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=11344"},"modified":"2022-07-21T08:07:56","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T12:07:56","slug":"finding-my-fathers-war-by-walter-j-eldridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/21\/finding-my-fathers-war-by-walter-j-eldridge\/","title":{"rendered":"“Finding My Father’s War” by Walter J. Eldridge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Copyright 2004 by Walter J Eldridge. Published by PageFree Publishing, Inc, Oswego MI.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Disclaimer: the author is a fraternity brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have had this book in my to-be-read pile for over a year and, frankly, was dreading it a bit. I thought it would be a dry recounting of World War II history. Instead it turned out to be the a gripping, humanizing story of a chemical mortar battalion that was instrumental in winning the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be honest, I had no idea that a “chemical warfare battalion” even existed in World War II. I had the mistaken impression that all kinds of chemical warfare had been banned after World War I. While certain kinds of chemicals – mustard gas, nerve gas, etc – had indeed been banned, use of incendiary chemicals like white phosphorus had not. A lot of white phosphorus mortars – useful as anti-personnel weapons and to lay down smoke screens – were used in the second World War. These mortars were highly accurate and became valued support weapons for infantry in Italy, France and Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technology of the chemical mortars and its successes and failures were fascinating (e.g., some men were killed, late in the war, due to “early detonations” – mortars exploding in the tube – due to cold and dampness). But the human stories – laboriously researched and documented by Eldridge – were even more fascinating. The action photo of the soldier taken a minute before a shell took his life. The two soldiers who reluctantly left their foxhole to move to a place deemed safer by their commanding officer, only to see their foxhole take a direct hit from a shell a few minutes later. The misery of a cold, wet winter in the mountains of Italy. The legendary direct hit – a mortar shell dropped through the open hatch of a German tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can’t make this stuff up. This is the fog, the misery and the triumph of war recounted in a compelling way. More than any other book on war that I have ever read, this one put me there and made me understand the experience of the Greatest Generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2004 by Walter J Eldridge. Published by PageFree Publishing, Inc, Oswego MI. Disclaimer: the author is a fraternity brother. I have had this book in my to-be-read pile for over a year and, frankly, was dreading it a bit. I thought it would be a dry recounting of World War II history. Instead it … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-2WY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11344"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12029,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions\/12029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}