In December 1944, some 270,000 American, British, and Commonwealth prisoners were sent on the road so they wouldn't be liberated by the advancing Allied armies. Nichol (himself a PW during the first Gulf War) and Rennell have dug out the stories of these men, who were marched for hundreds of miles through one of the worst winters Germany has ever experienced--half frozen, generally unfed, racked with dysentery, and apt at any moment to be shot by a German guard or strafed by Allied aircraft who had no idea who they were. Afterward, their ordeal was forgotten by all but themselves. An excellent account of an unknown atrocity, which left thousands dead and other thousands crippled for life. -- Dan Ford

this adventure take place in Canada with gihghgfld fjdslfjfd;gkfds

Imagine if you were a 17 year old male and knew nothing about armies, weapons, or how to be a soldier, and yet were told to put on a uniform, not given any weapons initially, (the author had to scrounge for a gun from the battlefield) and then told to go out with a group of other teenage boys to fight the advancing Russian army.

The result is pretty much total chaos - our author gets randomly shifted around from one assignment to another, basically as cannon fodder to stand and hold his ground against the Russians. He only occasionally manages to fire his gun, rarely to any effect. His location at any one moment in the book is just as baffling to him as it is to the reader. He has no idea of what or who is advancing on him or why he is even in any particular location. Tanks and heavy weapons he encounters are just tanks and heavy weapons. Several times, I wanted to scream out, what kind of tanks are those that you saw out there? Tigers? Panthers? T-34's? You know, basic stuff that even the novice WWII history buff would know. Not a clue.

There are lots of descriptions of soldiers and civilians getting killed, of mangled bodies, of the cruelty of SS and SA "chain dogs" (assigned to hung down and execute deserters and otherwise terrorize other Germans, military and civilian alike) in the final days of the Third Reich. A surprising amount of the really detailed verbiage in this book is spent describing what the author eats, practically every single day. It's just amazing to me that the guy could remember exactly what was in that tin of meat he just opened up, but can't tell the reader what kind of tank that was that just almost killed him.

About the only interesting vignettes from this book, the only topic that I have not seen set down in other "soldier's tale" books of this type, are the descriptions of the author's brief tryst with a German teen age girl right before his group of teenagers gets slaughtered in battle, and of the existence of "SS girl volunteers" whose main function seems to have been to bed down the German soldiers that they encountered. These scenes really do remind you that even in the midst of war, these were just high school teenagers, complete with raging hormones.

But don't buy the book for that reason either. These parts are very much PG-13 rated.

Not much value as military history overall.

I look for books on this subject, and have to say I enjoyed this one. Ther style is a bit different from what I expected, and the story is certainly not what I expected - which ads a new dimention to the Berlin fight. It wasn't always constant bitter fighting with tanks everywhere. There was a lot of confusion, and a lot of time when not mnuch was going on.

The one weak point is in the maps, which could be improved, but they do help tie the story into the historical tale- and the fellow that helped edit in in English is known as a long time student of the Berlin fight, so if he says its real, I belive him.

So all in all I recomend it for those looking for a groiund eye view of the fight for Berlin.

I have used this book as a multicultural gerontology text with mixed reviews. It is an excellent review of world poverty, issues, and programs to address these needs. It does a good job of not romanticizing other world views, but looks at struggles realistically.

This book is really a report of HelpAge International and it actually reads more like a document than a book - I think more could be done with stories and narratives and make this come really alive.

The graphs are sometimes difficult to decipher, but overall the graphics are easy to understand and there are many exellent links for closer review.