Small Unit Actions; France: 2d Ranger Battalion at Pointe du Hoc; Saipan: 27th Division on Tanapag Plain, Italy; 351st Infantry at Santa Maria Infante; France 4th Armored Division at Singling

x, 212 pages, with folding map at back. Illustrations. Occasional footnotes. Maps. Abbreviations. Cover has some wear and soiling. Some corners creased. Some page wear and soiling. Format is 8 inches by 10.25 inches. This is one of the American Forces in Action Series. The Historical Division's Information and Historical Units, attached to field armies, conducted extensive interviews with personnel of units engaged in typical, unusual, or critical actions. The interviews were accompanied by terrain study of the battlefield, sometimes conducted with members of the units being interviewed. Every effort was made, by careful checking and rechecking, to obtain a full and accurate account. The four narratives given here will serve as samples of the source materials thus obtained, containing in very large measure data which are not to be found in unit records. The latter were used in every case, however, to check and supplement interviews. The actions chosen for this publication illustrate widely varying tactical problems and methods. Only one (Pointe du Hoc) represents a highly specialized form of action; the others are typical of scores of battles in their respective theaters of operations. All are average in the sense that they are not 'success' stories, but cross sections of a war which involved reverses as well as victories. This fact will be obscured in histories of campaigns and major battles, for, in these, U.S. forces were almost uniformly successful. But the larger successes were won by actions like those recorded here; in every phase of the war battalions and companies went through a daily fare of experience that was never uniform, that nearly always included some measure of trial and even defeat as part of the fuller pattern which, over a longer period, added up to victory.…