The poor bloody infantry 1939-1945
Charles Whiting

Nobody in the Second World War paid a higher price for the failure of politicians and generals than the infantry, whatever their nationality. Most battalions had a 100 per cent turn over due to casualties, some as high as 200 per cent. The majority of histories of the Second World War focus on what are perceived to be the more glamorous aspects of the conflict. flying aces, new technologies, politics. However, Charles Whiting’s classic book, now reprinted in paperback is in the author’s own words not a history. Poor Bloody Infantry is the story of the brave men whose efforts were so central to Allied victory but which has been gravely neglected by many writers on the Second World War. Whiting’s vivid account of their experiences puts the reader in the thick of their struggles. firing useless Boyes rifles at oncoming SS tanks, crouching low in foxholes beneath a yellow incandescence as the surrounding dessert rocks and roars.

From the half-mad dream of training camps where they polished their insteps and scrubbed floors with toothbrushes, these young men in their field grey, olive drab and khaki had been sent packing into the teeth of the German war machine, waking up to the terrifying reality of the front, and sometimes the beyond of human endurance. They came face to face with their enemies as drawing room generals can never do, fought and died, rejoiced in their mates, sang songs, told black jokes and looked forward to the ‘dixies’ of stew, the postcards from home and the breathers between bombardments.