Dresden
A Survivor's Story, February 1945
Rick Stroud author Victor Gregg author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:7th Feb '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
British Soldier and POW Victor Gregg's eyewitness account of the Dresden bombings in February 1945
'Victor Gregg is the most remarkable spokesman for the war generation' Dan Snow In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut fictionalised his time as a prisoner of war in Dresden in 1945. Vonnegut was imprisoned in a cellar while the firestorm raged through the city, wiping out generations of innocent lives. Victor Gregg remained above ground throughout the firebombing. This is his true eyewitness account of that week in February 1945. Already a seasoned soldier with the Rifle Brigade, Gregg joined the 10th Parachute Regiment in 1944. He was captured at Arnhem where he volunteered to be sent to a work camp rather than become another faceless number in the huge POW camps. With two failed escape attempts under his belt, Gregg was eventually caught sabotaging a factory and sent to Dresden for execution. Before Gregg could be executed, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden in four air raids over two days in February 1945. The resulting firestorm destroyed six square miles of the city centre. 25,000 people, mostly civilians, were estimated to have been killed. Post-war discussion of whether or not the attacks were justified has led to the bombing becoming one of the moral questions of the Second World War. In Gregg's first-hand narrative, personal and punchy, he describes the trauma and carnage of the Dresden bombing. After the raid, he spent five days helping to recover a city of innocent civilians, thousands of whom had died in the fire storm, trapped underground in human ovens. As order was restored, his life was once more in danger and he escaped to the east, spending the last weeks of the war with the Russians.
Victor Gregg is the most remarkable spokesman for the war generation. Searingly honest in his appraisal of what that conflict did to the world, on society and, above all, on himself. -- Dan Snow * History Hit *
This is a small but extremely thought-provoking book about the Allied bombing of Dresden in eastern Germany, written by a soldier who was a prisoner of war and who was there and whose life, upon witnessing such horror, was re-evaluated. Whether you think the bombing was justified (after Coventry had suffered similar) or not, this is such a moving record written from a soldier's perspective about his enemies and the suffering that such bombing created. Read, think and read again. -- Bruce Kemble-Johnson * Let's Talk *
It is an engaging tale and the author writes with a witty sarcasm that keeps the narrative flowing. -- Patrick Shrier * Military-History.us *
ISBN: 9781448217489
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 41g
64 pages