Reading recommendations by Combat! fans for Combat! fans

Those Devils in Baggy Pants
by Ross Carter

Recommended by Scout:
Author Ross Carter was with the 82nd Airborne (the first airborne division activated and sent overseas to join the Allied Expeditionary Forces). He fought in North Africa, Italy, Holland and Belgium. [...] it was interesting to me how many times during terrible battles in Italy, that the Germans and Americans would call short truces so both sides could collect their wounded.

The author said while medics attended the wounded, soldiers would be sitting on rocks smoking or walking around, all within clear view of and shooting distance of the enemy. (The same goes for the Germans.) And yet no one was nervous about getting shot...they seemed to fully trust each other during the truce. The author did note that after the Normandy invasion, these truces were rare (he attributed it to the desperation of the Germans as they sensed they were losing the war).

I can think of a couple of uneasy truces on Combat!...in the episodes "Cry in the Ruins" and "Entombed." Those were truces during strange circumstances, but it seems like there was an episode (one of the color ones) when they called a truce to tend to a wounded German and an American soldier. It also seems like they were all very nervous...like neither side really trusted the other to not break the truce."

Trade Paperback: 261 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.75 x 8.75 x 5.75
Publisher: Claymore Pub Corp; ; 3rd edition (May 1998)
ISBN: 1886681244