From Here to Hell: Book Two: Anzio
About this audiobook
Operation Dragoon was the code name for the invasion of France by way of its Mediterranean coastline. Approximately two months prior to Dragoon, the Allied landings at Normandy had taken place.
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel -- the famed "Desert Fox" of the Nazi campaigns in North Africa -- had personally seen to the construction of the Normandy's defenses; the infamous Atlantic Wall against which thousands of American, British and Canadian troops hurled themselves in wave after wave of assault formations.
The bloody fight to take the beachheads of Normandy from Hitler was ultimately successful but only at a tremendous cost in lives and materiel. The Allied advance deeper into France was hampered by fierce German resistance. But advance they eventually did, forcing the Nazis into an ever-tightening noose.
Dragoon was intended, in part, as a means of closing the noose completely and strangulating the German war effort in France. Under the direction of General Alexander Patch, the plan called for the Thunderbirds of the Oklahoma National Guard to form the cutting edge of a three-pronged assault force hitting the beaches along the Mediterranean coast of southern France.
Since the German lines were thinly stretched and Nazi strategy hinged on retreat, the Allied advance was surprisingly swift after the landings. Allied forces gained ground at a rapid pace.
While swift, the advance was not without pitfalls. Soldiers fell by the score on these killing grounds in the south of France as they had done on the bloody beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword in the north earlier in the campaign. Yet despite the hardships they endured, history has recorded that this was to be the Oklahoma National Guard's finest hour.
About the author
David Alexander is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold over five million copies. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Paris Sorbonne. David Alexander's novels and nonfiction titles have won critical acclaim from USA Today, The New York Times, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, The Wall Street Journal and many other venues in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
His prizewinning thriller, Threatcon Delta: Assault on the Pentagon, reached first place on numerous bestseller lists including those of The New York Times and USA Today. The Times called Threatcon Delta, "... surely one of the best technothrillers to come along in a great while." USA Today also praised the thriller, declaring, "Alexander once again turns newspaper headlines into riveting high-tech military action fiction with that special combination of cinematic thrills and chills and fly-on-the-wall accounts of back room crisis management in the making ..."
Dubbed "an Ian Fleming for the 21st Century" by one reviewer, David Alexander has written and published in virtually every literary category, including novels, novelettes, short fiction, poetry, essays and film scripts. Investigative journalism, technical writing on defense-related subjects and short fiction over Alexander's byline have appeared in US and international periodicals that have ranged from the glossy pages of Penthouse Magazine to the more sober leaves of the global defense journal Military Technology.
His books and shorter writings have been translated into seven languages, including Italian, German and Japanese. Alexander is an inveterate traveler and among the alumni of literary passengers to have boarded the Orient-Express; he has often used it as a basis for plot and reportage. Unlike the authors who have sold out, who are as interchangeable as cogs in a wheel, author David Alexander prefers to throw away the rule book whenever possible. Each new novel he pens must challenge him and must present a story told powerfully, yet freshly and originally. Each effort must compel him to deliver the best he has to offer.
