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A review by sherwoodreads
No Surrender: A Father, a Son, and an Extraordinary Act of Heroism That Continues to Live on Today by Christopher Edmonds, Douglas Century
This book is part biography, part detective story, part history, and part a story of heroism and of faith.
I was a kid during the fifties, born six years after the war ended. The economic and cultural aftermath of WW II surrounded me as I was growing up--kids regularly played good guys vs. "Nazis" (not differentiating them from Germans) and "Japs" as parents looked on in approval. And yet those older male relatives who had survived being soldiers or sailors in the war talked little about it, or didn't say anything at all. One friend's father drank himself to death, after being one of the first in at a death camp, an experience that shattered him, his family pieced together later. My grandfather, who signed up as a kid in his middle teens, using his older brother's ID so he could get away with it, had a hidden cache of extremely gruesome Kodak black and whites, taken after his naval units retook Iwo Jima and a couple of other blood-drenched islands.
Edmonds' father was another of these, staying silent and stoic through the remainder of his life. According to his son, pretty much all he'd say was that he and his fellow prisoners of war were humiliated.
But after his father's death, Edmonds took a look at what little was left, mainly an extremely cryptic diary, decided for his children's sake to uncover the whole story, and so began the detective work.
The account is colorful and gripping as he tracks down surviving members of his father's fellow prisoners, and men of his unit. Their stories are woven into his father's biography, creating a thought-provoking picture of ordinary American men swept into the meat-grinder of war. Those who survived did not come back the same as they had been.
Edmonds sometimes dips into fictionalizing, putting in dialogue and thoughts behind Nazi leaders, but he's not writing an academic text, so these dramatic additions can be forgiven when set against the fascinating whole. There are plentiful snapshots included, which add to the overall canvas.
Fight, capture, and then the grim reality of POW life in disintegrating Germany as men tried to hang onto their humanity through the few small acts and decisions they were permitted to make. One of the grimmest moments was when the Germans forced the prisoners to out the Jews among them, knowing what was going to happen to them, leading to Edmonds' act of heroism.
After liberation, which was another exercise in agonizing tension, they would discover stockpiled Red Cross packages never given to them--and their letters home never sent. There was no debriefing in those days, or offers of counseling. They were shipped home to pick up their lives again, including those like Edmonds, who had gotten "Dear John" letters before, or during their service. (When the writer found out he had a half-sister by his father's first marriage, he was able to connect with her.
Edmonds brings everything up to the present, including emotional evolution as well as recovery. It's an absorbing book, depicting both the best and the worst of the human spirit.
A content warning: it's written about a man of deep faith by another equally faithful, so if readers are offended or upset by Bible quotes and Christian thought, they probably should take a pass.
Copy provided by NetGalley
I was a kid during the fifties, born six years after the war ended. The economic and cultural aftermath of WW II surrounded me as I was growing up--kids regularly played good guys vs. "Nazis" (not differentiating them from Germans) and "Japs" as parents looked on in approval. And yet those older male relatives who had survived being soldiers or sailors in the war talked little about it, or didn't say anything at all. One friend's father drank himself to death, after being one of the first in at a death camp, an experience that shattered him, his family pieced together later. My grandfather, who signed up as a kid in his middle teens, using his older brother's ID so he could get away with it, had a hidden cache of extremely gruesome Kodak black and whites, taken after his naval units retook Iwo Jima and a couple of other blood-drenched islands.
Edmonds' father was another of these, staying silent and stoic through the remainder of his life. According to his son, pretty much all he'd say was that he and his fellow prisoners of war were humiliated.
But after his father's death, Edmonds took a look at what little was left, mainly an extremely cryptic diary, decided for his children's sake to uncover the whole story, and so began the detective work.
The account is colorful and gripping as he tracks down surviving members of his father's fellow prisoners, and men of his unit. Their stories are woven into his father's biography, creating a thought-provoking picture of ordinary American men swept into the meat-grinder of war. Those who survived did not come back the same as they had been.
Edmonds sometimes dips into fictionalizing, putting in dialogue and thoughts behind Nazi leaders, but he's not writing an academic text, so these dramatic additions can be forgiven when set against the fascinating whole. There are plentiful snapshots included, which add to the overall canvas.
Fight, capture, and then the grim reality of POW life in disintegrating Germany as men tried to hang onto their humanity through the few small acts and decisions they were permitted to make. One of the grimmest moments was when the Germans forced the prisoners to out the Jews among them, knowing what was going to happen to them, leading to Edmonds' act of heroism.
After liberation, which was another exercise in agonizing tension, they would discover stockpiled Red Cross packages never given to them--and their letters home never sent. There was no debriefing in those days, or offers of counseling. They were shipped home to pick up their lives again, including those like Edmonds, who had gotten "Dear John" letters before, or during their service. (When the writer found out he had a half-sister by his father's first marriage, he was able to connect with her.
Edmonds brings everything up to the present, including emotional evolution as well as recovery. It's an absorbing book, depicting both the best and the worst of the human spirit.
A content warning: it's written about a man of deep faith by another equally faithful, so if readers are offended or upset by Bible quotes and Christian thought, they probably should take a pass.
Copy provided by NetGalley