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Dogface Soldier: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr.1
General Truscott rose, walked to the podium, did a sharp about-face, and proceeded to address not the guests but the graves holding the bodies of men whom he had so recently commanded. . . . Truscott apologized to the dead for their presence in the cemetery. He went on to say that "everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but that every leader knows in his heart this is not altogether true," asking that any soldier resting there because of a mistake that he made forgive him but acknowledging "that was asking a hell of a lot under the circumstance."2
Introduction
The short list of great World War II U.S. Army generals contains many familiar names: Marshall, Bradley, Eisenhower, Patton, and MacArthur. A name that should be included, but that history has all but forgotten, is General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. Little has been written about General Truscott largely because of where his victories and innovations in warfare occurred. He did not appear upon the main stage of Normandy and northern France. Instead, Truscott's innovative and brilliant efforts came in the Allied Force's opening acts in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Southern France.3
Dr. Wilson A. Heefner, a retired physician and Army officer, seeks to set right a "miscarriage of history," namely, General Truscott being overlooked despite his being "a faithful and consummate soldier, commander and leader of men, victorious general, and warrior of the Cold War."4 Dr. Heefner asserts that General Truscott deserves attention on par with Generals Patton, Marshall, Eisenhower, and Bradley.5 Dogface Soldier is meant to be the biography of Lucian Truscott and to earn him his deserved recognition.6 Dr. Heefner succeeds by providing a meticulously researched and comprehensive, yet often clinical and occasionally dense, account of the life of this consummate combat leader. Through the thorough detailing of Truscott's life, Dr. Heefner may succeed in gaining General Truscott the attention he deserves, but it is the substance and subject of Heefner's story that does this and not his analysis or style; Dogface Soldier as the messenger of Truscott's life is not the intellectually or emotionally engaging work that it may have been.
Analysis
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