Dogface Soldier
The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr.
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- $47.99
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- $47.99
Publisher Description
On July 11, 1943, General Lucian Truscott received the Army’s second-highest decoration, the Distinguished Service Cross, for valor in action in Sicily. During his career he also received the Army Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and the Purple Heart. Truscott was one of the most significant of all U.S. Army generals in World War II, pioneering new combat training methods—including the famous “Truscott Trot”— and excelling as a combat commander, turning the Third Infantry Division into one of the finest divisions in the U.S. Army. He was instrumental in winning many of the most important battles of the war, participating in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Anzio, and southern France. Truscott was not only respected by his peers and “dogfaces”—common soldiers—alike but also ranked by President Eisenhower as second only to Patton, whose command he took over on October 8, 1945, and led until April 1946.
Yet no definitive history of his life has been compiled. Wilson Heefner corrects that with the first authoritative biography of this distinguished American military leader. Heefner has undertaken impressive research in primary sources—as well as interviews with family members and former associates—to shed new light on this overlooked hero. He presents Truscott as a soldier who was shaped by his upbringing, civilian and military education, family life, friendships, and evolving experiences as a commander both in and out of combat.
Heefner’s brisk narrative explores Truscott’s career through his three decades in the Army and defines his roles in key operations. It also examines Truscott’s postwar role as military governor of Bavaria, particularly in improving living conditions for Jewish displaced persons, removing Nazis from civil government, and assisting in the trials of German war criminals. And it offers the first comprehensive examination of his subsequent career in the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served as senior CIA representative in West Germany during the early days of the Cold War, and later as CIA Director Allen Dulles’s deputy director for coordination in Washington.
Dogface Soldier is a portrait of a man who earned a reputation for being honest, forthright, fearless, and aggressive, both as a military officer and in his personal life—a man who, at the dedication ceremony for the Anzio-Nettuno American cemetery in 1945, turned away from the crowd and to the thousands of crosses stretching before him to address those buried there. Heefner has written a definitive biography of a great soldier and patriot.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lucian K. Truscott Jr. (1895 1965) was one of America's finest WWII combat commanders, building a reputation second only to George Patton as an inspiring and gifted leader. Today he is remembered only by specialists. Hefner, a retired army colonel and physician turned historian (Patton's Bulldog: The Life and Service of General Walton H. Walter), corrects that by combining extensive archival and printed sources with perceptive analysis. Truscott served in secondary theaters: the Mediterranean and southern France. But from Sicily and Anzio to the 1944 drive up the Rh ne valley and the successful concluding of the Italian campaign as 5th Army's commander, Truscott showed comprehensive skills in defense and attack, in amphibious landings and mobile operations. Hefner's Truscott is not a genius, but rather the master of a craft painstakingly studied between the world wars and applied no less painstakingly in combat. He shared the hardships of his men; he drank like a Texan, and a gentleman; he never hesitated to question orders he thought would cost unnecessary casualties. To call him a faithful and consummate soldier as Hefner does in this model general-officer biography does Truscott no more than justice. 15 illus.; 23 maps.
