Abundance of Valor

`

Abundance of Valor

Resistance, Survival, and Liberation: 1944-45

Will Irwin

432 pages
83 illustrations, 4 maps, 1 appendix

Paperback

April 2012

978-0-8032-4068-1

$22.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

The operation known as “Market-Garden”—made famous in the book and film A Bridge Too Far—was the largest airborne assault in history up to that time, a high-risk Allied invasion of enemy territory that has become a legend of World War II even as it still invites criticism. Abundance of Valor re-creates for the first time the full adventures of the bold “Jedburgh” paratroopers, whose exploits were equally risky and heroic.

Kicked off on September 17, 1944, Market-Garden was intended to secure crucial bridges in Nazi-occupied Holland by a parachute assault conducted by three Allied airborne divisions. Jedburgh teams—Allied Special Forces—were dropped into the Netherlands to train and use the Dutch resistance in support of the larger operation. Based on new firsthand testimony of survivors and declassified documents, Abundance of Valor concentrates on the three teams that operated farthest behind enemy lines, the nine men whose treacherous missions resulted in deaths, captures, and hairbreadth escapes.

With piercing criticism of the mission’s failure through faulty use of intelligence, Abundance of Valor is a brutally honest and truly inspiring account of fighting men in a noble cause who did their jobs with extraordinary honor and courage.

Author Bio

Will Irwin retired from the U.S. Army in January 2000 after a career of more than twenty-eight years, half of that in Special Forces. He is the author of The Jedburghs: The Secret History of the Allied Special Forces, France 1944 and currently works as a defense consultant in Tampa, Florida.

Praise

“All the elements of good, readable history are here: triumph and tragedy, heroes and villains, the few against the many. Irwin needs no special effects wizardry to weave a captivating story of desperate fights in desperate times.”—America in World War II Magazine

“A gripping account.”—Washington Times

“A thoroughly enthralling book for serious students of World War II, this is the labor of love of a Special Forces veteran with a rare talent for writing and research. . . . For exhaustive studies of little-known episodes that add much to general WWII knowledge as well as provide enthralling reading, this book is hard to beat.”—Booklist

Table of Contents

List of Maps
Prologue
1. The England Game
2. The Man from Washington
3. Hazardous Duty
4. Highlands Interlude
5. First Jeds into Holland
6. Operation Market-Garden
7. Germans Everywhere
8. Sunday, September 17, D-Day
9. Monday, September 18, The Second Day
10. Tuesday, September 19, The Third Day
11. Wednesday, September 20, The Fourth Day
12. Thursday, September 21, The Fifth Day
13. Friday, September 22, The Sixth Day
14. Saturday, September 23, The Seventh Day
15. Sunday, September 24, The Eighth Day
16. Withdrawal, The Last Day
17. Prisoner of War
18. Todd's Journey Begins
19. Dulag Luft
20. The Insufferable Lord Haw Haw
21. Solitary Confinement
22. Stolen Plans to Be Delivered
23. Oflag 64
24. Goodbye to Bunny and Henk
25. Pappy's Return
26. Missing in Action
27. The Long March
28. Patton's Hammelburg Raid
29. Rumors of Evil
30. Freedom
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix: The Dutch Jedburgh Teams
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Also of Interest