Friday, November 16, 2007

More on 'Etched in Purple' by Frank Irgang






I found the following book description online, and think it sheds light into the motivations and meaning of Potomac Books' upcoming re-release of Frank Irgang's classic 'Etched in Purple'. Enjoy.







The wartime experiences of Frank J. Irgang




Frank Irgang's personal record of his experiences as a combat infantryman of World War II has its beginning on the dawn of that famous day when the invasion troops landed in France.




We know the outer facts of that invasion - what was planned, how it was executed, and what happened - but what we do not know are the innermost thoughts of those crawling bits of humanity who fought their way across France and into Germany. What were they thinking? How did they meet the terror of each new day?




In this well-timed revelation of one infantryman's experiences are to be found the inner facts we have wanted to discover. And they are revealed truthfully and with a freshness of reality which it would be impossible to recapture unless the observations had been jotted down, as they were by Frank Irgang, soon after the events took place.




Frank's keen eye for seeing, his unliterary terseness, his sometimes blunt way of stating brutal truths, all contribute toward making this book more than one man's record of the war. In its unpretentiousness it says effectively and vividly what hundreds of other soldiers would have said had they found a means of expression.




ETCHED IN PURPLE The Caxton Press, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho, 1949

Young Frank Irgang, newly returned from the bloody fighting in Europe with the 29th Division.
A more recent picture of Dr. Frank Irgang, Professor, San Diego State University



Coming soon from Potomac Books.




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