Our Tortured Souls

The acclaimed WWII historian continues his in-depth chronicle of the 29th Infantry Division as it made its brutal push into Germany.

By November of 1944, the U.S. 29th Infantry Division had stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day and embarked on an epic and arduous path toward Allied victory. In Our Tortured Souls, acclaimed military historian Joseph Balkoski picks up the story of the 29th on the eve of the all-out offensive intended to carry the Allies to the Rhine River by Christmas and end the war soon afterward.

The plan for the 29th seemed simple enough. As part of General William Simpson’s Ninth Army, the division was to drive ten miles eastward, breaking through several German strongpoints, crossing the Roer, and seizing Jülich, beyond which lay the Rhine and Germany’s heartland.

The offensive encountered problems from the very beginning, on November 16th, when it took days to crack the German’s first line of defense. By the time the offensive was halted on the banks of the Roer three weeks later, the 29th Infantry Division had suffered 2,600 casualties and fallen short of its objectives. Balkoski reconstructs this tragic chapter in the division’s history with his trademark combination of meticulous research and vivid st