Roll Me Over: An Infantryman's World War II

Roll Me Over: An Infantryman's World War II

When Raymond Gantter arrived in Normandy in the fall of 1944, bodies were still washing up from the invasion. Sobered by that sight, Gantter and his fellow infantrymen moved across northern France and Belgium, taking part in the historic and bloody Battle of the Bulge, slowly penetrating into and across Germany, fighting all the way to the Czechoslovakian border. With depth, clarity, and remarkable compassion, Gantterâ€”an enlisted man and college graduate who spoke Germanâ€”portrays the extraordinary life of the American soldier as he and his comrades lived it while helping to destroy Hitler's Third Reich.

A graduate of Syracuse University who had played piano with jazz bands from the age of fourteen, Gantter was the program manager of the major radio station in Syracuse when he turned down his third draft deferment and entered the army. At thirty years of age, nearly six feet tall and 130 pounds, he made an unlikely infantryman, but in six months, he went from private to acting squad leader to acting buck sergeant before being awarded the Silver Star and a battlefield commission. He began to write the journal that became Roll Me Over in September 1944 and finished the manuscript in 1949. He died in 1985, and his book was first published in 1997. It is a beautifully written and insightful memoir.

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