Last of the Horse Soldiers

ISBN: 0741434601

Author: Orr, Uriah

Condition: New

Product Description A young officer of horse cavalry is rudely unhorsed and transferred to the corps of engineers. He lands in Normandy and after the breakout of Normandy he is in charge of engineer intelligence as American troops pursue the beaten Germans clear to the Dutch German border. As the American first and ninth armies prepare to cross the Roer River and close on the Rhine, the author is informed by a refugee of two large dams on the Roer high up in the Ardennes Mountains. The dams are full and together contain some hundred eighty million cubic meters of water! The Roer crosses our route of attack and if the dams are blown during our assault crossing of the Roer thousands of American and British troops will be lost and the crossing doomed! The author was instrumental in preventing this! About the Author In 1920 Colonel Orr was born in the coalfields of West Virginia to well to do parents. His grandfather owned all the coalmines in Preston County. In 1928 repeated strikes by the miners almost ruined the coal business and the depression of 1929 finished the job! The market for coal was destroyed! The author's father went bankrupt and was forced to take a job in far off Ajo, Arizona. Ajo was a frontier mining camp of shacks and outdoor plumbing! Schools were a cruel joke! The author worked in the mines and finished his junior year in mining engineering when Pearl Harbor struck! He was an ROTC cadet and was commissioned second Lt. In horse cavalry in May of 1942.