Part of Series
Assault Troop Series This is the third in a series of 4 books about Assault Troop, the specially armoured infantry who precede the main advance to 'soften up' the opposition. Led by the rebellious Captain Corrigan, this particular troop form part of the 'Iron Division' during the 1944/45 European campaign. RHINE CROSSING! Now the massed Allied armies, crouched like some huge armoured beast, waited for the final decisive push across the Rhine into the German heartland. Day and night the heavy bombers dropped their creeping barrage of death and destruction onto the enemy who waited, dug-in, across the ominous bullet-whipped river. Captain Corrigan's battle-toughened Assault Troop, on detachment to a green, tall-talking Texan division, led by officers too self-important to take advice, knew that a bloody baptism of battle, death and mutilation was about to sweep over their so-called allies. The Germans would kill with professional skill but the Texans could get them all slaughtered through arrogant incompetence. The Author Born in 1926, Charles Whiting became a volunteer in the 52nd Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment in 1943, aged 17. After the war he studied both in England and in Germany and subsequently became a university teacher in England, the USA and in Germany where he was also German correspondent for The Times Educational Supplement. He gave up teaching in 1973 to write full-time and has written a number of thrillers under several different pseudonyms, including Ian Harding. Other fiction works by Charles Whiting include: As Ian Harding: Assault Troop Series Blood Beach Death In The Forest End Run As Duncan Harding: Flotilla attack Hell on the Rhine Ramps down, troops away! : a novel of D-day Sink HMS Cossack Sink HMS Kelly Sink the Graf Spee Sink the Prince of Wales Sink the Scharnhorst Sink the Warspite Slaughter in Singapore Tug of war As Leo Kessler: Otto Stahl Series Stuka Squadron Series S.S. Wotan Series The Dogs of War Series Rommel's Last Battle# The Hitler Werewolf Murders The Great Escape Operation Glenn Miller Murder at Colditz Kill Patton! Kill Rommel Flight from Berlin As John Kerrigan Fireball Bluebeard Vermin Watchdog Non-fiction works by Charles Whiting include: 48 hours to Hammelburg Ardennes: The Secret War Highway Through Hell In Turkish Waters Operation Fox Hunt Operation Il Duce Operation Kill Ike Operation Stalag Operation Werewolf The Baltic Run West Wall: The Battle for Hitler's Siegfried Line ‘44: In Combat from Normandy to the Ardennes '45: Final Drive from the Rhine to the Baltic The Battle of Hurtgen Forest Ardennes: The Secret War Decision at St Vith The Other Battle of the Bulge: Operation Northwind Patton's Last Battle Paths of Death & Glory: The Last Days of the Reich America's Forgotten Army: The Story of the U.S. Seventh American Eagles: The 101st Airborne's Assault on Fortress Europe 1944/45 Balkan Chase: A Story of the S.A.S. Battle of the Bulge: Britain's Untold Story Battle of the Ruhr Pocket Battleground Korea: The British in the Korean War, 1950-51 Bloody Aachen Bloody Bremen: Ike's Last Stand Bounce the Rhine: The Battle for the Heart of Germany Britain Under Fire: The
Authors
Charles Whiting was a British writer and military historian and with some 350 books of fiction and non-fiction to his credit, under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms including Ian Harding, Duncan Harding, K.N. Kostov, John Kerrigan, Klaus Konrad, and Leo Kessler. Born in the Bootham area of York, England, he was a pupil at the prestigious Nunthorpe Grammar School, leaving at the age of 16 to join the British Army by lying about his age. Keen to be in on the wartime action, Whiting was attached to the 52nd Reconnaissance Regiment and by the age of 18 saw duty as a sergeant in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany in the latter stages of World War II. While still a soldier, he observed conflicts between the highest-ranking British and American generals which he would write about extensively in later years. After the war, he stayed on in Germany completing his A-levels via correspondence course and teaching English before being enrolled at Leeds University reading History and German Language. As an undergraduate he was afforded opportunities for study at several European universities and, after gaining his degree, would go on to become an assistant professor of history. Elsewhere, Whiting held a variety of jobs which included working as a translator for a German chemical factory and spells as a publicist, a correspondent for The Times and feature writer for such diverse magazines as International Review of Linguistics, Soldier and Playboy. His first novel was written while still an undergraduate, was published in 1954 and by 1958 had been followed by three wartime thrillers. Between 1960 and 2007 Charles went on to write over 350 titles, including 70 non-fiction titles covering varied topics from the Nazi intelligence service to British Regiments during World War II. One of his publishers, Easingwold-based Rupert Smith of GH Smith & Son said he was a quiet man and prolific writer. "He's one of a band of forgotten authors because he sold millions of copies and still, up to his death was doing publishing deals.He was the kind of man who was very self-effacing, one of Britain's forgotten authors, still working at 80 years of age, with his nose down and kicking out books." Charles Henry Whiting, author and military historian died on July 24 2007, leaving his wife and son.
Pseudonym for author Charles Whiting Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
