Four Hours of Fury

April 22, 2019
Fenelon, a former paratrooper, examines Operation Varsity, a little-known but massive operation near the end of WWII, in perhaps too fine detail. On March 24, 1945, more than 16,000 Allied paratroopers landed around the German city of Wesel over a four-hour stretch, protecting bridgeheads seized by ground troops, in “the culmination of Allied airborne experience earned the hard way over the past three years.” Nearly 55,000 German troops, from battle-hardened SS veterans to old men and boys corralled into Volkssturm units, were dug in to defend their homeland, but the concentration of Allied firepower, air support, and a well-trained, fully supplied fighting force was overwhelming. Testimony from surviving veterans provides gripping detail, but the minutiae of the operation (recommended size of base camps, the number of weapons in a regiment) are meticulously noted, nearly to a fault, which can make for slow passages and a lack of clarity about the larger context. Readers interested in granular detail of military operations and individual combat accounts will appreciate this most. Agent: Jim Hornfischer, Hornfischer Literary.