Book Review: Blood River to Berlin by Michael Freeland
July 3, 2016
Clarksville, TN – With Independence Day approaching, if you can read only one book this year, let it be Blood River to Berlin. No, you aren’t going to find it on the best seller list available from a New York publisher. This book is written by your neighbor, Michael Freeland, who lives in Hopkinsville, KY.
Published by Proctor’s Hall Press in Sewanee, Tennessee, Blood River to Berlin: The World War II Journal of an Army Medic is the story of someone who started to school in a one-room schoolhouse in a remote community called “Blood River” in Henry County, Tennessee. He dropped out of high school, went to Detroit to work, and was drafted into the United States Army.
Blood River to Berlin
Remembering American Heroes
May 30, 2011
Written by State Senator Roy Herron
Dad got to England in July of 1944. Soon after he landed, he was on a landing craft headed for Normandy. As they crossed the English Channel, over the loudspeaker came the familiar voice of Roy Acuff singing, “The Great Speckled Bird.”
Years later, Dad would remember that no son of the South, and few from anywhere else, had dry eyes as Acuff sang that Grand Ole Opry favorite and their thoughts returned to home.
They hit Omaha Beach and before long were fighting in the hedgerows. A few days into combat, Dad was wounded, but it could have been much worse. For thousands, it was. So on he fought with his buddies, all part of the Ninth Infantry that famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle once called “a beautiful machine.”
Army troops on board a LCT, ready to ride across the English Channel to France. Some of these men wear 101st Airborne Division insignia. Photograph released 12th June 1944. (Official U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives.)
