Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army From the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany.

Stephen Ambrose has written a lot of good books, including a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon and no fewer than six books about Dwight D. Eisenhower as soldier and president. Last year his account of the Lewis and Clark expedition won high critical praise. Now, with Citizen Soldiers, the story of the defeat of Germany in 1944 and 1645, he completes a magisterial two-volume account of the climactic year of World War II in Western Europe.

Most Americans today are too young to remember first-hand that final year of the European war. Older people tend to think of it in terms of the successful landings on D-Day, followed by the liberation of Paris and the surrender of Germany. Some also recall the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last great counteroffensive in December 1944.

But almost no one except the surviving participants has any comprehension of the vicious, unrelenting, blood-stained conflict that continued through every day and every night of the 11 months from D-Day to the German surrender on V-E Day. Citizen Soldiers fills that gap. In the process, Ambrose has produced not only m authoritative history but a powerful and painful anti-war testament as well.

As the title suggests, Ambrose tells his story through the eyes and voices of the front-line troops -- the captains and lieutenants, the sergeants and corporals and privates who did all of the fighting and most of the living. These young men, many of them less than a year out of high school, are the heroes of this book. Ambrose sets out his main themes at the very beginning:

Normandy was a soldier's battle. It

belonged to the riflemen, machine

gunners, mortarmen, tankers, and

artillery-men who were on the front lines. There

was no room for maneuver. ... There

was a simplicity to the fighting: for the

Germans, to hold; for the Americans, to

attack. Where they would hold or

attack required no decision-making: it

was always the next village or field ... .

Ambrose is deservedly kind to his front-line subjects. On the other hand, he is coldly critical of some strategic judgments by top commanders -- including Eisenhower -- and of the intelligence staffs at higher headquarters whose misjudgments and omissions unnecessarily raised the bloodshed in the front lines.

Ambrose is particularly critical of what he labels "one of the greatest intelligence failures of all time." The failure of planners to warn the Allied assault forces that the Normandy countryside they were about to enter was criss-crossed with hedgerows -- six-foot earthen banks topped with dense vegetation. They made perfect terrain for defense, but they were hell for would-be attackers. One U.S. officer described the hedgerow fighting this way: "Thus goes the battle -- a rush, a pause, some creeping, a few isolated shots, some artillery fire, some mortars, some smoke, more creeping, another pause, dead silence, more firing, a great concentration of fire followed by a concerted rush. Then the whole process starts over again."

The hedgerows had been there for hundreds of years, but somehow they escaped the notice of the invasion planners. As a result, American company commanders and platoon leaders had to start from scratch to devise new tactics and teach them to their men under enemy fire. The tuition fee was payable in blood -- blood that need not have been so freely spent had the rear-echelon planners done a better job.

It took American and other Allied forces seven weeks to fight through the hedgerow country. When they did, the war changed: Complete air superiority, a phenomenal supply capability, and a steady flow of replacements to the battered American infantry units enabled the Allies to take advantage of the open country to outflank and then crush the German army in France. Many top U.S. commanders -- even such level-headed men as Eisenhower and Gen. Omar Bradley -- began to think in terms of finishing off the Germans by the end of 1944.

But they were wrong, as the front-line U.S. troops who met and measured the enemy first-hand could have told them. As soon as the Americans crossed the border into Germany, the German army came back to life, reorganizing and re-equipping the shattered units, shoving 15- and 16-year old boys into combat, and stubbornly contesting every inch of ground.

But the generals (with a few admirable exceptions) never got to the front lines or talked with the men who slept, ate, and fought in muddy or icy foxholes. The allied commanders ordered continuing attacks against the stiffening German resistance. The result was three months of grinding, bloody, and inconclusive fighting. There was a particularly bitter struggle in the German city of Aachen. U.S. losses were over 5,000; the Germans lost about the same number -- plus another 5,000 captured. The ancient city was completely destroyed. Ambrose's verdict: "The Battle of Aachen benefited no one. The Americans never should have attacked. The Germans never should have defended. Neither side had a choice. This was war at its worst, wanton destruction for no purpose."

He is similarly critical of another battle that fall, in the Hurtgen Forest: "The Battle of Hurtgen [was] started on the basis of a plan that was grossly, even criminally stupid.... The Americans took the forest but lost the battle of Hurtgen, and too many good men. The battle did not shorten the war by one minute."

American combat units in the final months of the war were mainly manned by enlisted men who had been drafted in 1943 or early 1944. They replaced veterans of earlier fighting who were mostly dead or crippled, their luck having run out after months of daily fighting. Example: One infantry company entered combat on September 1,1944, with a full complement of 193 officers and enlisted men. By V-E Day, eight months later, 625 men had served in the company. Of those, 51 had been killed, 183 had been wounded, and 167 had been knocked out of action by trenchfoot or frostbite. Thus combat or combat-related losses had caused a turnover of more than 200 percent in this one unit -- which was by no means untypical.

Ambrose includes separate chapters on the U.S. Army's combat medical services (which he finds wonderful), the replacement system (which he thinks terrible), the air forces, and the experiences of Americans in German prisoner-of-war camps. Each adds something to his overall account; but the power of this book lies in its grim recitation of the unrelenting day-to-day war of the infantryman.

It is more than half a century now since the American citizen soldiers fought across France and Germany, but their story remains painfully relevant today. Stephen Ambrose has paid eloquent homage to these men, and has given the rest of us a powerful reminder of what war really is.