Vanguard of the Crusade: The 101st Airborne Division in World War II (review)

In Vanguard of the Crusade, Mark Bando combines new photographs and material with two previously published works to present a single volume. In this work, as in the previous books, he faced a daunting task when he decided to include photographs. In 1944 a divisional policy banned the use of cameras by soldiers during the Normandy invasion. Despite the ban, however, some paratroops carried cameras into battle. Others acquired them later. The photographs included in Bando's book depict pre- and post-battle scenes.

Bando's goal is to tell the story of the experiences of the 101st Airborne Division from its inception in August 1942 to its first mission during the D-day invasion, to its role in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge, and, finally, to the end of the war. The author readily admits that he relied heavily on first-hand accounts in compiling this history, although he did refer to other printed sources. He occasionally uses first-hand accounts to challenge the version of events presented earlier by S. L. A. Marshall in Night Drop. Like any other author, Bando faced a difficult task when describing the different operations in which the 101st participated. Because not all of the units within a division fight in the same place and because the fighting is not organized once the battle has begun, it is challenging to present a comprehensive, coherent picture of an operation. This is immediately apparent in the author's description of the D-day invasion. Enemy flak disrupted the flight patterns of the planes, consequently, many of the paratroopers landed in the wrong place. Bando uses the paratroopers' own words to describe the confusion that many of them experienced, as well as the difficulty they had finding other members of their units and arriving at their target areas.

Although Bando does an admirable job of presenting the paratroopers' stories, there are a few problems with the book. First, because it contains fifty-two extremely short chapters, it is not always clear that several consecutive chapters focus on different aspects of the same set of events. Second, Bando periodically fails to place isolated experiences in the larger context of an operation. For example, at the end of the chapters on Operation Market Garden, he notes that the paratroopers were withdrawn from Belgium and sent to France to rest and refit but he does not identify the reason for the withdrawal of the 101st—the failure of the operation. Finally, Bando does not always do a good job of tying things together, which disrupts the text's flow.

Overall, in Vanguard of the Crusade, Bando has made a useful contribution to the field, particularly for the World War II enthusiast. Because it is not an academic work, the book is less useful for the serious historian. It does, however, provide a good starting point for those interested in uncovering the story of the 101st Airborne Division's contribution to the Allied successes in Europe in 1944-45.