It is a story of courage and determination, revenge and redemption, grippingly told in a fast-moving narrative ... Based on interviews, oral histories, and many primary sources, this is a readable, almost novelistic undertaking that opens a window into a much-ignored aspect of the war. But it is a history with personality — and irony, the inevitable byproduct of war ... It is a magnificent story, one crying out to be told and one that is told very well.
Henderson meticulously crafts a riveting non-fiction account ... Henderson’s research and interviews with scores of veterans gives us a richly detailed story that puts readers alongside the Ritchie Boys in some of the darkest moments of history, from Kristallnacht to D-Day to the liberation of the Buchenwald death camp. In addition to providing sobering insight on how Jewish soldiers fought the Nazis, Sons and Soldiers is a spellbinding account of extraordinary men at war.
Henderson is a skilled storyteller. Sons and Soldiers records concrete acts of courage, commitment, compassion (and, of course, unspeakable cruelty) that may well move — and perhaps motivate — his readers ... his narrative invites readers to wonder whether World War II was the last 'good war,' a conflict in which the enemy was so evil, the cause so just, the stakes so high, and all the alternatives so much worse that the carnage and the 'collateral damage' was and should have been accepted. Reluctantly.
Henderson is a pro at distilling mountains of research into a smoothly told tale, and here he has found an irresistible story arc ... Sons and Soldiers kicks into high gear with the invasion of Europe, as many Ritchie Boys traveled with the 82nd Airborne and Patton’s 3rd Army, questioning POWs in time to use the information for the next day’s battle plans. They were in extreme jeopardy — if they were captured and the Germans discovered who they were or where they came from, they risked execution on the spot. Henderson tells their stories with clarity and detail, but without sentimentality or cant. This is a war story, but it’s not pro-war.
...[a] a highly readable, often thrilling narrative ... A gripping addition to the literature of the period and an overdue tribute to these unique Americans.
Henderson does well to humanize the story of the boys, although he occasionally gets bogged down in the details of particular battles. He also opens the book by overstating the number of victims of the November 1938 German national pogrom known as Kristallnacht. Despite these shortcomings, this is an ably researched and written account of a previously unknown facet of the American-Jewish dimension of WWII.
