Gerald Astor Writer on Americans in Combat dies

The New York Times is reporting that Gerald Astor has passed away. He was 81. Gerald was a writer on Americans in Combat.

Besides his accounts of the Battle of the Bulge and the air war in Europe, Mr. Astor wrote of World War II in books including “The Greatest War: Americans in Combat, 1941-1945,” “June 6, 1944: The Voices of D-Day,” “Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II” and biographies of Maj. Gen. Terry Allen, a leading combat commander in both North Africa and Europe, and the Nazi medical experimenter Dr. Josef Mengele.

He also wrote “The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military” and “Presidents at War,” an account of presidents’ evolving assertion of authority to take military action in the absence of a Congressional declaration of war.

Through interviews and correspondence with veterans and accounts from their journals, Mr. Astor, who served with the 97th Infantry Division in the Second World War, told of combat as experienced by foot soldiers, sailors and pilots.