A Dangerous Assignment: An Artillery Forward Observer in World War II

Bill Hanford had one of the U.S. Army’s riskiest jobs in World War II: artillery forward observer. Tasked with calling in heavy fire on the enemy, FOs accompanied infantrymen into combat, crawled into no-man’s-land, and ascended hills and ridges to find their targets--all while the enemy singled them out with a vengeance. The war may have been drawing to a close as Hanford fought in eastern France and then Germany, but as his brutally honest memoir reveals, that didn’t make his assignment any less dangerous.