Author Talk: Kathryn Lang-Slattery – Immigrant Soldier: The Story of a Ritchie Boy

Posted by bonnie on 15 September 2016

K. Lang-Slattery became fascinated with her uncle’s World War II stories and began taping him in 1991. After two decades of research, she decided to write a novel about Herman’s life as a teenage refugee, as well as his experiences as an intelligence officer in General Patton’s Third Army. This award-winning novel was described by Kirkus Reviews as “an engaging tale of one man’s involvement in the world’s most horrific war.”

Some of the greatest contributions in defeating the Nazis and winning World War II came from
intelligence gathered by immigrant soldiers. Herman Lang was trained at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, where 9,000 immigrant soldiers– primarily German and Austrian Jews, learned the principles of psychological warfare, counter-intelligence, and interrogation,through which they obtained information about German force levels, troop movements, and the physical and psychological state of the German soldiers.