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I Marched with Patton

A Firsthand Account of World War II Alongside One of the U.S. Army's Greatest Generals

Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Published to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of General George Patton's death, a gripping firsthand account of World War II written by a soldier with the American Third Army who served under the legendary warrior and participated in many of the most consequential events of the conflict—including the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of Dachau.
Following in the footsteps of the bestsellers All the Gallant Men, Every Man a Hero, Don't Give Up, Don't Give In, and Never Call Me a Hero, I Marched with Patton is a remarkable eyewitness account that offers priceless insights into a foot soldier's life on the front lines during World War II under the command one of the legendary figures in American military history.

Now a spry ninety-four years old, Frank Sisson looks back at his life and his service in the Third Army. Born in rural Oklahoma, Frank grew up fatherless during the Great Depression. In 1944, at age eighteen, he enlisted and was deployed to France where he marched with Patton, taking part in many of the key Allied movements of the war. Frank fought in the Battle of the Bulge, nearly died crossing the Rhine with Patton, and was among the first American soldiers who liberated the notorious Dachau concentration camp.

After the war, Frank continued to serve in the army as a military police inspector in Berlin. When he finally returned home, he attended college and built a career in business.

Frank Sisson's remarkable reminiscences provide a fresh, unique look at Patton's leadership, the final year of World War II and its direct aftermath, and the experience of combat on the front lines.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 17, 2020
      WWII veteran Sisson recounts his wartime experiences in this spirited yet familiar memoir. A farm boy from Weleetka, Okla., Sisson dropped out of high school to help support his family after his father’s death. Drafted when he turned 18, Sisson shipped off to Europe in 1944 as a member of the Tenth Armored Division in Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. His job was to string communication wires between observation points and the artillery, and to repair the wires when they were cut by German soldiers. Most of the book’s anecdotes about Patton are well-worn and add little to his legend. Still, Sisson narrates his battlefield observations and close scrapes with death in aerial assaults and artillery shelling with verve, and renders his dialogues with fellow soldiers in charmingly folksy vernacular (“When Patton took the command,” a Texan soldier tells Sisson, “he started the Third Army kicking them German’s asses like slapping fleas on a dog. Them Nazis didn’t know what hit ’em”). In the book’s most intriguing sections, Sisson details his experiences as a military police investigator in Berlin after the war and his return home to the U.S. WWII buffs will welcome this comforting snapshot of the Greatest Generation in action.

    • Library Journal

      September 11, 2020

      Joining the commemorative commentary on the 75th anniversary of Gen. George Patton's death, still robust 94-year-old Sisson recalls his World War II service under Patton as a soldier with the American Third Army. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

      Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      September 1, 2020
      A 94-year-old World War II veteran tells his story. Raised in Depression-era rural Oklahoma, Sisson enlisted in 1943 at age 18, sailed to Europe in 1944, served through the final, freezing winter, and fought into Germany. His unit finished the war in Munich, where he witnessed the horrors of the nearby concentration camp at Dachau: "Death hung in the air like a maleficent fog. We stopped, and the men got out. We could see barracks and buildings. Barbed wire lined the perimeters. On the far side of the camp stood a blackened brick chimney. The crematorium, I realized with horror." After Germany's surrender, the Army transferred him to the military police, where he served in the occupation of Berlin for nearly a year, which included a long, apparently platonic relationship with his female interpreter before returning home to enjoy a long and prosperous life. This is not the first as-told-to memoir from an elderly veteran by the prolific Wise. Like 82 Days on Okinawa, which Wise wrote with veteran Art Shaw, he produces an unashamedly novelistic narrative with plenty of action and long stretches of "reconstructed" dialogue that resemble an old Hollywood film and--like the movies--get some details wrong. Most readers of World War II memoirs know something of the war's history, but Wise takes nothing for granted, so he portrays Sisson as an omniscient observer, privy to the thoughts of the higher command and actions of other armies. At times in the text he encounters another soldier who helpfully proceeds to describe the current state of the fighting, including events on the Russian front and politics at home. In his defense, it's unlikely that Sisson's recollections from 75 years ago could fill out an entire 300-page book. What survives is a convincing story of an innocent young man who experienced a vicious war and then a year of adventures in postwar Berlin. Some parts require grains of salt, but this is a believable portrait of a soldier present at the defeat of the Reich.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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