"Poignant . . . Well worth the read." —Wall Street Journal
In December 1944,
Frank Sisson deployed to Europe as part of General George S. Patton’s famed
Third Army. Over the next six months, as the war in Europe raged, Sisson would
participate in many of World War II’s most consequential events, from the
Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Dachau. Now 95 years old, Frank shares
his remarkable story of life under General Patton for the first time.
Frank Sisson grew up in rural
Oklahoma during the Great Depression. His father died when Frank was young, and
so in 1944, at age eighteen, Frank, like so many other young men across
America, enlisted in the Army and was deployed to France. At a traffic
intersection one day, Frank caught his first glimpse of the man who would
control the next six months of Frank’s deployment, and whose lessons, and
spirit, would shape the rest of Frank’s life. General Patton could be erratic
and short-tempered—but he was also a brilliant military tactician and cared
deeply for the men who served under him, a credo that gave Frank and his fellow
soldiers solace as they faced death every day. In this gritty, intimate
account, Frank reveals what life on the ground was really like in the closing
days of World War II.
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. Like
many members of the Greatest Generation, he was often reluctant to share his
stories of the war, in all their glory, and terror. He was content to live and
work in the nation he had fought to protect, an embodiment of the American
Dream.
Patton, on the other hand,
would not live to see the postwar world he helped create. In December 1945,
less than a year after the conclusion of the war, he tragically died following
a car accident. Now, seventy-five years later, Frank Sisson’s remarkable
reminiscences provide a fresh, unique look at Patton’s leadership, the final days
of World War II and its direct aftermath, and the experience of combat on the
front lines.
Frank Sisson was born in 1925. In 1944, he deployed to France with the 667th Field Artillery. As a sergeant, he participated in much of the most significant fighting of the later war, including the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he served as a military police inspector in Berlin. He lives in Oklahoma City.
ROBERT L. WISE is the author of 34 books, including five which cover the World War II period.
