Frank Sisson

While I Marched with Patton was written with a ghostwriter and decades after the events it is a very good account of one person's experience of the Second World War. Frank Sisson was just eighteen years old when he was drafted into the Army and sent to fight in the Second World War. He was trained for artillery and placed in a unit of the US Third Army. Sisson and his companions were rushed from England directly into the Battle of the Bulge. After months in active combat duty they were present at the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. He saw the horrors of war and the atrocities of the Nazi's crimes against humanity. Every Holocaust denier should be required to read this book. It is no accident that Frank Sisson had to wait until he was in his nineties to tell his story. The horrors he saw and experienced were something he couldn't tell anybody about for years. In the book he mentions that he didn't think he or his companions would ever be able to say anything about the awful things they and seen.… (más)

Until I go to about half-way, I didn't think much of this book. The story, as told, seemed rather pedestrian. I just couldn't relate. And then it began to dawn on me: we need stories like this to tell us how ordinary people left their home environment and were transformed into fighters. Their ordinariness is what makes stories like this so compelling. Sure, we're all aware of the towering figures like Patton but Patton would have gone nowhere without the troops of the Third Army. The reverse is true too ... without Patton, one can only speculate what the Third Army might have been.
As a literary work, this book leaves much to be desired. As one story among millions, it is one that has been handed down to us.… (más)