| Books |
UNLESS VICTORY COMES
Combat with a Machine Gunner in Patton’s Third Army
Gene Garrison with Patrick Gilbert
Gene Garrison spent a terrifying nineteenth birthday crammed into a
muddy foxhole near the German border in the Saar. He listened
helplessly to cries of wounded comrades as exploding artillery shells
sent deadly shrapnel raining down on them. The date was December
16, 1944, he was a member of a .30-caliber machine-gun crew with the
87th Infantry Division and this was his first day in combat.
Less than a year earlier, he had taken the first steps in charting his
future, entering college as a fresh-faced kid from the farmlands of Ohio.
Now, as the night closed around Garrison, slices of light pierced the
darkness with frightening brilliance. Battle-hardened German SS
troopers using flashlights infiltrated the line of the young, untested
American soldiers. Someone screamed "Counterattack!" In the
maelstrom of gun fire that followed the teenaged Garrison struggled to
comprehend the horrors of the present, his entire future reduced to a
prayer that he would be alive at daybreak.
From those first frightening, confusing days in combat until the end of
the war five months later, Gene Garrison saw many of his buddies killed
or wounded, each loss reducing his own odds of survival. Convinced
before one attack that his luck had deserted him, he wrote a final letter
to his family, telling them goodbye. Garrison gave the letter to a buddy
with instructions to mail it if he died.
From the bitter fighting west of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge to the
end of the war on the Czechoslovakian border, Garrison describes the
degradation of war with pathos and humor.
Gene Garrison's story is told through the eyes of the common soldier, a
man who might not know the name of the town or the location of the
next hill that he and his comrades must grimly wrestle from the enemy
but who is willing to die in order to carry the war forward to the hated
enemy. He writes of the simple pleasure derived from finding a water-
filled puddle deep enough to fill his canteen; a momentary respite in a
half-destroyed barn that shields him from the bitter cold and penetrating
wind of an Ardennes winter; the solace of friendship with a core of
veterans whose lives hang upon his actions and whose actions might
help him survive the bitter, impersonal death they all face.
The rich dialogue and a hard-hitting narrative style bring the reader to
battlefield manhood alongside Garrison, to each moment of terror and
triumph faced by a young soldier far from home in the company of
strangers.
Hardcover, 6 x 9, 256 pages, 16 b/w illustrations - maps
$32.95
Combat with a Machine Gunner in Patton’s Third Army
Gene Garrison with Patrick Gilbert
Gene Garrison spent a terrifying nineteenth birthday crammed into a
muddy foxhole near the German border in the Saar. He listened
helplessly to cries of wounded comrades as exploding artillery shells
sent deadly shrapnel raining down on them. The date was December
16, 1944, he was a member of a .30-caliber machine-gun crew with the
87th Infantry Division and this was his first day in combat.
Less than a year earlier, he had taken the first steps in charting his
future, entering college as a fresh-faced kid from the farmlands of Ohio.
Now, as the night closed around Garrison, slices of light pierced the
darkness with frightening brilliance. Battle-hardened German SS
troopers using flashlights infiltrated the line of the young, untested
American soldiers. Someone screamed "Counterattack!" In the
maelstrom of gun fire that followed the teenaged Garrison struggled to
comprehend the horrors of the present, his entire future reduced to a
prayer that he would be alive at daybreak.
From those first frightening, confusing days in combat until the end of
the war five months later, Gene Garrison saw many of his buddies killed
or wounded, each loss reducing his own odds of survival. Convinced
before one attack that his luck had deserted him, he wrote a final letter
to his family, telling them goodbye. Garrison gave the letter to a buddy
with instructions to mail it if he died.
From the bitter fighting west of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge to the
end of the war on the Czechoslovakian border, Garrison describes the
degradation of war with pathos and humor.
Gene Garrison's story is told through the eyes of the common soldier, a
man who might not know the name of the town or the location of the
next hill that he and his comrades must grimly wrestle from the enemy
but who is willing to die in order to carry the war forward to the hated
enemy. He writes of the simple pleasure derived from finding a water-
filled puddle deep enough to fill his canteen; a momentary respite in a
half-destroyed barn that shields him from the bitter cold and penetrating
wind of an Ardennes winter; the solace of friendship with a core of
veterans whose lives hang upon his actions and whose actions might
help him survive the bitter, impersonal death they all face.
The rich dialogue and a hard-hitting narrative style bring the reader to
battlefield manhood alongside Garrison, to each moment of terror and
triumph faced by a young soldier far from home in the company of
strangers.
Hardcover, 6 x 9, 256 pages, 16 b/w illustrations - maps
$32.95
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