Synopses & Reviews
""We followed the acting company commander as his tank started up the narrow road [into Noville]. There were destroyed buildings and disabled German tanks and vehicles everywhere we looked. I was the driver of the fourth tank in the column. It was getting dark and hard to see, so I was driving with my head partway out of the hatch. There was a church on our right and a small crossroads just beyond it. As we passed the crossroads, I saw the burning phosphorus of an armored piercing shell go over my head. Were we in enemy territory? All of a sudden, someone on the radio said, 'The tank of the third platoon leader's been hit.'... I closed my hatch and turned the periscope to look back toward town. I saw many German soldiers filing out of buildings."" --from the book
Tank Driver is the story of a young man's combat initiation in World War II. Based on letters home, the sparse narrative has the immediacy of on-the-spot reporting. Ted Hartman was a teenager when he was sent overseas to drive a Sherman tank into combat to face the desperate German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hartman gives a riveting account of the shifting tides of battle and the final Allied breakout. He tells about the concentration camps, the spectacle of the defeated Germans, and the dramatic encounter with Russian soldiers in Austria that marked combat's end. This is a vivid, personal account of some of the most dramatic fighting of World War II.
Review
""We followed the acting company commander as his tank started up the narrow road [into Noville]. There were destroyed buildings and disabled German tanks and vehicles everywhere we looked. I was the driver of the fourth tank in the column. It was getting dark and hard to see, so I was driving with my head partway out of the hatch. There was a church on our right and a small crossroads just beyond it. As we passed the crossroads, I saw the burning phosphorus of an armored piercing shell go over my head. Were we in enemy territory? All of a sudden, someone on the radio said, 'The tank of the third platoon leader's been hit.'... I closed my hatch and turned the periscope to look back toward town. I saw many German soldiers filing out of buildings.""
Review
"[A] well-balanced, often moving look at one man's war and every man's war." --World War II Indiana University Press
Synopsis
Infantry Soldier: Holding the Lines at the Battle of the Bulge by George W. Neill (University of Oklahoma Press, 2002). ISBN 9780806133805.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [157]-158) and index.
Synopsis
Tank Driver is the story of a young man's combat initiation in World War II. Based on letters home, the sparse narrative has the immediacy of on-the-spot reporting. Ted Hartman was a teenager when he was sent overseas to drive a Sherman tank into combat to face the desperate German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hartman gives a riveting account of the shifting tides of battle and the final Allied breakout. He tells about the concentration camps, the spectacle of the defeated Germans, and the dramatic encounter with Russian soldiers in Austria that marked combat's end. This is a vivid, personal account of some of the most dramatic fighting of World War II.
About the Author
J. Ted Hartman was 19 years old when he got behind the controls of a tank and drove it into battle. After receiving a discharge from the army, he took a medical degree and became an orthopedic surgeon. He was founding chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the School of Medicine, Texas Tech University, from which he is now retired.
Table of Contents
List of Maps
Foreword by Spencer C. Tucker
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. The Army Beckons
2. Basic Training at Camp Roberts
3. ASTP at the University of Oregon
4. Camp Cooke
5. Going Abroad
6. England
7. Forced March across Northern France
8. Entry into Battle
9. The Ambush at Noville
10. First and Second Drives to the Rhine
11. Bloody Easter
12. Bayreuth to Grafenwohr
13. Release of Concentration Camp Prisoners
14. Fierce Battle for the City of Regen
15. The Intensity of the Drive Continues
16. Mauthausen, Gusen I and Gusen II
17. Mass Surrender and Death March
18. Adjusting to Peacetime
19. Waiting to Go Home
20. Belgium Remembers: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge
21. Belgium Revisited, May 2000: Belgian Memorial Day
Bibliography
Index