Unless Victory Comes. Combat with a Machine Gunner in Patton's Third Army.

Garrison, Gene with Gilbert, Patrick.

ISBN 10: 1932033300 / ISBN 13: 9781932033304

Published by Casemate, Havertown, PA, 2004

About this Item

xiii, 266pp, index, glossary, bw ills, maps. Or boards in jacket. Near new. Experiences of a machine gunner from Dec 16, 1944 with the 87th Infantry Division on his 19th birthday through the following 5 months to the end of the war. During this period he took part in the Battle of the Bulge, and fighting on the Czech border. Size: 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 034192

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Unless Victory Comes. Combat with a Machine Gunner in Patton's Third Army.
• Publisher: Casemate, Havertown, PA
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1932033300
• ISBN 13: 9781932033304
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Militaria

About this title

Synopsis

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 an assistant gunner in 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 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 pudde deep enough to fill his canteen from; 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.

About the Author

Gene Garrison retired after a 30-year career with the Department of the Air Force. Patrick Gilbert has worked as a journalist and editor for 35 years, and was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.