No Surrender: A World War II Memoir

Readers will marvel at the heroics of this 19-year-old paratrooper after he floated down on D-Day into Nazi-occupied France. In this account of courage and endurance, Sheeran (who died in 2007) was a private with the 101st Airborne when he was captured by the enemy, rounded up with other POWs and marched through American bombs and aircraft strafing to a German camp, chatted up by Axis Sally, and herded before the French in Paris for Gestapo newsreels. He covers it all: the starvation, the exhaustion and hopelessness of captivity, and the suffocating boxcars of the prisoner train. Eventually, the plucky private and his pals escape into the dark and freedom. Each of Sheeran's chapters is devoted to a grander feat of daring than the last—joining the Resistance, battling the Germans toe-to-toe, repeating the same feat his father performed in the previous war. This is a moving portrait of a humble man who was awarded a Bronze Star and named a chevalier of France's Order of the Legion of Honor, going on after the war to become a respected New Jersey politician. (Feb.)